Deadline (28 page)

“If that’s true, why don’t the three of us split? We can be in New York by early afternoon.”

Donovan looked at him, then turned back to the window.

“Better make up your mind soon, Al, before it’s too late.”

“It already is.”

Walker stood and peered through the side window. Far away, he could just see the black car, turning in from the highway.

There were three of them in the car: even from across the room, Walker could see that. He moved toward the window, hoping for a better look, but Donovan waved him back. The car came toward them, and disappeared from Walker’s view under the windowsill. A moment later he heard a door slam, and again the sound of those long-striding feet on crisp leaves. Donovan moved back from the window.

“He’s coming in,” he said. “I want you two to do exactly as I say. Let him in. String him along. Try to get him talking. I’ll be in the bedroom, just a few feet away.”

“What about the files?” Walker said.

“Leave them right where they are.”

“Al, you know what he’ll do.”

“I want to be sure. I need that, Walker. If you don’t understand that, I’m sorry. But for both your sakes, you’d better play by my rules.”

Donovan slipped back into the bedroom and closed the door. At the same instant they heard footsteps on the front porch. The young one, Kevin Lord, came in without knocking. He opened the door a crack, then came into the large room. His gun was in his hand, and in one continuous sweep his eyes took in Walker, Diana, the papers on the table and the closed bedroom door. None of them moved for perhaps thirty seconds. Then, so softly that it was almost inaudible, Lord said, “Hello, Walker. You look just like your pictures.”

Lord came closer and wet his lips with his tongue. His eyes came to rest again on the files.

“Run out of places to hide?”

Walker didn’t say anything.

Lord looked at Diana. His eyes held hers as he said, “And this would be Miss Diana Yoder, of Radio City fame?”

Still they didn’t move or talk. Lord again looked around the room.

“Who else is here with you?”

“No one,” Diana said, too quickly.

Lord, keeping the gun pointed somewhere between them, eased sideways toward the closed bedroom door.

“Better not go in there,” Walker said.

Lord stopped.

“They keep a monster in there,” Walker said.

He resumed his slow movement toward the door, reached it, opened it and looked inside for a moment.

“I told you,” Diana said, more naturally now.

She didn’t falter, and Walker could see it in Lord’s eyes as he bought her lie. He moved to the side window and motioned with his hands. A moment later Armstrong arrived, coming awkwardly up the steps with his double burden of Joanne Sayers and constant pain. He pushed in the door and slammed it hard against the inner wall. He thrust Joanne into the room ahead of him, keeping a tight grip on her ponytail with his free hand while holding the gun in his right. Her eyes were wide with fear. Armstrong didn’t say anything. He pushed her to the floor and moved to the table. His fingers flipped through the pages, pausing in places. Several minutes passed while he looked through the papers. Then he looked at Malcolm Dawes’ diary, satisfied himself that it was intact and put everything into the large brown envelope.

“So much trouble over one crazy agent,” Lord said.

It was the only warning they had. The end of something, the beginning of something else. A simple transitory sentence, closing the book on Malcolm Dawes and his little brew of trouble. Only the people lingered now, to be disposed of by jail…or something else. There was never any question in Walker’s mind which it would be. Just as Joanne knew, had known all along, by now the truth was so obvious that even Diana understood and believed it. In those last few seconds, Walker knew that Donovan had overplayed his hand. If he had planned on a grand appearance on cue, there would be no cue. Donovan would arrive too late, and someone would die. Armstrong never spoke. His eyes seemed to change shape, very briefly and only slightly. Walker was already in motion as Armstrong leveled his gun on Joanne. He grabbed Diana around the waist and rolled to the floor. His sudden move distracted Armstrong, who turned and put a bullet through the wall where they had just sat. That was Donovan’s cue. He stepped into the room, and his appearance was so unexpected, so stunning that for a full ten seconds neither Lord nor Armstrong could react. They just stood there, and it might have been late one morning in Brooklyn, a brief lull after a day of busywork, three agents standing a room apart, wondering where to go for lunch, Unable to resolve it, they began killing each other. Strangely, it was Lord who moved first. Perhaps in panic, perhaps out of inexperience, he jerked his hand up and Donovan killed him where he stood. Lord twisted and jerked, pumping three shots into the floor while he died.

Donovan was facing his first man with a gun, after forty years in the FBI. The irony that the man was a colleague had long since lost its effect. The man was just a thug, a punk with a gun, and he was Donovan of the FBI. He felt almost invincible as Kevin Lord crumpled at his feet. The feeling dissolved as Armstrong fired, catching him high in the chest. Donovan didn’t feel the second bullet, didn’t even hear it, though he knew he had been hit. He dropped to the floor and tried to roll over for another shot, but Armstrong had disappeared. Donovan came to rest on his back, staring up at the dark ceiling, which spun crazily in spite of the dark. He saw faces there. Kim’s. Walker’s. That crazy goddamn guy in Nowater, Arizona. Southworth. Barney Southworth. Saw his face now, as clearly as if it had just happened yesterday.

And J. Edgar Hoover. Unchanging, beady eyes staring, pinched mouth walled between two mountainous jowls.

Donovan blinked. With an immense heave, he rolled over and faced the door. They were all gone. Walker. Diana. Sayers. Armstrong. Gone where? Then he remembered. The Yoder girl had grabbed the files and made a run for it. In that final shootout between himself and Armstrong they had all run out, and now Armstrong had gone after them.

The door opened and in the light Donovan saw an immense man wearing the work clothes, black hat and chin whiskers of the Amish farmer. The man said something. Donovan could sense the fear and urgency in the voice, but he couldn’t make out the words. Everything seemed so faint, so far away. For a moment the man seemed afraid to touch him, as if death itself might be contagious. Then he kneeled at Donovan’s side and looked into his face.
Diana.
The man had said Diana’s name.

Donovan tried to look at the door. He tried to tell the man that Diana was gone, but he honestly didn’t know if he made it. Some of the words came, some didn’t. He knew he said the word
killer,
loud and clear. It seemed to strike the man like a fist. The fanner recoiled as if he had been slapped. Donovan clutched at the pale blue shirt. With a last great heave, he rolled over and put his gun in the big man’s hand.

It was a small automatic. Jacob Yoder dropped it to the floor, as he might drop a hot iron. For the first time in his life, he felt an air of evil all around him.

He went out onto the porch. There were no signs or sounds to tell him where they might have gone. He went to the barn, but all was quiet there. Almost quiet. He stopped and listened, and his keen ears picked up the sound of heavy breathing. Unarmed, he moved back into the dark barn, his eyes probing far back beyond the shadows. He saw some movement in a haystack, and as he came closer Joanne Sayers emerged from the dark.

“Where is Diana?”

Either she didn’t know or wouldn’t say. Jacob left her there. He strolled quickly from the barn and stood by the fence at the edge of his field, his gray eyes trying to penetrate the fog that still covered the bogs. Where would his daughter run, if she wanted to hide away?

He was saved the trouble of figuring it out by the sound of gunfire. Three shots, coming up from the river. He started across the field, then stopped, ran back to the house and picked up the dead man’s gun. “Father, forgive me,” he said. He stuck the gun into his pants, just under the suspenders, and took off at a frantic run across the field.

Donovan hadn’t gone down easy. Armstrong had shot him three times, and Donovan had shot back at least that many. In the heat of the moment, Joanne had made a run for it, then Diana. Walker and Diana had been together under the table, but Diana had rolled out, scooped up the Dawes files and bolted out the front door. By the time Walker reached the porch, she was over the fence and running across the field, a good sixty yards ahead. Walker didn’t call to her or try to slow her in any way. The farther away she got, the better. He leaped the fence and tried to keep her in sight as she plunged into the tall grass that grew near the river. Armstrong came out behind him. Walker knew he was there, somewhere back in the yard near the porch. He heard the gun go off and felt the bullet kiss the grass at his feet. He dove to earth and rolled while Armstrong took another shot, and then, in the brief flash of light while he rolled over, he saw Armstrong struggling with the fence. Walker ran the hundred yards to the river path and disappeared in the marsh, running low, hugging his knees as he went. Armstrong would have his work cut out for him now. They could hide in these bogs forever.

But he had failed to reckon with Armstrong’s hate. Armstrong came along faster than Walker would have thought possible. Walker heard him, breathing like a bull as he came, laboring with the pain of his two wounds. Periodically he stopped and listened, as Walker did, hoping for some telltale noise as he crept along. The quiet was almost a living thing, and Walker felt certain that Diana, at least, had made it across the bridge and into the woods beyond.

He knew, too, that his own time was limited, that as long as he stayed on this side of the river, Armstrong would surely find him. There was only the one dry path; all Armstrong had to do was keep coming and sooner or later they would meet. He decided to try a run for the other side. At first he ran low. Finally he gave up even that pretense as the path became reinforced with redwood blocks and the cover of marsh fell away. He must have been less than twenty yards from the bridge when he made that last great sprint. Armstrong stood in the grass, holding the gun out at full arm’s length. His shot nicked Walker’s jaw, and Walker spun and crashed through the railing, flopping headfirst into the water. He swam back against the tide, under the bridge, coming up briefly for air. Through the arch of the bridge he saw Armstrong arrive at the riverbank. He got a good look at the man, perhaps as long as five seconds, before Armstrong saw him and squeezed off two more shots. Armstrong was gaunt and pale. His eyes were wild, and his breathing was raspy. The bandage around his neck had begun coming loose, and Walker saw that blood was soaking through the shirt at beltline.

Then Walker went under again, and Armstrong’s two shots tore through the water just above his head. Again he doubled back, swimming toward Armstrong, playing his best chance. If he could get his hands around Armstrong’s leg, jerk him off-balance and pull him into the water, it would be all over. He was counting on Armstrong remaining still, a long shot, and on his chance of estimating while swimming under water exactly where that spot was. He wouldn’t have a second chance. The tide took him quickly along. His fingers felt the soft mud of the bank. Roots grew out, along with tangles of grass. He pulled himself ahead. Now his lungs demanded relief. The struggle for air almost forced him up too soon. It blunted his judgment, made him more unsure. He stopped and dug in on the bottom of the river. This was it, for better or worse.

He pushed off from the bottom and leaped out of the water. Armstrong was about ten yards back upstream. He had missed. He grabbed some grass and struggled toward the agent, aware that Armstrong’s attention had been diverted by something, or someone else. Jacob Yoder had arrived on the riverbank. He stood off from Armstrong, about ten yards away, holding a gun with trembling hands.

“Where’s my daughter?” he said. “What have you done with her?”

He never got his answer. Armstrong lifted his gun, and Walker could see Jacob vainly trying to shoot, jerking the trigger, unaware that Donovan, going by the book to the end, had instinctively slipped the safety catch on. Jacob threw down the gun and came at Armstrong unarmed.

The old man wouldn’t have had a chance, but Armstrong’s first shot was wide. Call it a loss of stamina, a sudden loss of strength, but Walker heard the slug slap into a tree trunk a good ten yards beyond Jacob and to his left. The shot brought Diana to her feet, another few yards away in the marsh. “Stop it!” she screamed. Armstrong whirled, then twisted back for another shot at Jacob. Diana leaped up on his back, tearing at his neck with her hands. By then Walker had worked his way down the riverbank, and had gripped Armstrong by his left ankle. He toppled backward into the river, Diana still clinging to his back. A moment later her dark head broke to the surface. Armstrong never came up.

Jacob didn’t want to talk about it. He threw Donovan’s gun into the water before Walker could stop him. Then he took the daughter he had lost once and nearly lost again, and the three of them went back to the house.

Jacob sat on the steps, too stunned to move. In a while, when she was sure Armstrong wasn’t with them, Joanne came around the house and joined them on the porch. None of them spoke for a long time, beyond the bare necessity of relating to Joanne what had happened on the riverbank. It must have occurred to Joanne and to Walker at the same time. Armstrong and Lord weren’t alone. There were others like them. Malcolm Dawes’ diary was full of names, and every name was a threat. But Walker had an answer for that now, as pure and clear-cut as anything he had ever known. Maybe it was inspiration, growing out of shock. Suddenly Dalton Walker knew how to handle this story, and how to make print with it.

He went to the barn, started the station wagon and backed it out into the yard. Joanne waited in the front seat while he went back to the house. He didn’t touch Lord. He kneeled beside Donovan and turned his head sideways, padding it with an old quilt. With his thumb and forefinger he fished out Donovan’s wallet, and found the airline credit card.