The Project (15 page)

“You’re telling me to send a car?” (Bad cop.) “You don’t tell me what to do. You’re in a lot of trouble, kid. You do what you’re told to do!”

Luke began to feel removed from his body, as if he were watching the scene being played out by actors, instead of being part of it.
Stay calm
, he thought.

“Why are you avoiding my eyes?” Glenn pointed a finger at his own right eye to illustrate his point. “Are you lying to me?”

Luke forced himself to focus on the man’s face, but the feeling of detachment remained. His voice said, “If I’m lying, you’ll find out real fast.”

“You’ll never die of a heart attack, will you?” Glenn said.

“What?”

“You’re telling me your teacher has been kidnapped, you’ve been chased by thugs with guns, arrested by the police, and you’re as calm as a Hindu cow. You’re not even sweating.”

Luke watched the drama unfolding in front of him with interest and heard himself ask, “What would sweating accomplish?”

“Might help me believe you, you lying little ratbag.” (Bad cop still.)

“But if I’m not lying and you do nothing, you’ll look like a real moron.” Luke expected an explosion from the bad cop for that remark, but the good cop appeared instead.

Glenn smiled. “Wouldn’t be the first time and it won’t be the last. But you say that this Mullins, Mueller, whatever, is really after this book. So he won’t be in a hurry to leave if he hasn’t got it.”

“He knows I saw Ms. Sheck,” Luke said, “so right now he could do anything.”

Glenn put his hands flat on the desk and leaned back in his chair. Luke tensed, wondering which cop he was getting next.

The interview (interrogation?) room was a small paneled office at the rear of the police station in city hall. There was no mirrored window like on TV shows, but two cameras mounted high on the ceiling recorded everything.

Luke’s mother was in a brightly lit waiting room by the main entrance, and he couldn’t imagine what she was thinking or feeling.

Bad Cop Glenn said, “Come on, kid, admit it. You’re making up the whole thing to try and get yourself out of trouble.”

“Send a car to the airport,” Luke said.
Stop being an idiot!

“Your fingerprints were found at the library, and one of the news crews caught you on tape climbing over the wall of the ramp. You’re up the creek and your paddle ain’t working.”

“Hangar two.”
Just listen instead of talking for once!

“And all this crap about a rich book collector trying to steal a book that he could simply buy just doesn’t make sense. Why not make up something simpler?”

“Because I didn’t make it up,” Luke said. “Send a car to the airport.”
How hard could that be?

“That’s the only thing that’s got me wondering.” The good cop was back again. “Why would an intelligent kid like you make up a story that’s so preposterous that you’d be caught out in a second?”

Luke said nothing.

“Where is this book?” Glenn asked.

“At home,” Luke replied. “It’s well hidden.”

“Tell me where,” Glenn said, picking up his pen.

“Send a car to the airport,” Luke said, “and I’ll show you where.”

“I don’t negotiate,” Bad Cop thundered, slamming his hand down on the table, but the sunshine came out immediately: “But we’ll go to your house. If this book really exists, then I’ll think about it.”

“I’m not moving until you send a car,” Luke said. “Mueller
has a nuclear bomb, and you’re sitting here doing nothing.”

“Ah, yes, the nuclear bomb.” Glenn sighed.

He checked some of his notes and said, “You saw the nuclear bomb plans for just a minute or so, yet you were able to reproduce them from memory. That’s some amazing memory you have.”

“Thank you.” Luke ignored the sarcasm.

“With a memory like that, you’d be able to tell me the badge number of the cop who picked you up,” Glenn said.

The feeling of dislocation slipped away, and Luke found himself back in his own body—part of the play, no longer sitting in the audience.

“His name was Officer Aaron Fayers,” Luke said.

“I didn’t ask you his name.” Glenn leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “Again, it seems that someone with a memory like yours would have no trouble with a badge number.”

“I hadn’t finished,” Luke said. “His badge number was 488015. Would you like to know the license plate of his car?”

Glenn nodded, so Luke told him, then said, “When we arrived at the police station, there were six other vehicles in the yard.” He listed the license plates of those vehicles, then added the security code Glenn had punched into the lock on the rear door of the station.

Glenn unfolded his arms and stared at him for a moment. Luke struggled with the urge to look at the floor, or the ceiling, or the desk, or his hands.

“Send a car to the airport,” Luke said. “What harm can it do?”

Glenn made that funny half shrug again and picked up a telephone off the desk. “Janice, it’s Glenn.… No, we’re in the middle of it now. Tell her I’ll see her as soon as I can. Can you do me a favor and ask Matt to swing past the municipal airport? Hangar two. See if there is a private jet in there with call sign …”

Luke recited the registration number, and Glenn repeated it into the phone. “If there is, see if he can have a quiet look in one of the windows. Unofficial. Check if there’s anyone inside.” He looked at Luke and listened for a moment, then said, “I’m not sure, but if so, call me straightaway.”

He hung up the phone with a quick thanks and a goodbye.

“The trouble you’re in is going to get worse if you’ve made all that up,” he said.

“I just hope you’re not too late,” Luke replied.

They left through the rear entrance. No handcuffs. No point, really. Glenn knew who Luke was and where he lived. Where could a fifteen-year-old kid run to anyway?

Luke thought of his mother still waiting at the front of the police station and felt bad.

Glenn’s car was unmarked, a big Ford wagon that made a throaty noise when he started it. It was only ten or twelve blocks from the police station to his house, and they were there within minutes.

“Don’t go running off anywhere,” Glenn said, “or I’ll hunt
you down.” He smiled to let Luke know that he was joking.

Maybe.

Luke led him down the side path of the house to the ash dump. “Here,” he said, opening the heavy, rusted metal cover and reaching down inside. He brushed away the top layer of ash and felt around for the plastic covering. But he couldn’t find it. He dug deeper into the ash. His fingers scraped concrete, and he looked at Glenn in a panic.

“It’s not there!” he said.

To give Glenn credit, he actually looked a little disappointed. Luke thought he was really a good cop at heart.

“Anywhere else you want to look?” Glenn asked.

“No, it was here,” Luke said in desperation. “Right here. And nobody knew except Tommy, me, and Godzilla!”

“Godzilla?” Glenn sighed. “Tell me all about it back at the station. Or will you have a different story by then?”

“It was here.” Luke almost screamed it.

Mueller had it. That was the only thing that made any sense. Someone must have told him where it was.

“He’s got Tommy!” Luke said with a sudden horrible certainty.

“Come on,” Glenn said, and led the way back up the path to his car.

As Glenn reached the corner of the house, he coughed and his hands shot up in the air. He bent over and began to sag, and Luke couldn’t comprehend what was going on until he saw the big man in the black ski mask, the aerosol can, and every fine droplet of spray that was drifting toward his face. Luke tried not to breathe in, but it was already
too late. The last thing he saw was Godzilla, the giant squirrel, halfway up the tree outside their house, an acorn clutched in his paws. He was looking at Luke and seemed to be shaking his head disapprovingly, and then everything started to fade.

PART III
THE RIVER

There are three classes of people:
Those who see
.
Those who see when they are shown
.
Those who do not see
.

—Leonardo da Vinci

L
uke’s grandmother was watching him when he woke.

She was seated in a plush leather chair opposite him, and she was holding a gun.

But that made no sense at all.

Luke’s grandmother lived in Dunedin, New Zealand. And she didn’t own a gun.

There was a constant rushing noise outside his bedroom window, and he turned to look, surprised to see that it was so small, and oval. He glanced back at his grandmother, and it wasn’t his grandmother at all. It was someone completely different but someone he knew.

His eyes were blurry and unfocused from having just woken, and he tried to rub them, but his hands would not move. Looking down, he saw they were fastened with a plastic tie.

He blinked a couple of times to clear his eyes and looked at the woman again.

It was the old lady with the groceries from the Central Hotel.

But why did she have a gun?

“Hello, Luke,” she said.

How did she know his name?

“Hi, Luke,” another voice said, and he turned his head groggily to his left to see his teacher Ms. Sheck.

For a brief moment, he thought he might be in trouble at school again, and then consciousness returned with a crash and a throbbing pain in his temple, and he realized that he really was in trouble. But far bigger trouble than he could ever be in at school.

He was in the jet. Mueller’s jet!

The inside of the jet was divided into two sections—individual seats and sofas. He was sitting in a group of four seats, two rows of two, facing each other with a polished wooden table in the center.

Near the front of the plane, a leather sofa ran sideways up to a bulkhead and a door, behind which he guessed was the cockpit.

He looked again at Ms. Sheck. Her hair and clothes were disheveled and sweaty, and she looked like she had been crying, if not today, then earlier. Tommy sat opposite her.

Mueller sat on the sofa with Mumbo, discussing something in a low voice.

Jumbo was nowhere in sight, and Luke wondered if he was flying the plane.

“Who are you?” Luke asked with a thick tongue.

The old lady smiled, but it was without humor. “My name is Gerda Mueller,” she said.

The pistol rested on her lap, but her hand was on the grip.

Gerda Mueller. For some reason it had never occurred to Luke that Mueller might be married.

“The police know everything,” Luke said. “Whatever you’re planning, it’s over.”

She shook her head and gave the same smile. “It’s not over. It hasn’t yet started.”

He glanced at Ms. Sheck and Tommy, but they both had blank expressions.

“I told them where the book was,” Tommy said. “I’m sorry, Luke.” He looked as though he was about to burst into tears. “They said they’d hurt me.”

Luke didn’t blame him. The spy-kid fantasy had just collided with the hard wall of reality, and it wasn’t nice.

He’d have done the same, and he told Tommy so.

Mueller had Luke’s backpack open on the floor in front of the sofa and was going over the rough sketch of the nuclear bomb that Luke had drawn at the engineering department, comparing it to his own original plans.

“You did this from memory?” he said. “Very impressive.”

Impressing Mueller was the least of Luke’s concerns.

Ms. Sheck said, “Tommy told me what you boys did. That was very brave.”

“I don’t understand why they kidnapped you,” Luke said.

Ms. Sheck looked bitterly at Mueller, seated at the front of the cabin. “It was the book.
Leonardo’s River
. I recognized it immediately,” she said. “At least I thought I did. I’d read about it in some library journal. When I got home, I checked it out on the Internet and found Mr. Mueller’s email address.”

She studied her fingernails, shaking her head. “I emailed him
and he called me about five minutes later. I don’t even know how he got my number. We talked about it, and he sounded so excited. I was really pleased. I couldn’t wait to tell Claudia Smith and the media—everyone. It would be a huge news story. But Mueller asked me not to. Not until he’d positively identified the book. That made sense. It would be embarrassing to make all that fuss only to find out it was the wrong book. Next thing I knew, he was at my door demanding to know what I had done with it. But I hadn’t done anything with it.”

“No,” Luke said. “We had.”

“I’ve been held on this plane for days,” Ms. Sheck said. “I’ve lost track of how many. I tried screaming, but I think it’s soundproof.”

Luke said, “Are you guys nuts? This is kidnapping. The cops will hunt you down wherever you go. Wherever you take us.”

Gerda toyed with the pistol on her lap. “They will look. But it will be a while before they even know where to start, and by then it will be too late.”

“What do you mean, too late?” Luke asked with a sudden chill down his spine.

Gerda looked directly into his eyes and said, “They will not find you. You will be gone—”