generate enough business to meet our overhead. So we decided to diversify. We haven't abandoned the weapons business, but cocaine is much easier to handle than Uzi semiautomatics, know what I mean? Damn sight better markup, too.'
'Jesus, David, you are sick. How did you make a thug like Wheeler understand something as complex as DS- Nineteen?'
'Simple,' Subarsky said. 'I just told him that the real name of the drug was Money. Once it's perfected, we bargain for amnesty if we need to, and then name our price-as in eight zeros; maybe even nine.
Oil Lester understood that kind of science. Believe me he did.
'So we skim enough from our business endeavors to maintain life and limb, and keep sweet Rebecca in shoes, and then we throw the rest into the project.
The way things are going out in Charity, another year, maybe two is all it's gonna take.'
'I don't believe it.'
'Frankly, Eric, I'm very ticked off at you, so I don't really give a damn what you believe. Things were going mighty smoothly until your friend in there showed up and turned your head. Now, with most of my teammates gone, we may have to consider a relocation-whole new players, and even a new base hospital.' He sighed theatrically. 'Still, I have managed to salt enough away to take Rebecca on a sabbatical if I find I must.'
'You are really sad, David.'
'You're damn right I am,' Subarsky shot back, his tone suddenly much harsher. 'I'm sad because thanks to you, I may have to retool again.
And I'm sad because I'm getting soaked and catching a chill standing here talking to an old pal from Watertown who doomed himself by being too goddam smart for his own good.'
He reached his long arms up like an attacking grizzley, and took a step forward.
'Now,' he said, 'since the lovely Laura over there is absolutely positive that a certain video is locked in that trailer, and since the well-known chap buying poppy and blow from us on that tape is waiting to reward me handsomely for it, suppose you just let me-Head down, Eric charged the man, hurling himself through the rain at his chest, flailing with his fists at Subarsky's face. Subarsky stumbled backward. En'c lashed out again, connecting solidly with his cheek.
Then Subarsky reached out and effortlessly shoved him back to the ground.
'Happy now?' he said. 'Is it out of your system?'
Eric looked up. He had hit the man with everything he had, yet Subarsky was merely standing there, licking at a small tear in his lower lip and smiling at him through his beard. Eric tried another onslaught, but the advantage of surprise was gone. Subarsky grabbed him by the front of his jacket and slammed him against the trailer as if he were weightless.
Eric's head snapped against the metal door.
His arms and legs instantly went limp, and he dropped into a muddy puddle. Before he could fight through the dizziness to react again, Subarsky was on him. Kneeling on his back, he pulled Eric's arms behind him and tied them with a short length of clothesline. Then he knelt heavily on the back of Eric's thighs, and tied his ankles with similar quickness and.
'AD right, then,' he said, making no effort to ron Eric over or remove him from the puddle. 'There being no further objections, I move we take out the magic key set and find the one that fits this Bozo lock.
Do I hear a second?'
'David, don't hurt us,' Eric said, rolling onto his side. 'It won't help anything to hurt us.'
'Says you,' Subarsky mumbled, peering through the downpour as he sorted through a sophisticated-looking ring of keys and oddly bent wires. 'Why, just wrecking my flashlight the way you did carries the goddam death penalty.'
'David, please…'
'Now just shut up, little fella. Sit back in your puddle, enjoy the last few moments of your earthbound existence, and watch a master locksman at work. Believe it or not, these beauties were made by one of the engineering students at M.I.T He sold them for a thousand bucks a set, and was ready to retire by the time he graduated. There's nothing they can't open.'
He selected one of the keys, examined it, and then gently inserted it into the opening at the base of the padlock. Although there was a brand name of some sort die-stamped onto the oddly shaped padlock, it had become known around Plan B as the Scottlock, out of deference to Scott Enders, who had designed it. The actual keyhole was well concealed beneath a small sliding panel at the top of the apparatus.
The keyhole at the bottom was another piece of business altogether.
As Dave Subarsky worked the key he had selected in up to its hilt, the metal tip completed an electrical circuit between a tiny lithium battery and a wire-enclosed plastic capsule. In seconds the heat from the wire had melted the plastic, releasing a single large drop of concentrated hydrochloric acid.
Subarsky was dramatically humming a fragment of Bach's Concerto No. 2 in E, and gently jiggling the key, when the hydrochloric acid first touched the wad of chemically treated plastique explosive wadded into the base of the lock. He was bending over, peering at the keyhole, when the apparatus exploded.
Eric watched in stunned horror as, in an instant, both of Subarsky's hands and a good portion of his face were blown away.
Bellowing insanely, pawing at the remains of his eyes, he stumbled backward. He was still on his feet after absorbing a blast powerful enough to have actually blown a large hole in the metal door.
Eric rolled over in time to see Subarsky, still shrieking incoherently, reel blindly past the Saab and onto Meridian Avenue. The driver of the oncoming sixteen-wheeler, high on cocaine he had bought from a dealer in Cambridge, never saw the figure lurch out of the shadows and onto the road; nor did he feel the impact when the reinforced steel grille-guard of the truck slammed into the man full force.
What remained of the genius biochemist's right arm became entangled in the metal grate as the semi roared on through the rain.
The young driver, immersed in a Guns and Roses tape, sang along as he drove, unaware of the huge, grotesque ornament suspended just below the Mack bull dog on his hood.
Fighting the rain and a sudden profound exhaustion, Eric took nearly fifteen minutes to work free of his bonds. Then, using a rock, he smashed in the passenger window of the Saab. A minute later, he and Laura were inside the trailer. The video receiver was on a crate in the front left corner. It was enclosed in an oilskin sack, and its wire antenna had been brought out through a tiny hole drilled in the trailer wall.
'Here,' Eric said, handing the tape over. 'I think you should be the one to Turn this in.'
'That lock was the second time today that Scott's saved my life,' Laura said.
They huddled together in the it' eras she told him about finding her brother, their subsequent capture and escape, and Scott's death.
She eluded Lester Wheeler and his men by swimming underwater from one pier to the next. Finally, nearly unconscious from the cold, she had stumbled up the bank and onto the roadway. An elderly woman and her husband, on their way home from the market, had picked her up and brought her to their home.
'I've got a bit of a story to tell you, too,' Eric said, 'but unless I get some dry clothes on soon, I may end up getting pneumonia and being taken to White Memorial Hospital. And we all know what happens to people who are brought there.'
'Not anymore it doesn't,' Laura said. She jumped off the trailer and helped him to follow.
EPILOGUE
The ten-seat Leariet swooped down through the cloudless midmorning sky like a falcon, leveling off sharply at 2,000 feet. Inside the cabin, five passengers pressed their foreheads against the windows and peered through the glare across the stark San Rafael Desert, each one anxious to catch a first glimpse of Charity, Utah.
'We've sighted the town, Mr. Harten,' the pilot said over the intercom.
'About five miles ahead at ten o'clock. We've been cleared into Moab, so if it's okay with you, I'll make a couple of passes at this altitude and then head over to the airport.'
