The Methuselah Gene (45 page)

Jeremy blinked at my theory.
 
“You've got some imagination,” he admitted, “getting ahead of the story like that.
 
So you're proposing they didn't find this guy's body in Zion, after all?”

“Excuse me?” I said, feeling my own Adam's apple bobbing involuntarily.

“Jeff—”

“Jeffers?”

“Right, him.
 
He didn't die in Zion?”

“You tell me,” I proposed, my voice an unsteady rumble.
 
“Did he?”

“That's what I heard on the news, not fifteen minutes ago.
 
Of course . . .”

“What?”

“Of course his body was badly burned.
 
So . . . for the sake of discussion, as you say, you want me to imagine this Jeffers escaped somehow, but the CIA made it look like he died in that town, and now he's come to live on this ship?”

I nodded, once.
 
But I felt unexpectedly numb, in need of psychotherapy and message therapy amid all the shock therapy.

“
Humm
,” Jeremy said.
 
“That's a lot to imagine.
 
The way the story is shaping up, it sounds too risky for the CIA, even if they got him plastic surgery.
 
What if the press found him, and he talked?”

“What if?” I asked, considering it.

Jeremy nodded thoughtfully.
 
“The CIA would be exposed even more than they have been already, and even the best lawyers couldn't help.
 
I mean even like those Alice had.
 
And she got the house, even though she left me for another man.
 
Even though she sold it right off, and cashed out on the stocks and bonds too!”

“You've . . . got a point,” I said.

“She got half the business too,” Jeremy confessed.
 
“Almost got half my personal collection.”

“That's . . . just amazing.”

“Lawyers.”
 
He breathed the word like a curse, although it wasn't a four letter word.
 
“It's not fair.”

“It's not right,” I added.

“By the way,” Jeremy said, looking down at my hand as though for the first time, “does that hurt much?”

Jeremy Wells' new habitat was possibly the most luxurious I'd seen in any cruise magazine layout while waiting in Jeffers' outer office.
 
His art collection must have been extensive to leave the pieces that now hung here, saved from auction and illuminated by tract lighting.
 
The mood suggested by the original Jackson Pollack over his white leather sofa mirrored my own exactly, too.
 
But I kept most of that from Jeremy, even when he described the tall, red-haired man in his fifties who he'd seen inspecting the condo several weeks previously, on the weekend.
 
Up to that moment, I'd been chummy and grateful.
 
After that, Jeremy began to see the real me.
 
The obsessed and desperate loner, tired of communicating on the Internet.
 
The loser tired of being the patsy.

Once my hand was re-bandaged, I flung open his curtains for a look at the suite's terrace.

Jeremy lifted one hand in my direction.
 
“This is all so—”

“Highly irregular?
 
You can say that again.”
 
I slid open the door and stepped out onto a six-by-fourteen-foot private balcony to the sea.
 
An ornate wrought iron chair and coffee table were the only fillers for the space, in addition to two “wandering Jew” hanging plants in Grecian baskets.
 
I leaned as far out as I could, and peered in the direction of Jeffers' suite.
 
As Jeremy had indicated, I could just see the hand rail, two cabins over.
 
If Carson's death had been faked, and he was in hiding, I imagined him also spending some time on that terrace, in an attempt not to go stir-crazy.
 
Or maybe he was hitting the bottle heavily and continuously now, while watching satellite TV.
 
I wouldn't be able to tell he was there at all, though, unless he stepped to the rail.
 
And it was a twenty-five-foot drop to the ocean below.

I lifted my camera, ready for my first test.

“Carson!” I called.

Nothing.
 
I listened for movement, but heard only the ocean.
 
That and distant music from somewhere above.

I leaned back in to find Jeremy holding a gun.
 
Just holding it, like a child does a security blanket.
 
“Am I in danger?” he asked, not looking directly into my eyes.
 
I saw that his automatic had no clip.
 
In his anxiety, he'd forgotten that he'd been too nervous to keep it loaded.

“No, Jeremy,” I said.
 
“And I'm not a criminal, unless stupidity counts.
 
Burglars don't rob cruise ship passengers while at sea.
 
You want the truth?”

His eyes welled with a tremulous light.
 
His grip on the gun tightened.
 
“Yes,” he confessed.
 
“I do.”

I nodded.
 
“Okay.
 
The story I told you on deck, about Jeffers being here?
 
I'm betting it's true.”

“Jeffers?” Jeremy asked me.

“That's right.
 
Tactar
Pharmaceutical's V.P..
 
Or ex V.P., rather.
 
I want to confirm it, Jeremy, and I need your help.
 
It's been several weeks since you've actually seen him in the hallway, right?”

Jeremy hesitated, staring blankly, his face aging by the second.
 
Then he finally said, “How?”

“Will you go knock on his door for me?”

“I . . . I can't, because there's a Do Not Disturb sign on it.
 
And the staff patrols, so . . .”

I lifted a hand.
 
“Okay.
 
You're right.
 
He wouldn't answer the door at this point, anyway, if it's really him.
 
What about dialing him?”
 
I motioned toward Jeremy's antique French phone, experiencing another brief feeling of
deja
vu
until I recalled a scene with Peter Sellers from one of the Pink Panther movies.

“You need permission to call,” Jeremy told me.
 
“A special code.
 
It's for security, and privacy's sake.
 
It's in the purchase agreement guidelines, even.”

“Then there's no other way,” I said.

“No other way than what?”

“Who's next door?” I asked, and pointed toward the stern of the ship.

“No one,” he replied.

“Good.”
 
I took Jeremy's gun from his limp hand.
 
“Where's the clip?”

“What?”

“The clip, the clip.
 
Bullets.”

He showed me.
 
I loaded the pistol, and stuck it in my pocket.
 
Then I walked back to the heavy curtains, and discovered an unusually thick draw cord, snaking the full length of it free of the large metal runners.
 
Jeremy watched in awe as I went out onto the terrace again, and looped the cord like a rope around my waist.
 
“I need some kind of evidence, even if Jeffers is gone,” I told him. “If I fall, call the Captain and tell him man overboard.
 
Okay?”

Jeremy's eyes widened.
 
“You can't do that.
 
Your hand!”

“I have to try,” I said.
 
“Unless you'll testify you saw him, identified him.
 
Did they show his photo on the news?”

“No, I don't think so.
 
At least I didn't see it.”

I nodded.
 
“Then I've got no choice.
 
Besides, I've got something for him.”
 
I raised and clenched my good fist, feeling heat flush across my face as though from a sweeping lighthouse beam.
 
“If I go out of sight for more than five minutes, I want you to call that ship's security man out in the hallway, okay?”

He blinked at me rapidly.
 
He looked like he might faint.
 
“You really think it's him?” he asked, feebly.

“Or his body,” I said.

The cord now securely tied to the rail, I instructed Jeremy to release the knots when I gave the word.
 
Then I hoisted myself over.
 
The nylon bit into my back at the point where it circled twice outside the seam of my swimsuit, and stung with the tentacled embrace of the Portuguese man-of-war.
 
I braced my legs against the ship, and
pendulumed
back and forth much like a mountain climber does
rappeling
on a sheer wall—or a cruise ship's smoke stack—reaching for another hand hold.
 
But I had only one good hand, so it took nine tries, grimacing in pain, to make the rail of the next suite.
 
Then I put my elbow around it, and found myself in the predicament of being tied to the first rail, with no way to wiggle loose by myself.

“Now, Jeremy,” I said.

Like a magic trick, Jeremy produced a huge knife, and started to cut the cord.

“No!” I almost shouted at him.
 
“Just untie the knots.”

He held the knife over the cord, as if in indecision, then tossed it behind him.
 
His helpless terror metamorphosed into curiosity again.

“Hurry,” I urged him.

His fingers soon worked at the knots with fanatical zeal, a new sense of adventure animating his face.
 
I levered myself over onto the adjoining terrace, then watched as Jeremy freed the cord.
 
I gave him a nod, then went to retie the cord on the other side of the terrace.
 
The curtains were drawn on the empty suite.
 
No one would hear me scream, I realized.
 
If I
pinwheeled
for balance and fell to the sharks below, no one except Jeremy would know.
 
And I had the odd image of him frying himself an egg sandwich and forgetting the whole thing, regardless.
 
What bolstered me was the competing image of Julie and me decorating this very suite on whose terrace I now stood, purchased free and clear from film rights to our story.
 
We would only live here three months a year, though.
 
That would be enough for hiding, I reckoned.
 
The rest of the year we'd be with her parents, if they were still alive, which she hadn't said.
 
If not, we'd relocate with Rachel to Montana, as I'd promised, and just maybe live long, long lives.
 
We'd toast each other with cool clear water, then, laced with nothing except maybe
Alka
Seltzer.

On the other side of the empty terrace, I tied the same knot, then doubled it.
 
Then I repeated my foolhardy maneuver, this time preparing to take the gun out of my pocket.
 
I
pendulumed
once, twice . . . then grabbed for Carson's railing with my good hand.

It was a particularly and exquisitely painful save.
 
I hung onto the hot metal, panting, listening, but all I could hear was that annoying music somewhere above me.
 
No conversation, no television, no kitchen clatter.
 
Was Jeffers gone?
 
Had he decided to try the casino as his clone had earlier?
 
Then, when my window of opportunity inevitably expired, along with my muscles, would he return to his cabin—after I missed him in the hallway, as Jeremy had—so he could watch American Idol?

I thought about the flash.
 
Although the film was rated 400 ASA, my photos might be too dark.
 
Enhancement at a lab might not resurrect Jeffers' features adequately for a positive ID.
 
The tabloids, and not
Time
magazine, would carry a dark, grainy photo of what resembled Carson, only with dark hair.
 
It would be as with any UFO photo, too—there would be believers and skeptics.
 
And once I alerted the Feds to him, he would take off via helicopter for Kansas, never to be seen again.

I pulled myself up the remaining few feet, wanting to scream, every inch an agony.
 
Then I glanced over in Jeremy's direction.
 
He was watching me.
 
Beyond him, way up on deck, a boy peered down at me too, from where all that upbeat music was emanating.
 
See the crazy window washer, Mom?
 
Over here, stop dancing and look at this.
 
The pain in my back eclipsed even the agony of my hand and thigh, due to a cutting of circulation.
 
Easing the pressure off didn't help much, either.
 
But I managed to hoist my head up high enough to see over the floor of the terrace.