Firestarter

explosion simply by the force of her will?”

“That’s the most insane thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Is it? Then let me progress from insanity to utter lunacy, Captain Hollister. Suppose there is a little girl out there someplace this morning who has within her, lying dormant only for the time being, the power to someday crack the very planet in two like a china plate in a shooting gallery?”

They looked at each other in silence. And suddenly the intercom buzzed.

After a moment, Cap leaned over and thumbed it. “Yes, Rachel?” Goddamned if the old man hadn’t had him there, for just a moment. He was like some awful gore- crow, and that was another reason Cap didn’t like him. He was a go-getter himself, and if there was one thing he couldn’t stand, it was a pessimist.

“You have a call on the scrambler,” Rachel said. “From the service area.”

“All right, dear. Thanks. Hold it for a couple of minutes, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

He sat back in his chair. “I have to terminate this interview, Dr. Wanless. You may be sure that I’ll consider everything you’ve said very carefully.”

“Will you?” Wanless asked. The frozen side of his mouth seemed to sneer cynically.

“Yes.”

Wanless said: “The girl… McGee… and this fellow Richardson… they are the last three marks of a dead equation, Captain Hollister. Erase them. Start over. The girl is very dangerous.”

“I’ll consider everything you’ve said,” Cap repeated.

“Do so.” And Wanless finally began to struggle to his feet, propping himself on his cane. It took him a long time. At last he was up. “Winter is coming,” he said to Cap. “These old bones dread it.” “Are you staying in Longmont tonight?” “No, Washington.”

Cap hesitated and then said, “Stay at the Mayflower. I may want to get in touch with you.”

Something in the old man’s eyes-gratitude? Yes, almost certainly that. “Very good, Captain Hollister,” he said, and worked his way back to the door on his cane-an old man who had once opened Pandora’s box and now wanted to shoot all of the things that had flown out instead of putting them to work.

When the door had snicked closed behind him, Cap breathed a sigh of relief and picked up the scrambler phone.

7

“Who am I talking to?” “Orv Jamieson, sir.” “Have you got them, Jamieson?” “Not yet, sir, but we found something interesting at the airport.” “What’s that?”

“All the pay phones are empty. We found a few quarters and dimes on the floors of some of them.” “Jimmied?” “No, sir. That’s why I called you. They haven’t been jimmied, they’re just empty. Phone company’s going crazy.” “All right, Jamieson.” “It speeds things up. We’ve been figuring that maybe the guy hid the girl outside and only checked himself in. But either way, we figure now that we’re looking for a guy who paid with a lot of change.” “If they are at a motel and not shacked up at a summer camp somewhere.” “Yes, sir.” “Carry on, OJ.” “Yes, sir. Thank you.” He sounded absurdly pleased that his nickname had been remembered.

Cap hung up. He sat with his eyes half closed for five minutes, thinking. The mellow autumn light fell through the bay window and lit the office, warmed it. Then he leaned forward and got Rachel again.

“Is John Rainbird there?” “Yes he is, Cap.” “Give me another five minutes and then send him in. I want to talk to Norville Bates out in the service area. He’s the head honcho until A1 gets there.” “Yes, sir,” Rachel said, a little doubtfully. “It will have to be an open line. Walkie-talkie link-up. Not very-““Yes, that’s fine,” he said impatiently.

It took two minutes. Bates’s voice was thin and crackling. He was a good man-not very imaginative, but a plugger. The kind of man Cap wanted to have holding the fort until Albert Steinowitz could get there. At last Norville came on the line and told Cap they were beginning to spread out into the surrounding towns-Oakville, Tremont, Messalonsett, Hastings Glen, Looton.

“All right, Norville, that’s good,” Cap said. He thought of Wanless saying You are forcing him to reeducate the little girl. He thought of Jamieson telling him all the phones were empty. McGee hadn’t done that. The girl had done it. And then, because she was still up, she had burned that soldier’s shoes off, probably by accident. Wanless would be pleased to know that Cap was going to take fifty percent of his advice after all-the old turd had been amazingly eloquent this morning.

“Things have changed,” Cap said. “We’ve got to have the big boy sanctioned. Extreme sanction. You follow?”

“Extreme sanction,” Norville said flatly. “Yes, sir.”

“Very good, Norville,” Cap said softly. He put the phone down and waited for John Rainbird to come in.

The door opened a moment later and there he stood, as big as life and twice as ugly. He was so naturally quiet, this half Cherokee, that if you had been looking down at your desk, reading or answering correspondence, you wouldn’t have been aware that anyone was in the room with you at all. Cap knew how rare that was. Most people could sense another person in the room: Wanless had once called that ability not a sixth sense but a bottom-of-the-barrel sense, a knowledge born of infinitesimal input from the five normal senses. But with Rainbird, you didn’t know. Not one of the whisker thin sensory tripwires so much as vibrated. Al Steinowitz had said a strange thing about Rainbird once over glasses of port in Cap’s living room: “He’s the one human being I ever met who doesn’t push air in front of him when he walks.” And Cap was glad Rainbird was on their side, because he was the only human he had ever met who completely terrified him.

“Rainbird was a troll, an orc, a balrog of a man. He stood two inches shy of seven feet tall, and he wore his glossy black hair drawn back and tied in a curt ponytail. Ten years before, a Claymore had blown up in his face during his second tour of Vietnam, and now his countenance was a horror show of scar tissue and runneled flesh. His left eye was gone. There was nothing where it had been but a ravine. He would not have plastic surgery or an artificial eye because, he said, when he got to the happy hunting ground beyond, he would be asked to show his battlescars. When he said such things, you did not know whether to believe him or not; you did not know if he was serious or leading you on for reasons of his own.

Over the years, Rainbird had been a surprisingly good agent-partially because the last thing on earth he looked like was an agent, mostly because there was an apt, ferociously bright mind behind that mask of flesh. He spoke four languages fluently and had an understanding of three others. He was taking a sleep course in Russian. When he spoke, his voice was low, musical, and civilized.

“Good afternoon, Cap.”

“Is it afternoon?” Cap asked, surprised.

Rainbird smiled, showing a big set of perfectly white teeth-shark’s teeth, Cap thought. “By fourteen minutes,” he said. “I picked up a Seiko digital watch on the black market in Venice. It is fascinating. Little black numbers that change constantly. A feat of technology. I often think, Cap, that we fought the war in Vietnam not to win but to perform feats of technology. We fought it in order to create the cheap digital-wristwatch, the home Ping-Pong game that hooks up to one’s TV, the pocket calculator. I look at my new wristwatch in the dark of night. It tells me I am closer to my death, second by second. That is good news.”

“Sit down, old friend,” Cap said. As always when he talked to Rainbird, his mouth was dry and he had to restrain his hands, which wanted to twine and knot together on the polished surface of his desk. All of that, and he believed that Rainbird liked him-if Rainbird could be said to like anyone.

Rainbird sat down. He was wearing old bluejeans and a faded chambray shirt.

“How was Venice?” Cap asked.

“Sinking,” Rainbird said.

“I have a job for you, if you want it. It is a small one, but it may lead to an assignment you’ll find considerably more interesting.”

“Tell me.”

“Strictly volunteer,” Cap persisted. “You’re still on R and R.”

“Tell me,” Rainbird repeated gently, and Cap told him. He was with Rainbird for only fifteen minutes, but it seemed an hour. When the big Indian left, Cap breathed a long sigh. Both Wanless and Rainbird in one morning-that would take the snap out of anyone’s day. But the morning was over now, a lot had been accomplished, and who knew what might lie ahead this afternoon? He buzzed Rachel.

“Yes, Cap?”

“I’ll be eating in, darling. Would you get me something from the cafeteria? It doesn’t matter what. Anything. Thank you, Rachel.”

Alone at last. The scrambler phone lay silent on its thick base, filled with microcircuits and memory chips and God alone knew what else. When it buzzed again, it would probably be Albert or Norville to tell him that it was over in New York-the girl taken, her father dead. That would be good news.

Cap closed his eyes again. Thoughts and phrases floated through his mind like large, lazy kites. Mental domination. Their think-tank boys said the possibilities were enormous. Imagine someone like McGee close to Castro, or the Ayatollah Khomeini. Imagine him getting close enough to that pinko Ted Kennedy to suggest in a low voice of utter conviction that suicide was the best answer. Imagine a man like that sicced on the leaders of the various communist guerrilla groups. It was a shame they had to lose him. But… what could be made to happen once could be made to happen again.

The little girl. Wanless saying The power to someday crack the very planet in two like a china plate in a shooting gallery… ridiculous, of course. Wanless had gone as crazy as the little boy in the D. H. Lawrence story, the one who could pick the winners at the racetrack. Lot Six had turned into battery acid for Wanless; it had eaten a number of large, gaping holes in the man’s good sense. She was a little girl, not a doomsday weapon. And they had to hang onto her at least long enough to document what she was and to chart what she could be. That alone would be enough to reactivate the Lot Six testing program. If she could be persuaded to use her powers for the good of the country, so much the better. So much the better, Cap thought. The scrambler phone suddenly uttered its long, hoarse cry. His pulse suddenly leaping, Cap grabbed it.

THE INCIDENT AT THE MANDERS FARM

1

While Cap discussed her future with Al Steinowitz in Longmont, Charlie McGee was sitting on the edge of the motel bed in Unit Sixteen of the Slumberland, yawning