clothes.'
Earlier, in his naivete, Mitch had been willing to have Iggy dragged into this mess to spare Anson.
Now he wondered if he would have been willing for other innocent people to be beaten, burned, and savaged in order to save Holly. Perhaps he should be thankful that the choice had not been offered to him.
'If we tweaked twelve of theirs in twelve hours, those pussies
would send your wife home with apologies and a Nordstrom gift certificate for a new wardrobe.'
The two gunmen never took their eyes off Mitch.
'But Anson,' Campbell continued, 'he wants to make a statement so nobody ever underestimates him again. Indirectly, the statement's also for my benefit. And I gotta say…I'm impressed.'
Mitch could not let them see the true intensity of his terror. They would assume that extreme fear would make him reckless, and they would watch him even more diligently than they watched him now.
He must appear to be fearful but, more than fearful, despairing. A man in the grip of despair, who has utterly abandoned hope, is not a man with the will to fight.
'I'm curious,' Campbell repeated, coming around at last to where he had started. 'For your brother to be able to do this to you.. what did you do?'
'Loved him,' Mitch said.
Campbell regarded Mitch as a wading heron regards a swimming fish, and then smiled. 'Yes, that would do it. What if one day he found himself reciprocating?'
'He's always wanted to go far, and to get there fast.'
'Sentiment is an encumbrance,' Campbell said.
In a voice weighed low with despair, Mitch said, 'Oh, it's a chain and an anchor.'
From the coffee table where one of the gunmen had put it, Campbell picked up the pistol that had been taken from Mitch. 'Have you ever fired this?'
Mitch almost said that he had not, but then realized that the magazine lacked one bullet, the round with which Knox accidentally shot himself. 'Once. I fired it once. To see what it felt like.'
Amused, Campbell said, 'And did it feel scary?'
'Scary enough.'
'Your brother says you're not a man for guns.'
'He knows me better than I know him.'
'So where did you get this?'
'My wife thought we should keep one in the house.'
'How right she was.'
'It's been in a nightstand drawer since the day we bought it,' Mitch lied.
Campbell rose to his feet. With his right arm extended full length, he pointed the pistol at Mitch's face. 'Stand up.'
Chapter 27
Meeting the blind stare of the pistol, Mitch rose from the armchair.
The two nameless gunmen moved to new positions, as though their intent was to cut down Mitch in triangulated fire.
'Take off your coat and put it on the table,' Campbell said.
Mitch did as he was told, and then followed another instruction to turn out the pockets of his jeans. He put his ring of keys, his wallet, and a couple of wadded Kleenex on the coffee table.
He recalled being a boy in darkness and silence. Instead of concentrating for days on the simple lesson his incarceration was meant to teach him, he had conducted imaginary conversations with a spider named Charlotte, a pig named Wilbur, a rat named Templeton. That had been the closest he had come to defiance — then or since.
He doubted that these men would shoot him while in the house. Even when scrubbed away and no longer visible to the signature mat special chemicals and lights could reveal.
One of the gunmen picked up Mitch's coat, searched the pockets, and found only the cell phone.
To his watchful host, Mitch said, 'How did you go from being an FBI hero to this?'
Campbell's puzzlement was brief. 'Is that the yarn Anson spun to get you here? Julian Campbell — FBI hero?'
Although the gunmen had seemed as humorless as carrion-eating beetles, the one with smooth skin laughed, and the other smiled.
'You probably didn't make your money in entertainment, either,' Mitch said.
'Entertainment? That could be true enough,' Campbell said, 'if you have an elastic definition of entertainment.'
The acne-scarred gunman had produced a folded plastic garbage bag from a hip pocket. He shook it open.
Campbell said, 'And Mitch, if Anson told you these two gentlemen are candidates for the priesthood, I should warn you they aren't.'
The carrion beetles were further amused.
The gunman with the plastic bag stuffed it with the sports coat, cell phone, and other items that they had taken off Mitch. Before throwing away the wallet, he stripped out the cash and gave it to Campbell.
Mitch remained on his feet, waiting.
The three men were more relaxed with him than they had first been. They knew him now.
He was Anson's brother but only by blood. He was an evader, not a hunter. He would obey. They knew he would not effectively resist. He would retreat within himself. Eventually he would beg.
They knew him, knew his kind, and after the gunman finished putting items in the garbage bag, he produced a pair of handcuffs.
Before Mitch could be asked to extend his hands, he offered them.
The man with the cuffs hesitated, and Campbell shrugged, and the man with the cuffs snapped them around Mitch's wrists.
'You seem very tired,' Campbell said.
'Funny how tired,' Mitch agreed.
Putting down the gun they had confiscated, Campbell said, 'It's that way sometimes.'
Mitch didn't bother to test the cuffs. They were tight, and the shackle chain between the wrists was short.
As Campbell counted the forty-odd dollars that had been taken from Mitch's wallet, his voice had an almost tender quality: 'You might even fall asleep on the way.'
'Where are we going?'
'I knew a guy who fell asleep one night, on a drive like the one you're taking. It was almost a shame to wake him when we got there.'
'Are you coming?' Mitch asked.
'Oh, I haven't in years. I'll stay here with my books. You don't need me. You'll be all right. Everyone's all right, at the end.'
Mitch looked around at the aisles of books. 'Have you read any?'
'The histories. I'm fascinated by history, how almost no one ever learns from it.'
'Have you learned from it?'
'I am history. I'm the thing nobody wants to learn.'
Campbell's hands, as dexterous as those of a magician, folded Mitch's money into his own wallet with an economy of movement that was nevertheless theatrical.
'These gentlemen will be taking you to the car pavilion. Not through the house, but across the gardens.'
Mitch assumed that the household staff — night maids, the butler — either were not aware of the hard side of Campbell's business or collaborated in a pretense of ignorance.
