The Traveler Page 12

  "When the Final Messenger comes, the Evil One will fall into the Darkest Realm and swords will be transformed into Light."

  "Sounds wonderful." The Harlequin slipped her sword into a carrying tube. "But until that happens, I'm keeping my own blade sharp."

  They got into the car and the Harlequin adjusted the right side mirror so that she could see if anyone was behind them. "Let's get out of here," she said. "We need to go someplace where there aren't any cameras.

  They left the parking structure, followed the airport traffic circle, and turned onto Sepulveda Boulevard

  . It was November, but the air was warm and sunlight was reflected off every windshield and pane of glass. They were driving through a commercial district of two- and three-story structures, modern office buildings facing immigrant grocery stores, and fingernail salons. Only a few people were on the sidewalk: the poor, the elderly, and a crazy man with matted hair who looked like John the Baptist.

  "There's a park a few miles from here," Vicki said. "It doesn't have surveillance cameras."

  "Are your sure about that or just guessing?" The Harlequin kept looking at the side mirror.

  "Guessing. But it's a logical guess."

  Her answer seemed to amuse the young woman. "All right. Let's see if logic works any better in America."

  The park was a small strip of land with a few trees across the street from Loyola University. No one was in the parking lot and there didn't appear to be any surveillance cameras. The Harlequin examined the area carefully, and then removed her sunglasses, tinted contact lenses, and brown wig. The young woman's real hair was thick and black, and her eyes were very pale—with only a hint of blue color. Her puffy appearance came from some kind of drug. As it began to wear off, she looked much stronger and even more aggressive.

  Vicki tried not to stare at the sword case. "Are you hungry, Miss Harlequin?"

  The young woman stuffed the wig into her travel bag. Once again, she glanced at the side mirror. "My name is Maya."

  "My church name is Victory From Sin Fraser. But I ask most people to just call me Vicki."

  "That's a wise choice."

  "Are you hungry, Maya?"

  Instead of answering her, Maya reached into her shoulder purse and took out a small electronic device about the size of a matchbox. She pressed a button and numbers flashed on a narrow screen. Vicki didn't understand what the numbers meant, but the Harlequin used them to make a decision. "Okay. Let's have lunch," Maya said. "Take me to a place where we can buy food and eat in the car. Park facing out, toward the street."

  They ended up at a Mexican-food stand called Tito's Tacos. Vicki carried sodas and burritos back to the car. Maya remained silent and picked at the beef filling with a little plastic fork. Not knowing what else to do, Vicki watched the people come and go in the parking lot. An old woman with the stocky physique and Indian features of a Guatemalan peasant. A middle-aged Filipino husband and wife. Two young Asian men—probably Korean—wearing the flashy clothes and gold jewelry of black rappers.

  Vicki faced the Harlequin and tried to sound confident. "Can you tell me why you're in Los Angeles?"

  "No."

  "Is this about a Traveler? The pastor of my church says that the Travelers don't exist anymore. They've all been hunted down and killed."

  Maya lowered her can of soda. "Why didn't your mother want you to meet me?"

  "The Divine Church of Isaac T. Jones doesn't believe in violence. Everyone in the church knows that Harlequins . . ." Vicki stopped talking and looked embarrassed.

  "Kill people?"

  "I'm sure that the people you fight are wicked and cruel." Vicki dumped the rest of her food into a paper bag and looked straight at Maya. "Unlike my mother and her friends, I believe in the Debt Not Paid. We must never forget that the Lion of the Temple was the only person brave enough to defend the Prophet on the night of his martyrdom. He died with the Prophet and was burned in the same fire."

  Maya rattled the ice in her cup. "So what do you do when you're not picking up strange people at airports?"

  "I graduated from high school this summer and now Mother wants me to take the exam for the post office. Many of the Faithful here in Los Angeles are postal carriers. It's a good job with lots of benefits. At least, that's what they say."

  "And what do you want to do?"

  "It would be wonderful to travel around the world. There are so many places I've only seen in books or on television."

  "So do it."

  "I don't have money and plane tickets like you. I've never even been to a nice restaurant or a nightclub. Harlequins are the freest people in the world."

  Maya shook her head. "You don't want to be a Harlequin. If I was free, I wouldn't be in this city."

  The cell phone in Vicki's purse began playing the theme from Beethoven's Ode to Joy. Vicki hesitated, then answered the phone and heard Shepherd's cheerful voice.

  "Did you get the package at the airport?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Let me talk to her."

  Vicki passed the phone over to Maya and listened to the Harlequin say "yes" three times. She switched off the phone and dropped it on the seat of the car.

  "Shepherd has my weapons and identification. You're supposed to go to 489 Southwest—whatever that means."

  "It's a code. He told me to be careful talking on the cell phone."

  Vicki got a Los Angeles phone book from the backseat and turned to page 489. In the lower left corner—the southwest section of the page—she found an ad for a business called Resurrection Auto Parts. The address was in Marina del Rey, a few miles from the ocean. They left the parking lot and drove west on Washington Boulevard

  . Maya stared out the window as if she were trying to find landmarks that she could remember.

  "Where's the center of Los Angeles?"

  "Downtown, I guess. But not really. There's no center here, just little communities."

  The Harlequin reached beneath the sleeve of her sweater and adjusted one of her knives. "Sometimes my father would recite a poem by Yeats when we were walking around London." She hesitated, then spoke softly: "Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer; things fall apart, the centre cannot hold ..."

  They drove past shopping malls and gas stations and residential areas. Some of the neighborhoods were poor and shabby with little Spanish-style houses or ranch houses that had flat roofs covered with gravel. In front of each house was a strip of Bermuda grass and a tree or two, usually a palm or a Chinese elm.

  Resurrection Auto Parts was on a narrow side street between a T-shirt factory and a tanning salon. On the front of the windowless building someone had painted a cartoon version of God's hand from the Sistine Chapel. Instead of giving life to Adam, the hand was hovering over a muffler.

  Vicki parked across the street. "I can wait for you here. I don't mind."

  "That's not necessary."

  They got out of the car and unloaded the luggage. Vicki expected Maya to say "goodbye" or "thank you very much," but the Harlequin was already focused on this new environment. She glanced up and down the street, evaluating each driveway and parked car, then picked up her bag, camera, and tripod and began to walk away.

  "Is that all?"

  Maya stopped and glanced over her shoulder. "What do you mean?"

  "We're not going to see each other again?"

  "Of course not. You've done your job, Vicki. It's best if you never mention this to anyone."

  Carrying all the luggage with her left hand, Maya crossed the street to Resurrection Auto Parts. Vicki tried not to feel insulted, but angry thoughts pushed through her mind. When she was a little girl, she had heard stories about the Harlequins, about how they were brave defenders of the righteous. Now she had met two Harlequins: Shepherd was an ordinary person, and this young woman, Maya, was selfish and rude.

  It was time to go home and prepare dinner for Mother. The Divine Church had prayer service tonight at seven o'clock. Vicki
got back in her car and returned to Washington Boulevard

  . When she stopped at a red light, she thought about Maya walking across the street with the luggage in her left hand. That kept the right hand free. Yes, that was it. Free to draw the sword and kill someone.

  Chapter 16

  Maya avoided the front door of Resurrection Auto Parts. She entered the parking lot and began to circle the building. There was an unmarked emergency door near the back with a diamond Harlequin mark scrawled on the rusty metal. She pulled the door open and entered the building. Smell of oil and cleaning solvent. Sound of distant voices. She was in a room filled with racks of used carburetors and exhaust pipes. Everything was stacked and sorted by make and model. Pulling her sword out a little farther, she moved toward the light. A door was open a few inches, and when she peered through the crack she saw Shepherd and two other men standing around a small table.

  They looked surprised when Maya came through the door. Shepherd reached beneath his jacket for a gun, then recognized her and grinned. "There she is! All grown up and very attractive. This is the famous Maya I've been telling you about."

  She had seen Shepherd six years ago, when he visited her father in London. The American had a plan to make millions of dollars from pirated Hollywood movies, but Thorn refused to finance the operation. Although Shepherd was in his late forties, he looked a good deal younger. His blond hair was cut in a spiky style and he wore a gray silk shirt and a tailored sports jacket. Like Maya, he carried his sword in a case slung over his shoulder.

  The other two men looked like brothers. They were both in their twenties with bad teeth and bleached blond hair. The older one had smudged prison tattoos on his arms. Maya decided that they were taints—Harlequin slang for low-class mercenaries—and she decided to ignore them.

  "What's going on?" she asked Shepherd. "Who's been following you?"

  "That's a conversation for later," Shepherd said. "Right now I want you to meet Bobby Jay and Tate. I've got your money and identification. But Bobby Jay is providing the weapons."

  Tate, the younger brother, was staring at her. He wore warm-up pants and an extra-large football jersey that probably concealed a handgun. "She's got a sword like yours," he said to Shepherd.

  Shepherd smiled indulgently. "It's a useless thing to carry around, but it's kind of like being in a club."

  "What's your sword worth?" Bobby Jay asked Maya. "You want to sell it?"

  Annoyed, she turned to Shepherd. "Where did you find these taints?"

  "Relax. Bobby Jay buys and sells weapons of all kinds. He's always looking for a deal. Pick out your gear. I'll pay for it and they'll go."

  A steel suitcase was on the table. Shepherd opened it and displayed five handguns lying on a foam pad. As Maya stepped closer, she saw that one of the weapons was made of black plastic with a cartridge mounted at the top of the frame.

  Shepherd picked up the plastic weapon. "Ever seen one of these? It's a Taser that delivers an electric shock. You'd carry a real gun, of course, but this would give you the choice of not killing the other person."

  "Not interested," Maya said.

  "I'm serious about this. Swear to god. I carry a Taser. If you shoot someone with a gun, the police are going to get involved. This gives you more options."

  "The only option is to attack or not attack."

  "All right. Fine. Have it your way . . ."

  Shepherd grinned and pulled the trigger. Before she could react, two darts attached to wires flew out of the barrel and hit her in the chest. A massive electric jolt knocked her to the floor. As she struggled to stand up she was hit with another shock and then another that brought darkness.

  Chapter 17

  General Nash called Lawrence on Saturday morning and said that Nathan Boone was going to have a teleconference with the Brethren's executive committee at four o'clock that afternoon. Lawrence drove immediately from his town house to the research center in Westchester County and gave an entry list to the guard at the front gate. He dropped by his own office to check e-mails, and then went up to the third floor to prepare for the meeting.

  Nash had already typed in the command allowing Lawrence to enter the conference room. When Lawrence approached the door, his Protective Link was detected by a scanner and the lock clicked open. The conference room contained a mahogany wood table, brown leather chairs, and a wall-sized television screen. Two video cameras photographed different angles of the room so that the Brethren living overseas could watch the discussion.

  Alcohol was never allowed at committee meetings, so Lawrence placed bottled water and drinking glasses on the table. His primary job was to make sure that the closed-circuit television system was working. Using the control panel placed in one corner, he connected with a video camera set up at a rented office suite in Los Angeles. The camera showed a desk and an empty chair. Boone would sit there when the meeting started and give a report about the Corrigan brothers. Within twenty minutes, four small squares appeared at the bottom of the television screen, and the control panel indicated that Brethren living in London, Tokyo, Moscow, and Dubai would be joining the discussion.

  Lawrence was trying to appear diligent and respectful, but he was glad that no one else was in the room. He was frightened and his usual mask wasn't concealing his emotions. A week earlier, Linden had mailed him a tiny battery-operated video camera called a spider. Concealed in Lawrence's pocket, the spider felt like a time bomb that could explode at any moment.

  He double-checked the water glasses, making sure they were clean, and then headed for the door. Can't do it, he thought. Too dangerous. But his body refused to leave the room. Lawrence began praying silently. Help me, Father. I'm not as brave as you.

  The anger he felt at his own cowardice suddenly overpowered his survival instinct. First he switched off the closed-circuit camera that would be used during the discussion, then he bent down and pulled off his shoes. Moving quickly, he stepped onto one of the chairs and stood in the middle of the table. Lawrence inserted the spider into a ceiling air-conditioning vent, made sure that the holding magnets were in contact with the metal, and jumped back onto the floor. Five seconds had gone by. Eight seconds. Ten seconds. Lawrence turned on the closed-circuit camera and began to adjust the chairs.

  ***

  WHEN HE WAS growing up, Lawrence never suspected that his father was Sparrow, the Japanese Harlequin. His mother told him that she had gotten pregnant when she was a student at Tokyo University. Her wealthy lover refused to marry her and she didn't want to have an abortion. Instead of bringing up an illegitimate child in Japanese society, she immigrated to America and raised her son in Cincinnati, Ohio. Lawrence accepted this story completely. Although his mother taught him to read and speak Japanese, he never felt the desire to fly to Tokyo and track down some selfish business-man who had abandoned a pregnant college girl.

  Lawrence's mother died of cancer during his third year of college. In an old pillowcase hidden in the closet, he found letters from her relatives in Japan. The friendly, affectionate letters surprised him. His mother had told him that her family had thrown her out of the house when she became pregnant. Lawrence wrote to the family members and his aunt Mayumi flew to America for the funeral.

  After the ceremony, Mayumi stayed to help her nephew pack up everything in the house and transfer it to a storage warehouse. It was during this time that they found the belongings that Lawrence's mother had brought from Japan: an antique kimono, some old college textbooks, and a photo album.

  "That's your grandmother," Mayumi said, pointing to an old woman smiling at the camera. Lawrence turned the page. "And that's your mother's cousin. And her school friends. They were such pretty girls."

  Lawrence turned the page again and two photographs fell out. One showed his young mother sitting next to Sparrow. The other photograph showed Sparrow alone with the two swords.

  "And who's this?" Lawrence asked. The man in the photograph looked calm and very serious.

  "Who is t
his person? Please tell me." He stared at his aunt and she began to cry.

  "It's your father. I met him only once, with your mother, at a restaurant in Tokyo. He was a very strong man."

  Aunt Mayumi knew only a few things about the man in the photographs. He called himself Sparrow, but occasionally used the name Furukawa. Lawrence's father was involved in something dangerous. Perhaps he was a spy. Many years ago, he was killed with a group of Yakuza gangsters during a gunfight at the Osaka Hotel.

  After his aunt flew back to Japan, Lawrence spent all his free time on the Internet looking for information about his father. It was easy to find out about the Osaka Hotel incident. Articles about the massacre appeared in all the Japanese newspapers as well as the international press. Eighteen Yakuza had died. A gangster named Hiroshi Furukawa was listed as one of the dead, and a Japanese magazine printed a morgue photograph of his father. It seemed strange to Lawrence that none of the articles gave a definitive reason for the incident. Usually the reporter called it a "gangland dispute" or a "clash over illegal profits." Two wounded Yakuza had survived, but they refused to answer questions.

  At Duke University, Lawrence had learned how to write computer programs that could handle a large amount of statistical data. After graduation, he worked for a game Web site run by the U.S. Army that analyzed the responses of the teenagers who formed online teams and fought each other in a bombed-out city. Lawrence helped create a program that generated a psychological profile of each player. The computer-created profiles had a high correlation with the face-to-face evaluations performed by the army's recruiters. The program determined who was a future master sergeant, who should operate the radio, and who would volunteer for high-risk missions.

  The army job led to a job in the White House and Kennard Nash. The general felt that Lawrence was a good administrator and that he shouldn't waste his talents writing computer programs. Nash had a relationship with the CIA and the National Security Agency. Lawrence realized that working for Nash would help him obtain a high-level security rating that would give him access to secret data about his father. He had studied the photograph of his father with the two swords. Sparrow didn't have the elaborate tattoos of a typical Yakuza.