The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [107]
On the flight, eyes closed to ward off any attempt at conversation from a major sharing the cabin, he’d mulled the nature of power. Many years before, when Nikola still harbored hopes of redeeming humanity, a disenchanted political science professor and itinerant lecturer, Marcus Lassiter, had spoken to an audience of young people eager to discover the ways of the world. Power, Professor Lassiter had reflected, was about change, about forcing others to do what they would never have done of their own accord. And, like everything about our wretched species, change had its own mechanics. After reaching for his glass of water and moving it about without raising it to his lips, Lassiter had gone on to explain that the mechanics of change revolved around three tools: love, money, and fear.
The professor had carried on his monologue for almost two hours while his spellbound audience soaked in his words, at times laced with a left-wing touch carefully designed to delight his listeners. Toward the end, he’d offered a gem, one that Nikola had saved in his repository of useful data. Stability, status quo, and security—however illusory the security may be—and the possibility of losing these, floated to the uppermost layer of our fears in later years when most other dreads had been tamed into submission.
The Brownells were successful, professional, rich, and well connected. The retired couple—Martha, the ex-dean of a prestigious university, and Vance, an old-fashioned four-star general—didn’t fear much. Now in their seventies, they had surrendered to the unstoppable ravages of time, had more money than they could ever spend, and their family had long since disappeared or climbed to respectable heights on the social ladder. Socially, they were untouchable, and threatening them with changes to their physical integrity or their life span was out of the question. If prodded, they could tap into the awesome power of friends and relatives.
As Nikola sped north, weighing how much Mrs. Brownell valued her peace and security, he relaxed behind the wheel. He read the names of the towns as he passed—Winnetka, Glencoe, Ravinia—rolling the words over his tongue like wine, and he toggled the entertainment panel until he found music worth listening to. As a wistful oboe filled the car with the notes of Mikhail Kinsky’s “Rhapsody for Steppes and Silences,” the skies got wider and brighter, the horizon flatter and longer.
The previous day had yielded a precious puzzle piece: a corner, an anchor to which other pieces could be attached. Dr. Hulman had a prodigious memory after Sergeant Cox paved the way with a conscientious dose of the world’s best oil: three broken fingers. With the help of the plentiful notes in a notebook jealously stashed away in his safe—with scores of other pads and agendas—the obliging doctor remembered calling a young man to Araceli’s deathbed. He had nodded to the page in the agenda where he’d noted the man’s name and address; pointing would have been difficult under the circumstances.
In retrospect, Laurel’s father’s identity was almost predictable, and Nikola could have kicked himself after reading the name in Dr. Hulman’s spidery longhand. Laurel’s adoption by the Coles and the identities of her natural parents explained the young woman’s involvement—a relationship that Nikola could have learned at once had he ordered comparisons from the fugitives’ DNA.
Damn! Araceli Goldberg had been Eliot Russo’s woman, and heavy with his child.
Dennis had pulled the images of Araceli’s last minutes from a film archive. Sobering. After the demonstration, when she fell before a trooper’s well-aimed kick, Eliot, with remarkable political savvy, ran away. Afterward, when the good Dr. Hulman humored his dying patient