Whisper Death

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  The reaction was brief and fleeting, but unmistakeable: the eyes of the two Secret Service men met in a flash of recognition and insight.

  “Get lost, McGuire,” Baldy said. He and his partner began striding in the direction of the trailer home. “You turn around, you walk to the car and you haul your ass out of here.” He paused next to one of the assault-team members whose weapon was still aimed at McGuire. “If you don’t go directly to your car, now, this man, on my order, will put a full cartridge of shells in your body without a second thought.”

  The soldier didn’t flinch; the muzzle of his weapon never strayed from McGuire’s direction.

  “Now!” Baldy barked.

  McGuire turned to walk back to his car, conscious of the soldier’s weapon levelled at him. He wondered if Baldy would give the order to shoot with a curt nod of his head or a wave of his hand.

  He walked, unsteadily at first, then more confidently as the voices of the men faded behind him, followed by angry shouts and the clatter of a door being kicked in.

  Then nothing.

  A breeze began to rise, shivering the sagebrush and mesquite plants. McGuire heard only the sound of his own footsteps on the dusty road and the mechanical flick-flick of the helicopter’s main rotor turning at idle speed.

  Halfway to the gully, he looked back at the trailer home. The soldier was still in firing position, his weapon pointed at McGuire. Not much chance of him hitting me at this distance, McGuire assured himself, but he turned and continued walking to the gully.

  Runoffs from rare but violent desert storms had carved the gully through the desert landscape over untold years. The bed of the ravine was carpeted with small stones carried from distant hills by sudden floods. Sagebrush plants, their roots able to tap moisture more easily in the gully than on the desert flatland, were greener and healthier here. Still, there was no moisture to be seen as McGuire walked down the side of the gully and across the weathered surface of the low wooden bridge traversing the dry creek bed. He was almost over the bridge and bracing himself to climb the steep slope of the far bank when the wind whispered a familiar name.

  “Mozart!”

  McGuire continued his pace, determined to reach his car and leave the open landscape that intimidated him in ways the threats of the Secret Service men had not.

  “Mozart!”

  He paused at the far end of the bridge.

  “Down here!” An insistent call from somewhere near his feet.

  McGuire kneeled, squinting through cracks between the wooden planks of the bridge.

  Four wide eyes shone back at him from beneath the structure. Two were darting here and there behind rimless glasses. The others—round, unblinking and shimmering with gold—seemed to float in a black pool.

  “Get down, Mozart,” the voice hissed. “Out of sight before you’re out of mind!” A cackle rose from beneath the bridge. “Kill time and time will kill you.”

  McGuire stepped down to the dry creek bed from the edge of the bridge and peered into the shadows at a small, white-haired man crouched against the bank of the gully, giggling and pushing his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. He wore tattered khaki shorts, a khaki bush jacket with bulging pockets and ankle-high leather boots with no socks. Gathered in one arm, a large black cat stared back, its malevolent eyes never wavering from McGuire.

  “Make haste, McGuire,” the man said, his head turning as though on a swivel, left and right, up and down. “Seek the shelter—”

  In an instant, the shadows beneath the bridge died in a sudden harsh, reflected light, an inhuman blue brilliance that dominated the sun. McGuire looked up at a purple sky visible between the walls of the gully. The wind ceased; the cat in the man’s arms cried out in fear. For one long, extended second all was silent, all was unreal.

  When the noise of the explosion arrived, first like the crack of a whip inside McGuire’s ear, then like timpani thunder rising in a crescendo, it was almost reassuring. At least the noise was real and familiar, as real and familiar as the earth that shook beneath him and dislodged rocks that tumbled down the sides of the gully. But he would never forget the sudden silent light that preceded it, the burst of fire that had melted shadows.

  McGuire flung himself beneath the bridge as debris began to fall around him from the sky. The white-haired man cackled hysterically, restraining the cat which struggled, panic-stricken, in his arms.

  “Jesus!” McGuire muttered.

  “And Moses, Meshach and Abednego, too,” the man laughed.

  “What the hell was that?” McGuire asked.

  “The lights of hell, Mozart,” the man replied, staring up through the cracks of the bridge at a sky that was once again blue. A sudden wind rose, whistling threats above their heads. “For a heartbeat of time, you were standing in the lights of hell.”

  “Who are you?” McGuire demanded. Small pebbles fell and danced on the wooden bridge above his head. The sound of the blast continued to rumble back from distant hills.

  “Sam,” the man replied, extending one bony hand, the other clutching the wide-eyed cat to his chest. “Little Sam Littleton. That was my doorway you were about to darken. And this,” he said, nodding at the cat, “is Lafaro. Much more companionable than his namesake, I must add.”

  McGuire refused the hand. “What happened just now?” he asked.

  Like the turning of a card, a new expression appeared on Littleton’s face: sober, reflective, concerned. “Theory became action, Mozart,” he said sadly. “Einstein’s theory. Nuclear action. But limited to a midget. Battlefield size.” He began to crawl from beneath the bridge. “Behold the ultimate magic mushroom,” he said, looking beyond the rim of the gully to a sand-coloured cloud still boiling and rising into the air on a column of death.

  Chapter Fourteen

  McGuire watched the grey cloud rise in the air and begin drifting eastward. The column beneath it sagged and dissipated; debris continued to rain down into the massive crater that had once been the site of the trailer home, while lighter dust rode away with the wind.

  Nothing remained of the ramshackle trailer, the helicopter, or the immovable and unyielding soldiers who had stood like granite a minute earlier.

  “A car, Mozart?” Sam Littleton asked, turning from the sight. “You have one? Let’s go.”

  “Go?” McGuire grasped the man by the shoulder. “What the hell are you talking about? We can’t go. There’ll be people all over here in a couple of minutes asking questions.”

  “Precisely!” The black cat swiped at McGuire’s hand with its paw. “Some of them may be confederates of Marlowe and Peppler.”

  “Who?”

  “Baldy and Goggles. Stephen Marlowe. Gaylon Peppler. Good fascists both. If they see us, they will know we know, Mozart. Knowledge is death, can’t you see that? Knowledge of what began as a lark over twenty years ago qualifies you for liquidation with extreme prejudice. But if we are here no more, like the Avon men from Washington who rang my door chimes just now, they will assume we are nowhere anymore.” He giggled and clutched the struggling cat tighter to his chest. “Like the Avon men from Washington and their clattering delivery truck.” The insane smile vanished. “Take me out of here, Mozart, and I’ll tell all. On my word I’ll tell all. Because you, like me and Lafaro here, have been tainted by . . .” His hand swept in an arc, indicating the devastation beyond them. “. . . by this. By all of it.”

  From the east, the mournful cry of sirens drifted across the desert. “We have to stay and tell what we know,” McGuire said. “They’ll figure it out anyway.”

  “No!” Littleton cried in panic. “Think, Mozart. They don’t want the world to know. They have never wanted the world to know. My claim of living more than twenty years over an armed tactical nuclear weapon will become the babblings of an insane desert rat, driven to hallucinations by emptiness, by drugs, by whatever they wish to claim. An
d prove, Mozart. They will gather proof that it never happened. Don’t you see? The lie must become a truth. The lie is that no one ever successfully stole a nuclear weapon. The truth is, someone did. Do you have any idea what the impact of that revelation will be?”

  McGuire hesitated. The sirens were wailing their way closer. “I’m a police officer,” he said lamely. Somehow he had trouble believing it.

  “You bloody fool!” Littleton cried, pulling away and turning in aimless circles. “Tell what you know and you will be contradicted by every federal authority from the Pentagon to your mailman. Your patriotism will be savaged, every transgression in your past will become fodder for new lies.” He swept a hand over his face before turning back to McGuire and screaming, “They will destroy your credibility for the sake of the lie! Then they will destroy you. As a suicide, as an unfortunate accident, whatever can be sold to a public that needs to believe!” He took a step closer. “Whisper what you know and you are a dead man, McGuire. As dead as Bunker. As dead as Marlowe and Peppler. As dead as I would be.”

  McGuire turned in the direction of the sirens. Already, the evidence of the nuclear explosion had drifted north and east, away from the crater. “You’ll tell me everything?” he asked softly.

  “Yes! Yes!” Littleton replied. He was already heading for the gate. “Into the valley. West into the valley, where we’ll avoid traffic on the road.” He looked up, scanned the sky and began running unsteadily, his arms still clutching the cat.

  With McGuire once again behind the wheel of the Mercedes, they plummeted west into a Death Valley moonscape rendered in endless shades of brown and rust. Seated beside McGuire, Littleton alternated between spasms of giggles and periods of sober reflection, which caused tears to course down his cheeks and his receding chin to tremble. The cat remained gathered in his arms, its golden eyes wide and watching. McGuire realized the animal was crippled, unable to move its hind feet. Littleton fed it with small morsels of food from one of the bulging pockets in his jacket.

  On the floor of the valley, the road ended at an intersection. “Left,” Littleton directed when McGuire hesitated.

  They drove south for more than an hour through the heart of Death Valley, past Furnace Creek and Zabriskie Point, without speaking. At the Black Mountains the road curved east, up and out of the valley, emerging at Shoshone.

  “The cave,” McGuire said, pulling onto the dusty shoulder of the highway just beyond the town. “What was in the cave here?”

  “Cave?” Littleton had been in a reverie. He looked at McGuire with red-rimmed eyes. “I know nothing of a cave. Not in this dead little hole in the ground.” He giggled with a light, high-pitched laugh. “A hole in the ground with a hole in the ground. That’s where we are, Mozart.”

  “Don’t call me that anymore,” McGuire ordered.

  “Certainly.” Littleton sank deeper into the passenger seat. “Certainly, McGuire.”

  McGuire reached across Littleton and popped open the glove compartment. He pushed aside a road map, the owner’s manual and a pair of elegant sunglasses to find a small flashlight. “Let’s see for ourselves,” he said, swinging the car into town.

  The narrow road into Tecopa Canyon wound past several ramshackle houses. It ended at the ruins of a weathered wooden barn and a crumbling stone foundation, both set against a steeply sloped rocky hill. McGuire saw no evidence of life.

  “How did those guys get around?” he asked Littleton, his eyes scanning the hillside.

  “Marlowe and Peppler? They flew. On the wings of Sikorsky. Their own small army in tow.”

  “So they would have flown here?” McGuire asked. “In the same helicopter they used to reach your place?”

  “I expect.”

  The grassy area alongside the old barn had a flattened look, as though it had been pressed to the ground with a soft, circular weight. McGuire’s eyes followed the line of the hillside above the spot where the helicopter had landed, and found a cluster of bushes clinging to a small, flat precipice. “Let’s go,” he said opening the car door. “Leave the cat here.”

  He scrambled up the shallow slope of the hill, pausing several times to catch his breath and note boot tracks, disturbed rocks and other evidence of recent visitors.

  Littleton matched his pace, the smaller man’s wiry body climbing easily with practised skill.

  McGuire paused halfway to the cave, leaned against the side of the hill and breathed deeply. Littleton stopped just below him, his hands constantly fluttering at his face, stroking eyebrows, adjusting glasses, scratching cheeks.

  “Why were you watching Glynnis Vargas from behind her house?” McGuire asked.

  Littleton’s body became even more animated; his shoulders shrugged and his head swivelled to survey the scene around them. “Oh my, oh my,” he giggled. “Not voyeurism, Moz . . . McGuire. Indeed not. No, no. Nor mere curiosity. To escape the jackals watching over me, back . . .” His arm waved toward Death Valley. “. . . back there. And to learn.”

  “Learn what?”

  Littleton giggled again and stared down at the Mercedes parked a hundred feet below. “Later. Everything later.” His eyes darted back to the slope above them, where the mouth of the cave yawned from behind the clump of bushes. “Let’s be done with this first.”

  When they reached the cave, McGuire shone the flashlight into its dark interior and saw the marks of heavy boots imprinted on the dusty floor.

  McGuire herded the giggling Littleton ahead of him, sweeping their way with the weak beam of the flashlight.

  The cave soon narrowed at a large outcropping of sandstone. Beyond the jutting rock it opened again into a small cavern where no daylight penetrated. McGuire moved the light across the floor of the cave, still following the fresh boot tracks, then up the shale-terraced walls to a rock ledge protruding from the wall at eye-level.

  McGuire swore and felt his heartbeat quicken. Beside him, Littleton giggled nervously.

  From the centre of the cone of light, a human skull stared back at McGuire.

  He approached the ledge, keeping the light moving along the length of the skeleton, its bones inhumanly white in the gloom of the cave, across the rotted print fabric of a dress that the body had once worn, and back again to the skull. He fingered the light cotton material, feeling it begin to crumble. Recently attached to one of the skeleton’s ribs was a small yellow tag that McGuire lifted to see the symbol of an eagle, a code number and a scribbled initial. He moved the flashlight back to the skull and into the hollow of the mouth, which he carefully pried open and inspected.

  “Enough, McGuire,” Littleton said nervously from behind him. “It’s enough. Let’s be gone from here.”

  “Who was she?” McGuire asked, stepping back from the skeleton.

  Littleton was already retreating toward the dim light near the cave entrance. “Merely another lost soul on its way to dust. Let’s be gone.”

  “How did they know where to find me so quickly?” McGuire demanded.

  They were driving south out of Shoshone toward Baker, returning through the same empty landscape McGuire had travelled earlier.

  Littleton was stroking the cat, which purred contentedly in his lap. “Find you?” he asked. “Oh, finding you was easy for them. Finding almost anyone was easy for them.” Then he cackled: “But finding nuclear device six-eight-dash-one-three-nine, ah, that was difficult.”

  “It was under your trailer home all the time?”

  “Armed and ready. In the deepest, darkest blackness of the desert night, it would waken and speak to me.”

  McGuire glanced across at the man, watching him slip back and forth between sober reality and giggling insanity.

  “Yes, speak to me, McGuire. For I slept with death all those years. Not mild and gentle death, who carries you tenderly through the web of delirium with age. Or the random death of accident and misfortune. No, McGuire. I w
as closeted with purposeful death. A seventy-five-pound stainless-steel sphere, McGuire. Your everyday death-dealing basketball.”

  “And you set it up to destroy Marlowe and Peppler.”

  “We are all here for a purpose, McGuire. They were here to locate it.” He laughed. “Locate it they did. The proof, McGuire, is floating over Colorado about now. Particles of molecules which were once Marlowe and Peppler and their robotic confreres. I trust they are enjoying the view.”

  “Why did they show up at your place today just as I got there?”

  “Because I invited them there. By inviting you.”

  “You knew they would follow me.”

  Littleton scratched the cat’s chin, watching the animal stretch its front legs and yawn. “And bring as many of their team as possible. Their strike force. Their fascist band. One short, sarcastic note from me pinned to the door and they were inside.”

  “Why now? Why invite them now, if you’d had that thing for over twenty years?”

  “Ripe time, McGuire. Over-ripe even.” He fed the cat and stroked its fur lovingly. “And the game was up. Tear down the goalposts. Exit the dugouts. Kill the fucking referees.” His laugh was high-pitched and uncontrolled. “Kill the fucking referees. Or as many of them as I could gather in one place. But not directly, you see. A direct invitation would have been recorded. Flight plans and all. It is records and files that breed fascists, McGuire. Peppler and Marlowe, they kept files too. But of facts only. Opinions, intuition, hunches, they were acted upon before they could be recorded, you see. No files of hunches and such, McGuire.” He tapped the side of his head. “They kept them all up here in their ass.” He laughed again.

  “Where were you when they arrived?”

  “I became my alter ego. The subterranean Little Sam. Defeating my larger uncle with lessons from the Congo Tunnels,” Littleton said in reply to McGuire’s puzzled expression. “Ten years of tunnels beneath the desert. Emerging at the gully. You saw my sickly garden? Nurtured with rich soil withdrawn from beneath the surface? Spread on rocky ground to disguise my life as a mole. And they never understood how my garden grew. Never learned it was the detritus of my escape paths. Fools they are, McGuire. Confident they had contained me with electronic babysitters. They thought ground movements beyond my sorry abode were the wanderings of lovesick coyotes. But it was me, their supposed prey, coming and going. They pictured me coiled with my books and my paranoia, staring at my Sony from the comfort of my reclining chair like patriotic middle-aged Americans everywhere. And there I was, picture it McGuire, there I was, a hundred, two hundred, three hundred miles away, moving crablike over Palm Springs hills or touring the fleshpots of Las Vegas in my tired Volvo.”