He had done it again, Buchanan realized.
He’d become catatonic. Rubbing at the pain in his skull, he had the sense of coming back from far away. The compartment was dark. The night beyond the window was broken only by occasional lights from farms. How long had-?
He glanced down at the luminous dial on his pilot’s watch, Peter Lang’s watch, disturbed to see that the time was eight minutes after ten. He’d left Washington shortly before noon. The train would long ago have left Virginia. It would be well into North Carolina by now, perhaps into Georgia. All afternoon and most of the evening? he thought in dismay. What’s happening to me?
His head throbbing, he stood, turned on the lights in the locked compartment, felt exposed by his reflection in the window, and quickly closed the curtains. The reflected haggard face had looked unfamiliar. He opened his travel bag, took three aspirins from his toilet kit, and swallowed them with water from the tiny sink in the compartment’s utility washroom. While he urinated, he felt his mind drifting again, going back six years, and he concentrated to pay attention to now.
He needed to get into character. He had to rebecome Peter Lang. But he also had to be functional. He couldn’t keep staring off into space. After all, the whole point of going to New Orleans, of finding out why Juana had sent the postcard, was to give himself a purpose, a sense of direction.
Juana. As much as he needed to focus on reassuming the character of Peter Lang, he had to focus on Juana. She’d be- what? — thirty-one now. He wondered if she’d kept in shape. She hadn’t been tall, and she’d been thin, but her military-trained body had compensated. It had been hard and strong and magnificent. Would her thick dark hair still be as short as when he’d known her? He had wanted to run his fingers through it, to clutch it, to tug it gently. Would her dark eyes still be fiery? Would her lips still have that sensuous contour? She’d had a habit, when she’d been concentrating, of pursing those lips and sticking them out slightly, and he had wanted to stroke them as much as he’d wanted to touch her hair.
What was his true motive for going back? he wondered. Was it really just to give himself mobility?
Or had the postcard awakened something in him? He’d repressed his memories of her, just as he’d repressed so much about himself. And now. .
Maybe I shouldn’t have let her go. Maybe I should have. .
No, he thought. The past is a trap. Leave it alone. Obviously, it’s not doing you any good if it makes you catatonic. What you’re feeling is a bush-league mistake. In your former lives, you left plenty of unfinished business, a lot of people whom you liked or at least whom your assumed identities liked. But you’ve never gone back before. Be careful.
But I didn’t love those other people. Why did she send the postcard? What sort of trouble is she in?
Your controllers would have a fit if they knew what you were thinking.
The trouble is, I remember her so vividly.
Besides, I promised.
No, a warning voice told him. You didn’t promise. Peter Lang did.
Exactly. And right now, that’s who I am.
I meant what I said. I promised.