Necessary Evil

Chapter 26

" Worm's Way? I don't like the sound of that," Jessie said. "Why not go back the way we came in-at Tree Cave?"

"It'll be okay."

"Exactly how small is it? How long is the tunnel?"

"Tight for maybe forty feet. But I can fit. For you, it'll be easy."

She stared at him.

"You aren't normal, Kier. You're not afraid of things that scare the piss out of most people. So when you say it's tight for forty feet, what about the rest?"

"You crawl for a hundred yards, then lie flat on your back for probably thirty yards. Then comes the tight part. Hopefully not much rock has fallen down. I haven't been through in a few years."

"Do the kids go there?"

"No."

"Why?"

Kier started to walk and decided to change the subject. There was no point in having her frightened out of her mind before they even arrived at the tunnel.

It took almost a half-day's hiking through the darkroom-black caverns until they stood before the telescoping rock passage that Kier called Worm's Way. They had used up two lights and were on their third, but they had several more lights from incapacitated or dead enemies.

Stooping to look, Jessie would have sworn the passage petered out just beyond the first bend sixty or seventy feet away.

"Can't be."

"It's an illusion," he replied.

Bending, she looked again.

"Once you get there it's not as tight as it looks. Around the corner it opens up a little."

"It's 140 yards to daylight?"

"About that, give or take."

At first it was easy to crawl, and although it got low at the bend, it did open some, just as Kier had said. They enjoyed three feet of clearance for the next thirty or forty feet around the bend, then almost had to drop on their bellies. At this point Jessie still had a couple of feet on either side, which helped control her claustrophobia.

Because they could not risk a light near the exit point, they had to feel their way from here. Kier could do little to make it easy for her. When they stopped for a moment now and then to take stock, he encouraged her by telling her how he admired her strength and her determination.

The air tasted stale and slightly bitter in her throat. She found herself breathing more deeply without knowing if it was from exertion or fear. A choking sensation began to overtake her. Diseases like hantavirus came to mind. It became easier to imagine the ceiling caving in, or becoming trapped, or dropping into some unknown shaft because they had taken a wrong turn.

"Talk to me," Kier called out as her chest heaved with choking.

"How much farther?"

"We're about halfway."

That pierced her like a knife. The earth was crushing in on her. She yearned to stretch her arms out at her sides, but couldn't. She inched like a caterpillar, but still felt her back rubbing against the rock above her. And up farther it would be tighter still. She couldn't imagine it. She couldn't imagine surviving it. The chill of the limestone under her fingers sent the lonely cold to her mind. She couldn't raise her forearms or hands more than a few inches above her head-a constant reminder that she was locked under a mountain of rock.

At the academy they had put her in a sensory-deprivation tank that they flooded with water in the darkness. The marines used it to deter the faint of heart. It had been disturbing, but as the sound of her heart had filled her ears, she told herself over and over: They won't kill you.

What could she tell herself here?

"I don't know if I can do this."

"Listen to me," he said. "Turn over on your back and close your eyes. You can be wherever you let your mind put you. Remember the bed in the cabin. Remember the stars."

In desperation she did as Kier said, barely able to roll in the confined space. She filled her mind with the way she'd felt under the night sky. When she had calmed herself again, she listened to his voice.

"We'll be there in minutes. Just minutes. Reach and grab the rock, then pull." She did it. "Pull," he said again and again, making a rhythm for her of reaching, pulling, and sliding.

The regularity of it was calming, breaking up the terrible pictures in her mind. She found herself breathing with every reach and every pull, enhancing the rhythm. Reach, breathe, pull, breathe.

They did not stop or rest again until they came to the tightest section.

"Now don't let your hands come back past the top of your head. Stretch yourself out. Think string bean."

At that she laughed quietly. Kier chuckled back. They started again. Now she could almost kiss the rock. Her knees could scarcely rise to dig in her heels. It was so tight she couldn't imagine Kier moving. At that moment her hands touched his feet. Oh God, no.

He was stuck. She could feel him struggling. Her heart jumped. Inside her head a small, imaginary Jessie cringed at things too horrible to contemplate. The feet ahead of her still weren't moving. There was only struggle. Too much breath rushed in and out to even ask. She couldn't bear the wrong answer.

Something in her mind started pounding. Perhaps I'm coming undone. She noticed her head moving wildly side to side as if a giant hand were making her say no. She wanted to scream, but didn't. Then a voice spoke in her head. Her voice. She was back under the stars. There was something tiny inside her that wanted to reach out to something huge, something infinite.

You need to be at peace inside the mountain, she told herself, imagining herself rising up out of her body and passing into the stone. In a few moments, it no longer seemed so confining. The mountain was still above her, but it didn't contain her. She was part of it.

Then she saw the face of her late father. Before she had time to think what the tears meant Kier's voice cut through her consciousness. For a split second, she had thought it was the voice of her father.

"We're gonna make it."

The feet were gone. Calmer now, her mind urged her forward. In seconds the light of day replaced the utter blackness. A minute more of squirming and Kier pulled her hands into a wide-open world. The air tasted like her mother's fresh pillowcases. The little Jessie inside her head danced for joy.

It did surprise her that the men in white suits had disappeared like a bad dream. Kier speculated that Tillman would try to pick up their track in the morning after they had passed farther down the mountain. Tillman would want to feel in control. He would want to ensure that they kept the appointment. But he would be too shrewd to risk scaring them off by leaving men in place. Kier planned to leave no trail by following creeks, and once they got below the snow line, by sticking to rocky slopes and washes.

With the wind whipping her unprotected ears with enough velocity to make her jaw ache, the reptilian mist washing over her, Jessie needed all her faculties to step precisely where Kier did. To do this, she wore no hood or helmet over her head. When Kier insisted on some protection, she agreed to wear only the helmet. More than once (she supposed as a form of encouragement), he remarked that she had saved them on the ledge. Even so, one more freezing hike over dangerous ground on a hungry stomach meant misery on a scale she never cared to repeat.

She developed confidence in Kier's theory about Tillman's willingness to pull back only after they had traveled miles without incident. When they doubled back, there was no one following. Below the snow line now, Kier took them down then up and over a high ridge and down into a different drainage.

They walked beside a beautiful stream in the afternoon sun. To her amazement it made her forget her weariness and her hunger.

"The whisperings of the mountain are like laughter-nourishment for the soul, Grandfather says."

Jessie's senses began to catch the special feeling of this wild place. They traveled a river trail worn smooth in the verdigris granite. Around them echoed the many sounds of moving water: its murmurs, its bright tones like loose change, its pelting drumbeat, and in the distance, its cavalcade roar.

She felt the intrigue of the forest for the first time. Angled shafts of sun met the trees' hefty, gnarled old arms ending in hands of feathery, green-needled leaves. The chilly breath of the woodland on a winter afternoon left this world of light and shadow tinted with the sparkling wet of fresh rain.

On one side of them, there was a six-foot drop to rushing water; on the other, the firs grew thick, overhanging the ancient pathway.

"Watch your step." He offered a hand as if she were a porcelain princess.

She smiled, feeling foolish for enjoying the man's peculiar chivalry when they had such a sobering obligation.

"Moccasins, mules, and hard heels have worn these trails in the rock for hundreds of years," Kier half whispered, catching her eye, making it hard for her to concentrate on the history.

She wanted to stop and talk. Actually she wanted to be close to him, but the fear of being ambushed and the need to press on kept them going.

Running over bedrock ledges into shimmering pools in a series of cascades, the river became a foaming roar in this part of the canyon-known as Spirit Gate. At the end of the cascades was a pool, surrounded by lichen and moss-covered rock, and ringed with old-growth fir, hemlock, and cedar. Jessie tilted back her head, awestruck by the timeless immensity of it all.

They stood on a gray-white rock beyond the reach of the spray from the last cascade, where a small clear pool mirrored the mountain. They stopped for a moment to drink.

Kier pointed at tracks in the mud. "Those are otter," he explained. He pointed farther away to the water's edge. "Those are coon."

All around the soft dirt told the story of the passing little feet.

"I'm chilled." She moved against him, feeling slightly bold. She let her gaze wander across the mountain. One lone fir grew crooked, high up, out of what seemed to be a smooth rock face. Wanting Kier's touch, Jessie felt a kinship to the solitary tree.

After a time, a gentle hand rested on her near shoulder.

"This hasn't changed for thousands of years, I suppose," she said, pulling his arm around her and leaning into his ribs.

"What hasn't changed, the scenery or the other?" he said.

"Well, both, but I guess at the moment I'm thinking more of the other."

The creek took them to the bottom of Mill Valley to the Wintoon River, but at a point far above the Donahues' or Kier's cabin. Quickly they darted across the Mill Valley Road, over a still-snowy ridge, and down into an area where they had not yet been-a place Tillman was unlikely to search for them.

At the far side of the ridge, Kier stopped and listened. They were in a dense forest.

"There's a cabin that's mostly hidden in the trees. We can approach it without being seen."

The owner was known as Indian Lady Margaret, Kier told Jessie, as they neared the dwelling. Her husband had been a successful fisherman, both on the river and in the ocean. Full of youthful energy at seventy, Indian Lady Margaret still kept the summer place that she and her husband had long ago built on the side of the mountain. It sat far away from any public road at the end of a jeep track in a tiny, natural meadow left to the sun by the conifer forest. As they approached the back of the cabin, Jessie could see that its walls were built entirely of stone; from the outside it appeared solidly enticing.

All one room, it was nevertheless a good deal larger than the now-destroyed honeymoon cabin. Kier knew right where to find the key and promised that its owner would heartily approve of their use of the place. In minutes, they had a fire going in the stove. Among the luxuries of this cabin was a feather bed and running water that flowed by gravity from a spring higher on the mountain. It took only a little doing to prepare their leftover food. Kier said Margaret wouldn't mind if they borrowed a canned ham that Jessie favored over reheated beaver tail.

For light they had kerosene lanterns. Not as bright as a normal array of electric bulbs, the lanterns bathed the cabin in a soft yellow glow. The rock walls would have been positively chic in a downtown New York restaurant-here they made good protection. The furniture consisted of a rocker with layers of blanket tacked on for padding, an old but serviceable sofa flanked by two handmade tables, and a five-board kitchen table with four rustic chairs.

Kier and Jessie still had enough energy left to speculate during dinner about the airplane and their adversary's machinations.

After dinner, Kier rigged sheets around a large bathtub in the corner. Using water that had been heating since before dinner, he made her a shallow bath. Almost falling asleep, he threatened to assist her in order to get his turn. Although they both talked of sleep with real eagerness, they were running on adrenaline and could not turn their drowsiness into the will to crawl in bed. Giving up on sleep for the moment, they sat down for a dessert of canned peaches.

"How the hell did he get a piece of you to clone?" she asked.

''I had my jaw wired together at the clinic. It was three years ago. They put me to sleep. They could have done anything."

"Oh." After taking another bite of peach, she continued. "Why are you so aloof? With women, I mean."

"How did we get from cloning to…?"

"Biology to love? I think for most men that's the natural sequence of events, except maybe they don't usually get to the second part. So don't change the subject. We're on aloof now."

"Maybe I'm not altogether sure."

"But you admit it?"

He nodded.

"Of course, you're sure. You've had years to think about it. You are introspective. You can't fool me with those terse Tilokisms of yours. Tell me. I want to know."

"I suppose my dad dying the way he did, coated me with emotional veneer. I suppose if I am numb I wouldn't know, after all these years, that there is anything but numb."

"I don't agree. I think you understand stir the oatmeal as a no-risk deal. To understand that, you've got to understand the possibility of something else."

Kier shrugged and touched her face. She didn't pull away.

"At this point I nod and you talk," he said.

She laughed hard.

"You're attractive when you're demanding telephones."

"You think you can sidetrack me with secret eyes?" she asked. "What do you take me for?"

"Who gets the bed?" Kier asked, abruptly sliding back his chair slightly as if to stand up.

"You. I can fit on the couch," she said.

As before, Kier wore only jockey shorts, she his T-shirt with her panties, while the rest of their clothes dried. She glanced at him as she sipped the cup of instant coffee they had borrowed along with the ham and peaches. She wasn't going to badger him any further. She was tired of badgering men. This time Kier did not try to make love to her with his gaze. He sat circling his coffee mug with a finger.

"Well, we should sleep for a few hours before I take off."

"Meeting's not until nine a.m. the day after tomorrow."

"I'm arriving before daybreak."

"Really. And why are we arriving before daylight?"

"I am arriving before daybreak to take Tillman hostage. It's the only way to find out what is going on."

This engendered a thirty-minute argument in which neither of them made a single new point.

"Well, at least you can't win the debate by locking me in a hole," she said finally.

"Wine cellar. But forget it. You wanna come, you come."

Now she could feel herself squinting, suspicious that she was being tricked.

"When you do that, it makes each little line in your face get deeper," he told her.

They smiled, and she inexplicably knew that he wouldn't trick her again. She held his gaze for as long as she dared. In his eyes she found a knowing strength that reached to her core. On the kitchen table his large brown hand contrasted with the whiteness of hers. She wished to feel his rough hand moving over hers. Such a simple thing, she imagined, would be so pleasurable. But she felt guilty for the wish. Each move they made toward one another, each little intertwining of emotion and personality, would in the end be undone, leaving neither the better for it.

''Frank Bilotti,'' she blurted out without really having made up her mind to do so.

"Who?" he asked.

"My boss."

"Yes," he said after a long pause in which she struggled to gather her thoughts.

''And Grail is my best friend from way back. I would have trusted either of them with my life. No question. You gotta understand. Frank was my mentor. We never crossed the line, but we felt deeply about each other-or I thought we did. After I introduced them, Gail had an affair with him. He's married to Eva. First big mistake."

Kier's eyes scrutinized her.

"Got your attention, didn't I?"

He nodded slowly.

"It had been going on for months. Frank is rich, by the way. Frank inherited lots of money, and unlike most of us, he doesn't need to work. The Bureau was an interesting hobby in more ways than one. He was bringing her travel brochures and talking honeymoon when there wasn't even a divorce in sight. He said they could take their honeymoon even before they were married. I begged Gail, pleaded with her to forget him."

Kier's eyes were somber, intent. She could feel herself about to cry, and tried to hold everything still from her stomach to her lips. "Gail, my dearest friend, was such a schmuck." Now tears were running hot down her cheeks. She paused to catch her breath. "She just ignored the facts. He was never going to leave his wife. She actually began thinking I was jealous. And maybe I was, but not the way she thought.

"See, I couldn't work with him like I used to. All his help, all his insight, the coaching about how to deal with the bureaucracy.. it was gone, dried up. I suppose my disapproval about the whole situation was just oozing out of me. My respect for him disappeared, and he could feel it.

"I was supposed to meet Frank and two other agents at his summer home for a brainstorming session on a tough case. They were going to raid a place I had identified electronically. Anyway, I show up unexpectedly early by several hours, and even from the patio I can see that Frank and these two guys are watching this video.

"I'm a little quiet, wanting to surprise them, and they're so busy watching the TV they don't even see me. The window is cracked an inch and I can hear them. At first I think it's like an X-rated film or something. I'm embarrassed. Then I'm horrified. It's a video of Gail having sex with Frank, and these three guys are watching. And get this-Frank is commenting on it, and it's sick. All of a sudden I realize he's this cold detached bastard who's just using Gail in the crudest possible way. Frank's face is conveniently blurred on the tape, some special effect, but Gail's isn't. And believe me, from Frank's commentary for the boys you know it's Frank. And you knew Gail never had a clue about this."

Jessie had finished her coffee long ago, but she held the empty cup in a death-grip.

"I blew sky-high, barged in and told them what I thought of them." She stopped for a moment. "Frank turned on me. Just like that. My mentor, this man I would have trusted with my life, says that if three top agents say it didn't happen, it didn't happen. Then he threatens me. He actually threatens me if I say anything."

"What did he threaten you with?"

"You know this case we were supposed to be meeting about?"

Kier nodded.

"I had done some sweeps on the computer that required permission from above. Frank had given me the authorization. It's like a wiretap sort of, only with respect to a hacker's computer. I didn't do much of it, but another gal in our section did, and he was going to say it was all my doing. That I was trying to get ahead and it was all unauthorized. He said I'd get a failing performance review because of it. He would tell everyone that I had concocted this crazy story about the tape when all they were doing was watching an adult movie to pass the time."

"Usually the truth comes out."

"Oh yeah, right. Sure it does. But you've got no idea how somebody as powerful as Frank, with as many friends as he has, can screw up your career. And in the end I didn't have the tape. When I grabbed it, they took me down. Beat the shit out of me."

Jessie pushed the coffee cup aside and looked away.

"So what did you do?"

"It got bad, Kier. I had to use my gun to get out of Frank's summer home. Then I just walked out of the New York office, took a leave of absence, and came up here, but not without telling Frank's boss, Grady White. He's the head of the region. I told him the whole thing-off the record. He's sweating like hell. He believes me, but he says I gotta make up my mind: Do I want to leave this for Gail to deal with or file a formal report?"

"What does he think you should do?"

"I think he just feels sick, and trapped, and he probably thinks I should come forward and nail the bastards. Either destroy their careers or let them destroy mine. Without me, there probably won't be anything official. I'm not sure Gail would or could do it alone. If I talk, a holy war's gonna break out in the ranks of the Bureau. We can't all survive, but we could sure all go down."

Kier leaned back in his seat. ''After all that, you think there's no way the government could have sold out to Tillman?"

"I promise you, Kier, this is different. This is three guys and their twisted sex lives. It's hormones. It's not bribery. It's just not the same. And Frank Bilotti is not the institution."

Kier nodded as if he understood. "So when I met you on the road, when we were in the barn, all this time you've had this inside you. And you've kept it there."

''Yeah. Until now.'' She let herself begin to cry, completely weary of containing it. The fear, the anxiety, the heartache, the lost affection for Frank, it all wanted to squeeze its way out through her eyes.

She knew that Kier's hand would not move. At the other cabin he had rebuked himself; he would not allow himself to be drawn to her again. Sorrow and depression had replaced desire and settled over her. But now there was something worse than Frank Bilotti and his betrayal. Jessie could see the disappointment in all of her tomorrows: the mornings she would awake and wonder if she were in bed with the wrong person. Of course, she realized, that would be the lucky result. Just as likely, she would die-die missing this last opportunity to finally connect with this man, this guileless man. And outlive her cynicism, if not her singleness. She did not know how to begin.

In his fingers Tillman held the picture of Jessie, and his eyes periodically darted to it. A great pressure was building in his mind. Outside he saw a faint movement in the blackness. It was the llama wandering across the front porch. A man went quickly by the table, obviously trying to avoid him.

"When's somebody gonna butcher that damn llama?" Tillman asked. "Walking around like that gets the sentries used to movement. It's dangerous."

"I'll see that she's put in the barn, sir."

Tillman grunted as if he was half satisfied. Obviously the man had developed some ridiculous attachment to the animal.

Ready at last to talk, he called for Doyle, who came immediately with his mug of coffee. Doyle sat heavily as though the struggle were equally his.

"So what will he do?"

"I think he'll come." Doyle spoke without hesitation. "You've got his family and he's smart enough to know it. But I don't think he'll come when he says. And he won't come peacefully, that's sure. He'll come to take you."

"When do you think he'll get here?"

"Tonight sometime."

Tillman leaned back in the chair and poured himself another cup of coffee from the Donahues' pot. Only Doyle knew that Tillman had been on the mountain. The others thought he had just returned from Johnson City. He hadn't even told Brennan.

"I don't think we dare do anything until he arrives here. These men aren't smart enough to ambush him without being detected," Tillman said.

"With a chap like this who knows the terrain, it's nearly impossible to move on that mountain without tipping him off. Especially when we don't know where he's going to leave that cavern."

"I'm going to go out by myself tonight."

"I have an idea," Doyle said.

"Go ahead." Tillman took another sip and let his stare test the man.

"I'd like to talk to Kier and the woman alone. I'd like them to think I'm an undercover FBI agent."

Tillman lowered his chair to the floor, intent on Doyle's every word. "I'm listening."

"When I worked for Her Majesty's government, one of the things they taught us was FBI procedure. Even went to Quantico for a fortnight. Their antiterrorist course was supposed to be the finest in the world. If I could get with the FBI woman, talk to her, I believe I could convince her that I'm on her team. Maybe I could convince Kier. If either of them believed me, it would be over quickly."

Tillman reappraised Doyle. "Why does a man with your background go to work as a mercenary?"

"Had a run-in with my supervisor. He had strong feelings about my taking some favors from some rich business types. Just vacations. They were recruiting for private security. It was the one really thick thing I did, but believe me, it was enough. Got demoted very quietly. At first I thought it was a disaster. Until I learnt the private money was a lot better, if you don't count the lost pension."

Tillman was silent while he thought about it. Something made him slightly uncomfortable, but he couldn't put his finger on it. Maybe it was the way Doyle told the story so easily, as if he'd never lived it.

"How do you propose to do this?"

''Tonight we leave the greenest men in the house. You and I get on the most likely trails. We put a few more men, the best ones, in the woods around the house. We try to capture him or her-either one. Preferably the bird. But we've got no control over that. If anybody gets either of them at gunpoint, I come along and promise to save them when I can. Then I pitch them."

"You turn them loose?"

"Certainly not. But if I convince them I'm on their side- maybe I can get the sixth volume."

"Sounds like a long shot. Might work."

"To make it work I need something."

"What's that?"

"I need to know whatever Kier would know if he read Volume Six. If I were the FBI and investigating, you see, I'd know why the hell I'm investigating. Only way to be convincing is tell them some seemingly secret stuff."

It was a seductive pitch. Doyle was the brightest of his men. The subterfuge would be elegant if it worked. Tillman wanted to trust him.

"In short, I need to know what's going on or I won't be effective."

Tillman wanted a drink and rose to pour one.

"You like a Scotch?"

"Please."

Tillman had discovered that the Donahues had no liquor cabinet. An oversize kitchen drawer held the libations. He removed a bottle of Glenlivet, amazed that the Donahues would have a single malt.

As he returned to the table and poured them two Scotches, neat, he decided to begin by giving Doyle a rundown of the Marty Rawlins diary, then observe his reaction before deciding how much more he would disclose.

He might even tell Doyle just how far ahead of the rest of the world he really was.