Put enough investigators and agents on that set of information, and I was sure the uranium would be found within a day or so. And with such good progress being made, maybe that carrier group would get other orders in the next several hours, orders that would mean a great number of people-strangers all would live to see another day.
I was on Atlantic Avenue and drove by the Lafayette
House, and through the hotel's parking lot to my private driveway. As I got closer to my house, I saw that someone was waiting for me on the front steps, somebody who stood up and waited for me to park my Ford in the nearby garage.
Detective Diane Woods, Tyler Police Department.
I came out of the garage and Diane nodded at me as I came closer. "You having an okay day?"
Let's see, one missing old man, one man who just died an hour or so ago in front of me. I shook my head. "I've had better."
"So have I," she said. "I got a call a little while ago from Joe Stevens, detective up in Porter. All kinds of hell are breaking loose up there. Seems like a museum director is missing, and his son has been found dead in his apartment. Detective Stevens said you've had contact with both of these individuals. True?"
"Quite true," I said.
It had gotten cloudy again and the wind was picking up.
Diane had on a knee-length leather coat that she was holding closed by using her hands in her pockets. "He also said somebody took a pot shot at you the other day, and that the dead guy --- called Keith --- had threatened you just beforehand. Also true?”
“Yes, also true,” I said, now standing in front of her by the entrance to my home.
She gently kicked at one of the many rocks that littered the landscape that really couldn't be called a lawn. Diane said, "Now, in reply to all this, I told Detective Stevens that you were a trustworthy, honorable man, and that while you might have been on the fringes of whatever was going on up there, that you wouldn't have done anything criminal. That you wouldn't have anything to do with the death of that guy or the disappearance of his father. That he should trust me on this. Is that also true?"
"You're batting a thousand," I said, thinking now of that damn carrier task force, trying to remember what time it was in the Mediterranean at this hour. Was it still dark and would they attack in the next few hours?
A small nod. "Then that's the first time in days that I've batted anything well. Look, don't make me look like an idiot, all right? Get in there and call up Detective Stevens and go on and see him. Clear everything up. I went out some distance to do some favors for you. Don't make me regret it."
"I won't."
"Good." And then she added quietly, "Of course, next few days, it might not make one hell of a difference."
"Story coming out in the paper about you?"
"Three more days. On a Friday, most popular day in the week for newspapers. Make sure it gets a lot of good coverage. Ain't I lucky?"
Off in the distance, the faint sounds of thunder approaching. "Maybe something will happen between now and then. Paula Quinn might find something else to report about, something that will bump your story into the dead file."
Now she smiled. "You still trying to do the best for your friends, aren't you?"
"Always."
She looked at her watch. "Time to get going, my friend.
Look, let's get together in a couple of days for lunch or something. Maybe you could give me some advice on how to market my skills.”
I smiled at her, still cooling my heels. “Lunch sounds good, and don’t be so quick about worrying to market anything, okay?”
Diane didn't reply, just waved a hand in my direction as she trudged back up the hill to the parking lot. I waited a decent interval of about a second or two before I went into my house.
Inside, as I was taking my coat off, I had about the third or fourth coronary of the day as that damn cell phone started ringing again, making me drop the coat on the floor. I got down on my knees and pulled the phone free. "Hello?"
"Yeah," said the male voice on the other end. "Is Tony there?"
"Who?"
"Tony."
Jesus, of all the times... "Sorry, there's nobody here by that name."
"'Kay," said the voice. "Sorry."
I snapped the phone shut so hard that I was sure I had broken it --- and wouldn't Felix be displeased --- and then I went over to my own phone and the answering machine that glowed steady with a solitary "1." I hit "play" and Laura Reeves's voice filled my living room: "Lewis? It's Laura. Understand that you're trying to get a hold of me, but in about ten minutes I'm going to be in a helicopter and fairly unreachable. Look, talk to Gus. He can handle anything you've got. That's what he's there for. All right? Talk to you when I get back on the ground."
I stopped the answering machine and went into the kitchen, realizing I was starved but also wasn't very hungry. An odd combination, I realized, but there you go. I had a banana and a Granny Smith apple, and a large glass of water. I felt constricted, closed in. Opening the sliding glass doors, I went out onto the deck, looking out to the ocean and to the wooded hills of Samson Point. This was where it had all started just a few days ago, when I had been out here in the middle of the night to see a space shuttle go overhead. I wondered how the mission was going, and I had a feeling it was going much better than Laura's.
I looked out to the ocean, but for some reason my gaze returned to Samson Point. Storm clouds were moving in again, after the rain showers of this morning. The wind was stronger, making me shiver, and I rubbed at my arms and kept looking at the nature preserve. That's where it had started. Right there, with the Libyan agent being found dead in the parking lot.
A battery room, that's what Keith Emerson had said to me. A battery room.
A. Battery. Room.
I rubbed at my eyes and looked at the trees and the low hills, hiding the bunkers and gun emplacements and tunnels and ---
I turned and went back into the house, and upstairs to my office. My fingers flew across the bookshelves until I found a slender volume that I remembered reading a couple of years ago. Back downstairs, I went to my phone and dialed for across the way, and Gus Turner came back on the line. "Yes, what is it?"
"Gus, it's Lewis Cole," I said. "Is Laura there?"
A slow sigh. "No, she's not. She's on another reconnaissance mission. Look, what do you have? I'm pretty busy over here."
I couldn't help it, I was smiling. "How does this sound? I know who Whizzer is, and I know where the uranium's hidden. Is that good enough for you?"
A pause, making me wonder if the phone line had suddenly broken, and then he whispered, "You better not be joking."
"I'm not. I guess I should come over there, right?"
"Jesus, you better believe it."
I hung up and grabbed my coat and looked at my Beretta and the shoulder holster hanging in the closet. I shrugged, took my weapon and holster, and pulled it over my shoulders. As I was getting my coat on, my phone rang. I looked over and thought for a moment, and then waited a few more rings, until the answering machine clicked on. As my outgoing message did what it was supposed to do, I walked over to the machine, to see if it was a hang-up, my threatening caller, Laura Reeves or Gus, or just someone trying to get me to change my long-distance carrier.
Click.
A woman’s voice. “Lewis? Are you there? Pick up, will you?”
Paula Quinn. Damn. I looked at my watch and imagined again that carrier task force moving into position, getting ready to launch death in a half dozen ways.
"Lewis? Pick up, will you? I really need to talk to you. Really." I looked down at the book I had in my hand,
A History of Samson Point Coast Artillery Station
, and then turned on my heel and walked out the door. As I closed the door behind me, I heard her quiet voice, "Oh, okay, please call me, okay?"
Sure, I thought, walking up my dirt driveway. Soon as I can.
Honest.
One of the NEST guards, Clem, was standing inside the hotel room with the door barely ajar, probably to make sure I wasn't abducted as I made my way down the hallway. He opened the door wider and called out, "He's here, Gus."
I went in, wrinkled my nose again at the smell. When these folks moved out of here in a day or two, the staff of the Lafayette House was going to have their hands full. They'd probably have to borrow some decontamination gear from the nuclear power plant at Falconer down the coast.
Gus looked up at me from his chair at the long conference room table, a nervous smile on his face. "I got a call into Laura and she said, 'Congratulations, Lewis, and I owe you dinner.' She'll be back here in about a half hour, but she told me to get right on it. And another thing she told me, too."
"What's that?" I said, pulling a chair out and sitting at the table.
He motioned to Clem standing by the door, his large hands
clasped in front of him. "She also told me that if you were playing games with us, that I should have Clem kill you and dump your weighted body in the ocean. And I don't think she was kidding."
"And I don't care if she was or wasn't," I said. "Because I got the real deal. Look. Whizzer was one Keith Emerson. His dad is the curator of the submarine museum up in Porter. I went there to check on any leads he might have about Navy Yard retirees who might have been around when the U-boat was brought into Porter Harbor.”
Gus said, “We jumped on those retirees, first thing we did when we set up shop here. Why did you go to that museum? Why not the retiree's association?"
I thought about the hesitation I had before, decided it didn't make any sense anymore. "Well, there was one other thing, too."
Gus was writing furiously on a yellow legal pad. "And what was that?"
"Remember the first time you met me, Gus?"
He looked up from his scribbling. "Sure. The night the operative's body was found."
I nodded. "Besides the two cops and the EMTs, I was one of the first ones there. I looked at the body in the front seat of the car. The guy was wearing a button on the lapel of his suit coat. I didn't think much of it, and later, when Laura showed me the photos you guys took there, the button was missing. I guess it had fallen off or been removed."
"Go on," Gus said. "I wasn't in charge of removing and ID'ing the body, so I can't help you there."
"Well, I found out later that the button is used to control admission at the Porter Submarine Museum. And the curator remembered someone matching the description of the Libyan visiting there, the day he arrived here and later got killed. So obviously he was there to meet somebody --- the curator's son. Gus, the son, was a Marine aviator a few years back, before being medically discharged. His call sign was Whizzer."
That seemed to get even Clem's attention, for he seemed to be leaning his large bulk closer into the room to hear better. "Whizzer," Gus said, his eyes bright with excitement. "After all these weeks... where is he now?"
"He's dead."
Gus blinked hard. "He's
what
?"
"He's dead. I went to meet him this morning, because he told me last night he knew where the uranium was hidden, even what it looks like. And before I got there to meet him, somebody took a knife to his neck. But he managed to tell me something before he lost consciousness. He said what caused everything was a battery room.”
"Hold on," he said, sitting up straighter in his chair. "You were meeting with someone who said he knew where the uranium was, and didn't tell Laura or anybody else here?"
I shot back, "We can discuss my investigatory techniques later, Gus. The thing is, he said a battery room. That's what caused it. A battery room."
He glared at me. "That doesn't make sense."
"No, it doesn't," I agreed. "Because I was hearing him wrong. He wasn't saying 'a battery room.' He was trying to say, 'Battery A room.'"
I slid the book across to him. "Look at pages fifty and fifty-one. A schematic design of a gun emplacement at the Samson Point nature preserve, which was once a coast artillery station. One of the batteries was known as Battery A. Your Libyan was killed within a hundred yards of that gun emplacement. That's a hell of a coincidence, isn't it?"
He opened the book up and looked at the drawings, looked at me, and then went back to the book. "An underground vault, covered with yards of concrete and dirt... no wonder none of our detection equipment could spot it." He closed the book. "This Keith Emerson. Did you report it to the police?"
"No," I said.
That really got his attention. "Why the hell not?"
"Because I didn't do it, and about the only lead I could give the Porter cops was the possibility that another Libyan agent in country did it. And if I started talking to the cops, I wouldn't be here, letting you in on what I just found out. And that wouldn't help you guys get the uranium to beat the deadline, would it."
He whistled. "Jesus, you're a cold one."
"Only when the circumstances count. Plus, there's the matter of Keith's dad."
"The museum curator? What about him?"