pressure pounding in there to do it.
He held the key up to the lock-it went in without a hitch-threw over the bolt and opened the lid.
“Oh, c’mon,” he growled. The box was empty. “Why send us here for an empty box?”
“It’s my box,” I said again, though I’d never seen the thing before that I could remember. His eyes narrowed. The look on his face made me nervous. I’d seen what he could do if he had to.
“Where’s the next nearest?” he asked.
“What?”
“ What’s mine is yours; what’s yours is mine,” he said, enunciating like he was teaching a child a nursery rhyme. “Where is the next nearest?”
“Mark Tauber, Savannah Georgia,” I said and nearly fainted.
“Shit!” he said and stomped around the room cursing.
The name came out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying. Actually, I didn’t understand it after I’d said it, either. I didn’t know any Mark Tauber and I didn’t know what he had to do with Mr. Dulles’ question. Tell the truth, I didn’t even understand the question-but I’d just answered it.
My heart was pounding and my shirt soaked through. I couldn’t think and I was afraid of what I would think if I could.
“Okay,” he sighed, “Let’s go.”
I stumbled after him but I kept banging into everything, desks and displays and kicking through piles of paper. My whole body was trembling.
“It’s not far,” he said, leading the way. “You can collapse once we get to the car.” But the trembling only got worse when I hit the seat.
“What’s happening?” I spurted, the words flying out of me. “Tell me what’s going on!”
“Relax, you’ll be okay,” he said, pulling a map from the glovebox. I reached over and ripped the thing right out of his hands.
“I’ll tear this to shreds if you don’t tell me-right now!” I screamed and I meant it. I had the pages between my fingers-no power on earth could stop me from doing it if he didn’t give me some answers there and then.
He flashed me a sickly smile.“They sell them at gas stations, Gregor,” he said, taking it back. Then he drove out to Main Street and turned left-away from the VA, away from the police station.
“Where’re we going?” I asked.
“Did you know you have a sister in New York?” I didn’t have any sister in New York. I mean, there are plenty of things I don’t remember but I’d remember if I had a sister. “I’ll take you to her-she’ll take better care of you than the VA would.” But that wasn’t enough of an answer, even if I believed it.
“I never heard of Mark Tauber,” I cried. “I don’t get the question but I’m answering it! And you’re pretending nothing’s wrong. What the fuck is going on?!” I was pitched forward in the seat, choking back tears, I’m not proud to say. It surely wasn’t the first time my mind had gone off on its own-but that was a kind of fear I’d thought I’d left behind a while ago.
He pulled over onto a knoll overlooking an inlet where seventeen cranes stood on one leg, waiting for a nice fish to come by. “Sorry,” he said, sounding for a change like he meant it. “Dave worked for the government before you knew him. The program was disbanded but Dave kept a list of the members. I thought it was in his office-so did the boys rifling the place. But apparently, he locked it in your head. And my guess is, he wants us to go run around the country warning the others.”
“How do you know?”
“Because of the way he did it. He planted the names in your head, and he planted a suggestion in mine so I would recognize your password when you said it: What’s mine is yours; what’s yours is mine.”
I don’t know why but, after everything else that had already happened, this really upset me. “I don’t want a password,” I whined.
“Well, you’ve got one and I’ll bet-” He stared right through me; the back of my skull went hot again. “ What’s mine is yours; what’s yours is mine. Give me a list of all the agents in the program.”
I stared back at him, blank as newsprint.
“You see? He rigged it so I can only get one name out of you at a time. I’ll bet, once we’ve found Tauber, you’ll give me the next name. Which means, until then, we’re Siamese twins.”
Two
Whick-whick went the trees along the highway, whick-whick like the frames of a movie flashing through the shutter. Whick-whick while the fields lazed in sunlight, the grass a little brown from too little rain and too much sun, water spurting from irrigation pipes wrapped in grape vines. Whick-whick, marking space, marking time. Marking time, which is all I’d done as long as I could remember, not that that was very long.
I used to be good with words, I remember that. Words and me got along. They tell me I was a writer for Stars amp; Stripes, till my brains got rattled one time too many. I still play with them but all I get are phrases, flickers-whick whick-and each new one just drives out the old. In the end, it’s just light through the trees-pretty and whispering all kinds of promises but nothing real and nothing that’s a part of anything bigger. And that’s not enough.
Mr. Dulles was driving. He was a lousy driver, real intense but never seeming to be where he was. It was like he was keeping real good track of traffic a hundred and forty miles ahead while just barely lurching through the close-up stuff.
“The government?” I asked. “Their program, right?” It didn’t hurt to talk anymore; it just felt weird. It was so peaceful ignoring everybody once they accepted they weren’t getting much out of you.
“They disowned it. Everybody was put out to pasture. Governments are not real interested in re-exploring their failures.”
“But if it’s a failure-”
“The guys who murdered Dave didn’t think it was,” Dulles said and it hurt to hear the word ‘murder’ out in the air. “The guys who hired them didn’t either.” He was glaring at the driver ahead of him. “Get moving, willya?” he snapped.
“Those guys-part of the program?”
He shook his head. “Too young. The programs ended years ago. But…they must have trained with people from the program. ”
“Why?”
“Just procedures they were using, defenses they tried against me.”
“Are they dead?” I asked, buying time to think as much as anything else.
“They’ll come around by morning,” he said. Seeing my reproach, he added, “They don’t matter anyway. If you want revenge, you want the guys who sent them.”
“Big guns,” I said, though I was pretty sure that wasn’t what he meant.
“Guns are just their first line of defense. With guys like that, guns always are. They had more dangerous weapons, if they’d been a little more imaginative.” He swerved around the car in front of us, cursing a blue streak. “Who teaches them to stack up like this?”
“Who?”
“Look!” he said, gesturing out the windshield. It looked like regular traffic to me. “Three slowpokes, clogging all the lanes. They stack up right next to each other so you can’t pass them.”
“The guys we’re warning-in the program-they dangerous too?” I asked.
“With any luck,” he laughed-a nasty, harsh laugh. “Hopefully, they’re dangerous too.”
I waited a long moment before the next question. “You?”
“Yeah,” he said, with a half-smile that actually seemed genuine. “Yeah. You saw. Me too.” He banged at the steering wheel. “Okay, that’s enough, dammit,” he grumbled at the traffic. “ Move!”
His face turned red and I wouldn’t have wanted him looking at me like that. And as soon as he spoke, the car in front of us suddenly swerved out of the way, weaving and pulling to the right. We sped through the empty space and, for the next few miles, anytime anyone was ahead of us, they moved over as soon as we approached.
