He was at least ten years younger, maybe no more than twenty, with messy hair and a sharp face. Kind of scary, and really intense. And not Hans. Come on, Lizzy, she thought, did you really expect it to be him? And if you didn’t, why is your heart sinking? The Range Rover didn’t move. Elizabeth swung the binoculars back to the Cessna. The pilot and co-pilot were coming out of the plane; there were no more passengers. She watched as the young man punched the dashboard in frustration, then pulled out of the parking lot. He drove slowly at first, then veered past her so quickly that she had to duck down in her seat. IslandMan, she thought.
She waited until it was a dozen car lengths away, then followed. He drove straight to Esperanza, following the line of cars and cabs that had picked up the tourists at the airport. Elizabeth put a truck carrying diving gear between her and the Range Rover and hoped to God the kid at the wheel was looking forward. Halfway down the main drag of Esperanza, he pulled to the curb. Elizabeth did the same a block back and waited. The kid got out and crossed the street. She followed him with the binoculars. He was heading for the beach and the Inn on the Azure Horizon. Her heart in her mouth, Elizabeth eased the Honda out of park and rolled by, stealing a glance. She could see the guy in the lobby; talking to the same woman she had spoken to earlier, the one with the paper rose in her hair. She was shaking her head at him and shrugging, and then Elizabeth couldn’t see either one of them. After circling the block, she stopped where she had paused before. The kid came out of the hotel, plucking irritably at his Scooby-Doo T-shirt, got back into the Range Rover and roared away. Again she followed, taking care to keep at least two cars between them, although he was driving much faster this time and threatened to disappear. He drove back to the airport on a different road, then headed north. Fifteen minutes later, as they passed El Fortfn, he hung a sharp right. Elizabeth had a sudden notion that the kid knew he was being followed. She glanced in the rearview, as if to gauge how far back she had to stay to remain unobtrusive, and caught sight of a second SUV, hanging back, slowing as she slowed. Its windshield was catching the sun, so she couldn’t make out the driver’s face, but she was now convinced she was being followed, so she hung back even further. No, now the second SUV was turning off onto another road and she could glimpse a family through the side windows. She looked back for the Range Rover: it had disappeared from sight. Cursing herself for getting spooked and losing her quarry, she floored the Honda. Coming over a rise, she could see the road ahead for a quarter mile, but the Range Rover was gone. There were dirt tracks running off into the scrub everywhere. Which one the weird kid had gone down was impossible to tell. Well, Lizzy, she thought, you blew that, didn’t you? She took a deep breath and realized she had been holding the steering wheel so hard that her hands ached. She was scared, wet with perspiration and definitely shaky. Pulling over to the side of the road, she lit a cigarette. Probably you’re damn well better off, she told herself inhaling deeply and forcing herself to calm down. The fact was that having lost the scent, she was now feeling something like sweet relief. She could go back to the hotel and shower, have a margarita, maybe look up the flight attendants. She started her engine and drove into a pullout to turn around. But as soon as she did, she found herself staring at a fortified gate and an armed U.S. Marine who was watching her, very carefully indeed. Her blood ran cold. Above his head was a simple sign in a concrete gate: CAMP GARCIA-U.S. MARINE CORPS. The Marine was walking toward her. When she tried to pull away, she stalled the car. Shit. He was at her window.
“Help you, ma’am?”
“No, thank you, just turning around.”
He nodded and offered her a little salute. He looked all of fifteen but she guessed he was probably eighteen. When he had leaned over to talk to her she couldn’t help noticing that the muzzle of his rifle swung right past her face. She felt her hands shaking again as she restarted the car and drove away, checking the rearview mirror. No, he hadn’t jumped on the phone, and no, when she returned to Esperanza and her room at the Casa del Frances, there were no messages, no jittery kid waiting in the lobby, no soldier hiding in her closet, no monsters under her bed. Yes, Lizzy, she thought, you are the most paranoid idiot on this island. Either that or this time by sheer dumb luck you have picked the door without the tiger behind it.
For two days, Peter Jr. had been working his staff fiendishly Now they were as elated as they were exhausted. This genius son of someone they had worshipped and then had mourned had in forty-eight blazing, astonishing hours completely reconceived the weapon. “Where have you been all our lives?” Rosemarie Wiener wanted to know. “You Jances are all such bundles of secrets.” She stared at Peter so shamelessly he had to laugh. His refusal of her advances hadn’t dimmed her fires, but it had fueled her curiosity. When he left the room for a moment, she turned to Alex. “He looks so much like his father.”
“Yeah, so what’s the problem?” Alex said. “Sons have a habit of doing that.” “Almost too much. His dad’s picture in the Britannica? It’s practically identical.” “Maybe he’s a clone?”
“All I know is,” Rosemarie said, not even dignifying the comment, “he’s definitely hung-up on his mother. Every time I see Beatrice, they’re always together. I mean, I know they just lost the old man, but they’re inseparable.” “Yeah,” Alex agreed, rubbing his head as he punched numbers into a handheld computer. “Wouldn’t be surprised if he was sleeping with her.” “Yuck! You are so not-funny, Alex.”
“What I want to know,” said Flannagan, who had been on the Internet that morning, “is why when the old man won the Nobel, the articles mention him thanking a wife, but he never mentioned a thing about the kid.” “Because, duh,” said Alex, “the kid was minus two years old. Do the math. I’m tired of doing all the heavy lifting around here.” Alex walked away, and the others looked at each other. “What’s eating him?”
“Not me,” said Rosemarie, and went back to work closer to Peter Jr. No one else paid too much attention to the issues of Sr. and Jr. Jances. There were other things far more exciting to talk about. The fact was, the math was coming together. The new weapon was turning out to be twice as small and three times as lethal on paper and on Alex’s computer models. The next move was from theory to hardware. It was evident that this next stage was coming soon because Heartless Henderson had been in and out of the lab a half-dozen times in the past three days. “We’ll be moving back to White Sands next week,” the colonel told Peter in private. “You feeling up to it?” “Fit as a fiddle,” said Peter, scribbling the words HOT DO NOT ERASE on the day’s blackboard. “And ready for love.” He stowed his notebooks and grabbed a pair of running shoes out of the same desk drawer. Henderson was not amused. Peter’s workout obsession had become a subject of daily concern to Barrola and the rest of the medical staff, except for Wolfe, who to Henderson’s mind had become way too laissez-faire. “You going back on the treadmill again?” said the colonel. “Are we sure we’re not overstressing our brain arteries?” “I can’t speak for yours, but mine are fine. Besides, Freddy gave his okay,” Peter lied. Ever since the operation he had been chafed at having to answer to Henderson, instead of enjoying the more collegiate handling he received from Wolfe. “You sure?”
“Mens sana in corpore sano. Or didn’t they teach Latin at West Point?” “Fuck you, too,” said Henderson sharply. Really, Jance was getting too ballsy for his taste. All this GHIP-Genius Has Its Privileges-was starting to put his teeth on edge. “Barrola says it’s a needless risk.” “Barrola wouldn’t run if his ass was on fire,” Peter said with a cool smile. “I need the release. You wouldn’t want me to go psycho on you, would you?” He jogged past Henderson, and was gone. That afternoon he ran for half an hour and barely broke a sweat. He was monitored by one of Barrola’s worker bees who had been instructed to notify her boss at the first sign of a blip. She found a benign irregularity’ in the AV bundles, but a quick comparison of Peter’s and Peter Jr.’s EKGs proved it was congenital. As punishment for her vigilance, the techie had to sit there another forty-five minutes while Peter jogged up the equivalent of Machu Picchu. Back in his own quarters, he showered and changed into fresh clothes. The bare, tawny walls and low ceiling made him feel claustrophobic. Their suite had all the charm of a Motel 6, and while Beatrice had tried to perk up the place with a spray of dried chrysanthemums in a giant Erlenmeyer flask, the three rooms now felt alien and confining, old and smalltoo small to contain his newfound energy. He went out onto the balcony, the only real perk they had been granted. Beatrice found him there when she came in from dinner, staring off into space. “Peter? You all right?”