Stone Junction (11 page)

‘Pour the champagne,’ Annalee said.

Annalee didn’t get home until noon the next day. She knew by the way Daniel looked at her that he knew something was up. She consulted each of her mixed emotions as she worked in the darkroom, debating whether she should tell him or not, and reached no decision. After dinner he said, without preamble, ‘You weren’t supposed to tell me about the plutonium theft to start with. Since you did, you might as well tell me the rest.’

So she did and was immediately sorry.

‘I want to go with you,’ he said. ‘I want to help.’

‘No. Absolutely, finally, unalterably
no
. No you can’t go, and no discussion. You’re not riding around with a bomb in a car.’

‘You are. And you told me Shamus said it’s safe.’

‘I’m not going to risk you. No. End of discussion.’

‘I won’t risk you, either. Suppose somebody happens along and sees you between the time you leave the car and go in the alley and come back? You need someone in the car, a lookout, to warn you if a cop or somebody shows up – that’s the point of greatest vulnerability. Besides, I’m great cover – if you get stopped, who’d suspect a bomb with a kid in the car?’

‘Exactly. Not a mother on this planet would be that stupid. Including me.’

‘Algerian mothers took their kids along when they planted bombs.’

‘Oh yeah, how do you know that?’

‘I read books.’

‘No.
No
. Forget it.’

‘I want to ask Shamus.’

‘Goddammit, Daniel, you
can’t
ask Shamus: You’re not supposed to
know
, remember?’

‘But I do.’

‘What does that mean?’ Annalee said, ice in her tone. ‘That you’d betray me out of childish spite?’

‘No. It means I’m implicated, but that I can’t share in the responsibility. That’s a betrayal, too. Mom, we share a lot between us – not everything, but a lot. I’m willing to share the risk of delivering the bomb because I share the risk of knowing about it. You have to quit feeling responsible for me. I’m almost fourteen. I need to be responsible for myself.’

‘I don’t like it,’ Annalee shook her head. ‘It doesn’t feel right.’

‘Besides, you need a lookout and moral support. And cover. And I need to do it. Let me go.’

Annalee put her head down on the table. When she lifted it, she said with weary resignation, ‘All right. You can go. Not because you’re my son – that defies my maternal instincts – but because you’re
you
.’

The next night with Shamus she told him that she was sure Daniel knew something was going on.

‘
Shit!
’ Shamus exploded, jumping from the bed and pacing the room naked.

Stung by his vehemence, Annalee said nothing.

‘Okay,’ Shamus said, more in control, ‘what does he know, or think he knows? And how?’

‘
How
? Jesus, Shamus, he’s a piece of my heart! He can feel it from me, that’s how. And that’s probably
what
he knows – nothing specific, just something in the air, a tension, an edge.’

‘Has he
said
anything specific?’

‘A couple of times he asked me if I was okay. Yesterday he asked me if there was anything going on that he should know about.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘I told him we were going through a tense time in our relationship.’

‘Do you think he’s talked to anyone else?’

‘Never happen.’

Shamus paced for a moment, then came over and sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘Daniel’s bright, he’s got heart, he’s loyal, but he’s a kid. I don’t know about kids. You do, and you know him in particular. Any suggestions how to handle this? Or is that why you brought it up?’

‘If you’re absolutely sure about the bomb being safe to transport, I think he should go with me.’

Shamus stared at her. ‘Annalee, if that bomb wasn’t safe,
you
wouldn’t be carrying it. Do you understand that?’

‘Yes. And I know I can trust Daniel as much as I trust you.’

‘Fine. You work it out with him. But absolutely don’t tell him
when
it’s going to happen or
where
until you’re on your way in the car. And don’t tell him what’s involved. Just that we’re going to need his help.’

‘Shamus, he’s been an outlaw his whole life. He forges papers every day. He understands how it is. When the theft hits the news, you think he won’t know who did it, what went down? And be hurt and pissed off he wasn’t trusted enough to be included – especially when he might have to suffer the consequences? You don’t think there’s going to be a shit-rain of heat?’

‘Obviously. But don’t forget, the plutonium is our umbrella. That’s why I
have
to pull it off. Because without the plutonium, there’s no leverage. They’re gutless, Annalee, not stupid. They won’t fire if they know we can fire back. And they’ll have the whole world watching, because I’m going to make sure it’s on every front page and television set in the world, and the first demand will be amnesty for everyone involved.’

‘And if they call the bluff? Won’t negotiate?’

‘I lose. I’ll surrender myself and the plutonium on the condition that everyone else involved, who I’d duped or forced into doing their tiny, innocent, unconnected parts, be granted amnesty. But even if it comes to that, it will be a success, because I’ll have held up a mirror to their madness, ripped off their masks.’

‘And they’ll lock you up forever as an example, maybe even execute you, and I’ll never see you again.’

‘Annalee,’ Shamus pleaded, ‘it’s beyond us. It cries to be done.’

‘I’ll cry, too,’ Annalee said.

Shamus took her in his arms and embraced her, rocking her as he said, ‘Do you think I won’t?’

When Annalee left for Shamus’s apartment the evening of the fourteenth, she hugged Daniel and said, ‘I’ll bring you a bomb for breakfast.’

‘Are you nervous?’ Daniel asked her.

‘About to fall to pieces. Are you?’

‘Yes. But excited, too.’

‘Right. Which is why you should go to bed early and get plenty of sleep so you’ll be rested and sharp, because tomorrow’s going to take the very best we’ve got. And remember to lock the doors.’

‘I will.’

He didn’t.

Daniel was undressed and in bed when he remembered the back door. He’d locked it earlier, but then, deciding to gather all the equipment together and have it ready for tomorrow, he’d gone out to the garage for the tent and couldn’t recall if he’d relocked it. He was reaching for his nightstand light when a woman’s voice said from the doorway, ‘I’ll look for you in the shadows.’

Carefully, Daniel reached for his pants beside the bed and took out his pocket knife, opened it, and slipped it under the covers. When he set his pants back down on the floor some change in the pockets jingled.

‘I seek you in the dark by the jingle of silver and the sound of your breath.’ He could hear her hand patting along the wall and then the overhead light switched on. The woman standing in the doorway was young, pretty, and, as Daniel quickly judged from her eyes, very stoned.

She peered at him intently. ‘Ha. I found you.’ She smiled at him. ‘But who have I found?’

‘My name’s Daniel,’ he said, too surprised not to answer.

She giggled, ‘Then this must be the lion’s den.’ She walked into the room.

‘Not really. It’s my bedroom. Who are you?’

But she was staring at the poster of the Horsehead Nebula on the wall over the bed. ‘What’s this?’

‘The Horsehead Nebula. It’s what’s called a dark nebula, because it doesn’t contain any bright stars. The dark nebulae block the light of the stars beyond them, so from here they look like dark patches in the sky. They’re like huge interstellar dust clouds. Some astronomers think they’ll eventually collapse into themselves and form new stars.’

She stared at it intently for half a minute. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, and began to cry.

‘I feel the same way sometimes,’ Daniel said.

Sniffling, she sat down on the edge of the bed and, head cocked quizzically, looked at him. Though it was a cold night, she wore only a thin blouse, blue jeans, and sandals. ‘Nebula, nebulae; nebula, nebulae,’ she intoned. ‘You’re too young to be a scientist, aren’t you?’

‘Are you too young to be a burglar?’

‘Hey,’ she said sharply. ‘I’m not a burglar.’

‘Then why are you here in our house, late at night, without knocking?’

‘I lost the party,’ she said. ‘When you lose the party, you have to find something else. You have to look for an open door.’

‘Did you take something at the party?’

She sniffled, shaking her head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Tonight it’s Brigit Bardo. Like that old French actress.’

‘Are you an actress?’

She peered at him closely. ‘I’m not anything.’

‘Do you need some help?’

‘No,’ she laughed suddenly, ‘it’s easy.’

Daniel started to say something but she reached out and put a finger to his lips. ‘No more questions for awhile.’ She pressed harder with her finger. ‘All right?’

Daniel barely nodded.

She trailed her finger over his chin and throat and down his chest to the edge of the blanket that covered him.

‘What are you doing,’ Daniel asked uneasily.

‘Something you’ll never forget.’ She pushed the blankets down slowly. When she saw the knife, she reached over and folded the blade closed. Leaning down, she bit him lightly just below the ribs, then lifted back the blankets. When she took his cock in her mouth, Daniel shuddered and shut his eyes.

Her mouth was unbearably warm, infinitely slow. As Daniel passed through the Horsehead Nebula he learned there are things beyond imagining that exist anyway.

She left an hour later, locking the door behind her.

When Annalee returned home in the late afternoon, Daniel was waiting to open the door. They looked at each other and asked, ‘Are you all right?’ and then laughed.

‘You look like you didn’t get much sleep,’ Annalee told him.

‘And you look jumpy and exhausted,’ Daniel said.

‘You’d be jumpy, too, driving around with a bomb.’ Noticing the camping equipment piled on the living room floor, she pointed. ‘What’s this? We taking to the hills?’

‘That’s our cover. We’re going camping in Yosemite.’

‘There’s a small flaw, isn’t there? Like the fact that it’s February?’

Daniel reached into the pile and produced two pairs of snowshoes. ‘We’re going
snow
camping. I rented these at REI this morning. Out in the parking lot, a short, bearded man asked me where I was headed …’

Annalee listened distractedly to the elaborate cover story Daniel had concocted in case they were pulled over with the bomb in the car. How the bearded man had given him a package to deliver to his sister in Livermore, some sort of illegal cancer treatment from Mexico. The story was well conceived, but wouldn’t make any difference if they were busted on the way, which she was sure Daniel understood. When she finally saw the point, she shook her head.

‘Daniel, bless you, but there’s no way you can protect me if we get popped.’

‘I’m a juvenile. I wouldn’t go to jail.’

‘You’re a sweetheart. And I’d go to jail for contributing to your delinquency on top of possession of an explosive device.’

‘We could try it.’

Annalee didn’t want to argue. ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘but let’s hope we don’t have to.’

Daniel pointed at the ceiling. ‘Something else. The paper upstairs. I put the blanks and seals in the safe, but if anything happens and they search here, they’ll find them.’

‘Yeah, well, AMO will just have to eat it.’

‘I was thinking we could drop the incriminating stuff off at Jason’s. Tell him we decided to go camping and didn’t want to leave it around.’

‘But we’ve taken off before and just stashed it. He’ll know something’s weird. And we don’t have time.’

Daniel considered this a moment, then shrugged. ‘Do you know where we’re going?’

‘Las Postas Avenue in Livermore. An alley between a machine shop that just went out of business and an empty warehouse.’

‘I can’t cover both ends of an alley.’

‘You don’t have to – it’s a blind alley, T-shaped. Just for deliveries and garbage pickup.’

‘What’s the bomb look like?’

‘A sealed black metal cube about a foot on each side. It’s in a paper shopping bag.’

‘What sort of bomb?’

‘I didn’t ask.’

‘I mean does it have a timer? Fuse? Remote control?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t care, either. What difference does it make?’

‘I just wondered if it was armed.’

‘No. I have to do that in the alley. There’s a button I push. A red light should come on. Whether it lights up or not, we leave immediately and call a number from a pay phone a half mile away.’

‘Probably a timer,’ Daniel said to himself.

‘Right, I guess it is. Shamus said it had a Mickey Mouse clock inside. He said the guy that put it together was in the avant garde of demolition.’

‘How is Shamus?’

‘Gone. Not there. Electric with purpose. The damn bomb was under the bed all night, if you can believe that.’

‘Yeah,’ Daniel said noncommitally. ‘How’s our time?’

‘Too much, not enough, and running out.’ She felt tears welling in her eyes and turned for the bathroom.

Daniel caught her by the hand as she passed him and held her at arms’ length. ‘You sure you’re okay? We have to concentrate.’

‘If I concentrate any harder I’ll disappear.’ She took a deep breath to gather herself, slumping as she let it out. ‘This whole thing is stupid and impossible and pointless.’

‘We’ve got outs,’ Daniel said gently. ‘Call the number Shamus gave you and tell him the car broke down. I can dump some sugar in the tank.’

Annalee hugged him fiercely. ‘I know, I know.’ She buried her face on his shoulder and squeezed him again. After a moment, she pushed herself away and gave him a weak smile. ‘I’m all right. I got shaky there for a minute, but I’ll make it.’

‘Then let’s go.’ Daniel smiled back. ‘You’ll be fine. You always are.’

* * *

A light rain was falling when they left Berkeley. As Shamus had planned, Daniel and Annalee were just in front of the heavy rush hour traffic on 580 through Castro Valley. It was almost dark as they left Dublin Canyon. Annalee glanced at her watch when they saw the Las Postas exit.