The Traveler

  "You don't deserve your Harlequin name. You've betrayed the memory of your family."

  "Both my grandfather and my father only cared about Travelers. Neither of them ever thought twice about me. We're the same, Maya. We both grew up with people who worshipped a lost cause."

  Shepherd turned to Bobby Jay and Tate. "Watch her at all times," he said, and walked out of the room.

  Tate went over to the table and picked up Maya's throwing knife. "Take a look at this," he said to his brother. "It's perfectly balanced."

  "We're going to get the knives, her Harlequin sword, and some bonus money when Shepherd comes back."

  Maya flexed her arms and legs slightly, waiting for an opportunity. When she was much younger, her father took her to a club in Soho where they played three-cushion billiards. It taught her how to think ahead and organize a quick sequence of actions: the white ball would strike the red ball, and then bounce off the rubber cushions.

  "Shepherd is way too scared of her." Holding the knife, Tate walked over to Maya. "The Harlequins have got this big reputation, but there's nothing backing it up. Look at her. She's got two arms and two legs just like anybody else."

  Tate began to push the point of the knife against Maya's cheek. The skin flexed and gave way. He pushed harder and a little dot of blood appeared. "Now look at that. They bleed, too." Carefully, like an artist shaping wet clay, Tate made a shallow cut from the side of Maya's neck to her collarbone. She felt blood oozing out of the wound and trickling across her skin.

  "See. Red blood. Just like you and me."

  "Stop fooling around," said Bobby Jay. "You're going to get us in trouble."

  Tate grinned and returned to the table. For a few seconds, his back was turned and he blocked his brother's view. Maya fell forward, onto her knees, and pulled her arms as far back as possible. When she was free of the chair, she slipped her arms beneath her pelvis and legs. Now her hands were in front of her.

  Maya stood up—wrists, ankles still bound—and leaped past Tate. She somersaulted over the table, grabbed her sword, and landed in front of Bobby Jay. Startled, he fumbled inside his leather jacket for a gun. Maya swung the sword with two hands and slashed open his neck; blood sprayed out from the cut artery. Bobby Jay started to fall, but she had already forgotten about him. Sliding the sword down behind the black rubber fan belt, she cut her legs free.

  Move faster. Now. She stepped around the table toward Tate while he reached beneath his oversized shirt and grabbed an automatic. As he raised the weapon, Maya moved to the left, swung down hard, and chopped off his forearm. Tate screamed and staggered backward, but she was on him immediately, slashing back and forth across his neck and chest.

  Tate dropped to the floor and Maya stood over his body, clutching her sword. The world became smaller at that moment, collapsing like a dark star into one small point of fear and rage and exultation.

  Chapter 19

  The Corrigan brothers had been living upstairs at the clothing factory for four days. That afternoon Mr. Bubble called Michael and assured him that his negotiations with the Torrelli family in Philadelphia were proceeding smoothly. In a week or so Michael would have to sign some transfer-of-ownership documents and then they would be free.

  Deek showed up in the evening and ordered Chinese food. He sent Jesus downstairs to wait for the delivery van and started a chess game with Gabriel. "Lotta chess in prison," Deek explained. "But the bruthas there play chess the same way.

  They attack and keep on attacking until somebody's king goes down."

  It was very quiet in the factory when the sewing machines were switched off and the workers went home to their families. Gabriel heard a car come down the street and stop in front of the building. He peered out the fourth-floor window and saw a Chinese driver get out of his car with two bags of food.

  Deek stared at the chessboard, considering his next move. "Somebody gonna get angry when Jesus pays them. That driver come a long way and cheap Jesus give him a one-dollah tip."

  The driver got the money from Jesus and began to walk back to his car. Suddenly the driver reached beneath his warm-up jacket and pulled out a handgun. He caught up with Jesus, raised the weapon, and blew off the top of the bodyguard's head. Deek heard the gunshot. He hurried over to the window as two cars roared up the street. A crowd of men jumped out and followed the Chinese man into the building.

  Deek punched a number on his cell phone and spoke quickly. "Get some bruthas over here, fast time. Six men, with guns, comin' through the door." He switched off the phone, picked up his M-16 rifle, and motioned to Gabriel. "You go find Michael. Stay with him 'til Mr. Bubble come and help us out."

  The big man moved cautiously toward the staircase. Gabriel hurried down the hallway and found Michael standing beside the folding cots.

  "What's going on?"

  "They're attacking the building."

  They heard a burst of gunfire, muffled by the walls. Deek was in the stairwell, firing down at the attackers. Michael seemed confused and frightened. Standing in the doorway, he watched Gabriel pick up the rusty shovel.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Let's get out of here."

  Gabriel cracked the shovel through the lower part of a window frame and pried the window open. Tossing the shovel away, he forced the window up with his hands and looked outside. A four-inch-wide concrete molding ran around the side of the factory. The roof of another building was six feet across the alleyway, one floor lower than where they were trapped.

  Something exploded inside the building and the power went off. Gabriel went over to the corner and grabbed his father's Japanese sword. He thrust its hilt down into his backpack so that only the tip of the scabbard was sticking out. More gunshots. Then Deek screamed with pain.

  Gabriel put on the backpack and returned to the open window. "Let's go. We can jump to the other building."

  "I can't do that," Michael said. "I'll screw up and miss." "You have to try. If we stay here, we'll get killed."

  "I'll talk to them, Gabe. I can talk to anybody."

  "Forget it. They don't want to make a deal."

  Gabriel climbed out of the window and stood on the molding with his left hand holding on to the window frame. There was enough light from the street to see the roof, but the alleyway between the two buildings was a patch of darkness. He counted to three, then pushed off and fell through the air to the tar-paper surface of the roof. Scrambling to his feet, he looked up at the factory building.

  "Hurry up!"

  Michael hesitated, made a move like he was going to climb out the window, and then pulled away.

  "You can do it!" Gabriel realized that he should have stayed with his brother and helped him go first. "Remember what you've always said. We've got to stick together. It's the only way."

  A helicopter with a mounted spotlight roared across the sky. The beam cut through the darkness, briefly touched the open window, and continued across the top of the factory.

  "Come on, Michael!"

  "I can't! I'm going to find someplace to hide."

  Michael reached into his coat pocket, took something out, and threw it to his brother. When the object fell onto the roof Gabriel saw that it was a gold money clip holding a credit card and a wad of twenty-dollar bills.

  "I'll meet you at Wilshire Boulevard

  and Bundy at noon," Michael said. "If I'm not there, wait twenty-four hours and try again.

  "They're going to kill you."

  "Don't worry. I'll be all right."

  Michael disappeared into the darkness and Gabriel stood alone. The helicopter flew back over the building and hovered in the air, its engine roaring, the big propeller stirring up dust and bits of trash. A spotlight beam hit Gabriel's eyes; it was like staring at the sun. Half blinded from the glare, he stumbled across the roof to a fire escape, grabbed a steel ladder, and let gravity pull him down.

  Chapter 20

  Maya stripped off her blood‑splattered clothes and stuffed them into a pla
stic garbage bag. The two dead bodies were only a few feet away and she tried not to think about what had happened. Stay in the present, she told herself. Concentrate on each action. Scholars and poets had written about the past—admired it, longed for it, regretted it—but Thorn had taught his daughter to avoid these distractions. The sword blade itself was the proper model as it flashed through the air.

  Shepherd had left to meet someone named Prichett, but he could return at any moment. Although Maya wanted to stay and kill the traitor, her first objective was to track down Gabriel and Michael Corrigan. Perhaps they've already been captured, she thought. Or maybe they didn't have the power to become Travelers. There was only one way to answer those questions: she had to find the brothers as quickly as possible.

  Maya got some spare clothes out of her suitcase and pulled on jeans, a T-shirt, and a blue cotton sweater. She wrapped her hands with strips of plastic bags, sorted through Bobby Jay's handguns, and picked out a small German-made automatic with an ankle holster. A combat shotgun with a pistol grip and a folding stock was in the long metal suitcase and she decided to take it along with her. When she was ready to go she tossed an old newspaper on the bloody floor and stood on it while she searched the brothers' pockets. Tate was carrying forty dollars and three plastic vials filled with rock cocaine. Bobby Jay had more than nine hundred dollars in cash rolled up with a rubber band. Maya took the money and left the drugs beside Tate's body.

  Carrying the shotgun case and her other equipment, she left through the emergency door, walked a few blocks west, and tossed the bloody clothes into a dumpster. Now she was standing on Lincoln Boulevard

  , a four-lane street lined with furniture stores and fast-food restaurants. It was hot and she felt as if the splattered blood was still sticking to her skin.

  Maya had only one backup contact. Several years ago, Linden had visited America to obtain false passports and credit cards. He had set up a mail drop with a man named Thomas who lived in Hermosa Beach.

  She used a pay phone to call a taxi. The driver was an elderly Syrian man who barely spoke English. He opened a map book, examined it for a long time, and then said he could take her to the address.

  Hermosa Beach was a small town south of the Los Angeles airport. There. was a central tourist area with restaurants and bars, but most of the buildings were little one-story cottages a few blocks from the ocean. The taxi driver got lost twice. He stopped, flipped through his map book again, and finally managed to find the house on Sea Breeze Lane

  . Maya paid the driver and watched the cab disappear down the street. Perhaps the Tabula were already there, waiting inside the house.

  She climbed onto the front porch and knocked on the door. No one answered, but she could hear music coming from the backyard. Maya opened a side gate and found herself in a passageway between the house and a concrete wall. In order to free her hands, she left all her bags near the gate. Bobby Jay's automatic was in a breakaway holster strapped to her left ankle. The sword case hung from her shoulder. She took a deep breath, prepared herself for combat, and went forward.

  A few pine trees grew near the wall, but the rest of the backyard was stripped of vegetation. Someone had dug a shallow pit in the sandy ground and covered it with a five-foot-high wicker dome of sticks lashed together with rope. While a portable radio played country and western music, a bare-chested man covered the dome with blackened squares of tanned cattle hide.

  The man saw Maya and stopped working. He was Native American, with long black hair and a flabby stomach. When he smiled, he showed a gap in his back teeth. "It's tomorrow," he said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "I changed the date for the sweat lodge ceremony. All the regulars got an e-mail, but I guess you're one of Richard's friends." "I'm looking for someone named Thomas."

  The man leaned down and turned off the radio. "That's me. I'm Thomas Walks the Ground. And who am I talking to?"

  "Jane Stanley. I just flew in from England."

  "I went to London once to give a talk. Several people asked me why I didn't wear feathers in my hair." Thomas sat down on a wooden bench and began to pull on a T-shirt. "I said I was one of the Absaroka, the bird people. You whites call us the Crow tribe. I don't need to pluck an eagle to be an Indian."

  "A friend told me that you know a great many things." "Maybe I do or maybe I don't. That's for you to decide."

  Maya kept looking around the yard; no one else was in the area.

  "And now you build sweat lodges?"

  "That's right. I usually have one going every weekend. For the last few years, I've organized sweat lodge weekends for divorced men and women. After two days of sweating and pounding a drum, people decide they don't hate their ex-spouse anymore." Thomas smiled and gestured with his hands. "It's not a big thing, but it helps the world. All of us fight a battle every day, but we just don't know it. Love tries to defeat hatred. Bravery destroys fear."

  "My friend said you could tell me how the Tabula got their name.

  Thomas glanced at a portable cooler and a folded-up sweatshirt on the dirt. That was where the weapon was hidden. Probably a handgun.

  "The Tabula. Right. I might have heard something about that." Thomas yawned and scratched his stomach as if she had just asked him about a group of Boy Scouts. "Tabula comes from the Latin phrase tabula rasa—which means `a blank slate.' The Tabula think the human mind is a blank slate when you're born. That means the men in power can fill up your brain with selected information. If you do this to large numbers of people you can control most of world's population. The Tabula hate anyone who can show that there's a different reality."

  "Like a Traveler?"

  Once again, Thomas looked at his hidden weapon. He hesitated, and then seemed to decide that he couldn't grab it in time to save himself.

  "Listen, Jane—or whatever your name is—if you want to kill me, go ahead. I don't give a damn. One of my uncles was a Traveler, but I don't have the power to cross over. When my uncle came back to this world, he tried to organize the tribes so that we would turn away from alcohol and take control of our lives. The men in power didn't like that. Land was involved. Oil leases. Six months after my uncle started preaching, someone ran him down on the road. You made it look like an accident, didn't you? A hit-and-run driver and no witnesses."

  "Do you know what a Harlequin is?"

  "Maybe ..."

  "You met a French Harlequin named Linden several years ago. He used your address to obtain fake passports. Right now, I'm in trouble. Linden said that you could help me."

  "I'm not fighting for the Harlequins. That's not who I am."

  "I need a car or a truck, some kind of vehicle that can't be tracked by the Vast Machine."

  Thomas Walks the Ground stared at her for a long time, and she felt the power in his eyes. "All right," he said slowly. "I can do that."

  Chapter 21

  Gabriel walked up the drainage ditch that ran alongside the San Diego Freeway. It was almost dawn. A thin line of orange sunlight glowed on the eastern horizon. Cars and trailer trucks raced past him, heading south.

  Whoever had attacked Mr. Bubble's clothing factory was probably waiting for him to return to the house in West Los Angeles. Gabriel had left his Honda back at the factory and needed another bike. In New York or Hong Kong—any vertical city—he could lose himself on the subway or in the crowd. But only homeless people and illegal immigrants walked in Los Angeles. If he were on a motorcycle, he would be absorbed by the traffic that flowed from the surface streets into the anonymous confusion of the freeways.

  An old man named Foster lived two doors down from Gabriel's house. Foster had a toolshed with an aluminum roof in his backyard. Gabriel climbed up on the concrete wall that separated the freeway from the houses on his street, and then jumped onto the toolshed. Looking over the rooftops, he saw that a repair truck from the power company was parked across the street. He stood there for a few minutes, wondering what to do, and a yellow flame flashed inside the truck cab
. Someone sitting in the shadows had just lit a cigarette.

  Gabriel jumped off the shed and scrambled over the wall to the freeway. Now the sun was up, emerging like a dirty balloon from behind a line of warehouses. Better do it now, he thought. If they've been waiting all night, they're probably half asleep.

  He returned to the wall, grabbed the top, and pulled himself over to his weed-filled backyard. Without hesitation, he ran to the garage and kicked in the side door. His Italian-made Moto Guzzi was parked in the middle of the garage. Its large engine, black fuel tank, and short racing handlebars had always reminded him of a fighting bull waiting for a toreador.

  Gabriel slammed his fist on the button that activated the electric garage-door opener, straddled the motorcycle, and kick-started the engine. The metal garage door made a grinding sound as it rolled upward. The moment Gabriel saw five feet of clearance, he gunned the accelerator.

  Three men jumped out of the truck and sprinted toward him. As Gabriel roared down the driveway, a man wearing a blue jacket raised a weapon that looked like a shotgun with a grenade attached to the muzzle. Gabriel bumped across the sidewalk to the street and the man fired his weapon. The grenade turned out to be a thick plastic bag filled with something heavy. It hit the side of the motorcycle and the bike lurched sideways.

  Don't stop, Gabriel thought. Don't slow down. He jerked the handlebars to the left, recovered his balance, and roared down the street to the end of the block. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the three men running to the repair truck.

  Gabriel turned the corner at a steep angle, the Guzzi's back wheel spitting up gravel. He gunned the engine and a burst of speed pulled him back on the seat. His body seemed to become part of the machinery, an extension of its power, as he held on tightly and raced through a red light.

  ***

  HE STAYED ON surface streets, traveling south to Compton, then turned around and rode back to Los Angeles. At noon, he cruised past the corner of Wilshire and Bundy, but Michael wasn't there. Gabriel rode his motorcycle north to Santa Barbara and spent the night in a run-down motel several miles from the beach. He returned to Los Angeles the following day, but Michael still wasn't at the street corner.