Lasher

Eleven

THE NOTE WAS waiting for him when he picked up his ticket for New Orleans. Call London at once.

“Yuri, Anton wants to talk to you.” It was not a voice he knew. “He wants you to stay in New York until Erich Stolov gets there. Erich can meet you in New York tomorrow afternoon.”

“Why is that, do you think?” asked Yuri. Who was this person? He had never heard this voice before, and yet this person spoke as if she knew him.

“He thinks you’ll feel better if you talk to Stolov.”

“Better? Better than what?”

As far as he was concerned, there was nothing he would say to Stolov that he had not said to Anton Marcus. He could not understand this decision at all.

“We’ve arranged a room for you, Yuri,” said the woman. “We have you booked at the St. Regis. Erich will call you tomorrow afternoon. Shall we send a car for you? Or will you take a cab?”

Yuri thought about it. In less than twenty minutes the airline would call his plane. He looked at the ticket. He did not know what he was thinking or feeling. His eyes roved the long concourse, the motley drift of passersby. Luggage, children, round-shouldered staff in uniform. Newspapers in a darkened plastic box. Airports of the world. He could not have told from this place whether he was in Washington, D.C., or Rome. No sparrows. That meant it couldn’t be Cairo. But it could have been Frankfurt or L.A.

Hindus, Arabs, Japanese passed him. And the countless unclassifiable individuals who might have been Canadian, American, British, Australian, German, French, how could one know?

“Are you there, Yuri? Please so to the St. Regis. Erich wants to talk to you, wants to bring you up to date on the investigation himself. Anton is very concerned.”

Ah, that is what it was-the conciliatory tone, the pretense that he had not disobeyed an order, not walked out of the house. The strange intimacy and politeness of one he did not even know.

“Anton himself is very anxious to speak to you,” she said. “He will be distressed when he discovers you called while he was out. Let me tell him you are going to the St. Regis. We can arrange a car. It’s no trouble.”

As if he, Yuri, did not know? As if he had not taken a thousand planes and a thousand cars and stayed in a thousand hotel rooms booked by the Order? As if he were not a defector?

No, this was all wrong. They were never rude, never, but they did not speak this way to Yuri, who knew their ways perfectly. Was it the tone for lunatics who had left the Motherhouse without permission, people who had simply walked out after years of obedience and commitment, and support?

His eyes settled on one figure-that of a woman, standing against the far wall. Sneakers, jeans, a wool jacket. Nondescript, except for her short dark hair. Swept back, rather pretty. Small eyes. She smoked a cigarette, and she kept her hands in her pockets, so that the cigarette hung on her lip. She was looking at him.

Right at him. And he understood. It was only a partial understanding but it was plenty. He dropped his eyes, he murmured something about he would think about it, yes, he would probably go to the St. Regis, he would call again from there.

“Oh, I’m so relieved to hear it,” came that warm ingratiating voice. “Anton will be so pleased.”

“I’ll bet.” He hung up, picked up his bag and walked down the concourse. He did not notice the numbers of the various gates, the names of the snack stands, the bookshops, the gift stores. He walked and he walked. At some point he turned to the left. And then on he went to a great gate that ended this arm of the terminal and then he pivoted and walked very fast back the way he’d come.

He almost ran into her, she was that close on him. He came face-to-face with her, and she-startled-stepped to the side. She almost tripped. Her face colored. She glanced back at him, and then she took off down a little corridor, disappeared through a service door, and was seen no more. He waited. She did not come back. She did not want him to see her again or be close to her. He felt the hairs stand up on the back of his head.

An instinct told him to turn in the ticket. To go to another airline, and proceed south by another, less obvious route. He would fly to Nashville, then to Atlanta and on to New Orleans. It would take longer, but he would be harder to find.

He stopped at a phone booth long enough to send a telegram to himself at the St. Regis, to be held for him when he came, which of course he never would.

This was no fun to him. He had been followed before by policemen in various countries. He had been stalked once by an angry and malevolent young man. He had even been attacked a few times in barroom arguments, when his world had carried him down into the dregs of some slum or port. Once he’d been arrested by the police in Paris, but it had all been straightened out.

Those things he could handle.

What was this happening to him now?

There was a terrible feeling inside him, a mixture of distrust and anger, a feeling of betrayal and loss. He had to talk to Aaron. But there was no time to call him. Besides, how could he burden Aaron with this now? He wanted to go to Aaron, be of assistance, not confuse him with some mad story of being followed in an airport, of a voice on the phone from London which he did not know.

For one second he was tempted to blow the lid, to call back, demand to speak to Anton, ask what was happening, and who was this woman who was tailing him at the airport?

But then he felt no spirit for it, no trust that it would work.

That was the awful part. No trust at all that it would do any good. Something had happened. Something had changed.

The flight was leaving. He looked around, and he did not see her. But that didn’t mean anything. Then he went to board the plane.

In Nashville, he found a desk with a fax machine, and he wrote out a long letter to the Elders directly, to the Amsterdam number, telling them all that had taken place. “I will contact you again. I am loyal. I am trustworthy. I do not understand what has happened. You must give me some explanation, personally, of why you told me not to talk to Aaron Lightner, of who this woman in London was, of why I am being followed. I do not mean to throw my life out a window. I am worried about Aaron. We are human beings. What do you expect me to do?”

He read it over. Very like him, very melodramatic, the manner that often prompted from them a little humor or a pat on the head. He felt sick suddenly.

He gave the letter to the clerk with a twenty. He said, “Send it three hours from now, not before.” The man promised. By that time Yuri would have already left Atlanta.

He saw the woman again, the very same woman in the wool coat, with the cigarette on her lip, standing by the desk, and staring at him coldly as he boarded the Atlanta plane.