Asterisk Read Online Free Page B

was being dragged to the edge of the swimming pool. Survive, goddamn, survive. It came back, when you didn’t need it and couldn’t do a damn thing with it, when you had become resigned to an ending, it came back. He scratched, kicked, bit. Thorne, he thought—Thornethornethorne thorne. It was useless.
    The edge of the pool. Blue water. Parasols overhead, umbrellas tilting, the dark sky beyond, hazy stars over the city. Kicking, clawing. Live. To die like this without a fight . A rat, a dog, nothing more. And what had he left behind him but silences? His face was held beneath water and he was confused—had he been dragged out of the room? that iron hand clamped across his mouth? dragged, drawn, it was a dream, it was a nightmare of falling from impossible heights. A file, a folder, everything important just sucked away—his face was being held beneath water. Panic, the urge to fight, no strength left, nothing remaining. He opened his eyes. The underwater lights blinded with the intensity of fireworks exploding in his brain. Thorne—He attempted to raise his face from the water. No. Couldn’t do it. No. Nothing left. He saw his own limp hands sink in swirls of foam under the surface, he felt himself drift and drift and dream—and the dream was taking him round the edges of some impermeable darkness toward which, inevitably, he was sinking.
    Tarkington was looking through the slats of the blind at the night sky when the telephone rang. He turned around, saw Sharpe pick it up. Tarkington felt tense. He was aware of perspiration on his forehead, his upper lip. He thought: Stupid fucker. Screw yourself. What did they teach you?
    Observe, observe, observe.
    At all times.
    There can be no relaxation of vigilance in the field .
    He stared at Sharpe’s knuckles. They were white beneath the glow of the desk lamp.
    Sharpe said into the receiver: “You got the case?”
    Tarkington waited.
    Sharpe was quiet for a time, then he put the receiver down slowly, deliberately, as if he were afraid of missing the cradle.
    â€œLykiard?” Tarkington asked. He poured himself a cone of ice water from the cooler, watching the bubble rise and burst.
    â€œLykiard, right,” Sharp said. “Lykiard. But no sign of the case. Anywhere.”
    Tarkington felt blank, dizzy.
    â€œIt’s got to be somewhere, Jesus,” he said.
    Sharpe smiled at him coldly: “I wonder where, Tarkie.”

2
    Sunday, April 2
    The man with the high-powered binoculars had been waiting for the sun to come up and an end to the long, cold desert night. He had lain most of the night in his down-filled sleeping bag in the tent, shivering, now and then sleeping, waking intermittently because the cold had gotten through to him. When he emerged from his tent it was dawn, the landscape beginning to fill with a soft red light.
    He had camped in an arroyo. Now he scrambled up out of the dry wash, binoculars hanging from his neck, his hands gloved, a balaclava hat around his ears. He lay flat on his stomach. In the east the rising sun was the color of molten lava. But still there was no warmth. The saguaros cast long flattened shadows that were strangely motionless in a way that suggested they would never change, regardless of how high the sun might climb. A terrible landscape, the man thought. He had read books in praise of it, he had read the works of those who had come to love such a place, but he knew that he himself would always feel alien out here. It was hostile. The only book he had come to trust was the one he had in his backpack: Desert Survival .
    He looked through the binoculars.
    Out of focus. He adjusted them for a time. The sun climbed almost perceptibly. There was not a cloud anywhere in the sky. In the west there hung a fading moon and beyond that the stars were one by one going out. The sun and the moon together in the sky: didn’t that mean some form of calamity?
    He looked through the lenses. He swung