only a husk, anyway.
He would not do that. For one thing it would be the most murderous sort of thievery,
because he would not be content to be just a passenger for long, looking out of this man’s
eyes like a traveller looking out of a coach window at the passing scenery.
For another, he was Roland. If dying was required, he intended to die as Roland. He would
die crawling toward the Tower, if that was what was required.
Then the odd harsh practicality that lived beside the romantic in his nature like a tiger with
a roe reasserted itself. There was no need to think of dying with the experiment not yet
made.
He picked up the popkin. It had been cut in two halves. He held one in each hand. He
opened the prisoner’s eyes and looked out of them. No one was looking at him (although, in
the galley, Jane Doming was thinking about him, and very hard).
Roland turned toward the door and went through, hold- ing the popkin-halves in his hands.
11
First he heard the grinding roar of an incoming wave; next he heard the argument of many
sea-birds arising from theclosest rocks as he struggled to a sitting position (cowardly buggers were creeping up, he thought, and they would have been taking pecks out of me soon enough, still breathing or no—they’re nothing but vultures with a coat of paint); then he became aware that one popkin half—the one in his right hand—had tumbled onto the
hard gray sand because he had been holding it with a whole hand when he came through
the door and now was—or had been—holding it in a hand which had suffered a forty per
cent reduction.
He picked it up clumsily, pinching it between his thumb and ring finger, brushed as much
of the sand from it as he could, and took a tentative bite. A moment later he was wolf- ing it,
not noticing the few bits of sand which ground between his teeth. Seconds later he turned
his attention to the other half. It was gone in three bites.
The gunslinger had no idea what tooter-fish was—only that it was delicious. That seemed
enough.
12
In the plane, no one saw the tuna sandwich disappear. No one saw Eddie Dean’s hands
grasp the two halves of it tightly enough to make deep thumb-indentations in the white
bread.
No one saw the sandwich fade to transparency, then dis- appear, leaving only a few
crumbs.
About twenty seconds after this had happened, Jane Doming snuffed her cigarette and
crossed the head of the cabin. She got her book from her totebag, but what she really
wanted was another look at 3A.
He appeared to be deeply asleep. . . but the sandwich was gone.
Jesus,Jane thought. He didn’t eat it; he swallowed it whole. And now he’s asleep again? Are you kidding?
Whatever was tickling at her about 3A, Mr. Now-They’re-Hazel-Now-They’re-Blue, kept
right on tickling. Something about him was not right.
Something.
CHAPTER 3
CONTACT AND LANDING
1
Eddie was awakened by an announcement from the co- pilot that they should be landing at
Kennedy International, where the visibility was unlimited, the winds out of the west at ten
miles an hour, and the temperature a jolly seventy degrees, in forty-five minutes or so. He
told them that, if he didn’t get another chance, he wanted to thank them one and all for
choosing Delta.
He looked around and saw people checking their duty declaration cards and their proofs of
citizenship—coming in from Nassau your driver’s license and a credit card with a stateside
bank listed on it was supposed to be enough, but most still carried passports—and Eddie
felt a steel wire start to tighten inside him. He still couldn’t believe he had gone to sleep,
and so soundly.
He got up and went to the restroom. The bags of coke under his arms felt as if they were
resting easily and firmly, fitting as nicely to the contours of his sides as they had in the
hotel room where a soft-spoken American named William Wilson had strapped them on.
Following the strapping opera- tion, the man whose name Poe had made famous (Wilson
had only looked blankly at Eddie when Eddie made some allusion to this) handed over the
shirt. Just an ordinary paisley shirt, a little faded, the sort of thing any frat-boy might wear
back on the plane following a short pre-exams holiday . . . except this one was specially
tailored to hide unsightly bulges.
”You check everything once before you set down just to be sure,” Wilson said, “but you’re gonna be fine.”
Eddie didn’t know if he was going to be fine or not, but he had another reason for wanting
to use the John before the FASTEN SEATBELTS light came on. In spite of all
temptation— and most of last night it hadn’t been temptation but raging need—he had
managed to hold onto the last little bit of what the sallow thing had had the temerity to call
China White.
Clearing customs from Nassau wasn’t like clearing cus- toms from Haiti or Quincon or
Bogota, but there were still people watching. Trained people. He needed any and every
edge he could get. If he could go in there a little cooled out, just a little, it might be the one thing that put him over the top.
He snorted the powder, flushed the little twist of paper it had been in down the John, then
washed his hands.
Of course, if you make it, you’ll never know, will you?he thought. No. He wouldn’t. And wouldn’t care.
On his way back to his seat he saw the stewardess who had brought him the drink he hadn’t
finished. She smiled at him. He smiled back, sat down, buckled his seat-belt, took out the
flight magazine, turned the pages, and looked at pictures and words. Neither made any
impression on them. That steel wire continued to tighten around his gut, and when the
FASTEN SEATBELTS light did come on, it took a double turn and cinched tight.
The heroin had hit—he had the sniffles to prove it—but he sure couldn’t feel it.
One thing he did feel shortly before landing was another of those unsettling periods of
blankness . . . short, but most definitely there.
The 727 banked over the water of Long Island Sound and started in.
2
Jane Doming had been in the business class galley, help- ing Peter and Anne stow the last
of the after-meal drinks glasses when the guy who looked like a college kid went into the
first class bathroom.
He was returning to his seat when she brushed aside the curtain between business and first,
and she quickened her step without even thinking about it, catching him with her smile,
making him look up and smile back.
His eyes were hazel again.
All right, all right. He went into the John and took them out before his nap; he went into
the John and put them in again afterwards. For Christ’s sake, Janey! You’re being a goose!
She wasn’t, though. It was nothing she could put her finger on, but she was not being a
goose.
He’s too pale.
So what? Thousands of people are too pale, including your own mother since her gall
bladder went to hell.
He had very arresting blue eyes—maybe not as cute as the hazel contacts—but certainly
arresting. So why the bother and expense?
Because he likes designer eyes. Isn’t that enough?
No.
Shortly before FASTEN SEAT BELTS and final cross-check, she did something she had
never done before; she did it with that tough old battle-axe of an instructor in mind. She
filled a Thermos bottle with hot coffee and put on the red plastic top without first pushing
the stopper into the bottle’s throat. She screwed the top on only until she felt it catch the
first thread.
Susy Douglas was making the final approach announce- ment, telling the geese to
extinguish their cigarettes, telling them they would have to stow what they had taken out,
telling them a Delta gate agent would meet the flight, telling them to check and make sure
they had their duty-declaration cards and proofs of citizenship, telling them it would now
be necessary to pick up all cups, glasses and speaker sets.
I’m surprised we don’t have to check to make sure they’re dry,Jane thought distractedly.
She felt her own steel wire wrapping itself around her guts, cinching them tight.
“Get my side,” Jane said as Susy hung up the mike.
Susy glanced at the Thermos, then at Jane’s face. “Jane? Are you sick? You look as white
as a—”
“I’m not sick. Get my side. I’ll explain when you get back.” Jane glanced briefly at the jump-seats beside the left-hand exit door. “I want to ride shotgun.”
“Jane-”
“Get my side.”
“All right,” Susy said. “All right, Jane. No problem.”