Time to Kill (11 page)

‘So there are to be no expulsions?' anticipated Ann.

‘That's the thinking at the moment,' confirmed Spalding, guardedly.

‘Which leaves David a target when all the fuss has died down?'

‘No,' denied the man. ‘The number of counsellors is to be expanded from two to four. And every child in every class is to be told – told, not advised – to report, anonymously if they choose or on behalf of another child if they are not the victim, the very first suggestion of bullying or threatened violence. In the particular case of David, it's been made clear to the eleven involved, and agreed by each of their parents, that they are under an unlimited period of probation. If they are involved in one more incident, their expulsion will be automatic, with no appeal.'

‘Is that an unequivocal decision?' asked Slater.

‘Unequivocal,' guaranteed Spalding. ‘It's being set out, in writing, to each of the involved parents. As it will be to you, if you choose to keep David in the school.'

‘You're definitely not going to introduce metal detection or police presence?' persisted Ann.

‘No,' said Spalding.

‘It would seem to be a good resolution all round,' conceded Slater.

Ann looked sharply towards her husband before turning back to the principal. ‘How does the ethos of not ratting fit into it all?'

‘The anonymity provision is going to be stressed at every class lecture,' said the man. ‘And that's what it's going to be, a positive curriculum lecture. And not just once, in this immediate aftermath. It'll be a permanent inclusion. As I told you at our earlier meeting, there is going to be no bullying, intimidation or outright violence in a school of which I am in charge.'

‘You seem to have covered all the bases,' said Slater.

‘Except what you're going to do with David,' reminded Spalding.

Slater looked at his wife, deferring to her. Ann hesitated before saying, ‘He doesn't want to leave.'

‘What do you want, as his parents?' pressed the principal.

‘The best for David,' said Slater. ‘Which I think you've set into place.'

‘I'll not fail you,' pledged the man. ‘I'll not fail any child in my charge. David will not be victimized if he remains here, neither will he be eulogized for what he did or attempted to do.'

The meeting had been in the morning, so they didn't wait to take David home. On their way to return Ann to the gallery from which he'd earlier collected her, she said, ‘I'm not sure we shouldn't take David away.'

‘I meant what I said back there,' insisted Slater. ‘We both want what's best for David. And he wants to stay.'

‘No one gets punished!'

‘If I do have a reservation, it's for setting David apart. He armed himself with a goddamned knife, just like the others did.'

To protect a friend,' reminded Ann. ‘Have you given the knife back to him?'

‘Not yet.'

‘Are you going to?'

‘The next time we go into the mountains, maybe. But with a lecture far stronger than they're going to get back there at the school.'

‘We're trying to rebuild bridges, remember?'

‘Which is exactly what I'm doing,' said Slater.

That night, for the first time for more than a fortnight, which was the longest interval there had been since their marriage – since the beginning of their affair, in fact – they made love. Afterwards Ann said, ‘I'm glad that's another bridge we've rebuilt.'

‘So am I,' said Slater.

‘We couldn't, could we?'

‘Couldn't what?'

‘Break up.'

‘Never.'

‘Convince David about that, as strongly as everything else he has to believe and understand.'

In his locked and chain-secured apartment Jack Mason gazed down at the strongbox collection he had so long ago assembled for an escape if he was ever suspected of spying for Russia. He smiled at the tremor in his hands as he opened it, more easily this time than it had been in the lawyer's office; what else could he be but excited?

Mason laid each individually wrapped package upon the table before him like a Las Vegas blackjack dealer setting out a winning hand. The passport was first, before the safe deposit registrations and their authorizing code at the First National Bank in Washington DC and the Chase Manhattan bank on New York's Wall Street, as well as a Social Security record and the birth certificate in the name of Adam Peterson.

Mason savoured the moment, the first of the euphoria he knew he was going to feel over the next few months, as an afterthought flicking open the passport. Without the slightest conceit Mason decided the photograph of himself inside could have been taken yesterday. He'd even avoided, which Slater hadn't, the almost clichéd mistake of keeping the same initial letters for the new name as for the old he was abandoning.

He was going to enjoy the trip to New York to add most of his inheritance to his $850,000 stash. And now that he had an Adam Peterson driving licence he could rent a car and make his first exploratory visit to Frederick, Maryland.

It took Mason the entire following day and four separate outings to dispose of letters and photographs and memorabilia of his mother and father's existence, none of which he bothered to look at beyond checking official-looking documents to discover if they had any financial value. None did.

Nine

A
sudden and entirely coincidental flurry of external happenings balanced – even put into partial perspective – the internal difficulties from which Ann and Slater were trying to recover.

Slater had months before tendered, more in hope than expectation, for security contracts for a planned mall on the outskirts of Frederick, on the Harpers Ferry road, and in the space of a week was awarded six separate design commissions, two by nationally established names. The construction of the mall was spread over six months, sufficiently spaced for Slater to work in sequence within the building programme – as usual outsourcing each installation – without needing to take on extra staff. It was the largest combined commission he had ever won and would still enable him to take on other, additional work. Slater's conservative forecast, predicated over the preceding four years' income, was a year end, pre-tax profit increase of fifty percent. From his psychology knowledge Slater knew the financial guarantee would underpin the feeling of physical security it was essential for Ann to restore.

And the good fortune continued.

Daniel Slater didn't remotely come close to being a bull or bear stock market gambler. Like thousands – millions – of Americans he studied newspaper financial sections and Internet fluctuations but his buying and selling was barely above the par of always following the favourites through a horse-race card. He didn't win big but he didn't lose big, either.

In his small time way Slater followed pharmaceuticals and long before submitting his hopeful shopping mall tenders he'd read a Forbes magazine biography of a geneticist who'd impatiently switched from pure science to establish his own genetic research company. When that fledgling, DNA-based firm offered a dollar a share rights issue Slater took his profit from his GlaxoSmithKline investment and bought $10,000 worth. Within a month the much hyped expectation of a common cold treatment by virus DNA engineering was, without any warning, dismissed by the Federal Drug Administration spokesman as impractical and overnight Slater's $10,000 share speculation was reduced to $1,500, too quick and too severe for any escape selling.

Just one day after the acceptance of his mall security tenders the FDA's licensing announcement of a successfully tested psoriasis treatment stirred the moribund portfolio. For the first time ever the already financially bolstered Slater gambled with money he believed he'd already lost, waiting until the stock rose eight points above his purchase price before selling 6,000 shares to recover most of his original investment. He sold the remaining 4,000 shares within the same week when they peaked at $4 a share, doubling his initial $10,000 stake.

That was on the Friday. On the Saturday David dropped three baskets – the last the winner – to lift his youth club team two places up the local junior league. David chose a Wendy's instead of McDonald's for the celebration hamburger supper and during the meal they talked of taking another weekend trip up into the mountains, without fixing a specific date.

Later that night, when she and Slater were alone, Ann said, ‘He didn't say anything about getting his knife back?'

‘I haven't told him he will get it back on the next camping trip.'

She remained silent for several minutes. ‘It's all come good again, hasn't it?'

‘Everything's back to normal,' agreed Slater.

‘I'm sorry, for collapsing like I did.'

It was embarrassment, not regret, Slater guessed. His was the regret for never having realized how deep her fear had been. ‘It's all over now – in the past.'

‘It's …'

‘Over,' he insisted, knowing that it wasn't but not wanting her to dwell upon what had eroded too much too quickly. Perhaps as the years passed she would come to accept how completely hidden and safe they were. But that's what it would take, years not months. And Ann hadn't been alone in her fear. He'd felt the uncertainty, too. It was good – reassuring – to know that was all it had been, a blip that he could now put behind him and never think of again.

Jack Mason was in the majority of CIA officers at the height of the Cold War of the 1980s to use, without Langley's official knowledge, Agency facilities and expertise to obtain his false ID. The irony was that that majority, who anyway operated under the CIA policy of cover names, did so to protect themselves against KGB moles disclosing them to Moscow. It was during his time as a Russian spy, when he was unsuccessfully trying to uncover such protective identities, that Mason discovered and used the technique for himself.

Adam Peterson had been born on the same day, month and year as Mason in a one-street, two-store farming hamlet six miles east of Coon Rapids, Ohio. He'd attended the local school that did not aspire to a yearbook in which an identifying photograph might have appeared and did not go on to college, but left as soon as he was able to become a farm hand, like his five brothers. He'd died just short of his twentieth birthday beneath the blades of a combine harvester. Because birth and death certificates are not coordinated within the United States, it was comparatively easy, although necessarily time consuming, for Mason to obtain Peterson's birth certificate and Social Security details and substitute his own photograph and physical details for a passport, driving licence and other documentation to become, whenever he chose, Adam Peterson. The only time he'd used them was to open the about-to-be re-accessed safe deposit and banking facilities in Washington DC and New York.

Before which he put himself behind the wheel of a car for the first time in more than fifteen years, determined, as he was determined about everything, to discard any giveaway institutionalized hesitations. Mason had been caught, during his jogging and walking re-entry into Washington DC, by the compactness of automobiles, even though the era of the fin-tailed, chrome-encrusted car had been history well before his imprisonment. As observant as he'd been trained to be, he'd isolated makes and models and decided upon a Toyota Yaris that he could confidently ask for before approaching the Hertz office just off M Street. And encountered his first unanticipated challenge.

‘You don't have a credit card?' frowned the clerk, curiously.

‘I prefer to deal in cash. Nothing wrong with cash, is there?'

‘We got your validated credit card number and rental approval, we've got something to charge against in the event of your keeping the car longer than you first thought you'd need it. Or any other problem,' said the girl.

‘Like my running away with it,' sneered Mason, recovering. ‘How much do you think I'm going to get trying to sell a Toyota Yaris with a Hertz insignia at the back and no ownership papers!'

‘It's what the company prefer. People don't often want to rent in cash.'

‘I do. And I know you have the facility for it.' It was a gamble, because Mason didn't know.

The girl's face became fixed. She took her time getting a thick regulations book from her desk drawer and even longer finding the process. Without argument Mason agreed to the $500 deposit and paid the extra for every offered insurance cover, tensed that she might want to confirm the non-existent Adam Peterson reservation at Guest Quarters, the only address he had to offer. She didn't.

Mason set out the first afternoon to confine himself to the city but after just an hour of in-town driving he felt confident enough to amuse himself by crossing the river to climb the familiar Washington Memorial Parkway and pass the tree-shrouded Langley headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency to join the traffic-congested Beltway. The moment he began going south Mason accepted how easy it would be to reach Frederick but just as quickly dismissed the idea. By the time he did that, pacing himself still, his driving had to be as automatic as the gear box, with no distraction whatsoever from his preoccupation with the occupants of 2832, Hill Avenue SE. Mason left at the first convenient slip road to turn back north, indulging himself as he descended back into Washington by slowing once more to pass Langley before going into Georgetown over the Key Bridge. The following day he took a different route, driving through Annapolis as far as Baltimore, where he lunched overlooking the harbour and chose a different, slower route back that intentionally delayed his return until after dark for him to regain further, night-driving experience.

The next day he set out to rearrange his wrongly placed banking facilities. He drove to the First National Bank and worked his way through the various departments, restoring to himself full control of the inheritance account Patrick Bell had administered during his imprisonment, after his mother's death. It took so long to establish the briefly needed safe deposit facility that he was tempted to abandon it, but he forced the patience, knowing that it was essential he had such a hiding place for the Glock until the very moment that he needed it. After finally achieving it he withdrew all but $3,000 from the checking account, drove directly to Reagan airport, where he returned the car and recovered his full cash deposit. He recognized the two police officers to whom he'd surrendered after Howitt's abandonment as soon as he entered the concourse. Having missed his intended shuttle because of the bank delay and with time to spare before the next, Mason lingered, although keeping himself as unobtrusive as possible, and tested himself as a crowd person. Neither officer showed any recognition, not even when Mason passed within yards of them on his way to catch his plane to New York. There was no in-flight challenge when he bought his ticket in cash.