Germ

If it isn't too late.

Nix that. Think of something else. Julia. He did like the way she looked. He liked that she was tough too. And smart. Somebody he could get to know.

He thought of all the women he'd known, the ones he could remember. One by one, he counted through them, tried to recall how they'd met, what they'd done on their first date, their names.

He entertained any thought that entered his mind, anything but the most pressing, the most insistent. He didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to know—

Why am I feeling these pains? What have they done to me?

—Angelina. Pretty blonde. Senior prom. No, he'd taken Robin. Brunette. So how had he known Angelina? Homecoming?

The dead bolt rattled, thunked. The door cracked open. A face peered in, then bent low. A water bottle rolled in. The door shut, the lock thunked.

He was thirsty. He willed himself up to get the bottle. Didn't move. He watched the bottle, on its side, unmoving.

Reminded him of Patty. She loved water, wouldn't drink anything else. Drove him nuts, that girl.

When he returned to the comic shop, Stephen paid Sweaty

Dave the balance owed by purchasing a cellophane-sealed comic book with a thick stack of hundreds. The book itself was a new issue of an unpopular comic, worth a few bucks at best. The documents it hid, however, were invaluable.

Back in the van, he and Julia inspected the bogus identifications, stunned by their perfection. The passports possessed stamps from other countries, dating back half a dozen years. Some of the pages were dog-eared, and Stephen's had a coffee-cup circle stained into the front cover. The driver's licenses also showed signs of wear, but not to the extent that the numbers were illegible or the pictures hard to see. Sweaty or one of his cohorts had digitally removed his beard but left him with a mustache, so it appeared that it had been taken at a different time from the passport photo. Their new birth certificates appeared to be yellowing and slightly brittle from age. Julia said that the effect was achieved by immersing the paper in weak tea, then warming it in an oven at low temperature. As a final touch, Sweaty Dave had given each of them several major credit cards, complete with a few hundred dollars of available credit. Julia got a Sears card embossed with her new name.

"You have to shave," she told him, "or at least take a trimmer to it."

"I won't look like my photo."

"That's okay," she assured him. "People who check IDs expect appearances to change. They get suspicious when you look too much like your photo. They're trained to compare the nose, eyes, size of the ears, shape of the face, things that don't change. They'll know it's you, don't worry."

seventy-four

Gregor burst from the Quonset hut door, pistol drawn. Making his way toward the airstrip, he grimaced at the sky. Guards, two with rifles, two with Uzis, were already there, looking off toward the distant Amambay mesas to the south. The jet seemed to rise up from the treetops. It sailed overhead, low and loud.

At the end of the runway, the parked Cessna's door opened, and Atropos came out, stopping on the steps. He glared up, blocking the sun with his hand.

Gregor ran all out for him.

Atropos saw Gregor and pulled his gun.

Gregor stopped. He realized Atropos was responding to his own drawn weapon. He holstered it and jogged the rest of the distance.

Atropos's big pistol remained in his hand, pointed at the runway. His thick black hair was even messier than it had been when he arrived. His clothes were wrinkled, as though he'd slept in them.

"Another plane!" Gregor called. "One of yours?" He knew it had to be. It was the same model as the one Atropos flew.

"Have you taken care of Parker?" He saw Gregor's confusion and said, "Allen Parker. When can I take him?"

"Soon. We just want to make sure—do you know anything about that plane?"

Atropos stepped onto the packed-dirt airstrip. He strode past Gregor, heading for the four guards. Karl Litt appeared from behind the Quonsets. He scanned the sky as he moved slowly toward the guards.

"Atropos," Gregor pleaded. "I need to know—"

"Yes, that's me."

"You weren't supposed to tell others. I invited only you."

"I know."

They were almost within earshot of Karl. His scowl was already visible.

"This is a problem," Gregor said. "I told Karl you were coming alone."

Karl stepped toward them. "What's going on?" he asked loudly.

Gregor trotted ahead of Atropos, holding his palms up. "I was told—"

The jet roared up from the east, over the trees, and dropped down onto the runway. Its engines whined as its reverse thrusters kicked in. It taxied past the men at more than a hundred miles per hour. Slowing quickly, the sound ramped down. The plane reached the end of the airstrip, near the other Cessna, turned around, and approached them at a slow clip.

The guards brought up their weapons. Gregor felt Atropos's pistol push into his temple.