On Borrowed Time (28 page)

I didn’t waste time telling Luther how I knew Garber was behind this.

It didn’t matter; I was either going to be shown to be right or I was going to be shown to be wrong. He needed to spend the precious time planning what was going to be done, not worrying about whether he should be doing it.

I took note of the fact that Luther also didn’t ask me what it was that Garber was behind. The feds had had their eye on this operation all along, but they didn’t have the pieces. My guess was they knew basically what the research consisted of, and maybe even that I was the guinea pig. But they didn’t know who was in charge, and they needed that before they could successfully move in.

The truth was it was easy for me to focus in on Garber, at least once I knew that Lassiter was in the clear. Garber told me I had come to see him three times, during which I’d mentioned I was working on a story about Lassiter. That was clearly not true; it was his way of setting Lassiter up as my fall guy.

Also, and even more significantly, he told me that in those sessions before Jen’s “disappearance,” I had been worried that Jen was a fantasy and was questioning whether I was losing my mind. That was patently false; the truth was that Jen was not in my mind before the implant, and was indelibly there afterward.

So Garber had to be lying about our sessions. I hadn’t remembered them, because they hadn’t taken place. His number was on my cell phone bill because I’d called him in the process of chasing down the story I was really on, the story about scientists creating memories. I must have been getting too close, so he made me the story.

I told Luther that I thought Garber would be at a place listed in the phone book as Jefferson Auto Parts, near Damariscotta. It had been listed twice on the phone bill I’d found after Jen disappeared, but it hadn’t made any sense.

Garber’s plane went down off the coast of Maine, near Damariscotta. I believe he must have sent the plane down purposely, while bailing out before it did. The location would make it easy to subsequently leave the country, and his apparent death would ensure that no one would ever suspect or look for him.

Luther made some calls to get the lay of the land, and I think he spoke to someone in Washington about the strategy they would employ once we got to Maine.

Luther was receiving updates on the explosion at the hospital, and he was good enough to fill me in. There had been nine confirmed deaths, though more were possible. As terrible as that was, it was a relief. I knew how bad it could have been.

I told Luther about the events in the twenty minutes leading up to the bombing, as well as my adventure at Lassiter’s house.

“You might be tougher than you look,” he said.

“I don’t think so.”

I asked if he could find out whether Marie Galasso had gotten out, and he asked the question of someone on the phone, then laughed at what he heard and turned to me. “She’s okay. She set fire to the place to get everybody to leave. She might be tougher than you look also.”

I sat back and reflected for a few minutes on where we were going, and who we were going after. The man who had put me through all of this was there, and if we could get there in time and all went right, he would get nothing out of it.

But my greatest hope, and a hope was all it was, was that Jen was there and okay, and that we would get her out of there.

And then it hit me that I was thinking of Allie as Jen, and of Jen as real, instead of as a metal chip in my brain. And I worried that when all this was over, maybe all the people who thought of me as crazy would turn out to be right.

It was the longest flight of my life.

Philip Garber was a realist, and what CNN was saying was very real. All those people had escaped the building, which was bad enough, and indicated something unexpected had happened. But the worst part was that one of those people was Gates, and Gates had been arrested.

Gates would talk; there was no question about that. He had to realize that he was to be killed in the blast, and he would get his revenge. He would reveal Garber’s involvement, his leadership, in the entire operation, and he would tell them that Garber’s death was faked.

All of that was certain.

The saving grace, of course, was that Gates had no idea where Garber was. He had been smart enough never to share that with Gates, so Gates could not put the authorities on his trail. At least not until long after Garber had left the country.

Langel was the only person who knew where he was, and there was no reason to think anything had gone wrong at Lassiter’s house. He assumed that Langel was on the way, as planned, to get his share of the money and kill the woman.

However, this changed the timing. He would close the deal now and leave, before anyone could figure out where he was. Langel would be out his money, but that was not Garber’s concern.

Of course, it would mean killing the woman himself, a prospect Garber did not relish. Ordering a killing was one thing; doing it himself was quite another. He reflected on the irony for a moment; he was that rare combination, a squeamish mass murderer.

Garber called the purchaser, explained what had happened, and why the deal needed to be consummated immediately. The man was upset, concerned about what his superiors, his government, might say.

Garber gave him ten minutes to report to them, but he knew what the answer would be. They would go along with the arrangement. They had to, this was too important to them to lose out on. The ability to control memory gave them that which was most important to people in power: permanence.

Garber took the time to gather everything together. It was remarkable that all the work by all those people could fit into one duffel bag, but it did, with room to spare. When he turned it over, it was not an exaggeration to say that the world would change.

It only took eight of the ten minutes for the call to come in. The money was being wired; Garber could get confirmation of that within ten minutes. Then they would go to the airfield, the handover would be made, and the woman would soon be fish food.

Soon Garber would be wealthy beyond his wildest dreams, beyond the wildest dreams of all but a select few. All he had to do was wait for the money, and then it would be time to move.

Time to get this over with.

The money was in the account. Garber had never seen that many consecutive zeroes before, at least not on any financial transaction he had ever been involved in. It was intoxicating to look at, and he could have happily done so all day.

But there was no time for that. The best thing to assume was that they were on to him, even though they likely weren’t aware of his location. His customer was just as anxious to get out; he did not have diplomatic immunity, and together they were involved in a most serious crime against the United States of America.

In the moment, Garber had to decide whether or not to change the plan and kill Allie right then. He came to the conclusion that there was no immediate upside to it; there was always the possibility that something could go wrong, so why voluntarily give up a bargaining chip?

They would go to the airfield together, Garber, Allie and the buyer. Then the final piece of the puzzle would snap into place.

Tied up in the basement, Allie knew there was no chance Garber would let her live. He had talked some about what he had done, and his openness and lack of concern that she knew his identity made it clear she would never be allowed to tell the world the truth.

All she could do was wait and hope there would be a chance to save herself. She had never felt fear like that before, but she had to make a conscious effort not to let it overwhelm her.

She needed to be alert to any opportunity, and to act decisively if and when one presented itself.

Garber came downstairs and it was obvious from his attitude that something was up. He had a gun, and he held it on her. “Let’s go,” he said. “Upstairs.”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“First we’re going upstairs,” he said. “Unless you want a bullet in your head right here, but dying in the basement seems to lack some dignity, don’t you think?”

She did as she was told, and the next step was to get into the car with Garber and a tall man she had never seen before. Garber drove, with the other man in the passenger seat. Because her hands were tied, she was put into the backseat and not viewed as a threat.

Neither man spoke to her, and when she asked questions, Garber angrily told her to shut up. He had still given her no opportunity to escape; it was nearing the time when she would have to make her own.

Damariscotta’s airfield made Teterboro look like JFK.

Cars were there waiting for us right at the plane as we taxied to a stop, and within ten minutes we were at the target building. Less than three minutes later, the FBI had it surrounded.

True to his word, Luther was allowing me to remain on scene, albeit it near the rear and therefore out of danger. Not surprisingly, he did not seem interested in consulting me on tactics.

The lack of signs of life from the building were worrying Luther, but not nearly as much as they were worrying me. I was realizing just how little beyond a few hints and a lot of instinct I had relied on to bring us here.

Luther wasn’t wasting any time; if Garber was not there, he needed to know it immediately. He had his agents move to the building in a pincer movement, though from my vantage point it was hard to know exactly what was happening.

I heard him give the order to move in, and braced myself for the possibility of gunshots. But there were none; all I could hear were shouts.

Luther went in himself, telling me to wait behind. He came out less than a minute later. “They’re gone,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Back to the airfield; we found a copy of a flight plan.”

We all piled back into the cars, but I was crushed by the events. “There’s no way we’ll catch them,” I said. “They could have left hours ago.”

Luther turned to me. “A phone call was made from the house fourteen minutes ago. We must have just missed them.”

Left unsaid was the obvious truth: Garber was playing us for fools.

Garber saw it as soon as they drove out onto the tarmac.

There were two planes there. One was the plane they were to leave on; but it was the other he was looking at. On the side of the plane was an insignia with the words,
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
.

Federal agents had found him; they were in Damariscotta.

Garber’s contact didn’t see it, and may not have gauged its import even if he had. But Garber had anticipated the possibility, and he had a backup plan ready to go. He always had a backup plan.

Garber looked in the window and saw the airport employee who worked at the reception desk, the man who was basically in charge of this small airport. He slowed as he passed by and waved, allowing the man to get a look into the car.

Garber then drove the car out to the plane, parking on the far side of it so that the plane was between the car and the airport employee. There was no way he could see them, and no reason for him to be looking in that direction anyway.

They got out quickly, with the car motor still running. The pilot had the plane’s engine running; takeoff could be accomplished within seconds. The buyer, duffel bag clutched tightly in hand, quickly ran up the steps into the plane.

Garber held the gun up, pointing it at Allie. “Get on the plane,” he said.

“No.”

He pointed the gun in an even more threatening gesture, finger pressed on the trigger.

“Get on the plane or die now.”

Allie knew that he would be reluctant to shoot her out here; the noise could attract unwanted attention. And once she stepped on that plane she had absolutely no chance. It was time to take a stand.

“No.”

We raced back to the airfield at high speed.

I knew, and I was sure Luther knew, that if Garber was able to beat us back to the airfield, even by five minutes, he would be able to get the plane into the air. From the location where we were, he could be out of U.S. airspace in ten minutes.

At that point there would be only one solution, and it was something I didn’t even want to contemplate.

We were not the first car to get back there, and when we arrived we drove right onto the tarmac, where other agents were waiting, along with the man who served as the reception person behind the desk.

“He said there were three of them,” the agent said. “Two men and a woman. They took off five minutes ago.”

“What kind of aircraft?” Luther asked.

“Gulfstream IV,” the man said. “Heading east.”

Luther got on the phone and quickly explained the situation to someone I took to be his boss, or his boss’s boss. He concluded with, “There’s nothing we can do from here, sir.” Then, “I concur with that, sir.”

When he got off the phone, he turned to me. “Jets are going to be flushed to intercept them over international waters. They’ll try to force them back here, where we will be waiting.”

“You know they won’t turn back,” I said. “It would be throwing everything away, and over international waters they’ll think they’re safe. The jets will shoot them down.”

To Luther’s credit, he told me the truth straight out. “That would be my guess as well.”

“You promised her life would be the priority,” I said, though I knew I had no chance of changing the decision.

“It wasn’t my call,” he said. “But I agree with it. That material cannot be allowed out of the country.” Then, “I’m sorry, but when she got on that plane, there was no longer anything anyone could do.”

Then it hit me; she would not have gotten on that plane, not without a fight that would have attracted attention. It was like that day along the highway, when we were facing what seemed like imminent death, and she would have handled it the same way.

She would have drawn her line in the sand.

There was absolutely no guarantee or even evidence that I was right, but the truth was that in my mind I couldn’t believe that she had gotten on that plane, because I wouldn’t be able to stand it if she had.