Blasphemy (26 page)

“I . . . was sent here to investigate the Isabella project.”

“In other words, you’re a spy.”

He took a deep breath. “Yes.”

“Does Hazelius know?”

“Nobody knows.”

“I see . . . And you
befriended
me because I was a quick route to the information you needed.”

“Kate—”

“No, wait—it’s worse: they
hired
you knowing of our past relationship, in the hopes that you could blow on those old coals and coax the information out of me.”

As usual, Kate had figured it all out even before he could finish.

“Kate, when I agreed to this assignment, I didn’t realize . . .”

“Didn’t realize what? That I’d be such a sucker?”

“I didn’t realize . . . that there’d be a complication.”

She tugged her horse to a halt and stared at him. “Complication? What do you mean?”

Ford’s face burned. Why was life suddenly so incomprehensible? How could he answer her?

She tossed her hair and brushed her cheek roughly with a gloved hand. “You’re
still
in the CIA, aren’t you?”

“No. I quit three years ago when my wife . . . My wife . . .” He couldn’t say it.

“Yeah,
sure
you quit. So—did you tell them our secret?”

“No.”

“Bullshit. Of course you told them. I trusted you, opened up to you—and now we’re all screwed.”

“I didn’t tell them.”

“I wish I could believe you.” She gave her horse a jab and trotted away.

“Kate, please listen—” Ballew broke into a trot, too. Ford bounced up and down, one hand gripping the saddlehorn.

Kate gave her horse another nudge and it began to canter. “Get away from me.”

Ballew broke into a canter, unasked. Ford clutched the saddlehorn, his body joggling around like a rag doll’s. “Kate,
please
—slow down, we need to talk—”

She kicked her horse into a gallop, and again Ballew thundered after her. The two horses whipped along the mesa top, hooves pounding the ground. Ford held on for dear life, terrified.

“Kate!” he shouted. A rein slipped from his hand. He lunged forward to snag it, but Ballew stepped on the dragging rein and jerked up short. Ford cartwheeled off the back of the horse and landed on a carpet of snakeweed.

When he came to, he was staring at the sky, wondering where the hell he was.

Kate’s face loomed into his field of view. Her hat was gone and her hair was wild, her face in an agony of concern.

“Wyman? My God, are you all right?”

He gasped and coughed as air returned to his lungs. He tried to sit up.

“No, no. Lie down.” When he sank back, he felt his head settling into her hat and realized she must have folded it up for a pillow. He waited for the stars to clear from his eyes and memory to return.

“Oh my God, Wyman, for a moment there I thought you were dead.”

He couldn’t gather his thoughts. He breathed in, out, in again, sucking in air.

She had taken off her glove, and her cool hand patted his face. “Did you break anything? Do you hurt? Oh, you’re bleeding!” She slipped off her bandanna and dabbed at his forehead.

His head began to clear. “Let me sit up.”

“No, no. Stay still.” She pressed the bandanna firmly against his skin. “You hit your head. You might have a concussion.”

“I don’t think so.” He groaned. “What an idiot I must seem. Falling off a horse like a sack of potatoes.”

“You don’t know how to ride, that’s all. It was my fault. I never should have run off like that. You just make me so
mad
sometimes.”

The throbbing in his head began to subside. “I didn’t betray your secret. And I’m not going to.”

She looked at him. “Why? Isn’t that what you were hired to do?”

“Screw what I was hired to do.”

She dabbed at his cut. “You need to rest a little more.”

He lay still. “Aren’t I supposed to get back on the horse?”

“Ballew took off for the barn. Don’t be embarrassed—everyone falls off eventually.”

Her hand rested on his cheek. He lay still for a moment longer, and then slowly sat up. “I’m sorry.”

After a moment, she said, “You mentioned something about a wife. I . . . didn’t know you were married.”

“Not anymore.”

“Must be hard to be married to the CIA.”

He said quickly, “It wasn’t that. She died.”

Kate covered her mouth. “Oh—I’m
sorry
. What a stupid thing for me to say.”

“It’s all right. We were partners in the CIA. She got killed in Cambodia. Car bomb.”

“Oh my God, Wyman. I’m
so
sorry.”

He hadn’t thought he’d be able to tell her. But it came out so easily. “So I left the CIA and went into a monastery. I was looking for something; I thought it was God. But I didn’t find Him. I wasn’t cut out to be a monk. I left and had to earn a living, so I hung out my shingle as a PI, got hired for this job. Which I never should have taken. End of story.”

“Who are you working for? Lockwood?”

He nodded. “He knows you’re hiding something and he wanted me to find out what it is. He says he’s going to pull the plug on Isabella in two days.”

“Jesus.” She laid that cool hand again on his face.

“I’m sorry I lied to you. If I’d known what I was getting into, I never would have taken this assignment. I didn’t count on . . .” His voice trailed off.

“What?”

He didn’t answer.

“You didn’t count on what?” She leaned over him, her shadow crossing his face, her faint scent drifting in.

Ford said, “On falling in love with you again.”

In the distance, an owl hooted in the dimming light.

“You’re serious?” she said finally.

Ford nodded.

Slowly, Kate brought her face closer to his. She didn’t kiss him—she just looked. Astonished. “You never said that to me when we were going out.”

“I didn’t?”

She shook her head. “The word ‘love’ wasn’t in your vocabulary. Why do you think we broke up?”

He blinked.
That
was the reason? “What about me going into the CIA?”

“I could’ve lived with that.”

“You want . . . to try again?” Ford asked.

She looked at him, the golden light all around her. She had never looked so beautiful. “Yes.”

Then she kissed him, slowly, lightly, deliciously. He leaned forward to kiss her but she stopped him with a gentle hand on his chest. “It’s almost dark. We’ve got a ways to walk. And . . .”

“And what?”

She continued looking down at him, smiling. “Never mind,” she said, leaning down to kiss him again, and then again, her soft breasts settling against him. Her hand strayed to his shirt, and she began unbuttoning it, one button at a time. She slid the shirt open and began unbuckling his belt, her kisses becoming deeper and softer, as if her mouth was melting into his, while the shadows of evening grew ever longer on the desert floor.

PASTOR RUSS EDDY COAXED HIS TRUCK off the mesa road and drove toward a fin of sandstone, behind which he could hide the vehicle. It was a clear night, with a gibbous moon and a scattering of stars speckling the night sky. The truck lurched and rattled across the barren rock, a loose fender banging with each heave. If he didn’t borrow the arc welder at the service station in Blue Gap one of these days, the fender would fall off, but it made him feel so ashamed, always borrowing the Navajos’ tools and wheedling gas out of them. He kept having to remind himself that he was bringing these people the greatest gift of all, salvation—if only they would accept it.

All day he’d been thinking about Hazelius. The more he listened to the man’s words playing over and over in his head, the more verses from the First Epistle of John seemed to apply: “
Ye have heard that antichrist shall come . . . . He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son . . . . This is that spirit of antichrist . . .
.”

The memory of Lorenzo, sprawled on the ground, flashed into his head, the clots of living blood that wouldn’t sink into the sand . . . He winced—why did that hideous image keep popping up? He forced it out with an audible groan.

He eased the truck behind the fin of sandstone until it was well hidden from the road. The engine died with a cough. He yanked on the emergency brake and blocked the wheels with loose rocks. Then he pocketed the keys, took a deep breath, and set off walking down the road. The moon was bright enough that he could see where he was going without the flashlight.

He felt a stronger sense of purpose than ever before. God had called him and he had said
yes
. Everything until now, all the troubles in his life, had been mere prelude. God had been testing him and he had passed. The final test had been Lorenzo. It had been God’s sign to him that he was readying him for something big. Very big.

The Lord had guided him in Piñon that afternoon. First a full tank of gas—free. Next, a turned-around tourist trying to find Flagstaff thanked him with a ten-dollar bill. Then he learned from the gas station clerk that Bia was investigating the death at the Isabella project as a murder—not a suicide. Murder!

A coyote howled in the distance, answered by another even farther away. They sounded like the lonely, lost cries of the damned. Eddy reached the edge of the bluffs and scrambled down the trail into Nakai Valley. The dark hump of Nakai Rock rose on his right like a hunchbacked demon. Below, a scattering of lights marked the village; the windows of the old trading post cast boxes of light into the darkness.

Keeping close to the rocks and junipers, he moved toward the trading post. He did not know what he was looking for, or how he would find it. His only plan was to wait for a sign from God. God would show him the way.

The faint sound of piano music drifted through the desert night. He reached the valley floor, easing through the shadows of the cottonwoods, and sprinted across the grass to the back wall of the trading post. Through the old logs, chinked with plaster, he could hear muffled conversation. With infinite care he approached a window and peeked inside. Some scientists sat around a coffee table, talking intensely, as if arguing. Hazelius sat playing the piano.

At the sight of the man who might be the Antichrist, Russ felt a rush of fear and rage. He hunkered beneath the window and tried to hear what people were saying, but the man was playing so loudly, Eddy could hear almost nothing. Then, over the piano notes, through the double-paned window, down through the chilly autumn air to where Russ huddled on the grass, burst a single word, in the voice of one of the scientists:
God
.

Again, in a different voice:
God
.

The screen door banged, and two voices drifted around the corner and into his ears: one high and tense, the other slow, careful.

His heart pounding, Eddy crawled forward in the dark until he was just around the corner from the front door. He listened, hardly breathing.

“. . . one thing, Tony, I wanted to ask you—sort of confidentially . . .” The man lowered his voice. Eddy didn’t catch the rest, but he could not risk moving closer.

“. . . we’re the only two nonscientists here . . .”

They walked out into the darkness. Eddy shrank back, and the voices dissolved into indistinctness. He could see the two dark shapes, strolling down the road. He waited, and then darted across the road and into the trees, where he pressed himself against the gnarly trunk of a cottonwood.

Air brushed past his face. It could have been the Holy Ghost, changing itself into a breeze in order to carry the voices of the shadow figures toward him.

“. . . about these criminal charges, but I don’t have anything to do with the operation of Isabella.”

The deeper voice answered, “Don’t kid yourself. Like I said before, you’ll take the fall with the rest of us.”

“But I’m just the psychologist.”

“You’re still part of the deception . . .”

Deception
? Eddy moved through the darkness to another position.

“. . . how in hell did we get into this mess?” said the high voice.

The answer was too low for Eddy to hear.

“I can’t believe the damn computer is claiming to be God . . . . It’s like something out of a science-fiction novel . . . .”

Another low reply. Eddy was trying so hard to listen and understand that he held his breath.

The men walked into the scattering of lights that marked the living quarters. Eddy scuttled forward like a spider as their phrases rose and fell with the breeze.

“. . . God in the machine . . . driving Volkonsky over the edge . . .” The high voice again.

“. . . waste of time speculating . . .,” came the gruff answer.

The conversation continued more softly. Eddy thought he would go crazy not being able to hear. He took a risk and scurried closer. The two men had halted at the end of a driveway. In the soft yellow light the bigger one looked impatient, as if trying to get away from the nervous one. The voices were clearer now.

“. . . saying things like no God I ever heard of. It’s a lot of New Age bullshit. ‘Existence is me thinking’—give me a break. And Edelstein buying it. Well, he’s a mathematician—he’s by definition a weirdo. I mean, the fellow keeps rattlesnakes as pets . . . .” The high-pitched voice rose, as if by talking more loudly, he could keep the big guy from moving on.

The big guy shifted, so that Eddy could see his face. It was the security man.

The man’s low voice said something that sounded like “check around before hitting the sack.” A handshake, and the little guy walked down the driveway toward his house, while the security guy stared down the road one way, then the other, then toward the cottonwoods, as if scouting the scene, deciding which way to begin his patrol.

Please, Lord, please
. Eddy’s heart was beating so strongly, he could hear the pulse of his own blood whooshing in his ears. Finally the man walked down the road in the other direction. Moving with exquisite caution to keep from crunching fallen twigs, Eddy passed slowly through the cottonwoods and felt his way up the dark trail and out of the valley.

Only when he was driving back down the Dugway did he permit himself to whoop out loud with giddiness. He had exactly what Reverend Spates needed. It would be the middle of the night in Virginia, but surely the reverend wouldn’t mind being woken up for this. Surely not.