Jumper

  I jumped, grabbed him from behind, and released him to sprawl forward onto the sand in the pit, his face a few feet from the fire. He scrambled back away from the light and stood.

  Matar was on the far side of the fire, shivering, his hands held up suddenly, to protect himself. His wet clothes were steaming. Cox was farther back, sitting up, wrapped in his sleeping bag in the chair I’d left there.

  Dad looked back and forth, bewildered. Not angry, not scared, but bewildered. This made me even angrier.

  I jumped and hit him, an uppercut with my damaged knuckles that snapped his mouth shut with a click. He fell over backward and I jumped back to the fire, clutching my sore hand to my chest. Matar scrambled away from the circle of light, into the darkness.

  “Is it my turn, next?”

  “Huh?”

  Cox sat up in the chair. “I said, is it my turn now? As long as you’re in the business. Should I stand up?” He made as if to stand.

  “Shut up. Sit down.”

  He settled back. “That’s your father, isn’t it?”

  I glared at Cox.

  Dad was sitting up, both hands on his jaw, moaning. I wanted to hit him again, even more than I wanted to keep punishing Matar.

  Cox spoke again. “You’ve taken your time in striking back at your father. Why didn’t you just kill him before? With that trick of yours, you could have made it look like suicide or at least provided a decent alibi. I mean... look out!”

  There was a rustle on the sand and I jumped sideways five feet. Matar moved through the space I’d occupied, his fist-sized rock swinging down, sharp edge forward. With my evasion, he had to skip awkwardly over the fire. He turned to face me, teeth bared.

  “Throw it in the water,” I said.

  He blinked. I raised my left hand as if to slap, even though I was ten feet away from him. He turned quickly and threw the rock underhand, away, to splash out in the darkness. I put my hand down.

  “That is my father,” I said, pointing. To Dad, who was glaring now, honest hatred, not bewilderment, I said, “This is Rashid Matar, the man that killed Mother.”

  They looked at each other, wary, curious. Dad said, “Why is he still alive?”

  I stared at the fire. The flames reminded me of the blast on the Cyprus runway. “Why are you still alive? If you want him dead, do it yourself.”

  Cox stood, holding the sleeping bag around himself like an Indian. I jumped behind him and said, “Hold still.” I put my arms around his waist and lifted him. He stiffened but made no move to strike. I jumped him to the parking lot of the Pierce Building in Washington, the spot where I’d grabbed him, the night before. It was snowing. The guard in the doorway’s glass cage saw us and pushed a button. Somewhere an alarm bell rang.

  Cox turned around and looked at me, dancing from foot to foot on the icy pavement, surprised as he recognized the building.

  “Are there any more of me, Cox?” I had to ask, I had to know.

  He looked surprised, then thoughtful. I’d given him some information he didn’t have. Now it was time to see if he’d reciprocate. Finally he said, “No. Not that we know of.”

  Alone. Forever alone. My shoulders slumped and my throat tightened.

  “If Millie is released unharmed, I’ll stop jumping NSA people all over the globe. I’ll leave you guys completely alone. If she isn’t released...” I started to say more, but stopped. “Just release her. She never did anything to you.”

  He licked his lips and started to shiver. Men began to pour through the building’s door.

  I jumped.

  They would never leave me alone.

  I sat on the floor of my cliff dwelling, feeding the wood stove, a blanket wrapped around me.

  It didn’t matter what I did to Dad, to Rashid Matar. It wouldn’t bring Mom back. She was gone, dead, worm food, just like the little Greek maid from the Argos. Just like the skinny Arab wired to explode. She wasn’t coming back.

  And would the NSA ever stop trying to use me, capture me, or, failing that, kill me? Would Millie ever be safe? Would we ever have a chance to be happy?

  I slammed the stove door and sparks flew upward, landing on the stone floor, burning minute holes in the blanket. I batted at them absently, then stood, letting the blanket slide to the floor. I jumped to the pit.

  Matar was choking Dad, straddling him at the edge of the water, his hands locked around Dad’s throat. Dad’s hands pulled feebly at Matar’s wrists. His face was dark in the firelight.

  I jumped forward and kicked Matar in his unprotected ribs. He flew off Dad, into the water yet again, and clutched at his side. I think I cracked some ribs.

  Dad started breathing again, deep, wheezing breaths. I grabbed him by his jacket collar and pulled him away from the water, up near the fire. Matar crawled slowly out of the water, still holding his side. He was breathing very carefully, short, shallow breaths of air.

  Why did I stop him?

  I considered jumping back to the cliff dwelling and getting one of the grenades, coming back, and pulling the pin. I didn’t know whether I would jump away before it exploded. I didn’t know whether I wanted to.

  Matar’s breathing regularized and he began speaking in Arabic and spitting at the ground between us. I realized that I couldn’t do the grenade thing. If I killed myself and the NSA didn’t know it, they might hold onto Millie forever.

  Is it normal for women to enter your life and then leave forever? Oh, Millie....

  I jumped behind Rashid and grabbed him at the collar and waist, keeping his wet clothes at arm’s length. He lashed back with one of his shoes, scraping my shin. I jumped.

  We appeared outside the observation deck of the World Trade Center. Twenty feet outside, well clear of the steel and glass sides, one hundred and ten stories up. The air was crisp and cold and we dropped toward the plaza below like rocks.

  Matar screamed and I pushed him away from me, letting him flail and twist below me. The air filled my coat, flapping it like laundry on a line, slowing me slightly, increasing the distance between myself and Matar. In nine seconds we would impact the concrete below, a quick death. Slightly behind him, I’d be able to watch Matar die before kissing the pavement.

  The NSA would identify the bodies and they’d let Millie go. Matar would never kill another innocent and I could stop hurting.

  After two seconds the air sounded like a hurricane, tugging, numbing. After four seconds it was a steady upward pressure flattening my posture to face down. Matar was thirty feet below me and I was sliding sideways, my coat like a sail. I trailed my arms behind me, and the coat slid off as if jerked by an enormous hand. I fell quicker, closing on Matar again. The lighted fountain in the plaza grew closer and closer.

  Matar kept screaming, a keening cry barely audible over the rush of the wind. The sound made me smile.

  Fuck this.

  I jumped the distance between us, grabbed onto his belt, and jumped back to the pit. Matar sprawled in the sand and kept screaming and screaming.

  Dad was sitting by the fire. His eyes were on Rashid. “What did you—” He swallowed. His voice was raspy. “What did you do to him?”

  “Sightseeing. Your turn.”

  He shivered. “No, that’s all right.”

  I jumped behind him and hauled him up by the back of his shirt. He scrambled to get his feet under him. “What—” I jumped him to the cemetery in Pine Bluffs, Florida, then shoved him down again, to sprawl forward. It was after midnight but a mercury vapor light mounted over the cemetery gate brought the carved letters into sharp relief: Mary Niles, 13 March 1945 to 17 November 1989.

  Dad whimpered. I reached down and pushed him flat onto the grave. With the other hand I snaked his belt out of his pants loops, then backed away.

  “Remember this, Dad?” I swung the buckle back and forth like a pendulum, the silver rodeo buckle winking in the light. I swung it suddenly back, over my head, and down. It slammed into the ground by his side and grass flew up. He flinched away. r />
  “How many times, Dad?” I brought it down on the other side. It gouged the earth. “How many times?”

  I took a step closer and smashed it again and again on the gravestone. The enameled design cracked and splintered, and the silver edges buckled. Scratches marred the stone surface. I threw the belt down in his lap.

  I pointed at the grave. “Would she be here if you hadn’t beaten her? Abused her? Caved her face in? Would she be in this grave if you’d stopped drinking?”

  He flinched more from my voice than he had from the belt. “What kind of man are you? What sort of creature? What pitiful excuse for a human being?”

  I took a step toward him and he started crying.

  What?

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I never meant it. I... I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t want to hurt you.” Tears were streaming down his face.

  It made me want to puke.

  What do you want from him?

  “Stop it! Stop it!”

  He flinched again and fell silent.

  “Get up.”

  He got slowly to his feet, one hand to his pants. The belt with its battered buckle stayed on the grave.

  “Turn around.”

  He did and I jumped him to the parking lot of the Red Pines Substance Abuse Treatment Center in Stanville. I let him go and he turned.

  “You know where we are?”

  He swallowed. “Yeah.”

  “Well?”

  “I can’t! I lost my job. I don’t have the insurance anymore!” The anguish in his voice was even greater than when he’d said he was sorry. It diminished him to be without his job, the same job he’d had all my life—or to admit it to me.

  “You could sell your car.”

  “They repossessed it!” He started to cry again.

  “Stop it! If there was a way to pay, would you do it?”

  He closed his mouth to a stubborn line.

  “How many people are you going to screw up before you die? Fuck it. It’s your life. Kill yourself if you want.” I stood there, arms crossed.

  “I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it. I’ll do it. I was gonna do it right before I lost my job.”

  I jumped to the cliff dwelling, then returned, a bag under my arm. Dad followed me up the steps and inside.

  It took a half hour to fill out the paperwork but Dad signed in all the right places. When it came time to discuss payment they said the average six weeks ran twelve thousand dollars.

  I paid cash, in advance.

  Chapter 20

  Cox came to the phone. He sounded tired.

  “Millie Harrison and her roommate are back in their apartment.”

  “What?”

  “They’re free. Home. Safe. A federal judge in Wichita issued warrants for the arrest of myself, several of my men, and the head of the agency for kidnapping. We could have stonewalled them, but... I talked my superiors out of it.”

  “Uh, for how long? When are you going to grab them again?”

  He was silent for a minute, then said, “I don’t know. I don’t know who else knows your identity and Millie’s relationship to you.”

  “Well, you certainly didn’t help in that area!”

  He cleared his throat. “No, I suppose not. But we did release her. Think about that. An act of good faith, not unlike your releasing me.”

  I stared at the phone. “I’ll think about it.”

  “You have our number.” He hung up.

  I phoned from a phone booth, still not sure if Cox could be trusted.

  “Hello?” Millie answered immediately, her voice anxious.

  “Any bogeymen around?” My voice was lighthearted. My eyes were full and my throat felt tight.

  “Oh, Davy! Oh, God, are you all right? Are you hurt?”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yes! The bastards better not come near me, either, or Mark will slap them with a—”

  I jumped to her bedroom and she dropped the phone. Her bed was stripped and boxes, half packed, covered the floor. Then I didn’t notice anything but the press of her body against mine, the smell of her hair, the taste of tears on her cheeks.

  When we’d loosened our arms enough to actually look at each other, she said, “You haven’t been eating.”

  I laughed. “Well, not really.” I looked around. “What’s with the boxes?”

  “Sherry is moving out. She doesn’t want to associate with me anymore. I hang out with ‘questionable’ people. I can’t afford this place on my own.”

  “Some friend.”

  She shrugged. “We were never that close. And she was locked in a room for a week just because she lived with me.”

  “Did they hurt you?”

  “No. They treated us with kid gloves, except for holding us incommunicado. They didn’t even ask any questions after the first day.”

  I thought back. That must have been after I started jumping agents to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

  “So, what are you going to do? Get a smaller apartment?”

  She shrugged. “Well, if I didn’t get any better offers... and stop grinning like that.”

  I kissed her.

  “I’d just as soon not have to worry about goons breaking in the door. If there’s anything to be said about your place, it’s private.”

  “The rent’s right, too.”

  She shrugged. “But you’ll have to make some way for me to get out of there in an emergency. And I want a real bathroom. Stop grinning like an idiot and help me pack.”

  Millie looked down into the pit. Matar was seated by the smoking remains of the fire. I noticed that he’d burned the chair after the firewood ran out. He was trying to sharpen one of the chair’s metal bolts on a piece of sandstone, but the hardened steel was just wearing a groove in the stone.

  She whispered, “What are you going to do with him?”

  “Well, I could drop him again from the World Trade Center, only this time...” I lowered my fist rapidly to waist height and opened it suddenly, flat, fingers extended. “Splat. Or I could drop him like I did the last time, pulling him away at the last moment, over and over again, until he loses his fear of it. Then I could let him hit.”

  Millie made a face. “If you’re going to kill him, just do it. Don’t play with him like a mouse.”

  “Do you think I should kill him?”

  She looked away from me, at the horizon and sighed. “It’s not my decision. He didn’t kill my mother, did he?”

  I nodded. “But it would affect how you feel about me, wouldn’t it?”

  She nodded slowly, looking back at me with solemn eyes.

  “I thought about leaving him in the pit, just putting several years of food there, and checking on him every couple of months. He wouldn’t kill anybody else.”

  “That’s sick. You’d be obligating yourself to take care of him forever.”

  “Well, yeah. Besides, somebody would probably run across him eventually or he’d carve climbing steps out of the pit.”

  She nodded. “Give him to the NSA.”

  “American justice? He was wearing a mask when he killed an American citizen. I doubt he’d be convicted. When he killed the maid, he was in Egyptian waters aboard a Greek ship. Oh my God... I forgot about the maid. Her body’s in Baltimore and they don’t have any idea who she is.”

  “Her family...”

  I nodded. I knew exactly how they must feel.

  I arranged for Cox to meet me in the Baltimore Hospital morgue, watching carefully. He arrived alone, with the paperwork.

  They put her, Maria Kalikos, in a body bag. The news media published her name, making much of her disappearance. Maria Kalikos—I wanted to remember it. I didn’t want to forget. Cox signed for her and distracted the attendant while I jumped the body to Athens Airport, to the tarmac, and put it in an empty baggage trailer. Then I went back and jumped Cox to the same place.

  The sun was low in the sky. It was late afternoon here, late morning in Baltimore. r />
  He looked at his watch. “Ten minutes.” He took out a knife and started to cut away the tag on the body bag, which said, BALTIMORE MORGUE.

  “No problem,” I said.

  I jumped to Heathrow Airport.

  Corseau was waiting by the New Caledonia ticket counter. He carried a camera and a tape recorder. We walked around a corner and I jumped him to Athens.

  “Brian Cox of the National Security Agency. Jean-Paul Corseau of Reuters News Service. Mr. Cox will be the ‘unidentified American intelligence agent.’ “

  Corseau looked like he tasted something bad but it was part of the deal—exclusive but limited coverage of the exchange. Cox was even unhappier about it, but it was one of my conditions. “Right,” said Corseau.

  “Be right back.”

  I jumped to the pit. Matar was ready. I’d handcuffed him earlier, wrists and ankles, and left him in a chair. As always he flinched back when I appeared.

  I smiled and considered taking him on one more drop off the World Trade Center. No—Millie wouldn’t like it.

  “What was my mother’s name?”

  He licked his lips. “Mary Niles.”

  “Right,” I said pleasantly. “And the maid from the Argos?”

  “Maria Kalikos.”

  I hadn’t taken him for any more “drops” but I’d threatened to if he forgot those names. When you’re responsible for the death of someone, you should remember their name.

  He screamed when we appeared on the tarmac, but abruptly cut it off when he realized he was on solid ground, not falling. I pushed him against the baggage trailer and he sat, next to the body bag.

  Cox handed me a slip of paper and some Greek coins. “Call that number and tell them what gate we’re at. Keep out of sight until they’re gone—it’s bad enough that we know who you are.”

  I was starting to like Cox. Didn’t trust him a bit, but I was definitely starting to like him.

  I turned to Matar. “Remember. If you escape, I will find you. If they don’t convict you, I will find you. If you ever kill again, I will find you. I assure you, you don’t want that.”

  He refused to look at me, but his face whitened.