The Danger

by Dick Francis

  Standing up I could put my foot under it; a knobbly dark sinew as thick as a thumb, tensing and relaxing when I leaned my weight against the tree trunk.

  I’ve got all day, I thought, and all night.

  I have no other chance.

  IT DID TAKE all day, but not all night.

  Hour by hour it went on raining, and hour by hour I scraped away at the roots with toes and fingers, baring more of them, burrowing deeper. The movement I could make in the trunk slowly grew from a tremble to a protesting shudder, and from a shudder to a sway.

  I tested my strength against the tree’s own each time in a sort of agony, for fear Giuseppe-Peter would somehow see the branches moving above the laurels and arrive with fearsome ways to stop me. I scraped and dug and heaved in something very near frenzy, and the longer it went on the more excruciatingly anxious I became. Given time I would do it. Given time . . . Oh, God, give me time.

  Some of the roots tore free easily, some were heartbreakingly stubborn. Water filled the hole as I dug, blocking what I could see, hindering and helping at the same time. When I felt one particularly thick and knotty root give up the contest the tree above me lurched as if in mortal protest, and I stood up and hauled at it with every possible muscle, pushing and pulling, wrenching, thudding, lying heavily against the trunk, digging in with my heels, feeling the thrust through calves and thighs; then yanking the tree this way and that, sideways, like a pendulum.

  A bunch of beleaguered roots gave way all together and the whole tree suddenly toppled, taking me down with it in rough embrace, its branches crashing in the rain onto a bed of its own brown leaves, leaving me breathless and exultant . . . and still . . . still . . . fastened.

  Every single root had to be severed before I could get my arms out from under them, but I doubt if barbed wire would have stopped me at that point. Scratching and tugging, hands down in water, kneeling and straining, I fought for that escape as I’d never thought to fight in my life; and finally I felt the whole root mass shift freely, a tangled clump of blackly sprouting woody tentacles, their grip on the earth all gone. Kneeling and jerking I got them up between my arms, up to my shoulders . . . and rolled free into a puddle, ecstatic.

  It took not so very much longer to thread myself through my own arms, so to speak, bottom first then one leg at a time, so that I ended with my hands in front, not behind my back; an unbelievable improvement.

  It was still raining and also, I realized, beginning to get dark. I went shakily over to the laurels on the opposite side of the clearing from where Giuseppe-Peter had appeared, and edged slowly, cautiously, between two of the glossy green bushes.

  No people.

  I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself, trying to make my knees work efficiently instead of wanting to buckle. I felt strained and weak and in no shape for barefoot country rambles, but none of it mattered. Nothing mattered at all beside the fact of being free.

  I could hear only wind and rain. I went on and came shortly to a sketchy fence made of strands of wire strung between posts. I climbed through and walked on and suddenly reached the top of an incline, the wood sloping away in front: and down there, through the trees, there were lights.

  I went down towards them. I’d been naked so long that I’d stopped thinking about it, which was somewhat of a mistake. I was concerned only to get away from Giuseppe-Peter, feeling that he still might find me gone and chase after. I was thinking only, as I approached what turned out to be a very substantial house, that I’d better make sure it wasn’t where Giuseppe-Peter was actually staying before I rang the doorbell.

  I didn’t get as far as ringing the bell. An outside light was suddenly switched on, and the door itself opened on a chain. A pale indistinguishable face inspected me and a sharp, frightened female voice said, “Get away. Get away from here.”

  I started to say “Wait,” but the door closed with a slam, and while I hovered indecisively it opened again to reveal the business end of a pistol.

  “Go away,” she said. “Get away from here, or I’ll shoot.”

  I thought she might. I looked at myself and didn’t altogether blame her. I was streaked with mud and handcuffed and bare: hardly a riot as a visitor on a darkening November evening.

  I backed away, looking as unaggressive as I could, and presently felt it safe to slide away again into the trees and reconsider my whole boring plight.

  Clearly I needed some sort of covering, but all that was to hand easily were branches of evergreen laurel. Back to Adam and Eve, and all that. Then I’d got to get a householder—a different one—to talk to me without shooting first. It might not have been too difficult in the Garden of Eden, but in twentieth-century suburban Washington, D.C., a proper poser.

  Further down the hill there were more lights. Feeling slightly foolish I picked a twig of laurel and held it, and walked down towards the lights, feeling my way as it grew darker, stubbing my toes on unseen stones. This time, I thought, I would go more carefully and look for something to wrap round me before I tackled the door: a sack, a trash bag . . . absolutely anything.

  Again events overtook me. I was slithering in darkness under a sheltering canopy-roof past double garage doors when a car came unexpectedly round a hidden driveway, catching me in its lights. The car braked sharply to a stop and I took a step backwards, cravenly ready to bolt.

  “Stop right there,” a voice said, and a man stepped out of the car, again bearing a pistol. Did they all, I thought despairingly, shoot strangers? Dirty naked unshaven handcuffed strangers . . . probably, yes.

  This native wasn’t frightened, just masterful. Before he could say anything else I opened my mouth and said loudly, “Please get the police.”

  “What?” He came three paces nearer, looking me up and down. “What did you say?”

  “Please get the police. I escaped. I want . . . er . . . to turn myself in.”

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “Look,” I said. “I’m freezing cold and very tired, and if you telephone a Captain Wagner he’ll come and get me.”

  “You’re not American,” he said accusingly.

  “No. British.”

  He came nearer to me, still warily holding the gun. I saw that he was of middle age with graying hair, a worthy citizen with money, used to decision. A businessman come home.

  I told him Wagner’s telephone number. “Please,” I said. “Please . . . call him.”

  He considered, then he said, “Walk along there to that door. No tricks.”

  I walked in front of him along a short path to his impressive front door, the rain stopping now, the air damp.

  “Stand still,” he said. I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing anything else.

  Three orange pumpkin faces rested on the steps, grinning up at me evilly. There was the sound of keys clinking and the lock being turned. The door swung inward, spilling out light.

  “Turn around. Come in here.”

  I turned. He was standing inside his door, waiting for me, ready with the gun.

  “Come inside and shut the door.”

  I did that.

  “Stand there,” he said, pointing to a spot on a marble-tiled hallway, in front of a wall. “Stand still . . . wait.”

  He took his eyes off me for a few seconds while he stretched a hand through a nearby doorway; and what it reappeared holding was a towel.

  “Here.” He threw it to me; a dry fluffy hand towel, pale green with pink initials. I caught it, but couldn’t do much with it, short of laying it on the ground and rolling.

  He made an impatient movement of his head.

  “I can’t . . .” I said, and stopped. It was all too damn bloody much.

  He parked the pistol, came towards me, wrapped the towel round my waist and tucked the ends in, like a sarong.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He put the pistol near an adjacent telephone and told me to repeat the number of the police.

  Kent Wagner, to my everlasting gratitude, was in h
is headquarters half an hour after he should have gone off duty.

  My unwilling host said to him, “There’s a man here says he escaped . . .”

  “Andrew Douglas,” I interrupted.

  “Says his name is Andrew Douglas.” He held the receiver suddenly away from his ear as if the noise had hurt the drum. “What? He says he wants to give himself up. He’s here, in handcuffs.” He listened for a few seconds and then with a frown came to put the receiver into my hands. “He wants to talk to you,” he said.

  Kent’s voice said into my ear, “Who is this?”

  “Andrew.”

  “Jee—sus . . .” His breath came out wheezing. “Where are you?”

  “I don’t know. Wait.” I asked my host where I was. He took the receiver temporarily back and gave his address, with directions. “Three miles up Massachusetts Avenue from Dupont Circle, take a right onto Forty-sixth Street, make a right again onto Davenport Street, a quarter mile down there, in the woods.” He listened, and gave me back the receiver.

  “Kent,” I said, “bring some men and come very quietly. Our friend is near here.”

  “Got it,” he said.

  “And Kent . . . bring some trousers.”

  “What?”

  “Pants,” I said tersely. “And a shirt. And some shoes, size ten English.”

  He said disbelievingly, “You’re not . . . ?”

  “Yeah. Bloody funny. And a key for some handcuffs.”

  My host, looking increasingly puzzled, took the receiver back and said to Kent Wagner, “Is this man dangerous?”

  What Kent swore afterwards that he said was “Take good care of him,” meaning just that, but my host interpreted the phrase as “beware of him” and kept me standing there at gunpoint despite my protestations that I was not only harmless but positively benign.

  “Don’t lean against the wall,” he said. “My wife would be furious to find blood on it.”

  “Blood?”

  “You’re covered in scratches.” He was astonished. “Didn’t you know?”

  “No.”

  “What did you escape from?”

  I shook my head wearily and didn’t explain, and waited what seemed an age before Kent Wagner rang the doorbell. He came into the hall half grinning in anticipation, the grin widening as he saw the pretty towel but then suddenly dying to grimness.

  “How’re you doing?” he said flatly.

  “O.K.”

  He nodded, went outside, and presently returned with clothes, shoes, and impressive metal cutters which got rid of the handcuffs with a couple of clips. “These aren’t police-issue handcuffs,” he explained. “We’ve no keys to fit.”

  My host loaned me his cloakroom to dress in, and when I came out I thanked him, handing over the towel.

  “Guess I should have given you a drink,” he said vaguely; but I’d just seen myself in a looking glass, and I reckoned he’d dealt with me kindly.

  20

  You’re not doing that,” Kent said.

  “Yes I am.”

  He gave me a sidelong look. “You’re in no shape . . .”

  “I’m fine.” A bit tattered as to fingers and toes, but never mind.

  He shrugged, giving in. We were out in the road by the police cars, silent as to sirens and lit only by parking lights, where I’d been telling him briefly what had happened.

  “We’ll go back the way I came,” I said. “What else?”

  He told his men, shadowy in the cars, to stay where they were and await orders, and he and I went up through the woods, up past the house I’d waited in, and up past the one with the frightened lady: up to the top of the slope, over onto flat ground and through the wire fence.

  We were both quiet, our feet softly scuffling on the sodden leaves. The rain had stopped. Behind broken clouds the moon sailed serene. The light was enough to see by, once we were used to it.

  “Somewhere here,” I said, half whispering. “Not far.”

  We went from laurel clump to laurel clump and found the familiar clearing. “He came from that way,” I said, pointing.

  Kent Wagner looked at the uprooted tree for a frozen moment but without discernible expression, and then delicately, cautiously, we passed out of the laurel ring, merging with the shadows, a couple of cats stalking.

  He wasn’t as good as Tony Vine, but few were. I was conscious just that he would be a good companion in a dark alley, and that I wouldn’t have gone back up there without him. He, for his part, had explained that his job was chiefly indoors now, in his office, and he was pleased for once to be outside with the action.

  He was carrying a gun like a natural extension of his right hand. We went forward slowly, testing every step, aware of the chance of trip-alarms. There were a good many laurels here among a whole bunch of younger trees and we could get no distant view, but approximately fifty paces from the clearing we caught a glimpse of a light.

  Kent pointed to it with the gun. I nodded. We inched in that direction, very careful now, conscious of risk.

  We saw no lookouts, which didn’t mean there weren’t any. We saw the front of a modern split-level house looking perfectly harmless and ordinary, with lights on downstairs and curtains half drawn.

  We went no closer. We retreated into the first line of trees and followed the line of the driveway from the house to the road. At the roadside there was a mailbox on a post, the mailbox bearing the number 5270. Kent pointed to it and I nodded, and we walked along the road in what he confidently assured me was the direction of the city. As we went he said, “I heard the tape you made. Your company relayed it to us from London this morning. Seems the Jockey Club had got it by express courier.”

  “My company,” I said wryly, “were no doubt displeased with me.”

  “I talked with some guy called Gerry Clayton. All he said was that while you were alive and negotiating it was O.K.”

  “Nice.”

  “They did seem to want you back; can’t think why.”

  We walked on, not hurrying.

  “I talked to the Goldonis,” he said. “Parents.”

  “Poor people.”

  I felt him shrug. “He was furious. She was all broken up. Seems she did see her son, did tell him about you. But no use to us. She met him by the Potomac, they walked a ways, then went to some quiet restaurant for lunch. He’d telephoned her in their hotel to fix it . . . never told her where he was staying, himself.”

  “It figured.”

  “Yeah.”

  A step or two further on he stopped, parked the gun in his belt and unclipped a hand radio instead.

  “Turn around,” he said to his men in the police cars. “Go back to Forty-fifth Street, make a left, make another left into Cherrytree, and crawl along there until you reach me. No sirens . . . No, repeat, no noise. Understood?”

  The policemen answered in regulation jargon and Kent pushed down the telescopic aerial of his radio and stuck the black box on his belt.

  We stood waiting. He watched me calmly in the moonlight, a hard man offering parity. I felt at ease with him, and grateful.

  “Your girlfriend,” he said casually, “will be one happy lady to have you back.”

  “Alessia?”

  “The jockey,” he said. “White face, huge eyes, hardly could speak for crying.”

  “Well,” I said, “she knows what it’s like to be kidnapped.”

  “Yeah, so I heard. I was talking to her this afternoon. In addition she said she didn’t know she loved you that way. Does that make sense? She said something about regretting saying no.”

  “Did she?”

  He glanced with interest at my face. “Good news, is it?”

  “You might say so.”

  “Something about prisoners coming home impotent from Vietnam.”

  “Mm,” I said, smiling. “I told her that.”

  “Glad it makes sense to you.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “She’s still at the Regency Hotel,” Kent said. “Sh
e said she wasn’t leaving until you were free.”

  I made no immediate reply, and after a pause he said, “I didn’t tell her you wouldn’t make it. That if you did, it would be a miracle.”

  “They happen,” I said; and he nodded.

  “Once in a while.”

  We looked back along the road to where I’d escaped from.

  “The house back there is three and a half miles in a pretty direct route from the Ritz Carlton,” he said. “And . . . did you notice? No pumpkins.” He was smiling in the semidarkness, his teeth gleaming like Halloween.

  He checked things pretty thoroughly, however, when his cars came, climbing into the back of one of them, with me beside him, and flicking through sheets and sheets of computer print-out. The print-out, I discovered, was of properties offered for rental, or rented, during the past eight weeks, not only in the District of Columbia itself but in adjacent Arlington and parts of Maryland and Virginia. It seemed to me to have entailed a prodigious amount of work: and again, like Eagler’s efforts, it produced results.

  Kent growled a deep syllable of satisfaction and showed me one particular sheet, pointing to the lines:# 5270 CHERRYTREE STREET, 20016,

  RENTED OCTOBER 16,

  PERIOD 26 WEEKS, FULL RENTAL PREPAID.

  He picked up a map already folded to the right page and showed me where we were.

  “There’s the house you called from, on Davenport Street. We walked a block up diagonally through the woods to Cherrytree, which is parallel with Davenport. The woods are part of American University Park.”

  I nodded.

  He heaved himself out of the car to talk to his men, and presently we were riding back in the direction of 5270, driving slowly with side lights only.

  Kent and Lieutenant Stavoski, who’d come in the second car, were in full agreement with each other that a sudden all-out raid was best, but a raid on their own well-prepared terms. They sent two policemen through the woods to approach from the rear but stay out of sight, and positioned the cars also out of sight of the house, but ready.

  “You stay out here,” Kent said to me. “You keep out, understand?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ll find Freemantle.”