Abel Baker Charley

by John R. Maxim

  “It would seem so, sir. The house looks abandoned, but I suggest you wait until my men secure it. It could easily be booby trapped.”

  Peck allowed himself a sigh. “Your men couldn't secure this house if they had a week and a fleet of minesweepers to do it. No offense, Edward, but I know this man.” Peck walked past Burleson and through Sonnenberg's front door.

  Peterson, with Biaggi following, was already on the second floor. The two moved quickly from room to room, opening doors and bursting through in a crouch, or trading hand signals that argued over who would be the first to turn a blind corner. Peck heard the stomping sounds above him and the crack of a lock being kicked open. He winced at the damage being done to so fine an example of Colonial architecture. And as he winced, he was struck by the clear and certain feeling that he was not alone in his reaction. Peck folded his arms and let his eyes wander along the walls and ceiling of the center hall. He smiled and raised a hand toward Burleson.

  “Clear them out, Edward,” he ordered.

  “The search isn't completed, sir. Sonnenberg may have left some sign of where he's gone.”

  Peck waved aside what he knew to be an idle hope. ”A message doubtless awaits us, Edward. We'll find it without enriching the local plasterers and painters.”

  “Well said, Duncan.” Sonnenberg's voice seemed to float in front of them.

  Burleson's gun barrel snapped up at the words and trained on the ceiling. Peck patted his shoulder and gestured the weapon away. He pointed toward a smoke detection device that seemed more than a bit overlarge and had a slit two inches square cut into it.

  ”I take it, Dr. Sonnenberg, that we're to play hide-and-seek for a while.” He spoke directly to the smoke detector.

  “If that amuses you, Duncan. However, you may correctly assume that I'm out of harm's way, even if my woodwork isn't. Please do as your master asked, Mr. Burleson. Send away your various androids so my friend and I can chat.”

  Burleson looked questioningly at Duncan Peck, who was busy scribbling a few lines on a piece of paper. This he tore off a pad and handed to Burleson. Burleson read it and, still doubtful, placed two fingers against his teeth and whistled. Peterson appeared at the top of the stairs, followed by Biaggi, then two more from the kitchen and study. Burleson huddled briefly with the four, brushing aside their questions, and directed them to positions outside the doors they'd originally entered. Biaggi left more reluctantly than the others. Burleson remained.

  “This one is to stay, I take it?” Sonnenberg asked.

  “If it's quite all right.”

  “I'm delighted,” said Sonnenberg expansively. “Welcome, Mr. Burleson. Your invited presence suggests either that Mr. Peck would trust you with his life or that he fully intends to take yours when all is said and done. I suspect the latter. What was on the little note, by the way?”

  Burleson folded his arms over his Uzi but offered no other expression.

  “Gentlemen don't read each other's mail, as they say, Doctor,” Peck answered. “Obviously, however, it contained instructions. What to do next, where else to look for you, that sort of thing.”

  “Well, if you'd asked, I'd have been more than happy to give you a hint. But you've been rude, so I won't. And as for this Dr. Sonnenberg business, you know perfectly well who I am. Or was. Back then, at least. One of these telescanners, incidentally, is installed in my study. By all means choose a comfortable place to sit and we'll have a long and frank discussion about old times and new. And I shall be frank, Duncan. I shall even be Blount.”

  Peck shook his head wearily and turned to Burleson. “That was a pun, Edward. Blount. It's the man's name. He was Ivor Blount when he worked for me.”

  “I'll bet you're just breathless to hear the story, aren't you, Edward?”

  “Ivor—”

  “Call me Marcus, Duncan. Less confusing.”

  “Marcus, is there a point to this? Not that I mind listening to your demented chitchat while my people search for you, but what exactly do you expect me to contribute? You hardly expect me to bare my innermost thoughts for the benefit of your recording devices.”

  “Not a bit of it, Duncan. There are no such devices. My word on it.” Unless we count Connor Harrigan's own notepad, he thought, upon which he too is doubtless beginning to scribble downstairs. Sonnenberg decided he'd forgive himself the small lie of omission. “In any case, I won't ask you to admit a thing. I do, however, have a surprise for you in just a short while. Do you mind if I pass the time telling Mr. Burleson a story or two?”

  “Would this surprise involve a lethal device, old friend?” Peck began to envision being blown up or electrocuted if he sought comfort in the wrong chair.

  “Absolutely not!” Sonnenberg's voice seemed appalled at the suggestion. “You're a guest in my home, Duncan. I intend merely to annoy you. But there will be compensation, I promise, in the coin of useful and valuable information.”

  Duncan Peck smiled. “We'll see who annoys whom, Marcus.” Peck strolled toward the study as he spoke, deciding to take Sonnenberg at his word. Burleson followed and, after Peck was seated, chose a lesser seat for himself.

  “Where to begin?” The speaker in the hall clicked off and another beneath the study's mantel clicked on. ”I suppose, Edward . . . May I call you Edward? Thank you. I suppose the tale begins in 1944, Edward. Back when war could be fun. Bond rallies, patriotic songs, winning—that sort of thing. Spying, too, had a certain grandeur to it then. The espionage game attracted every sort of person. Patriots, humanists, swashbucklers, and most reliable of all, those who did it for the money. This was before we learned to homogenize our spies and turn earnest young Fordham and Georgetown graduates into sociopaths like yourself, Edward.

  “But I digress. Duncan here, and yours truly, were once what a chronicler of the time described as the young lions. We fought and dared. Dared mostly. My job, under Duncan, was to train American agents for assignment to occupied European countries. Others taught them how to spy, to kill silently, to kidnap, and to otherwise make mischief. I taught them how not to get caught. I taught them how to blend with any populace and how to convincingly live whatever identity they assumed. I could, immodestly perhaps, turn a shoe salesman into a pastry chef or a yachtsman into a truck driver. If I am boasting, Edward, it's not entirely without cause. No one placed in my charge was ever caught, save two women who were deliberately betrayed by Duncan here in order to have false information torn out of them through their fingernails. It was then that I began to suspect that Duncan's loyalties and personal ethics were less than rigid.”

  Duncan Peck glanced at Burleson and shook his head sadly. Burleson nodded that he understood the occasional need for reluctant ruthlessness. He understood further, his eyes said, what a trial it must have been for Peck to work with such a pansy. Peck glanced out the window. Peterson was near the front gate now. He held a device with a large circular antenna in one hand and a transceiver in the other. A direction finder, Duncan Peck knew. Perhaps he would not have to endure this very much longer. But long enough to fill in a gap or two.

  “After the war ended,” Sonnenberg continued, ”I lingered on, performing a similar service but in reverse. People who were then in need of new identities included defectors, certain witnesses, agents who'd committed capital crimes more or less in the line of duty, and the like. Since the management of such an operation requires a certain indifference to truth and convention, Duncan Peck was naturally put in charge. The terribly secret Relocation Service was off and running.

  “As it grew, Duncan found it convenient to use more and more of these people for his own ends. I mean, what's the use of having a political assassin on hand if you're going to let him lie fallow? Or a skillful forger. Or an extortionist. You understand this, don't you, Edward? You see it as a perfectly sensible alternative to leaving the power in the hands of the flighty electorate. I, however, was one of the flighty ones. I thought he was wrong and said so, even threatened to make my views more broadly known.
So here you see truth and convention rearing their ugly heads again. Having heard me voice such alien concepts, Duncan reasonably concluded that I was deranged. From his point of view I probably was. It was not long afterward that others in government, including an honest man here and there, began to share his conviction. In truth, I was a bit of an eccentric. My public behavior became increasingly bizarre, thanks to certain controlled substances that found their way onto my luncheon plate whenever I dined with Duncan. In a matter of weeks, Duncan managed to do such violence to my credibility that my every pronouncement was seen as the raving of a lunatic. It remained only to put me where lunatics go. You're familiar with St. Elizabeths Hospital, Edward? It's where we entombed the poet Ezra Pound during the war. It seems that he recognized a random good quality in Germans and Italians before the rest of us were prepared to embrace a similar notion. Ezra was allowed to rant on for years, but in my case that simply wouldn't do.

  “Two attempts were made on my life. The first involved an accidental overdose of drugs, which failed only because I'd learned by that time to palm half of every dosage as a matter of course. As it was, the remaining quantity left me in a coma for ten days. For the second attempt, I was slashed in the dead of night by a deranged inmate. I survived, as you see, but my assailant was never identified. He was a portly fellow, like myself, but with a bent nose, and he smelled of cheap cigars.

  “Well, enough was enough. Feeling distinctly unwanted by this time, I decided to leave. Christmas was fast approaching. You remember Christmas, Edward. Good will toward men, gaily wrapped gifts, a goose spitting in the oven? No, I don't suppose you do. In any case, it was the one time of the year when Duncan's security was somewhat relaxed. I had several plans in mind. The best of a bad lot involved setting a fire in the common room and escaping in the smoke and confusion. They allowed us to work with paints for therapy, you see, and my ward contained no end of combustible materials. A fire would get me off the floor, but the gates outside were another matter. My salvation came indirectly from Duncan here in the person of Santa Claus himself.”

  In the basement room, Connor Harrigan put down his notepad at the sound of a grunt from Baker. He snatched up the yellow dart he'd kept in readiness and rushed to the cot where Baker lay. With the point of the dart against the muscle tissue of Baker's neck, Harrigan watched his eyes as he stirred.

  “Sorry, lad,” he said softly. “And I'll be sorrier still if you blink and I see the beastie looking back at me.”

  Baker filled his lungs and winced, his fingers moving tenderly against his jaw. Frowning, his eyes still closed, he reached inside his mouth and probed a tooth that had l been loosend. Harrigan relaxed and drew away the dart. The soft green eyes opened. There were no tears.

  “’Twas for your own good, lad. You're no good to your daughter dead or in irons.”

  Harrigan didn't see the blow coming either. Baker's fist caught him high on the cheek and smashed him backward against the Morris chair. Harrigan rolled and kicked, trying to regain his legs, but they would not hold him. He covered his face with his arms and waited for Baker's attack. None came. Cautiously, he peeked through his guard.

  Baker was ignoring him. Baker for sure. He sat on the edge of the cot, his head still clearing, focusing now on the familiar voice coming over the small speaker. Harrigan climbed onto the Morris chair and sat.

  “Harrigan?” Baker asked, not looking at him, “you won't hit me anymore, will you?”

  Harrigan touched his eye. “Not if this is how I'm thanked for it.”

  “I'd appreciate it.”

  Harrigan leaned forward. “There's an interesting tale being told up there. How much of Sonnenberg's history do you know?”

  “Not much. Just what he told me. Probably none of it's true.”

  “Why don't we listen together now that we're friends again. Do you have any notion of where Sonnenberg might be lurking, by chance?”

  “Probably on his boat. It's all rigged for this kind of stuff. He's probably talking from the middle of Long Island Sound.”

  “If that's the most logical guess, I suspect that it's exactly where he isn't. Hush, lad. We're about to learn of his adventures with Santa Claus.”

  “Sure enough,” Sonnenberg's voice was saying, “on Christmas Eve the jolly old elf appeared, distributing presents from room to room. My Yuletide gift was a jar of Beluga caviar, Iranian, of course, which I presumed to be teeming with botulism. That presumption was based largely on the fact that Santa happened to be a portly fellow like myself who had a bent nose and smelled of cheap cigars. We chatted for a while of the joys of the season, and he sampled some fudge that I'd made in another of my therapy electives. The fudge was double chocolate with walnuts and, I'm afraid, most of my unused sedatives. Poor old Santa went to sleep in the middle of a swallow. Then, not wishing to deprive the other inmates of their Christmas goodies, I took up the baton, to say nothing of Santa's costume, and went about distributing gifts until a fire alarm cut short my rounds. It seems the portly fellow was smoking a cigar in a bed on which he'd carelessly spilled a can of paint thinner. A dreadful accident. Went up like a dried-out Christmas tree, they tell me. In my room. In my bed. The authorities could be forgiven for assuming that poor old cracked Ivor Blount was no more.

  “But you ask, Edward, why no positive identification was made. Dental work and the like. The answer is that Duncan here was entirely convinced that his assassin had done his work. Duncan had even come by St. Elizabeths to make sure this time. How do I know? Because after a helpful orderly escorted me to the courtyard and I approached the main gate, whom to my wondrous eyes should appear but Duncan Peck, his face fairly glowing with anticipation behind the rolled-down window of a car parked at the curb. He questioned me with a look and I reassured him with a wave. He then drove off with the peace of the season in his heart. Sadly, his good humor lasted only a matter of a week or two, when it became clear that his bent-nosed Santa had vanished like the Spirit of Christmas Past. How long, Duncan? How long did you endure the nagging thought that something had gone seriously askew? How many more Christmas Eves went by without a visit from Santa before you gritted your teeth and exhumed your overdone assassin?”

  Peck looked at his watch and made a show of yawning.

  “Oh dear me, I'm boring you. But it won't be much longer. How long can it take your men to triangulate these radio signals? Indulge me, Duncan. It's been such a long time.”

  “I'm afraid you really are becoming tiresome, Ivor.”

  “Marcus.”

  “As you wish.” Duncan Peck pushed to his feet and wandered to the window facing front. Peterson was still in the driveway, a radio at his ear. He saw Peck watching him and signaled that he needed more time. Peck turned and faced another smoke detector that was mounted above a corner cabinet. “Your self-righteousness, Marcus, is tedious most of all. You sit at what I presume to be a safe distance mocking me and mocking Mr. Burleson here. You mock men who have purpose to their lives while you play at yours. You escape from a mental institution in which you assuredly belonged and then for the next two decades you send me Christmas cards signed ‘Santa’ with a little smiling face. It was a childish and arrogant act, Marcus. It was also the act of a man who is really quite mad. Whether or not I later chose to put you out of your misery, the papers committing you to that institution were entirely legitimate.”

  “Hmmm,” the voice answered. “Duncan, I don't suppose you see an ethical paradox in that last sentence? Never mind. Perhaps we are a bit bonkers, both of us. I think I'll hold to the view that my form of lunacy is more engaging than yours. And a great deal more fun. You're quite right, Duncan. I play at it. I've had wonderful times and I've done some quite wonderful things with the human mind, as I hope to demonstrate shortly. And it's all quite to the good. So many of my people are now so much more than they were before. Your people invariably become less. Look at this pathetic robot, Burleson. You took a bright-eyed collegian and did this to him. Show me the joy in his
soul, Duncan. Show me the pleasure he finds in this lofty purpose of which you boast.”

  “Jared Baker is hardly a barrel of laughs, Marcus.”

  “True enough,” Sonnenberg acknowledged. “Jared is troubled. Jared is in turmoil. But the best evidence of Jared Baker's humanity is that he has the capacity for inner turmoil. He'll sort it out with my help or without it. You can't have him, by the way.”

  “We'll see about that, Marcus.”

  “We will, Duncan. We will indeed.”

  ”I don't suppose you'd tell me whether there are more like him. Perhaps even how you plan to use these people who are so much better than we are.”

  “Don't mind at all,” Sonnenberg answered agreeably. ”I gather the triangulation process isn't going very well.”

  “We can't expect too much from robots, Marcus. What about the other Bakers. Do I assume there are more?”

  “Nope. He's one of a kind. I have a near miss or two running around, but Baker is my first real success. As for my master plan, the truth is that I really didn't have one until you showed signs of mucking things up. Oh, granted I had all sorts of schemes in mind from time to time. Real mad-scientist stuff. A race of supermen and women. Government within a government. An army of Jared Bakers. Tomorrow the world, that sort of thing. But as you perceptively suggested, I play at it. I have neither the heart nor the low boredom threshold necessary for a sustained conspiracy. And in any case, my people have an irritating way of thinking for themselves at inconvenient times, unlike your doomed innocent here. In my loonier states I suppose I've teetered on the brink of a Messiah or Napoleon complex, but I really think I lack the power drive that would have made me sally forth from my little Elba here. Hmmph.” Sonnenberg chuckled. ”A pun leaps to mind. Elba was I ere I saw Abel. Hmmph. That's really quite apt. Sorry, Duncan. Inside joke.”

  Harrigan listened in fascination, his attention punctuated by short periods of unreasonable fury that subsided before the anger could express itself. Even Baker was listening intently now, no less worried about Tanner Burke and Tina, but calmed past the point where he would have rushed uselessly and recklessly to find them.