Strangers

For one thing, Ernie admired the caution and stealth with which the guy had answered his own call to the Tranquility Motel. He had not just walked in like the others. He'd even brought a submachine gun.

But as he watched “Thornton Wainwright” slip the carryingstrap of the Uzi over one shoulder and head out the front door of the motel office, Ernie was still stung by the criticism he had endured. In fact, his rage was so great he did not pause to grab a coat, as most of the others did, but plunged after the stranger, through the door and across the macadam toward the diner, keeping pace with him in order to chew him out. "Listen, what the hell's the point of being a wiseass? You could've made your point without being so goddamn snide."

The stranger said, “Yeah, but I couldn't have made it as fast.”

Ernie was about to reply when he abruptly realized he was outside, vulnerable, at night, in the dark. Halfway between the office and the diner. His lungs seemed to collapse; he could not draw the slightest wisp of breath. He made a disgustingly pitiful mewling sound.

To Ernie's surprise, the newcomer immediately grasped his arm, providing support, with no trace of the scorn he'd shown

before. "Come on, Ernie. You're halfway there. Lean on me, and you'll make it."

Furious with himself for letting this bastard see him disabled and weak with childish fear, furious with the guy, too, for playing the Samaritan, humiliated, Ernie jerked his arm away from the helping hand.

“Listen,” the newcomer said, "while I was eavesdropping, I heard about your problem, Ernie. I don't pity you, and I don't find your condition amusing. Okay? If your fear of the dark has something to do with this situation we all find ourselves in, it's not your fault. It's those bastards who messed with us. We need one another if we're going to get through this thing. Lean on me. Let me help you over to the diner, where we can turn on some lights. Lean on me."

When the newcomer began to talk, Ernie was unable to breathe, but by the time the guy finished his spiel, Ernie had the opposite problem; he was hyperventilating. As though pulled by a magnetic force, he turned from the diner and looked southeast, out into the terrifyingly immense darkness of the barrens. And suddenly he knew the darkness itself was not what he feared, but something that had been out there on the night of July 6, that bad summer. He was looking toward that special place along the highway, where they had gone yesterday to commune with the land in search of clues. That strange place.

Faye had arrived, and Ernie had not shaken loose of her when she had taken hold of him. But now the crookedeyed man tried to take his arm again, and he was still angry enough to reject that assistance.

“Okay, okay,” the guy said. "You're a bullheaded old Leatherneck bastard, and it's going to take your hurt pride a while to heal. If you want to be a thickskulled mule, go ahead, stay pissed at me. It was only your blind anger that got you this far into the dark, wasn't it? Sure as hell wasn't Marine backbone. Just dumb blind anger. So if you stay pissed at me, maybe you'll be able to get to the diner."

Ernie knew the crookedeyed man was cleverly taunting him into completing the trip to the Tranquility Grille, that he was not really being cruel. Hate me enough, the guy was saying, and you'll fear the darkness less. Focus on me, Ernie, and take one step at a time. This was not much different than taking the guy's arm and leaning on it, and if Ernie had not been scared half to death by the surging night on all sides of him, he would have been amused at being conned this way. But he held fast to his anger, fanned the flames of it, and used it to light his way to the diner. He stepped through the door after the newcomer, and sighed with relief when the lights came on.

“It's freezing in here,” Faye said. She went directly to the thermostat to switch on the oil furnace.

Sitting in a chair in the center of the room, his back to the door, Ernie recuperated from his ordeal as the others entered behind him. He watched the crookedeyed newcomer moving from window to window, checking the plyboard slabs that had been nailed up to replace the shattered glass. And that was when, to Ernie's surprise, he realized he no longer loathed the guy, merely harbored an extreme dislike for him.

The newcomer examined the payphone near the door. Being a coinoperated unit, it did not unplug, so he lifted the receiver, tore the cord free of the wallmounted box, and threw the useless handset aside.

“There's a private phone back of the counter,” Ned said.

The newcomer told him to unplug it, and Ned obliged.

Then he told Brendan and Ginger to push three tables together and pull up chairs to accommodate everyone, and they did as they were told.

Ernie watched the crookedeyed man with keen interest.

The newcomer was concerned about the diner's front door, which had not shattered during the weird phenomena on Saturday night because it was made of much thicker glass than the windows had been. It was not boarded up, so it offered a weak point to anyone trying to monitor them with a directional microphone. He wanted to know if any plywood was left from the window job, and Dom told him there was, and he sent Ned and Dom to bring back a suitable piece from the stack in the maintenance room behind the motel. They soon returned with a section of wood that was slightly larger than the door, and the newcomer stood it in front of the glass portal, bracing it in place with a table. “Not perfect,” he said, “but good enough to defeat a rifle mike, I think.” Then he headed toward the back of the restaurant to “have a look in the storeroom,” and on his way he told Sandy to plug in the jukebox, switch it to freeplay, and punch in some songs. "Some background noise makes eavesdropping more difficult." Even before he explained why he wanted music, Sandy jumped up and headed for the jukebox, quick to obey him.

Abruptly, Ernie realized why the crookedeyed man fascinated him. The guy's quick thinking, precision movements, and ability to command indicated that he wasor had once beena career soldier, an officer, a damn good one. He could tune an intimidatingly hard edge into his voice one moment, and the next moment tune it out in favor of cajolery.

Hell, Ernie thought, he's fascinating because he reminds me of me!

That was also why the newcomer had been able to needle Ernie so effectively back in the apartment. The guy knew just where to stick the sharp points because he and Ernie were, in some ways, two of a kind.

Ernie laughed softly. Sometimes, he thought, I can be such a perfect jackass.

The crookedeyed man returned from the storeroom and smiled with satisfaction when he saw everyone seated at the long table which he had told Brendan and Ginger to put together from three smaller ones. He came to Ernie and said, “No hard feelings?”

“Hell, no,” Ernie said. “And thanks ... thanks a lot.”

The newcomer went to the head of the table, where a chair had been left for him. With Kenny Rogers crooning on the jukebox, the guy said, "My name's Jack Twist, and I don't know any more than you what in hell's happening, probably less than you know. The whole thing gives me the heebiejeebies, but I also have to tell you this is the first time in eight years that I've really and truly felt like I'm on the right side of an issue, the first time I've felt like one of the good guysand dear God in Heaven, you can't know how much I've needed to feel that!"

Lieutenant Tom Forner, Colonel Falkirk's aidedecamp, had enormous hands. The small tape recorder was totally concealed in his right hand when he carried it into the windowless office. His fingers were so large that he seemed certain to have trouble using the little control buttons. But he was remarkably dextrous. He produced the recorder, placed it on the desk, switched it on, and set it in the playback mode.

The tape had been duplicated from the reeltoreel machine on which all phonemonitored conversations were recorded. It was a portion of an exchange that had taken place between several people at the Tranquility only minutes ago. The first part of the tape concerned the witnesses' discovery that the source of their trouble was not Shenkfield but Thunder Hill. Leland listened with dismay. He had not anticipated that their quest would take the right trail so soon. Their cleverness worried and angered him.

On the tape: "For God's sake, shut up. If you think you can plot in privacy here, you're badly mistaken."

“That's Twist,” Lieutenant Forner said. He had a big voice, too, which was as well controlled as his enormous hands: a soft rumble. He stopped the tape. "We knew he was coming here. And we know he's dangerous. We figured he'd be more cautious than the others, sure, but we didn't expect him to act as if he was at war from the getgo."

As far as they knew, Jack Twist's memory block had not seriously deteriorated. He was not suffering fugues, sleepwalking, phobias, or obsessions. Therefore, only one thing might have motivated him to suddenly lease a plane and fly to Elko County: mail from the same traitor who had sent Polaroids to Corvaisis and to the Blocks.

Leland Falkirk was furious that someone involved in the coverup, probably someone at Thunder Hill, was sabotaging the entire operation. He had made this discovery only last Saturday night, when Dominick Corvaisis and the Blocks had sat at the kitchen table and discussed the strange snapshots they'd been sent. Leland had ordered an immediate investigation and intense screening of everyone at the Depository, but that was going a lot slower than he had anticipated.

“There's worse,” Horner said. He switched on the tape again.

Leland listened to Twist tell the others about rifle microphones and infinity transmitters. Shocked, they adjourned to the diner, where they could discuss their strategy without being overheard.

“They're in the diner now,” Horner said, shutting off the recorder. "Ripped out the phones. I've spoken by radio with the observers we have stationed south of I-80. They watched the witnesses move to the Grille, but they haven't had any luck tuning in with a rifle mike."

And won't,“ Leland said softly. ”Twist knows what he's doing."

"Now that they 're aware of Thunder Hill, we've got to move on them as soon as possible."

“I'm waiting to hear from Chicago.”

'Sharkle's still barricaded in his house?"

'Last I heard, yes,“ Leland said. ”I've got to know if his memory block has completely crumbled. If it has, and if he gets a chance to tell anyone what he saw that summer, then the operation's blown, anyway, and it'd be a mistake to move against the witnesses at the motel. We'll have to fall back to another plan."

Under the diner's wagonwheel lights, safe in her mother's lap, Marcie dozed off even as Jack Twist introduced himself. In spite of the nap the girl had taken on the plane, sooty rings of weariness encircled her eyes, and a tracery of blue veins marked her porcelainpale skin.

Jorja was tired, too, but Twist's dramatic arrival was an effective antidote to the narcotizing effects of the dinner. She was wide awake and eager to hear what he had to tell them of his own tribulations.

He began by briefly mentioning his imprisonment in Central America, with which his military career had ended. He made the experience sound more boring and frustrating than frightening, but Jorja sensed that he had endured grueling hardship. From his matteroffact tone, she had the impression that he was a man so secure in his selfimage, so certain of his emotional and physical and intellectual strengths, that he never needed to boast or to hear the praise of others.

When he spoke of Jenny, his late wife, he was less able to maintain an air of detachment. Jorja heard the cadences of lingering grief in this

part of his story; a river of love and longing flowed...

feigned placidity. The intimacy of mind and spirit between Jack Twist and Jenny, prior to her coma, had surely been extraordinary, for only a special and magical relationship would have ensured his unflagging devotion through the woman's long deathlike sleep. Jorja tried to imagine what a marriage of that sort might be like, then realized that, regardless of how magical their marriage had been, Jack would not have committed himself so totally to his afflicted wife if he'd been any less than the man he was. Their relationship had been special, yes, but even more special was this man himself. That realization increased Jorja's already strong interest in Twist and his story.

He was vague in describing the enterprises by which he had financed Jenny's long stay at a sanitarium. He made it clear only that what he had done was illegal, that he was not proud of it, and that his lawless days were over. "At least I never killed any innocent bystanders, thank God. Otherwise, I think it's best if you don't know any details that might somehow make you accessoriesafterthefact."

Their mutual unremembered ordeal had affected Jack Twist. But as with Sandy, the mysterious events of that July night had wrought only beneficial changes in him.

Ernie Block said, "I think what you've indirectly told us is that you were a professional thief." When Jack Twist said nothing, Ernie continued: "It occurs to me that you were almost certainly forced to reveal your criminal life to the people who brainwashed us. In fact, from what little you've said, I figure those safedeposit boxes in which the postcards turned up were kept under the identities you also used when committing robberies; therefore, since that July, the Army and government must've known about your illegal activities."

Jack's silence was confirmation that he had, indeed, been a thief.

Ernie said, "Yet, once they'd blocked your memories of what really happened here that summer, they turned you loose and let you continue with what you'd been doing. Why in the hell would they do that? I can understand the Army and government bendingeven breakingthe law to hide whatever happened at Thunder Hill if it involves national security. But otherwise, you'd expect them to uphold the law, wouldn't you? So why wouldn't they at least anonymously inform the New York police or arrange for you to be caught in the middle of a crime?"

Jorja said, "Because from the start they've not been certain that our memory blocks would hold up. They've been monitoring us, at least checking in on us once in awhile, to be sure we don't need a refresher course in forgetfulness. What happened to Ginger and Pablo Jackson seems to prove they're watching, all right. And if they decided it was necessary to grab Jackor any of usand put him through another session with the mindcontrol doctors, they'd want him where they could reach him without too much trouble. It'd be a lot easier to snatch Jack out of his apartment or from his car than to spirit him out of prison."

“Good grief,” Jack said, smiling at her, "I think you've hit on it. Absolutely." Although Jorja had been slightly chilled by his smile the first time she'd seen it, she perceived it differently now; it was a warmer smile than it had seemed initially.