Carrion Comfort (84 page)

“No,” said Natalie, “but if it’s twenty-three miles off the coast the way Harod says, it probably wouldn’t be on this map. I figure it to be here, east of Cedar and Murphy Islands . . . no farther south than Cape Romain.”

Saul removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “This isn’t some low tide key or sandbar,” he said. “According to Harod, Dolmann Island is almost seven miles long and three miles across at its widest. You lived in Charleston most of your life, wouldn’t you have heard of it?”

“I didn’t,” said Natalie. “Are you sure he’s asleep?”

“Oh yes,” said Saul. “I couldn’t wake him for another six hours if I tried.” Saul took out the map he had drawn from Harod’s instructions and compared it to the map from Cohen’s dossier on Barent. “You awake enough to review this?”

“Try me,” said Natalie. “All right. Barent and his group . . . the surviving members . . . will be meeting for their Dolmann Island Summer Camp during the week of June seventh. That’s the public part. The people Harod said will be there match the caliber of notables that Jack Cohen told us about. All men. No women allowed. Even Margaret Thatcher couldn’t get in if she wanted to. All the support personnel are male. According to Jack, there will be scores of security men. The public fun ends Saturday, June thirteenth. On Sunday, June fourteenth, according to Harod, the Oberst will arrive and join the four Island Club members— including Harod— for five days of sport.”

“Sport!” breathed Natalie. “I would hardly call it that.”

“Blood sport,” amended Sau1. “It does make sense. These people possess the same power that the Oberst, Melanie Fuller, and the Drayton woman have. The taste of violence is as addictive to them, but they are public figures. It is more difficult for them to be even tangentially involved in the types of vicarious street violence our three old people appeared to have begun in Vienna.”

“So they save it up for one terrible week a year,” said Natalie. “Yes. And it also serves as a painless way . . . painless for
them
. . . to reestablish their pecking order each year. The island is incredibly private. Technically it is not even under U.S. jurisdiction. When Barent is there, he and his guests stay in this area . . . the southern tip. His estate is there as well as the so-called summer camp facilities. The other three miles of jungle trails and mangrove swamps are separated by security zones, fences, and mine fields. It is there that they play their own version of the Oberst’s old game.”

“No wonder he’s gone to such great lengths to be invited,” said Natalie. “How many innocent people are sacrificed during this week of madness?”

“Harod says that each Island Club member receives five surrogates,” said Saul. “That would be one a day for each of the five days.”

“Where on earth would they find these people?”

“According to Harod, Charles Colben used to provide the bulk of them,” said Saul. “The idea is that they draw their . . . what would you call them? Their playing pieces. They draw them at random each morning for the day’s fun. The evening’s fun, actually. Harod says the play does not begin until almost nightfall. The idea is for them to test their Ability with some element of chance involved. They did not want to lose . . . pieces . . . that they had conditioned over long periods.”

“Where are they getting their victims this year?” asked Natalie. She went to the cupboard and returned with a bottle of Jack Daniels. She added a healthy share to her coffee.

Saul smiled at her. “Exactly. As junior partner or apprentice vampire or what ever our Mr. Harod is, he was charged with the task of providing fifteen of the surrogates. They have to be people in reasonably good physical condition but people who will not be missed.”

“That’s absurd,” said Natalie. “Almost anyone would be missed.”

“Not really,” sighed Saul. “There are tens of thousands of teenage runaways in this country each year. Most never return home. Every major city has mental wings of hospitals half filled with people with no backgrounds, no family searching them out. Police are besieged with reports of missing husbands and wayward wives.”

“So they just grab a couple of dozen people, ship them out to this god-damn island, and make them kill each other?” Natalie’s voice was thick with fatigue.

“Yes.”

“You believe Harod?”

“He may have been relaying faulty information, but the drugs left him in no condition to construct lies.”

“You’re going to let him stay alive, aren’t you, Saul?”

“Yes. Our best chance to find the Oberst is if this group goes ahead with their island madness. Eliminating Harod . . . or even keeping him in captivity much longer . . . would probably spoil the entire thing.”

“You think that it won’t be spoiled when this . . . this
pig
runs to Barent and the others and tells them all about us?”

“I think it is probable that he will not do that.”

“Dear Christ, Saul, how can you be sure?”

“I am not, but I
am
sure that Harod is very confused. One minute he is convinced that you and I are agents of the Oberst. The next he believes that we were sent by Kepler or Barent. He simply cannot believe that we are in de pen dent actors in this melodrama . . .”

“Melodrama is right,” said Natalie. “Dad used to let me stay up to watch this kind of crap on the Friday night Creature Feature.
The Most Dangerous Game.
This is bullshit, Saul.”

Saul Laski slammed the kitchen table with his palm so hard that the noise echoed in the tiled kitchen like a rifle shot. Natalie’s coffee cup jumped and spilled its contents on the wooden tabletop. “Don’t tell
me
it’s bullshit!” shouted Saul. It was the first time in five months that Natalie had heard him raise his voice. “Don’t tell
me
that this is all bad melodrama. Tell your father and Rob Gentry with their throats cut! Tell my nephew Aaron and his wife and children! Tell all of them . . . tell the thousands that the Oberst led to the ovens! Tell my father and brother Josef . . .”

Saul stood so quickly that his chair went over backward. He leaned over the table and Natalie noticed the muscles under the tanned flesh of his forearms, the terrible scar on his left arm, the faded tattoo. His voice was lower when he spoke again, but not calmer; the ferocity was simply under control now. “Natalie, this entire century has been a miserable melodrama written by third-rate minds at the expense of other people’s souls and lives. We can’t stop it. Even if we put an end to these . . . these aberrations, it will only shift the spotlight to some other carrion-eating actor in this violent farce. These things are done every day by people with no shred of this absurd psychic ability . . . people exercising power in the form of violence by right of their place, position, by bullet or ballot or the point of their knife blade . . . but
by God
these sons of bitches hurt
our
family,
our
friends, and we’re going to stop them.” Saul stopped, leaned on his hands, and lowered his head. Sweat dripped to the table.

Natalie touched his hand. “Saul,” she said softly, “I know. I’m sorry. We’re very tired. We need sleep.”

He nodded, patted her hand, and rubbed his cheeks. “You get a few hours’ sleep. I’m going to bed down on the roll-away in the observation room. I have the sensors programmed to set off the alarm when Harod wakes. With luck, both of us can get seven hours’ sleep.”

Natalie flicked off the light and walked with him to the bottom of the stairs. As she started up she paused and said, “This means that we definitely have to go ahead with the next part, don’t we? Charleston?”

Saul nodded tiredly. “I think so. I see no other way. I am sorry.”

“That’s all right,” said Natalie although her skin tightened with fear at the thought of what lay ahead. “I knew it would come to that.”

Saul looked up at her. “It doesn’t have to.”

“Yes,” said Natalie. She started slowly up the stairs, whispering the next sentence only to herself, “Yes, it does have to.”

S
pecial Agent Richard Haines used a Bureau scrambler phone to contact Mr. Barent’s communications center in Palm Springs. He had no idea where Barent was when the billionaire answered the phone. “Richard, what do you have to report?”

“Not much, sir,” said Haines. “The Bureau here has been keeping track of the local Israeli consulate— that’s standard procedure— but they don’t have any record of Cohen visiting either the consulate or the import office that is the Los Angeles front for in-county Mossad operatives. We’ve got a man in their operations here, and he swears that Cohen wasn’t here on business.”

“That’s all you have?”

“Not quite. We checked out the Long Beach motel and confirmed that Cohen was there. The day clerk said that he’d been driving a rental car the morning he checked in— Thursday the sixteenth— but that he’d had a van, the clerk was pretty sure that it was a Ford Econoline, when he checked out on Monday morning. One of the maids remembered that there were several large boxes— almost crate-size, she said— stored in his room on Saturday and Sunday. She said that one of them was labeled Hitachi.”

“Electronics?” said Barent. “Surveillance equipment?”

“Possibly,” said Haines, “but the Mossad usually provides that kind of equipment without buying it over the counter.”

“What if Cohen was working alone . . . or for someone else?”

“We’re going under that assumption right now,” said Haines. “Have you been able to ascertain whether Willi Borden was in the area?”

“No, sir. We staked out his house again . . . it hasn’t been sold yet . . . but there’s no sign of him or Reynolds or Luhar.”

“What about Harod?”

“Well, we haven’t been able to get in touch with him.”

“What does that mean, Richard?”

“Well, sir, we haven’t had any surveillance on Harod for several weeks and when we’ve tried to call yesterday and today, his secretary tells us that he’s out and she doesn’t know where he is. We have people over there today, but so far he hasn’t left his house or shown up on the Paramount set.”

“I am somewhat disappointed, Richard.”

Haines began to shake slightly down the length of his body. He propped his elbows on the desk and gripped the receiver tightly in both hands. “I’m sorry, sir. It’s been difficult handling the Wyoming investigation while supervising the special team here in California.”

“What else has come of the Wyoming search?”

“Ah . . . nothing concrete, sir. We’re sure that Walters, the affected air force officer who . . .”

“Yes, yes.”

“Well, Walters was in a Cheyenne bar on Tuesday evening. The bartender is pretty sure he remembers a group of men who included someone who fit Willi’s description . . .”

“Pretty sure?”

“It was very crowded, Mr. Barent. We’re assuming it
was
Willi. We’ve checked all of the hotels and motels in an expanding radius that’s reached Denver, but no one remembers seeing him or his two companions.”

“This is becoming a litany of futile actions, Richard. Have you had
any
leads in discovering Willi’s current location?”

“Well, sir, we have all airline. Amtrak, and bus line scheduling computers on alert should any of Willi’s entourage use a credit card or fly under their own names. We’ve expanded that alert to include the Jew psychiatrist who probably died in Philly, and the Preston girl. We have Customs covered; it’s an A-l priority on the Bureau’s weekly list. And there are alerts to each of our regional offices and their local liaisons . . .”

“I
know
all of this, Richard,” Barent said softly. “I asked if there were any new leads.”

“Not since we got the trace on Jack Cohen’s computer incursions last Tuesday.”

“You still believe that Cohen was being Used by Willi?”

“I don’t know anyone else who would be exploring connections between Reverend Sutter, Mr. Kepler, and yourself, sir.”

“Perhaps we were premature in . . . ah . . . greeting Mr. Cohen the way we did upon his return.”

Haines said nothing. The visible shaking had stopped, but a slick sheen of sweat stood out on his forehead and upper lip.

“What about the gas station receipt, Richard?”

“Ah . . . yes, sir. We checked that out. The own er says that it’s very busy, he can’t remember everyone who stops there. We confirmed through his credit card carbons that it was Cohen. The boy who filled out the credit card form has a week off and is backpacking in the Santa Ana Mountains somewhere. It’s a long shot anyway . . .”

“It seems to me, Richard, that it is time you began following up on the long shots. I want Willi Borden found and I want the Cohen connection nailed down. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I would hate to become so disappointed that I had to call you back here for disciplinary action, Richard.”

Haines used the sleeve of his Joseph Banks poplin sports coat to wipe the sweat from his face. “Yes, sir.”

“Now did you not mention that you considered it a possibility that the Israelis had a safe house . . . or more than one . . . near Los Angeles. Ones that your Bureau would not have yet discovered?”

“Uh . . . I said it was possible, Mr. Barent. It doesn’t seem very likely.”

“But it is possible?”

“Yessir. You see, a couple of years ago there was this middle-level Al Fatah Palestinian who’d been the accountant for Black September. He agreed to defect to the U.S.A., but the CIA agents he’d thought he was dealing with were actually Cohen’s Mossad. So they brought this man to the States, let him see that he was in L.A., and then spirited him away somewhere where neither the CIA nor the Bureau could find them to . . .”

“Richard, this is irrelevant. You have reason to believe that there might be another safe house somewhere near Los Angeles?”

“Yessir.”

“And it might be near the San Juan Capistrano gas station.”

“Yessir, but it might be anywhere.”

“All right, Richard. Here is what you will do. First, you will immediately go to Mr. Harod’s house and conduct a thorough interrogation . . . I emphasize
thorough
, Richard . . . of Miss Chen. If Harod is there, interrogate him. If he is not there, find him. Second, you will utilize the full resources of your Los Angeles Bureau station and what ever other local resources are necessary to find that backpacking gas station attendant and any other witnesses you may want to question. I want to know precisely what vehicle Mr. Cohen was driving, who was with him, and what direction they went from this particular gas station. Third, begin a survey of electronics supply stores in the Long Beach and surrounding areas. Find out if Jack Cohen or Willi purchased anything there. Fourth, re-interrogate the maids and clerks at the Long Beach motel to discover the smallest bits of additional information. You may use what ever form of persuasion you deem necessary.

“Finally, I will offer some help from this end. A dozen of Joseph’s plumbers will be sent out this afternoon to aid you in your . . . ah . . . confidential investigations. Also, we will find out about that additional safe house. I will have that information to you within twenty-four hours.

Haines rubbed his eyebrows. “But how . . .” He shut up.

C. Arnold Barent’s chuckle sounded static-filled over the scrambled circuit. “Richard, you certainly don’t believe that you and Charles were my only sources of information? If all else fails, I will telephone certain . . . ah . . . contacts I have within the Israeli government. Because of the time difference, it may be tomorrow morning before I have a specific address for you. Do not wait that long. Begin a search of the area around San Juan Capistrano this afternoon. Check land sales records, homes that are unattended much of the year . . . simply drive around and look for a dark Econoline van if nothing else occurs to you. Remember, you are looking for a private dwelling in a secure area, most probably away from residential areas.”

“Yessir,” said Haines. “I will be back to you as soon as possible,” said C. Arnold Barent. “And Richard?”

“Yessir?”

“Do not disappoint me again.”

“No,
sir
,” said Richard Haines.