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twelve

So now Jarrow was three people. Two of them were dead, and neither he nor the only person who seemed to know him had heard of the other. He was still bemused by it all when he boarded a flight for Chicago that same evening—his Maurice Gordon ID once again having proved effectual in jumping him to the head of the queue. If it wasn't for the fact that to himself he looked normal, he would have believed he was in the stock movie situation of somehow occupying another body. Whatever had happened was obviously not as simple, if that was an appropriate word. But Valdheim's abrupt disappearance removed any remaining doubt that, intentionally or otherwise, whatever had happened was a result of the process to which he had been subjecting Jarrow.

Could he, Jarrow asked himself, be the Warrant Officer Demiro that Rita had known, undergoing some kind of delusion of being Jarrow? Rita had never heard of Jarrow, but Demiro might have. The thought brought to mind accounts of hypnotic subjects who assumed personalities that they re-created in their minds from things they'd read or heard or imagined, possibly from childhood—in some cases sufficiently vivid to lead overcredulous researchers into -believing that they were witnessing reincarnations.

On the other hand, how could Demiro be aware of things that only Jarrow could have known, such as what he and Larry Banks had talked about that day in the car on the way to Valdheim's, or things he'd talked about with the staff at the school? . . . Unless those things hadn't happened at all, but were simply fabrications of his—Demiro's—mind. The only way to find out would be to check such recollections against the accounts of the people actually involved, which meant that he still needed to find some way of -approaching them without getting himself arrested or certified as insane.

Aside from all that, he was still none the wiser as to who Maurice Gordon was, whose clothes he was wearing, whose papers he was carrying, and in whose name he was obliged to travel, for it seemed that the name meant no more to Rita than it did to him. As he sat in his seat, turning over the possibilities and permutations in his mind, the disquieting realization unfolded that he really didn't know if he was Jarrow having somehow taken over Demiro, Demiro undergoing delusions that he was Jarrow, or really Maurice Gordon somehow endowed with different aspects of both of them.

Gordon with Demiro's body and Jarrow's persona? Surely that didn't make sense. If you replaced the handle of a hammer and then put on a new head, was it still the same hammer?

But who else could he be if Jarrow was dead, for Christ's sake, and now he'd just been told that Demiro was too?

Maybe Larry had been right, and Jarrow—or whoever—really was crazy. That thought didn't do much to gladden him, either.

* * *

Rita spotted him as he came off the jetway at Chicago's Midway Airport, before he recognized her. She had told him on the phone that it would be closer than O'Hare. She was wearing the same green coat that he'd seen in the room at the Atlanta Hyatt, with a white scarf wrapped around her neck and head. She moved toward him through the flurry of people, her step quickening when she saw the recognition on his face. An urge to throw out her arms to him telegraphed itself, causing Jarrow to stiffen, and she came to a confused halt, like a kitten suddenly wary of the reflection that it had been about to pounce on in a -mirror.

They stood looking at each other for several seconds. From their conversation that afternoon, Rita seemed to know more than Jarrow did, and he had unconsciously come prepared to follow her lead on what to do next. On the other hand, he'd had longer to adjust to his own bizarre circumstances, and as the first full realization sank into her that he was indeed a different person, he could see that she was at a loss.

He tried to force what he hoped would be a halfway reassuring smile, but it emerged as just a thin stretching of the month. "Er, I don't know what to say," he stammered. "It's all too insane."

Rita gave a quick nod. Her voice choked when she started to answer. She gulped and tried again. "I know. I don't meet bodies back from the dead at airports every day." Her eyes traveled down the length of him, then back up to find his again.

He said, not really thinking, "You're sure I'm this Demiro that you remember? It couldn't have been a mistake?"

She shook her head. "Oh, no. You're Tony. There's no question about it. Monday was enough to prove that—in Atlanta."

Jarrow flinched. Of course. "Oh, yes. . . . You realize that I don't remember anything about that? All I know is waking up the way I am now, on Tuesday."

"You told me that when you called. . . . What did you do to your chin?"

"Nothing. It's just a scratch."

She hesitated. "Nothing's changed?"

He shook his head. The hope that had flickered on her face for an instant vanished.

The crowd of arrivals and people who had been waiting to meet them was thinning, leaving them both feeling awkwardly unprepared and conspicuous. Jarrow looked around, searching for a way to inject some semblance of normality into this. "Have you eaten?" he asked. "I mean, would you like to get something here, before we go?"

"I'm not really hungry."

"I didn't—"

"Thanks. It's—"

"You—"

They stopped together, entangled in their own clumsiness. Then, for the first time, both managed thin smiles simultaneously at the absurdity of it. Rita recovered herself first.

"I borrowed someone's car—I haven't owned one since I moved into the city. I left it in an unloading area. It's a twenty-five-dollar hole in your budget if they tow it."

"Let's go then," Jarrow agreed. "Where to?"

Rita seemed surprised, as if it hadn't crossed her mind. It brought home to Jarrow once again that until just a few minutes ago, she really hadn't thought of him as anything else but Tony Demiro suffering from some kind of amnesia—returned unexpectedly from somewhere mysterious, to be sure, but very much alive. Indeed, from the little she had told him over the phone, three days ago he had been just that!

She shook her head and brushed a curl of red hair back under her scarf. "Back to my place, I guess," she said.

As they moved away in the direction of Baggage Claim and the exit, a mustached man in a fur-trimmed parka, who had been observing them from a position by a line of phone booths a short distance away across the concourse, spoke into a hand-held radio. "We've got him. The guy she met is Samurai, no question. They're heading for the exit."

A voice in the receiver acknowledged. "Got it. Follow them out front and wait there for Mac to pick you up. Are you reading, Jaybird Two?"

Another voice on the channel: "Two here."

"Positive identification of Samurai. They're coming out now. Stick with them when they leave."

"Gotcha."

"Jaybird Four, be standing by at the intersection with Cicero. Pick up the tail there, assuming they head back north and into the city."

"Moving out now."

The man in the fur-trimmed parka pocketed the radio and began strolling casually toward the main entrance of the terminal. So the longshot had paid off, and they'd found Samurai again: the girl had led them right back to him. Not that the party was quite over yet. They still had to bring Samurai in.

And they'd been warned by the people from Atlanta that Samurai could be dangerous.

 

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