Marshall mounted the set of stamped-metal steps very slowly. The stairwell was narrow and dark, lit only by a single fluorescent fixture. Lightbulbs were a scarce commodity: even with the film crew on hand, much of the base remained completely dark.
He felt more tired than he had ever felt in his life. And yet it was not a physical weariness-it was total emotional exhaustion. He had seen it in the strained faces of the others, as well. After so much effort, so much buildup, the sudden inexplicable disappearance left everyone stupefied. And over the entire base hung the question: Who did it?
Reaching the top of the stairwell, he stopped at a closed, windowless door. He glanced at his watch: five minutes past eight. Fifteen hours had passed since he’d discovered the missing cat. Fifteen endless, awful hours, full of mistrust and suspicion and uncertainty. And now, just after dinner, an e-mail summons from Faraday: “RASP room, right away.”
Marshall reached for the handle, pushed it open. Beyond lay a long, low room that resembled the control tower of an airport. Windows ran around all four sides, looking out over the limitless icescape of the Zone. The room was as dark as the stairwell, and the dim light reflected off the scopes of a dozen obsolete radar stations, arrayed in regular rows. Ancient screens, each six feet tall, were pushed diagonally into the corners of the room. Before each sat a projection device, dusty and unused for nearly half a century.
This was the Radar Mapping and Air Surveillance Command Post, known as the RASP room, the nerve center of Fear Base and the highest structure within the perimeter fence. As he looked around, he could make out three dim forms seated at a conference table: Sully, Barbour, and Chen. Chen gave a listless wave. Sully, elbows on his knees and chin in his hands, glanced up at the sound of the door, then let his eyes sink back to floor.
Three evenings a week, without fail, the team had assembled here for a status meeting. Who’d chosen the RASP room for the meeting was forgotten, but the bizarre location had become a fixed ritual within days of their arrival. Except this was no pro forma meeting: Faraday wanted to talk to them, urgently.
As if on schedule, the door opened again and Faraday came in, a thin folder under one arm. The usual preoccupied look was gone from the biologist’s features. He stepped quickly past the radar stations and sat down between Sully and Chen.
For a moment, nobody spoke. Then Barbour cleared her throat. “So. Are we going to have to pack it in?”
There was no response.
“That’s what he told me, you know. That nancy-boy Conti. Him and his storm trooper.”
“We’ve only got another two weeks on the project,” Marshall said. “Even if they do close us up, bureaucracy moves slowly. We can get our work done in time.”
Barbour didn’t seem to hear him. “Pawed through every last one of my drawers. Said it was us, he did. He said we thought we were in it together. Said we wanted the specimen for ourselves, for the university.”
“Penny, forget it,” Sully snapped. “He’s just kicking out at anybody within reach.”
“He just kept after me…and after me…oh,
God!
” And Barbour buried her face in her hands, her frame suddenly shaking with violent sobs.
Marshall leaned over quickly, put an arm around her shoulders.
“Bastard,” Sully murmured.
“Maybe
we
could find it,” Chen said. “Or maybe the person who stole it. They couldn’t have gone far. In fact, they must still be here. We’d be off the hook then, they could salvage the special.”
Barbour sniffed, detached herself gently from Marshall ’s embrace.
“We can’t do anything Wolff isn’t doing already,” Sully said. “Besides, he’s not likely to trust us. He made that perfectly clear. I don’t know why he’s so fixated on us-that Dr. Logan seems guilty as hell. You think his arrival just yesterday was a coincidence? And why wasn’t he at the meeting?”
“Why indeed?” Marshall replied. Privately, he had been thinking the same thing.
“While cooling my heels in my quarters I went online, did a little digging into Jeremy Logan. Seems he’s a professor of medieval history at Yale. Last year he published a monograph on some genetic disorder that afflicted ancient Egyptian royalty. The year before, a monograph on spectral phenomenon in Salem, Massachusetts. ‘Spectral phenomena.’” Sully spat out the words. “Does that sound like a history professor to you?”
When nobody answered, Sully sighed and looked around. “Well, this speculation won’t get us anywhere. Wright, what was it you wanted to see us about? It is your latest theory du jour?”
Faraday glanced at him. “No theory,” he said. “Just some pictures.”
Sully groaned. “
Again
with the photographs? That’s why we’re here? You’re in the wrong profession, you know that?”
Faraday ignored this. “After Evan told us about the theft-after the first hue and cry died down-I went out to the vault. The door was wide open, nobody seemed to care about it anymore. So I took some shots.”
Sully frowned. “Why?”
“Why do I ever take shots? Documentation.” He paused. “Conti seemed to be blaming us already. I thought maybe…well, maybe I’d find some evidence to clear us. I didn’t get a chance to print them until an hour or so ago.” He opened the folder, drew out half a dozen eight-by-tens, and passed them to Sully.
The climatologist shuffled through them quickly, then handed them to Marshall, clearly unimpressed.
The first photo showed a blurry interior of the vault. Chunks and blocks of ice littered the floor, but otherwise it was empty save for the heater in the rear and the large hole between the I beams. Marshall turned to the second photo. This was clearer: a close-up of the hole itself.
“And?” Sully prompted.
“People were saying the thief must have crawled in under the vault.” Faraday removed his glasses, began polishing them on the cuff of his shirt. “Cut out the block of ice with a hacksaw.”
“Yes, we all heard that. So?”
“Did you see that shot of the hole? Look at the kerf pattern.”
“The what?” Sully asked.
“Kerf. The saw marks. If somebody was breaking into the vault from underneath, the marks should go from down to up. But when I examined the edges of the hole in close-up, the marks did the opposite. Went from
up
to
down.
”
“Let me see that.” Sully plucked the photos from Marshall ’s hand, examined them closely. “I don’t see anything.”
“May I?” Marshall retrieved the photos, looked at the close-up again. Although the silver paint of the floor reflected the bright light of the vault, he could immediately see that Faraday was right: the wood splinters weren’t forced upward. Instead, they clearly angled down.
“Whoever it was didn’t break in from underneath,” he said. “They sawed their way out from inside.”
Sully waved his hand in impatient dismissal. “Wolff’s gotten to the two of you. You’re seeing things.”
“No. It’s there all right.” Marshall glanced at Faraday. “You know what this means?”
Faraday nodded. “It means whoever stole the cat knew the combination to the vault.”
Until now, Marshall had been no deeper inside Conti’s capacious suite than its threshold. But as the director gestured for him to enter, Marshall immediately understood why Conti had appropriated not only the commander’s quarters but the deputy commander’s as well. The rambling but spartan set of rooms on C Level had been converted into a sprawling, opulent salon. Leather couches, velvet banquettes, and plush ottomans were placed in complementary attitudes atop expensive Persian rugs. Draperies and postmodernist paintings in discreet frames camouflaged the drab metal walls. The centerpiece of the space was a huge, hundred-inch LCD screen in the rear, its base hidden by rows of chairs set before it: a private cinema for viewing rushes, feature films, and- Marshall felt certain-the Greatest Hits of Emilio Conti.
The director was polite, even cheery, and the only hint he hadn’t slept in perhaps thirty-six hours was the blue-black smudges beneath his eyes. “Good morning, Dr. Marshall,” he said with a smile. “Good morning. Come in, come in. Seven-thirty: excellent. I appreciate promptness.” He’d been watching something on the vast screen-black-and-white, slightly grainy-and with the flick of a remote he switched it off. “Please, sit down.”
He led the way across the room. Through an open doorway, Marshall could see a small conference table, surrounded by ergonomic work chairs. A Moviola stood in a far corner, strips of film trailing from its spools. Marshall stared at it, wondering if this anachronism was part of Conti’s work flow or simply a directorial affectation.
Conti took a seat before the screen and motioned Marshall to do the same. “What do you think of my little screening room?” he asked, still smiling.
“I watched them airlift that thing in,” Marshall said, nodding at the LCD. “I’d assumed it was some critical piece of documentary technology.”
“It
is
critical,” Conti replied. “Not only for assembling my film but for maintaining my sanity.” He waved at two bookcases full of DVDs that framed the screen. “You see those? That is my reference library. The greatest films ever made: the most beautiful, the most groundbreaking, the most thought provoking.
The Battleship Potemkin, Intolerance, Rashômon, Double Indemnity, L’Avventura, The Seventh Seal
-they are all here. I never travel anywhere without them. Yet they are not just my solace, Dr. Marshall-they are my oracle, my Delphic temple. Some turn to the Bible for guidance; others, the I Ching. I have these. And they never fail me. Take this, for instance.” And with another flick of the remote Conti restarted the film.
The perpetually worried-looking visage of Victor Mature filled the screen. “
Kiss of Death.
Familiar with it?”
Marshall shook his head.
Conti muted the sound to a whisper. “A forgotten masterpiece of 1947. Henry Hathaway’s breakthrough film-but then you must know Hathaway’s work,
The House on 92nd Street, 13 Rue Madeleine.
Anyway, in the movie, the hero, Nick Bianco”-and Conti pointed at Mature, his exaggerated face now framed by prison bars-“is sent up to Sing Sing on a minor charge. There he’s double-crossed by his shyster lawyer. In order to make parole, he cuts a deal with the DA: he agrees to squeal on this psychopathic killer named Tommy Udo.”
“Sounds intriguing.”
“That’s putting it mildly. Not only is it a brilliant film-but it’s exactly the solution to my problem.”
Marshall frowned. “I don’t follow you.”
“When we discovered the cat was missing, I was close to panic. I was afraid my documentary-possibly even my career-was in jeopardy. You can imagine how I felt. This was to be my ne plus ultra. It was to put me right up there with Eisenstein.”
A prime-time documentary?
Marshall thought. He decided it was better to keep mum.
“I paced half the night, worrying, debating what to do. Then I turned to these”-he waved at the bookcases-“and as always they provided the answer I needed.”
Marshall waited, listening, as Conti nodded once more toward the screen. “You see,
Kiss of Death
is what’s known as a ‘docunoir’: a hybrid of documentary and film noir. Very interesting concept. Very revolutionary.”
He turned to Marshall, the screen illumination throwing the contours of his face into chiaroscuro. “Yesterday, in the heat of the moment, I was sure this was an act of theft. Now I’ve had time to think. And I’ve changed my mind. I’m convinced it was sabotage.”
“Sabotage?”
Conti nodded. “As valuable as that cat is, the logistics of removing it from the base-spiriting it away-simply don’t work.” He ticked the points off on his fingers. “The thieves-and there would have to be at least two, the asset is simply too heavy for one person to handle-would need transportation. That would be impossible to conceal from us. And if anyone were to leave prematurely, we’d know.”
“What about Carradine, the trucker? He not only has the transportation; he’s one of the newest arrivals.”
“His cab’s been thoroughly searched, and his movements are accounted for. As I was saying, stealing the cat would be prohibitively difficult. But if all somebody wanted was for the documentary to
stop,
for our show to go away…” He shrugged. “Then it would just be a matter of dropping the carcass down some crevasse. Nobody would be the wiser.”
“Who would want to do such a thing?” Marshall asked.
Conti looked at him. “You would.”
Marshall looked back in surprise. “Me?”
“Well-you scientists. It might be you, in particular. But on careful consideration I think Dr. Sully is the more obvious choice. He seems to be quite put out that I didn’t make him a star of
Raising the Tiger.
”
Marshall shook his head. “That’s crazy. The documentary was set to go live yesterday-you would have been gone today. Why bother with sabotage?”
“It’s true: I would have been gone today. But postproduction on a successful shoot would take several days longer. Not to mention dismantling the sets, removing the equipment. When I gave Sully an estimated timeline, he didn’t seem especially pleased.” Conti looked at him searchingly. The smile was now gone. “Sully seems like the impulsive type. You don’t. That’s why I’ve come to you. Despite our little fracas the other day, I think you’re a reasonable man. Perhaps more than your colleagues, you realize what’s at stake. So:
Where the hell is that cat?
”
Marshall returned the stare. Despite the director’s carefully composed expression, it was obvious that Conti was doing a desperate dance, searching for a way,
any
way, to salvage the situation.
“What about Logan?” Marshall asked, recalling the previous evening’s conversation in the RASP room. “He came here out of nowhere. Nobody knows what he wants. I’m told he’s a Yale professor-professor of history. Doesn’t that strike you as strange-and very suspicious?”
“It is strange. So strange, in fact, that I have to discount him as a suspect. He’s too obvious. Besides, I already told you: my money’s on sabotage, not theft. And Dr. Logan has no reason to sabotage my documentary. So: Where’s the cat? Sully would have told you, I think. Is it retrievable?”
“Sully didn’t tell me anything. You’re barking up the wrong tree. You should be searching among your own team.”
Conti regarded him carefully, his expression slowly dissolving into something very much like regret. “That’s Wolff’s job.” He sighed. “Listen. I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I can do this one of two ways. If we find that cat, I can make the film I originally intended. With my skills, I can even turn this delay into a benefit: make things more exciting, increase the audience. Everybody wins.
Or
-I can make this a crime story.”
He jerked his thumb back at the screen. “I’ve always wanted to make a noir picture. Now I can-except I have a
true
story to tell. A
huge
story, documented as it plays out in real time: the sabotage, the investigation, the ultimate triumph of justice. Such a story would never die, Dr. Marshall. Imagine the publicity-positive or negative-for those portrayed. All I need do is cast it. Find the hero…
and
the villain.”
On the huge screen, Victor Mature was crossing a busy street, the urban skyline rising behind him. “Look at him,” Conti said. “An average Joe, caught up in something bigger than himself. Remind you of anybody?”
Marshall did not reply.
Conti shifted again. “So what’s it going to be, Dr. Marshall: do the right thing, side with the cops, squeal on the bad guy? Or do something else…something much more stupid?”
As Mature left the frame, the camera panned in on another figure, hiding in a dark alley: pale, lean, all in black with a white tie, eyes strangely empty. Tommy Udo. Emerging from concealment, he looked carefully around, then disappeared into a doorway.
“I always loved Richard Widmark in this role,” Conti said. “He plays such a great psycho. His mannerisms, his nervous hyena laugh-pure genius.”
Now the killer was creeping stealthily up a narrow staircase.
“I was hoping to cast you as Mature,” Conti said. “But now I’m not so sure. You’re beginning to look a little more like Widmark.”
The killer had entered an apartment and was confronting a terrified old lady in a wheelchair.
“That’s Nick Bianco’s mother,” Conti explained.
The camera looked on, with monochromatic dispassion, as the woman was interrogated, shaken about. Widmark was smiling now, a strange lopsided smile, as he manhandled the grips of the wheelchair, steered it out of the shabby apartment and onto the landing.
“Watch this,” Conti said. “An imperishable moment of cinema.”
Widmark-still smiling, a pale, grinning death’s-head in a black suit-positioned the wheelchair at the top of the stairs. There was the briefest of pauses. Then, with a sudden violent thrust, he sent it and its struggling occupant tumbling down on a one-way ride to perdition.
Conti froze the picture on Widmark’s contorted face. “The network is calling me in six hours. I’ll give you four to make your choice.”
Silently, Marshall rose.
“And remember, Dr. Marshall-one way or the other, I’ll be casting you.”