Dantes' Inferno (29 page)

As he releases the brake and allows the truck to roll forward, gauging his entrance into traffic, he checks to make sure his cell phone is handy.

Timing is everything.

Accelerating Metal with Explosives: This method is used to predict the velocity to which explosives can accelerate materials placed in contact with them.

Paul W. Cooper and Stanley R. Kurowski,
Technology of Explosives

1:03
P.M
.
To quiet the chaos of his mind, Sweetheart kept his eyes on the tumbling view of the canyon as the Mercedes navigated the twists and turns of Topanga. The environment of dense foliage, thick underbrush, and tall tree canopy represented a simple system compared to the complexities of human interaction.

Sylvia seemed content to focus on scenery, too.

Sweetheart took advantage of the mutual silence to let go of his previous mood. Their exchange at the ruins of Simon Mole's old residence had bothered him much more than he liked to admit. He didn't want to think about Jason. Or Molly. He shook off images that threatened to disturb his focus. He concentrated on the mechanics of driving.

The Mercedes was in its element, gliding along, oblivious to the steep drop-offs, the ragged corners, the rock slides of Topanga. For miles, traffic was surprisingly light; they shared the road with a few bikers, assorted commuters, a horse trailer or two. Until they reached the village. As they passed the market, the secondhand store, the restaurant and realty offices, vehicles lined up and the cruising speed slowed to fifteen miles per hour. At
this pace it would be
tomorrow
before they reached the coast.

Two miles outside the village, the Mercedes doubled speed again, hitting thirty, then forty. Still, they were a good ten minutes from the junction of Topanga Canyon Boulevard, Pacific Coast Highway, and the restaurant.

1:14
P.M
.
Sweetheart watched as Sylvia riffled in her briefcase.

He reached across, placing his cell phone in her lap. “Use mine.”

She punched in a number—Sweetheart thought it must belong to Leo Carreras—then she hugged the handset to her ear. After thirty seconds, she swore under her breath. “His voice mail picked up.”

“In four minutes we'll be at the restaurant—you can talk to Leo in person.”

“Why didn't he make it easy and meet us at his house?”

“I'm assuming he had business out this way; a consultation.” He glanced at her. “This isn't exactly a major detour.”

Sylvia nodded, but Sweetheart saw her jam her hands between her thighs. A sudden awareness, he guessed, that she'd been gnawing on her fingernails for the last five miles. Better fingernails than pills or cigarettes, he thought.

With a big sigh, she closed her eyes and leaned back in the seat. She didn't open them again until Sweetheart slowed around a curve. They were less than a mile from the coastal highway and the Pacific Ocean. Here, small businesses had worked their way up the canyon, and hodgepodge signs and billboards advertised surfboards, flowers, hamburgers, palm readings.

Hot weather had only intensified the usual seaside crowds.

He shifted into second gear, anticipating the intersection, now three quarters of a mile away.

Sylvia jumped in her seat as the cell phone bleated.

When she offered Sweetheart the phone, he barked: “Yes, Luke?”

“Professor?” Something was wrong—Luke's voice was thin and tense. “
He's
on the other line—he says it's an emergency.”

“Turn on the recorder, then put him through,” Sweetheart said, his voice flat with urgency. He heard several clicks as Luke made the connections; then a new voice addressed him.

“Furious Phlegyas—you're just in time for a lesson in the fifth circle. We both know who falls so low . . .”

“Souls ruled by anger.”

“Dantes said you were good, Professor.”

“Get to the point.”

“Stay away from the temple of the sun god.”

“Apollo.” Sweetheart was concentrating on aural information—instantly processing M's verbal content, tone and phrasing, references. At the same time, he was scanning traffic, pedestrians, the intersection ahead.

“Who's burning the temple?” Sweetheart caught sight of a low sedan with tinted windows. Then a van parked in the lot of the market across the street caught his eye. He said, “Simon? Is that—”

“Shut up and listen,” M ordered. “Your baby is carrying a special package—and she's set to blow in . . . one minute, two seconds.”

“What do you—”

“Make that one minute exactly.”

Click
. Disconnection.

Sweetheart saw his fear mirrored in Sylvia's dark eyes.

“Start timing forty-five seconds,” he ordered. “We've got a bomb.”

“Oh, shit.” But she was already focusing on her watch.

“Give me every five—out loud,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Forty-five.”

“What did you bring with you in the car?”

“My briefcase—my phone—
forty
seconds—my laptop—”

Sweetheart saw the laminated plastic case beneath Sylvia's feet. “It's in the laptop.”

Sylvia pulled back abruptly, and her fingers dug into leather—but she didn't lose focus. “
Thirty-five
seconds,” she said. “Can we throw it—”

She broke off, registering cars, pedestrians, the highway traffic signal—now just a hundred feet ahead—turning yellow.
“Thirty!”

“Hold on!” Sweetheart bellowed, bearing down simultaneously on the horn and the accelerator.

The Mercedes shot forward, weaving past a FedEx truck, a yellow school bus, and an open Jeep filled with teenagers, then dodging a dozen oncoming motorcycles. He barely registered the surprise on the faces of the middle-aged bikers.

“Twenty-five seconds,”
Sylvia hissed.

“Give me your briefcase!”

She shoved the leather case into his lap.

The Bay View Restaurant, just ahead, was perched on fortified bedrock and pilings, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Due to constant shoring of an eroding coast, the parking lot (where it met the cliff edge) was rimmed with a series of five-foot-high metal posts, each embedded in a roughly molded concrete base; orange hazard tape strung from pole to pole was all that alerted drivers of danger—a headfirst
dive onto the rocky tidal zone twenty feet below the cliff.

Thank God it was tape instead of the usual seven-foot-high chain-link fence.

Sweetheart downshifted, scanning the area; he saw a young mother pushing a baby in an elaborate stroller. She was midway across the lot.

He prayed the Mercedes had enough metal to contain most of the blast.

“
Twenty
seconds—”

—and a red light.

But Sweetheart kept going—horn blaring as he plowed the Mercedes through the busy intersection. Oncoming cars skidded left and right. A massive tour bus went into a long, harrowing skid across asphalt. The Mercedes scraped bumpers before it bounced over the curb into the crowded parking lot of the restaurant.

They were headed straight for the cliff.

Now he braked, shouting, “Get ready to jump!” From the corner of his eye, he saw Leo Carreras standing near the door of the restaurant.

“
Ten
seconds!”

“Do it, now, Sylvia! Jump!”

She pushed open the door, and he shoved her out with his right arm. He saw a blur of color as she hit the ground.

Just ahead, a narrow parking space with a blue-and-white handicapped insignia would give him access to the ocean—if the Mercedes didn't blow first.

He pushed open the driver-side door.

Please don't detonate
—

He jammed Sylvia's briefcase onto the accelerator just as he thrust himself from the vehicle. Pain shot through his body as he collided with earth.

The linen sleeve of his jacket caught on metal as the Mercedes shot forward like a two-ton bullet.

Sweetheart's feet left the ground, his body torqued, and he was dragged ten feet to the edge of the cliff.

When he was inches from air—inches from jagged tidal rocks and roiling ocean waves—the fabric of his suit gave way like a zipper.

The Mercedes lunged, plunging off the side of the cliff in a perfect suicide dive, but Sweetheart, suddenly free of forward thrust, seemed to float in midair.

Abruptly, he fell to the ground, where gravel bit into his skin as his body came to rest halfway off the precipice. He grabbed for a handhold, catching a bit of exposed root, a few strands of yucca.

He heard the booming explosion of the bomb as it drowned out the softer roar of Pacific breakers. He saw flames, and shooting stars.

His Mercedes crumpled, shattered into fiery bits and pieces.

He thought it like a prayer:
Nokotta. You're still in the match
.

You're still alive
.

The disagreements that have arisen over the meaning, significance, and consequences of anarchy—especially with respect to the extent to which the absence of central authority hinders the prospects of inter-state cooperation—is at the center of the latest academic controversy between neorealism and neoliberalism.

Brian C. Schmidt,
The Political Discourse of Anarchy

M watches as the car explodes into a vortex of mutating metal, glass, plastic, until it is broken down to its basic, primary
car
elements.

He shifts into first gear, merging carefully with southbound traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway.

Time to go. The forces of good will arrive any minute. And he has a long drive ahead of him—and an important stop to make, a crucial job to do—before he can return to the apartment in San Pedro.

He doesn't look back at the scene of most recent destruction. No need to linger. It is nothing special.

His inquisitors won't miss him; they are busy, and it's been a very big day.

They have been searching for truth. Along the way, they have discovered a boy, a house, a school.

In his mind, the boy who lived in that house—the young man who went to Oxford and UCLA, and who died in Europe—was never meant to survive. From the moment of his birth, from the first bawling complaint, that boy had been unfit, a runt earmarked for the drowning sack.

Those without the fiercest will, the
weak
, are culled; that is the brutal truth of the world's order, that is the world of Darwin's hierarchy of evolution, which itself evolved from Christian theology sprung from the deserts of Negev and Kara Kum, inscribed by feverish monks dodging plague and pestilence, embellished by the poetics of Dante and Milton.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is God's fucking truth
.

Dead boy, Simon. Stupid boy who worshiped blindly.

A one-eyed, one-armed fool who lost his way in a world where he never belonged. He was put out of his misery many years ago.

M is another animal altogether. His flesh is encased in
chitin. He was born a beast. One who vicariously tasted innocence, found it to his liking, and feasted. His sins are too many to mention, but don't imagine he fears Dante's hell.

The only thing he truly fears is
nothing
. Emptiness. The void of his existence.

What keeps nonexistence at bay?
The anticipation of revenge
.

He chides himself softly. All these archaic games, this schoolboy bluster,
enough
.

Tonight he has work to do close to home.

Last-minute touches for his pièce de résistance have begun.

Tomorrow he will take the first step down to the sixth circle of hell.

Two more lives his soul to take
.