The Traveler

She tested the cord and made sure that it would hold. Carefully, she went over the low wall on the edge of the roof and lowered herself hand over hand to the second-floor window. Peering through the glass, she saw that the apartment was filled with grayish-white smoke. Maya pushed back from the building and kicked in the glass. Smoke poured out of the hole and was absorbed by the night. She kicked again and again, knocking out the sharp edges of glass still held by the window frame.

Too much smoke, she thought. Careful or you’ll be trapped. She pushed back as far as possible, then swung through the hole. Smoke drifted up to the ceiling and flowed out of the shattered window; there were a few feet of clear space above the floor. Maya got down on her hands and knees. She crawled across the living room and found the Russian lying dead beside the glass coffee table. Gunshot. Chest wound. A pool of blood surrounded his upper body.

“Father!” She stood up, staggered around the half wall, and found a pile of books and cushions burning in the middle of the dining-room table. Near the kitchen, she stumbled over another body: a big man with a knife in his throat.

Had they captured her father? Was he a prisoner? She stepped over the big man and walked down a hallway to the next room. A bed and two lampshades were burning. Bloody handprints were smeared on the white walls.

A man lay on his side near the bed. His face was turned away from her, but she recognized her father’s clothes and long hair. Smoke swirled around her body as she went down on her hands and knees and crawled toward him like a child. She was coughing. Crying. “Father!” she kept shouting. “Father!”

And then she saw his face.

4

Gabriel Corrigan and his older brother, Michael, had grown up on the road, and they considered themselves to be expert concerning truck stops, tourist cabins, and roadside museums displaying dinosaur bones. During their long hours traveling, their mother sat between them in the backseat, reading books or telling stories. One of their favorite tales was about Edward V and his brother, the Duke of York, the two young princes locked in the Tower of London by Richard III. According to their mother, the princes were about to be smothered by one of Richard’s henchmen, but they found a secret passageway and swam across a moat to freedom. Disguised in rags and assisted by Merlin and Robin Hood, the brothers had adventures in fifteenth-century England.

When they were boys, the Corrigan brothers pretended to be the lost princes at public parks and highway rest stops. But now that they were adults, Michael had a different view of the game. “I looked it up in a history book,” he said. “Richard III got away with it. Both princes were killed.”

“What difference does that make?” Gabriel asked.

“She lied, Gabe. It was just another fabrication. Mom told us all these stories when we were growing up, but she never told us the truth.”

* * *

GABRIEL ACCEPTED MICHAEL’S opinion: it was better to know all the facts. But sometimes he entertained himself with one of his mother’s stories. On Sunday, he left Los Angeles before dawn and rode his motorcycle through the darkness to the town of Hemet. He felt like a lost prince, alone and unrecognized, as he bought fuel at a discount gas station and ate breakfast at a small coffee shop. As he turned off the freeway, the sun emerged from the ground like a bright orange bubble. It broke free of gravity and floated up into the sky.

* * *

THE HEMET AIRPORT consisted of one asphalt runway with weeds pushing out of the cracks, a tie-down area for the planes, and a shabby collection of trailers and temporary buildings. The HALO office was in a double-wide trailer near the south end of the runway. Gabriel parked his bike near the entrance and unfastened the shock cords that held his gear.

High-altitude jumps were expensive, and Gabriel had told Nick Clark, the HALO instructor, that he was rationing himself to one jump a month. Only twelve days had passed and now he was back again. When he entered the trailer, Nick grinned at him like a bookie greeting one of his steady customers.

“Couldn’t stay away?”

“I made some more money,” Gabriel said, “and I didn’t know where to spend it.” He handed Nick a wad of cash and went into the men’s room to put on thermal underwear and a jumpsuit.

When Gabriel came out, a group of five Korean men had arrived. They wore matching green-and-white uniforms, and carried expensive gear along with laminated cards with useful English phrases. Nick announced that Gabriel was jumping with them, and the Koreans came over to shake the American’s hand and take his picture.

“How many HALO jumps you make?” one of the men asked.

“I don’t keep a logbook,” Gabriel said.

This answer was translated and everyone looked surprised. “Keep logbook,” the oldest man told him. “Then you know the number.”