Borderless Deceit (44 page)

Why, I wanted to know, was she doing this for me? I had only ever treated her with contempt.

“It was you playing sourpuss all the time. Maybe you don't know it, but you've got a perfect scowl. I figured, everyone else is all smiles all the time and they don't mean it. So that says something about you.”

“And you?” I countered. “What does it say about you?” Jaime mock-scowled, a hilarious, crab-apple twisting of her face. Then she snapped a finger at me which seemed to say,
You figure it out!

On the bus I thought of Jaime. Why had I promised her to go away and lie low? But beyond that, what caused me to promise her that from somewhere I would be in touch?

I also thought of Minding Merrick and Hugh-S.
We talk sometimes
. And why that ambiguous remark about something ending up in my boat? Texts in Chinese fortune cookies are like that. Then too there was the reference to Irving Heywood. And of all things, why the purdah offer by Hugh-S?

I let all these things drift back and forth and into and out of my thoughts. A promise to Jaime to be in touch. A promise to Merrick to report on my catch. A promise to Hugh-S to indicate where I'd be. Effectively the promises were all the same – that I wouldn't
permanently drop out of sight. Was there a common threat? Were Jaime, Merrick and Hugh-S somehow linked? Was Jaime part of something larger than I had imagined? There were no clues. Or was
that
the clue? Something to puzzle out. Of course, the way that day developed further,
they
lacked a few clues too. Not one of them knew I was on a bus, that I was speeding south, and that, like Jaime and Silicon Valley, I now had a destination too. Mind games. The more I delved into them, the more they tantalised me.

Mostly though, as the bus transported me away, I thought about Anne-Marie and through her of Rachel.
She needs someone she trusts to be near
. Anne-Marie had voiced this opinion while sipping from her mug. My reply was that surely, that ruled me out. Why would she trust me after I had failed her so badly in Berlin? Anne-Marie scoffed at this. “You're a fast learner, Carson. Becoming Rachel's confidant, you'll pick it up.”

I tried to imagine going to Rachel and being with her. Yet I wavered. Anne-Marie waited. Intermittently she nodded encouragement, then finally she said:
Do it, Carson. Just do it
.

The thought of seeing Rachel stirred me. I mumbled, “I…uh…I thought…I might go on a vacation.”

It was all Anne-Marie needed. “Where?”

“Not sure.”

“Why?”

“I need a break.”

“When?”

“Soon…maybe today.”

For Anne-Marie this brought closure. “Why didn't you say so earlier? Problem solved. Spend your vacation with Rachel.”

It was so quick and easy that it bewildered me. Right away I tried to worm out of it. In vain. Each protest I made was weaker than the one before, while Anne-Marie's rejections became steadily more resolute. I tried one last objection, but it withered on my tongue. “Where is she?” I asked at last. “The postcard said you would know. Vienna, I suppose.”

“Oh no. Not Vienna. Turrialba. Ever heard of it?”

Jaime insisting that I evade Heywood, pressure from Anne-Marie to search out Rachel – the force of the confluence overwhelmed me, carried me away, immersed me in a state I almost always shunned: I turned traveller. But not your standard type. Not some waxwork frozen in time in the glacial airport queues. Purdah or not, I didn't want my progress registered. I intended to stay off the radar screens, to leave no trace, not of where I was going, nor where I had been. Something had caused Rachel's life to rupture and I feared somewhere out there were certain twisted Heywood types who could use me to locate her.

Once on the run, I had time to dwell on Rachel's postcard. If Anne-Marie was right, if Rachel was driven by fear, what could be the cause? Her work in Bucharest – the daily hand-holding of visitors, the too-thin-spreading-of-self over the bland social functions – had been routine. And the pattern of her visits to Alexandria had been steady. Nothing stood out there. Had Anne-Marie and I missed something? Beyond the words in the postcard, had Rachel sent a subtler signal?

I also thought about the way Rachel disappeared, how
she
was managing to stay off radar screens. Neither I nor Jaime could find a thing on her. Had she taken on deep cover? If so, how? With whose help? And what about the timing? Was it a coincidence that pressure to disappear hit us both nearly at the same time? Had my attention to her – and through her to the Junker and the Caliph – so easily detected by Jaime – been
picked up elsewhere too? Had the effect of my blundering rippled out and somehow caught up with her? Foreboding throttled my breath when I thought I was the one who put Rachel in danger.

I wondered too what real chance there was that we would rendezvous. In an unheard of place called Turrialba? But suppose we did. Would I have the courage to take her back through the years? Would she be prepared to listen to a story of duplicity, of a friendship betrayed? Would she condemn me, send me packing? Or, could there be a miraculous turning back of the clock? Could the innocence of the early years, the easy, impromptu chatting in the hallways, always so companionable, so filled with pleasantries, be regained? I also thought back to the long, laid-back night with Jaime when I had revealed all this. It had been like a dress rehearsal for opening up, for honesty, for building trust. How odd, I thought, as I set out to search for Rachel, that it was the night with Jaime which now gave me strength.

Of course, I was inept at it, I mean the travelling. I groped my way forward as if blindfolded. The route to Turrialba became complicated. I lost track of the back-road busses I took and stopped counting the leaky tubs with me on board chugging across West Indian waters.

The first stage of a zigzag route south took me across the St. Clair River into the US. The monotony of the days must have anaesthetised that border crossing long ago, for scarcely anyone took notice of my presence on the 9:00 p.m. bus. A flashlight briefly illuminated my ID. “Going where, dearie?” the uniformed woman asked.

“Major league baseball,” I mumbled. “I'm a fan. Travelling around to take in some games.”

The lightbeam fell on me. “Like my husband, huh? Ape mad about the Texas Rangers. Always driving down. Well, fellah, catch yourself a foul ball.” She moved on deeper into the bus.

In Flint, Michigan, I slept on a bench in the terminal. Mental numbness next morning caused me to get on a departure for Chicago instead of Detroit. I discovered this just before Michigan City and promptly jumped out. A string of short-haul, local busses delivered me to Indianapolis. From there, on day three, it was south and east through Kentucky into Tennessee.

The route curved towards the Great Smoky Mountains and as the road began twisting up with spectacular intermittent views back through the trees, I began to feel strangely well. I stopped watching the driver's rearview mirror to determine if furtive eyes there were observing me. And I no longer cared whether I was the topic of nearby, hushed conversations. With the bus belching higher up into the mountains, encumbrances from my past began to vaporize. Only three days had passed since I promised Jaime I would run and hide, but already I had stopped thinking about my cell and the heavy files there of a world growing nastier all the time.

And from this pleasant new perspective I began to speculate why I always overreacted to Service ridicule. Why had I allowed my guts to roil at every snub? What had been the good of it? Because now – here – who cared? In this way the superstructure of twenty years of negative attitudes was falling apart, and as it dissipated, so did the granite set of my face. A soft, hallucinogenic-like wonder took its place. I became glued to the window and watched big birds soar over deep folds in the mountains. There in the Great Smokies, during that ascent, I decided that no matter what lay ahead I would never go back. With that resolved, it was as if scales fell from my eyes. And more strangely still, with all clarity, I saw that monolith again, the symbol which set off the night with Jaime. How it had threatened, yet how different its portent was now. If anything, it lured me – symbolising vistas of freedom, scenes I had never before beheld. It caused contentment to fill my mind. Freedom, the monolith seemed to be announcing, is the basis for a charitable co-existence with one's fellow man. Had it, I now wondered, all along been a symbol that explained Rachel?

At the mountain crest there was a public area where the bus stopped. Passengers spilled out and headed for the restrooms. I wandered to a lookout which offered an expansive view west. The air was uncommonly clear. No dark clouds, no swirling fog welled up the slopes of the Smokies that day. I don't know how far I saw. Tennessee rested below. Beyond would be Arkansas, and beyond that Oklahoma. From there the continent ran on through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona. And farther still lay Silicon Valley, that prominent location for Jaime's sense of family. I thought of her.
Gotta hug ya
. It seemed her desire for it came from the heart. And yes, I embraced her back, though it had
startled me, and I must have looked more confused than happy. So she marched off. In the high-altitude air I quietly wished I could replay that moment.

The bus, squeaking and shuddering, descended towards the east and lumbered onto the Atlantic plain. By evening it straggled into Charleston. That night I was on an Interstate express going south along the coast. In Fort Lauderdale I climbed out into a rising morning heat. It didn't take long to find more transport…of the informal kind – a poor man's water taxi, a stinkpot really, which set course straight east into the Atlantic haze. The Bahamas are not far off and before nightfall I stood on shore. Port Lucaya. No immigration officer in sight on that remote pier. Straight away the stinkpot putt-putted back. I slung my rucksack over a shoulder and sauntered off to spend the night in the shadows.

This, more or less, was how it went for days – me seeking out rusting hulks with their operators delivering me for a little cash from one island to the next. I might be dropped off at a jetty, or in a bay, or sometimes in a port. Often on board, resting against piles of nets I'd doze off. Other times I would sleep a few hours under a palm tree just off a beach, or check into a rooming house of the unlicensed kind. No one paid me much attention because, I assumed, I was starting to look as scruffy as any other regular old salt.

For a couple of hundred US, a corroded trawler with a bearing due south took me away from the Bahamas. When the Dominican Republic was a dark ochre pencil line on the horizon, we chanced upon a small trawler and in the gentle swell I jumped from one vessel into the other. The crew finished their fishing, then headed for land. A further dollop of cash paid for a motorcycle ride from the local quay to a town called Puerto Plata. From there I traversed the island by bus, thus slipping in to Santo Domingo. In its port I located a tramp steamer with a free cabin. Once it finished taking on cargo it sailed southwest. The Panama Canal was next.

Looking back, it seems time stood still throughout that circular Caribbean trek. Ferried from island to island, leaning into the wind from the bows, mesmerised by the play of light on water, I was still further transformed. Pangs of well-being, that same lightheadedness I felt in the Great Smokies, grew stronger. Sea smells, the dull thudding
of diesel engines, a shared gulp of cheap rum now and then, saltwater spray in the face, scenery so fine that either you wept or had to ignore it – all this gelled, and cleansed, and took me to a new pinnacle of serenity.

On the tramp steamer, once out on the open sea, I went to lie down on my bunk. Flat on my back, eyes closed, sensing unity with the ship's rolling, I was euphoric with the bearing I now had: physically it was southwest; metaphysically it was into an unknown.

Had this happened to Rachel too?
The future can't be anything like the past
. Was this her way of saying that henceforth each next day should be exalted as an inspiring new question mark? Anne-Marie had interpreted Rachel's scribbled sentence differently. She saw it as an idiom for escape. Which was it? Or had Rachel meant it both ways? Once more I wondered whether Anne-Marie was right, that a dark grip had tightened on Rachel from which in the nick of time she'd slipped away. I might know soon. It might not be too long before I found her. I pictured the reunion and again rehearsed what I would say.

The Caribbean crossing was smooth. Before the Panama Canal the ship dropped anchor, then waited. A whole flotilla was waiting to push through to the Pacific. I studied ships on all sides, port, starboard, from the bow and stern. The captain handed me binoculars and I made out people on other decks. I nearly waved at them. Even on the high seas with its distances I was now open to feeling togetherness.

The Canal's operation interested me. When a pilot came on board next day I pumped him with questions. My curiosity infected him, because on the bridge, in between instructions to the first officer, as we moved through the Gatun Locks and then into Gatun Lake, he described the Canal's history, its hydrology and economics, even its politics. All in passable English. Then he fixed on himself. His name was Estavan. His family lived on the Panamanian coast near the border with Colombia, but he preferred to stay in Panama City. “Come and see me,” Estavan said. “Anytime. I shall introduce my friends to you. Where are you going now?”

Nowhere in particular, I replied. “Just drifting.”

“
Maravillosa!
” A decision was made on the spot that at the end of his pilotage I would join him on the launch to shore.

In this way I put foot on land again without a passport being shown.

But then the hours turned claustrophobic. Estavan's social energy exhausted me. There was a ninety-minute super-tourist tour of Panama City with eyes laid on a cathedral, a presidential palace, and several important museums, me nodding mechanically at fact after explained fact and anecdote after narrated anecdote. With evening falling we settled under an awning on a quiet square, Estavan still reciting chapter and verse, as if from either a detailed tourist guide, the history books, or his complex family tree. Expansive views on the
yanquis
and Manuel Noriega and the drug trade followed until Estavan's friends began arriving, each one joyously welcomed, each one loudly exclaiming his great happiness to be there. Cacophony, hilarity, endless rounds of drinks. Open-mouthed, I laughed along, yet was plotting an escape. Around midnight I penned Estavan a note consisting of one word:
Gracias
, stuck it in his shirt pocket and walked away. When I glanced back from the opposite side of the square I saw it was catching up with him. He unfolded the piece of paper and raised an arm to wave.
Adios, amigo
, he yelled. He tried to get up as if to follow me, but fell back in his chair.