The Methuselah Gene (46 page)

I was looking at two cushioned chairs and a telescope on a tripod.
 
A green towel partly draped one of the chairs, and the lower half of it made a damp stain on the floor.
 
The curtains were drawn, the door shut.
 
Carson might be asleep.

With absurd effort, I hugged the rail and eased off the cord, scraping my legs in the process.
 
Snagging the cord with my foot, I looped it on the rail and tied a hitch knot.
 
Then I climbed over with grunting effort, spilling onto the open space beside one of the chairs.
 
I lay there for a moment, catching my breath and trying not to make a sound as I took Jeremy's gun from my pocket.
 
Then, reaching slowly up, I tried the door.
 
There was a click, like a metal tumbler falling into place.
 
The door had been unlocked, but my initial touch had made it catch.
 
Now it was locked.

I sat there in disbelief, with nowhere to look but out to sea.
 
The distant white caps along the tops of all that rolling blue belied a restless agitation.
 
It was a familiar feeling.
 
What now?

Suddenly I heard a sound from inside.
 
A sound like walking, moving toward me.
 
It was coming.
 
An end to all of it, at last.
 
I gripped the pistol, seeing already how I would do it.
 
Before breaking his nose, I'd tie him up, take some photos.
 
Gather evidence.
 
Then I'd leave him there, make my calls.
 
No one would see me.
 
And my final shot of Carson's bloody face would be better than the first shot of
Jacko's
baby.
 
The story had teeth.
 
Controversy too, in our age of intensive debate over intelligence and agency practices, to say nothing of the drug industry.
 
With the proper spin and the right doctoring, it would be . . .

I froze, gun lifted as the curtain parted.

And then suddenly I couldn't move.
 
I couldn't breathe.
 
Because the face I now stared into was also just as unexpected, just as astonished.
 
And when the door slid open, Russell
Winsdon
said, “You . . .
you.”

“You,” I repeated.
 
“You?”

The old geezer just stood there in a dark pullover shirt, his eyes wild, his gray brows angled high in mounting rage.
 
“You,” confirmed his mindless robotic voice.

There is a moment when surprise can be used as a weapon.
 
I should have known that moment well, by then.
 
But before I could fully stand, the old man suddenly rushed me, taking me off guard, tackling me in midriff, taking advantage of that surprise himself.
 
I buckled and fell back against the railing, my wounded hand crushed behind me.
 
Then he
kneed
me in the groin, and I screamed in agony.
 
My pistol dropped from my other hand and skidded into the towel.
 
Pain like an electric shock shot through my back as
Winsdon
began to hoist me, his aging muscles fueled by an adrenaline rush.
 
He would toss me overboard as if I weighed nothing.
 
As if I were his dirty laundry, which must be discarded before the guests arrive.

I couldn't believe what was happening.
 
My legs still numbed from the loss of circulation, I stared down at
Winsdon's
neck and saw the cords there standing out as he struggled to lift me over the rail.
 
Methodically, he managed to bull me up and over my center of gravity, grunting with the effort, driven like a madman.
 
He bellowed with the anticipation of it, not caring if he broke his back in the process.

I used the only weapon I had in the closeness of our encounter—my elbow.
 
I came down onto his temple with it, as hard as I could.
 
It glanced off.
 
He jerked once but amazingly continued to buck me up—another moment and the job would be over.

I twisted to one side, and shot him another taste, this time with a sideways blow that caught at the juncture between his ear and lower jaw.
 
He winced, was dazed by it.
 
But by then I teetered on the railing, gripping desperately with one hand as he put his shoulder into it.
 
He levered me over as I went for his eyes with my bandaged hand.
 
But I couldn't wriggle any fingers out to do damage to him, and so he caught and bit down on my bandaged forefinger, crunched bone and jerking his head from side-to-side like a shark does to loosen the meat.

The pain of it eclipsed even the pain in my leg.
 
I gritted my teeth, and fanned frantically for the loop of nylon behind me, which slipped away and whispered out of reach.
 
Glancing to my left, I saw that Jeremy was gone now too.
 
The little boy watched, though, from high above.
 
He would be witness to my fall.
 
He would see the waves swallow me, and hear my muffled cries in the churning wake of salt water, far too faint to be heard over the loud Calypso music up there.

Winsdon
backed off, spitting, and then stepped to my left to kick lopsidedly at my hands.
 
He missed.

“No,” I cried, my voice hoarse with exertion.

“No?”
 
He smiled that thin, economical smile of his.
 
You don't waste more on a dead man.
 
I glanced beyond him, into the open room.
 
The bed was mussed, but empty.

“Where's Carson?” I asked, as he lifted his foot again.
 
“Dead?”

In reply the old man kicked savagely at my weakening hand with his heel, connecting more by luck than skill.
 
I screamed and swung out, dangling from one arm.
 
Far below, the water licked up at me, a boiling wake of spray and foam.
 
I was aware of everything—of the subdued laughter of oblivious revelers, of the ballooning whiteness of a seagull's wings that enabled a hovering high wire act nearby, and especially of that faint fluttering shadow, that silhouette riding the bulging wave beneath me, which was cast from the
masted
Panamanian flag somewhere high above in the sun.
 
Let go,
an old voice inside me urged.
Just let go.

Between the devil and the turquoise sea, I looked up, expecting to see my tormentor kneeling beside the railing, about to pry my fingers free.
 
But, oddly, he was gone.
 
I heard sounds of a struggle instead.

Cursing, from inside.
 
Muffled, intense grunts.
 
Then silence, except for the distant lilt of steel drums.

After an eternity, an arm finally reached down for me.
 
I looked up past my fingers at the face above.
 
A man in a blue blazer and dark sunglasses stood there on the terrace.
 
My left hand was a numb and bloody mess, but it was the nearest to him.
 
Our hands entwined, and he pulled with all his strength.
 
It was enough, just barely.

Four men were in the room now.
 
None of them was
Winsdon
.
 
After they patted me down, I was guided into a dining table chair, dripping blood on the brown marble tile there.
 
I slumped into the chair, breathing heavily.
 
The man who had pulled me up wiped his own hand dry first before getting a washcloth and wrapping my bleeding hand with it.
 
The others seemed to be waiting.
 
I started to speak, then decided against it.
 
What was the game here?

One of the other two, a stocky dark man with a goatee and a balding, sunburned head, seemed to decide the same thing.
 
To remain silent.
 
Then the staff member who had interrogated me on deck came in.
 
He had Walter's suitcase in one hand, which the bald man stared at as if for the first time.
 
Finally, after some whispered words, everyone in blue blazers left, escorted out by
Kojak's
twin, who locked the door behind them.

He wasn't one of them, I concluded.
 
He wore a gray shirt, no jacket.
 
He sat on the massive L shaped couch, and deigned me with a cynical smile.
 
“Pretending to be a writer, are you, Mr. Dyson?” he said with subtle sarcasm.

“What are you pretending to be,” I replied, “Mister—”

“Levy.”

“Mr. Levy.”

“You don't worry about that.”

“Where's
Winsdon
?”

“Who?”
 
He'd asked the question casually, and now took out a pack of cigarettes to light up.
 
He waved his match into smoke.
 
“Winston, did you say?”

“
Winsdon
.
 
The man who just tried to—”
 
I stopped myself.
 
“Where's Jeffers?”

He stared at me coolly, his eyes betraying nothing.
 
When he put one arm atop the couch I got a better look at the holstered 9 mm automatic beneath his armpit.
 
The suit jacket on the couch beside him was not blue, but gray.
 
Even his tie was gray.

“Who are you?” I asked.
 
“What's going on here?”

He blew a smoke ring at me.
 
I needed a gun to shoot through it, but the gun was out on the veranda.

“Come on,” I said,
 
“You, Curly, Moe, Bevis, and whatever fifth Musketeer you got protecting
Tactar
here aren't exactly doing a smashing job of keeping the lid on things, wouldn't you say?”

Now I saw a reaction, and again it was in the eyes.
 
A flicker, a softening.
 
And something more than I'd seen before.
 
The closest to it was fear, but it wasn't that either.
 
Not exactly.
 
He observed me like a specimen under a microscope is observed, one you fear might escape somehow and multiply to infect the masses.
 
You have control, but you are startled by the virulence of the bug just the same.
 
Before you kill it, and disinfect the lab, you monitor its mutations in case they are ever observed again.

“Is Carson dead,” I repeated, “or not?”

Levy glanced down at his pistol, moving one hand over it lightly as if a fly had landed on it.
 
But he said nothing.

“He's dead, isn't he,” I said, “because he screwed up.
 
Right?
 
He died just outside Zion, because you couldn't let him leave.
 
You were watching.”

“We?” Levy asked.

“CIA.
 
You couldn't afford to walk away, not knowing what might happen.
 
But you missed me.”

“You don't know what you're talking about.”

“Don't I?
 
I was there.
 
I saw everything.
 
I heard confessions.”

“Whose confessions?”

“Stephan
Rudnic
.
 
Kevin Connolly.”

The names struck him with noticeable blows.
 
He unclasped the strap on his holster, and took out his automatic.
 
He looked at it, gave me a slight smile, then lay it on the couch beside him.
 
“You're bluffing,” he said.

“Then why am I here?
 
It's you who's bluffing, pal.
 
Because you're going to kill me, no matter what.
 
Only reason you haven't done it yet is you'd have to explain it to the cruise line.
 
Those guys in the blue blazers.”

“If that's true, you should have spoken up while you could a moment ago, shouldn't you?”
 
He favored me with a toothy smile.

Because he was right.
 
I bit my lip, tasting more blood, then added,
 
“And you're curious, too, about how I got here.
 
And why Walter Mills isn't here.”

“Oh?
 
He confess to you too?”

“Let's say I know about Frank Fisher.
 
He's one of you, isn't he?
 
Independent head of
Tactar
security.
 
Who hired him—Jeffers or
Winsdon
?”