Germ

"Yeah, I'm okay." He smiled, and she strode off. He guessed he was okay. It was either be okay or be useless—and he didn't want to be that.

He had opened the driver's door and leaned in to deposit the bag of food on the passenger's seat when, from the rear seat, Julia spoke.

"We got a problem."

"What?"

"They're over the Atlantic, heading south."

"Yeah?"

"A few hundred miles southeast of Nassau."

"Heading for Cuba?" His mind tried to grasp the meaning of the jet's leaving the United States. How would that hinder their pursuit?

"I don't think Cuba. Haiti maybe. They've already flown outside the boundaries of the detailed maps hardwired into this laptop. Unless they sweep back into U.S. airspace, I'll only be able to pinpoint the transmitter to the nearest city, but no better."

"I'm not believing this," he said. "We lost him?"

"Absolutely not. If we can get to within a hundred miles of wherever they take him, we can still track them down. Every activity leaves a trail, and I know how to find it and follow it."

The road workers exited the restaurant, talking and laughing. Stephen climbed in and shut the door. He hitched an arm around his seat back, turning to address her.

"Foreign soil," he said. "If the cards were stacked against us before, think how much more difficult getting to Allen will be in another country. Where would we go for help? The language barrier alone—"

"Stephen!" It was a verbal slap and quieted him as effectively as a palm upside the head. When she was sure he was listening, she said, "I'm telling you we can do this—we can find and rescue your brother. I don't care if they take him to Antarctica." As firm as her countenance had been, it somehow hardened even further. "We will get him back."

She made him feel hope—insane and untenable maybe, but hope all the same.

He glanced away, at the men getting into a sedan across the parking lot, at the darkness of the night beyond. Did he believe her when he wasn't pinned by her determined eyes? Incredibly, he did. He believed in his heart she could do what she said.

That's all he needed.

He rolled his head in a muscle-stretching circle and let out a long, deep sigh. His heavy beard parted in a smile. "Have you ever thought of selling cars?"

"I'm pretty good at wrecking them." She checked her watch. "Now get this thing moving. We've gotta get to Atlanta before the man we need to see gets too plastered to help us."

seventy-one

The staccato pops of gunfire woke Allen from a fitful slumber. Before his eyes opened, pain from his shoulder and wrists welcomed him to consciousness. Nearby, a man spoke, something about a conference in Geneva. Music came on. One eye opened; the other was crusted shut. Light, shadows flickering over it. He remembered the plasma TV, rolled his head to see it. He forced open his other eye. A news commentator was replaced by a black-and-white western was replaced by a commercial for car wax was replaced by a televangelist . . . For a moment, he imagined that these images were not coming to him, but he was going to them: bouncing around through time and space, appearing and disappearing, a soul caught in the cosmic equivalent of a tornado. He wondered if the people he saw, saw him back, a flicker of a ghost, here and gone, swept off to the next sight and sound before surprise registered on the faces.

He experienced a sense of weightlessness as the plane bobbed gently over air currents and he swayed, handcuffed to the hook in the ceiling.

He swung his head the other direction. The cockpit door was open. Atropos sitting at the controls, seemingly staring at the stars beyond the glass.

He tried to think of something to say. He was thirsty. He had to use the restroom. He became aware of a cold pressure on his leg and crotch, the stench of ammonia, and realized he had already wet himself.

Explosions came from the television . . . canned laughter . . . A woman's screams followed Allen back into unconsciousness.

Shadows tumbled in the gusty wind as Stephen waited for Julia outside a windowless tavern on one of downtown Atlanta's rattier streets. He knew it must have been a trick of his eyes or faulty electrical currents that fed the anemic yellow light on the corner a half block away, but the illumination undulated intermittently, as though something unimaginable kept fluttering past—the spirit of despair or desperation, he thought, looking around.

On the other side of the street, outside another "lounge," a loud argument escalated into a shoving contest. Stephen sighed, pushing his hands deeper into his pants pockets. Darkness shifted silently in a recessed doorway not far away. He had the uneasy feeling of being watched but had no desire to investigate. Instead, he turned away.