The Patch of the Odin Soldier, page 7
“Hey,” she said delightedly, “now we’re chasing him!”
“Wonderful. What are you going to do when we catch him?”
“But as long as he’s in front of us,” she said, “he can’t run us off the road, right?”
“If we’re lucky.”
“Boy, are you a pessimist.”
“Habit,” he said, and climbed into his seat, still holding the iron and staring at it. There was a sudden temptation to grin then, and he succumbed to it. “Pass him,” he said as he rolled down his window.
“What?”
“Pass him.”
Molly took her gaze from the highway just long enough to gape before she shrugged and floored the accelerator again. Lincoln leaned back and away from the wind rushing at his face, his right arm cocked and ready across his chest.
“Mr. Blackthorne,” Molly said doubtfully, “be careful with that thing.”
“You’re right,” he apologized. “It’s too dangerous to have around.”
With that, and as they drew even with the tanker’s cab, he whipped arm and hand around, and the tire iron spun toward the driver’s window. They were moving too fast for him to see if it reached its mark, but the effect was the same—the tanker darted right as though the driver were trying to avoid the impact, darted left as he compensated to avoid smashing over a white metal barrier that ran along the shoulder, dove right again to avoid another school bus, dove left to avoid the trees, and finally gave up to sputter to a halt on the shoulder.
By that time the van was already climbing yet another rise, and when Lincoln looked back he could see the patrol car pulling up behind the truck.
“I think we’re all right,” he said, sagging in his seat.
“I hope so,” she told him, “because I think we have a flat tire.”
Lincoln wasted no time pulling Molly from the van as soon as she stopped on the verge. When she protested, he only reached in and grabbed his suitcase, took her hand and began pulling her along the road, his thumb out while he ordered her to look pathetic. She didn’t understand, but she managed it without much effort, and within five minutes they were in the back of a pickup and crossing into New Hampshire.
“Y’know,” she said, cringing in a corner away from the wind, “that was a perfectly good recreational vehicle. It had a lot of miles on it.”
“I suppose it was a gift from your brother,” he said, hugging himself against the unexpected chill.
She nodded curtly.
“He’ll understand.”
She shook her head decisively.
He started to say something else, saw the sour expression on her face and changed his mind. Besides, to be heard, he would have had to shout, and shouting was against his nature unless it occurred in the direst of emergencies. As it was, he had to figure out why, if Montague Partridge really had this Odin Soldier in the Hawaiian Islands, there were people here in New England trying to kill him. He didn’t have it, he didn’t want it, and he didn’t know where the man was, specifically, who did have it, and wanted it, and was obviously attempting to test its strength—if, indeed, the story were true;
He might have found an answer, or at least a clue to an answer, but in the middle of his musing he fell asleep, not waking until Molly jabbed at his shoulder.
His eyes opened instantly, blinked, and looked around.
“Where the hell are we?” he said.
She was already climbing stiffly over the side and paused only long enough to point to the tall buildings around them and say, “Boston.”
“Oh, lovely,” he grumbled, and winced when the shriek of an airliner’s engines threatened to take off his head. He ducked instinctively and looked up, groaning when he saw the streaks of grime on the underbelly of a 747.
“Logan Airport,” she elaborated as she helped him down to the tarmac.
“My favorite place.”
She stared at him puzzledly for a moment, then went around the truck bed to thank the driver. When she returned, she held put her hand.
“What?”
“Forty bucks,” she said.
“For what?”
“I had to give him forty bucks to take us here. He was going to Portsmouth.”
The truck pulled away, showering him with dust, and he turned his back to it, and stopped.
“This,” he said when she dropped his suitcase at his feet, “is a terminal.”
“That’s right.” A look, then. “Hey, Mr. Blackthorne, are you afraid of flying or something?”
He smiled at her stiffly, thinking of the time he got a nosebleed when he stepped over a packet of airmail stamps. It was a miserable burden to be saddled with, but one he’d managed to control simply by avoiding overseas letters and airports like this. The problem was, avoidance wasn’t always possible.
He took a deep breath and tried to appear undaunted. She only looked at him more strangely.
He brushed a hand through the shock of brown hair tumbling over his forehead, and stared at the electronic doors right in the eye. “I suppose there is a ticket counter inside that just might, if extraordinary luck is with us, be able to book us passage to Hawaii.”
“Right again,” she said, taking his hand and pulling him through the entrance. “Now let me do all the talking, okay? I know how to handle these people. You just stand here and look important.”
He took stock of his rumpled, dusty clothes, of the ivy-bound suitcase, and rubbed a hand over his stubbled face. He figured he might pass for an eccentric millionaire but not much else, but did his best to appear impatient, worried, and self-confident while he looked over the arrival-departure screens bolted to the counter’s overhang.
There was a silent cheer when he couldn’t find Hawaii, and one of despair when he realized that they’d probably have to stop at Los Angeles or San Francisco first—and there were five of those flights listed already.
Molly returned, took his arm and led him away, to a half-empty coffee shop where she promised to treat him to a hamburger and fries. She talked the entire time, chatting about the renovations done since she’d last been here, about the odd-looking people scurrying toward their flights, about the grease on their neighbors’ plates in which a microbiologist might discover his own version of research heaven. She didn’t quiet down until he reached across the tiny table and clamped a palm over her mouth.
“In other words,” he said, “you’ve got the tickets and we leave in an hour.”
“Well, not quite.”
He refused to consider hope.
“I did get the tickets.”
“I knew it.”
“But we don’t leave for three hours.”
“Okay.”
“And there’s a connecting flight we have to catch.”
“Really? Oh well, LA is—”
She sniffed, and quite suddenly her eyes filled with tears. “No, not Los Angeles.”
He leaned back and stared at her. “Oh?”
“New York.”
“Okay.”
“Then St. Louis.”
“Okay.”
“Then Denver, if we’re not delayed. By the airlines, I mean, not those other guys.”
He put his knuckles to his eyes and seriously considered an exotic form of suicide.
“Then Los Angeles.”
“Sure.”
“We arrive at ten o’clock.”
He scratched his upper lip, behind one ear, along the side of his neck, and had a feeling the ivy was going to wilt before she finished.
“Tomorrow night.”
A look at the huge clock positioned over the grille. “That’s not too bad, all things considered.”
“Their time.”
“Molly—”
“I know. That’s the day after tomorrow, our time.”
He asked for an explanation, and she told him that considering their recent perilous adventure on the highway, she thought it would be a good thing to make the trip as complicated as she could, to throw off any possible attempts to stop them. He allowed her a smile of approval and a pat on her hand, and she relaxed just long enough to tell him that she also figured the three hours they had would be useful.
“Oh?”
“Sure,” she said. “Then we can figure out a way to get rid of Loop.”
“Loop,” he said. Then he nodded—Loop Molahu, one of the men trying to stop them. And it took him a moment to realize that she wasn’t talking about the man in hypothetical terms. When she stiffened, then, he looked over his shoulder and saw the man standing in the coffee shop entrance. In his left hand he carried a suitcase; in his right hand he carried a pineapple, which he tossed in Lincoln’s direction.
Reflex had Lincoln’s hands out to catch the fruit before it struck the table.
And reflex made him snap his hands back when he saw the fuse burning brightly above the leaves.
NINE
Logan Airport’s crack security forces are not used to having explosive devices arrive in their midst in the form of a plant whose very name has been lent to hand-tossed weapons of an expanding nature; they much prefer to use their keen eyes and wits, the marvelous, open-ended screening devices at the entrances to the flight gates, the occasional frisk, and the sharp-nosed canines that spend most of their time in the baggage rooms.
A member of said force, then, enjoying his lunch break at a corner table, was rather disconcerted when Lincoln shouted a warning and Molly screamed for emphasis, and there was a general stampede toward the four exits. The security man leapt to his feet, and was tripped by a child being shoved along ahead of its wailing mother; he scrambled back to his feet, and was slammed against the wall by Miss Partridge, who was in pursuit of a corpulent but muscular-looking gentleman in a garish flowered shirt; he rebounded in time to be rudely grabbed by a scruffy-looking man claiming to be a tailor and pointing to a smoking pineapple resting comfortably in the middle of a recently vacated table.
The security man, whose name was Stanley Oberon, attempted to regain some of his dignity by shaking off the hand and dusting his uniform.
“Damnit,” Lincoln snapped, pointing again, “that’s a bomb, you idiot.”
“Sir, I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me,” Oberon said sternly. “It is a felony to create unreasonable panic in a public place, especially here where we’re trying to stop terrorism in its tracks, and teach those miscreants we are not a nation to be toyed with on the international revolutionary front, as it were.”
Lincoln examined the man’s thin, pale face closely, wondering if he were any relation to Molly. Then he threw up his hands in exasperation and raced back to the table, Oberon following, after closing his gaping mouth. Linc grabbed up the pineapple, vaulted the luncheon-meat counter, and dropped it into a sink. Oberon drew his gun. Lincoln turned on the taps and vaulted the counter again, dropping to the floor and pulling the security man down beside him.
“Sir!” Oberon protested.
Linc held his breath.
“Sir, this is going to go hard with you if you don’t come quietly.”
In response, Linc pinned his shoulder to the floor and told him to shut up.
Outside the coffee shop there were muffled screams, the sound of running feet, and shouts from a number of men who seemed to be heading in their direction.
A minute passed.
Oberon, not sure that this wasn’t a hoax but not willing to take the chance because it was, after all, only a part-time job until he could catch up on his alimony and become solvent again, waited with his revolver pointed at the scruffy man’s nose.
Another minute passed, and the terminal grew silent.
A third minute brought Linc to his feet. He looked disdainfully at the barrel wavering nervously in his face and rounded the counter to check on the bomb. Oberon followed closely and gasped when the scruffy man picked up a carving knife and carefully pruned away the sharp-thorned, stiff outer leaves of the fruit. Inside was a dark powdery substance out of which protruded a fuse.
“That’s a bomb,” Oberon said, astonishment widening his eyes.
“Exactly, officer. And if you hurry,” Lincoln told him gently, “you might catch the man who threw it in here. I think he didn’t like the food.”
Oberon holstered his weapon without hesitation and ran off, ran back for a description and ran off again. Lincoln watched him through the glass wall, shook his head and picked up his suitcase. Five minutes later, as he wandered aimlessly through a bookstore, Molly came in, her honeyed hair disheveled, her blue eyes dark with anger.
“Got away,” she said.
“Too bad.” He picked up a spy novel—Nazis running amok with the ultimate weapon in northern Greece shortly after the war. “Do you think this will put me to sleep?”
“He went into the men’s room.”
“You didn’t follow him?”
“Mr. Blackthorne, that was a men’s room he went into!
Molly, the man tried to blow us up.”
“But there are limits, proprieties, boundaries of acceptable public behavior.”
“Bombing someone is acceptable?”
“You don’t understand.”
She was right, and he didn’t think the book would put him to sleep so he replaced it, and took her back to the coffee shop. It was empty and they still had ninety minutes to go before they had to check in at their flight. When no one showed up to serve them, he sighed resignedly at the burdens life dumped so unceremoniously on his none-too-broad shoulders and cooked three hamburgers on his own, garnished them liberally, and dropped a bill on the register.
Molly could only stare when he sat down to eat, but didn’t long resist the meal. She did, however, resist asking what had happened to the pineapple—there was a fruit salad for dessert, which she forcefully, but politely, declined.
Stanley Oberon returned just as they were finishing.
“Sir,” he said, with far more respect in his voice than when they’d first met, “I think you’d better come with me to the chief’s office.” Lincoln shook his head.
“Sir, the chief wants to question you about the incident.”
Lincoln shook his head again, and began working on his salad.
Oberon looked to Molly, was struck mute for several seconds by her disarranged beauty, and pulled up a chair, clearly intending to plead with Lincoln, through her, for reason and the future of his job in airport security. What he received was a portion of fruit salad which, since his lunch had been interrupted, he accepted with pleasure.
“I don’t believe it,” Molly said, throwing her napkin down on the table, though since it was paper it lacked some of the impact she’d intended.
“Believe what?” Lincoln asked innocently.
“You,” she said, and pointed at the entrance where Molahu had stood, at the counter, at the sink, and finally at the salad.
“Sir,” Oberon said, “I really must ask you to come with me.”
“Why?”
The security man frowned. “Well … well, because of the bomb, sir.”
Lincoln touched his lips with a napkin and smiled. “What bomb?”
Oberon pointed at the entrance, at the counter, at the sink, and looked suddenly and fearfully at his clean plate. “Oh, sir.”
“Friend,” Lincoln said as he rose, “I understand how working in a place like this can get to you. Why don’t you find something new, like being a traffic cop?”
Oberon swallowed painfully, and rubbed a knuckle across his eyes.
Molly stalked out ahead of Lincoln and did not look back until they had passed through a clutch of uniformed, steely-eyed personnel at the security gate. Then she only glared when he drew up alongside her.
“Hey,” he said, “I saved our lives, you know.”
“Maybe. But you wanted me to …” She tossed her long hair in disgust, and found them a pair of contoured plastic seats to wait in for the boarding call. “You wanted me to go into a men’s room!”
He refused to answer. And refused to look at her. Instead, he scanned the faces of their compatriots in aeronautical suicide and hoped that none of them were working for Florenz Cull. Molahu, he decided, would not dare show himself soon again, even if he had discovered which flight they were on. He had to admit that Molly’s tangled pattern to the West Coast would probably be effective; he also had to admit that Cull probably didn’t have the resources to cover all the Pacific departures to Hawaii. All in all, it seemed to be a fair assumption that they would arrive in Honolulu in one piece.
What happened after that, however, he didn’t want to consider, not until he’d arrived and proved himself correct.
Lincoln had no idea what time his body thought it was, but the pilot told him, in a carefully cheerful tone, that they were cruising at an unconscionable altitude over St. Louis. Molly was in the seat beside him, reading a magazine.
“You know,” he said quietly, “you haven’t told me why you’re so anxious to find your brother.”
“To save the world,” she said without looking at him.
“I know that part,” he reminded her. “But why you? Why haven’t you gone to whatever authorities are in charge of saving the world and told them about it?”
“Would you believe it if you were them?”
“I believe somebody thinks it’s true. And so, I think, would the authorities.”
She shoved the magazine into the pocket in the back of the seat ahead of her and turned her head slowly. “Well, you’re wrong.”
“And you still haven’t answered my question.”
“I sure did.”
“Then I didn’t like the answer.”
“It wasn’t multiple choice.”
The plane dipped and he grabbed her hand tightly. Revulsion flickered over her face, and was replaced by a show of sympathy. “All right.”
He waited.
“I want to save my own skin, too.”
He waited.
“See, Monty—that’s what I call him because he hates his full name—Monty thinks that I want to kill him. So he’s tried to kill me a couple of times already.”
“I see.”
