Code 6, p.10
Code 6, page 10
Kate didn’t volunteer anything. “I’m sure he’ll be back.”
“It seems that no one can tell me when that might be.”
“What would you like me to do?”
“This is not cool, Kate. Games like this inevitably make matters worse. Maybe you can mention it to your father.”
Kate felt a knot in her stomach. First her father had asked her to talk to Noah, and now Noah was using her as the go-between with her father. She was starting to feel like the scarf knotted around the frozen rope in a proverbial tug-of-war.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she said, and then she checked her smartwatch. “Wow, it’s later than I thought. I’m going to head back. Lots of packing still to be done.”
“Good to see you,” said Noah.
“Likewise,” said Kate, and they headed off, Kate in her direction and Noah in his.
Chapter 15
Patrick woke to the patter of falling rain on a sagging canvas tarp. A proper tent was apparently too much to ask for on this corporate survival exercise. They’d been kind enough to provide hiking boots for the climb into the mountains, but beyond that, he had only the basics: a knife, a few lengths of rope, a pack of matches, a blanket to fend off the chill of the damp mountain air, and a tarp to lie upon on clear nights. Patrick had spent the previous two nights sleeping on the cold ground, each corner of his tarp tied to a banana tree for shelter from the misty rain.
Patrick still had no idea where he was. He’d flown commercial from Reagan National to Miami International Airport. An evening flight on a private jet, “window shades down,” had landed him on what appeared to be a private runway in a valley, the surrounding mountaintops glowing in the moonlight. A boat took him upriver. The pilot and his mate spoke no English, and even though Patrick was somewhat conversant in Spanish, they had no interest in answering his questions. The boat stopped somewhere in the jungle at dawn. There, he met Javier, who’d introduced himself as Patrick’s “safety net” and laid out the rules.
“I’ll be nearby at all times. I may choose to bandage a blister on your foot. I might take your temperature, if I think you look ill. I may even give you extra food, if I think you’ve earned it. But I’m here mainly in case of an emergency. However, if you call on me—if you use your safety net—you fail. Any questions?”
Patrick had answered in Spanish, guessing from the length of the flights that he was somewhere in South America, perhaps the Andes. Morning brought confirmation that he’d guessed correctly.
“Buenos días, Patrick,” said Javier. “You have company.”
Patrick sat up and looked around. The rain had suddenly stopped, and streaks of sunlight shone through the thick canopy overhead. Beyond the giant elephant-ear-leaf plants in the middle distance, he counted four other tarps like his strung from tree trunks, makeshift tents. His gaze drifted toward a wisp of smoke rising from a smoldering campfire. Three men and a woman were seated on an enormous log, warming themselves, their blankets draped around their shoulders.
“Is this my team?” asked Patrick.
“No. Your competition.”
Patrick almost smiled. He liked games, and as he walked over to the campfire to meet the other corporate superstars, he liked his chances against this group.
“I’m Patrick,” he said, and the others introduced themselves. The accountant from New York was a fish out of water. Same for the insurance executive from Chicago. The engineer from British Columbia might offer some competition, but surely he’d underestimate someone like Patrick, the “tech kid” who everyone assumed was more comfortable in the virtual world. He wouldn’t let on that he’d spent every summer of his boyhood camping and exploring the mountains of North Carolina, no video games allowed.
Javier brought them breakfast in a pot. Beans and rice.
“Same as last night’s dinner,” said the accountant.
“Which was left over from yesterday’s breakfast,” said Patrick.
Javier set the pot on a rock near the fire. “Better food to come. But only if you earn it.”
Patrick took the bait. “How?”
Javier removed a knife from his pocket and whistled. Only then did Patrick realize that each of his competitors also had a guide, as two other men and a woman emerged from Javier’s extralarge tent, all dressed in the same camouflage uniform. They stood in a group on the other side of the campfire, as if waiting for some form of entertainment to begin. Javier dropped to his knees and placed his left hand flat on the log, palm down, fingers spread.
“The challenge is on,” he said, as he unsheathed the large hunting knife on his belt.
The other guides hooted and hollered, egging him on.
“What the heck are you doing?” asked Patrick.
Javier held the hunting knife vertically, grasping the handle like a ski pole and placing the tip between his outstretched thumb and index finger. Slowly, he raised it and brought it down between the index and middle finger. Up again, then down between the middle and ring finger. Up and down once more between the ring and pinkie finger. Then he started all over again between the thumb and index finger, a little faster this time, counting as he moved from one to the next.
“One, two, three, four,” he said with each poke at the log.
The guides looked on with fascination, smiling and talking among themselves in Spanish. Patrick and the others found it harder and harder to watch. All was silent, save for the tapping of the blade against the log and Javier’s counting, the pace quickening.
“One, two, three, four.” Tap, tap, tap, tap.
“You don’t have to prove anything,” said Patrick.
The shiny blade moved from one position to the next faster and faster still. The tapping became like machine gun fire, the counting like one long word. The accountant jumped to his feet and hurried away, muttering something about the insanity of this place. Javier’s motion built to what seemed like controlled frenzy, if there was such a thing—back and forth, thumb to pinkie. The knife was a blur, the tapping nonstop, the rhythm ever escalating—until a deafening scream echoed in the mountains.
Patrick looked away, then back.
Javier emitted a second scream, even louder, as he thrust the unbloodied knife triumphantly into the air. It was his game, and Javier had won. His steady hand and coordination had prevailed. He took the knife by the blade and offered the handle to Patrick.
“Now you try.”
“What?”
“You want better food, or don’t you?”
“Not at the cost of my fingers.”
Javier offered the knife to the others. “Any takers?”
Not a one spoke up.
Javier sheathed the knife on his belt. “Pussies. Pack up. All of you. We head out in fifteen minutes.”
Patrick and the others left the campfire without saying a word, stunned and confused by what they’d just witnessed. Patrick’s hands were shaking as he untied the tarp from the tree. He wasn’t sure what to make of this corporate adventure and the “games” they were asked to play. But one thing was certain.
There was something not right about this guide named Javier who loved knives more than fingers.
Chapter 16
Kate dropped a box of wineglasses on the floor of her new kitchen.
“Shit!”
It was move-in day, and a few casualties were to be expected. Still, would the universe have been any less satisfied if she’d dropped a box of towels instead?
Sean entered from the hallway, having heard the crash. Kate had mentioned the move when he’d called to tell her that The Little Foxes was sold out for the coming weekend but he’d like to take her to the symphony instead. Perhaps his offer to help had been a token gesture, just being nice, but Kate had taken him up on it.
“Let me help you with that,” he said, tiptoeing around the shards of glass.
“Thirty minutes in my apartment, and you already know where I keep the broom?”
“It was in the broom closet,” he said dryly.
The shrill whine of a power drill came from the other side of the wall, the bedroom.
“Are you allowed to drill holes in the wall?” asked Sean, shouting over the drill.
“No!”
“I think you should tell the movers.”
Kate hurried to the bedroom, where two men were mounting her television on the wall. She pulled the plug on the electric drill, literally.
“First of all, whose TV is that? And who told you to mount it on the wall?”
“It’s in the work order,” said the guy holding the drill.
“Whose order?”
A voice came from the other room. “Kate, are you here?”
Her father. Things were suddenly coming clear.
“Just leave the TV,” she told the movers. “Let’s get everything off the truck first.”
The movers left, and Kate went to the living room. Her father was standing in the open doorway.
“There you are,” he said, entering. He seemed confused to see Sean. Kate made the quick introduction.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” said Sean.
More than you realize, thought Kate, thinking of the Fagin-like line from her script that Irving Bass had loved so much.
Her father was suddenly too distracted to exchange pleasantries. He quickly crossed the empty living room, stopping abruptly at the glass doors to the balcony.
“What’s this? I specifically asked for an apartment with no balcony,” he said.
“I changed it,” said Kate.
“Why would you do that?”
“Because it’s my apartment, and I want a balcony.”
He seemed utterly perplexed, then glanced at Sean. “Would you give us a minute, please?” he said, pointing to the open doorway.
Sean excused himself to the corridor and closed the apartment door behind him.
“Sweetheart, I’m not trying to run your life.”
“Really?”
“I just thought that waking up every morning and looking at a balcony would be a painful reminder for you.”
“Well, it isn’t. At least it wasn’t, until now.”
He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’m just trying to do the right thing. Maybe I’m trying too hard.”
He seemed genuinely contrite, and Kate might have felt sorry for him, except that all she could think was that this tender moment was a side of the evil capitalist that Irving Bass would cut from her play.
“It’s okay, Dad. We’re both struggling, trying to figure out what went wrong, what to do next.”
He turned and faced the sliding glass doors, looking out over the balcony railing toward the river. Kate had yet to ask him about Patrick’s sudden departure, as she’d promised Noah she would, but this didn’t seem like the time.
“I spoke to Detective Anderson,” he said.
“You told me. Mom was drunk.”
“I asked if he thought it could have been an accident. If it was possible that she fell.”
The possibility piqued her interest. Kate crossed the room and stood at his side, peering through the glass and out over the railing. “How high was the railing at the penthouse?”
“Forty-two inches,” he said. “Not that I’ve ever measured it. I checked the building code. But don’t let your mind go there. Your mother was only five foot two. Even if she was drunk and stumbled, she couldn’t just fall over the railing.”
“But what if she was so drunk that she got sick? If she was leaning over the railing, trying not to mess up her dress and—”
“Kate, we’re grasping at straws. We have to deal with the facts. Your mother left a note.”
“But the note said—”
“I know what it said. ‘I did it for Kate.’ I don’t think we’ll ever understand that.”
She stepped closer, her voice taking on added urgency. “That’s my point. Did what for Kate? The note says, ‘I did it.’ Past tense. After the fact. She didn’t write this from the grave.”
“Maybe—” he started to say, then stopped herself.
“Maybe what?”
Her father reluctantly finished his thought. “Maybe in her mind she was already dead.”
Kate looked away. “Not where I thought you were going with this.”
“Sorry if that sounded harsh. It was Detective Anderson who pointed out I was refusing to say things that needed to be said—things I wasn’t willing to admit to myself.”
“I suppose we’d both feel better if it was an accident, if we could look ourselves in the mirror and say we hadn’t missed an opportunity to prevent this—that we hadn’t let her down.”
“You didn’t let her down, Kate.”
“I’m just saying that if there’s any blame to go around, it goes equally.”
“No. I’m her husband.”
“Stop it,” she said.
“Certain facts are undeniable,” he said, smiling sadly. “Like the wise old man once said, ‘Truth is like poetry. And everybody fucking hates poetry.’”
There was an abrupt knock at the door, it swung open, and the movers carried in a leather couch.
“Where does this go?” the crew chief asked.
“I’m glad we talked,” her father said softly.
“We need to do more of it,” said Kate, and she turned to direct the movers.
Chapter 17
“Just don’t look down,” said Patrick.
Olga, the only woman on Javier’s team of guides, was behind him, clinging to the rocky face of a cliff, paralyzed with fear.
They’d walked for hours, mostly uphill along a narrow and sometimes overgrown jungle path. As they approached the gorge, Javier had made an announcement. “Olga,” meaning the female guide, “is a virgin. This is her first trip with us. She will lead the way from here.”
It was soon obvious to Patrick that Olga the rookie was not passing this test of acrophobia. The path was at its narrowest along the edge of a steep cliff. The rocks were slippery; the footing unsure. Each hiker was equipped with a Y-configured rope and two carabiners, a type of quick-release shackle used by mountain climbers. Pitons, steel spikes with eyelets, protruded from the cliff face, hammered into cracks in the rock by previous climbers. The technique was to have at least one carabiner clipped to an eyelet at all times, connecting, disconnecting, and reconnecting along the way. Still, it was an unsettling fact that, with one misstep, a cheap metal clip was all that stood between life and the certain death of a two-hundred-foot fall into the gorge below.
“I’d rather take the challenge of the dancing knife than do this,” said Olga.
“Just a few more steps,” he said.
Patrick chose his next step carefully, planted his foot, then moved to the next spot. Olga followed his exact foot placement. The final step was a bit of a reach. Patrick imagined himself at the top of the climbing wall he’d mastered as a teenager at camp, always the fastest to reach the top, never one of those kids who gave up and had to be lowered to the ground by harness. He stepped onto flat ground and pulled Olga toward him. She fell into his arms, which he rather enjoyed, and for the first time he saw her smile. It was a pretty one.
Javier approached. “All right, Romeo. Balcony scene’s over. On to the hot tub.”
Patrick thought he was joking about the hot tub, but Javier’s gaze directed them toward the pond ahead, a gaping hole in the jungle canopy where the sun made rainbows in the clouds of steam that wafted up from the surface. Patrick could feel the heat in the soles of his boots, and each step toward the water’s edge brought the audible crunch of ancient volcanic cinders beneath the overgrowth of fallen jungle foliage, grass, and mosses that had gathered over the centuries.
Olga knew the area well enough to explain.
“It’s an extinct volcano,” she said.
A tiny geothermal paradise where nature warmed the waters to bath temperature. For Patrick, who hadn’t showered since leaving Washington, this was heaven on earth.
“You have ten minutes,” said Javier.
Patrick stripped down to his underwear, humility be damned, and jumped in. The others quickly followed.
“You too, Olga,” said Javier. “You’re one of them until you prove yourself guide-worthy.”
Patrick looked away as she shed her clothes, but from the looks on the male guides’ faces, they seemed to very much enjoy the view.
The waters warmed Patrick to his core, soothing the joints and muscles that ached from sleeping on the cold, damp ground. He’d done more than enough climbing in the last four hours, but he couldn’t resist the boulder beside a towering stand of wax palm trees, the shortest of which had to be at least a hundred feet tall. He pulled himself up on the rock, shimmied up a few yards of the waxy tree trunk, and soaked Javier with a well-aimed cannonball. Then he swam toward Olga, who was talking to the other men about Javier’s knife trick.
“I think he’s crazy,” said the guy from Chicago.
“No,” said the accountant. “Everything here is choreographed. He didn’t want anyone to accept his challenge. He wouldn’t have let anyone accept it.”
Olga agreed, careful not to discredit her boss. “It’s just a mind game. Something to test your mental toughness.”
The two men swam toward shore, leaving Patrick alone with Olga. She was treading water, the ripples on the surface making a blur of her body below, which made her even more alluring.
“By the way,” she said, “don’t let Javier’s crack about Romeo bother you.”
“It didn’t. But I am surprised he knows Shakespeare.”
She laughed. “I’ve watched the real movie at least ten times, but I’m sure Javier plucked that line from the martial arts version, Romeo Must Die.”
A bird sang from somewhere in the forest.
“Ah, ’tis the nightingale,” said Olga, borrowing from the playwright.
Patrick smiled, liking her sense of humor. “No. ’Tis the lark.”
“Are you saying it’s time for you to go home?”
It was a clever question. Patrick’s high school English teacher had made a point of explaining how Juliet tries to convince her lover that the bird outside their window is the nightingale, meaning it was still night, not the lark, which would mean it was morning and time for Romeo to leave. Olga had surely picked up Patrick’s vibe that he wasn’t long for this place.
