Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers

by Strangers(Lit)

meant to keep them on edge and get his message through to them. They

  had to understand, right away, that their conversations must be far

  better guarded, and the lesson had to be driven into them so hard and

  deep that they would not forget it. "I heard you mention your years in

  Marine Intelligence, Ernie. Christ, how long ago was that? Better part

  of a decade, I'll bet. Things have changed since then, man. Haven't

  you heard about the high-tech revolution? Shit, they don't need to come

  in here and physically plant listening devices. Rifle mikes are a hell

  of a lot better than they used to be. Or they can just hook up an

  infinity transmitter to their phone and dial your number." Jack pushed

  rudely past Ernie and stepped to the living room extension, which stood

  on a table by the sofa. He put his hand on the phone. "You know what

  an infinity transmitter is, Ernie? When they dial your number here, an

  electric tone oscillator deactivates the bell while it simultaneously

  opens the microphone in your telephone handset. There's no ringing for

  you to hear; you've no way of knowing you've been called, that your

  line's wide open. But they can monitor you in any room where you've got

  an extension." He plucked up the handset and held it toward them with a

  calculated look of scorn. "Here's your bug. You had it installed

  yourself." He slammed the handset back into the cradle. "You can bet

  your ass they've been tuning in on you a lot lately. Probably listened

  all through dinner. You people keep this up, you might as well just cut

  your own throats and save everybody a lot of trouble."

  Jack's caustic performance had been effective. They were stunned. He

  said, "Now, is there a room without windows,

  big enough to hold a war council? Doesn't matter if there's a phone;

  we'll just unplug it."

  An attractive middle-aged woman, apparently Ernie's wife, whom Jack

  vaguely remembered from checking into the motel two summers ago, thought

  for a moment and said, "There's the restaurant, the diner, next door."

  "Your restaurant doesn't have any windows?" Jack asked.

  "They were . . . broken," Ernie said. "Right now they're boarded

  up."

  "Then let's go," Jack said. "Let's work out our strategy in privacy,

  then come back here for some of that pumpkin pie I heard you talking

  about. I had a lousy dinner while you people were in here eating

  yourselves into a stupor."

  Jack went quickly down the stairs, confident they would follow.

  Ernie loathed the crooked-eyed bastard for five minutes. But slowly,

  the hatred turned to grudging respect.

  For one thing, Ernie admired the caution and stealth with which the guy

  had answered his own call to the Tranquility Motel. He had not just

  walked in like the others. He'd even brought a submachine gun.

  But as he watched "Thornton Wainwright" slip the carrying-strap of the

  Uzi over one shoulder and head out the front door of the motel office,

  Ernie was still stung by the criticism he had endured. In fact, his

  rage was so great he did not pause to grab a coat, as most of the others

  did, but plunged after the stranger, through the door and across the

  macadam toward the diner, keeping pace with him in order to chew him

  out. "Listen, what the hell's the point of being a wise-ass? You

  could've made your point without being so goddamn snide."

  The stranger said, "Yeah, but I couldn't have made it as fast."

  Ernie was about to reply when he abruptly realized he was outside,

  vulnerable, at night, in the dark. Halfway between the office and the

  diner. His lungs seemed to collapse; he could not draw the slightest

  wisp of breath. He made a disgustingly pitiful mewling sound.

  To Ernie's surprise, the newcomer immediately grasped his arm, providing

  support, with no trace of the scorn he'd shown

  before. "Come on, Ernie. You're halfway there. Lean on me, and you'll

  make it."

  Furious with himself for letting this bastard see him disabled and weak

  with childish fear, furious with the guy, too, for playing the

  Samaritan, humiliated, Ernie jerked his arm away from the helping hand.

  "Listen," the newcomer said, "while I was eavesdropping, I heard about

  your problem, Ernie. I don't pity you, and I don't find your condition

  amusing. Okay? If your fear of the dark has something to do with this

  situation we all find ourselves in, it's not your fault. It's those

  bastards who messed with us. We need one another if we're going to get

  through this thing. Lean on me. Let me help you over to the diner,

  where we can turn on some lights. Lean on me."

  When the newcomer began to talk, Ernie was unable to breathe, but by the

  time the guy finished his spiel, Ernie had the opposite problem; he was

  hyperventilating. As though pulled by a magnetic force, he turned from

  the diner and looked southeast, out into the terrifyingly immense

  darkness of the barrens. And suddenly he knew the darkness itself was

  not what he feared, but something that had been out there on the night

  of July 6, that bad summer. He was looking toward that special place

  along the highway, where they had gone yesterday to commune with the

  land in search of clues. That strange place.

  Faye had arrived, and Ernie had not shaken loose of her when she had

  taken hold of him. But now the crooked-eyed man tried to take his arm

  again, and he was still angry enough to reject that assistance.

  "Okay, okay," the guy said. "You're a bull-headed old Leatherneck

  bastard, and it's going to take your hurt pride a while to heal. If you

  want to be a thick-skulled mule, go ahead, stay pissed at me. It was

  only your blind anger that got you this far into the dark, wasn't it?

  Sure as hell wasn't Marine backbone. Just dumb blind anger. So if you

  stay pissed at me, maybe you'll be able to get to the diner."

  Ernie knew the crooked-eyed man was cleverly taunting him into

  completing the trip to the Tranquility Grille, that he was not really

  being cruel. Hate me enough, the guy was saying, and you'll fear the

  darkness less. Focus on me, Ernie, and take one step at a time. This

  was not much different than taking the guy's arm and leaning on it, and

  if Ernie had not been scared half to death by the surging night on all

  sides of him, he would have been amused at being conned this way. But he

  held fast to his anger, fanned the flames of it, and used it to light

  his way to the diner. He stepped through the door after the newcomer,

  and sighed with relief when the lights came on.

  "It's freezing in here," Faye said. She went directly to the thermostat

  to switch on the oil furnace.

  Sitting in a chair in the center of the room, his back to the door,

  Ernie recuperated from his ordeal as the others entered behind him. He

  watched the crooked-eyed newcomer moving from window to window, checking

  the plyboard slabs that had been nailed up to replace the shattered

  glass. And that was when, to Ernie's surprise, he realized he no longer

  loathed the guy, merely harbored an extreme dislike for him.

  The newcomer examined the payphone near the door. Being a coin-operated

&nb
sp; unit, it did not unplug, so he lifted the receiver, tore the cord free

  of the wall-mounted box, and threw the useless handset aside.

  "There's a private phone back of the counter," Ned said.

  The newcomer told him to unplug it, and Ned obliged.

  Then he told Brendan and Ginger to push three tables together and pull

  up chairs to accommodate everyone, and they did as they were told.

  Ernie watched the crooked-eyed man with keen interest.

  The newcomer was concerned about the diner's front door, which had not

  shattered during the weird phenomena on Saturday night because it was

  made of much thicker glass than the windows had been. It was not

  boarded up, so it offered a weak point to anyone trying to monitor them

  with a directional microphone. He wanted to know if any plywood was

  left from the window job, and Dom told him there was, and he sent Ned

  and Dom to bring back a suitable piece from the stack in the maintenance

  room behind the motel. They soon returned with a section of wood that

  was slightly larger than the door, and the newcomer stood it in front of

  the glass portal, bracing it in place with a table. "Not perfect," he

  said, "but good enough to defeat a rifle mike, I think." Then he headed

  toward the back of the restaurant to "have a look in the storeroom," and

  on his way he told Sandy to plug in the jukebox, switch it to free-play,

  and punch in some songs. "Some background noise makes eavesdropping more

  difficult." Even before he explained why he wanted music, Sandy jumped

  up and headed for the jukebox, quick to obey him.

  Abruptly, Ernie realized why the crooked-eyed man fascinated him. The

  guy's quick thinking, precision movements, and ability to command

  indicated that he was-or had once been-a career soldier, an officer, a

  damn good one. He could tune an intimidatingly hard edge into his voice

  one moment, and the next moment tune it out in favor of cajolery.

  Hell, Ernie thought, he's fascinating because he reminds me of me!

  That was also why the newcomer had been able to needle Ernie so

  effectively back in the apartment. The guy knew just where to stick the

  sharp points because he and Ernie were, in some ways, two of a kind.

  Ernie laughed softly. Sometimes, he thought, I can be such a perfect

  jackass.

  The crooked-eyed man returned from the storeroom and smiled with

  satisfaction when he saw everyone seated at the long table which he had

  told Brendan and Ginger to put together from three smaller ones. He

  came to Ernie and said, "No hard feelings?"

  "Hell, no," Ernie said. "And thanks ... thanks a lot."

  The newcomer went to the head of the table, where a chair had been left

  for him. With Kenny Rogers crooning on the jukebox, the guy said, "My

  name's Jack Twist, and I don't know any more than you what in hell's

  happening, probably less than you know. The whole thing gives me the

  heebiejeebies, but I also have to tell you this is the first time in

  eight years that I've really and truly felt like I'm on the right side

  of an issue, the first time I've felt like one of the good guysand dear

  God in Heaven, you can't know how much I've needed to feel that!"

  Lieutenant Tom Forner, Colonel Falkirk's aide-decamp, had enormous

  hands. The small tape recorder was totally concealed in his right hand

  when he carried it into the windowless office. His fingers were so

  large that he seemed certain to have trouble using the little control

  buttons. But he was remarkably dextrous. He produced the recorder,

  placed it on the desk, switched it on, and set it in the playback mode.

  The tape had been duplicated from the reel-to-reel machine on which all

  phone-monitored conversations were recorded. It was a portion of an

  exchange that had taken place between several people at the Tranquility

  only minutes ago. The first part of the tape concerned the witnesses'

  discovery that the source of their trouble was not Shenkfield but

  Thunder Hill. Leland listened with dismay. He had not anticipated that

  their quest would take the right trail so soon. Their cleverness

  worried and angered him.

  On the tape: "For God's sake, shut up. If you think you can plot in

  privacy here, you're badly mistaken."

  "That's Twist," Lieutenant Forner said. He had a big voice, too, which

  was as well controlled as his enormous hands: a soft rumble. He stopped

  the tape. "We knew he was coming here. And we know he's dangerous. We

  figured he'd be more cautious than the others, sure, but we didn't

  expect him to act as if he was at war from the get-go."

  As far as they knew, Jack Twist's memory block had not seriously

  deteriorated. He was not suffering fugues, sleepwalking, phobias, or

  obsessions. Therefore, only one thing might have motivated him to

  suddenly lease a plane and fly to Elko County: mail from the same

  traitor who had sent Polaroids to Corvaisis and to the Blocks.

  Leland Falkirk was furious that someone involved in the cover-up,

  probably someone at Thunder Hill, was sabotaging the entire operation.

  He had made this discovery only last Saturday night, when Dominick

  Corvaisis and the Blocks had sat at the kitchen table and discussed the

  strange snapshots they'd been sent. Leland had ordered an immediate

  investigation and intense screening of everyone at the Depository, but

  that was going a lot slower than he had anticipated.

  "There's worse," Horner said. He switched on the tape again.

  Leland listened to Twist tell the others about rifle microphones and

  infinity transmitters. Shocked, they adjourned to the diner, where they

  could discuss their strategy without being overheard.

  "They're in the diner now," Horner said, shutting off the recorder.

  "Ripped out the phones. I've spoken by radio with the observers we have

  stationed south of I-80. They watched the witnesses move to the Grille,

  but they haven't had any luck tuning in with a rifle mike."

  And won't," Leland said softly. "Twist knows what he's doing."

  "Now that they 're aware of Thunder Hill, we've got to move on them as

  soon as possible."

  "I'm waiting to hear from Chicago."

  'Sharkle's still barricaded in his house?"

  'Last I heard, yes," Leland said. "I've got to know if his memory block

  has completely crumbled. If it has, and if he gets a chance to tell

  anyone what he saw that summer, then the operation's blown, anyway, and

  it'd be a mistake to move against the witnesses at the motel. We'll

  have to fall back to another plan."

  Under the diner's wagonwheel lights, safe in her mother's lap, Marcie

  dozed off even as Jack Twist introduced himself. In spite of the nap the

  girl had taken on the plane, sooty rings of weariness encircled her

  eyes, and a tracery of blue veins marked her porcelain-pale skin.

  Jorja was tired, too, but Twist's dramatic arrival was an effective

  antidote to the narcotizing effects of the dinner. She was wide awake

  and eager to hear what he had to tell them of his own tribulations.

  He began by briefly mentioning his imprisonment in Central America, with

  which his military career had ended. He made the experience sound more

>   boring and frustrating than frightening, but Jorja sensed that he had

  endured grueling hardship. From his matter-of-fact tone, she had the

  impression that he was a man so secure in his self-image, so certain of

  his emotional and physical and intellectual strengths, that he never

  needed to boast or to hear the praise of others.

  When he spoke of Jenny, his late wife, he was less able to maintain an

  air of detachment. Jorja heard the cadences of lingering grief in this

  part of his story; a river of love and longing flowed beneath his

  feigned placidity. The intimacy of mind and spirit between Jack Twist

  and Jenny, prior to her coma, had surely been extraordinary, for only a

  special and magical relationship would have ensured his unflagging

  devotion through the woman's long deathlike sleep. Jorja tried to

  imagine what a marriage of that sort might be like, then realized that,

  regardless of how magical their marriage had been, Jack would not have

  committed himself so totally to his afflicted wife if he'd been any less

  than the man he was. Their relationship had been special, yes, but even

  more special was this man himself. That realization increased Jorja's

  already strong interest in Twist and his story.

  He was vague in describing the enterprises by which he had financed

  Jenny's long stay at a sanitarium. He made it clear only that what he

  had done was illegal, that he was not proud of it, and that his lawless

  days were over. "At least I never killed any innocent bystanders, thank

  God. Otherwise, I think it's best if you don't know any details that

  might somehow make you accessories-after-the-fact."