The Last American Wizard (2 page)

The airplane crash woke Steven Rowan. To be entirely accurate, it wasn’t a
crash.

It was the insane screaming of four of the world’s largest jet engines being pushed twenty percent past their factory- recommended maximum thrust only thirty feet over his
head.

In addition, awake wasn’t really the correct term for his state
of consciousness at that
point.

Steve was standing stark naked in the center of
the
room, jerking back and forth in the classic fight-or-flight
reflex–his
mind frantically spinning between possibilities, developing
and
rejecting dozens
of
possible
threats
every
second,
and
running
through
as many options for escape. A small part of his
mind
was simultaneously working on the less-important questions of who
he was, where he was, and what he’d done to himself the night
before.

The pulsating howl of the jet began to diminish, but the screaming only grew louder and more intense. Suddenly, Steve fell to his knees, slamming clenched fists into his temples over and over, and screaming at the top of his
lungs.

Tears flew from his eyes as he crawled forward and began to pound his head against the glass door to the balcony. A small rational part of his mind wondered that he could be driven to such desperation that he would fill his mind with self-inflicted pain in the vain hope that it would expel the shocking sound, the sheer terror, and the infinite
grief.

He felt a sharp spark of agony as the glass
cracked.

Suddenly, as blood began to stream down his face, the terrible pain diminished. The confusion and terror, the immense waves of emotions, all of that continued to pour through him, but the anguish had ceased. The massive assault of sound began to break down into hundreds of what he could only think of as voices.

Men and women were screaming, a mother was kissing the top of a tiny head and whispering soothing sounds, a man on a cell phone was frantically dialing and redialing–desperate to leave a message. In contrast, two men were running through a checklist with professional calm, but curses tickled at their throats, fighting to get
out.

In the center, he heard a steady sound. A quiet chanting– young voices tinged with success and
anticipation.

The glass door
exploded.

It was going to be a lousy morning, his head hurt even worse than usual, and his head usually hurt like someone dying from alcohol
poisoning.

Steve opened his eyes at the sound of someone singing about hiding in Honduras and needing “lawyers, guns, and
money.”

OK, that was Warren Zevon, so it was probably his phone ringing. On Mondays, he set it to Afroman’s
Because I Got High
just to irritate any senior editorial staff he might run into, but this song pretty well summed up his mood every other
day.

He waited patiently until the late Mr. Zevon finished singing about how “the shit has hit the fan” and then listened for the Asian gong that would indicate a phone
message.

Instead, Max Weinberg’s driving drumbeat pounded out the syncopated SOS that began Bruce Springsteen’s
We Take Care of Our Own.
Since every journalist knew (but would never report)
that this song raised the dead whenever the Boss played within a mile of a graveyard, Steve figured someone was truly serious about talking to
him.

In addition, he was curious because he’d deleted it from his phone over a month ago, exhausted by its contrast between the American ideal of “help your neighbor” and the reality of greed and selfishness that was currently sweeping the
nation.

“Hello?”

There was a series of clicks and several of those odd changes in the quality of silence that indicate a call is being bounced from machine to machine or area code to area code. Of course, these were also the sounds that you heard when a telemarketer’s robot war dialer realized it had a fish on the line and switched in the human voice to make the
sale.

“Is this a freaking robot?” he said,
sharply.

There was a short pause without any clicks. For some reason, Steve thought the caller was
thinking.

“Mr. Rowan?” It was a man–the deep and authoritative voice of someone used to giving
commands.

“Who the hell wants to know?” Steve hated people with that kind of
voice.

Another
pause.

“Mr. Stephen Rowan of 14500 Windermere Drive, Apartment D2?” The voice had changed, just slightly. It wasn’t quite as abrasive and superior. Steve thought he could have a conversation with this
guy.

“Yes.” Steve’s state of awareness was beginning to recover sufficiently so that it wasn’t taking all of his concentration to talk on the phone. Unfortunately, that allowed him to begin to look around the room. If he hadn’t just received his ten-year chip from Narcotics Anonymous, he would have instantly identified this as a drug dream—and not a pleasant
one.

The smashed sliding door. Glass shards covering the carpet. The dozens of framed photographs he’d hung to remind himself of the good times when he’d worked in cool places were gone. They were in a heap of wood, glass, and photo paper on the other side of his bed. Only one remained. A picture of a Lebanese militiaman with
an
AK-47
wearing
a
T-shirt
decorated
with
a
picture
of
an AK-47 and the words “Lebanon War.” He reached over and straightened
it.

“Mr. Rowan.” The voice on the phone had changed again. Now it sounded like a person cowering with fear. Hell, this guy
was afraid to speak to him. “Umm. Are you busy at the
moment?”

Steve looked around the wreckage of his apartment. His cheek tickled and he touched it with a finger. He stared at the blood on
his fingertip. “Busy? No, not
really.”

“Would you be so kind as to consider possibly doing me a favor?”

Now the voice had gone all the way to
obsequious.

“Not until you tell me who the hell you are and what the hell you want.” Steve licked his finger, tasting the blood as if it might tell him something about what had just happened. “And stop sucking
up.”

“‘Sucking up’?” There was another series of clicks and silences, and the caller continued in its previous, more confident tone. “Mr. Rowan. Let me ask you a question. Could you use a job?”

Steve reached into his back pocket to check his wallet for his current financial position. Suddenly, he felt a hand stroke his butt. He jumped. When he looked down, he realized it was his own hand because he was still naked. Then, a sudden stab of pain proved that the silvery dust all over him was tiny bits of glass from his broken door and he’d just shoved a shard into his ass. He pulled his hand away sharply and held it out in front of him–carefully examining both
sides.

“Mr.
Rowan?”

“Oh. Sorry, I was distracted for a second. What...Oh, yeah. I have plenty of
money.”

“From your increasingly occasional work as a freelance reporter?”

Steve didn’t say anything.

The caller continued. “How’s that working out for
you?”

Steve surveyed his ruined stereo and television and stopped as he saw his metal-cased laptop. It was rolled into a cylinder. He wondered what in hell could do that to an expensive computer. Or at least one that had been expensive when he’d bought it.

“Don’t worry about the laptop. I think you’ll find your telephone will be
sufficient.”

Steve’s eyes widened and he slowly pulled the cell phone away from his ear and regarded it carefully–again, front and back. When he turned back to the main screen, a cartoon of a hand making a “thumbs up” sign had replaced his usual home screen picture of the Lebanese
militiaman.

Steve just stood there and looked at the hand. He knew it was
a cartoon because it only had three fingers and a thumb. Somehow, the artist had made it look happy and confident. That worried Steve.

He heard a faint squawking from the phone. He held the phone with only two fingers and raised it gingerly until it was an inch from his
ear.

“Mr. Rowan? Can you hear
me?”

Steve cleared his throat and answered carefully. “Yes.”

“Good, we can
continue.”

“Not until you tell me how you knew about my computer, we can’t.”

“Your computer? Oh, you mean that you were looking at it?”

“Yes. How did you know that I was looking at
it?”

The voice sounded more confident, almost comradely. “That’s easy. Look straight out your window. See the apartment building with the exterior
stairs?”

“They all have exterior
stairs.”

“Well, the one with stairs and exceptionally ugly pink paint.”

“Got
it.”

“OK. Look at the left edge of the building and then run your eye straight
up.”

Steve saw the gleaming black cube of a building on the other side of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. There were dozens of round white satellite dishes on the
roof.

“OK, I see the building across the highway. The NSA or Fort Meade or
whatever.”

“Just keep
watching.”

Slowly, almost ceremonially, all the dishes on the roof turned, swiveled, swung, or tipped so that they were all pointed straight at him. Without thinking, Steve’s left hand moved to cover his
crotch.

He made a noise, but it wasn’t a word. Something between a cough and the beginning of a scream, but definitely not a word. On the top of the black building, all the dishes nodded up and down in what he could only describe as a friendly fashion, and then moved back to their original positions.

“Mr.
Rowan?”

Steve cleared his throat again. “I guess you just made that happen.”

“Yes.”

“That was better than anything I ever saw in college, even on mushrooms, but it still doesn’t tell me who you
are.”

“No.”

“But it does answer the question of how you could see me.”

“Yes.”

“And demonstrates a certain amount of power over things.”

“Things and quite a few people as
well.”

“I would have to say that that remains to be proven, but I can agree that you’ve gone a long way in that
direction.”

“Why don’t we leave the rest of your questions for a later time and let me ask you
one?”

Steve’s eyes wandered from the roof of the building across the highway. “What am I looking for?” he
wondered.

Then he
remembered.

“Give me just one more question first.” Steve walked out on the balcony and scanned the horizon as far as he could. “Where is the
smoke?”

“Smoke?”

“Smoke. From the crash of the plane that just flew over
me.”

“Mr. Rowan. Can I suggest you step back inside? Good. You were frightening several of your neighbors. No, there is no smoke and, as a matter of fact, no airplane. Since there is no airplane,
there wasn’t a crash and,
ergo
, no smoke. That’s one of the things I’d like to hire you to
investigate.”

Steve thought for a second. “I don’t like it when people say
ergo.
But we can deal with that later. Right now, I’d like to know why–no wait, let’s begin with how I would investigate the nonexistent crash of an airplane that wasn’t
there.”

“You’re getting a bit
redundant.”

“You’ll have to live with it. It’s a side effect of the unease I’m feeling due to the stress of this uncommon and aberrant situation.” Steve’s voice rose to a shout. “Stop fucking around and tell me what the hell is going
on!”

“Well.” The voice on the phone paused as if choosing the next words carefully. “The jetliner did crash. At the same time, it did
not
crash.”

“OK, I’m relieved that you made that clear. Now that I understand, I’m hanging
up.”

“Mr. Rowan! Wait! Just one more
minute.”

Steve didn’t say anything, but he didn’t punch the END symbol, either. He really wasn’t sure
why.

“There has been a
Change.”

Steve blinked and looked at the phone. He put it back to his ear. “Did you just capitalize the word
change
?”

“Hmm? Oh, yes, I suppose I did. This particular change is a pretty big deal and certainly deserves to be
capitalized.”

“I’ll be the judge of that. What do you want me to do about this capitalized
concept?”

“Would you work for me? Investigate this
Change?”

Steve’s answer was quick and automatic. “I’m an experienced freelancer. I don’t work for just
anyone.”

“Really? Not even if it was for the Good of the
Nation?”

“Stop talking in capitals and, if you mean working for the government, the answer isn’t ‘no.’ The answer is ‘Hell,
No.’”

“I believe those last two words were capitalized.” Steve’s head felt like it was about to explode.
“Possibly.”

“Would it make you feel better if I hired you on a temporary freelance
basis?”

Once again, the answer was swift and automatic. “What are you
paying?”

“Well, I think I have unlimited
funds...”

“Then you’re full of crap. I’m hanging up
now.”

The phone began to vibrate in his hand and the voice became agitated. “Mr. Rowan. Don’t do that! It has to be you. No one else observed the
airplane!”

Steve’s eyes closed and whatever it was that had woken him up came back with the feeling of a knockout punch. His face twisted up in anguish at the memory of all the people...their terror...their helpless panic. He
groaned.

“Mr. Rowan! Are you all right?”

“Not one of my better
mornings.”

“I am actually glad to hear that.”

“Why?”

“Because I’d hate to think of what it might take to cause a worse morning. What’s your daily
rate?”

“Five hundred dollars. Double over ten hours.” Steve always held out hope even though he hadn’t made over $350 a day for the past
decade.

“You’ve got
it.”

Steve opened his eyes. “Plus expenses?”

“Expenses and the use of a car and
driver.”

“A car?” Steve walked over and looked out to the space in the parking lot where he’d parked his light-blue Prius. He thought it was still there, but it was difficult to tell because an enormous jet engine was smoking sullenly on top of the entire row of parked cars.