“And what’s that?” Pete asks.
“To break The Chain, of course.”
52
They are moving again. This time it’s back east. This time it’s closer to home: Boston. They pack boxes. Decide what to keep, what to donate, what to throw away. Little Anthony and Tom will miss LA, but the twins and Cheryl have never really fit in here.
Maybe Boston will be easier. Tom’s dad lives nearby and dotes on the grandkids.
Anyway, it’s another moving weekend.
Cheryl shifts the dresser in the twins’ room.
She finds the Polaroid Oliver took of Jennifer with no clothes on. The girl is in front of her house, and the photograph was probably taken from Oliver’s bunk in his bedroom.
She shows him the photograph and demands an explanation. Oliver can’t think of one. He doesn’t deny he took the Polaroid, though. Cheryl calls him a little pervert and slaps his face. “Wait till your father gets home,” she says. Tom returns with boxes from the supermarket. He’s been away a long time. He stopped at a bar on the way back.
Oliver and Margaret are waiting upstairs. They hear Cheryl talk to Tom. They hear Tom say, “Jesus H. Christ!”
Tom comes upstairs. He grabs Oliver by the collar of his T-shirt, drags him down from the top bunk, and throws him against the wall.
“You little sicko! You know what I think? I think they put LSD in your baby food. Who knows? I mean, Jesus, you might not even be my goddamn kids!” he yells.
Anthony has come upstairs to watch the fun. Margaret sees him standing in the doorway grinning. It’s a grin that is going to cost Anthony his life.
“It was just a joke,” Oliver says.
“I’ll show you a joke,” Tom says. He picks Oliver up off the floor, drags him to the bathroom, throws him into the shower, and turns the cold water on.
Oliver yelps as the water hits him.
“This is funny, isn’t it?” Tom says.
Tom keeps the shower on for two minutes and then finally turns it off.
Oliver is bawling his guts out. Tom shakes his head, puts his arm around Anthony, and leads him downstairs.
Oliver is sprawled in a corner of the shower, still sobbing. Margaret climbs into the shower next to him and takes his hand. Oliver is ashamed of his tears and everything that’s happened.
“Go away,” he says.
But he doesn’t mean it and Margaret knows he doesn’t mean it.
His sobs turn to whimpers. The day lengthens. The sun sets right down Orange Avenue, silhouetting the planes landing at Long Beach Airport.
“It’s OK,” Margaret says, holding her twin brother’s trembling hand. “We’ll get them.”
53
The three of them are in a private room at the back of the Four Provinces pub in Cambridge.
Rachel and Pete are sitting opposite the big man. There’s a festive air in the pub but not in here. Three pints of Guinness and three double Scotches in front of them, which should keep them from being bothered by waitresses for a while. Rachel takes her baseball cap off and sets it next to her pint. She looks at Pete, but he merely shrugs. He isn’t sure how this is supposed to commence either.
Rachel checks her watch. It’s 2:15 now. Kylie is going over to Stuart’s after school, and Stuart’s mom will be picking them up. Stuart’s mom is a tough-as-nails attorney and completely dependable. Stuart’s father is ex-army; he works from home and is still in the Massachusetts National Guard. Outside of Marty, Stuart’s mom and dad are just about the only people Rachel trusts to keep Kylie safe. But still, time is marching on. Rachel wants to get back before dark. “One of us is going to have to go first,” she says.
The big, shambling, sad-eyed man nods. “You’re right. I contacted you,” he says. “First things first. Security. No blogs, no e-mails, no paper trail, and when we meet, you make damn sure you’re not being followed. Get off the T at random stops, French Connection–style. Do it again and again and again until you know you’re not being tailed.”
“Sure,” Rachel says absently.
The man’s expression darkens. “No, no sure. Sure is not good enough. You need to be certain. Your life depends on this. You took a hell of a risk meeting me at the airport. And coming here? How do you know I didn’t lure you here so I could kill you both and slip out the back?”
“I wasn’t armed at the airport, but I am now,” Pete says, patting his jacket pocket.
“No, no, no! You’re missing the point!”
“What is the point?” Rachel asks gently.
“The point is you have to be vigilant. The last few weeks…well, I don’t know. There was a break-in in the math department. They ransacked half a dozen offices, not just mine. But that could have been cover. Even though I’ve been discreet, I’ve been making waves. Ripples in the pond. Maybe I’ve stirred things up. Maybe I’m being researched. Targeted. I don’t know. And more important, you don’t know. You don’t know me from Adam.”
Rachel nods. A few weeks ago she would have thought this kind of talk was crazy paranoia. Not now.
The man sighs deeply and takes a battered notebook out of his raincoat pocket.
“This is my third journal on The Chain,” he says. “My real name is Erik Lonnrott. I work there,” he says, pointing behind himself with his thumb.
“The kitchen?” Pete asks.
“MIT. I’m a mathematician. Coming to Cambridge was the worst thing that ever happened to me and my family.”
“What did happen?” Rachel asks.
Erik takes a large swig from the Guinness. “I’ll begin at the beginning. I was born in Moscow, but my parents moved to America when I was thirteen. I grew up mostly in Texas. I went to Texas A and M. I got my PhD in mathematics there and I met my wife, Carolyn, there. She was a painter. Huge, beautiful canvases, mostly with religious subjects. We had a daughter, Anna, when I was doing my postdoc in topology at Stanford. Those were the good days.”
“And then you came here,” Rachel says.
“We moved to Cambridge in 2004. I was offered an associate professorship with tenure. Who turns down something like that at MIT? All was good until 2010, when…” He chokes up and his voice dies away. He takes another drink and pulls himself together. “My wife was bicycling home from her studio in Newton and was hit by an SUV. She was killed immediately.”
“I’m sorry,” Rachel says.
He smiles weakly at her and nods. “It was terrible. I wanted to die, but I had a daughter. We got through it. A thing like that. You think you won’t, but you do. It took us five years. Five long years. Things were finally starting to turn around, and then…”
“The Chain,” Pete says.
“March fourth, 2015. They took Anna when she was walking home from school. In Cambridge, in broad daylight. It was only four blocks.”
“They took my daughter at the school-bus stop.”
Erik takes out his wallet and shows them a picture of a bright-looking curly-haired girl in jeans and a T-shirt.
“Anna was thirteen years old, but very shy, young for her age. Vulnerable. When they told me what I had to do to free her, I could not believe it. How can anyone contemplate such things? Nevertheless, I did what I had to do. Anna was kept underground in the darkness for four days before she was released.”