I was free to do what I pleased, to leave the island—the men in gray had dropped me off with several thousand dollars in my pocket—or to stay and accept the invitation. Apparently, I was no longer a threat to anybody.
On the island, Dr. Goncourt’s estate was famous for having the only private beach with its own stromatolites. Stromatolites made up one of the prime attractions on Lee Stocking Island.
The house was medium in size, wood frame, concrete foundation, large windows with wooden shutters, mostly open. It blended in with the rustling palm trees. I avoided the house and walked straight toward the beach, as I had been instructed. It was ten o’clock.
A blond woman in a swimsuit with a turquoise shawl draped over her legs sat in a lounge chair away from the driftwood and sea wrack of the high-water mark. A sun cap hid her face. As I approached, she heard the slap of my sandals, shaded her eyes, and half rolled in the chair to look back at me. She stood to meet me, without a touch of embarrassment or self-consciousness.
“Hello, Hal,” she said.
“Lissa,” I said. “Surprised?”
“No,” she said. “Should I be?”
“You did your best to kill me.”
“Not my very best, obviously,” she said. “But now it’s over. A request was made, and Dr. Goncourt is waiting for you. I doubt you want to stay and chat with me.”
“I’ve been thinking about you a lot, actually.”
“I’ve been thinking about you not at all,” she said.
“Rob would have loved to see this,” I said.
“How considerate of you to think of your brother.”
“We went through a lot of misery because of you. I hear somebody’s replacing Golokhov after all these years.”
“Dr. Goncourt. Indeed.”
“Are you guarding him?” I asked.
“He doesn’t have long to live. We decided it would be best to let him work and save his dignity, away from the mess.”
“Is it finished? The control, the tagging, the runners? The government is shivering like a big dog now, throwing it all off, don’t you think?”
“Of course, Hal,” she said, as if humoring a child. “You can just walk out there, through the water. The waves are light. No more than a few minutes, though. He tires quickly, and we’re leaving soon for the mainland. We won’t stay for the storm.”
“Moving to another estate? More hidden riches?”
Lissa shrugged.
I wanted to reach out and strangle her, or just touch her face, to discover whether she was a phantom. I could not be sure anything I saw was real.
“Why am I here?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But don’t do anything rash.” She lifted her arm and crooked it, then pointed her finger into the trees beside the house. I turned and saw four men in gray suits. Three of the men were young and athletic. The fourth was much older, in his seventies. He wore a Hawaiian shirt and Dockers. He was the man Ben had stared at in Anthrax Central.
Stuart Garvey.
I turned away then, hating the thought that Lissa would see me so confused. I stalked over the dry sand, onto the hard wet sand, then into the blue water. Stromatolites are not pretty, just stunted forests of little brown lumps in the water, surrounded by shifting sand. The brown towheads broke the gentle waves for thirty or forty feet before the ocean overtopped them.
A thin old man with a shock of white hair knelt in the water, a canvas bag slung around one shoulder. He looked up as I sloshed closer. His face was pale, heavily wrinkled, but his eyes were bright. He did not seem to have suffered from the same affliction as Irina Golokhova, and in fact he looked at least a hundred years old, though still spry. His wrinkled, spotted, but otherwise normal hands stroked the damp upper round of a stromatolite. Algae clung to his fingers.
He looked up. “Hello,” he greeted. “Are you a student of things biological? Do you know of these marvels?”
“Dr. Golokhov?”
He looked at me more critically. “Goncourt, please. Golokhov should have died decades ago.”
“I’m Hal Cousins. You killed my brother,” I said.
“Did I?” He made a regretful face. “I am sorry. I hope you will forgive me.”
This reaction brought all the blood to my face, but it also took me by surprise. “You damned near killed me.”
“How good that I failed,” he said with false gallantry.
“Don’t tell me it was war. It was vicious stupidity.”
“Perhaps it was,” he said. “Engendered by fear. Unimaginable, so much fear. You are one of the little human tumors, aren’t you? You and your brother. You both wanted to live forever.”
“I still do.”
“The Little Mothers watch over us all,” the old man said, and wiped his hands on his pants, leaving dark smears. “Sever the connections between the body and their ministrations, and you block far more than the path to old age. Have you ever felt fit and in tune? Life is good? Perhaps you have a mystical feeling of connection with Nature, with something higher? That is the voice of the Little Mothers. All the stresses and rewards of life are balanced, you are doing well, and they approve. To be judged and found wanting, that is painful. But take those voices away, and you soon lose all balance. We are far more than just brains encased in bone. Larger and older minds live inside our bodies and all around us, speaking in languages I have worked all my life to interpret.” He trailed his fingers in the water. “Perhaps we are only a dream the bacteria are having.”
I couldn’t just let the arrogant old bastard babble. I wanted answers. For Rob, for Ben.
“Did you make a deal with Stalin? How many people did you torture and kill?”
