by David Dun
There was a deep irony in the fact that the Schneider woman, a creature whose destiny had been tampered with by Groiter, now had him in her control. From all that they could tell, he had told her everything. So adept was Shohei that he had managed to get copies of all the woman's tapes- Groiter's entire confession. It was a fascinating tale indeed. Should he rescue Groiter? She would almost surely kill him. What should he do about the lawyers? About Kenji?
Maria spent most of her time in Dan's house, notwithstanding her insistence that she be free to go wherever and whenever she wished. Then, quite conveniently, Dan's home office became her office, with her laptop on-line instead of his floor-model computer. Dan's fax line became her fax line, his phone her phone. He emptied the filing cabinets so she could have files shipped from Sacramento. She had everything she needed right there. Dan and her mother made that point with regularity.
Pepacita needed help in the garden; Nate needed help with his homework. Since Dan's finances and Maria's business finances were going to overlap to some extent, she was the logical choice to take over the bookkeeping. Dan had no aptitude.
For some reason a cell phone wouldn't do. It had to be Dan's phone (now hers) in Dan's house (soon to be officially shared by her).
Being in love helped. There were worse prisons, she decided. And it did seem she could work many hours each day, planning her campaign to save the Highlands. So she gave in to the conspiracy and for the most part resolved to stay home.
On her fifth night at Dan's, she tried to imagine what marriage might be like. As nearly as she could recall, she was sitting with the shades open, taking in the last of the evening light. She had just finished running her fingers across a newly developed picture of Dan standing by her father, and was turning her attention to attacking a timber harvest plan when she was profoundly startled. A man's shadow fell across the desk. She stifled a scream. He had appeared literally out of nowhere, standing beside her, wearing a hat and sunglasses.
"Don't be afraid," he said.
''Well, I am," she said, aware now of her heart pounding.
His face was definitely Asian. He looked strong and had a flat, narrow waist under broad shoulders.
"We want to clear up all the mysteries. We have proof of what happened to you and what is happening in Amada's forest. Everything."
"Who sent you?" She tried to discern his features, but he seemed to gather the room's shadow around him like a cloak.
"My principal will make himself known to you in forty-eight hours."
"What about the police?"
"We will talk first."
"Why are you telling us?"
"One of your sacred ones once said: 'Seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.' "
"What's that mean?"
"It means you will be rewarded for your diligent efforts. But there is a condition."
"What is that?"
"You must come alone without your police. There will be no meeting if you bring them-you will not get your answers. There will be time enough for the police." Then the man bowed. "If you will excuse me."
She noticed that the door onto the patio was slightly ajar. How had he done that? Quickly he stepped out into the night and was gone. He could have killed her easily.
She looked at her watch. It was 9:20 p.m., and Dan was attending an office function with out-of-town clients. He had promised to leave early, and she expected him at any time. At 9:33 she heard the family-room door open. Forcing herself to wait, she counted to ten to ensure that Nate could get there first. Nervous with anticipation, she wondered how long these newlywed-type feelings would last. Then she walked faster than she intended into the family room to find him hugging Nate. Instantly Dan's eyes went to hers.
"Hey, Dad, we caught five fish this morning," Nate said.
"That's great," Dan said.
She put her hand on Nate's back and the other behind Dan's neck, kissing him firmly on the lips.
"Did you catch them in the same place?"
"Yeah. By the water tower. Hey, can I go over to Tim's and spend the night tomorrow?"
Dan tilted his head at Maria. She appreciated the consultation and nodded.
"Well, Maria and I are going to discuss it a little later, but I think it's gonna be fine."
"What's to discuss?"
"It's the principle of the thing, son. You know what that is?"
Nate smiled up at Maria. "She'd never say no if you said yes."
"I won't always be a pushover, buddy boy," she said, running her fingers through Nate's hair.
"I'm gonna go watch The Simpsons on video," Nate said.
"I had a really unusual visitor," Maria said when Nate had disappeared.
"What do you mean?"
She told him the story.
"Those cops outside are incompetent," he said. "I'm gonna go give them a ration-''
"No," she said, hugging him around the waist. "I think there's another set of players here and they mean us no harm. In fact, I think one of them stopped the shooter from killing you and me both. Maybe even this guy."
"We'll see. The police think the head of security over at Amada is implicated in all this. They have physical evidence at the barn that he was present. Amada's masters are Japanese. Nobody knows much about Kenji Yamada. And now you're telling me some Asian guy breaks into our house."
"There wasn't much breaking. He means us no harm. Trust me."
Corey's scheme worried her only because it was so ambitious and elaborate. It was all but impossible, which is what made it so delicious. She would show them all, especially the little Japanese bastard. Carefully she had studied the Hutchin Office Building, found old plans in the public library from the days when it was Mr. Carson's bank, and even crawled underneath it.
She had four bombs that she intended to plant in the crawl space directly under Dan Young's chair. Dialing a cell phone and then punching in a code that would normally activate a voice-mail playback system would leave a lethal message. She had stolen the technology from an engineering contractor who blasted roads through mountain rock. The rest she had adapted from an electronically minded prankster.
Activation could occur from anyplace there was a digital-cell-phone signal by simply dialing the detonator and punching in a code. Specifically, it would work from the little knoll where she intended to terminate Maria Fischer by firing a single shot through a window. Convinced that the bombing and shooting could be combined, she intended to send them on their way together. Dan Young's house had constant police surveillance, but they didn't check beyond a hundred yards. Her shooting spot was 150 yards distant.
Tonight she would take care of Groiter and Kenji. A few minutes earlier, she and Janet had deposited them both chained in the bilge of a small fishing trawler. She didn't kill them first because she needed them to walk under the cloak of darkness. Once on the boat she hadn't killed them because she wanted to watch them contemplate their own deaths. For the time being, she had sedated them beyond such contemplation, worried that chains and gags might not be good enough. Last she had seen, they looked nearly dead.
Now parked in the van with yet another set of stolen plates, she waited for 11:00 p.m. before she and Janet began hauling the bombs and placing them under the building. All in all, including the setup of the detonator, she expected to spend about one hour at this location. She didn't want to stay much after midnight because the janitorial service arrived around 1:00 a.m. Working earlier increased the risk that some night-owl attorney might stop by the office.
After the bombs were set, she would go to the boat and Janet would take the Chevy home. Deathly seasick on anything but a lake, Janet wasn't into watching Groiter and Yamada slide screaming into the sea.
The street was quiet, streetlights glowed in the night fog, and she hadn't seen a car for minutes. A stone's throw from the waterfront, she could hear the quiet chug of a diesel-some bone-weary captain and his even more exhausted crew were docking the boat. In the distance the w
histler buoy and the gong buoys made a ghost party in the mist. Much louder, the foghorn bellowed its melancholy at the jetties.
Wearing all-black clothing, she slipped from the van with a nervous shiver and nodded at Janet, who was parked in the Chevrolet behind her. Quickly Corey opened the van's rear door.
She and Janet would each carry one bomb at a time. She pulled out a pair of heavy-duty Atlantis travel cases on wheels, flipped open the tops, and signaled Janet to help with the placement of the first heavy round pipe, weighing in at eighty pounds. It was crammed with TNT, nails, and a twelve-ounce detonator.
Zipping up the first suitcase, they immediately repeated the process with the second and then hurried across the road. Once they reached the edge of the sidewalk, they grabbed the handle on the travel case and carried it over the decorative bark, setting it down in front of a hinged door. Two days earlier she and Janet had cut the lock with heavy bolt cutters. It had not been replaced. She zipped open the case and winced at the sound. In the utter silence it unnerved her. She looked around, saw no one, told herself to relax, and with Janet's help removed the pipe.
Janet held the door while Corey slid the pipe under the building. When they had repeated the process three more times, it was 11:15 p.m.
Once under the building with all four of her creations, she and Janet had to wrestle them to the intended location.
With a maximum of three feet under the building and in some areas only two, they had to struggle to get to the spot she had previously marked. Although the building was old, it had obviously been replumbed in recent times. The pipes were shiny copper and covered with modern insulating material. Little pieces of string affixed to these pipes led her to the chosen spot. At 11:30, after returning to the trapdoor for the third bomb, Corey decided to take a quick peek outside. Quietly she opened the door. And froze.
Two men stood on the sidewalk. She tried to hear, but they spoke in low tones. She made herself go to work anyway.
Returning to the bombs, she and Janet placed them in a perfect square about six feet apart. Although she might not have them located directly under Dan's chair, she was pretty certain she was under his office. Using copious amounts of duct tape, they managed to fasten the pipes in place. From each pipe a telephone cable protruded. Each cable was quickly plugged into a cable connector, then the cables fed into a central terminal that sat on the ground. Satisfied with her work, Corey activated the computer in the junction box and they each headed for the trapdoor with a travel case.
Gradually Corey opened the door. Five feet in front of them, a man watched the street. Something was wrong. The building was being watched. Probably a meeting with important people. And in the middle of the night. While she was pondering these things, she saw a car drive up. Instantly she recognized Dan Young's truck. Out stepped Maria Fischer and Dan Young.
"I'll be damned,'' she whispered to Janet. Maybe it would be easier than she thought to kill them both at once.
It was to be a midnight meeting in the conference room at Dan's office. Although bizarre, the desire of the Japanese for privacy without accidental intrusion by other attorneys seemed reasonable. There was a bone-chilling moment when Dan and Maria were told in a phone call that there would be five bodyguards surrounding the building. It was all very mysterious.
Dan and Maria arrived at 11:55. They entered through the front door, turned on some lights, and walked to the conference room.
At that moment there was a knock.
Dan left the conference room with Maria following. Three men waited at the door. The leader had a dignified bearing and Dan knew that he was in the presence of a powerful man. Wearing a long camel-hair coat against the cool of Palmer, the older man stepped over the threshold, followed by the other two. The second in line also wore a suit, whereas the younger man wore a black knit turtleneck. His eyes seemed everywhere and nowhere.
"I am Yoshinari Asaka, the chairman of the board of Kuru, the parent corporation of Amada. This is my lawyer, Kashi Nagura, and this gentleman, Shohei, looks after us."
"I am pleased to meet you," Dan said, shaking Yoshinari's hand and noticing the firm grip. "This is my fiancee, Maria."
Maria stepped forward and shook Yoshinari's hand, then followed Dan, shaking hands with the other two.
"This is new?" Yoshinari inquired, looking pointedly at Maria's diamond engagement ring.
"Yes, very," Dan said.
"Hard times winnow the heart, do they not?"
"Yes," Maria said, "they certainly do."
"May I take your coat?" Dan offered, appreciating the perfectly appointed blue pin-striped suit with hand-painted tie underneath. The lawyer looked anxious to get started. They walked to the conference room, where they all sat down. Yoshinari nodded to his lawyer. The younger man nodded his respect and began.
"We have recently discovered substantial irregularities in Amada. According to our sources, Kenji Yamada had discovered a means of manufacturing fuels from wood fiber. As an example, using the known technology it would cost thirty-four dollars per barrel to make crude oil. Using the method discovered by Kenji's scientist, it could be done for twelve dollars per barrel. Now, you probably wouldn't make crude oil, you'd make methanols and other fuels, but to make the point I'm using crude as an example.
"The implications if it worked are profound. With all the havoc in the Middle East you can imagine the value of this discovery. The only problem was that Kenji's new process used a special catalyst that created a dangerous effluent- dangerous enough to change the brain chemistry of the hoary bat subspecies that lived in the caves. They were storing the toxic by-product in a large plastic tank in the mine when it ruptured and made the pool that you saw. They left it there with the idea that they would develop a means of converting it to something useful or neutralize it. Then you came along."
"Why were they shooting the bats?"
"They had two major problems. First they had stumbled onto a new deep forest subspecies that would retreat to caves as well as tree hollows and the like. Any such subspecies would be a fascinating find for biologists who would start coming around. We think that compounding the problem, insects from the contaminated creek were affecting the bats' brains, particularly the area of the brain known as the cingulate gyms in humans and the area that corresponds to the prefrontal cortex. There is increased activity in the former and decreased activity in the latter, according to records we found at the compound. In a human it could result in suicidal behavior. In bats it causes them to fly around in daylight. And this would bring enormous scrutiny on the compound and might lead to discovery of the contaminated water- not to mention the cave.
"At first they thought it was just exposure to fumes from the cave. But after they thought they got all the bats from the cave, they were still having the problem. Unfortunately, they probably killed the man who was working on the issue when he discovered the contaminated water and the insects. Made it look like a heart attack.
"Of course they had the more serious problem. The effluent is lethal to humans, and it had made its way into the creek. They had a theory that if you went downstream far enough it would become sufficiently diluted so as not to kill anybody-at least immediately. Try telling that to your press and government officials."
"Who stole the money from us?" Dan asked.
''Amada Chief of Security Hans Groiter, working through a woman by the name of Corey Schneider. And that's what this is for." The old man nodded and they placed the briefcase on the table in front of Maria. It was the one Dan had given her. Dan popped open the latches, and it was full of bills that looked exactly as he had packed it.
"We found it in the vault at the Highlands lab. But one hundred thousand had been taken by the thief, Corey Schneider. We've replaced the money she stole."
"Who was her accomplice?"
"A dead man. Our people will be turning his body over to authorities after we are on the plane."
"Why did Amada do it?"
"They had discovered
a large natural-gas deposit under the lower Highlands. Their methanol-manufacturing process could be greatly enhanced by the natural gas. But a railroad company owned the mineral rights and wouldn't sell. Added to that, they had a mine full of toxic effluent. The last thing they wanted was a government purchase of the Highlands."
"And they contributed the money knowing they would try to screw it up?"
"They saw the sale going ahead like a juggernaut. At first they tried to stop it with the donation idea, but they couldn't. That's why they changed direction so dramatically. One day they are fighting all of you on giving the environmentalists the money; the next day they're leading the effort. Once they knew that Metco and the others were pushing, and that the donations would happen with them or without them, they decided to play along but sabotage the effort from within. If they stole the money, they expected the crime to become public knowledge. It would come out that industry was collaborating with the activists, hence both congress and the public would be suspicious. But you managed to keep it all quiet."
"What did Kenji know about all this?" Dan asked.
The lawyer paused and looked at Yoshinari.
''I'm afraid my son-in-law knew all about it. Even ordered it."
''Do you know about the photographer who was murdered out on Amada land a couple of months ago?''
Yoshinari bowed his head, a gesture of respect. "You have been excellent detectives."
"Was it his body I saw in the mine?"
"We believe so."
"Did Kenji do it?"
"According to Groiter," the lawyer said.
"Why are you telling us all this?"
Again the lawyer ceded to Yoshinari.
"We are telling you because you risked your lives to make it right. And because we don't wish to deal directly with your authorities. Shohei will provide the evidence. We leave for Japan in an hour."
"So what happens to Kenji Yamada?"
"He is missing. He will come to Japan if we can find him. There he can fight extradition. He, frankly, is not my concern," the old man said. "His wife, who is my daughter, and her child are both coming with us tonight."