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.
Twelve
HAVE I DONE this to myself? Is this how it ends for me, because of my own selfishness, my own vanity? She closed her eyes again on the vast empty cube of a room. Sterile, white, it flashed against her eyelids. She thought, Michael. She said his name in the darkness, “Michael,” and tried to picture him, to bring him up like an image on the computer of her mind. Michael, the archangel.
She lay still, trying not to fight, to struggle, to tense, to scream. Just lie as if it were her choice to be on the filthy bed, her hands chained with loops of plastic tape to the ends of the headboard. She had given up all deliberate efforts to break the tape, either with her own physical strength or with the power of her mind—a power she knew could work fatal results upon the soft tissue inside the human frame.
But late last night, she had managed to free her left ankle. She wasn’t sure why. She’d managed to slip it loose from the encircling tape, which had become a thick ill-fitted cuff. And with that foot free she had, over the long hours of the night, managed to shift her position several times, and to slowly drag loose the top sheet of the bed, stiff with urine and vomit, and force it down and away.
Of course the sheets beneath were filthy too. Had she lain here three days or four? She didn’t know and this was maddening her. If she even thought about the taste of water she would go mad.