The Straw Men by Michael Marshall Read Free Book Online Page A

Zandt at his car, a large file under her arm. “I told him I’d be going with you,” she said.
    As Nina got in his car, Zandt stepped over to the Lexus. Fielding looked up at him through the window with an unreadable expression, and started the engine. Then he pressed a button and wound the window down.
    “Guess I’ll let it go, this time,” he said.
    Zandt smiled. It was a thin smile, and bore little resemblance to anything caused by merriment. “There is only this time.”
    Fielding cocked his head. “And that’s supposed to mean . . . what?”
    “That if we meet again and you pull a gun on me, some pretty lake is going to have little scraps of Fed floating in it. And I don’t give a shit if it fucks up the ecosystem.”
    Zandt turned away, leaving the agent open-mouthed.
    Then Fielding reversed rapidly, kicking a shower of grit into the air. He gunned the engine and sped past, pausing only to lean across to display the middle finger of his right hand.
    When Zandt got into his car he saw Nina was sitting watching, arms folded and one eyebrow raised.
    “Your people skills just keep on getting better,” she said. “Maybe you should teach a course or something. Write a book. I’m serious. It’s a gift. Don’t fight it, share it. Be everything you can be.”
    “Nina, shut up.”
     
    HE DROVE IN SILENCE back up to Pimonta. Nina sat with the file on her lap. By the time they got back to the village it was dark, and a few more residents’ cars had appeared. Lights were on in many of the windows. He parked up in front of the inn, turned off the engine. He made no move to open his door, so Nina stayed as she was.
    “Do you still want to eat?” she asked, eventually.
    The car was getting cold. Two couples had already wandered past the car, on their way to the main building, their faces round with the prospect of food.
    He stirred, as if returning from a long distance. “Up to you.”
    She tried for cheerful: “I’m easy.”
    “Not out here you’re not. Supper’s six-thirty ’til nine. We eat now or in the morning. Breakfast’s seven ’til eight. And small.”
    “What—there’s nowhere you can get a burger in between? Or this place can’t lay on a sandwich a little later?”
    Zandt turned his head, and this time his smile looked almost real. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
    “No, thank God. Where I come from you can eat when you want. You hand over money and they give you food. It’s modern and convenient. Or have you been in the green so long you’ve forgotten?”
    He didn’t answer. Abruptly she dropped the file in the foot well and opened the door. “Wait here,” she said.
    Zandt waited, watching out of the windshield as she marched purposefully toward the main building. The hunger he’d felt after the day’s walking was long gone. He felt chilled, inside and out. He was unaccustomed to dealing with someone who knew him, and felt awkward, his thoughts and feelings out of sync. He had spent a long time on the move, as background texture: the man at the counter who was due for a refill; the guy who was working out the back for a couple days; someone at a windswept gas station, staring at nothing over the top of his car as he filled it up. For long periods he had thought of almost nothing at all, aided by a complete absence of any hooks into his past existence. Nina’s presence changed that. He wished he had moved on a day earlier, that she had arrived to find him gone. But Zandt knew more abouther doggedness than most people, and knew she would have kept on going once she’d set her mind to find him.
    He looked at the file lying in the foot well. It was thick. He felt no desire to touch it, still less to see what was inside. Most of it he knew too well already. The rest would be more of the same. The feelings it inspired were a rank mixture of numbness and horror, razor blades wrapped in cotton wool.
    He heard the sound of a door closing, and looked up to see Nina walking