Sole Survivor

a late-afternoon flight in the fast-fading hours of the weekend. Chattering, laughing, arguing, brooding in silence, shuffling-striding-strolling-limping-ambling, arriving passengers poured out of other gates and along the concourse. There were singles, couples, entire families, blacks and whites and Asians and Latinos and four towering Samoan men all with black porkpie hats, beautiful sloe-eyed women willow graceful in their turquoise or ruby or sapphire saris, others in chadors and others in jeans, men in business suits, men in shorts and bright Polo shirts, four young Hasidic Jews arguing (but joyfully) over the most mystical of all documents (a Los Angeles freeway map), uniformed soldiers, giggling children and shrieking children and two placid octogenarians in wheelchairs, a pair of tall Arab princes in akals and keffiyehs and flowing jellabas, preceded by fierce bodyguards and trailed by retinues, beacon-red tourists drifting homeward on the astringent fumes of medicated sunburn lotion, pale tourists arriving with the dampish smell of cloudy country clinging to them-and, like a white boat strangely serene in a typhoon, the man in the Panama hat sailing imperiously through the polygenic sea.
        As far as Joe was concerned, they might all be stage dressing, every one of them an agent of Teknologik or of institutions unknown, all watching him surreptitiously, snapping photographs of him with trick cameras concealed in their purses and attaché cases and tote bags, all conferring by hidden microphones as to whether he should be permitted to proceed or gunned down on the spot.
        He had never before felt so alone in a crowd. Dreading what might happen-might even now be happening-to Barbara, he tried to keep the storyteller in sight while also searching for a telephone.

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    FOUR
    PALE FIRE

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    13
        
        The public telephone, one in a cluster of four, was not in a booth, but the wings of a sound shield provided a small measure of privacy.
        As he entered Barbara's Colorado Springs number on the keypad, Joe ground his teeth together as though he could bite off the noise of the crowded terminal and chew it into a silence that would allow him to concentrate. He needed to think through what he would say to her, but he had neither the time nor the solitude to craft the ideal speech, and he was afraid of committing a blunder that would pitch her deeper into trouble.
        Even if her phone had not been tapped the previous evening, it was surely being monitored now, following his visit to her. His task was to warn her of the danger while simultaneously convincing the eavesdroppers that she had never broken the pledge of silence which would keep her and Denny safe.
        As the telephone began to ring in Colorado, Joe glanced toward the storyteller, who had taken up a position farther along-and on the opposite side of-the concourse. He was standing outside the entrance to an airport newsstand and gift shop, nervously adjusting his Panama hat, and conversing with an Hispanic man in tan chinos, a green madras shirt, and a Dodgers cap.
        Through the screen of passing travellers, Joe pretended not to watch the two men while they pretended, less convincingly, not to watch him. They were less circumspect than they should have been, because they were overconfident. Although they might give him credit for being industrious and clever, they thought that he was basically a jerk civilian in fast-running water way over his head.
        He was exactly what they thought him to be, of course, but he hoped he was also more than they believed. A man driven by paternal love-and therefore dangerous. A man with a passion for justice that was alien to their world of situational ethics, in which the only morals were the morals of convenience.
        Barbara answered the phone on the fifth ring, just as Joe was beginning to despair.
        “It's me, Joe Carpenter,” he said.
        “I was just-”
        Before Barbara could say anything that might reveal the extent of the revelations she'd made to him, Joe said, “Listen, I wanted to thank you again for taking me to the crash site. It wasn't easy, but it was something I had to do, had to see, if I was ever going to have any peace. I'm sorry if I badgered you about what really happened to that airplane. I was a little crazy, I guess. A couple of odd things have happened lately, and I just let my imagination run wild. You were right when