"Then Whittenfeld ordered the murders."
"Not really. Whittenfeld told Lefebre to take care of the matter. Offer the bribe. Murder was Lefebre's initiative."
"But Whittenfeld knows what happened."
"I suppose. But to Whittenfeld's mind, the problem has just gone away. The two divers died in an accident. How it happened does not concern him. He has most probably closed it out, just as he's closed out many things in his life."
"Like the death of his son, the car accident, the pain."
Houghton's brow shot up. "Whittenfeld's son did not die in a car accident. He died of a blow to the head. Whittenfeld and the boy argued often about his mother. One night, Whittenfeld smacked the boy. The boy fell, hit his head, died."
Incredulous, Scotty breathed deeply, feeling closed in. He rose, opened a window, then returned to his seat.
"A priest named Father MacPherson might have been next on Lefebre's agenda had MacPherson not succeeded in getting himself killed first," Houghton said, returning to the subject at hand. "Whittenfeld heard MacPherson's threats during the tribunal proceedings. He told Lefebre to watch the old man, keep him under control, make things difficult. Lefebre ordered his guards to wreck the priest's church. The next step would have been a beating. Then death. Father MacPherson denied Lefebre the exhilaration."
"But Hugh Sutherland didn't."
"No, Mr. Sutherland didn't. And here I'm afraid Mr. Whittenfeld cannot hide his head in the sand. It's far too obvious. Sutherland tried to take Whittenfeld's drill ship, his means to reach his 'child.' Sutherland terrified Whittenfeld. Whittenfeld told Lefebre to do something about the Jacobite. Lefebre accepted the assignment with enthusiasm, then located Sutherland and had him taken to the harbor."
"And the call to the police implicating a tan jeep?"
"A message from one of Lefebre's associates."
"What about Mrs. Munro? Lefebre again?"
"Yes, though the bomb had been intended for you."
Scotty was not surprised.
"You clashed with Lefebre. Clashed violently. You challenged him aboard the recovery barge when the hose section was brought up. You mentioned Africa!"
"I also endangered Whittenfeld's 'child.' Endangered it like no other man could." Scotty stopped, thinking. He had mentioned Africa! But only Girard, besides Lefebre, knew it. Girard was the source! Girard was Houghton's pipeline to information. "I challenged Whittenfeld. Threatened to destroy his dreams."
"You did. But Whittenfeld had nothing to do with the bombing. You are much like Barrett. Whittenfeld respects you. Appreciates you. Though he obviously didn't at the start—didn't want you here at all."
"Wait a minute. Whittenfeld told me he flew to the States to fight for me to get me this job."
"The truth, Mr. Bruce, is the opposite. Your Mr. Reddington recommended you to Whittenfeld, London, and New York simultaneously. London and New York responded positively at once. Geminii is an honest company which generally does business honorably. The company was not afraid of your activities and past. In fact, it felt your reputation for honesty and fighting corruption would help immeasurably in the difficult atmosphere here in Scotland. Whittenfeld flew to the States to stop you. Your past frightened him. But support for you was too strong, and Whittenfeld couldn't say he didn't want you because of your honesty. He had to submit."
"But you say he grew to respect me?"
"Yes. He felt he could handle you, too, even after you rebelled! However, he asked Lefebre to watch you from the first. Eavesdrop."
"Then why did Lefebre place the bomb?"
"I told you Lefebre never forgets. Never forgives. Besides, the Sutherland murder set the bombing up perfectly. And a bombing made more sense than the use of manijuju. The bombing was designed to kill two birds at once. You and the Jacobite threat. Put the Jacobites on the run."
"What about Geminii's political opponents? Why didn't Whittenfeld strike out at them? They certainly posed a danger."
"Whittenfeld's psychoses do not dominate him completely. One does not murder political opponents on whim. No, Whittenfeld had to eliminate a political figure in Biafra because he had no choice. I suspect he would only do so here if he felt
his back was against the wall."
"What about me?"
"You were probably saved by circumstances. After the decision was made to build the clandestine trap, they realized that the last thing they needed was the death of another district superintendent."
Scotty suddenly exploded. "We've got to stop them," he said; this was why he needed Houghton. To help him stop them.
"We?" Houghton asked.
"I need your help. I need your backing. After we catch the beast, you must help me deal with Whittenfeld."
Houghton stood; his voice was resentful. "Mr. Bruce, you are free to fight all the battles you wish. But without me!"
"You know where the skeletons are buried, Houghton. Where the evidence lies. You have the information, All I would have would be unsubstantiated allegations."
"I sympathize."
"You sympathize? That's all?"
"You expect something else?"
"Yes, I expect you to have a sense of justice, a respect for law. You're a citizen of Great Britain. I expect you to have a British citizen's sense of duty!"
Houghton broke up laughing. "Mr. Bruce, you are a very funny man." He shook his head. "Justice? The law? Those are concepts for courts, judges, barristers, parliamentarians, philosophers. I have no time for such games. As for my duty as a citizen, I can asure you, I have given my country far more than most and continue to give!"
"Lefebre has now committed crimes in Great Britain. Doesn't that bother you?"
"No. I have no business with Lefebre."
"If nothing concerns you, why did you agree to help me?" Houghton smiled patronizingly. "I work for remuneration. When I'm paid by someone I respect and the job appeals to me, I do it."
"Just like Lefebre!"
"Not quite."
"But you weren't paid here."
"Wasn't I?" Houghton asked with a look of surprise. "You must stand corrected, Mr. Bruce. I was paid. By Wessinghage. Though, of course, I wasn't paid in currency."
"Then how?"
Houghton walked toward the door. "Wessinghage asked me to do him a favor. One day, I will extract the payment, a favor in return, which, I assure you, often has far more value than mere coins or pieces of paper."
Houghton opened the door; Scotty sprung after him and grabbed his arm.
"You can't leave like this. You've got to help me! I have to find Mary MacKenzie. You must help me find her."
Houghton disdainfully removed Scotty's hand. "Don't touch, Mr. Bruce," he said. "Ever."
Scotty stepped back; a shiver had run up his spine.
Houghton smiled briefly, stepped out the door, and climbed into the limousine.
The limo roared off.
Chapter 37
The night air greeted Scotty coldly as he emerged from Travis House, climbed into the loaner, and gunned it down the Dores Road.
He yawned; he'd hardly slept. It was 4:30 A.M.
He'd spent most of the night placing phone calls, trying to locate Mary MacKenzie; he'd also sat up thinking, putting the final puzzle pieces into place. Christ, it was a horror. But it was all there—Whittenfetd's state of mind, the reasons for Whittenfeld's obsessions. He'd doubted it all at first, doubted a man could be driven so far off path by motives of revenge, but the doubt had been short-lived because he knew better. He'd known many men who, after being jilted, their egos crushed, had harbored unending dreams of requital. Whittenfeld was no different, just more pathologic.
He shivered. He was traveling in a mine field of insanity and murder, and the one person he cared about more than anyone in the world—Mary MacKenzie—was traveling with him.
He'd left messages all over the place, and he would continue the search after they had sunk the trap.
He had to find her.
The A-9 road from Inverness to Edinburgh, framed between the intimidating Grampian Mountains, was narrow, tortuous, unlit.
The drive had been difficult; more difficulties lay ahead. Mary's arms felt like lead weights, her eyelids like stone. She had a throbbing headache; her insides ached from the pain of betrayal and the shattered remains of her love.
She'd left Inverness at 1:30 A.M. Between the time she'd raced out of Scotty Bruce's home and her departure, she'd waited at a friend's aparment for a response from Droon.
Droon had called at midnight. He'd told her he'd met with his barrister and they'd decided to move against the findings of the Columbus tribunal, petition the Court of Sessions to reopen the hearings, and shut down the Geminii operation. All he needed was her presence, along with the photographic and narrative evidence she'd said she'd removed from Scotty Bruce's home.
Fly to Edinburgh, he'd ordered.
But flight had been impossible. The airport at Inverness, in fact, all the airports along the coast, had been shut down by a thick fog that had moved in from the sea.
She'd had to drive.
Scotty climbed aboard the helicopter. Jerry Foster was already inside.
"You coming for the show?" Scotty asked.
Foster placed the stem of his pipe in his mouth. "Yes, but I'm not looking to be entertained. There's work to do. I have the cover story to handle. We'll have to release something about the inception of further security measures. You know, tidbits. Nothing anyone could bite into, chew around, find a
bone."
The chopper rose. The noise was infernal. Scotty looked out the window. He could see the demolition ordnance building. There were several security cars parked outside and two vans from the constabulary.
"What the hell is going on there?" he asked.
Foster looked out the window, too. "They found some explosives missing early last night."
"Explosives!" Scotty repeated, shocked.
Foster swallowed awkwardly. "One thousand pounds of ninety percent gelatin dynamite."
"What else?"
"Number-eight blasting caps. Ten thousand feet of prima-cord. A blasting machine. A timing mechanism."
"Does Whittenfeld know?" he asked.
"Of course," Foster said. "Hell, he nearly blew through the roof of his house when he was told."
"Why wasn't I called?"
"You were. Several times. Your line was busy."
"Do they know how long the stuff's been missing?"
"A few days." "No clues?"
"Not yet. But the police are looking. Don't worry. Whittenfeld had the Magellan searched. The underwater hull, too. Nothing was found. And security was put on alert."
The helicopter started to move down the loch. Scotty crossed to the other side of the cabin and looked through the window. A massive white fog, highlighted by the moon, covered the harbor and part of the land mass. He'd known about the fog since the night before. He'd called the airport to check on flights, trying to locate Mary MacKenzie. They'd informed him all planes had been grounded. But he'd had no idea how huge the air mass had been.
He moved up next to the pilot.
"Anything on the fog bank?" he asked.
"The usual," the pilot replied. "It'll hold off the coast unless there's a wind shift."
Scotty returned to his seat, concerned that the fog bank could move in over the operation. He'd seen similar blankets race in over the loch like gunshots.
He looked out the window again. First at the bank, then at the Magellan, which had come into view.
Danm!
* * *
The sound and sudden movement startled her into action. She gripped the wheel tightly, hit the brakes. The front right tire had blown out!
The car twisted wildly along the edge of the road, then settled to a stop in the blackness, turned sideways.
She couldn't believe it. Of all times and of all places. She looked around. She was surrounded by mountains, though there was a rift valley that extended eastward several miles. In the valley, about half a mile away, was a farmhouse. No lights were on.
Climbing from the car, she glanced at the tire. Blown to shreds. She looked in the rear. She had a spare but no jack. Unless another car happened along or someone lived in the farmhouse, she was stuck.
She had no time to waste.
She headed for the farmhouse.
Scotty leaned against the guard rail of the the drill ship. The trap was floating several hundred yards away, held in place by the four support tugs. Beyond were the command barge and the three sonar tugs. Interspersed, the television flotation rafts bobbed like buoys.
He could also see the top of the fog bank rising over the Inverness horizon, highlighted by moonlight.
The ship's rotary was quiet. The Lyon TX-1 bit was back on the bottom. They had located another chert-silica formation. Everything was ready.
"I can tell you've been thinking," Whittenfeld, who had flown out before Scotty, said as Scotty moved back away from the railing.
They had already discussed the theft of gelatin dynamite and the implications.
"I've been thinking about a lot of things," Scotty said.
"I hope about a future for you and Loch Ness. About greatness. Immortality."
Scotty didn't reply.
They entered the bridge deck's supervisor's quarters.
The place looked like the command room on the command barge—television monitors, trap controls, sonar screens, and a plethora of other instruments. This was now the alternative operations room. Whittenfeld, Lefebre, and Dr. Fiammengo would be here. He and Dr. Rubinstein would be aboard the command barge. Both Dr. Fiammengo and Lefebre were in the room.
This was the first time he'd seen Lefebre since Houghton had given him the last bits of information. He wanted to lash out, break the Frenchman's neck. But he knew he couldn't, not yet.
"So what do you think?" Dr. Fiammengo asked.
"The engineers have done a good job," he replied.
She pointed to the communications equipment. "If anything goes wrong with the barge, we're ready here."
Scotty and Whittenfeld left the cabin.
Pierre Lefebre watched the launch, which held Whittenfeld and Bruce, pull away from the drill ship.
He could still see Bruce's face.
He despised the face. He hated mice. Cowards. Life's flotsam.
He moved to the other side of the ship and looked toward shore through a pair of binoculars. There it wast The sailboat shed. Inside it were the caps, the blasting machine, the timer, the primacord and gelatin. After the trap had been lowered and before the inception of operations—the two events would be separated by a shutdown of all sonar and tracking systems for calibration—his divers would ring the trap with the primacord and the gelatin dynamite and would tie the timing device into the clamp closure electrical system.
Then, ten minutes after the animal had been snared, it
would be blown into infinity.
He lit a Gitaries.
And smiled.
Mary MacKenzie knocked on the farmhouse door.
No one answered.
She looked inside the barn. There were no cars. The house didn't look abandoned, but obviously no one was home. She searched for a way to get in. The windows were barred; entrance was impossible.
She started to walk back to the road. She would have to wait for another motorist to drive by. There were no alternatives.
She crossed a grazing field, a sunken meadow below the level of the main road, then climbed back up toward the crippled car.
She stopped, surprised.
Another car was sitting right in front of hers.
She approached. No one was inside. There was also no one on the road. She turned toward the farmhouse. The missing driver had not gone in that direction. Intuitively, she sensed trouble. God, she was miles from nowhere on a sparsely traveled strip of highway, and suddenly a car had appeared, and the driver was nowhere in sight.
She felt a sh
iver of fear run up her spine. The shadows were suddenly very threatening. So were the sounds of the night.
She retreated to her auto and climbed inside, locking the doors.
A hand exploded up from behind her. A palm jammed shut her mouth. Nails dug into her cheeks. Heavy breathing rasped. She fought. She could not dislodge the hand.
Then she heard a man's voice; the voice was Girard's.
"There's a gun pointed at the back of your skull," Girard said. "One more move and I pull the trigger."
Scotty watched Dr. Rubinstein orchestrate. He listened to the cross of transmissions between the command barge, the sonar tugs, the trap tugs, and the duplicate control room on the Magellan while he tried to read Whittenfeld's very ambiguous expression, which was now colored by the light of the rapidly rising sun.
Dr. Rubinstein approached.
"It's as if God knows what we're about!" he declared, pointlng through the command cabin window at the white wall of air hanging above the horizon. "It's as if God has sent His messenger carpet. An angelic fog."
"Or a satanic one," Scotty countered.
"Could the fog be a problem?" Whittenfeld asked.
"It should stay out there according to the weather reports," Scotty replied.
"What if it doesn't?"
"It shouldn't significantly affect us," he declared, looking to Dr. Rubinstein for support.
"Correct," Dr. Rubinstein said. "We do not need visibility to see. We have sonar. Television. Everything will happen beneath the surface, and all our controls are at hand. No, unless we get a storm in here that would affect our operating efficiency, we'll be all right."
A structural engineer informed them that all systems were operational.
Dr. Rubinstein's voice rang through the command cabin. Captain Harrigan and Dr. Fiammengo reported in from their positions. The command barge's technicians hit a myriad of switches. The electrical heart of the trap fluctuated to life. Dr. Rubinstein opened the trap's main ballast tanks.
Scotty stared through the window. He could see the four anchor tugs moving, slow reverse. Suddenly, the water around the trap began to churn. The ballast tanks were filling. As orders flew around the command room, the churning increased; then, slowly, the trap began to sink, the tugs eased back into anchor positions, and the trap's anchor spools drew in the slack of the anchor lines.
Monster: Tale Loch Ness Page 36