Willing Hostage

by Marlys Millhiser

  “Hapless little crusade, I’ll bet you anything,” Welker mumbled as he pulled a Colorado road map from his jacket pocket. When Brian returned to wrap gauze around Leah’s hands, Joe Welker sat in a chair to study the map. “He must have let something slip. You were alone with him for days.”

  He rose and started pacing again. “While in the Flat Tops, you were with him every minute?”

  “Yes. From the time we left Oak Creek.”

  “He couldn’t have slipped off and retrieved something without your knowing it?”

  “No. And how did you know we were up there anyway?”

  “We didn’t. We were following the gentlemen you encountered yesterday.”

  “How did they know?”

  “One of them overheard a camper in a restaurant in Meeker say he’d seen a man, a woman, and a giant Siamese head up the trail to the primitive area at night When I got word of this, I thought it was Sheila with him because I thought she had the cat. It seemed to have an attachment for that Volkswagen of yours and hopped in when we opened the door. Sheila was to be a foil to get the danger off your trail and the cat was an added advantage.”

  “Then why did she follow me to Oak Creek? She should have gone in the other direction.”

  “That was the plan at first. She was to follow you from Walden and come straight to Steamboat after assuring herself that you turned off at Oak Creek.”

  The sliding-glass doors were open and the heavy scent of sun on rain-soaked pine needles came to Leah, bringing memories that she didn’t want.

  “But she didn’t show up here. She called me from Oak Creek that night and said she’d seen you being followed and put herself in the way, hoping to draw the danger off. Apparently she succeeded. She died to save you. Help us?”

  “He’s trying to shift the blame for Sheila to me,” she thought. Did he really believe Sheila died because of her, not because of a fool order from him?

  “If it had been me, Mr. Welker, in that Volkswagen? Who would have been blamed for my death?”

  “Your government needs your help, Leah Harper.”

  “My government just dangled me from a helicopter!” Her hands tightened around gauze.

  “Is that all your government’s done for you?” Julie whispered from the other end of the couch.

  “Oh, no. It’s taxed me silly instead of those who have all the money and it’s used me and lied to me, sent people like Glade Wyndham to places like Chile to commit murder in my name …”

  “So he told you about that.” Joseph Welker stared at the ceiling. “Leah, did you have to explain to your government why you left Chicago and came to Colorado? Did you have to present your papers at armed checkpoints all along the route or at state lines? Have you ever been visited by secret police in the middle of the night?” He stopped the incessant pacing to whirl around dramatically and face her. “Have enemy soldiers ever attacked your home or molested you? Leah, is there really any other country in this world in which you would rather live the rest of your life—not visit—but live, work, marry? Is there?”

  Leah blinked. “No.”

  “Then, can you really claim that your government has done nothing for you?”

  “It’s my country, too. It’s my government. You work for me! And the CIA has no right—”

  “Would you feel safer in a country—given today’s world—that had no CIA or FBI?”

  “No … but—”

  “All right. I’ll grant you that Charlie, in his fervor, made a ghastly mistake yesterday, for which he will pay. But Glade Wyndham is also making a mistake and it’s up to you and to me to persuade him otherwise, Miss Harper. This country you own as yours so fondly can only take so much and it has had enough of scandal and insecurity—”

  “It can take the truth, Mr. Welker,” she spat out quickly so that she could finish the sentence.

  “Do you know for a fact that what Glade wants to make public is the truth?”

  “I don’t know anything for a fact because I’m given none. I am expected to take you on faith because of who you are, presumably. I’m expected to make grandiose judgments on your word for things and on the basis of emotional patriotism and then risk my life because someone else decides it’s necessary.… Don’t ask me to make decisions on something I don’t know anything about!”

  “All right, I’ll tell you what I know. We’ll take a walk and let you get some fresh air. But first let’s have lunch.”

  Juie heated canned soup in the kitchenette.

  Welker studied the map while they ate. “He’s heading generally west … now why?”

  “Heard any more from Meeker?” Brian asked, with the expression of respect he reserved for Joseph Welker.

  “No. Everybody’s got Meeker covered. Goons’ll pick him up for sure if he gets anywhere near.”

  “What’s Meeker?” Leah said.

  “His brother’s ranch is outside a town called Meeker. Take a look at the map, Leah. Starting at Ted’s Place where you first saw him, I’ve drawn a line following his course. He’s moved haphazardly, but generally west. Did he mention any names of the towns you see west of the Flat Tops, like Grand Junction or Craig?”

  She studied the map. If she and Glade had continued down the road from Oak Creek instead of taking the turn-off to Trapper’s Lake and the Flat Tops, they would have ended up in Meeker … where goons and everyone else awaited them. She hoped Glade hadn’t continued in that direction when he left her. He’d been dangerously close the way it was. Had he abandoned Goodyear?

  “Miss Harper? You’re not listening.”

  “Hum? Oh. No, he didn’t mention any towns. There aren’t many that far west, are there?” Most of the towns seemed to be bunched along the eastern approach to the mountains. “Maybe he’s heading for Utah.”

  “Did he mention Utah?”

  “No. But there’s a lot of open country between here and Utah to hide something in. Why do you need a town?”

  “You could be right. We’ve searched that ranch he lived on. He didn’t have the papers with him when Charlie picked him up. Well, let’s take that walk.”

  Leah slipped into her tennis shoes. “I’m not up to much of a hike but it would be nice to get out in the sun.”

  “We’ll just stroll.” He held the door for her and Brian went on ahead.

  From the number of doors in the short hall upstairs and the identical hall below, Leah guessed that there were eight apartments in the building, four above and four below.

  She slid on her sunglasses the minute they stepped outside. Other buildings in the complex lined up beneath the ridge to their left, white stucco with wooden trim and balconies painted brown. Stacks of cut firewood were piled in the corner of each balcony. Concrete steps led to a sparsely populated parking lot on top of the ridge. Brian waited for them there, looking silly in coat and tie.

  The sun was high and warm, the air thin on oxygen and rich with odors of pine and earth. With all her aches, Leah felt good to be out again. “It’s funny, after all that time in the wilderness when I dreamed of bathtubs and soft beds and luxury …” she thought aloud.

  “Well, you can hardly claim we’ve housed you in squalor.” He pointed the way to Brian who turned to walk a good twenty yards ahead of them along the crest of the ridge.

  “No. That apartment is luxurious enough, but … empty. I hated that trudge through the Flat Tops while I was there but—”

  “Maybe it was the company you had that brings back fond memories, Leah. For all his mistreatment of you, you have a soft spot for Glade Wyndham, don’t you?” Welker walked leisurely beside her with his hands in his pockets. “I’ve known Glade for some years.” He smiled down at her and shook his head. “He could make the dungeons of a castle half flooded with water seem romantic—”

  “Romantic! He’s a beast.”

  “Some women find beasts romantic and Glade’s been known to switch tactics to suit the occasion. He knows his way around women.”

  “That’s wh
at Charlie said.”

  “If he didn’t have those papers on him when Charlie picked him up, he either got to them later or is on his way to them now. He’ll have to get to a telephone to contact a reporter. Did he mention any names? You must have talked about something all that time.”

  Leah sighed. He was determined to ruin her stroll. “We walked mostly. He wasn’t talkative. He asked me about my life so that I wouldn’t ask him about his.” She owed Welker nothing but trouble. She wouldn’t tell him about Norton and the Denver Post.

  In front of them Brian’s head kept turning from side to side as if he scanned the area for snipers, reminding Leah of secret servicemen guarding the President on television. She looked over her shoulder to see another man doing the same thing behind them, keeping pace, a cigarette hanging from his lips. Didn’t they notice how they stood out in their conservative suits in an area like this?

  “You’re hot, Leah,” Welker said, noting her glances. “We’ll protect you. But you must help us do that, you know. Those men are guarding your life … as Sheila did.”

  “From who?”

  “Everyone after Glade will soon know, if they don’t already, that you spent a week in the wilderness alone with him. There are leaks in any camp.”

  They walked along a path through a line of scrub bush to a patch of trees.

  “Now, I want to know—”

  “Mr. Welker, you were going to give me information. Remember? Are you working with Charlie and his friends? Or against them? What do those goons want with Glade? Why do you think I can be of any further use to you? Why are Charlie and Bradley operating in Colorado at all? I want to know everything about Glade. I want to know everything period … or I want to know nothing and go back to Chicago. You have a choice.”

  To her chagrin, Joseph Welker began to answer her questions. They weren’t going to let her go back to Chicago. “Glade and his older brother, Cal, were raised on their father’s ranch some miles out of Meeker, Colorado. Glade was used to isolated living, hard work, being bused long miles to school. A hardy family background, conservative in political and social outlook.…”

  Welker’s voice descended into an impersonal steady monotone as if he were reciting from memory a written dossier on Glade Wyndham. The thought struck Leah as chilling.

  “As I said, life was rugged and the men of the family were big and stolid. Unfortunately, the mother was frail and died when Glade was twelve of what the doctor termed exhaustion. The older brother married and brought his young wife home to care for the bruisers. She took two years of it and left. She also left behind another Wyndham … a baby boy, Glade’s nephew Jerry. Glade was fifteen at the time.” He stopped his ambling and looked at Leah squarely. “This seems to have affected Glade’s opinion of women … permanently.

  “Glade was an excellent student. His father paid fully for a college education and while Glade was off studying to become a mining engineer, a neighbor accidentally backed over the father with a wagonload of hay. It killed him. The brother got the ranch. Glade was free and set up with an education. He dated women and enjoyed them but carefully avoided long-standing attachments while in college and ever since. He has a preference for blondes and next comes redheads, brunettes, and whatever else man and nature can concoct. He—”

  “What about his other job?”

  “He was recruited in college and spent most of his time abroad after that.” Welker rarely mentioned the CIA by name.

  “Working at two jobs.”

  “Yes. About ten months ago, he unexplainably rifled his company’s safe and disappeared with some papers. He also withdrew all his money from a bank account.”

  “Why was he working for an American company in the U.S. ten months ago?”

  “That company hired mining engineers. What could be simpler?”

  “But why was a CIA agent working for this company in the United States?” Leah insisted. Welker could be as evasive as a politician.

  “That, I’m afraid, Miss Harper, is not in my domain.”

  “It isn’t theirs either, is it? And Colorado certainly shouldn’t be.”

  “It’s understandable, though. Glade is their renegade. Of course, they want to clean up their own affairs.”

  “The FBI and CIA are after the same man and the same papers but they’re not even working together. Seems a little inefficient, doesn’t it?”

  “I have orders to get to him first, to save his life and to retrieve the papers.”

  “And the goons?”

  “We think they have orders to stop him outright. They already know what the papers contain.”

  “You mean you don’t? You don’t even know what you’re after?”

  “Unlike you, Miss Harper, I do take some things on faith. I’m reliably informed that the contents of those papers are a matter for investigation by the bureau, that untold harm would be done to the nation if they were made public before this investigation … they were stolen, remember, from a large and respected company—”

  “Which sends out hoods to kill ex-employees:”

  “That I find deplorable also and am trying my best to see that they don’t succeed. But men in Glade’s line of work have been considered fair game, whenever caught, since time immemorial.”

  At a break in the trees, Brian stopped them with a raised hand. Another mountain rose before them, wide swaths slashed through its trees for winter skiers. A stilled chair lift angled up its side and another lift sat idle in the distance. To the side and beyond the ski runs, the jade-green valley led away to Oak Creek with its river snaking through herds of grazing cattle and an occasional brown haystack shaped like a soggy loaf of bread.

  “We’ll turn back here, I think.” They started for the condominium complex, slowly. “Now I’ve told you a great deal, Miss Harper. Will you help us? I want to know what’s in those papers. I want to find Glade Wyndham before any harm can come to him. If I could just talk to him. Why did he steal the papers to begin with?”

  “I don’t know where he is or where he’s going.” Leah felt suddenly exhausted. Her tennis shoes shuffled stones loose from the earth. If she told him just a little, would he let her go? “He was ordered by the CIA to photograph those papers and return them to the safe. Instead he took them and ran. They have something to do with oil shale … a deal between the government and the oil company. That is all I know, Mr. Welker. Please let me go back to Chicago.”

  “A deal … you’re sure?” They walked in silence back to the parking lot. “A deal?” He stood staring at the peaked aluminum roofs of Steamboat Springs. “This makes it all the more imperative that I talk to him. If we could just flush him. I’m afraid I can’t send you back to Chicago just yet. But I will take you out to dinner tonight,” he added thoughtfully.

  That night they dined at the Iron Horse, a group of connecting railroad cars lined up behind a motel. It had mirrors along one wall and windows along the other. A narrow aisle parted a single row of tables on each side. The damage to the carpeting matched that in her apartment in the complex … ski boots.

  Their waiter was a male ski bum working to exist through summer. Leah had seen the type during two expensive weekends away from New York when she’d dabbled in skiing at a Vermont lodge … young, unattached, year-round tan, perfect teeth, handsome … a ski bum was a ski bum east or west apparently. But from her glimpse of the dizzying slopes and their incredible lengths that afternoon she figured the bums had a lot more fun in the West.

  Leah refused a cocktail. She ordered eggs Benedict to Julie’s disgust. Sitting between Welker and Brian, she could see Welker in the mirror opposite.

  “You have to be careful of cholesterol,” Julie pointed out as Leah broke a yolk.

  “Replace that gauze after you bathe tonight,” Brian offered through a mouthful of sirloin.

  “He’s got to run out of cash soon,” Welker said over lobster. “He’ll have to go somewhere and we’ve got his brother covered. He emptied one bank account ten months ago. Th
e only way anyone found him was that we were all waiting for him to dip into the other one.”

  “That’s why it took ten months?” Leah tried a sip of wine on her ulcer.

  “Yes. He was living in a rented cabin in a place called Rustic. It’s in the canyon between Ted’s Place and Cameron Pass, where you met him in that fishing cabin. Eventually he wrote a rent check on that secret account.”

  “Secret account?”

  “He thought it was secret. Actually there are few secrets from Uncle Sam … but Glade had been out of the country for ten years.” Welker was sipping his third martini with his second glass of wine. Face on, he looked relaxed. In the mirror opposite he looked drunk.

  Leah, of the sober set, felt it was high time she took advantage of someone else. “You have access to bank accounts?”

  “The law reads that banks must photograph checks for over a certain amount. It’s a way to trace money leaving the country. But it’s such a hassle, banks just photograph all checks. Retrieval is a problem, but it can be done.”

  Leah couldn’t finish her eggs Benedict and had trouble sleeping that night. She couldn’t rid herself of the mental image of shadowed eyes, the rich sound of deep laughter, the … she knew she’d been wise to leave him, but as usual she’d ran to the wrong place.

  The condominium was as poorly built as everything else in this age and she heard sounds from the next apartment through the walls. She was on her way to the bathroom when Brian shouted from the hall, “He’s here! He’s got it.”

  In the bathroom, Leah heard Joseph Welker on the other side of the wall ask, “Is it complete, college organizations, bank …” and a flushing toilet drowned out the rest.

  Leah walked through the bed-sitting room to the sliding-glass door and opened it slightly. The screen was kept locked but the door opened for ventilation because there was no other window. The balcony guard was just opening the sliding door next to hers.

  “What’s going on?” he asked between puffs on his cigarette.

  “The Harper file is in,” Welker answered with satisfaction. “Have we got anything?”