Deadlock Page 10

  Directly below was a semicircular field of trimmed grass. Along the outside edge of the field, spanning half its perimeter on the right, were various training stations: a ropes course, a shooting range, a monolithic rock wall. A Quonset-hut-shaped structure of white material likely housed a pool. A course for vehicles started at the field and disappeared over a hill. At the field’s apex sat a full-sized commercial airplane, a 747, Hutch thought. It was mounted on what appeared to be shock absorbers the diameter of old redwoods, raising it twenty feet off the ground. Running along the outside of the fuselage were cubicles, platforms, and a ventilation system.

  The left half of the perimeter marked the beginning of a town. Hutch could make out only a handful of its structures: a gas station, bookstore, hotel, bank, ice-cream parlor. Farther back, larger buildings rose above the others, blotting out the trees. A “Hogan’s Alley,” he realized, like the one at the FBI’s training facility in Quantico. It was used to teach agents investigative techniques, firearms skills, and defensive tactics in a controlled real-world environment. Except Page’s was considerably larger.

  About a dozen men and a few women were going through the ropes course, walking a high tightrope, climbing rope ladders, swinging between elevated platforms. In the center of the field, a small group wearing black ninja garb had formed a circle around two people going at each other with martial arts moves. The ground was farther below him than the third-floor office accounted for. The back side of the building must have been open to a lower level or two.

  Hutch recognized Page as one of the combatants. The man planted a roundhouse kick into his opponent’s head, spun, and kicked the other man’s feet out from under him. The other man hopped up and snapped Page in the face with a punch so fast Hutch wasn’t sure he’d really seen it. Page reeled back. His foot shot up and nailed his opponent between the legs. The guy dropped, rolling and holding himself. Hutch noticed none of the protective gear he’d seen fighters wearing at other sparring events. No cups either, it seemed.

  While Page bounced around, urging his opponent to rise, the secretary who had shown Hutch into the office appeared on the field. She walked from the building toward the gathering. If she and Page started exchanging blows, Hutch would not have been very surprised. She raised her hand and got Page’s attention.

  He bounced over to her, then looked up at Hutch. He nodded and returned to the sparring circle. He pointed at one of the spectators—no, not a man, a boy. It was Julian, Page’s son.

  Hutch’s chest grew tight seeing Julian here, part of Page’s insanity. He had met him in Canada, the only decent person among Declan’s followers. Hutch had hoped that Julian would somehow find his way clear of his father’s influence. He should have known better. It reminded Hutch of why he was so determined to make Page accountable for atrocities he was committing now—deeds Hutch knew, but couldn’t prove . . . yet.

  Page touched his fist to his palm and bowed to his opponent, who struggled to stand and return the gesture. He strode toward the building. Julian stepped into the circle, and another man broke from the circle to face him. The boy turned and gazed up at Hutch.

  The first time they’d spoken, Hutch had been hiding from gunmen in a tree. Julian had been with them. He’d spotted Hutch, whispered, “They won’t stop looking,” and moved on. Hutch often marveled at the core of goodness the boy must possess to keep his moral flame flickering against the black hurricane of his family’s evil.

  Julian raised his hand in a tentative wave. Hutch waved back. A foot hit Julian’s face, and he went down. He rose onto his hands and knees and stayed like that for a while. Finally he pushed himself up, shook his head doglike, and raised his fists to the other guy.

  SEVENTEEN

  The elevator opened. Page came out of it like a car salesman spotting his first customer.

  “I tell you,” he said, touching a cut on his brow, “nothing like a little rough play to get the blood pumping.” He stopped, cocked his head. “How ya doing?” Rushing toward Hutch, he extended his hand.

  When Hutch didn’t take it, Page snapped it back. “Hey, I understand. We’re enemies, right? That’s what I hear, anyway. Excuse me a second.” He went into the bathroom, leaving the door open. He began peeing. He called, “Did Nanya offer you a drink?”

  Nanya. She’d been one of the secretaries he’d spoken to how-many-times in the last year, trying to get in to see Page. He hadn’t recognized her voice, and she hadn’t said anything about it.

  The toilet flushed. A faucet turned on, lots of splashing. Page emerged, toweling his hair. He’d taken off the ninja top. Gray hair curled over his abs and pecs. The man was fit. Not twenty-year-old fit, a bit thicker and less defined, but impressive for a man in his late fifties.

  Page said, “I didn’t hear you. Did you get a drink?”

  “No, thanks.” He looked out the window. Julian was down again.

  Page returned to the bathroom. He came out, pulling a gray T-shirt over his head. He walked past Hutch to a desk equidistant between the two side walls. It was close enough to the window for Page to turn in his chair and watch the training grounds anytime he wished. The wood was worn and scarred. Probably had been Eisenhower’s or Ulysses S. Grant’s. Page undoubtedly thought his ownership added to its value.

  Julian was dancing around his opponent, who outweighed him by a good fifty pounds. The boy was hunched over, pressing a hand to his ribs.

  “What do you think?” Page said. He nodded toward the field.

  “What’s Julian doing here?” Hutch said.

  Page gave him a puzzled expression. “He’s my son.”

  “You’ve got people twice his age beating on him.”

  Page took in the match. “Imagine what he’s going to be like in a few years. Unstoppable.”

  “If he lives that long.”

  Page pushed a button under the desk’s ledge. For a moment, everything outside the window appeared to fade. Then the glass turned milky white, as though a great mist were pushing against it. The effect was disorienting. Hutch felt a flush of vertigo. He took a step back to avoid falling over.

  Page said, “You didn’t come here to discuss my parenting, did you?”

  Hutch scanned the window. The entire pane had become opaque, radiating only the light of day.

  “Come,” Page said. “Let’s sit and discuss our grievances like men.”

  He strolled toward the chairs in front of the fireplace. He stopped at an end table and picked up a crystal decanter of amber liquid. “Can I pour you a Scotch? It’s 1926 Macallan. Exquisite.”

  “Does that mean expensive?” Hutch crossed to a chair and sat.

  “Very.”

  “Tempting, but I’ll pass.”

  Page poured himself two fingers and dropped into the chair opposite Hutch. His lips were bent into a tight smile.

  Still, Hutch recognized those smug, pursed lips he had grown to despise.

  Page’s eyes were dark and calculating. Hutch had seen them before too—in the cold stare of Page’s homicidal son, Declan.

  Page opened his hand. “Hutch, right?”

  “That’s what they call me.”

  On the coffee table between them, magazines were neatly arranged in a semicircle. Hutch noticed Page’s smiling countenance on the cover of each: Time, Newsweek, Fortune . . . others whose mastheads he couldn’t see. Beside them was a wooden container about the size of a shoe box. Its lacquer was so thick and highly polished, it could have been a large ice cube, the wood grain only reflections.

  Page set his glass down. He pushed the box closer to Hutch and opened the hinged top. “Cigar?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Are you sure? They’re quite good. Cuban.”

  The way he said it made Hutch take a closer look. He plucked one up. The band sported a portrait of Simón Bolívar, the South American liberator. The cigar was a Bolívar Royal Corona—the very brand he, Phil, Terry, and David had smoked in Canada the evening before their fatal encounter w
ith Page’s son.

  Hutch looked up sharply. “Why these?” he said.

  “I don’t understand.” The smile grew—only a little, but it did.

  It could not be a coincidence. What was he trying to say? That he’d conducted his own investigation up there? Found details even the authorities didn’t know? Was he saying that if he knew such seemingly innocuous things about what had happened, then he knew everything there was to know about Hutch himself?

  “This cigar,” Hutch said, choosing his words carefully, “has special meaning to me.”

  “How wonderful.” Page tilted his head innocently. “Take a few. I’ll have a box sent to your house.”

  Hutch dropped the cigar into the box.

  “So,” Page said, “let’s not play games with each other. You were instrumental in my boy’s death.”

  Hutch’s heart picked up pace. “He was trying to kill me and the nine-year-old boy I was with. He did murder two of my friends.”

  Page raised the glass of Scotch. He swirled the liquid under his nose. He did not so much sip it as he did eat it, taking it in his mouth and appearing to chew. He said, “Of course, I read the police report. I didn’t intend to sound accusatory, only factual. You were instrumental, am I right?”

  So this was the way it was going to go. Hutch wanted to leap out of the chair and strangle the man. “On second thought, maybe I will have a drink.”

  Page took pleasure in hoisting himself up, sauntering to the decanter, and pouring the liquor.

  Hutch said, “You don’t want to play games. So don’t. You know the facts, I know the facts. You want to know why I’m snooping around your companies, right?”

  Page handed him the drink. He leaned over, selected a cigar from the lacquered box, and took his place on the couch. He ran the unlit cigar under his nose like a harmonica. “From what I hear—and I do hear everything—you imagine Declan was carrying out my orders when he started killing people in Canada. You believe this because my dear friend, Andrew Norton, went up there to investigate, and Declan killed him.”

  Hutch remembered Larry’s words regarding staying mum around Page. If Page believed that Hutch’s interest in him began and ended with the events in Canada, a dead horse as far as authorities were concerned, Hutch wasn’t going to convince him otherwise. Let him think Hutch had stumbled over a few exposed roots of Page’s tree of corruption and didn’t care, because they didn’t pertain to Canada.

  Yeah, Page, he thought, you keep believing that, fine with me.

  He said, “He saw what Declan was doing and didn’t try to stop him.”

  Page’s eyebrows went up. “It’s my understanding that he told Declan to shut it down, to get back home. Andrew tried to bring Julian home with him on the spot, but Declan stopped him. In fact, in one of your own depositions, you stated that Andrew yelled at Declan. He told Declan he was supposed to field-test the weapon by blowing up trees and rabbits, but not people and buildings. That is what you told investigators, isn’t it?”

  Hutch took a swig. He immediately felt his belly warming, but no calming of his anger. “He saw me tied to a tree and did nothing.”

  “What was he supposed to do? If Declan had obeyed, he would have wrapped everything up, which included cutting you loose.”

  “Norton told Declan, ‘No witnesses.’”

  Page gave him a bored expression. “We can go round and round like this forever. Neither of us can ever know what Declan and Andrew had on their minds.”

  “Okay,” Hutch said. He took another sip. “Declan was working for two of your companies. The weapon was one of your designs.”

  Page shrugged. “If an electrician comes to work on your house and steals some jewelry, do you assume he’s acting on company orders? Or is he simply a bad employee, a bad person?”

  “Declan was a bad person?”

  “He snapped.”

  Hutch couldn’t disagree. What interested him was when Declan snapped: in Canada—or years before, under the pressure of a domineering, warmongering father?

  Page clipped the cigar into an ashtray. “The point I wanted to make earlier,” he said, “is despite your involvement in my son’s death, I’m not holding it against you. I have not come after you for it. As far as I’m concerned, you have not wronged me in a way that compels me to set things straight.” He put the cigar in his mouth and turned it. He removed it and said, “Yet.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Hutch said. He cracked the glass down on the coffee table and leaned back. “You’re more upset that I’m meddling in your business than that I was ‘instrumental’ in your son’s death.”

  “What Declan did was wrong. We have no argument there. You may believe that because I am wealthy, I think my family and I are above the law. That’s not me, never has been. I’m an advocate of personal responsibility. If Declan had been driving drunk and killed someone, I’d want him to stand trial. Of course, I would make sure he had all the advantages our legal system affords, but in the end, if he were convicted and sentenced to jail, I’d tell him, ‘Go pay for what you did.’”

  Hutch shifted in the chair. “So, Declan got what he deserved.”

  Holding it away from his face, Page rotated the tip of his cigar over a lighter’s flame. He blew on it, then took a puff. He said, “That’s a harsh way of wording it. Declan got in over his head. Look, my companies are doing no harm. In fact, they are helping by providing defense systems that ultimately save lives. What gets me is that you are bent on stopping me from saving lives. That, I will fight you over.”

  For the first time, Hutch saw anger touch Page’s eyes. “You’re saying it’s not that your personal freedom is in jeopardy, or that you’ll take a big financial hit because I’m trying to make you accountable for your actions?”

  Page leaped up. He held out his hands. “What actions? I raised a child who went wrong. You’ll have to put half the parents in the country in jail if you pursue that one. I’m providing our government with weapons that work, with soldiers who are the most efficient in the world. You want me accountable for what?”

  “If y suspicions are accurate,” Hutch said, “that’s a rather long list. Here’s one: xĭ não.”

  Oh crap, Hutch thought. Did I really go there?

  Page would not have looked more startled if Hutch had slapped him. “Brainwashing? Come on!”

  “That’s what I’m hearing. That’s how your soldiers become so efficient.”

  Page puffed on the cigar, like an engine trying to get up to speed. The smoke around him grew thick, and an expression occurred to Hutch: He has his head in the clouds. Too caught up in lofty dreams to see reality.

  Page said, “Every military in every society since the beginning of time has faced that accusation. Civilians cannot understand how rational people, noncriminals, essentially good people can kill their brethren. But all we have to do is point out that their brethren are trying to kill them. All we have to do is show them that the powers for whom the enemy is fighting want to impose their own beliefs on our mothers and sisters and children. They want to kill you, and they want you to live under their rule. It takes no more than that to convince people to kill.

  “If you want to call that brainwashing, where does it stop? We educate our children to understand the things we believe to be right. Is that brainwashing? Religions tell their followers what morality is. Is that brainwashing? You write articles that influence what people believe about an event or a person or the world around them. Is that brainwashing?”

  “You know it’s more than that,” Hutch said.

  “It is,” Page agreed. “For my soldiers to be efficient, they must have special skills.” He pointed the cigar at Hutch. “The way you, as a writer, have your own set of skills. My men have to learn to go against their impulses. When the average person hears gunfire, he ducks or runs away. Soldiers run to it. Teaching them to do that is not brainwashing. It’s called habituation. It’s getting them so used to the sound of gunfire, of fighting whil
e bullets and shrapnel fly all around them, that they can do their job without flinching.”

  Hutch said, “There’s a reason we flinch from danger.”

  “Self-preservation,” Page said. “But every society needs a group of people who choose fight over flight when the going gets tough. If I can send a hundred efficient soldiers into battle instead of a thousand who aren’t operating at a hundred percent, as a father and a man who loves the youth of his country, wouldn’t you want me to do that?”

  “Of course,” Hutch said, “but I wouldn’t want you to force those hundred into being our sacrificial lambs.”

  “Holy hell, man, nobody comes here unless they want to. I train soldiers faster and cheaper than any government on earth. They come out of my program with skills that help keep them alive, and help them do their jobs better, so the conflict ends sooner.”

  Page returned to his seat. He set his cigar in an ashtray and picked up his Scotch. He said, “Besides, we can tell quickly who has what it takes to be a soldier.”

  “Yeah, throw a bunch of kids in a war zone. Whoever comes out alive are the ones you want.”

  The conversation wasn’t going the way Hutch had hoped. He was trying to get Page to pay out more of the rope with which Hutch would eventually hang the man. Instead, it had become the sort of argument Fox News debates every day.

  Page leaned forward. “You’re right, but not in the way you think,” he said. “Nowadays we don’t need real battles. Video games, virtual reality, tactical simulations—we can filter out the nonfighters from the heroes without spilling a single drop of blood.”

  “Heroes?”

  “That’s what it boils down to. People who are willing to do what it takes to protect what they believe is right.” Page laughed. “Like yourself. Seems I can’t hear the name John Hutchinson without the word hero in the same sentence.”