Momentary silence. Although Slater did not understand the Latin, he knew Austad was asking them for their names. Austad had agreed it was important to get them speaking, and they’d chosen it as the least threatening question possible.
The silence continued too long. Finally, one boy whispered to another. They debated quietly among themselves.
“Can you hear anything,” Slater asked Austad.
“On this end, only a murmur.”
The boy in the middle glared at Slater. Slater held his hands wide and shrugged a universal gesture of noncomprehension.
The middle boy had been elected as spokesman, for in Latin he answered that he was twenty-one and his companions were twelve and seventeen.
“Slater,” Austad said. “You told me they were triplets.”
“They are.”
“I just asked them their names, and he gave me their ages. Twenty-one, twelve, and seventeen. Triplets generally share the same birth date.”
“Austad, those are their names. The numbers tattooed on their forehead. Damn it, Austad, what are they, lab animals?”
The boys watched Slater intently during his interchange. He hardly noticed. He was hearing the question he’d just asked in sarcastic disbelief. Lab animals? Impossible.
Austad was speaking to the boys, words fast and unintelligible. The boy in the middle fired back, then the other two boys.
Lab animals. Impossible?
Slater searched his memory for anything that might contradict the dead weight of sadness and horror settling upon him.
Tattooed, naked, unaware of anything about the modern world except for light switches. Like they truly had been kept in cages.
Slater no longer found it amusing to see the boys looking upward and around them as they searched for the source of the voice that spoke to them in a language that had been dead for centuries, one that in today’s world was only found in the realm of – Slater closed his eyes – science. Latin, for centuries, the voice of science.
Slater nearly jumped to his feet to shout interruption of the conversation. Anything, just to ease his mind and prove his thoughts wrong.
Yet the bond Austad was establishing with the boys was too fragile. An interruption might cost too much.
Slater walked to the front window blinds to gaze at the mountain trees. Austad would finish when he finished. Until then, Slater would force patience upon himself.
Barely a minute later – as an electric surge of adrenaline charged through him – he realized how fortunate he had been to remain outside of the conversation. If he hadn’t gone to the window, he wouldn’t have seen the police cruiser on its slow approach up the driveway. Inside the house, and with the telephone speaker at full volume, he wouldn’t have had warning of a visitor until a knock at the door. At that point, opening the door would show all three boys, send the stench of urine into the visitor’s face.
In Slater’s world, all visitors were unexpected – and possibly dangerous. Much more so any cop.
Slater snapped the blinds shut.
“Austad!”
The boys froze.
“Dr. Austad, I have no choice but to step outside. If you need to hang up before I get back, I’ll call you.”
“Slater,” Austad told him, grimness apparent over the telephone line. “I won’t hang up. And you’d better get back as soon as possible.”
Slater closed the door quietly behind him and walked toward the police cruiser.
***
The shack would easily go for a hundred and a half, Del thought. Two levels, loft probably, Fireplace, windows everywhere. This was a luxury mountain retreat. With no mortgage? Slater Ellis had to be spooksville. Slater Ellis was the man.
Del grunted as he pushed himself out of the police cruiser. He was right; he knew by the anticipation in his stomach, the same anticipation he savored when a buck was about to walk into his sights.
He leaned back into the car to retrieve his hat. By the time he’d straightened and squared the hat on his head, the guy was walking down from the porch. Right into his sights.
“Howdy,” the guy said.
Del squinted into the sun. Lucky accident the guy had maneuvered himself to put the sun at his back. Or maybe not. Del decided against moving into better position, just in case the guy was playing games.
“Howdy,” Del said. Friendly even though he didn’t feel it. “Nice place you got.”
“I like it.” Friendly in return.
Del had his own game he liked to play as a warmup to any serious discussion with suspects. He’d say nothing. Stand big and tall. Silently count real slow. It wasn’t a question of who would break the silence; it boiled down to how long before the other guy spoke, Del had a rule of thumb to go with his game too. For each ten-count before the guy spoke, it would take half an hour of interrogation to break him. Once a guy lasted until Del had counted to fifty. Sure enough, after barely two and a half hours in the room back of the jail cells, Del had the answers he wanted.
So Del said nothing, waited for the guy to rattle.
It didn’t happen.
Del was at sixty already. It had given him time to check out Slater Ellis. The guy looked compact, but that was an illusion when you realized he was plenty tall, just broad to go with his height. Probably ran, worked with iron – the smart way, high reps with lower weights. Late thirties, early forties. Had kept most his hair and showed a lot of calm in his face. Del had seen that look before – on a couple of guys in the army who’d wrestled death to the ground and survived, who came back with two simple rules: Don’t sweat the small stuff; it’s all small stuff.
Del got to eighty-five. A minute and a half had passed in silence. Two men appearing casual and relaxed and watching each other while jays squawked and the tops of the pines swayed in a light wind.
Del watched the guy turn, go back up the steps to the deck.
“Hey,” Del said, it surprised him so much.
Halfway up the steps, the guy pivoted again, faced Del.
“Yes?”
Del almost grinned. First time he’d lost his little game.
“How’s the head?” Del asked. Might as well launch into his excuse for visiting.
“Twenty-seven stitches,” Ellis said. The sun wasn’t quite behind him now. Small mercy. “But that isn’t new to you.”
“No,” Del said slowly. This guy was sharp, figuring out quickly Del was here because of the hospital report, but also not showing off by explaining he’d guessed it that way.
“I’m here doing a routine check,” Del said. “We had a hit-and-run last Tuesday night, the uh, fourteenth.”
Del watched close. If this was the guy who’d called, he should at least flinch. Hadn’t the transcript mentioned almost hitting a kid?
There it was. Slight. Real slight. A tightening of the small muscles around his eyes. But enough.
“I had a hit-and-run myself that night,” Ellis said. He lightly touched his skull. “It’s still tender.”
“Like I said, this is just routine. We went through the hospital reports and saw your name and alcohol on the report. You drive a...”
“Chevy Blazer.”
“This year’s model,” Del told him. “Metallic blue. I got all that from the state DMV.”
Slater watched Del. Del knew Slater was thinking through the hospital report, telling himself he’d listed his address as one in Montana, wondering how Del had tracked him here and, more important, wondering why. Pressure was building, even if the guy wasn’t showing it.
“The vehicle we’re looking for is a Chevy half-ton, though,” Del said. “That’s why this is routine. I’d like to look in your garage.”
There it was again. The extra tension around his eyes, hardly visible. If the sun had still been over the guy’s shoulders, Del wouldn’t be seeing it.
“No,” the guy said.
Del waited for an explanation. It did not come.
“No?”
“No. Any other questions?”
Del almost liked this guy.
“Why not?” Del asked.
“Because I don’t want you to.” The guy wasn’t upset or aggressive in saying it, but firm and calm.
Del sighed. But inside, he was happy, very happy. He’d come here knowing he needed something, anything to tell him he should risk questioning Slater Ellis.
Del could have come in plain clothes, not a uniform, but it didn’t matter, not with what he had in mind. If he didn’t take the guy in, it truly could appear just a routine check. But if he did take him in, the guy wouldn’t ever return, because either way, once Del began to question Ellis – spooksville or not – Ellis was dead. Two reasons. If he was spooksville, Del couldn’t afford to have him reporting back to the freak. If Slater Ellis wasn’t spooksville, it’s his bad luck Del had guessed wrong, but no way could Del rough him up, discover the guy was just a civilian, then apologize and send him on his way. One, to know Ellis wasn’t lying, Del would have to rough him up bad. Two, if the guy started to throw lawsuits around, not only would Del see his career go down the tubes, but spooksville would also learn Del was doing side work.
Del sighed again. “You’re right. I’d need a search warrant. Look, you mind if I use your john? It’s a long drive back to Los Alamos.”
“Duck behind a tree,” Slater said.
Del hadn’t thought the guy would go for it, but it had been worth a try. Along with deciding he wouldn’t take Ellis unless he felt there was an 80 percent chance the guy was spooksville, Del had decided he wouldn’t take him – especially in his police uniform – until there was a 100 percent chance he could get away with it.
“This is a serious biological need,” Del said, “not the kind you can take care of behind a tree. You can walk me right to the john; I won’t be doing a search of the house.”
“Nope,” Ellis said. Again, not upset.
All Del wanted to know was whether there was anyone in the house. If not, he’d just throw Ellis into the cruiser and drive to a remote fishing site he knew, hike him down to some caves and ask questions at his leisure.
“I hardly ever ask anything more than once,” Del said. “But my bowels are pushing me beyond pride.”
“I like my privacy,” Slater Ellis said.
Del figured that made it 90 percent sure the guy was spooksville. New decision, then. Del would cuff him in the back of cruiser then check the house at his leisure. If there were no witnesses inside, the guy was dead. Any witnesses, Del would either say it was routine questioning and let Slater go right away to take him later – or, if it’s only one witness, he’d take Slater anyway and do the witness too. It had come down to that. Just like war, make your decision and don’t let emotion make you weak about it.
“Asking one last time,” Del said.
“I like my privacy.”
Del got ready to pull his gun from the holster. It’d be kind of funny. This guy would think Del had to go so bad he’d shoot his way into the house.
But before Del dropped his hand to his holster, the crunch of gravel warned that another car was pulling into the long driveway.
They both watched and waited for it to round the tight bend. A station wagon appeared with a fat man and a fat woman filling most of the front seat.
“Afternoon, boys,” Josh Burns said as he rolled down the window. “Hey, I ain’t interrupting anything, am I.”
Chapter 9
Wednesday, May 22
Tansworth, to be frank, I’m having second thoughts about some aspects of the operation.”
“Oh?” Van Klees should have felt at his confident best. He was in his territory – at brunch at an elegant K Street restaurant in the D.C. power corridors of the most powerful nation in the world. But General Stanley, unlike General Prowse, radiated the unpredictable power of a grizzly. He had a massive bald head, the build of a bull, and, even sitting, erect military posture that showed very little belly. The lines across his fifty-year-old face were so thin they could have been cut by razor blades. In full military uniform, he was an imposing man. Van Klees always felt slightly soft and weak in this general’s presence.
“Are you afraid of a security leak?” Van Klees asked. Stanley hadn’t gotten wind of the lost boys, had he?
“If this were about a security leak, I’d. have already strangled you,” Stanley said. “I gave you that county sheriff on a platter when I pulled those photos, and I don’t expect a whiff of trouble. You read me clearly, don’t you?”
Van Klees did. With anyone but Stanley, Van Klees could sit back with detached superiority. Instead, Van Klees felt a trace of vulnerability despite the safeguard of his false identification as Jack Tansworth. Van Klees hated, really hated, any sense of loss of control. As a result, he also hated, really hated, the general sitting opposite him.
Van Klees let his face assume arrogance, “General, not only do we have the sheriff working for us, but we’ve got his wife reporting to us on him. No sense in wasting good photographs.”
Stanley grunted approval. “What I’ve got second thoughts about,” he then said, “is a lack of progress on your part. It’s been, what, more than a dozen years?”
Van Klees did not want to deal with General Stanley the same way he always dealt with General Prowse – the threat of mutual blackmail. With Stanley, the threat would be counterproductive. Stanley was such a stubborn bull of a man he might actually call the bluff. And where would the Institute be then?
“General,” Van Klees tried to soothe, “you haven’t needed the Institute in the manner of our good friend, Herman Prowse. To you, then, progress would seem slower. Yet...”
“Yet give me time and my body will fall apart?” George Stanley snorted. General Stanley leaned forward, pushing aside the cap he’d set on the table. His piercing blue eyes lasered into Van Klees.
“It’s like this, Tansworth. I don’t want patchwork repairs. It’s no mystery to me where you found a liver for Prowse. Refugees. Bosnia. Rwanda. Before that, Afghanistan. We’re letting you scavenge the world. When my body goes to pieces, I don’t want replacement parts from some refugee too slow and stupid to avoid roundup. What I want is the big payoff. And it’s been more than twelve years now. How much longer?"
“One year.” Van Klees held his hands open, palms up in a gesture of helplessness. “Maybe five. Science is not a certain –”
“And maybe ten years? Is that what I’m hearing?”
“Sir, you knew the odds when we went in,” Van Klees said. He hated it when he called the general “sir.” “My only promise was to expect it in your natural lifetime.”
“But all these years! Do you realize how much funding has been funneled in your direction?”
Van Klees wanted to pull back from the intensity in the general’s voice.
“Is it money out of your pocket, General? Remember, too, we’ve always considered the implications for the military. In the long run, you’ll have helped not only yourself but also the future of this country.”
“You don’t understand,” Gen. George Stanley said. The blaze of intensity grew in his eyes. “I really need to know when to expect results.”
Van Klees, an expert at fear and weakness, wondered what the general was trying to hide with his anger. It gave Van Klees no small satisfaction to hear the reason as the general continued.
“I’ve got the big C,” Stanley said to answer Van Klees’s unspoken question. His voice held disbelief that a body as strong as his might engage in such terrible betrayal. “Cancer of the colon, Tansworth. I’m running out of time, and I no longer give a damn what’s good for the country.”
***
An hour later, two blocks north to M Street and easy walking distance in the direction of the Potomac, Van Klees stopped at a bus-stop shelter. He needed a place to sit. He pulled a page loose from a newspaper on the ground, and spread the page across the bench before sitting down.
He placed his briefcase on his lap and snapped open the locks.
“That paper u
ses cheap ink,” a derelict in the opposite corner of the shelter said. “You’ll get dirtier from it than from the bench.”
“Hang yourself this evening,” Van Klees suggested. He didn’t look up as he transferred his wallet from his inside jacket pocket to a small compartment in the briefcase. “Try to die slowly.”
Van Klees reached into another compartment and pulled out another wallet. He glanced at the credit cards inside to confirm that they carried the John Hammond name. Van Klees never made mistakes; part of his perfection was to always double and triple check. Satisfied with the wallet, he placed it in his jacket where seconds earlier Jack Tansworth’s appropriate credit cards and driver’s license had rested.
Van Klees stood.
He finally deigned to focus attention on the derelict.
How distasteful. Crusty gray grizzle over wattled jowls. Stringy hair. One eye turned inward. The epidermis showed evidence of a multitude of dysfunctional processes. What a miserable excuse for Homo sapiens. And this man had dared to offer advice? It might take a hundred years, but eventually scum like this would be weeded from the species, and the world would have Van Klees to thank for it.
Van Klees reached into his suit pocket and took out the John Hammond wallet. He pulled a fifty-dollar bill loose, and extended it to the derelict.
“Really?” the man quavered. He began to reach for the money, joy lighting his features.
“Hardly,” Van Klees yanked the money away just as the man’s yellowed fingers began to close over it. “Have a nice day.”
Van Klees whistled as he walked toward his noon restaurant meeting with Paige Stephens.
***
“What I want to say is a cliche,” Paige said. “But I guess they become cliches because they are so suitable.”
“Try me,” Van Klees said. He smiled. Because he knew she liked it from him. “I’m sure you’ll add life to it.”
“All right, then,” she told him. “Really, you shouldn’t have.”
“Flown you to Washington?” Van Klees arched his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Trust me; you’re doing me the favor. There was no way I could get down to Tampa. And from your phone call, I felt this was important enough to discuss in person.”
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