“That’s the one. One plane hadn’t logged a flight plan, so the other didn’t know to look out for it.” “One was bringing in a clone?” he asked, as it all began to dawn on him. “Whose was it, do you know?” “Moores.”
“The chemist working on the so-called Death Aerosol?” “That’s him. He died of heart failure shortly thereafter. Or maybe a broken heart. Everyone who lost his clone had a hard time with it. Their immortality was almost in their hands and then it ran out through their fingers. And then there was you and yours. Hans Brinkman. And success. He looked down, ashamed to be part of such a cynical thing. “And the next one?” “He lives in New York.”
“State?”
“City. Where, I don’t know.”
“New York’s a big place, Beatrice. Eight or ten million people. Who told you all this-Wolfe?” “Correct.”
Peter had known. “He’s in love with you, isn’t he?” “Grotesquely.”
Peter reached across the table again and this time she allowed him to take her hands in his. Her hands were icy. Despite the stares from nearby tables, he continued to hold his wife’s hands. “And you were faithful to me,” he said. “And you were faithful to me,” said Beatrice rnatter-of-factly. “In your fashion.” Taking her hands from his, she tapped him lightly on the wrist. “Nine clones, Peter.” She stared at him until it finally struck him. He took a deep breath, feeling like a kid tipping over the brim of the highest roller coaster ever built, half-exhilarated, half-terrified. “Holy Christ,” he said under his breath. “Welcome to the new millennium.”
“But it’s not.., possible. . .”
“You of all people should know that anything is possible.” “I would have recognized her-she would have looked exactly like…” “Like me. That’s right. She did. Until she was eighteen. Then she had a skiing accident. Destroyed her face. Next came plastic surgery. New cheekbones, new nose, everything. And of course they always do the lips these days, it’s practically a default option. I’m a little surprised you didn’t recognize the body. but she might have had other things done as well. In for a penny. in for a pound.” “It was her voice, Beatrice. And her eyes. They were yours. Even the love I felt, for god sakes.” “I’d like to think so.” She smiled sadly. “Actually. when I look at it from a certain perspective, I almost feel flattered. If I tried, I suppose I could even take some vicarious pleasure in your affair. “God in heaven,” he groaned. The car was over the brink and hurling down a bottomless track. “Do you think she knows?” “She’s not stupid,” she said proudly. “If she doesn’t yet, she’ll piece it together soon enough. Did she tell you her father was in the Navy? Caribbean duty?” “On Vieques?” he asked, reeling.
“For a full two years.”
He rubbed his eyes. “So they’ll be looking for her for.. .” He looked at Beatrice, not wanting to believe he was thinking what he was thinking. “For me,” Beatrice said simply. “We want to have us both, Peter?” “Oh, Jesus.” He put his head in his hands. “We can’t do that, Beatrice.” “You, but not me? Is that it?”
When he looked up there were tears in his eyes. “Because it’s not right.”
She stared at him long and hard, and then slipped her hand into his again. “Thank God,” she said. “Now do you see why we have to find her? In a way. she’s the child we never had.” She signaled for the check.
“But if you don’t go back to Wolfe-”
“He needs us both. His gamble, I’m guessing, is that I’d change my mind once I was young again. There is some precedent to support that theory.” she said with only partial irony. “But since I am marginally a better person than you are,” she added, her smile warming slightly, “I don’t think I’ll stay with the program. You wouldn’t happen to know Elizabeth’s e-mail password?” “No” said Peter. “That intimate we didn’t get.” He cupped her hands in his and kissed them. An enormous burden had been lifted from his heart. For a few precious moments, the fear could wait. And then there was a long and fast drive to make it back to Miami. 17
The smart thing, Elizabeth reasoned, was not to go to the airport until she absolutely had to. She needed to clear her head big-time, so when the driver cut through Little Havana, she told him to let her off at one of the coffee stands that line Calle Ocho. She ordered the strongest coffee available and the clerk gave her a colada, straight espresso laced with sugar. To his amazement. she downed it straight off and ordered another. The place was vibrant with pleasant noise, as though her caffeine buzz had gone to everyone’s heads. Cigarette smoke floated in the air, along with the sounds of Cuban Spanish and the recitation of baseball scores. For the first time in a very long while, she felt safe. She looked out the shop window into the morning haze and saw workers and commuters rushing past, most Hispanic or black. How many wars, how many enslavements and horrors had these people or their gene pools survived? And now they were talking and laughing and going on with their lives. You’ll survive this, too, she said, emptying her tray into the trash bin and hurrying outside. She hailed a taxi for Miami International. In the cab, she put on sunglasses and a black wig she had bought for $50 at a store called Wig City in a strip mall. The size of Miami International Airport was another comfort. It was the eighth largest airport in the U.S., Mary Blanchard had told her: 1,500 takeoffs and landings a day, with connections to 2,200 cities on five continents. She remembered those numbers as if Mary had just whispered them in her ear. Game theory, hadn’t Hans given her a lecture about that once? The hugeness of Miami International, plus the likelihood that they wouldn’t expect her to exit from the same place she had entered the day before. Thirty million passengers per year equals 82,000 a day; 118 gates in eight concourses, versus say two hundred available surveillance personnel. Hell, the odds were excellent that she wouldn’t be spotted. But she was.
As she took the elevator to the fourth floor and stepped onto the horizontal escalator, she became convinced she was being followed- flurries of footsteps as she passed through the maze of bookstores, bars and boutiques seemed somehow to be matching her own. To reach the Martinair/KLM counter in Concourse B, she had to go halfway around the gigantic horseshoe that constituted the architectural footprint of the airport. She stopped at a sunglass kiosk and tried on a pair of Ray-Bans, examining herself in the rack’s tiny mirror. In its reflection, she saw three people behind her who were more or less frozen in position. One was a man about twenty-five, with well trimmed, sandy hair. He was tying his shoelaces. The second was an airline flight officer or a man dressed as one, who glanced once in Elizabeth’s direction and then looked away. The third was a hardbodied young woman in a track suit, with a bright duffel bag slung over her shoulder. With a weapon in it? Elizabeth carefully replaced the Ray-Bans and moved to the newsstand where she bought a Miami Herald. While waiting for her change she did a quick recheck. The pilot and the muscular young woman were gone, but the man who had been tying his shoelaces was still there, a hundred feet back, pretending to study a departure monitor. She lost herself by threading through the crowded lobby of the interminal hotel, emerging back on the concourse at its opposite end. She hooked a left, took the escalator down a floor, then walked rapidly for a full five minutes without looking back. At last, near her gate, she stopped in front of a Starbucks window. Carefully scanning the reflections in the glass, she found the man in the crowd. And since her back was turned, he was staring straight at her. Her throat clenched shut. It was the Navy Seal from the Casa del Frances. And he was now moving toward her. Fighting raw panic, she headed off as fast as she could without drawing attention. Then she heard his running footsteps behind her and broke into a sprint. He was fast, but she was faster.
In twenty seconds of flat-out running, she had built up a good enough lead to be able to vanish from his sight and into the crowd.
Lieutenant Lance Russell barreled around a corner and braked in alarm. The bitch wasn’t there.
He had spotted her easily enough. Who did she think she was, anyway, thinking she could fool anybody with the black dye-job? But for the moment, she was off the scope. Worse, an airport security asshole was heading in his direction. Russell ducked into a souvenir shop, trying to control his breathing. Fuck, he thought, the cop had seen him come around that corner at warp speed and had to know something was up. Russell was more right than he knew: the security guard had, in fact, been told to watch out for a certain Dr. Peter Jance, Jr., age thirty-five. Since this guy with the buzz-cut and pale blue eyes was about that age, the guard popped the thumb strap on his holster and advanced. “Can I see your ticket, sir?”