17-The Hollow Crown Affair

by David McDaniel

  "Hi, Ward!" she caroled. "Hi, Illya darling! It's lunchtime, and I hate to eat alone."

  "Good morning, Chandra," said Baldwin. "It's not noon until the chimes ring. And I'm afraid I must have lunch sent in today and all distractions sent out. Some research has just been reported which will require a complete revision of my address for tomorrow."

  "Oh dear—chained to your desk again. Illya, will you and Lyn come with me?"

  "Golly, Mrs. Reynolds, I ordered a lunch along with Dr. Fraser."

  Chandra looked appalled. "Well! Illya—don't tell me you're bound to be here all day too!"

  "Good heavens, no," Baldwin growled. "Mr. Kuryakin, I have quite enough work to do that I am unlikely to leave my desk, let alone my office. I assure you that I am quite safe here, and your presence—if you will forgive me—is a distraction. Allow me an hour to organize my thoughts on the problem and then return if you must."

  "Well..."

  "Oh, do come with me, Illya! I'll show you the old part of town."

  "I'd better not be gone more than an hour. After all, I am responsible..."

  The twelve o'clock bell sounded, and Baldwin said "Lunchtime. Why not take the opportunity to get out of the office, Mr. Kuryakin? You probably feel cooped up in here."

  "By the way," said Chandra. "Where's Napoleon?"

  "He took the weekend off," said Illya.

  "And left you here? Where did he go? You must tell me all about it over lunch," she said as Illya accepted his coat from Lyn and opened the door for Chandra. Her cheery " 'Bye Ward," followed them out.

  When they were gone, Baldwin turned to Lyn. "Miss Stier, you've lived in this area all your life. What is a 'Bozo Bill'?"

  "Bozo Bill? That's a statue in the town square over in Barre. My last boyfriend was from there. It's got a kind of bench around it that makes a whispering gallery so the people that sit at opposite ends can hear each other. We tried it one day. It was spooky."

  Baldwin nodded. "It seems a peculiar name for a statue."

  "Well, its real name is Youth Triumphant, or something like that. But it was put up during a big strike at the granite works and it was done by scab labor—they were called 'bozos'. And the workers called it Bozo Bill and the name stuck."

  "I see," said Baldwin, and added another anecdote to his mental file. "And you said it was in Bury?"

  "No, Barre. Like Goldwater. It's about forty miles east on Route Two, turn south just past Montpelier."

  "Thank you, Miss Stier." Baldwin made a brief notation on a card, then stood. "If I'm not back by the time you have finished, you may close the office and go home. I believe everything is taken care of here."

  "Close the office? But what about Illya?"

  "Mr. Kuryakin will not be back this afternoon at all, my dear." He rose, took his stick, his hat, his gloves, his coat, his scarf, and his leave.

  * * *

  At approximately the same time, Napoleon Solo, sitting nervous and hungry in a comfortable room some fifty linear miles north-northeast, heard a metallic chirp and picked up his transceiver. "Solo here."

  "We've checked out the Redwing Lodge, Mr. Solo—they're registered with the Hotel Association and the Diners Club. They just got started this year, with the backing of the Old Man of one of Boston's best families. As far as anyone can tell they have no connection with Thrush at all."

  "Sure," said Napoleon. "They just happened to make up a Thrush insignia."

  "Not necessarily. They could have seen it on that silly television show."

  "Yeah, but..."

  "Mr. Solo, all we can do is supply you with data. You're on the spot. We can't evaluate for you."

  "That's not what I mean. Okay, just tell Mr. Waverly where I am. It may look all right from a distance, but it bothers me here."

  "Very good, Mr. Solo." Section Four cut off.

  So here he was. He had a free weekend coming, since no one had challenged him as Dr. Fraser, and it was forty miles of bad roads back to civilization...He wondered momentarily about selling the car and buying a cottage rather than facing the long drive out.

  Still, he could just as well be on his guard for a while. It seemed an open-and-aboveboard sort of place, and if it was this new they wouldn't even have hidden TV cameras and booby traps wired in yet—considering it to be Thrush, and the more he thought about it the less likely it seemed. Besides, he was hungry, and he couldn't start back without breakfast or lunch. They'd be awfully unlikely to poison him in the dining room—at least intentionally. He folded his transceiver, gritted his teeth, girded his loins, and went out for breakfast.

  Chapter 10: "Watch Out For That Tree!"

  The clerk handed him a fluorescent orange windbreaker when he went to check out a horse, saying, "All the guests wear them, sir. You'll take a 44, I think."

  Outside, he observed indeed many light nylon windbreakers of identical design in yellow, blue, green and even pink, all with the little black bird patch that apparently was the symbol of the lodge. Napoleon looked at his where it lay over his arm, and considered the moral and aesthetic implications for several seconds before reluctantly slipping it on. If the boys at the office could see me now, he thought, and double-timed out to the stables.

  * * *

  He'd always fancied himself on a horse, and Napoleon sat tall in the saddle as he wandered out onto the trails. They were clearly marked, and the horse knew his way home, the groom said—adding that the fluorescent jackets made guests easier to find when they got lost.

  A couple of hours after this cheering piece of data, Napoleon Solo was walking his horse slowly along the Blue Trail. The paths were half-obliterated by fallen leaves from last night's storm, but rills ran down the edges and from time to time they passed larger freshets bounding down the mountainside, sometimes under the trail and sometimes across it. The air was cold and wet, and full of the sharp brown smell of rain-washed woods. Faded yellow and orange leaves cluttered the ground and stuck in bunches to the horse's hooves as he kicked through them, and blood-red and scarlet scattered before him.

  Then the trees drew apart on either side of the trail, and they came out into a wide clearing carpeted with ankle deep grass a hundred yards to either side. Above and to his left, Big Jay Peak rose against the sky, dappled with shifting patterns of light and shade as the puffy clouds drew their shadows across the autumnal motley of red and yellow with startling patches still deep green. His mind at peace, Napoleon Solo felt at one with the silence of the mountains.

  He and his horse, man and beast, away from the restraints of civilization, free of the last reminders...except for this windbreaker, he thought, glancing at the brilliant jacket. I think it's brighter than any of the others I saw. Even as he dismissed the matter, something was nagging at the back of his mind while his eyes refocussed on the mountainside beyond the meadow to his left.

  The first thing he noticed was the way a few green trees stood out so against the yellow and orange. At the same time his memory held the picture of all the other nylon windbreakers around the lodge—and none of them had been orange. Two trains of thought meshed, and a highly developed paranoiac reflex set in.

  I am pretty obvious, he thought as he prodded his stable-fed horse into a walk. I not only stand out from the woods, I stand out from all the other guests. Oh help!

  He headed her around towards the edge of trees still close behind, and then heard something like a distant rumble of galloping hooves. He rose in his saddle and looked in both directions. There was a very large horse with a reasonably large man astride him lumbering directly towards him at a respectable rate of speed. The man wore a red lumberjack shirt and seemed to have something long and sharp resting in the crook of his arm with its business end pointed straight at the center of the nearest fluorescent orange nylon windbreaker. Napoleon yelled and kicked frantically at his horse.

  In an unexpected fit of strength it kicked back and shook his left leg loose from the stirrup. Then it bolted for the woods after all as Napoleon locke
d his fingers on the reins and fought an urge to grab for the saddle-horn. He pulled up sharply to check the runaway and overdid it a little; the horse reared with a snort and writhed. Napoleon clamped his knees to the saddle and felt his loose left leg slip backwards; he leaned to grab the shaking neck and dropped the reins as he did so. As his horse twisted, Napoleon saw in a blurred moment the approaching horse shying away, and then his own mount hit the ground with all four feet and jolted the breath from his body. He clutched frantically for the reins, dangling just out of reach.

  The horse kicked again and Napoleon felt his other foot slip from its stirrup. He had hardly time to kick twice in the hope of catching it again before the whole world came apart around him. There was a moment of utter weightlessness, and then a mountain hit him in the back.

  His head cleared to a view of the sky. The horse was still snorting and stamping five feet away, and he tried to roll. Just as he started to wonder why he couldn't, the traitorous beast turned and galloped barebacked into the woods.

  Napoleon looked down at his legs. They were still clamped to the saddle, with a partially unfolded blanket wrapped around his ankles. It began to look more and more like a conspiracy.

  Hooves rumbled in the distance again as he sat up, and his head rang. Here he comes again, he thought with an odd resignation, and tried to unwrap his tangled legs.

  He staggered to his feet facing the approaching horseman and pulled up the heavy horse blanket. The charging horse didn't swerve as the canter picked up to a gallop and the long solidly-couched lance never swerved off point. Napoleon's head ached fiercely as he stood, knees bent, with the blanket draped loosely from one arm like a useless shield.

  He knew he had at least a couple of chances before the nut with his spear figured out what he was trying to do—unless his foot slipped and he got trampled or he misjudged something and got ripped in half before he managed to do it...But the horse was heading straight for him, looking as determined as a tank and just about as fast. He focused on the top of the lance, just ahead of the little pennon that fluttered there, and flexed his aching knees.

  He feinted to the spear side just a moment early and the point followed. Then he leaped to the other side, throwing the rough woollen blanket out over the end of the spear and jerking frantically back as the horse's heaving flank brushed past his chest and knocked him away. Over the thunderous passage, he heard a SPRUUNNNGGG!!! and a vague cry.

  Solo staggered to his feet and looked. The horse was galloping on, riderless. Eight feet away, a quivering aluminum pole beside him, lay a bulky man in a red flannel lumberjack shirt—a man who owed him at least a few civil answers.

  The man was getting to his feet as Napoleon approached, in a half-crouched defensive posture, forearms crossed, that shows practice in La Savat. Napoleon paused and re-evaluated. He didn't seem to be ready to give civil answers, and Napoleon was becoming increasingly certain he knew most of them already. As he hesitated, the man charged, breaking his defense and grappling. Napoleon dodged from his grasp and grabbed an arm as it went by. Redshirt spun once endways and once sideways, and went slithering across the wet grass.

  Napoleon jumped for him and caught a heavy boot just about the top of his left shoulder. He flopped heavily and rolled to his feet, facing his opponent, who dropped into his defensive position again, gripping his elbows, and sent a leather missile speeding at his face. Napoleon flinched back, and found himself falling as his legs were hooked from under him by a second kick. This time his attacker jumped for him. Solo, flat on his back, got his legs up in time and levered him right on over to land on his head a few feet further on.

  Some moments passed, and silence descended again over the woods. Napoleon slowly and painfully gathered his feet under his center of gravity and pushed them down. When he was erect, he looked over to where the other guy lay in a pile of arms and legs, just beginning to pull itself together.

  "Now," he said, panting slightly, "will you answer a few simple questions or do I have to do it again?"

  Something took him by both shoulders and turned him around. He found himself staring into the same face he had just dropped a man on, and the surprise slowed him down.

  "You hurt my brother," said the face definitely.

  Oh, Napoleon thought. Twins.

  He was lifted and spun once, he thought later, but at the time a sort of fatalism overwhelmed him. He had just time to think irrationally, I hope he's not triplets, before a large portion of the state of Vermont hit him all over at once and everything else faded.

  * * *

  It was just about the same time of day when, forty-some miles to the south, Ward Baldwin, quietly but impeccably dressed, walked into the town square in Barre and paused to study the statue of Youth Triumphant. It squatted, or knelt, facing Burlington, holding a sword point down, at the westernmost tip of what might have been a town square but now was cut off as a traffic island. Around one hundred and eighty degrees behind it ran a stone bench with a high back curving slightly over the seat six feet above the ground. The back was a shallow compound curve, capable of gathering and focusing sound while keeping neither sun or breeze from anyone who chose to rest there. Both ends of the bench were empty.

  Baldwin hobbled up to the southern end and sat. The white granite cube of the statue's base filled the center of the half-circle and he looked casually in several directions for Irene. He didn't see her approaching in the few minutes before the clock in the city hall tower sounded the hour of two, but as the last chime faded in the intermittent snarling of traffic, a voice murmured in his ear.

  "You were early."

  "Good afternoon, my love," said Baldwin, scarcely moving his lips. "You have discovered a fine meeting place."

  "Thank you, Ward. I trust you were able to shake your watchdogs without trouble?"

  "I sent Mr. Solo on a weekend in the mountains. I strongly suspect it of being a trap—for me, not for him."

  "You think more highly of him than you admit."

  "I have never questioned his survival instinct, my dear; merely his intelligence and taste. Chandra took Mr. Kuryakin to lunch."

  "Bless her heart. She has a real talent for this work. I wish she would decide to come in professionally, but she keeps saying that it's too much fun to do for money."

  "I received your bouquet with pleasure—and the pigeon, of course, arrived this morning."

  "She must have gotten distracted. She was sent Thursday night."

  "Could she have been intercepted?"

  "Not without injury. I'm sure we're safe here for the time being, at least. But I wanted to know whether Alexander Waverly is acting on the advice you gave him."

  "Yes. I heard an interim report—couched in the most guarded terms, of course—from him yesterday evening. Our misguided associates will be prevented from doing severe harm without actually suffering setbacks which could reflect adversely on us when this nonsense is resolved. But I was uncertain of my actions after you signaled me at the dance; did you mean that King is coming north or that Thrush Central is becoming increasingly militant? Or vice versa?"

  "The fan gestures have the same problem as the flowers," Irene said. "Neither has a vocabulary quite suited to our purpose."

  "All the better," said Baldwin seriously. "It forces us to think more deeply of what we are doing. I had no trouble following most of your meanings, in context."

  "At the time I didn't know King was coming north," said Irene, "but Thursday I heard through Elma that King had told Central if they weren't able to keep you from cutting them up a bit at a time, he was going to Vermont with his PAR for a field demonstration."

  "The Particle Accelerator Rifle? I believe Mr. Solo has referred to it as the Scrooch Gun?"

  "That's right. Have you seen it? It's all coils and tubing, with fins around the barrel to dissipate the heat from the RF and magnetic coils in between. It looks like a hand-prop for Buck Rogers."

  "I'm told it acts like one; the footage I examined was modera
tely impressive, as I recall..."

  "Well, Central offered him an assault force for back-up, but he turned it down. He said he would prove his worthiness for the Council seat by taking care of you and Mr. Solo and Mr. Kuryakin all by himself."

  Baldwin released a sigh of pleasure and frank relief. "My dear," he said, "the man is an obvious monomaniac. And monomaniacs never take adequate precautions. He wishes to prove his worthiness? Very well. If he succeeds, he must be worthy. But if he is unworthy—we may close the books on Mr. King."

  "He's a very convincing monomaniac," said Irene. "He gave Central one more chance to get you and they took it. There will be a fifteen-man undercover force hitting the UVM campus looking for you about a quarter past five on Monday afternoon."

  "You know I would never question your sources, my dear," said Baldwin after a respectful pause, "but are you certain of that?"

  "Unimpeachable, my love," said Irene. "But I must admit I am rather proud of it."

  "The Computer indicated the likelihood of such an attack, but it predicted a smaller force, optimized at four-point-seven men in an early morning attack Thursday."

  "Insufficient data."

  "Of course. King's pressure. My campus defense forces will be quite able to take care of this group; an undercover assault force will not be prepared to commit actual mayhem upon uninvolved persons, especially large numbers of them. None of my personal staff should have to lift a finger—and we will probably have very good seats for the show."

  "Don't be overconfident, my dear," said Irene. "If a covert force fails, they could still send in an overt one before giving King final permission to take the field." She paused. "Pigeon post isn't fast enough. I'll use the flowers. I can telephone and telegraph a bouquet to precise specifications overnight. I will have the Mercedes standing by if you find the situation a little too hot for you."

  "Now, Irene..."

  "Adequate precautions include admitting you may lose, dear. You taught me that, and it saved both our lives in Burbank. The Mercedes is in perfect condition and adequately close."