by Joseph Silva
“So the SHIELD agents will come storming in here—”
“Exactly,” said the Red Skull with a satisfied chuckle. “Right into my carefully laid trap, dear baron.”
“Very well,” said the baron. “You obviously know what you are about. Still, I wish she hadn’t killed Rex in making her escape.”
The crimson skull gave off an illusion of growth as the Red Skull leaned toward his minion. “I would sacrifice human lives to get hold of the man I am certain will come here. He will make a vain attempt to save Dr. Crandell,” he said, voice husky. “Yes, Jupiter warned me that he has been showing an interest in our activities.”
The baron cleared his throat, controlling an impulse to shudder. “You mean Captain America?”
The skull bobbed up and down. “Yes, yes. When Captain America arrives he’ll find I am well prepared for him.” He rubbed his gloved hands together. “Well prepared.”
Keep moving.
You have to keep moving.
It’s so cold.
Stop for a minute. Only a minute. Rest.
No, you must keep moving.
The lights weren’t any closer than they had been a half hour ago.
Or was that an hour?
Caroline was losing track of time.
She staggered along, the wind whipping at her slim body, the cold gnawing at her.
How long before you died?
It was so cold.
She couldn’t feel her fingers. She rubbed her dead-white palms together, thrust her hands into her armpits.
The pain that knifed up from her nearly frozen feet were awful. Her whole body ached and throbbed.
But she’d gotten away from them.
They must have found the dead dog by now, must have realized she was gone. Escaped.
So far there’d been no sound or sign of pursuit.
And she’d left the place two hours ago.
Maybe it was three.
So cold.
Time would drag along, then race forward. Like the snow swirling all around her, sometimes spinning fast and sometimes drifting slowly.
Something up ahead.
Sign on a post, crusted with snow.
Surely she could manage to trudge that far. It was very hard, though. She wanted to quit. Nothing was very important anymore, nothing except rest and warmth.
If she could rest in the snow for only a moment.
No, don’t even think that!
She kept on.
It was a signpost, yes. She raised one stiff arm and brushed away at the frozen snow.
WELCOME TO MOTTSVILLE, VERMONT.
Thank God. She was in the United States, she was in a town. A nice safe American town.
BUSINESS DISTRICT 3 MILES.
Three miles yet to go? No, oh lord, she simply could not make it.
She’d have to rest.
Hugging herself, she sank to her knees in the snow beside the welcoming signpost. The night cold came closing in around her.
Fifteen
Purely by chance.
Captain America, after a day of quietly asking questions in Mottsville and the vicinity, had learned of the existence of the chalet. Built over forty years ago by a wealthy shipbuilder, the place had been unoccupied for more than a decade until a little over a year ago. Then very discreetly, purchased by a gentleman of distinctly foreign appearance. He called himself Baron Graff, and hinted that his wealth came from industrial activities in Europe. The permanent citizens of Mottsville knew little more of the baron, although some of them speculated a great deal about him. He’d installed a very large staff at the chalet, something like thirty people. Did a lot of repairs, too, but didn’t hire any local workmen. Brought in his own crew, from somewhere else. That didn’t sit too well with Mottsville.
Very good skiing up around the chalet. Although no one from there had ever been seen on the slopes. Only a housekeeper and a driver ever came to town. They hardly spoke, bought up large quantities of food and supplies, always paid cash, then vanished for another few weeks. The baron himself was known to travel, maybe because of his European business. He owned a helicopter and several very somber and expensive cars.
The chalet sounded to Cap like an ideal place to store a kidnapped scientist and his daughter. He was also able to establish that two men who answered the descriptions of two thugs on Jupiter’s payroll had been seen around the ski resort town at about the time Dr. Crandell had disappeared.
A visit to the baron’s chalet was, therefore, in order.
Captain America waited until the small hours of the morning, until even the most enthusiastic of celebrating skiers had left the bars of the tourist inns. Slipping out of his own room in one of the smaller lodging houses, he went driving into the moderate storm.
It was purely by chance that he chose the road he did. Judging by the maps he’d consulted, there were two back roads that would bring him near the chalet for a scouting expedition. When he reached the crossroads he took the right-hand road. That made all the difference.
Even with his exceptional eyesight, he almost missed her. She was nearly covered with snow, but a patch of her blue sweater was showing and it caught his eye.
Captain America swung his car to the side of the narrow road and went diving out into the snowstorm.
The wind whirled around him as he ran to the girl’s side. She was still alive. He knelt and began to clear the snow away from her chilled body. In less than a minute he was carrying her back to the car in his arms.
“. . . get to . . . town,” Caroline murmured. “. . . help my father . . . he’s at . . . chalet . . .”
Propping her in the passenger seat of the sports car, he draped his trench coat around her. From the looks of her there was a good possibility of frostbite. He knew that the worst thing he could do was massage her hands and feet. What he did have to do was get her to a doctor as fast as possible.
He managed to turn the car around, though it was very difficult on the dark unplowed road. He headed back for town at the fastest speed he could manage.
“. . . skull . . .” muttered the semi-conscious girl. “. . . father needs . . .”
“Easy now,” Cap said gently. “You’ll be all right soon.”
He’d recognized her at once as the missing Dr. Crandell’s daughter. From her dazed murmuring, he deduced that her father was still a prisoner at the chalet. She had somehow managed to get away.
“. . . so cold . . . going to die . . .”
“No, you’re going to live,” he assured her. “We’re going to help your father, too.”
“Help my father,” echoed Caroline before dropping into a restless sleep.
Well, he’d never seen anything quite like it.
He’d been practicing medicine here in Mottsville for more than nineteen years and had treated every kind of skiing or barroom accident you could imagine.
But Dr. Bensen had never seen a man in a red, white, and blue costume, with a chain-mail tunic and a winged cowl, come running into his reception room at four in the morning carrying a nearly frozen girl wrapped up in an oversized trench coat.
Bensen was still up because he’d just come back from delivering the Fermans’ sixth child, another girl. He was in the process of fixing himself a cup of instant coffee when his doorbell rang.
He’d hurried from the kitchen to the offices at the front of his house and there, had been greeted by the unique sight of Captain America and Caroline Crandell.
“What happened, young man?” the doctor asked.
“Exposure, doctor. Possibly frostbite, maybe worse. I don’t know how long she was out in the snow.”
“Quite a long while, from the look of her, poor kid.” He started for one of his examining rooms. “Bring her in here, put her on the table.”
Cap placed Caroline down carefully on the white-padded metal table and then stepped aside.
“Been to a party?” asked the bald doctor while washing his hands at the sink.
“No.”
“Your costume wasn’t for a party?”
“No.”
“Just wear it for fun?”
“My line of work calls for it.”
Letting that pass, Dr. Bensen quickly slipped into a white jacket and hurried to the unconscious girl’s side. “Any idea how this happened?”
“A pretty good one.”
“How’d you happen to find her?”
“Purely by chance,” answered Cap.
Sixteen
The Bulldog Bar was nowhere near Yale. It stood, or rather leaned, at the wrong end of New Haven. It was framed on one side by a sparsely stocked thriftshop and on the other by a long defunct fish market. Long, narrow, and aggressively dingy, it was hardly the place to take a lovely red-haired girl at three in the morning. Yet that was exactly what Jake Sheridan was doing. Guiding Amanda Twain up to the swayback counter, he said, “Terrific ambience, huh?”
“Yes, I think I got some of it on my shoe,” said the girl.
“I told you being on the front lines like this was going to be more than you could handle, Mandy. Maybe you better hop in your jet and—”
“Hooey,” she told him. “I’m sticking. Besides, if I left you alone in a dive like this, they’d probably roll you. Even at this ungodly hour of the morning.”
The bartender was tattooed, but not with any of the traditional designs. No snakes, anchors, or dancing girls adorned his flesh. “Picasso,” he announced to Amanda, noticing her surprised scrutiny. He spread his arms wide, flexed his muscles, jiggled what showed of his flabby chest. “I am tattooed from head to foot with the major works of Pablo Picasso, the noted Spanish artist. Of whom you’ve no doubt heard. Most of the customers agree I add a definite touch of class to what would otherwise be a dump. Later on, when we know each other better, I might show you Picasso’s famous Guernica. I got it tattooed on my—”
“A.P. around?” asked Jake.
Turning his highly decorative head to study the wall clock, which extolled the virtues of a brewery that had long since gone bankrupt, the bartender replied, “He’s having breakfast.”
“When’ll he be back?”
“Oh, he’s here, but he’s having breakfast. Always does at this time or thereabouts,” explained the bartender, pointing. “Over there, in his usual spot. Booth three.”
With the girl close beside him, Jake made his way across the sawdust floor to the wooden booth. “A.P.?”
“Is somebody trying to play This Is Your Life?” inquired a blurred voice from deep within the ramshackle booth. “Because I definitely know that’s a voice out of my own lost and colorful past. He was a whey-faced stripling when I gave him his first big break. Little did we know that—”
“Amanda, this is A.P. Dana,” said Jake, sliding into the booth and pulling Amanda in after him.
Across the table the girl saw someone who looked like a faded photo of a once lean and handsome man. He was gaunt, pale, unshaven. His ancient suit displayed an impressive array of wrinkles. In the cracked bowl near his slightly shaking hand were about three or four ounces of dry cornflakes.
Dana studied the girl through his crusted, circle-rimmed eyes. “You’re very attractive,” he decided, “although a shade on the skinny side.”
“I was about to say the same about you,” remarked Amanda.
Dana sighed. “Feisty women, Jake. You’re always attracted to feisty women,” he said. “Be the ruin of you eventually, just as it was the ruin of me.”
“Amanda and I are not attracted to each other,” Jake explained. “Actually, we feel something more akin to a mutual loathing.”
“Well, a great many long-lasting relationships have been built on that sort of a foundation, Jake. Matter of fact, I recall that my second wife and I started off detesting each other. It grew into repulsion, and from there, it was only a short dash to the altar.” He deposited a spoonful of the dry cornflakes into his mouth, chewed them, and set the bent spoon aside. “You obviously didn’t seek me out simply to have me play Miss Lonely Hearts for you.” He paused.
“You know just about everything that’s going on, A.P.”
“True, true,” the older man agreed.
Suddenly Amanda snapped her fingers, exclaiming, “A.P. Dana! I remember you now. You won a Pulitzer back in the nineteen fifties someplace. Sure, we spent a week studying your work when I was in journalism school. You were a great reporter.”
Dana picked up the spoon, attempting to study his reflection in its less-than-polished surface. “Yes, I was good,” he admitted.
“Damn good,” said Jake. “You still are, and if you’d only quit the booze and get yourself—”
“Don’t try any tambourine and prayer-book stuff on me, Jake. Now . . . what can I do for you?”
With a resigned shrug, Jake rested his elbows on the tacky surface of the table. “There’s not much happening around here that you don’t know about, A.P.,” he said. “Because of your particular outlook on life you may not do anything about it, but I think you must hear about every crooked deal and cheap racket in this town.”
“I do have an extensive knowledge of crime and corruption,” the older reporter admitted. “To most people an old deadbeat like myself seems invisible. It allows me to listen in on a good many fascinating conversations. What is it you’re curious about?”
“A scientist, name of—”
“Anybody like a jelly donut?” inquired the tattooed bartender, materializing beside their booth. “Just found a couple of them back in the kitchen, look fairly new.”
“We’ll pass,” said Amanda.
“Remind me later to roll up my sleeve and show you my elbow,” said the decorated man before departing.
“A scientist named Gregory Crandell,” said Jake, watching the older reporter’s face. “Know anything about the guy?”
Dana tapped his yellowed front teeth with a fingernail, then began nibbling at it. “Brilliant man.”
After a few seconds of silence Jake said, “What else?”
Dana straightened up somewhat. “Trouble, Jake. Leave it alone.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve always been a little foolhardy, walking right into messes.”
“That’s what a good reporter’s supposed to do, A.P. You know that. It’s what gets you the big stories and the prizes and whatever satisfaction you can grab out of this lousy trade.”
“True. Still—leave this one alone,” advised Dana. “Go back home to that sun-drenched wonderland where you now reside. Forget this.”
“Nope,” Jake said. “With or without what you can tell me, I’m going to keep digging into this. There’s something big going on.”
The older reporter nodded once. “There is indeed, so big it could kill you.”
Amanda reached across the table to touch the old man’s wrinkled sleeve. “Then you do know something about what happened to Dr. Crandell? About who took him?”
“I advise you two to get married, move to Florida and look into the possibilities of opening a seashell shop.”
“C’mon, A.P.,” said Jake with impatience. “You can quit treating me as though I’m still the office boy you knew when we worked together on the Stamford Advocate.”
“Okay, Jake,” said Dana, poking at the cornflakes in the cracked bowl. “I’ll tell you what I’ve heard. Then it’s up to you. I’ll put you and this fetching young woman out of my mind until I come upon your obits in the press.
“The government boys haven’t learned much about the good doctor’s whereabouts, because anyone who knows anything about what happened is too terrified to talk. Most informers would blab just about anything for money, and it takes something formidable to hush them up.
“The actual snatching of Dr. Crandell was carried out by a New York area crime czar who calls himself Jupiter.”
“Syndicate man,” said Jake. “Fairly high up in the organization.”
Amanda asked, “You mean this is a syndicate job? What would they want with�
��”
“Oh, no, my dear,” said Dana. “Jupiter and his people were working for someone else. Someone so powerful that he can persuade the biggest hoods to do exactly what he wants.”
“What are you getting at?” asked Amanda, leaning forward. “Some super all-powerful villain who has the—”
“Easy now, Mandy,” urged Jake. “Let A.P. give us the news. Save your editorial comments for later.”
“There is,” continued Dana, “a very big plot in the making. Don’t have all the details, and haven’t tried to dig them out. I’ve grown old and, regardless of how it may look to you, I enjoy the life I lead. I don’t want to know anything more about this plot.”
Jake said, “Then someone is using Crandell’s sonic weapon.”
Dana gave a single nod.
“But,” said Amanda, “we’re talking about someone who is destroying entire cities, killing thousands and thousands of people.”
“As long as they don’t kill me, my dear, I don’t—”
“Naw, you can’t con me, A.P.,” Jake told him. “You haven’t changed that much. You aren’t going to sit here and pretend to be a colorful old drunk while somebody is shaking the world to pieces.”
The reporter didn’t reply immediately. “Okay, Jake,” he finally said. “The best I can do for you is give you what information I have and make a few suggestions about where to get more. Maybe you’ll be able, with luck, to find out where Dr. Crandell is. Going to be very tough, very risky.” He inclined his head toward the girl. “The odds are very strong you’ll both end up dead and done for.”
“We’ll take that chance,” she said.
“Okay,” said Dana. He gave them facts, names, data. When he had finished he leaned back against the worn wood, letting his eyes close slowly.
Very quietly, Jake asked, “The lad who’s behind all this, do you have any idea who he is?”
“Yes,” replied Dana, not opening his eyes. His answer was barely whispered. “The Red Skull.”
Seventeen
The dawn was thick and gray; the snowstorm was worsening. Big flakes fell hard and fast around the Snow Hills lodge. Only glowing embers remained in the deep fireplace. The lobby was dim and silent, with scents of last night’s festivities lingering in the air. A lone figure came quietly down the back stairway, crossed the deserted lobby and slipped into a phone booth. Closing himself into the cubicle, he dialed a secret number.