by Paul Kenyon
But what the hell, it was important, she finally decided. "Are you awake?" she whispered into the end of the douche.
"I am now," the douche said in the Baroness' voice. "What have you got to report, Fi?"
Fiona told her about the fairies and the Beastie and the activities of SIP in the Crombie area. She didn't worry about being overheard. The microscopic electronic circuitry embedded between the thick rubber walls of the douche bag was connected to a midget scrambler in the plastic plug. And the microphone in the fountain tip was sensitive enough to pick up her whispers. The MacEwans, asleep in the room at the other end of the loft, wouldn't hear a thing.
"One more thing," Fiona said. "Sir Angus Bane isn't the saint that everybody in the outside world thinks he is." She told the Baroness about Black Tom's visit and his brutality toward Sir Angus' tenants.
Four miles away, behind the thick stone walls of her bedroom in the Bane castle, the Baroness spoke into the dial of her travel alarm. A thin wafer of circuitry behind the face kept the hands showing the right time and made it ring at the hour it was set to. The rest of the clock's interior contained a miniaturized two-way radio.
"All right, Fi," the Baroness said. "You stay close to SIP. There's something very strange going on around here. I think I might just take a drive along the loch and see if I can get a glimpse of the Crombie Beastie." She wrinkled her nose at the clock. "If I'm lucky, I might even get to see Sir Angus."
Chapter 7
Tony had to shout to make himself heard over the noise of the helicopter. "Hate to leave you alone, but I'll be back in time for dinner. Think you can find something to do all day?"
"I think I can find something to do," the Baroness said.
The helicopter floated downward, a bright orange bubble with the word CALEDONIAN painted on its side. The wind from its blades whipped her skirt around her legs. The helicopter settled slowly to the moor, flattening the heather.
"Let me have your car keys," she said.
He dug into his jacket pocket and handed her the keys. "Going to take a drive, are you?"
"Maybe."
"Where?"
"Just around the shores of the loch. I hear there's a monster." She watched for his reaction.
"I wouldn't take it too seriously," he said carefully. "You know how the Scots are. They love their things that go bump in the night. The Crombie Beastie is a new invention. Just a case of the local people becoming jealous of the Loch Ness Monster and deciding to go it one better."
"I'll have a look, anyhow," she said.
"Whatever you say."
He gave her an absentminded kiss and started toward the helicopter. "Tony," she said. He turned around. "When will I get to meet Sir Angus?"
"Tonight," he said. "He's making his ceremonial appearance. Once for every set of paying guests. A great honor for the commoners, and all that. They'll be piping in the haggis and a lot of phony stuff like that."
"Does that mean we have to eat with your German friends?"
"They're not my friends!" he said angrily. "I told you that!" The helicopter pilot was leaning out of the bubble, making frantic gestures. Tony said, "Look, I've got to go. They're waiting for me out at the rig. They're down to twenty thousand feet and they're having problems." He flashed a sudden forced smile at her and ran for the helicopter, ducking under the blades.
She watched the orange machine rise and head out over the waters of Crombie Firth. Then she walked slowly back across the moors toward the castle.
On the way she passed little parties of the Germans, heading out for their hired shooting and fishing. They were all dressed to the nines in colorful tweeds, carrying shiny, expensive equipment. Each small group had a kilted member of the gamekeeper's staff to escort it.
On the way through the gate, she bumped into Schmidt. He was alone, leading a black retriever, holding his shotgun as carelessly as ever.
"Guten morning," he cried jovially. "Lord Tony is away today? Would you like to join me for some shooting?"
"I don't think so," she said. "Why don't you invite another pheasant, instead?"
He laughed uncertainly. "A joke?"
"Not for the pheasant. Take care that you don't shoot off your foot, now. I don't think feet are in season."
She brushed past him, leaving him puzzled, the loaded gun pointed in the general direction of his boots. She headed for the courtyard where the vehicles were parked.
Tony's red sports car was boxed in by one of the estate wagons. She frowned. She could have sworn that it had been unobstructed a few minutes earlier, when she'd accompanied Tony out to the moor. She looked around for someone to move the wagon for her. She caught sight of someone disappearing around a corner. She hurried after him. It was Muir, the one who'd gotten her out of the way of the deerhounds when she'd arrived. The carroty little man seemed to be trying to evade her. He turned around and faced her reluctantly. When she asked him to move the estate car, he stammered and said, "I ha'e not got the keys."
"See about getting them, then, will you?"
He stood there uncertainly. "You were na' going to drive around the loch, were you?"
"As a matter of fact, I was. I thought I might get a peek at the Beastie."
He gulped. "Begging your pardon, ma'am, but would you na' prefer to shoot today? Black Tom says that MacCaig can arrange to ha'e someone raise the birds for you if you wish to do the walking up…"
She gave him a deadly smile. "How nice. So everybody's been discussing the way I'm going to spend my day?"
He looked stricken. " 'Tis just that…"
There was a sudden shadow at her shoulder. She turned around and saw Black Tom. The burly guard named Fergus was just behind him.
"So you're after seeing the Beastie, are you?" Black Tom said.
"Now, how did you know that?" the Baroness said.
He spat into the dust. "There is no Beastie. Just a lot of foolish talk frae the shiftless people hereaboots."
She let him have a very small smile. "You shouldn't be talking down the Beastie that way, should you? Isn't Sir Angus trying to attract tourists?"
He spat again. "Muir, move the car."
Muir sprang to obey, forgetting that he wasn't supposed to have the keys. A few minutes later she was speeding across the stone bridge with barely an inch to spare on either side, then heading out along the shore road. She looked back through the rearview mirror. Black Tom and Fergus were walking out across the moors, heading in the general direction of the MacEwan croft. Fergus was carrying his shotgun.
It was a clear Highlands day with a blue sky and golden sun. She drove past stone-fenced pastures dotted with sheep or sleek Highlands cattle, past hayfields with standing ricks. The waters of the loch, to her right, were as smooth and clear as a mirror. The steep mountains on the far shore were reflected in the water. It was hard to believe in monsters.
The road was narrow and rugged, with a lot of blind curves. She held the car at fifty, giving it part of her attention while she tried to put it all together in her head. There were too many missing pieces to the puzzle, but SPOILER'S trail seemed to point here, to this stretch of Highlands shore on the North Sea. Skytop had found a possible link in Israel, pointing to the German pharmaceutical combine. His quarry had been headed for Scotland, and Castle Bane was full of German businessmen. Coincidence? She'd radioed John Farnsworth to trace the German guests, giving him what clues she could to their identities. Then there was Sir Angus. There was something very odd going on at Castle Bane. And there was SIP. From what Fiona had reported, the activities of SPOILER were very much in line with SIP's objectives. They had the motive, but she wasn't convinced that they had the capability. Blowing things up — that was more their style. And the Russians. She mustn't leave them out. She hadn't heard from Eric yet. That was strange; he should have reported long before now. No, she definitely couldn't write off the Russians yet.
The Germans. Sir Angus. The Scottish nationalists. The Russians. It was quite a list of suspects
.
And then there was Tony. She knew he had a connection to Schmidt — another coincidence, perhaps. But Tony, along with a hundred other oil wildcatters, had benefited from that mess at the Illingford drilling rig.
She whipped around a curve in the road, and suddenly there was a hay wagon looming in front of her, a rickety yellow mountain that took up almost all the road. Anyone else would have slammed on the brakes, but that would have sent her skidding into the wagon or careening into the ditch, surely to flip over at this speed. Instead, she put her foot all the way down. There was a stone culvert across the ditch, just — maybe — in the right place if she could reach it in the next fraction of a second before the wagon blocked it off.
She spun the wheel and zipped past the tractor pulling the wagon, seeing the blurred, frightened face of the driver. She was up to eighty by the time her right front wheel hit the culvert. Her left wheels were just barely on the road, biting at gravel. Then her right front wheel was grabbing at nothing but air, suspended for a miraculous moment by her momentum, and a quick flip of the steering wheel made the other front tire grip at a different angle, and her right rear tire was on the stones of the culvert, sending her inward toward the road again, just a bare fraction of an inch past the tail of the wagon, and she'd won her gamble.
She laughed with the sheer excitement of it and arrowed down the road without slowing down. The road was straight here for a stretch, and she looked back through the rearview mirror. The wagon had stopped and the driver was leaning over the ditch, being sick.
A few miles further on, she'd slowed to a cautious thirty. The road was rougher now, and unpaved, barely a cow track. She hadn't passed a cottage now for quite a while. She was above the loch, on a ribbon of dirt and gravel scratched in a steep bank. If her wheels went off the rim, she'd go tumbling down to jagged rock.
There was activity down there at the water's edge. She stopped the car and leaned over for a look.
A twenty-foot whaleboat was beached, its engine hatch open and a half-dozen small figures clustered around it. A second whaleboat was drifting helplessly just offshore, a man in its bow frantically waving with both arms. He was waving at a third boat, chugging its way toward him. "Modotte, modotte!" he was shouting.
It was the Japanese expedition, the one after the Crombie Beastie. She could see the harpoon guns mounted in the bows, loaded with their giant barbed syringes full of tranquilizers. The boat on the shore was crammed with all kinds of electronic sounding equipment. Two of the men hovering nearby were in skin divers' wet suits. They were in some kind of trouble.
"Tomate!" the man in the drifting boat called. The men on the beach added their voices: "Iie, iie! Modotte!"
They were warning the third boat to stop, to turn back. But the man at the tiller couldn't hear them over the sound of the engine. He came straight on, waving encouragement.
He was barely fifteen yards away when the engine sputtered and died. The helmsman looked frantically in all directions. Then he started tugging at the tiller. It seemed to be jammed.
The boat glided on, making a respectable bow wave. There was a frozen moment when everybody stood rigid, and then the third boat ploughed into the side of the drifting vessel. There was the crunch of splintering wood, and the sight of flailing figures being pitched into the water. The skin divers raced into the loch to the rescue. The stoved boat started to settle into the water.
Something at the road's edge caught her eye. She got out of the car and bent over to pick it up. It was a metal spring clip and a bit of wire, the kind used as a safety lock for pressurized containers.
She felt the breath of a bullet whizzing by her cheek then, and an instant later came the sharp crack of a rifle.
She flung herself to the road. There was the sound of running footsteps about a hundred yards away. She lifted her head just in time to see someone disappear around the bend of the road. Ah engine started up.
The Japanese down on the beach were looking up at her, gesticulating excitedly. She vaulted into the car, her skirts flying, and put it into gear. The red Triumph lurched forward eagerly. By the time she hit the curve, she was doing seventy.
She could see the vehicle ahead, stirring up dust. It was an old estate car, its upper body a yellowing wood. It lurched and swayed on the narrow road. It was going fast, but it couldn't hope to outrun the Triumph. Bit by bit she closed the gap. It took every bit of skill she had to keep to the road with its poor traction and surprise curves. She was climbing higher above the loch now, bouncing over a dangerous slope, the waters of the loch sparkling below like a silver knife. If she met a hay wagon now, she'd be dead, but she didn't worry about it because it would be the estate car that would have the collision, not her.
She was close enough now to see two heads sketchily through the glass of the estate car. She reached under her skirt with one hand and eased out the little Bernardelli automatic that was holstered on her inner thigh. Another ten yards and she'd be close enough to try for a shot at a tire.
The tail gate of the wagon fell open, and there was a man in a kilt kneeling there facing toward her, reaching for something long and gleaming, like an oversized fire extinguisher. His features were hidden by a plaid scarf — the Bane tartan, a popular pattern around Crombie.
What was he doing? The rifle lay beside him. Perhaps he didn't want to shoot; he'd had second thoughts about having a body found with a bullet in it.
He twisted a valve and there was suddenly a glistening wall of fog in front of her. What was it? A nerve gas of some sort? It was too late to stop. She drove through the cloud, feeling a dewy wetness on her face. The body of the car glistened with tiny droplets.
If it were nerve gas, she'd be feeling the first telltale symptoms within ten seconds: first, tightness of the chest and a darkening of her vision; then violent cramps, vomiting, loss of bowel and bladder control, and death a minute or two later. Dispassionately she counted off the seconds, feeling nothing but curiosity. She reached ten, twenty, thirty. Nothing — no dimming of vision, no pains, no nausea. What the hell had been in that aerosol spray?
She grinned. Perhaps he'd been trying to fog her windshield, hoping she'd have an accident. It hadn't worked. She could still see. She switched on the wipers and pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor. She was almost on top of him now. She thumbed the safety catch of her gun and waited for a smooth enough stretch for her to take aim. She could see blue eyes and carroty eyebrows over the man's scarf. He was just staring at her, waiting. What was he waiting for, with the rifle beside him?
The wiper blades suddenly stopped, all by themselves.
She'd had no time to think about that, when the whole car suddenly gave a shudder. She fought the wheel, trying to stay on the road.
Everything froze.
The wheels gave a banshee shriek as they locked. She couldn't steer because the steering wheel went gummy, then rigid, in a second or two.
The motor died abruptly, but that was no help to her because she was hurtling along at seventy miles an hour with no control. She was thrown painfully against the wheel. She gripped the rim with all her might, trying to keep from going through the windshield. The entire car spun around on its locked wheels, in a cloud of smoking rubber.
Then she was falling, tumbling, bouncing down the side of the slope.
She lifted her head, dazed. She must have been out for a moment; she didn't remember being thrown clear. She was lying in a patch of scrubby underbrush that clung to the slope. The bright red car was rolling over and over again down toward the loch below. It hit an outcropping of rock with a great tinny crash and tinkle of glass, and then stopped, a crumpled thing of red metal.
She tried to sit up. Pain stabbed her like a crazed demon. Her vision went red. She sat deliberately motionless, then tried again. This time it was bad, but not as bad as the first time. She found she was able to rise to her knees. Her arms and her legs were unbroken. She wasn't so sure about her ribs.
She peeled o
ff the thick wool sweater and the blouse. She felt her ribs, wincing. There were angry bruises all over her torso, but there was no white splintered end of bone poking through. The worst thing that could have happened would be a couple of cracked, not broken, ribs. She took off her bra. It was a painful process. Tears came to her eyes as she held her breasts. A livid, curving bruise stretched across them where she'd slammed into the lower edge of the steering wheel. She jumped as she kneaded it, then made herself press hard. It was excruciating, and made her feel nauseated, but it was going to be all right. She loosened the straps of her bra a notch and put it back on. After a moment, when the pain died down again, she put the blouse and sweater back on.
The Baroness struggled to her feet. There was a wave of dizziness, and then it passed. Her knees were scraped and bleeding. Her legs were covered with scratches, the pantyhose in shreds. She found her little golden gun in the heather and put it under her sweater, in the waistband of her skirt. One shoe was missing.
And her wristwatch was smashed. That was a little more serious.
She looked at the wrecked automobile. It hadn't caught on fire or exploded. Perhaps it was still going to.
She hobbled painfully down the slope, clutching at handfuls of heather. The hood was completely off. The engine had been rearranged by the impact, but she found the dipstick and pulled it out. It was dry, with a few crumbs of some blackish gummy substance clinging to it. She explored further. The crank case had been split open by the impact. There was no pool of oil soaking the ground under it. There was no film of oil left inside. Just lumps of black, foul-smelling gunk, the approximate consistency of tapioca.
It must have been edible. There were ants swarming all over it.
* * *
"Gott in Himmel!" John Farnsworth said.
He stared incredulously at the rows of little porcelain figurines on the shelves. They were very cute. They covered one entire wall of the directors' conference room. They depicted the entire history of bacteriology in chubby, pastel-painted statuettes. There was Edward Jenner taking a sample from a buxom milkmaid with cowpox, Paul Ehrlich injecting a dimply syphilitic with Salvarsan, a quaintly crusty Sir Alexander Fleming discovering penicillin.