The Talbot Odyssey

by Nelson DeMille

  Stewart smiled at him. Farber gave a thumbs-up and flashed a green penlight. Stewart reached out and pushed Grenville through the open door.

  Tom Grenville felt that there was no longer any floor beneath his feet, a feeling that always made him unhappy. He felt himself tumble head over heels, then righted himself and spread his arms like a bird, experiencing the exhilaration of free fall. He soared above the moonglow on the Long Island Sound, the wind carrying him toward the coastline a mile below and a mile forward. He thought, I didn’t collide with the fucking pontoon, Stewart.

  He looked back and saw that Stewart and Collins were soaring above him. Then Johnson dived out of the cabin, followed by Hallis.

  * * *

  In the dark cabin, Farber watched Hallis clear the helicopter, then grabbed the handle of the rolling door.

  A hatch on the bulkhead of the aft stowage compartment dropped open and a man emerged. Farber sensed the movement and looked up as the shadow approached. The black-clad man in a parachute harness stood in front of Farber, who was holding the door half-open. The man said, “Hello, Barney.”

  Farber’s eyes widened in surprise as the man reached out and seized Farber, who had no parachute, and pushed him out the open door. The man dived after him.

  * * *

  Tom Grenville looked down at the approaching coastline. He hoped they would spot the Russian house, though he wasn’t certain he himself was going to aim for it. Like other combat parachutists who had come to their senses on the way down, he could miss his target and explain that he mistook the lights of the country club for the Russian mansion.

  The air warmed as he descended, and the wind slackened. To his front he saw the village of Glen Cove and the strands of crisscrossing roads that surrounded it like a net of white blinking Christmas lights. Beyond the village were suburban housing tracts, and here and there the large houses of country estates surrounded by dark blotches of woodland and fields. Grenville spotted the Russian estate and saw that there was no mistaking anything else for it. Scratch that idea, he thought.

  Grenville looked down. The ground was coming up fast now, as it always did at the end. He realized he could pop his chute at this moment and guide himself to a safe landing outside the enclosed thirty-seven acres of the Russian estate. A few more seconds and he wouldn’t be able to move laterally far enough to do that. He put his hand on his rip cord.

  But something Van Dorn had said made him hesitate. Beyond all the patriotic hoopla, and the assurances of a favorable promotion review, Van Dorn had said, “If you and Joan make it back, everything will be all right between you two for a long time to come.”

  Grenville knew instinctively that was true. He really did love her. They’d just gone off the track. They had to share something special to put the spark back in their relationship. Like a commando raid.

  Grenville heard himself saying, “I can’t let her go in there alone. I have to go too.”

  He looked down at the big floodlighted area around the house. It was very close now, and it was too late to avoid his rendezvous with it, his rendezvous with death or with life. “Oh, shit. . . .”

  He looked at the quickly changing red LED numbers on his altimeter: one thousand feet above sea level, nine hundred, eight hundred. He pulled his rip cord and felt the deceleration as the skydiver chute filled with air. He looked up at his chute, spread like black bat wings above his head. He felt himself drifting slowly, updrafts keeping the altimeter at five hundred feet. “Shit!” He didn’t like the idea of hanging above the target. Even though the skyrockets had stopped on schedule, and he supposed no one below was looking up anymore, he felt very exposed. The altimeter read four hundred and fifty feet. Much too slow a descent. He began to guide his chute toward the house.

  Grenville looked back over his shoulder. The Sikorsky wasn’t visible any longer. Grenville suspected it was still there, monitoring their fall, but its gray camouflage paint and its darkened lights made it impossible to see.

  The four other chutes were close behind him. They were maneuvering also, closing in on the house. Grenville turned back to his front, then his head swung around quickly. He counted: One, two, three, four . . . five! That wasn’t right. He counted again and again and came up with five. “What the hell . . . ?” He thought, Farber? But Farber hadn’t been wearing a chute and couldn’t have gotten into one quickly enough to be that close. Who the hell was that? Maybe they had a buddy for him. But Grenville could see that the other men had swiveled around also and were watching the unknown chutist above and behind them. Instinctively he knew that the sixth man was not one of them. He was no buddy.

  65

  Stanley Kuchik held the cable tighter as the grade became steeper. He thought he should be nearing the end of the conduit by now. He called out softly to Joan, “You still there?”

  “In body only. I projected my spirit to the Côte d’Azur.”

  “Oh . . .” Stanley said, “don’t let go. If you do let go, tell me first. I’ll let go too.”

  Joan thought the boy seemed frightened. She said, “You’ll be the first to know.”

  Stanley was silent as the cable carried him through the conduit. He felt something brush over his helmet and face and heard the tinkling of metal chimes—the signal marker that meant he had ten seconds before his fingers reached the return pulley. He quickly released one hand from the cable and felt around the top of the conduit, finding the first of the handgrips embedded in the pipe. He released the moving cable with his other hand and reached back for the next grip, pulling himself, hand over hand, through the conduit, the trolley still beneath him.

  He heard the chimes again and heard Joan feeling for the first overhead grip. Stanley said, “I’m pulling myself through.”

  “Me too.”

  Stanley felt her head come into contact with his feet. He said, “Hold it there.”

  Stanley heard the return pulley spinning above his face. “Christ, talk about tight. . . .” He found the next handgrip and pulled himself another foot along, feeling his helmet come into contact with the concrete plug that the Russians had poured into the conduit. He drew a deep breath. The air was foul and he felt dizzy. He whispered, “I hit the wall.”

  “Well, ram through it.”

  “Okay. . . .” Bergen had explained that his men—the midgets—had used muriatic acid to eat away most of the concrete plug, leaving just a two-inch shell. Stanley gave a mental shrug. Nuts.

  He began a difficult turning motion, thrusting his body around until he lay facedown on the trolley. He found a recessed handgrip in front of him, buried his gloved fingers in it, and pulled. He and the trolley traveled forward, sending his helmet into the concrete wall. The brittle acid-eaten concrete shattered immediately and fell noisily to the floor of the boiler room.

  Light flooded into the conduit and Stanley was almost blinded by the sudden glare. Cool air bathed his sweaty face as he squinted into the lights. He drew his pistol and aimed it to his front.

  If anyone was in the boiler room, or came in to investigate the noise, he was to call out “Red!” and they’d both push off, sending the trolleys rolling back to the basement of the tennis court.

  Stanley stared at the closed door of the boiler room twenty feet away. He realized that he was the only one who would ever know whether or not that door opened. He kept staring at it, praying, but not knowing if he was praying for it to open or stay closed.

  Joan whispered urgently, “Green or red?”

  Stanley replied, “Yellow.” He waited for some time, his eyes adjusting to the light as he stared at the door, considering his options, then suddenly blurted, “Green! Green!”

  Joan replied, somewhat unhappily, he thought, “Understand. Green.”

  Stanley stuck his pistol into his chest pouch, then pulled the small trolley from under his body and dangled it over the edge of the conduit. He let it fall and heard a soft thud as the rubber trolley hit the floor.

  Stanley knocked off a few clinging fr
agments of concrete, then pulled his head and torso out of the conduit. He glanced around the big boiler room, lit with naked incandescent light bulbs. He looked down. Bergen had said it would be a three- or four-foot drop, but it was at least five feet. Shit.

  He worked his body out farther and bent at the waist, pushing his palms against the wall until his weight and gravity took over and he felt himself sliding down, face first, to the floor. He hit with his hands and somersaulted away from the wall, ending up on his feet. He drew his pistol quickly and backed up to the wall again. He called softly up to the conduit. “Okay. I’m in. Hold on a minute.” He went to the boiler room door and listened. There were sounds in the distance, but he couldn’t make them out. Stanley turned from the door and made his way silently around the large concrete room. He found a handmade wooden bench and carried it to the wall. He stepped up on it and peered into the conduit. He saw Joan’s head and shoulders a few feet away. She was still lying on her back, the trolley beneath her. Looking at her stuffed in there, he didn’t see how either of them had got through. No way, he thought, would the Russians expect this. He called out, “Okay, I’m here—”

  “Get me the hell out of here. I can’t hold on much longer.”

  “Okay. . . .” Stanley reached in and worked his hands into the compressed space between her forearms and breasts.

  “Watch it, Stanley.”

  He stammered. “This is the way Bergen—”

  “Just pull.”

  His fingers hooked around her pectoral muscles and he pulled back. The trolley under her rolled toward him. After a good deal of twisting and pulling, she came free and dropped into his cradled arms. They stared at each other, wide-eyed, as they listened to the trolley rolling back down the conduit. Joan said, “Oh, Christ. . . .”

  Stanley looked at her. “You were supposed to secure it with a cord. . . .”

  Joan snapped, “I forgot. Put me down.”

  Stanley lowered her and she stood quickly, then hopped up to the bench and stared into the black conduit. “Well, the trolley left without me, Stan.”

  Stanley was shaking his head. “I should have reminded you.”

  She jumped down to the floor. “Hey, I forgot, not you. Don’t pull your adolescent macho shit on me.”

  He stared at her, slightly bewildered. “Sorry. . . .”

  She drew a short breath. “Well, let’s get this dog-and-pony show on the road.”

  He nodded, but didn’t move. “How are you going to get back?”

  “Limo. First class.” She looked around. “All right, next we cover our arrival. Correct?”

  Joan and Stanley quickly gathered up the thin slabs of broken concrete from the floor below and put them behind a boiler. Joan moved Stanley’s trolley there as well. Stanley reached into his pouch and retrieved a round section of cloth with adhesive backing. He stood on the bench, unfolded the cloth, and stuck it over the conduit opening.

  Joan looked at it from across the room. It was colored and textured like concrete and she supposed it would pass a cursory inspection of the room. “Looks terrific. We’ll donate it to the Guggenheim.”

  Stanley hopped down from the bench and carried it back to where he had found it. Joan reached up with her gloved hand and partially unscrewed two of the four overhead light bulbs, throwing the back of the room where the conduit was into near darkness. “Much nicer. All right, let’s go.”

  Stanley hesitated, then went toward the door. He drew his pistol again and glanced back at Joan. He saw that she had done the same. He grasped the door handle and pushed outward, peering through the crack into the large storage room that he remembered from his last visit. He motioned to Joan and they both slipped through the door.

  Stanley led the way through the stacked boxes of canned food. He knew the way up to a point, but he took out a small rough diagram and stared at it. This section of the basement was a maze of wooden partitions. There were doors everywhere, some marked in Russian and a few still marked in English. He found the one he was looking for, marked in the same Russian letters as those on his diagram. He opened it slowly and began heading along a dark narrow passage, Joan behind him. They were traveling toward the west end of the house.

  The passage ended and they stepped into an open area. Ten feet to his front was a wall of fairly new concrete, about fifty feet long. He approached a single massive door sheathed with lead, and he knew this was the bomb shelter.

  Inside the bomb shelter, he had been told, were over a hundred Russians: men, women, and children. He and Joan had to keep them in there.

  Joan came up beside him and nodded. They both pulled tubes of epoxy weld from their black stretch suits and began running a bead of the fast-drying weld around the edge of the door where it met the steel casement jamb. The Russians inside would not be able to pull it open.

  Stanley looked at his diagram again. He had been told that there was a staircase that ran up to the first floor and into a hallway that lay between the living room and trophy room. He had been briefed about the little girl who had come up the staircase. Van Dorn seemed to know a lot about this place, from defectors and spies, but he didn’t know if the staircase lay inside the bomb shelter or outside.

  Joan was searching the dimly lit area in front of the shelter wall. She tried a few doors, but none of them led to a staircase. She whispered, “The stairs must be inside the shelter.”

  Stanley nodded.

  Joan said, “We have to do the other thing. It’s over here.” She led Stanley to the south foundation wall. Standing against the wall were three steel boxes about the size and shape of large freezers. In fact, each unit was an air conditioner and air purifier for the bomb shelter. Ducts led out of the top of each unit through the wall and surfaced somewhere out in the plantings around the south terrace. Ducts also ran from each unit along the ceiling and penetrated the concrete wall of the bomb shelter.

  None of the three units was running at the moment, and Stanley felt each one until he found the one that was warm with electrical heat. “This one.”

  He examined the steel sides. They were completely sealed, but there was a hinged access panel on the side. He turned a latch and the panel swung open. Stanley peered inside and saw the charcoal and fiber-glass filters. He pulled one out and dropped it behind the unit. Joan handed him a vacuum-sealed plastic bag and he tore it open, quickly dumping the clear crystals through the intake where the filter had been. He drew away immediately, knowing that the crystals were vaporizing into an invisible and odorless gas. He shut the access panel and stepped away from the unit.

  Joan whispered, “Let’s get out of here.”

  “I have to be sure this unit kicks on. Orders.”

  “I’ll kick you in the ass, Stanley. Don’t push our luck.”

  Stanley remained motionless, staring at the big gray steel box. After what seemed a very long time, but was less than a minute, he heard an electrical relay click and the unit vibrated, emitting a noise like a refrigerator. Stanley nodded with satisfaction. “They’ll be sleeping soon. Let’s—” He turned and saw that Joan was already heading back along the passage. He followed quickly.

  They turned right, back toward the boiler room, but didn’t enter it, continuing instead to the door of the utility room.

  Stanley opened the door and stepped into the long, narrow room. He found himself standing ten feet away from a man in overalls holding a clipboard in one hand and a pencil in the other.

  Joan let out a scream. The man did the same. Stanley raised his pistol instinctively and fired three times, the silencer making a noise like air rushing out of the neck of a toy balloon. Phfft! Phftt! Phftt!

  Stanley watched the man stagger aimlessly, a surprised look on his face, his hands covering his groin and chest as though he’d been caught naked.

  Stanley didn’t know what to do. People were supposed to fall down dead when you shot them. He tried to fire again, but his hand was shaking so badly he couldn’t have hit the wall.

  Joa
n closed her eyes.

  Finally the man fell to the floor. Stanley approached hesitantly. Blood flowed from the man’s shoulder and groin, spreading over his khaki overalls and puddling on the gray floor. The man’s chest heaved rapidly and his eyes stared up at Stanley.

  Stanley turned away. He felt his stomach heave. Without further warning he vomited up bile, acid, and a chocolate candy bar.

  Joan came up behind him and put her hand on his shoulder. “Oh . . . oh, my God . . . Stanley . . .”

  Stanley took several deep breaths and with some effort got control of himself. “We have to . . . to finish him. . . .”

  Joan didn’t reply.

  Stanley turned and looked down at the man, hoping he was dead, but he was not. Stanley wanted the man to live, but he had his orders: no witnesses. He aimed at the man’s head, closed his eyes, and fired, hearing the bullet thud against the skull and crack into the concrete floor.

  Joan and Stanley stood quietly for a few seconds, then Joan said with forced calmness, “Help me hide him.” They dragged the man into a corner where wooden skids were stacked and lowered a skid over his body. Joan found a rag mop and Stanley located an overhead water valve. They cleaned up the blood and hid the mop under the big electrical generator.

  Joan and Stanley stared at each other for a brief second, their expressions revealing the fact that they had been intimate accomplices in something that neither of them would ever forget. Joan broke eye contact and looked quickly at her watch. “Oh, God, we’re nearly four minutes late.”

  Stanley quickly drew a photograph from his chest pouch and compared it to the large electrical panel. The photograph was a blown-up reproduction of the shot he had taken a month before. There were grease-pencil marks next to the circuit breakers in question. One was to be shut, the other, the only circuit breaker that was in the off position, was to be turned on.