“I’m glad. Once you’re here I’m sure you’ll appreciate what I’m trying to accomplish.”
I didn’t think so. I was planning on going in, getting the girl, and leaving. “What might that be?”
“Something historic. But I can’t go into details now. You understand. Now, let me give you the coordinates.”
He dictated a series of numbers to me, which I dutifully wrote down despite not having a clear idea what they meant. He assured me anyone with a basic understanding of navigation could figure them out. He was kind enough to give me a hint. It was somewhere in Arizona. Guess he’d left Seattle.
“Don’t be late,” he recommended before hanging up. “I don’t want to hurt her, but… you understand my position.”
I hung up by pressing the button a second time. As soon as the call was disconnected the digital display blinked out. The phone was a one-use-only device, as I’d thought. Which was okay, because I really didn’t relish another conversation with Mr. Grindel. But I had two days to worry about that.
Tossing the device back into my bag, I retrieved the cell phone I’d taken from John in the minivan. I checked my watch. It was six in the evening in Zurich. They’d take my call anyway. Money buys lots of things.
Chapter 23
The first thing Patti did, when I handed her the coordinates Grindel had given me, was check her map and confirm. “There’s no airfield at that location.”
“It’s in Arizona somewhere,” I offered helpfully.
“I know it’s in Arizona. It’s probably a dried lake bed or something. Not my point.”
She sat down and made a few calculations and then a few phone calls, and in another twenty minutes, she had the entire itinerary planned out. Patti seemed very competent, which was good. I always look for competence in someone who’s going to be flying me somewhere. I’m still pretty sure man was not meant to fly, so the confidence that the person doing that flying is not also a raving nut job helps me cope. I knew more than a couple of self-professed geniuses in my day who managed to turn glue and some bird feathers into inadvertent suicide.
The problem with the lack of an airport, as Patti explained to me shortly after takeoff, was refueling. If she wasn’t landing on an airstrip she needed to get to the coordinates with enough fuel to cover a trip to the nearest one. “It changes the dynamics of the flight plan a bit.”
It turns out it doesn’t take all that long to make it across the United States. This is one of those things I still can’t quite get used to. For most of my life, distances were calculated by how long it would take to walk from one place to the next. Then it was how long a good horse could take you in a day. Now it’s motorized vehicles and planes, and I’ve only had a century to adjust. Flying in general doesn’t bother me so much—as long as I don’t think about it all too long—because it’s conceptually so far removed from any other experience that I have nothing to compare it to. It’s the efficiency that messes me up.
As Patti pointed out when handing me the itinerary, she could have drawn up a plan to get me there in under a day if I wanted. I didn’t, mainly because as expected, the cell phone I was using couldn’t pick up a signal at thirty-thousand feet. And I had a follow-up phone call or two to place.
We made small talk for most of the flight. Patti was decidedly professional about the whole thing, not once bringing up the gun in my bag or her suspicion that whatever I was involved in, it was in all likelihood illegal.
Instead, we talked about Patti and her sordid love life. The bulk of her tale lasted about three hours and took us through two states. Which was plenty of time to learn more than anybody who isn’t a priest or a lover should have any right to know about another person. The good news was I hardly had to talk at all. Sure, I could have volunteered something to the conversation—I have learned enough to know that when a woman talks, one should at least nod and grunt appreciatively from time to time—but once she got into a rhythm there was no stopping her.
“Oh, listen to me!” she said finally, shortly after the amusing tale of Dan, the garbage man who liked to dress in a tutu at night. “I’ve been doing all the talking. Sorry, it’s a nervous thing. I talk a lot when I’m nervous.”
“I make you nervous?”
“Not you exactly, no,” she said, without elaboration. She meant the gun. “So what’s your story?”
“You don’t really want to know, do you?”
She glanced over at me. “Kinda,” she said. “You just don’t seem the type.”
“The type for what?”
“To be involved in… whatever. Crime, I guess. There’s a big black cloud of trouble around your head.”
“You reading my aura now?”
She smiled. “Pilots know clouds.”
I laughed. “So how does a person who is, as you say, involved in crime, act ordinarily?”
“There’s two types—nervous or way too calm. The nervous ones spend the whole time bouncing up and down and staring at shit on the dashboard and asking stupid questions. I hate that. But the calm ones are worse. They just sit there and don’t move, or talk, or anything. The whole flight is one uncomfortable pause. I hate that.”
“Okay. Which category do I fit in?”
She stared at me for a five count, the way someone might if they were attempting to count your eyelashes. “Maybe neither. Except for the cloud, I’d put you somewhere between tourist and businessman,” she concluded.
“Maybe that’s all I am,” I offered. “A businessman on vacation.”
“Right,” she said sarcastically.
She quieted down for a while, checking random dials or whatever one is supposed to check when one flies an airplane. She hadn’t touched the stick in over an hour, which made me wonder how much pilots actually have to do to fly planes. Not like she had to swerve to avoid things. Seemed pretty easy to me.
“How old are you?” Patti asked, finally.
“Isn’t that an impolite question?”
“There are no impolite questions at this altitude.”
“Okay. How old do I look?”
She frowned. “You have a habit of answering questions with questions, you know that? Maybe thirty- five.”
“Okay. Thirty-five, then.”
“Except you don’t act thirty-five, so that can’t be right.”
“How should I act?” I was trying not to be too forthcoming, because I’d only recently learned exactly how much trouble it caused when I was. It helped that I was currently sober, and thus less likely to run off at the mouth. Plus, this was sort of interesting.
“Oh, I know what it is!” she exclaimed. “You’re a vet.”
“A pet doctor?”
“Don’t play dumb. What was it? Iraq?”
That was a tricky one to answer. If I said yes, we might have gotten bogged down in questions about divisions and units, and I didn’t know enough about regular army to lie convincingly. And once you start talking about this stuff, you quickly find the person you’re speaking to knows someone who knows someone you might have served with. But I couldn’t very well tell her that the last time I fought in something that was big enough to come with a name was during the Peloponnesian War.
“What about me cries out veteran, exactly?”
“Dunno. But I know a few. There was this World War vet I used to know. He didn’t give a damn about much
