The black space, confined, close, airless, and still. This time he felt himself moving through
it, not very far, not very fast, just moving, seeing
little but aware of the nearness of the walls, aware of another abyss ahead.
A shudder passed through him and he felt Constance’s hand on his arm. He blinked. “It’s right over there,” he said in a thick voice. “At the end of the valley.”
“I can’t see anything.”
“I know. Let’s get the skis off the car while we wait. They can stick out the rear window. God knows it can’t get much colder in here than it is now.”
They had to get closer, he thought, unfastening the skis from the rack. He had no idea how far away it was, only that it was over there. He could cross-country ski, but not well enough to carry the suitcase and manage two poles, and he knew he could not ski at all with the suit on. They had to get close enough for him to make it alone, no steep hills to negotiate, and then… . And then he would know what to do.
Constance had just opened the trunk to get the suitcase out when she heard another car engine. “Charlie!”
He had stopped moving. “I hear.”
Carson was not in sight. Charlie propped one pair of skis against the car and Constance closed the trunk lid. “I’m going to get us stuck,” she said. “Stay clear.” She ran past Charlie, got in behind the wheel and turned on the ignition. Charlie jumped back when she revved the engine and plowed into the snow with wheels spinning, digging in, hitting ice, then simply spinning again. A black car pulled up behind her. It looked misshapen with oversized wheels and studded snow tires, a modified Buick that probably could go anywhere it damn chose.
A heavy man in a dark coat got out and came to Charlie. “What the hell are you doing in here? What’s she trying to do?”
Constance stopped gunning the motor and got out. “We’re stuck,” she said brightly.
“You’re trespassing. What are you doing in here?”
“We wanted to go skiing,” Constance said. She looked accusingly at Charlie. “He said it was a good place. He used to come here all the time, he said. And now look at us, stuck.”
“You dug through that snow bank to go skiing?” the man said in disbelief. “Come on. You’re getting out of here.”
“You the owner of this place?” Charlie asked then.
“Caretaker,” the man said. “Out!”
With great patience, speaking the way a kindergarten teacher might talk to a backward child, Constance said, “We are stuck in the snow. My car won’t come out. We can’t leave. Will you please drive to town and call a tow truck for us. We will sit right here and wait. No skiing or anything.”
The man walked to the front of the car, looked at the rear wheels. The Volvo was clearly stuck. He kicked the rear tire and scowled, then went back to his own car and spoke in an inaudible voice to a second man who had not got out. Now he did. He inspected the wheels and both men withdrew and consulted.
They both came back to Constance and Charlie. “We’ll take you to our camp,” the heavy one said. The other was lean faced, and almost albino pale. “We’ll send a truck to pull your car out and deliver it to you at the camp. Come on.”
“I don’t think so,” Charlie said. “We’ll wait here for the truck.”
The lean one reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet with ID. “Buster, you’ll do what we tell you. Police officers. Now move.”
“Hold it a second,” the other one said. “Who’s with you?” He was looking at Carson’s tracks.
“I was looking for a good place to park,” Charlie murmured. “Out of the traffic, you know. Funny kind of ID you had there,” he went on, studying the lean one. “Mind if I have a closer look?”
Now the heavy one withdrew his hand from his pocket. He had a gun in it. “Search them,” he ordered.
The lean man was efficient and thorough. When he was finished, the other one said, “Mr. and Mrs. Meiklejohn, get in the car. Now.”
Charlie walked to it, talking easily to Constance. “Actually they’ll take us to Fred Foley. I was sure this road would lead us to him, but wrong. Can’t win them all.”
“You’re looking for Foley?” the heavy man asked, clearly confused now.
“Yep. And Sid Levy. Wrong turn, though.”
“You got that right. Come on, get in.”
“Look, what’s your name? FBI agent what?”
“Lovins. Mel Lovins. He’s Jack Windekin.”
“And I’m Charlie Meiklejohn, retired New York City Police force. I’ve been on this case with Fred and Sid from the beginning. Take my wife to your camp and I’ll wait for a tow and join you. Is Fred up there yet?”
Charlie knew the instant he had gone too far. Lovins got mean again and snapped that no one stayed in this place, orders. For a second Charlie eyed him and his partner, thought about trying to run in foot deep snow, thought about being tackled and dragged back, and he shrugged and got in the car. He was joined by Jack Windekin. Constance sat in front with Mel Lovins.
Chapter 19
Carson watched the
car back out. He had
heard nothing, but the actions had spoken eloquently. The FBI, army, police, whoever they were, were already trying to cordon off the area, not very successfully yet, but it would get tighter, he knew, remembering the entrances to the Old Town, the blockade, the patrols on the ridge. For a moment he felt a wild desire to jump up and down and wave his arms, go with them to some safe place, let the cops handle it all. The urge passed swiftly; the car was out of sight. Only then did he leave the clump of snow-shrouded brush he had been crouching behind. He had gone another two hundred yards or so without feeling the charged cobwebs, but even if he had doubted Charlie’s certainty that this was the place, the bit of action he had just witnessed solidified his own conviction that this was it. He was sweating under the heavy clothes that Constance had insisted he put on.
Always before he had been able to drive up to the front door, take his gas can inside, do the job, and drive away. This time he didn’t even know where the damn thing was yet. Briefly he cursed Constance for deliberately getting stuck, but then he realized that if she had not done that, they would have driven the car out, and with it the skis and the suitcase, and the bomb. Charlie had insisted that it was not a bomb, but rather a two-phase device, but to Carson it was a bomb. He and Constance had watched silently as Charlie explained how to activate it. Simply pull this ring all the way out, he had said, lifting the ring. No way it could accidentally come out. No electrical device needed, nothing mechanical. Sometimes you get fancy with wires and stuff only to have them melt too soon. He reached the Volvo, and, just as the two strange men had done, he examined the wheels and gave up on driving farther without help. Stuck. He looked inside and let out a sigh of relief when he saw the keys in the ignition. He took them out and opened the trunk and stood for a moment looking at the suitcase. It was not very heavy, not a burden to carry, but he knew he could not carry it and use the skis too. Constance had been right about that.
He took out the suitcase, tossed the keys on the front seat, and started to walk again. The road must lead to the hotel, he told himself, and it couldn’t be very far, a mile and a half, no more than two. As soon as he was within view of it, he would consider cutting across the valley in a straight line, but until then he was better off on the road. In truth, he did not trust the valley, which widened as he went farther into it. It seemed that the snow was deeper in the clearing than here against the rising hill, and he was afraid there might be a brook somewhere under the snow. He could see himself falling into an icy stream, soaked through and through, resting, drifting into the comfortable sleep of hypothermia. And in the spring some kids would find the suitcase, open it, and pull the string…
The lower reaches of Childer’s Park were where families went for picnics in the heat of summer; little kids played in the shallow stream that ran through a meadow. There was a pond that froze solid every winter, fine for ice skating. Up a bit higher was where the eight to ten year old kids took their sleds, boys and girls. Higher than that was the turf of the junior high kids, all boys. No girls would risk the snowball fights, and fistfights, that broke out regularly among them. The highest part was reserved for the high school boys. The sled runs were long and somewhat dangerous, curving around drywalls hidden by snow, winding through stands of trees. Here the toboggan runs began, and they were the most dangerous of all. By the time the boys were old enough to try to join in the fun at the top of the mountain, they were also old enough for beer, for pot, whatever was making the rounds at the time. The cops cruised the road up there, and for the most part the boys tired of the snow games early in the season and were always searching for new ways to get the town cops out of the cruiser into the snow, whereupon the boys would leap on their long sleds or toboggans and flash down the slope. It was a game they played every year; the local police cooperated by yelling and sometimes giving chase, and more often getting back in the car to try to beat the boys to the bottom of the run in order to bawl them out and threaten them with charges everyone knew would never be pressed.
That afternoon there was a serious snowball fight, with the jocks holding off what seemed at times to be the rest of the high school population, but in reality was about a dozen other boys. Herman Kohl was bored with snowball fights, but Jud and Bobby were really into them, and he had to go along or get clobbered. In his mind he was planning their slide down the back of Childer’s Park. No one ever went down that way, although it was as good as the front side, because they knew they would end up over four miles from town, and going down the front took them nearly to the elementary school. He had been over every inch of the ground with his father in hunting season, starting when he was twelve, and he knew exactly where the drywall was that would be
their turning place, knew exactly how to get past
the old Miller Hotel, coast through the valley, and halfway up the hill to Mel’s camp. From
there it would be a five-minute walk to the camp
itself. A snowball hit him in the head and he
turned to retaliate, but inside he was furious with
himself for being in a fucking snowball fight. It seemed particularly childish that day when he had other things on his mind. This was kid stuff; he wanted to take on the whole fucking army.
Mel’s camp was for hunters, and had never been meant for anything more than primitive shelter and a place to cook meals and eat them, and to play cards after a long day in the woods. There was a large common room with a plank table that could seat sixteen at a time, and four card tables with folding chairs. Other folding chairs were scattered around the room, some at the plank table, others apparently at random. The windows were niggardly in size, bare. Electric lights hung on cords from the ceiling, which was finished with rough boards. The walls were made of the same rough lumber. The floor was bare and echoing. There was a back door, to the kitchen evidently, and halls leading off from the central room. When Charlie and Constance entered the building, there were three men there. One was at a portable typewriter typing, two at the plank table. A coffee urn was on the end of the table.
Mel Lovins went to the table and spoke to one of the men, who got up and walked to Charlie and Constance. He was round-faced, nondescript, as bland looking as a junior high civics teacher. “Brooks Sussman,” he said, extending his hand. “FBI.”
Constance pulled off her ski cap and gloves angrily and slammed them down on one of the card tables. “Mr. Sussman,” she said, “your associates have forced us to come with them at gunpoint. They forced us to abandon our car. I protest this kind of treatment and I want it on record. I don’t know what in the world is going on here, but I just intended to go skiing and I was kidnapped.”
Charlie blinked, then raised his eyebrow at Brooks Sussman, who appeared taken aback. Not my fault, Charlie seemed to be saying.
“Mrs. Meiklejohn, please just try to be patient until we get in touch with Agent Foley. They’re trying to reach him now in his car.” He looked at Charlie questioningly. “I thought you said you were in on this, have been from the start?”
“I am not a police officer,” Constance snapped. “And I never have been, and whatever he’s in on is his business. Where’s the bathroom?”
Charlie spread his hands helplessly; after a brief hesitation Sussman nodded toward the hall. “Down there.” Constance marched off.
“She doesn’t like guns,” Charlie said. Weak, but he did not have a clue about what she was up to, what the act was for. He caught a look of sympathy that flashed across Sussman’s face.
“Well, it’s unfortunate that you missed this road and went in over there instead. If you know anything about any of this, you know more than I do right now. Our orders are to keep everyone out of the valley.”
Oh, I know something about it, Charlie thought. On the short drive up to the camp he had felt as if he had circled it almost completely, that he could draw the coordinates to locate it with precision. What he lacked was the correct reference to calculate distance.
“How far are we from the hotel?” he asked.
Again Sussman hesitated. Then he shrugged and motioned Charlie to come to the table with him. “Just under two miles. We’re plugging the various ways into it right now. Didn’t expect anyone to dig through that bank, though.”
A map was opened on the table, a topographical map with a red circle that stood out like a target. Sussman put his finger in the circle.
“There,” he said. “We’re here.” He touched another place outside the circle. “You drove in about there.” The spot he indicated was also outside the circle, about as far from it as the camp was.
Exactly how he had envisioned it, Charlie thought, gazing at the map. He wondered if Carson had made his way into the red zone yet, and decided probably not; he was too inexpert on the skis. He had a lot of falling down to do on his way to the party.
A door slammed and there was the sound of boots stomping on bare wooden floors. Constance reappeared and cast a withering glance toward the table. She crossed the room, making a lot more noise than was necessary, moved a chair under one of the tables, straightened another one, continued past the table where Charlie and Sussman and the other two men watched her, and went into the kitchen.
“Maybe she’ll find something to do in there,” one of the men said almost meekly.
She came back and Charlie realized with near awe that she was casing the joint, looking for other exits, making a head count, right in front of them, openly, blatantly. At the same moment he was swept up in the other images that overrode what was actually before his eyes. Blackness, the too small space, the other doorway that called, called…
“Mr. Meiklejohn? Hey, are you all right? Mr. Meiklejohn! What’s wrong with him?”
He felt the hand on his arm and he was back, straining to see, facing away from the table, facing toward the hotel that was still calling him. Constance moved into his line of vision.
“He’s very ill,” she said coldly. “We think it could be smallpox.” She kept moving, this time toward the second hall.
“Shit!” Sussman said under his breath. The look he gave Charlie was solicitous. “Maybe you’d better sit down. You want some coffee?”
“Coffee,” Charlie said. “That sounds good. Actually it’s a form of epilepsy, very mild. I hardly ever even fall down.”
He had to talk to her, find out what she had learned, not make it obvious. How many agents were up here already, where were they? Two men entered the building together, breathing too hard, looking cold. Sussman motioned Charlie to the coffee urn and joined the two at the door, where they spoke in voices too low for Charlie to hear. Sussman cursed and motioned to a man at the table.
“Get your stuff on and go help them. Take Lovins with you. I’m going to the van a minute, see if they’ve raised Foley yet. Sit down, Meiklejohn. Just relax.”
Help them do what? Charlie wondered bleakly, after Sussman left. Search the hotel in the valley? Set up spotlights? Find someone lost in the woods? He hoped it was none of those things. The coffee was bitter with an aftertaste of aluminum. He held the Styrofoam cup with both hands and tried to add up how many agents he had already seen. Seven, at least, and one in the van probably, and a couple more out there on patrol without a clue about what they were looking for or guarding against. Ten or more. Probably all armed. All antsy on a screwball assignment. He scowled at the coffee, not liking his addition at all, not liking the way
Constance was behaving, feeling the need to talk to her well up stronger and stronger, because he was afraid she had already made a plan and was tidying up details with all this stamping about, the bitch act that was almost too good.
Sussman returned and looked at Charlie curiously. “Foley wants you to hang around until he gets here, half an hour or so. He’s on the road. He says you could tell me what the hell is going on, but you probably won’t.”
Charlie shrugged. “The hotel is haunted. I’d keep away from it and keep my men away from it if I were you.”
“Shit!” Sussman said.
“Actually it’s more like Dracula,” Charlie said thoughtfully. And that seemed right to him. Dracula’s sharp kiss on the neck claimed his victim for all time. He could call his victim home when he desired another kiss. That felt right. He drank the bitter coffee.
Sussman said in a level voice, “Foley also said that I could tell you what’s going on here, that you might even have advice for us.” It was obvious that this was hard for him, and also that he needed advice right now. “Look, Meiklejohn, we don’t know what we’re dealing with, that’s for sure. One of my men has vanished in the area, not a sign of him all afternoon. Okay. We’re marking trees, following that circle on the map, and we’ll rope off the area. No one’s to go in. You know how big that perimeter’s going to be? Anyway, we’ll do it. But meanwhile I have a man missing out there. Do you know what’s in that hotel?”
“No,” Charlie said flatly. “And neither does anyone else.”
Windekin, the pale man who had escorted them from the other side of the valley, entered the building, stamping his feet, blowing on his hands. “I drove the Volvo up after we got it pulled loose. Jamieson’s in the truck at the end of the drive they dug out.”
Sussman nodded, then saw Constance hurrying from the hall. “I want to see my car,” she said. “If you’ve damaged it, you pay, you know. You can’t just go around pulling a car like that with a truck. If you hurt the transmission… Give me my keys!”
Sussman signed. “Let her look it over,” he said, waving Jack Windekin back out. “You keep the keys,” he added. “They’re both staying here until Foley says otherwise.”
Constance glanced at the men imperiously and swept up her cap and gloves from the table on her way out. “He’ll tell you a fairy tale about the hotel,” she said, and slammed the door behind her. Charlie sat down at the map table. Again, it was happening again, more and more often, with more power each time. He would
not
turn in that direction, he told himself even as he turned to look, tilted his head in a listening attitude.