haunted and solitary atop a knoll to his right. A redtail hawk perched near the top paid him no attention at all as he continued down the trail. The next half mile was laborious and uphill; the final half mile an easy coast down to where the trail ended in a clearing, and the clearing ended in the fence. He checked his watch: 17 minutes, two short stops, a steady pace but not a hurried one.
He called the dogs, walked them across the clearing and made them sit in front of the fence. He took each dog by the collar, pointed at the fence and issued a harsh 'No.' The puzzled labs then followed him back into the clearing and sat attentively by as John settled onto a stump, pulled out a cigarette and lit up. When you get to the clearing, take five. See if any shadows fall.
He smoked and listened to the birds hidden around him. When he was finished he ground the butt into the dirt, rose and commanded his dogs with a firm 'stay.' He walked across the clearing to a smallish oak tree-no more than twenty feet high- whose branches had been pruned away from the fence. He estimated two yards from the trunk to the fence, then knelt down and began scraping away handfuls of the loose, leaf-covered soil. The box was six inches under. He removed it and opened the lid, then brought out the small flat cellular telephone and slid it into his shirt pocket. He piled the sharp oak leaves around the box before turning to look behind him-just three inquisitive dog faces staring back-then pushing one of the two dial buttons on the face of the little phone. The buttons are dedicated. You can only call one person on earth and that person is me. Black for business and red for busted. If you're flushed, John, press red. Press red and use the hole. We'll do what we can to help you out but it may take a lot more time than you have.
John faced the clearing. He felt his heart pounding against his shirt and the pulse in his forehead. Joshua answered before the second ring.
'I'm here.'
'How's the scenery?'
'Superb.'
'All your luggage arrive?'
'I think so. No trouble finding it.'
'Tell me.'
'I've been invited to stay a few days. Whether that's five days, seven or nine hasn't been specified. Wayfarer's insistence. The pit bull has a pant leg already, but no skin inside it. He arranged a week of paid leave with Bruno. These guys move fast if they like you. I met two clients and some of the Liberty Ops people at dinner the second night. Notes to be delivered shortly.'
'Can you get some quality time?'
'He's leaving tomorrow. Back on Saturday.'
'Beautiful. Is his study still in the main house?'
'Yes. Just like your drawings.'
'Then that's your first stop.'
'I remember. But I still can't believe he's so lax about his own home.'
'Guarded gate, a five-man security team and almost complete isolation do not constitute lax.'
'There have to be cameras inside.'
'He fashioned Liberty Ridge for the specific purpose of not needing cameras inside. Wayfarer had the sloppiest security habits you could imagine on the job. Took it as a personal affront that anyone would open his mail, so to speak. It was a form of challenge. Miscellaneous?'
John thought of Valerie. 'He asked if I was in touch with Susan Baum.'
Joshua's laughter was low, clear and wicked. 'Well, well. He's nibbling already. And?'
'That was all.'
'You can be in touch, Owl. At Wayfarer's pleasure.'
'I assumed that.'
'The world is lovely when things fall into place. Now, the study-papers, notes, files, records. Think Baum. Think what you might commit to paper if you were going to cap someone. Anything that has a buzz about it, you shoot. Right?'
'Right.'
'After that, we'll branch you out into the firearms and ammunition. How are your nerves?'
'Steady.'
'Ten-four, clever Owl.'
'Later.'
John hung up, his fingers sweating on the slender antenna as he folded it back against the body of the unit. He returned to the box, brushed away the leaves, and set the phone back inside. He looked at the dogs again, then down the trail, listening. Next he took out one of the two micro-cameras mocked up to look like penlights-the beams actually worked-and clipped it to the edge of his pocket. He closed the box, set it back in its shallow hole, and replaced the dirt and brittle oak leaves, turning the dark sides down and the light sides to the sun. A grasshopper landed on his shirt and sent his heart into the sky.
He went back to the stump where the dogs waited, sat down and lit another smoke. He jammed a rock inside the empty pack, crumpled it, then walked to the fence and tossed it over. Joshua's people would retrieve it-notes slipped between the cellophane and the paper-in the darkness of night, just as they would retrieve a used camera and replace it with a loaded one, using the hole to cross the fence. John looked at the ground beneath the fence post nearest the tree and the next post north, and could see nothing that indicated the three-foot by three-foot tunnel Joshua had dug beneath the links. It was only six feet long, running under the fence like a curve of bathroom pipe, with openings on each side of the chain. For a human, it was little more than a tube to wriggle into and out of. But it was a safe way to cross the line. The openings were covered with thin plywood onto which were glued a representative camouflage of dirt, leaves, rocks and sticks. With a few handfuls of the real stuff thrown on, they'll be invisible. But if someone steps on one, we're in trouble.
John returned to the stump, ground his cigarette out beside the first one, then put both butts in his pants pocket. The dogs lay in a row, all three with their heads on the ground, but all three eyeing him. He told them 'stay' again, then walked around to the oak tree and approached the gnarled brown trunk.
He could hardly believe how loud the leaves under his feet were. Spider webs tickled his cheeks. He reached his hand up into the second V of the trunk and, with a sharp click, pulled down from its securing clasp the Colt. 45 Joshua had promised. If you ever need it, you will probably die with it in your hand. It's the last resort, John. Your goal is to never touch it. Your goal is to leave it there to rust in the shade while Wayfarer rusts in a cell. If you say a prayer every night, and I recommend that you do-it should be that you never have to use the Colt.
He checked the empty chamber and the clip, then rose up on his toes again and wedged the automatic back into its seat. A fence lizard gazed down at him from the upper fork of the V, his eyes curious and alert. The idea crossed John's mind that the lizard was one of Joshua's operatives, keeping tabs on him. Wiping the sweat from his face, he ducked back out from the drooping branches and wiped the dirty webs from his arms and shirt.
A blast of hot wind greeted him as he stepped from the canopy, swirling the leaves up around his legs and roaring against his ears. Then the gust moved on and John stood and listened to it swooshing against the treetops and in the brush.
As always, the sound of the Santa Anas shot him back to his childhood. Now he felt the same way that he felt at age five with the big winds hitting: awestruck, surrounded by a power much larger than his own, immersed in the pure velocity of change. They had always made him think of time, and made him realize how the present passes so quickly into the past, how the present is just a series of future moments marching backward to meet you. He had always loved the way the wind made you feel each of those moments going by. He had always loved the way he could just stand there in that wind and let it blow right past him, flattening the grasses, bending the trees, lifting silver-green spray off the faces of advancing waves. It was like seeing time itself. Seeing himself within time, John had always felt small. But he had felt integral, too. With the wind blowing around him he understood that he was a part of larger things, like the grass, the trees and the waves. He remembered, age ten, jumping off the roof of his uncle's house in a high Santa Ana with bed sheets spread behind his outstretched arms, wanting not so much to fly as to dissolve into the wind and let it take him with it. He was hoping it might carry him to his mother and father.
John stood in the clearing, looking out at the buffeted landscape and feeling his slow reentry into the present. He thought about Rebecca. Here was another day, another moment he wished she could have shared. He listened
