could be heard even above the roar of the wind that buffeted his face.
He glanced at the rear view mirror. The night was a great black ocean
behind him, relieved only by widely spaced street lamps that dwindled
into the gloom like the lights of a double convoy of ships.
According to the speedometer, he was doing thirty miles an hour just
after coming out of the turn. He tried to push it up to forty in spite
of the ruined tires, but something clanged and clinked under the hood,
rattled and whined, and the engine coughed, and he could not coax any
more speed out of it.
When he was halfway to the next intersection, the street lamp either
burst or winked out. Frank couldn’t tell which one it was because the
street lamps were widely spaced, he could see enough to drive.
The engine coughed, then again, and the Ford began to gain speed. He
didn’t brake for the stop sign at the next intersection Instead he
pumped the accelerator but to no avail.
Finally the steering failed too. The wheel spun uselessly in his sweaty
hands.
Evidently the tires had been completely torn apart. The contact of the
steel wheel rims with the pavement flung up turquoise sparks.
Fireflies in a windstorm….
He still didn’t know what that meant.
Now moving about twenty miles an hour, the car headed straight toward
the right-hand curb. Frank tramped the brakes, but they no longer
functioned.
The car hit the curb, jumped it, grazed a lamppost with a sound of sheet
metal kissing steel, and thudded against the bark of an immense date
palm in front of a white bungalow. Lights came on in the house even as
the final crash was echoing in the cool night air.
Frank threw the door open, grabbed the leather flight bag from the seat
beside him, and got out, shedding fragments of gummy yet splintery
safety glass.
Though only mildly cool, the air chilled his face because sweat trickled
down from his forehead. He could taste it when he licked his lips.
A man had opened the front door of the bungalow as he stepped onto the
porch. Lights flicked on at the house door.
Frank looked back the way he had come. A thin cloud of luminous
sapphire dust seemed to blow through the street.
As though shattered by a tremendous surge of current, the bulbs in
street lamps exploded along the two blocks behind him, the shards of
glass, glinting like ice, rained on the blacktop. In resultant gloom,
he thought he saw a tall, shadowy figure more than a block away, coming
after him, but he couldn’t be sure.
To Frank’s left, the guy from the bungalow was hurrying down the walk
toward the palm tree where the Ford had come to rest. He was talking,
but Frank wasn’t listening to him.
Clutching the leather satchel, Frank turned and ran. He was not sure
what he was running from, or why he was so afraid, or where he might
hope to find a haven, but he ran nonetheless because he knew that if he
stood there only a few seconds longer, he would be killed.
THE WINDOWLEss rear compartment of the Dodge van was illuminated by tiny
red, blue, green, white, and amber indicator bulbs on banks of
electronic surveillance equipment but primarily by the soft green glow
from the computer screens, which made that claustrophobic space seem
like a chamber in a deep-sea submersible.
Dressed in a pair of Rockport walking shoes, beige coat and a maroon
sweater, Robert Dakota sat on a swivel chair in front of the twin video
display terminals. He tapped his toes against the floorboards, keeping
time, and with his right hand he happily conducted an unseen orchestra.
Bobby was wearing a headset with stereo ear phones and with a small
microphone suspended an inch or so in front of his lips. At the moment
he was listening to Benny Goodman’s “One O’Clock Jump,” the primo
version of Count Basie’s swing composition, six and a half minutes of
heaven. Just as he took up another piano chorus and as Harry James
launched into the brilliant trumpet stint that led to the infamous swing