Abel Baker Charley

by John R. Maxim

  This too pleased the neighbors. All forms of protection that embraced the Sonnenberg home also embraced their own. Most, in fact, boasted possession of one or more of his security devices, often experimental, and installed by one of the technicians who often stayed at Sonnenberg's house for weeks, sometimes months, on end. There was never a charge for the service, save the unwitting cost in the coin of privacy as each became a channel on Sonnenberg's console.

  Once a year, the neighbors and a handful of local business people would receive a glitteringly formal invitation to cocktails at the Sonnenberg home. It was the party Blair Palmer had mentioned to his friend Dunny. The invitation always came during the holiday season, a time when good will was pandemic and when the baser forms of curiosity were at their lowest ebb. A gift box containing a delicate tree ornament from Tiffany's would invariably accompany the invitation. Some of the neighbors had collected nine of them.

  Sonnenberg was a superb and elegant host. He would appear at the door, leaning on his cane with one hand, holding a champagne glass aloft in the other, and he would greet each of his guests, enthusiastically pronouncing each of their names and bowing slightly in the European manner. If a guest brought a small gift, as did most, he would profess a childlike delight at being remembered. Such a wonderful season, he would say. Such wonderful friends and neighbors. Such a wonderful country.

  Although the act of walking was obviously painful for him, Sonnenberg would insist on taking the curious on a tour of his house. Even veteran guests usually followed with equal interest. There was always something new.

  The tour presented a portrait of the man. Inside the hall closet, where furs and topcoats would be hung, Sonnenberg first had to push aside a tangle of fishing rods and other gear that had an oft-used look about it. An old wicker creel and a dented tackle box sat conspicuously on the shelf. Polite questions about how they were biting resulted in an immediate visit to Sonnenberg's den, where he would point to a mounted bluefish or sea bass of awesome dimension. Underneath and on top of the mantel, which framed an antique Franklin stove, were two mounted photographs. In one, Sonnenberg posed proudly beside a seven-foot Mako shark on a Montauk weighing dock. In the other, he stood beside a boy of perhaps thirteen whom he identified as his favorite grandson and sometime fishing companion who was now attending school in Switzerland. In truth, Sonnenberg had no notion of the boy's identity.

  Passing the mantelpiece, the guests would confront a floor-to-ceiling collection of Sonnenberg's books. They were arranged in groups, the largest being two dozen or more volumes dealing with pre-Columbian art. A single volume lay open on the same shelf, a tasseled bookmark holding flat a color plate that showed an ancient Mayan bird carved in gleaming obsidian. Its beak and the tips of its feathers were of hammered gold so finely blended that they seemed to grow from the stone itself. Photograph courtesy of Dr. Marcus Sonnenberg, read the acknowledgment below the text. The priceless artifact itself sat unpretentiously on a lower shelf, as if it claimed no greater worth than the half-dozen other carvings displayed above and below it.

  Another cluster of books dealt with fishing, including a first edition of Walton in a presentation case. A third contained a considerable collection dealing with antique furniture and reproductions. More color plates. The designs of Thomas Chippendale, Duncan Phyfe, George Hepplewhite, and Thomas Sheraton. Inevitably, a guest would show interest in the subject, and Sonnenberg would call attention to the Hepplewhite bookstand that supported the massive Sonnenberg family Bible. He would delight in confessing that the bookstand was not a Hepplewhite at all but the product, time-worn dents and wormholes included, of his basement workshop. A marvelous hobby, he would say. Superb therapy when the mind wearies of circuits and transistors and when the fingers itch to create form rather than function. There is profit enough in alarm systems but precious little humanity. His visitors would answer with rueful smiles and then follow him from the room, usually pausing before a large sepia photograph of several dozen smiling men in combat uniform posing on a brace of Sherman tanks. Someone always stopped and asked about it.

  “It was taken just after my outfit entered Aachen,” he would say, and a mist of nostalgia would cloud his eyes. “I'd buried that photograph in my attic for years. There was a time when it saddened me because I neither looked nor felt like that adventurous young man anymore. But, remembering all the other grand young men whose bodies were broken or who died in that conflict, I came to look upon it rather as a celebration of life. As that, and as a reminder that chance survivors such as myself ought to see an obligation to justify that survival. . . Goodness, that was pompous of me, wasn't it?”

  All would rush to disagree.

  “Which one are you, Doctor?” one would ask, his or her fingertips tracing lightly over the montage of faces.

  “The one with the beret.” He'd point. “The tank commander's arm is around my shoulder. I joined the Third Army as a scout after I was liberated from a camp near Neufchateau.”

  All would nod. “Can't mistake those eyes.” It was usually a woman who said that. That and, “You've become much more handsome. Distinguished. The beard makes you look like one of those 1914 archdukes of the Hohenzollerns.” This last was once pronounced by Audrey Thronhill, a pretentious boob whose sum knowledge of significant events was drawn from the pages of Town & Country.

  Nevertheless, Sonnenberg would blush and wave off all compliments. “Come,” he'd say abruptly. “Perhaps you'd like to see where the mad inventor works. Or would that be boring of me?”

  More disagreement.

  So Sonnenberg would lead the small group through his expensively understated living room, past an obviously original Duncan Phyfe sofa, under a probably original Winslow Homer, and by a possibly original Henderson butler's table. They could no longer be sure, having seen evidence of his skill at reproduction. They would line up behind him as he stiffly negotiated the narrow basement steps. As he descended, he'd explain that among the reasons he looked forward to this little entertainment was that it forced upon him the incentive of cleaning up his workshop once a year. Then he would wait while someone complimented him on its tidiness.

  It was actually two distinct workshops. His lathe and bandsaw and router table were at one end. A canister vacuum stood at attention, as did a rank of wood chisels that hung from a pegboard. At the other end was a well-lit work area whose centerpiece was a large, flat drafting table. Several pages of dog-eared specification sheets were tacked to one corner and a thick file of catalogues lay close at hand. No tools were in evidence, save several spools of insulated wire and a single transformer. Against one wall stood a high oak cabinet painted white, with separate glass doors enclosing each shelf. Behind the glass was a random jumble of electrical parts, printed circuits, testers, and exotic-looking modules, all in some stage of construction or disassembly. Sonnenberg had memorized their names and functions.

  Here the tour would end. Sonnenberg would answer perfunctory questions about his most current project, being understandably vague, or he would commiserate with that inevitable guest who thought to remark ruefully on the unhappy need for such devices of protection. But Sonnenberg's mind, by then, was on the white cabinet and on the unsuspected door behind it. The door, which led to a tiny room where Sonnenberg's real work was done, opened onto a world without props or facades or false trails, a room in which Sonnenberg's world was real and thrilling. Of all the living, only Mrs. Kreskie had seen it.

  Sonnenberg would force himself back to his entertainment. Go, Marcus. Go complete your work with these people. Disarm them. Enlist them. They are your insulation. If you are real to them, it follows that you must be real in fact. Study and record them as they sip your wine and munch Mrs. Kreskie's rumaki. Bottle them against the day when their behavioral clones will spring into existence in some distant city. Let them, meanwhile, wander about, discovering Marcus Sonnenberg, as long as one of them doesn't take it into his head to wander out among the rhododendrons with a spade in his hand
. The result would certainly be high drama but hardly worth the consequent inconvenience. Someday, though. Someday the house would change hands, and the new owner would decide that the manicured fairways of the Westchester Country Club were too much of an environmental asset to be blocked from view, and he'd tear down the fence and rip up the bug-ridden old rhododendrons by their roots. “Hey, Marge, look at this. There's some kind of animal under here. Maybe two or three animals. Wait a minute . . . these aren't. . . Holy Christ. . . these are skeletons here . . . No, damn it, I mean people skeletons. Holy Christ.. .”

  Then it would be only a matter of a day or so before they found the room downstairs. They'd bring in a trencher that would break its teeth against the reinforced concrete of the room's ceiling. Or else it would slice through the vent that led to the inside wall of the well. Sonnenberg winced at the probable fate of the marigolds and geraniums in the trencher's path and hoped that the event would occur in winter, when only sleeping tubers would be disturbed. On the other hand, marigolds mean contempt in the language of flowers and geraniums mean deceit. How very apt. There was a certain poetry to the vision of these two flowers hurling a last, defiant insult at their murderer.

  As for the room downstairs, Sonnenberg knew that how he'd managed to excavate it would become one of the enduring mysteries of the case. Actually, he didn't build it. Luther Dowling the elder built it and he's dead, so he isn't telling. Luther Dowling the younger is alive enough except that he isn't Luther Dowling anymore, so he won't tell either. The room, in fact, was the feature of the house that had most attracted him when he bought it from young Luther nine years earlier. A century before that, it had been a root cellar, then a coal bin until the house was converted to oil, and finally a bomb shelter built by batty old Mr. Dowling in 1954 without benefit of a building permit. Contractors of the time, who competed to construct these Eisenhower Specials, often disguised what they were doing at the request of the client, who frequently preferred that the shelter's existence remain a secret. If the Russian bombers ever actually came, it wouldn't do to have fear-maddened and less provident neighbors hammering at the door, begging to share the measured rations of food and water as nearby New York City boiled into the stratosphere.

  The room measured eight feet wide and nearly ten feet deep. At one end was a louvered metal door resembling the grate of a furnace. An air conditioner jutted from the wall beneath it. The door led to a concrete tube, twenty-eight inches in diameter, that was both an air shaft and an escape tunnel leading to the inside wall of the well. The well had long been filled to a level six feet below its lip, which was covered with a latticed grating that served as a base for potted plants.

  The room itself offered only the barest amenities. A studio couch, a small kneehole desk, and a Morris chair. It didn't seem that old Luther had made provision for his son. The built-ins included a large water tank, hermetically sealed, and an attached washstand that folded into the wall. Farther along the wall was a group of horizontal steel cabinets, each with its own combination lock. The lowest one contained a month's supply of assorted dehydrated dinners. The middle one, which was lined with asbestos, held a Coleman gas stove with a reserve supply of Sterno, and a rain slicker, clothing, a fire extinguisher, and miscellaneous hardware. The third was all Sonnenberg. It held his files, his notebooks, and his journals. A separate case held dozens of tape cassettes labeled with coded names and dates plus a battery-powered player. Sonnenberg had added only two significant refinements to the room. The first was an air conditioner that, like the electric lights, tapped into the power line outside and ran unmetered. The second was a thermite charge that would explode among his files if the air conditioner was not first turned on or if it was set at any combination other than Low Cool-Exhaust.

  On the opposite wall, he'd replaced Luther Dowling's gun rack with a large map of North America. More than forty colored pins dotted its surface from Saskatoon in the north to Cuernavaca in the south and to the island of St. Croix in the east. Each pin was a person—or an identity, to be precise—that had not existed before Sonnenberg.

  Sonnenberg needed no map to know where they were. The map was an indulgence and he recognized it as such. It was fun to play with and to contemplate. Much more tangible in its way than booby-trapped records entombed in steel. He could look at a pin and imagine, with no small degree of accuracy, what that man or woman would be doing at that hour. He knew each of them intimately. He knew their occupations, their hobbies, their favorite foods, and their styles of dress. Sonnenberg had shaped and polished all of them. Most, or certainly many, had nearly forgotten whom and what they had been before. Backsliding was rare because few could go home again, anyway. The need for discipline was rarer still. Excellent subjects, on the whole.

  And such accomplishments. Sonnenberg beamed. Darrel Finney, from a Utica policeman marked for assassination to a successful sculptor in Tucson barely a year after he picked up his first chisel. Melanie Laver, from a Boston murderess—manslaughteress, actually—to a newspaper columnist in Christiansted. Probably hadn't written so much as a postcard since she was a girl in summer camp. Or Milo Barney, the vacationing investigative reporter from Chicago who spotted Melanie, began tracking her transformation, knew a good thing when he saw one, and converted, eventually resurfacing running a ski shop in Killington, Vermont. A man whose prior interest in snow began and ended with snow tires. And then we have our born-again intellectuals, Luther Dowling the younger among the first. Brought up by an emasculating zealot of a father who was obsessed by the prospect of Armageddon and his exclusive survival thereof, the son was left with little sense of self and seeing even less practical value in being Luther Dowling the younger. That condition ended when Luther the elder was found beaten to death with a copy of the Old Testament. Young Luther is Philip Poindexter now, an admired curator in a museum where his focus is on the preservation of beauty rather than its vaporization. William Berner's transformation is even more impressive. Captain William Berner, the near-cretinous gook killer from Vietnam who metamorphosed into a gentle Smithsonian scholar. The list goes on. All loyal, all eager, all useful. Forty-three precisely. Forty-four with Baker. And that's if you only count him as one. Ah, Baker, how many of you are there? And which one will I find first?

  Sonnenberg's cigar had gone out. It was cold. He blinked and shook his head to clear away the memory of Christmas entertainments past and of his map of pins two floors below. He switched off his console. The Dickerson house was quiet and only static came through the speaker. Marcus, he thought, you've been woolgathering. It's a sign of a mind not at peace. Next thing you know, you'll be talking to yourself. And like Baker, getting answers.

  Sonnenberg giggled.

  Baker, Baker, Baker! Just think of it. A small army of Bakers. An elite force of men and women who could be anything they wished or needed to be. Without effort. Without fear. Without guilt. A legion of will-o'-the-wisps. A strike force at the leading edge of a new society. Men who can touch the tiller a few points this way and that and then fade away until the course must be corrected anew. And you, Baker, could be at the legion's head. The men and women you lead will be policemen when the need is for police, surgeons when the need is to cut away what is putrefying, seekers of learning when the power lies in knowledge, and seekers of truth when strength lies in understanding.

  Sonnenberg studied the cigar, considering idly whether the stub was worth saving for another day. He'd lost his taste for it. Sonnenberg leaned forward toward the window and shook out the saucer of ashes. The cigar followed, dropping among the rhododendrons. Mrs. Kreskie never went there.

  Ah, Baker, he thought, pushing to his feet, what wouldn't a Hitler have given for a specimen like you. Or an Allen Dulles, not to compare the two. Or a Duncan Peck, to split them down the middle ...

  Oh, my heavens. Dunny. No wonder that episode kept tugging at me. My uncharacteristically erratic golfer was Duncan Peck, wasn't he? Of course he was. He's lost weight. It's that jogging foolishness.
How long has it been? At least twenty years. One of his people must have spotted Ben Meister's picture after all. How much could he know? That Baker is here? Possibly. What Baker is? That I may have found a Chimera? Also possible. Oh, Duncan, I'm going to have to pay much closer attention to you, I'm afraid. I do hope you're not about to do something melodramatic. That would be terribly, terribly inconvenient. No. No, you won't, will you, Duncan? You like things tidy. You'll snoop for a while first. Or you'll prevail upon a good friend to snoop for you. It's a wonder where you keep finding foolish friends.

  Well, he thought, clapping his hands together, we're just going to move along, aren't we? Put the fleet to sea, so to speak.

  Sleep soundly, Mr. Baker. Tomorrow we begin in earnest.

  7

  “Tell me what you see there.”

  Sonnenberg rapped on the thick manila folder that he'd just placed on the butler's table in front of Baker, then returned stiffly to his couch.

  Baker looked up. He saw without interest that a photograph of himself was clipped to the cover. It was a confident face. At least not a beaten face. He was sure he didn't look like that today. He hadn't even bothered to shave.

  ‘Tell me what you see,” Sonnenberg repeated.

  Sonnenberg's manner, in contrast to Baker's, was almost gleeful. Like a grandfather on Christmas morning presenting a gift that was certain to be prized.

  The folder itself was three inches thick. Baker looked away from the photograph. “That's all me?” he asked, incurious.

  “More than you can imagine.” Sonnenberg smiled. He didn't want to rush this part. He reached for a carved silver samovar and gestured with it toward Baker's cup. Baker waved it off. He'd almost rather have had a drink. Sonnenberg shrugged. Too slowly, he filled his own cup, then carefully stirred in some heated cream and, from an enamel box, a few grains of chicory. This he tasted, then took from another bowl containing honey. Only when Baker began to fidget did he reach into the folder and slide out a second photograph of Baker's face.