CHARLIE ALONE

1

The story appeared in fragments on the late television news that Wednesday night, but Americans were not greeted with the entire story until they rose the next morning. By then all the available data had been coordinated into what Americans really seem to mean when they say they want “the news”-and what they really mean is “Tell me a story” and make sure it has a beginning, a middle, and some kind of ending.

The story America got over its collective coffee cup, via Today, Good Morning, America, and The CBS Morning News, was this: There had been a terrorist firebomb attack at a top-secret scientific think tank in Longmont, Virginia. The terrorist group was not positively known yet, although three of them had already stepped forward to claim the credit-a group of Japanese Reds, the Khafadi splinter of Black September, and a domestic group who went by the rich and wonderful name of the Militant Midwest Weather-people.

Though no one was sure exactly who was behind the attack, the reports seemed quite clear on how it had been carried out. An agent named John Rainbird, an Indian and a Vietnam vet, had been a double agent who had planted the firebombs on behalf of the terrorist organization. He had either killed himself by accident or had committed suicide at the site of one of the firebombings, a stable. One source claimed that Rainbird had actually been overcome by heat and smoke while trying to drive the horses out of the burning stable; this occasioned the usual newscom irony about coldblooded terrorists who cared more for animals than they did for people. Twenty lives had been lost in the tragedy; forty-five people had been injured, ten of them seriously. The survivors had all been “sequestered” by the government.

That was the story. The name of the Shop hardly surfaced at all. It was quite satisfactory.

Except for one dangling loose end.

2

“I don’t care where she is,” the new head of the Shop said four weeks after the conflagration and Charlie’s escape. Things had been in total confusion for the first ten days, when the girl might easily have been swept back into the Shop’s net; they were still not back to normal. The new head sat behind a make-do desk; her own would not be delivered for another three days. “And I don’t care what she can do, either. She’s an eight-year-old kid, not Superwoman. She can’t stay out of sight long. I want her found and then I want her killed.”

She was speaking to a middle-aged man who looked like a small-town librarian. Needless to say, he was not.

He tapped a series of neat computer printouts on the head’s desk. Cap’s files had not survived the burning, but most of his information had been stored in the computer memory banks. “What’s the status of this?”

“The Lot Six proposals have been tabled indefinitely,” the head told him. “It’s all political, of course. Eleven old men, one young woman, and three blue-haired old ladies who probably own stock in some Swiss goat-gland clinic… all of them with sweat under their balls about what would happen if the girl showed up. They-”

“I doubt very much if the senators from Idaho, Maine, and Minnesota have any sweat under their balls,” the man who was not a librarian murmured.

The head shrugged it off: “They’re interested in Lot Six. Of course they are. I would describe the light as amber.” She began to play with her hair, which was long-a shaggy, handsome dark auburn.

“‘Tabled indefinitely” means until we bring them the girl with a tag on her toe.”

“We must be Salome,” the man across the desk murmured. “But the platter is yet empty.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Never mind,” he said. “We seem to be back to square one.”

“Not exactly,” the head replied grimly. “She doesn’t have her father to watch out for her anymore. She’s on her own. And I want her found. Quickly.” “And if she spills her guts before we can find her?”

The head leaned back in Cap’s chair and laced her hands behind her neck. The man who was not a librarian eyed appreciatively the way her sweater pulled taut across the rounds of her breasts. Cap had never been like this.

“If she were going to spill her guts, I think she would have by now.” She leaned forward again, and tapped the desk calendar. “November fifth,” she said, “and nothing. Meantime, I think we’ve taken all the reasonable precautions. The Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune… we’re watching all the majors, but so far, nothing.”

“Suppose she decides to go to one of the minors? The Podunk Times instead of the New York Times? We can’t watch every news organ in the country.” “That is regrettably true,” the head agreed. “But there has been nothing. Which means she has said nothing.” “Would anyone really believe such a wild tale from an eight-year-old girl anyway?”

“If she lit a fire at the end of the story, I think that they might be disposed to,” the head answered. “But shall I tell you what the computer says?” She smiled and tapped the sheets. “The computer says there’s an eighty-percent probability that we can bring the committee her dead body without lifting a finger… except to ID her.”

“Suicide?”

The head nodded. The prospect seemed to please her a great deal.

“That’s nice,” the man who was not a librarian said, standing up. “For my own part, I’ll remember that the computer also said that Andrew McGee was almost certainly tipped over.”

The head’s smile faltered a bit.

“Have a nice day, Chief,” the man who was not a librarian said, and strolled out.

3

On the same November day, a man in a flannel shirt, flannel pants, and high green boots stood chopping wood under a mellow white sky. On this mild day, the prospect of another winter still seemed distant; the temperature was an agreeable fifty degrees. The man’s coat, which his wife had scolded him into wearing, hung over a fencepost. Behind him, stacked against the side of the old barn, was a spectacular drift of orange pumpkins-some of them starting to go punky now, sad to say.

The man put another log on the chopping block, slung the ax up, and brought it down. There was a satisfying thud, and two stove lengths fell to either side of the block. He was bending down to pick them up and toss them over with the others when a voice said from behind him: “You got a new block, but the mark’s still there, isn’t it? It’s still there.”

Startled, he turned around. What he saw caused him to step back involuntarily, knocking the ax to the ground, where it lay across the deep, indelible mark in the earth. At first he thought it was a ghost he was looking at, some gruesome specter of a child risen from the Dartmouth Crossing graveyard three miles up the road. She stood, pallid and dirty and thin in the driveway, her eyes hollow and glistening in their sockets, her jumper ragged and torn. A scrape mark skidded up her right arm almost to the elbow. It looked infected. There were loafers on her feet, or what had once been loafers; now it was hard to tell.

And then, suddenly, he recognized her. It was the little girl from a year ago; she had called herself Roberta, and she had a flamethrower in her head.

“Bobbi?” he said. “My sainted hat, is that Bobbi?”

“Yes, it’s still right there,” she repeated as if she had not heard him, and he suddenly realized what the glisten in her eyes was: she was weeping.

“Bobbi,” he said, “honey, what’s the matter? Where’s your dad?”

“Still there,” she said a third time, and then collapsed forward in a faint. Irv Manders was barely able to catch her. Cradling her, kneeling in the dirt of his dooryard, Irv Manders began to scream for his wife.