Axis

Lise craned her head to look back at Diane. 'You know where to find Dvali?'

'I've heard a few things over the years. These foothills are riddled with little Utopian communities and religious retreats of every imaginable kind. Avram Dvali disguised his compound as one of those.'

'But if you knew where he was—'

'We didn't, not at first. But even a community like Dvali's is porous. People arrive, people leave. He was hidden from us when it was critical for him to hide, before the child was born.'

* * * * *

It meant another half hour in the air. After yet more simmering silence Turk said, 'I'm sorry about that phone thing back in the city. What were you doing, trying to get a message to your mom back in the States, something like that?'

'Something like that.' She was pleased that he had apologized and she didn't want to make it worse by admitting she'd called Brian Gately even in an attempt to get Tomas Ginn out of custody. 'Can I ask you a question?'

'Go ahead.'

'How come you had to steal your own plane?'

'I owed some money to the guy who owns the airstrip. The business hasn't been going too well.'

'You could have told me that.'

'Didn't seem like a good way to impress a rich American divorcee.'

'Hardly rich, Turk.'

'Looked that way from where I stood.'

'So how were you planning to get out of hock?'

'Didn't have what you could call an actual plan. Worst case, I figured I'd sell the plane and bank whatever I didn't owe and find a berth on one of those research ships that sail out past the Second Arch.'

'There's nothing past the Second Arch but rocks and bad air.'

'Thought I'd like to see for myself. That, or—'

'Or what?'

'Or if something worked out between you and me, I thought I'd stay in the Port and get a job. There's always pipeline work.'

She was briefly startled. Also pleased.

'Not that it matters now,' he added. 'Once we're done here—and whether you find out anything about your father or not—you're going to have to head back to the States. You'll be okay there. You come from a respectable family and you're well-connected enough that they won't arrest and interrogate you.'

'What about you?'

'I can disappear on my own terms.'

'You could, you know, come back with me. Come back to the States.'

'Wouldn't be safe, Lise. The trouble we're in right now isn't the first trouble I've had. There are good reasons why I can't go back.'

Tell me, she thought. Don't make me ask. Do you know he's a criminal? That's why he fled the States . So tell me. She said, 'Legal problems?'

'You don't want to know.'

'Yeah, I do.'

He was flying low across the desert, the moonlit foothills hanging off his right wing. He said, 'I burned down a building. My father's warehouse.'

'You told me your father was in the oil business.'

'He was, at one time. But he didn't like being overseas. When we left Turkey he went into my uncle's import business. They brought in nickel-and-dime shit from Middle Eastern factories, rugs and souvenirs and things like that.'

'Why'd you burn down the warehouse?'

'I was nineteen years old, Lise. I was pissed off and I wanted to do some damage to my old man.'

She said as gently as possible, 'How come?'

He allowed another silent moment to pass, looking at the desert, his instruments, anywhere but at her. 'There was this girl I'd been seeing. We were going to get married. It was that serious. But my old man and my uncle didn't want it to happen. They were old-fashioned about, you know, race.'

'You're girlfriend wasn't white?'

'Hispanic.'

'Did you really care what your father thought?'

'Not at that point, no. I hated him. He was a brutal little shit, frankly. Drove my mother to her grave, in my opinion. I didn't give a fuck what he thought. But he knew that. So he didn't say a word to me. What he did was, he went to my girlfriend's family and offered to pay a year's tuition on her college education if she would stay away from me. I guess it sounded like a good deal. I never saw her again. But she felt bad enough to send me a letter and explain what happened.'

'So you burned his warehouse.'

'Took a couple cans of paint stripper out of the garage and went down to the industrial district and dumped it on the truck bay doors. It was after midnight. The place was three-quarters in flames by the time the fire department got there.'

'So you had your revenge.'

'What I didn't know was that there was a night guard in the building. He spent six months in a burn ward because of me.'

Lise said nothing.

'What made it worse,' Turk said, 'was that my old man covered it up. Cooked up some arrangement with the insurance company. He tracked me down and told me that. How he'd taken this huge financial hit in order to save me from legal action. He said it was because I was family, that was why he did what he did about my girlfriend, because family mattered, whether I knew it or not.'

'He expected you to be grateful?'

'Hard as that is to believe, yeah, I think he honestly expected me to be grateful.'

'Were you?'

'No,' Turk said. 'I was not grateful.'

* * * * *

He landed the Skyrex where he had landed it for Sulean Moi some months before, on a little strip of pavement that appeared to be in the middle of nowhere but was, Diane insisted, less than a mile from Dvali's compound, a hikeable distance.

They hiked, carrying flashlights.

He could smell the commune before he could see it. It smelled like water and flowers against the flat mineral essence of the desert. Then they crossed a little hill and there it was, a few lights still burning: four buildings and a courtyard, terracotta roofs like some kind of transplanted hacienda. There was a garden, and a gate, and Turk saw what looked like a young boy standing behind the ornate ironwork. As soon as the boy spotted them he ran inside, and by the time they reached the gate many more lights had come on and a crowd of ten or fifteen people was waiting for them.

'Let me talk to them,' Diane said, a suggestion Turk was happy to accept. He stood a few paces back with Lise while the old woman approached the fence. Turk tried to study the crowd of Fourths, but the light was behind them and they weren't much more than silhouettes.

Diane shaded her eyes. 'Mrs. Rebka?' she said abruptly.

A woman stepped out of the crowd. All Turk could see of this Mrs. Rebka was that she was a little plump and that her hair was fine and made a white halo around her head.

'Diane Dupree,' the woman named Mrs. Rebka said.

'I'm afraid I've brought uninvited guests.'

'And you're one yourself. What brings you here, Diane?'

'Do you have to ask?'

'I suppose not.'