Pale Horse Coming

by Stephen Hunter

  So he returned to his quest, though the dark of the moon was but a few days off. He had determined to find out the secret of David Stone, M.D., and if, lacking gun skills, experience, and the type of mind to close with and shoot to death the men of Thebes, then he had decided that this last thing, small as it was, and perhaps as meaningless as it was, would be his last contribution.

  If no doctor would help him, he would try lawyers. Reasoning that students at Harvard law and Harvard medical might share dormitory space, and having far more contacts in that world, he began to examine the Harvard law class of 1928, helped by the good auspices of a former governor of Arkansas, who was himself Harvard law of 1918. Thus he fought his telephone war, alone in his office in Little Rock, armed with numbers and charts of connections; in this way, he tracked men through corporate boards and municipal judicial systems, through great law firms, through directorships of huge organizations, and through the professorates of many great law schools.

  It was among the last that he finally achieved just the faintest possibility of a breakthrough. He was talking to a Professor Reginald Duprey, of Madison, Wisconsin, and the University of Wisconsin Law School.

  “Well, Mister—what was it?”

  “Vincent. Samuel Vincent, sir.”

  “Mr. Vincent, you know, I didn’t know anybody in the medical school except my poor brother.”

  Sam knew that from his examinations of the Harvard medical graduates there was no Dr. Duprey carried in the graduating class of ’28, or ’29 or ’30 for that matter.

  “I see,” he said noncommittally.

  “Jerry was a little wild. He made some mistakes. He was smart, don’t get me wrong, but I think Dad pushed him into medicine, and he wasn’t suited for medicine.”

  “Dad was a doctor?”

  “Dad was a lawyer and a doctor. There are a few. We were to be one of each. I did what I was told, but Jerry finally blew out his third year. He was so close. But he got caught cheating on a test. It was a family scandal. Jerry’s in Texas now. He’s a high school biology teacher. I haven’t heard from him in years.”

  “Do you have an address?”

  “Yes.”

  Sam took it, and eventually reached Jerry Duprey in New Braunfels, not that it did any good, for at first Jerry denied knowing anything about his brother, then he denied having been at Harvard or even having heard of Harvard, and finally he denied ever having heard of a Dr. David Stone. But Sam had been a prosecutor long enough to know the little gulp that announced the presence of a lie or two, when a tide of phlegm clogs the throat as the liar improvises awkwardly.

  So he knew Jerry Duprey knew a thing or two. He drove a full day to New Braunfels, a leafy town south of Austin, and called upon Mr. Duprey at New Braunfels High School. There, it was clear, he was a beloved figure, not only a popular teacher but the basketball coach, the chess team sponsor, the faculty advisor to the weekly New Braunfelian and the college counselor.

  Jerry made him wait, and when he finally admitted him to the little office, was quite nervous.

  “Sir,” Sam explained, “I am not here to bring you any trouble. I am not here about any aspect of your past except that you might have a line on a man named David Stone. I don’t even care where or when you met him, and this is not a deposition. It has no legal meaning whatsoever. I’m just asking a favor.”

  Duprey sat, caught in his own private agony. Finally he said, “I have built a good life down here. I am sorry for what happened and for my failures in the other life and for my father’s rage and my brother’s contempt. But I am proud of what I have done down here and the kids I have helped and I do not mean to lose that.”

  “I absolutely represent no threat to you. I will take no notes. I will declare under oath that I have never met you. This is not in regard to a legal matter and no court case is in the offering, nor any testimony of any kind. Give me the benefit of your memories, and I will never see you again.”

  “It was very long ago and I have forgotten much.”

  “Yet you did, in fact, know him.”

  “He was a friend. Briefly. I don’t know why. Insanely ambitious, very hard worker. Maybe he scented in me what he was, and that is a son bending under a mantle of family expectations. In my case, it broke me; in his, I suppose, it made him a saint.”

  “He was a saint?”

  “In that, unlike the others, he was not interested in money. He had a genuine interest in doing good. I think his rebellion against his father was different than mine. Mine was to destroy the life my father had planned for me, which not incidentally killed my father and estranged my brother. David’s was to be everything his father wasn’t; that is, not a society gynecologist, but a great researcher. Not a Jewish outsider trying to make it in the cosmopolitan town, and proud when he did, but someone known far and wide for his goodness. He was obsessed with ‘goodness,’ somehow.”

  “He sounds dangerous.”

  “See, that’s your cynicism. You’re a prosecutor; you think everyone is guilty of something, even if only in their minds. But I don’t think David was like that. He took great pleasure in his goodness, almost sensuous pleasure.”

  “I see. Well, he lived a hero’s life, he died a hero’s death. But there are some things about him I thought maybe you’d have some insight into.”

  “Insight? Boy, that’s a word you don’t hear much in New Braunfels. Sure, yeah, try me.”

  “Ah, I visited his home and his widow. And found that he had secrets. Odd that he should have secrets, such a good man. Do you have a comment? I also found that the body reported to be his after his death in nineteen forty-five was not. It was some other man’s.”

  The man’s stony face met Sam’s. In a time, he said, “You know, he was a good man. Why are you doing this?”

  It was Sam’s first true inkling that he was onto something.

  “It’s not about him. It’s about what happened to him in the war. I have to find out his involvement in something in the war that may have led to something going on now.”

  “But you can’t tell me what?”

  “I have confidences to keep, too.”

  “Then you certainly understand that I must keep mine as well, if only out of respect to the dead.”

  “Well then, what about the fact that his wife was infected with syphilis in the mid thirties, and could have no children. Now, again you’ll think it’s my cynicism, but suppose she got that disease from him in the first place, he knew it but could not face her knowing of a secret life. So he had her raped, so that the syphilis was thought to come from the rapists. Does that strike you as a possibility?”

  “Good Lord, man, have you no decency?”

  “His subsequent actions are consistent with incredible shame. He suffered what can only be termed a serious attack of nerves, maybe even a breakdown, immediately prior to what was called his death. But it gets stranger yet. There still seems to be, at some high level, some sort of government involvement in the program that he founded in Mississippi. And someone is extremely interested in keeping it secret. It’s a fine kettle of fish this saint has gotten himself into.”

  Jerry Duprey just shook his head.

  “And finally this. He published for years, very aggressively, very dynamically, very brilliantly, in a number of prestigious medical journals. Then, in 1936, nothing. That would have to be about the time his wife was raped and lost the capacity to have children. He ceased to exist. Yet he didn’t die until 1945. Or so it’s alleged. But whatever, he ceased publishing. Do you know why?”

  “Well, you are a clever man, aren’t you, Mr. Vincent? You have uncovered a great deal. Is it that important? He meant well, he did well, he really did help the world. The sick, the poor, the victimized. He believed in them. Yes, I suppose he had some human appetites. Who doesn’t? Don’t you?”

  Sam thought of the woman he loved more than his wife, with whom he would never sleep nor live, who would leave, eventually, and he would then wallow in his bitter destiny
.

  “Of course I do. But I’m not here to judge him. That’s for someone else. Not me. And one last thing. Can you think of anything that might connect him to the Plutonium Laboratory at Los Alamos, or some issue of nuclear medicine, and thence to a government installation in Maryland called Fort Dietrich? I know that seems—”

  “You’ve been seeing too many movies.”

  “I haven’t seen a movie since nineteen forty-six.”

  “As for the other three questions, I happen to know the answer to all of them. It’s really the same answer. But I’m not going to give it to you. Because I don’t like your certitude. You are a man who has never made a mistake, and it annoys me, a man who’s made many mistakes.”

  “Sir, take it from me, I have made some lulus.”

  “Well, then, I will give you one clue, for your lulus. One clue alone. If you are as smart as you seem, you will have no trouble figuring it out and all your questions will be solved.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Maybe when he finally decided where his career had to go, he could no longer publish under his own name. For certain reasons. So maybe he published under another name.”

  “That’s very interesting,” said Sam, and thought immediately of that letter from Harold E. Perkins, about a bill of lading being cc-ed to another doctor in Thebes, Mississippi, years after the alleged death of David Stone whose name he could not remember but who he knew was not named Stone.

  “I only know this because he was the one guy from Harvard who kept in touch with me and dropped me a card or two every year. He even offered to loan me some dough when I was kicked out. He was good, you know.”

  “I believe that.”

  “So he made a joke about what he was doing, and what it linked up to in his private personality that I knew about when I was close to him, and what he had to do to preserve the name of the ‘good doctor’ he had become.”

  Sam’s eyes bored into him intently, the old prosecutor’s trick. It had no effect. Jerry Duprey told him because Jerry Duprey wanted to, and for no other reason.

  “His middle name was Goodwin. Remember that, Mr. Vincent. His middle name was Goodwin.”

  53

  DARK of the moon was just a few days off. The most important thing, Earl knew, was to let them get used to each other, or as used to each other as such a confabulation of ornery, egotistical old cusses could manage. Audie seemed to settle them down, though each little clique sought him out to join up. But Audie was too much his own man, and Earl was happy to see the youngest man avoid the pitfalls of siding with one or the other, and instead work hard to keep on the best of terms with them all. He was also, though he could find no words to express this, happy to see that no little puppy love thing sprung up between Sally and Audie.

  So for two more days, it was more like a convention of old fools than it was any kind of gunfight preparation. They joshed and bickered and needled, and Charlie Hatchison got them all mad at him with his aggression, and Bill Jennings dominated by the steel countenance of his majestic face, and Elmer and Jack sniffed arrogantly around each other, and Ed snoozed gently on the porch, ate the food his granddaughter prepared, and had a pleasant if vague smile for them all. But if he seemed not to know exactly where he was, Earl knew that to be an illusion; he knew exactly where he was and what was set. He was simply saving up his energy.

  On the night after the next, Earl finally had to take over and to begin to guide them. He did this by means of a meeting called for 8:00, after the evening meal, when all were most relaxed and before any had gotten too drunk.

  Earl had played it quiet till now. He knew these old boys were stars in their own little worlds, and didn’t need a sudden tyrant to bark at them and treat them like shit. They needed guidance more than leadership.

  “Okay, fellows,” he said. “I’d like to talk this thing out for all to hear and so that all can comment. Is that fair? Are you ready for that?”

  “Earl,” said Charlie, “these boys are too old to retain any information you give ’em. They’re all so close to senile, there ain’t no point. Just shove ’em in the right direction and tell ’em to shoot, and that’s about all as you’re going to get out of ’em.”

  “You speak for yourself, you dry old goat,” said Elmer. “I got plenty piss left in my liver, and no dried-up old Texas stringbean Mexican-killer is going to speak for me.”

  “Well, yippie ki yi!” yelped Jack. “Mr. Kaye has gotten his back up.”

  “Now fellows,” crooned Audie. “Let’s just settle down and listen. You too, Charlie.”

  “Charlie thinks when he puts his butt on the toilet it’s candy that comes out,” said Jack O’Brian, from behind his harsh spectacles. “But so do all of you. I’m the only man of whom it’s true.”

  “Jack, whyn’t you go fiddle with them biddy-little bullets you like so much?”

  “All right, all right,” said Earl, as the bickering threatened to break out and overwhelm them all. “Now look here and see what we got before us.”

  He pulled a sheet off something he’d brought to the head of the room and mounted on a couple of chairs, and of course it was a map.

  But it was a map like no map they’d ever seen before. It was a high altitude photo reconnaissance map, complete to the tiniest detail of vegetation and architecture. “This is it. Thebes Penal Farm for Colored, as seen from thirty thousand feet by a Banshee photo jet nose camera. Got me a friend who’s a high mucky-muck in naval aviation circles, and he pulled this one out of the hat for me.

  “Look at it. It’s got all the roads, all the distances; it’s got all the buildings; you can even make out some of the paths in the woods. You can see the curve of the river embracing it. You can follow the roads. You can, and I know you are all good compass men, take your readings from this map so that when you are on the ground you can orient fast and night-navigate better than the boys who’ve been there ten years. That’s the way they fight wars these days, and that’s the way we’ll fight this one.”

  The old men were at last silent. There it was before them, the sweep of the river, the Big House, the Store, the Whipping House, the Screaming House, the prison compound with the four towers around the Ape House, the road out to the levee project, the levee itself holding back the water, the Drowning House, with its scow moored to the dock. Earl could even see the little blasphemy of the coffin out back of the Whipping House.

  “These people are heavily armed,” he began. “This will be a gunfight, like I promised. You will prevail on your coolness, experience and shooting skills. These boys have never faced men who can shoot as well as you, have your determination and spirit. That’s why I ain’t training you or running any drills as I would with young fellows.”

  “And you don’t want any of these old farts shitting up their pants,” said Charlie.

  “Thank you, Charlie, for your observation.”

  “That looks like a mighty big setup,” said Elmer.

  “It is. But like I say, seven men can take it. Seven against Thebes and it’s finished. You each will have an assignment, and it’ll happen smooth and easy, I swear to you.”

  “Earl, put me where I can get the most kills,” sang Charlie. “Got seventeen. Want more. Three things a man can’t have too much of: wives, guns or kills. In a pinch, I could do without the first.”

  “You ain’t laid with a damn woman in fifty years,” said Elmer.

  “I’ll put you where the shootin’ will be fiercest, Charlie. You will have your goddamn snootful of action by the time this is all over. Anyhow, fifty guards, by my count, all armed with Winchester 07 self-loaders shooting a .351 Winchester round and Colt revolvers. I saw one Thompson and maybe a half-dozen Model ’97 Winchester 12-gauges. They’re housed in a barracks behind the Whipping House. We’ve got to seal them there. That’s one big problem. The other big problem is the four Browning water-cooled machine guns in the four towers, and in each there will be a two-man night crew with spotlights. If those guns get into p
lay, they’re simply going to make matchsticks out of the barracks and kill all the Negroes. That’s their point. They’re Warden’s insurance policy. They keep the boys good at night, ’cause he can kill ’em all in the snap of a finger.

  “So do you see it yet?”

  There was silence. Then it was Jack, the intellectual, who spoke.

  “I see it.”

  “Tell them.”

  “The weakness is that everything is geared to keep the prisoners in. It’s not to keep us out.”

  “That’s it exactly. The forest and the swamp, and the long dark river: that’s what they’re counting on for their protection. And that’s why I can get teams in there and up close without detection, and strike fast and hard. We have to trap them in their buildings. We don’t want them roaming about, because then we’re hunting targets all around us, and they’re hunting us. If we got them in their buildings, we win, easy.

  “So this is it: first off, our Irish invasion. Mr. Ryan and Mr. O’Brian will land here”—he put a marker pin on the map—“move across the fields in darkness, and hit the towers. That is your job. I’ll give you a compass reading, and track you a path in away from populated buildings. You won’t have no problems. You will get into one of the towers, take it over, and from that vantage point, Jack, you will pick off the other gunners. Then, Jack, you will remain in the tower as a kind of backup. You will scope the action, and wherever you see targets, you will deal with them.”

  “Got it,” said Jack.

  “Audie, over here is ’ho town, as they call it. It’s where the women who work the prison kitchen and laundry live, and they’s known to take in visitors from the guards at night. You have to clear that. Can you do it with that German gun?”