“Pretty much.”
Sandstone stared at him as if to say, You’re nuts, but are you dangerous?
Elliot pointed to the map. “See?”
As Tina’s hand moved slowly over the paper, the corners of the map began to curl and uncurl again.
“How is she doing that?” Sandstone asked.
“She isn’t.”
“The ghost, I suppose.”
“That’s right.”
An expression of pain settled over Billy’s face, as if he were suffering genuine physical discomfort because of Elliot’s belief in ghosts. Apparently Billy liked his view of the world to be as neat and uncluttered as everything else about him; if he started believing in ghosts, he’d have to reconsider his opinions about a lot of other things too, and then life would become intolerably messy.
Elliot sympathized with the hypnotist. Right now he longed for the rigidly structured routine of the law office, the neatly ordered paragraphs of legal casebooks, and the timeless rules of the courtroom.
Tina let the pen drop from her fingers. She lifted her gaze from the map. Her eyes remained unfocused.
“Are you finished?” Billy asked her.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
With a few simple sentences and a sharp clap of his hands, the hypnotist brought her out of the trance.
She blinked in confusion, then glanced down at the route that she had marked on the map. She smiled at Elliot. “It worked. By God, it worked!”
“Apparently it did.”
She pointed to the terminus of the red line. “That’s where he is, Elliot. That’s where they’re keeping him.”
“It’s not going to be easy getting into country like that,” Elliot said.
“We can do it. We’ll need good, insulated outdoor clothes. Boots. Snowshoes in case we have to walk very far in open country. Do you know how to use snowshoes? It can’t be that hard.”
“Hold on,” Elliot said. “I’m still not convinced your dream meant what you think it did. Based on what you said happened in it, I don’t see how you reach the conclusion that Danny’s going to help us get into the installation. We might get to this place and find we can’t slip around its defenses.”
Billy Sandstone looked from Tina to Elliot, baffled. “Danny? Your Danny, Tina? But isn’t he—”
Tina said, “Elliot, it wasn’t only what happened in the dream that led me to this conclusion. What I felt in it was far more important. I can’t explain that part of it. The only way you could understand is if you had the dream yourself. I’m sure he was telling me that he could help us get to him.”
Elliot turned the map to be able to study it more closely.
From the head of the table, Billy said, “But isn’t Danny—”
Tina said, “Elliot, listen, I told you he would show us where he’s being kept, and he drew that route for us. So far I’m batting a thousand. I also feel he’s going to help us get into the place, and I don’t see any reason why I should strike out on that one.”
“It’s just… we’d be walking into their arms,” Elliot said.
“Whose arms?” Billy Sandstone asked.
Tina said, “Elliot, what happens if we stay here, hiding out until we can think of an alternative? How much time do we have? Not much. They’re going to find us sooner or later, and when they get their hands on us, they’ll kill us.”
“Kill?” Billy Sandstone asked. “There’s a word I don’t like. It’s right up there on the bad-word list beside broccoli.”
“We’ve gotten this far because we’ve kept moving and we’ve been aggressive,” Tina said. “If we change our approach, if we suddenly get too cautious, that’ll be our downfall, not our salvation.”
“You two sound like you’re in a war,” Billy Sandstone said uneasily.
“You’re probably right,” Elliot told Tina. “One thing I learned in the military was you have to stop and regroup your forces once in a while, but if you stop too long, the tide will turn and wash right over you.”
“Should I maybe go listen to the news?” Billy Sandstone asked. “Is there a war on? Have we invaded France?”
To Tina, Elliot said, “What else will we need besides thermal clothing, boots, and snowshoes?”
“A Jeep,” she said.
“That’s a tall order.”
“What about a tank?” Billy Sandstone asked. “Going to war, you might prefer a tank.”
Tina said, “Don’t be silly, Billy. A Jeep is all we need.”
“Just trying to be helpful, love. And thanks for remembering I exist.”
“A Jeep or an Explorer — anything with four-wheel drive,” Tina told Elliot. “We don’t want to walk farther than necessary. We don’t want to walk at all if we can help it. There must be some sort of road into the place, even if it’s well concealed. If we’re lucky, we’ll have Danny when we come out, and he probably won’t be in any condition to trek through the Sierras in the dead of winter.”
“I have an Explorer,” Billy said.
“I guess I could have some money transferred from my Vegas bank,” Elliot said. “But what if they’re watching my accounts down there? That would lead them to us fast. And since the banks are closed for the holiday, we couldn’t do anything until next week. They might find us by then.”
“What about your American Express card?” she asked.
“You mean, charge a Jeep?”
“There’s no limit on the card, is there?”
“No. But—”
“I read a newspaper story once about a guy who bought a Rolls-Royce with his card. You can do that sort of thing as long as they know for sure you’re capable of paying the entire bill when it comes due a month later.”
“It sounds crazy,” Elliot said. “But I guess we can try.”
“I have an Explorer,” Billy Sandstone said.
“Let’s get the address of the local dealership,” Tina said. “We’ll see if they’ll accept the card.”
“I have an Explorer!” Billy said.
They turned to him, startled.
“I take my act to Lake Tahoe a few weeks every winter,” Billy said. “You know what it’s like down there this time of year. Snow up to your ass. I hate flying the Tahoe-Reno shuttle. The plane’s so damn small. And you know what a ticky-tacky airport they have at Tahoe. So I usually just drive down the day before I open. An Explorer’s the only thing I’d want to take through the mountains on a bad day.”
“Are you going to Tahoe soon?” Tina asked.
“No. I don’t open until the end of the month.”
“Will you be needing the Explorer in the next couple of days?” Elliot asked.
“No.”
“Can we borrow it?”
“Well… I guess so.”
Tina leaned across the corner of the table, grabbed Billy’s head in her hands, pulled his face to hers, and kissed him. “You’re a lifesaver, Billy. And I mean that literally.”
“I’m a small circlet of hard candy?”
“Maybe things are breaking right for us,” Elliot said. “Maybe we’ll get Danny out of there after all.”
“We will,” Tina said. “I know it.”
The roses in the crystal vase twirled around like a group of spinning, redheaded ballerinas.
Startled, Billy Sandstone jumped up, knocking over his chair.
The drapes drew open, slid shut, drew open, slid shut, even though no one was near the draw cords.
The chandelier began to swing in a lazy circle, and the dangling crystals cast prismatic patterns of light on the walls.
Billy stared, open-mouthed.
Elliot knew how disoriented Billy was feeling, and he felt sorry for the man.
After half a minute all of the unnatural movement stopped, and the room rapidly grew warm again.
“How did you do that?” Billy demanded.
“We didn’t,” Tina said.
“Not a ghost,” Billy said adamantly.
&nb
sp; “Not a ghost either,” Elliot said.
Billy said, “You can borrow the Explorer. But first you’ve got to tell me what in hell’s going on. I don’t care how much of a hurry you’re in. You can at least tell me a little of it. Otherwise, I’m going to shrivel up and die of curiosity.”
Tina consulted Elliot. “Well?”
Elliot said, “Billy, you might be better off not knowing.”
“Impossible.”
“We’re up against some damn dangerous people. If they thought you knew about them—”
“Look,” Billy said, “I’m not just a hypnotist. I’m something of a magician. That’s really what I most wanted to be, but I didn’t really have the skill for it. So I worked up this act built around hypnotism. But magic — that’s my one great love. I just have to know how you did that trick with the drapes, the roses. And the corners of the map! I just have to know.”
Earlier this morning it had occurred to Elliot that he and Tina were the only people who knew that the official story of the Sierras accident was a lie. If they were killed, the truth would die with them, and the cover-up would continue. Considering the high price that they had paid for the pathetically insufficient information they had obtained, he couldn’t tolerate the prospect of all their pain and fear and anxiety having been for naught.
Elliot said, “Billy, do you have a tape recorder?”
“Sure. It’s nothing fancy. It’s a little one I carry with me. I do some comedy lines in the act, and I use the recorder to develop new material, correct problems with my timing.”
“It doesn’t have to be fancy,” Elliot said. “Just so it works. We’ll give you a condensed version of the story behind all of this, and we’ll record it as we go. Then I’ll mail the tape to one of my law partners.” He shrugged. “Not much insurance, but better than nothing.”
“I’ll get the recorder,” Billy said, hurrying out of the dining room.
Tina folded the map.
“It’s nice to see you smiling again,” Elliot said.
“I must be crazy,” she said. “We still have dangerous work ahead of us. We’re still up against this bunch of cutthroats. We don’t know what we’ll walk into in those mountains. So why do I feel terrific all of a sudden?”
“You feel good,” Elliot said, “because we’re not running anymore. We’re going on the offensive. And foolhardy as that might be, it does a lot for a person’s self-respect.”
“Can a couple of people like us really have a chance of winning when we’re up against something as big as the government itself?”
“Well,” Elliot said, “I happen to believe that individuals are more apt to act responsibly and morally than institutions ever do, which at least puts us on the side of justice. And I also believe individuals are always smarter and better adapted to survival, at least in the long run, than any institution. Let’s just hope my philosophy doesn’t turn out to be half-baked.”
* * *
At one-thirty Kurt Hensen came into George Alexander’s office in downtown Reno. “They found the car that Stryker rented. It’s in a public lot about three blocks from here.”
“Used recently?” Alexander asked.
“No. The engine’s cold. There’s thick frost on the windows. It’s been parked there overnight.”
“He’s not stupid,” Alexander said. “He’s probably abandoned the damn thing.”
“You want to put a watch on it anyway?”
“Better do that,” Alexander said. “Sooner or later they’ll make a mistake. Coming back to the car might be it. I don’t think so. But it might.”
Hensen left the room.
Alexander took a Valium out of a tin that he carried in his jacket pocket, and he washed it down with a swallow of hot coffee, which he poured from the silver pot on his desk. This was his second pill since he’d gotten out of bed just three and a half hours ago, but he still felt edgy.
Stryker and the woman were proving to be worthy opponents.
Alexander never liked to have worthy opponents. He preferred them to be soft and easy.
Where were they?
Chapter Thirty-Two
The deciduous trees, stripped of every leaf, appeared to be charred, as if this particular winter had been more severe than others and as cataclysmic as a fire. The evergreens — pine, spruce, fir, tamarack — were flocked with snow. A brisk wind spilled over the jagged horizon under a low and menacing sky, snapping ice-hard flurries of snow against the windshield of the Explorer.
Tina was in awe of — and disquieted by — the stately forest that crowded them as they drove north on the narrowing county road. Even if she had not known that these deep woodlands harbored secrets about Danny and the deaths of the other scouts, she would have found them mysterious and unnervingly primeval.
She and Elliot had turned off Interstate 80 a quarter of an hour ago, following the route Danny had marked, circling the edge of the wilderness. On paper they were still moving along the border of the map, with a large expanse of blues and greens on their left. Shortly they would turn off the two-lane blacktop onto another road, which the map specified as “unpaved, nondirt,” whatever that was.
After leaving Billy Sandstone’s house in his Explorer, Tina and Elliot had not returned to the hotel. They shared a premonition that someone decidedly unfriendly was waiting in their room.
First they had visited a sporting-goods store, purchasing two Gore-Tex/Thermolite stormsuits, boots, snowshoes, compact tins of backpacker’s rations, cans of Sterno, and other survival gear. If the rescue attempt went smoothly, as Tina’s dream seemed to predict, they wouldn’t have any need for much of what they bought. But if the Explorer broke down in the mountains, or if another hitch developed, they wanted to be prepared for the unexpected.
Elliot also bought a hundred rounds of hollow-point ammunition for the pistol. This wasn’t insurance against the unforeseen; this was simply prudent planning for the trouble they could foresee all too well.
From the sporting-goods store they had driven out of town, west toward the mountains. At a roadside restaurant, they changed clothes in the restrooms. His insulated suit was green with white stripes; hers was white with green and black stripes. They looked like a couple of skiers on their way to the slopes.
Entering the formidable mountains, they had become aware of how soon darkness would settle over the sheltered valleys and ravines, and they had discussed the wisdom of proceeding. Perhaps they would have been smarter to turn around, go back to Reno, find another hotel room, and get a fresh start in the morning. But neither wanted to delay. Perhaps the lateness of the hour and the fading light would work against them, but approaching in the night might actually be to their advantage. The thing was — they had momentum. They both felt as if they were on a good roll, and they didn’t want to tempt fate by postponing their journey.
Now they were on a narrow county road, moving steadily higher as the valley sloped toward its northern end. Plows had kept the blacktop clean, except for scattered patches of hard-packed snow that filled the potholes, and snow was piled five or six feet high on both sides.
“Soon now,” Tina said, glancing at the map that was open on her knees.
“Lonely part of the world, isn’t it?”
“You get the feeling that civilization could be destroyed while you’re out here, and you’d never be aware of it.”
They hadn’t seen a house or other structure for two miles. They hadn’t passed another car in three miles.
Twilight descended into the winter forest, and Elliot switched on the headlights.
Ahead, on the left, a break appeared in the bank of snow that had been heaped up by the plows. When the Explorer reached this gap, Elliot swung into the turnoff and stopped. A narrow and forbidding track led into the woods, recently plowed but still treacherous. It was little more than one lane wide, and the trees formed a tunnel around it, so that after fifty or sixty feet, it disappeared into premature night. It was unpaved, but a solid bed had been
built over the years by the generous and repeated application of oil and gravel.
“According to the map, we’re looking for an ‘unpaved, nondirt’ road,” Tina told him.
“I guess this is it.”
“Some sort of logging trail?”
“Looks more like the road they always take in those old movies when they’re on their way to Dracula’s castle.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“And it doesn’t help that you’re right. It does look like the road to Dracula’s castle.”
They drove onto the track, under the roof of heavy evergreen boughs, into the heart of the forest.
Chapter Thirty-Three
In the rectangular room, three stories underground, computers hummed and murmured.
Dr. Carlton Dombey, who had come on duty twenty minutes ago, sat at one of the tables against the north wall. He was studying a set of electroencephalograms and digitally enhanced sonograms and X-rays.
After a while he said, “Did you see the pictures they took of the kid’s brain this morning?”
Dr. Aaron Zachariah turned from the bank of video displays. “I didn’t know there were any.”
“Yeah. A whole new series.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Yes,” Dombey said. “The spot that showed up on the boy’s parietal lobe about six weeks ago.”
“What about it?”
“Darker, larger.”
“Then it’s definitely a malignant tumor?”
“That still isn’t clear.”
“Benign?”
“Can’t say for sure either way. The spot doesn’t have all the spectrographic characteristics of a tumor.”
“Could it be scar tissue?”
“Not exactly that.”
“Blood clot?”
“Definitely not.”
“Have we learned anything useful?”
“Maybe,” Dombey said. “I’m not sure if it’s useful or not.” He frowned. “It’s sure strange, though.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense,” Zachariah said, moving over to the table to examine the tests.
Dombey said, “According to the computer-assigned analysis, the growth is consistent with the nature of normal brain tissue.”
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