Then I started to fall. I dropped like a stone toward the sea. A monster reared its head above the crashing surf, its mouth stretching open to reveal fangs as tall and glittering as the walls of the castle.
I woke up before I fell into the dragon’s mouth.
“Alfred,” Ashley was saying. “Alfred, we’re boarding.”
On the plane, I sat down beside her—she took the window seat—and waited, my knee popping up and down, counting off the seconds in my head. This was goodbye, but it was a goodbye without a farewell.
I gave her hand a squeeze and said, “I think I got hold of some bad lettuce—have to go to the bathroom,” the third lie, and then I worked my way toward the front of the cabin with a lot of “excuse me’s” and “I’m sorries” as I slid sideways past passengers filling the overhead compartments. At the front of the plane, I risked a glance toward our seats. All I could see was the top of her blond head and for some reason that broke my heart: the last I would see of her would be the top of her head.
I told the lady attendant I’d left my carry-on at the gate. She was distracted, trying to find room in a little compartment for a first-class passenger’s coat. She waved me through the hatch but told me I’d better hurry.
I hurried all right, bumping into people on my way to the gate, counting the seconds in my head. Once they close a hatch on an airplane, they can’t open it again. Hopefully by the time she realized I was missing, it would be too late.
I sank into a chair just outside the double doors of the gate and waited for her to come rushing out. When she didn’t, I stood up and walked to the big window facing the tarmac. The plane was already backing away from the terminal. I wondered if she was going berserk, demanding they let her off. If she pitched a big enough fit, they might. I stood and watched until the plane was out of sight, heading for the runway. Then I stood a few more minutes until it took off, and I watched it until it dwindled to nothing in the blue.
Goodbye, Ashley.
01:07:54:12
I hoofed it back to the men’s room, praying no one had made a garbage run while we sat at the gate. The guns were still at the bottom of the bin where I had stashed them, buried beneath three feet of discarded paper towels. I tucked one gun in the front of my jeans and one in the back and examined my sweatshirt in the mirror for any unsightly bulges.
For the next three hours, I wandered the Helena airport. Besides algebra class and anyplace where you have to wait in line, airports are the most boring places on earth. This was my opportunity to come up with a really brilliant plan, like creating a disabling device out of a shampoo bottle and my pee. But I was a little panicky and tired and already regretting not keeping Ashley with me. Having a seasoned field operative by my side might come in handy when Vosch and company touched down.
When you have time before a life-threatening situation, you feel the need to clear the air, to settle any dangling loose ends, so I called Alphonso Needlemier to unstick the thing stuck in my craw.
“You lied to me,” I said.
“Alfred, I would never—”
“You knew they had Samuel the whole time. Hell, I bet you gave them Samuel.”
“Alfred . . . Alfred,” he sputtered. “I hardly know what to say.”
“Vosch and Jourdain must have contacted you after Nueve pulled me from the warehouse.”
Pushed into a corner, he went all stiff and formal on me. “That is an outrageous assumption on your part.”
“And you were scared out of your mind. I understand that. But I also know how these things work. They’ll lean on anyone who knew me—anybody close I might have confided in. So they leaned on you—they must have leaned on you. Was that the deal, Mr. Needlemier—did you offer them Samuel if they let you go?”
My answer was the soft hiss of the long-distance connection.
“When did you tell them my death was faked? At my funeral? Or did Vosch go with you so you wouldn’t try to give them the slip in Ohio?”
“Alfred, may I say, this is completely . . . Alfred, from the beginning I have always done all I could . . .”
“Stop lying to me!” I yelled into the phone.
“I have a wife!” he yelled back. “A family! I never had any business in this business! You don’t understand what it’s like to face losing everything, Alfred.”
Oh boy, I thought. Oh, boy.
“They said they’d kill them if I didn’t cooperate!” he went on.
“Did you set him up, Mr. Needlemier? Did you give them Samuel?”
“I would pay any price to protect my family. I am not ashamed of that. I will not apologize for that.”
“That’s it,” I said. “I knew it. It didn’t make sense. Even at half speed, Samuel could have taken Vosch. You lured him somewhere and they ambushed him.”
“I saved his life,” Mr. Needlemier said. “Say what you want, judge me if you wish, but I saved his life.”
“They’re going to kill him anyway.”
“Alfred, truly, I never meant to harm anyone. I was put in an untenable position. I can’t . . . there must be . . . please, Alfred, tell me what to do. Is there anything I can do to help you?”
I remembered this fifteen-year-old kid, scared out of his mind, chasing a tall, lion-haired man down a hallway, crying after him as he marched to his doom, There’s gotta be something I can do. Take me with you; I could help.
And I remembered the tall man’s answer.
“Yes,” I said. “Pray.”
01:06:38:29
I was sitting in Captain Jack’s drinking a Diet Coke and listening to an old Billy Joel song (“Saturday night and you’re still hangin’ around . . .”), when a voice came over the intercom instructing Alfred Kropp to meet his party at baggage claim. Baggage claim, I thought. Perfect. I dropped a five on the table and said goodbye to Captain Jack’s. I felt like a regular.
Two men wearing trench coats were standing by the conveyer belt, hands jammed into their pockets, hats pulled low over their faces. Between them stood a third man, tall and pale, with a hound-dog face and very bushy, very black eyebrows. His face showed no expression as I approached; if he was happy to see me, he wasn’t going to show it. I figured he wasn’t happy to see me. I was right.
“You shouldn’t have done this, Alfred,” Samuel said.
Vosch was standing on his right, the slit-eyed, flat-face brute I first met driving the Town Car on his left. I ignored Samuel and turned to Vosch.