Time to Kill (2 page)

‘I know you have, Mason. I wish everyone here accepted their punishment as objectively as you've done, ‘fessed up to the wrong and shown the determination you've demonstrated to rehabilitate.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

‘You got any firmed-up plans?'

If only you knew, thought Mason. ‘Nothing positive. I've enjoyed running the library for these last few years. Might try something involving books.' He smiled. ‘Although I don't mean trying to write one. Maybe something involving distribution, where I can utilize what I've learned about computers while I've been here.'

‘From what I hear you could go into competition with Bill Gates and Microsoft.'

‘I'm not that good.' Mason knew he was assessed to be very good indeed according to his legitimate instructors. A year earlier, using the illegal expertise he'd learned from the bank fraudster, Mason had embedded deep within his prison personnel records a ‘Trojan Horse', a hacker's bug with its password and access code known only to himself in which the entire traffic in and out of those records was automatically duplicated and from which he could access everything that had preceded it, from the very moment of his sentencing. Using either the penitentiary's rehab computer training room or the dedicated station in the library in which he'd been assigned as chief librarian for the last six years, he'd taken his time to read every report, assessment or recommendation about himself. Before today's meeting with Harrison he'd gone into his Trojan Horse looking for the records of the automatic warning which he knew, from his CIA experience, was sent to everyone supposedly hidden forever in a Witness Protection Programme, of the imminent release of a felon for whose imprisonment they were responsible. He had been concerned at not finding it, as he'd failed to do every day over the preceding month. Mason had expected to find it – and everything else he needed to discover about the new life and identity of Dimitri Sobell – long before now. A change of routine was an unsettling uncertainty.

‘We should hear the parole arrangement by next week. Of course, you'll be attached to DC, your last city of domicile.'

‘Yes,' accepted Mason. He'd already read the exchanges between Harrison and the parole authorities and knew his exemplary record was going to cut him as much slack as he could expect. The parole restrictions were still going to be a potential irritation, although he'd already thought of some evasions.

‘They could give you a steer about accommodation, if you intend to stay there.'

‘I'm not sure that I do,' said Mason. ‘Ann's divorced me for the Russian. And got the proceeds from the sale of our old house.'

‘Thought about where you might resettle?'

‘California is where the computer industry is,' Mason said, smiling. ‘And the winters are warmer there than on the East Coast.'

‘And that physique you've developed will look good on Venice Beach,' smiled the warden, in return.

‘I did wrong,' said Mason. ‘Very wrong. When I arrived here I made myself a personal promise, not to let my body or my mind atrophy.'

‘You didn't do either,' acknowledged Harrison, a reform-dedicated penologist. ‘Wherever you choose to live and whatever you decide to do, I know you'll be successful.'

‘I'm absolutely determined to be,' said Mason, a remark entirely for his own benefit.

Two

S
o long and so well had Daniel Slater adjusted to his new life and identity that he rarely consciously thought of his previous existence. One of the few exceptions were weekends like this, when he and Ann took David into the Ridge and Valley Appalachians of Maryland to camp and for Slater to teach their son the survival tradecraft he'd learned from his geology professor father in the harshness of his native Siberia. The recollection only brought nostalgia for his father. Slater didn't miss Russia, didn't miss anything about his first twenty-six years as Dimitri Sobell, so perfect did he consider everything to be as Daniel Slater.

‘Not one mistake so far,' said Ann, who'd automatically learned the backwoodsman techniques as Slater had taught them to their son.

‘I'd have corrected him by now if there had been,' said Slater. He and Ann had let the boy lead their detour off the official trail, to choose a path upon which they would make as little sound as possible – to avoid disturbing any game or animals – and select their campsite, close enough to the tight tree clump to provide the wind break, but far enough away to avoid added precipitation if there were a storm. Another flank was protected by a natural ground bank in which David had already cut the conduit to carry away any water from where the tents were, although no rain was forecast. David's pup tent was further shielded on its third side by the separate tent Slater and his wife would occupy. The stream from which they would get their drinking and cooking water – purified by boiling on a fire for which David was at that moment preparing a rock and pebble base in the turf-removed hollow – was about ten yards from the site on its unprotected side, flowing away from them down a slope sufficient to prevent any back-up flooding. There were no animal paths or markings to indicate it was a watering hole. David used the extra rocks he had collected to seal against drafts along the edges of their tents, both of which he'd pitched with their entrances away from the already tested and determined wind direction. He'd taken that into account when positioning the fire base too, to take the smoke away from, not into, the camp. It would be blown into the high fir shield and dispersed, not form into an identifiable plume to attract a forest ranger. The guiding principle of David's backwoodsman instruction was never to cause or leave a detectable trace of their having been there. When they left, the ashes and the fire-blackened stones would be scattered into the fast moving stream and the turf replaced in the fire pit.

‘You're doing fine, David,' encouraged Slater. He always called his son by his full name, never abbreviating it as his father had never abbreviated his name, not even omitting the patronymic, always Dimitri Alexeivich. His widowed father had been the icon in Slater's life, the man he admired as well as loved above anyone and anything else, the image in which he'd always worked to model himself in David's upbringing. Slater was glad his father had died before his defection. His father had been a fervent, uncompromising communist, which Slater had never been, despite his father's overwhelming influence in everything else, particularly in his joining the KGB. Slater had no doubt that had his father been alive when he defected, the man would have disowned him for abandoning his country; he would not have wept, either, at the retribution that might have been exacted had the KGB ever been able to find him. Which they hadn't, although Slater knew they would have tried because they always tried, wanting to make a physical example of what happened to those they regarded as traitors.

‘Good enough to be an Indian scout?'

About to turn fourteen, David was engrossed in the exploration history of the western United States and Slater had encouraged the interest by comparing David's backwoodsman prowess against that of the earlier settler heroes whose images adorned the boy's bedroom walls, although greatly outnumbered by past and present basketball stars. David was close to being unnaturally tall for his age and was the star in his own right of both his school and youth club basketball teams.

‘Almost,' said Slater.

As David hurried off to collect kindling twigs and firewood, Ann said, ‘You're too hard on him.'

‘I'm not,' denied Slater, at once. ‘I praise him when it's due.'

‘Not enough. You're trying to bring him up too quickly in your own image,' said Ann. She was a blonde, exercise-trim woman who believed her second life was as perfect as Slater believed his to be, although she'd never told him outright. To have done so would have inevitably taken them back to the times she wanted to exorcise: the cheating, the physical violence of times with Jack as well as his whoring and neglect and her attempted escape into the bottom of too many gin bottles.

‘Would that be so bad?' There was no irritation in his voice.

‘He shouldn't miss out on being a young kid.'

‘He's not missing out on anything. And never will.'

They were only aware of David's return at the very last moment, so silently, despite his height, did the boy instinctively move through the wooded undergrowth. ‘I've stacked up a lot of stuff lying around,' he said. ‘Enough to take us through tomorrow. Big stuff from some felling over the brow.'

‘About time I helped,' offered Slater.

‘I can manage.'

‘Together we can do it twice as quickly.'

‘I should set the fire first. There's not a lot of sun left.'

‘Well done!' praised Slater, looking pointedly at his wife. It had been a test. By the time they would have made another wood collection, even though it had all been assembled, there would not have been sufficient heat in the sun to start the fire through the glass scrap upon which Slater insisted. To have used ordinary, reserve-only matches represented a failure. Slater's return, laden with branches, was another test, although this one for himself. So many were supported on his outstretched arms that Slater could not see to pick his way soundlessly over the twigs and bark and branch-fallen forest floor. So he moved cautiously, feeling and assessing each step before imposing the slightest weight.

‘Got you!' shouted the boy when Slater judged himself still too far away from the camp to be detected. He hadn't heard the give-away twig snap, either.

‘Identify,' demanded Slater, going into their rehearsed routine.

‘You're next to a birch sapling between two conifers,' complied the boy, coming into view. ‘And you were scuffing.'

David was far better than he had been at his son's age, conceded Slater. He consoled himself with the thought that it was easier to move soundlessly over the permanently frozen tundra around Irkursk than the tinder-dry undergrowth of an early summer Maryland. These outings had an underlying reason, far beyond David becoming expert in outdoor existence and survival. They were just one of several ways Slater intended making his son as totally self-sufficient and confident as possible.

‘Don't try to carry as many logs as me,' he admitted, sweating as his outstretched arms ached under the weight.

The fire was well alight and Ann had moved their equipment into their tent by the time Slater got back, letting the logs drop and supporting himself half bent, panting, with his hands against his knees.

‘Why'd you try to carry so much, macho-man?' she demanded.

‘I didn't realize how heavy they were,' admitted Slater. ‘I'm out of shape.'

‘Maybe David should start teaching you.'

‘Maybe he should,' agreed Slater, as the boy re-entered the clearing, carrying without apparent effort what appeared to Slater to be practically as big a load as he had.

It took each of them two more journeys to complete their log pile, stacked as an additional wind break, Slater carrying less each time. David constructed the wood spit over the fire to grill their steaks, which he did perfectly without burning the meat or allowing the wood to catch alight from the dripping fat.

As they ate the boy announced, ‘Tomorrow I'm going to try to catch some fish. I'm sure there are some, trout maybe, in the rock pool just over the rise.'

Slater considered it an unlikely location but didn't challenge the boy. ‘If you're right I could teach you how to bake them in clay.'

They burned the meat debris on the fire, to prevent its lingering scent attracting forest predators, and built up the fire as a further deterrent and to warm the stream water to wash. Slater and Ann shared a double sleeping bag, both naked because their relationship was still very physical although that night neither moved to make love, contentedly tired from the climb and from their contribution to setting up the camp.

There were fish in the river pool and David caught two, not with a line but by lying trapper fashion with his hands in the icy water to snatch them out when they swam over his caressing fingers. He caught a rabbit, too, in a snare he set before he began to fish, and he skinned and gutted it for their evening meal. For most of the remaining morning and early afternoon they wandered the forest, with Slater further challenging the boy on which berries and fungi and plants were edible, against those that were not.

‘Did you really do things like this with your father?'

‘A lot,' said Slater, cautiously.

‘How long did it take you to learn it all?' asked the tall boy, striding slightly ahead of his parents as they descended towards their camp.

‘Quite a while.'

‘I'd have liked to know what your father looked like – seen a photograph.'

Slater was conscious of Ann's sharp sideways look, to which he didn't respond in case David unexpectedly turned back. It had, not surprisingly, taken the untrained Ann longer than Slater to completely adopt their new CIA-guided personas. Very soon after Ann had become pregnant, they had begun devising their own legend – using the ingrained KGB credo of keeping small falsehoods and outright lies to a minimum, to avoid being caught out – to satisfy the inevitable curiosity of their then unborn child. Over the months and years they'd been confident they had prepared as effectively as possible, even to the extent of believing everything about their new, now secure identities. But increasingly there had been questions and curiosity from David they had not anticipated.

‘I wish I had one to show you,' said Slater. ‘But I've told you the house fire in which my mother and father died destroyed everything.'

‘Wasn't there any other family, apart from you?' persisted the boy.

‘You know all my mother and father's relations died in Poland in the last years of the war in Europe.' Sometimes Slater regretted the Polish invention, which had been an unnecessary CIA insistence to account for his Russian accent in an immigrant America in which foreign accents aroused little interest anyway; over the subsequent fifteen years the accent had flattened out to be virtually undetectable although there was still the Slavic flaxen hair and high cheekbones of his genuine ancestry.