Surrender, New York

by Caleb Carr

  “So where do we go when we get back?” Mike asked.

  “I’m figuring that out,” I replied. “The important thing is that you get under way—now.”

  “I don’t know…” Gracie looked from me to Mike. “I still think this is kind of nuts.”

  “It is,” Mike said, trying to reassure her. “It’s what has to happen, though, if we’re going to go on with this meeting. But listen, Gracie, it’s you who’s gotta decide: is the discussion you came for worthwhile, or should we just bag it right now?”

  Allowing herself a steady pause, Gracie at length answered, “No. No, I think it’s worthwhile. I don’t want to see any more throwaways turning up dead, and their cases going uninvestigated, just because of politics.”

  “Well said, Doctor,” I told her. “Okay, then—we’ll be ready.” I tried to assist Mike’s attempt to gently buck up Gracie’s courage. “Try not to worry too much—we’ll be okay. You have no idea of the number of hiding places that Shiloh offers. But you do need to get out of here.”

  “All right,” Gracie said, still a little fearfully, as she seized hold of Mike’s arm and they started down toward their cars. “But don’t you dare lose sight of me, Michael Li…”

  Mike turned just long enough to give me a determined nod as they went—whether in reference to their chances of a safe return or to his personal chances with Gracie, I couldn’t tell. All I knew was that I had to come up with the most secure place I could imagine to continue our discussion; and with that in mind, I went to an ancient nail that protruded from one of the wall beams of the hangar, and retrieved a large collection of keys that hung on it. Picking out two fairly new ones, I informed Lucas, much to his delight, that in a lean-to shed behind the barn where the cars had been parked there were two side-by-side Arctic Cat Prowler ATVs; and I told him to get them started, as their engines could sometimes take a while to warm up if they hadn’t been used in a bit, which was the case just then. Overjoyed at his luck at being given the assignment of getting such big gas-powered beasts running and ready, Lucas shot off, and I went up to call Marcianna away from a crow she’d managed to kill and put her onto her leash. I had to laugh when she finally appeared, the last bits of small black feathers still stuck to her muzzle.

  “You slob,” I said, brushing the mess away. “Come on, I need you to do your favorite thing—parade for the public…”

  And parade she did. I saw no further sign of the Bureau boys, so whatever their shock at having glimpsed Marcianna, they were obviously keeping to their first assignment closely. Having tasted wild blood once that day, Marcianna kept her wide eyes on special lookout for little Terence, during our quick walk; but even thoughts of that quarry vanished from my companion’s thoughts when we returned after a half an hour or so to find that Lucas had pulled the Prowlers out of the shed and into the open, where he was busily making sure that first one and then the other got fully warmed up. Marcianna knew exactly what this sight indicated: she and I frequently took trips up the mountain in one of the rigs, trips that delighted her to no end, and it would have been difficult to say whose excitement was the greater at that moment, hers or Lucas’.

  “Damn, Doc!” the boy exclaimed, ready for anything. “Six hundred ninety-five cc’s and four-stroke engines—not bad, for utility rigs! They’ll get you up that mountain, all right. Suh-weet. So—what’s the plan?”

  “The plan is, you get as comfortable as you can in the bed of the one I’ll be driving. Marcianna goes in our passenger seat.”

  “Passenger seat?” Lucas echoed. “She’s going to be all right, riding up there?”

  “Always has been,” I said. “You’re the one I’m worried about—the ride’s going to be a little rough, especially toward the top of the mountain. When we get where we’re going, you stay outside and keep watch—but listen, too, Lucas, I want you to keep hearing what’s discussed. And at the first sign of any real trouble, you bolt, got it? I take your very sensible sister’s worries very seriously, and I don’t want anything unfortunate happening.”

  “Hey, don’t worry about me,” Lucas said, jumping into the small bed of the first of the Prowlers. “I done crazier shit in ATVs, and I know my way around these mountains pretty good.”

  “I have no doubt, you God damned little trespasser,” I said, turning the binoculars on the hollow road once more, this time a little more worriedly: for it was about time for Mike’s car to be getting back.

  “What I want to know,” Lucas asked, getting himself as braced as he could in the Prowler, “is what you think Dr. Chang is really up to. She doesn’t seem to know what the BCI’s next move will be—and you can call me crazy, but I don’t think she came here just to hear about your method.”

  “A shrewd analysis, Consulting Detective,” I said without turning.

  “Plus,” he pressed, pleased with himself, “when she told you about Kelsey getting the boot out of her house, didn’t she just give you what you were looking for?”

  “She gave us a lot,” I said, leading Marcianna—or rather being led by her—to the passenger seat of the ATV, after which I secured a sheet of nylon netting over the opening from the roof of the open cab to the floor, just to make sure she didn’t go tumbling out: though such was always unlikely, given her ability to grip the seat with her ever-extended claws.

  “So,” the kid went on, still proudly, “why are we taking her someplace you obviously think’ll scare the shit out of her if you know she’s already told you everything she has to say?”

  “I never said she’d told us everything—there’s more about the official investigation that Gracie hasn’t told us. Besides her not buying into the serial killer idea, I mean.”

  “Damn,” Lucas said in quiet disappointment. “And that woulda been so cool…”

  “Oh, yeah. That would be just awesome—you’d shit yourself, Lucas, if a serial was loose, grabbing kids in this county. But, returning to the realm of the sane, what we’re doing, other than trying to find out what more she knows, is trying to get Gracie to start acting as a conduit of information between the senior county and state levels and our own investigation.”

  “So you figure this whole escaping the Bureau guys and then going someplace super-secret to have a conference is what’s going to ice the deal? Take her up the mountain with Marcianna, generally freak her out so much that you guys’ll be the only people she really trusts?”

  “Something like that—” I said, stopping suddenly as I caught sight of dust rising from about halfway down Death’s Head Hollow. I couldn’t see the actual car yet, but from the cloud that was rising into the trees along the road, it could only have been lead-footed Mike driving. “Okay, here we go,” I announced.

  “And you’re sure Marcianna’s going to be okay with a stranger?” Lucas questioned.

  “I’m only sure of one thing,” I told him, as we got under way. “You, me, Mike, Gracie—we’re all about to learn a lot. Provided there’s no shooting.”

  “About that,” Lucas said without missing a beat. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance—”

  “No!” I told him. “You don’t get a gun, for God’s sake.”

  “Aw, man,” Lucas said, kicking at the wall of the ATV’s bed. “Not even one lousy gun for self-defense? This really is getting to be like school…”

  {iii.}

  The Empress pulled into Shiloh’s driveway and up to the barn as speedily as it had approached, roaring to a halt before us. Mike bounced out, his mood dramatically improved, and Gracie followed, at a much slower pace that indicated her amazement at what she was seeing.

  “The Prowlers, hunh?” Mike said with a grin. “Excellent—let’s hit it.”

  “Hang on,” I said, looking from him to Gracie, who continued to approach the ATVs very cautiously. “What, exactly, happened?”

  “Went like clockwork,” Mike said, as if he’d just carried out the most routine maneuver imaginable. “The Bureau boys didn’t stay around very long, just did a pass-by—right,
Gracie?”

  But Gracie had her eyes fixed on Marcianna, who was staring back at her with wide golden eyes as she tried to determine who our guest might be.

  “That—” Gracie began nervously, holding up a finger. “That is no dog!”

  “No,” Mike said, a little apologetically. “It’s not…”

  “But—everybody’s always saying that you have some strange kind of dog up here,” Gracie protested, before repeating, “And that is no dog!”

  “I think we’ve pretty much established that, Gracie,” Mike said, taking out two cigarettes, lighting them both, and then handing her one. “But there is an explanation.” Then he gently lowered Gracie’s arm. “Don’t point, she doesn’t really like it.”

  This was nonsense, but I was glad to see Mike playing along with the idea of keeping her off-balance until she’d told all she had to tell. “ ‘Don’t point’?” Gracie echoed in disbelief, still too shocked by all she’d been through to accept the sight of Marcianna. “That is a damned cheetah, Michael, how do you explain that? I mean—” She once again gripped Mike’s arm hard. “I know a damned cheetah when I see one!”

  “Yes, you do,” Mike said, getting Gracie seated in the second Prowler. “But try to keep your voice down, too—their ears are really sensitive.”

  Gracie was about to launch into another round of sarcastic invective, which she finally abandoned in favor of asking, with some resignation, “So—is she safe?”

  “As long as Trajan has hold of her,” Mike said, “then yeah, she’s safe. Basically.”

  “All right,” I said. “Mike, have you got Gracie strapped in?”

  “Ready to roll, L.T.,” Mike answered, dashing around to the driver’s seat of his ATV. “Where are we headed, anyway?”

  “Up the mountain!” I called over the revving of the two engines. “It’s getting dark fast, so keep up.”

  “But where up the mountain?” Gracie called, her fear of Marcianna having given way to a new sort of bewilderment. “I mean, exactly?”

  “Oh, I think you’ll know when you see it,” I answered. “All set? Then let’s move…”

  And with a hard motion I threw my Prowler into gear and stepped on the gas, steering away toward the first of the trails that would take us to our high destination. Yet even as I pulled out, I heard Gracie continuing to protest to Mike: “I mean—I’m being followed by damned Bureau men, okay, I get that. But what the hell is your partner doing with a damned cheetah?”

  I didn’t stick around to hear more. The farming trail we were initially on took us to Shiloh’s highest crop field, where tall, soft alfalfa was just maturing; and when we’d completed the trip around half of this expanse, we came to a spot where an old road into the woods became visible. Without pausing, we turned and burst through a border of huge maples, oaks, and ash trees, plunging on into the wilderness.

  Suddenly we found ourselves in a world where the rust color of years of dead leaves on the earthy floor and the light green of the undergrowth that grew up through that base formed a shadowy contrast to the brilliance of the sunset that we were literally chasing up the mountain. Its light was splintered into emerald flakes by the countless leaves of high summer in front of us, as the shadow of night crept up in a line just behind the racing Prowlers. Marcianna, unable to contain herself, let out a sharp chirrup of pure joy: for the woods were teeming with life, and she could see, smell, and sense far more of it than the rest of us could. But, while she was anxious to get to the ground and pursue some of the creatures that scattered before our approach, she nonetheless loved the speed of the Prowler and the quick, endless panorama of new sights and sounds that it offered; and she ultimately decided, as she always did on these trips, that the ground could wait. Sitting back on her haunches, she clung expertly to her seat with her claws, and reveled in the ascent to ever higher ground.

  Lucas, however, was a little less happy: at one point, when we hit the third or fourth in a series of strong bumps in the agèd road, he let out a particularly sharp cry of pain, one that was followed by his similarly passionate voice: “I can’t believe this—she gets to enjoy the ride, while I’m back here getting my ass kicked by every rock and hole that, I’m beginning to think, you’re hitting on purpose? That shit is wrong, Doc…”

  As we began to move up the steepest trails and roads, many of which predated even Caractacus Jones’ purchase of the land, a white-tailed doe burst out of nowhere at one point, coming close to being struck by the Prowler. I had to lean over and put my arm around Marcianna for a moment, for fear that her predatory desires would get the best of her, and cause her to try to leap from the racing vehicle. But she continued to understand that there might be even more alluring visions ahead, especially when we finally stopped; and so she kept her seat with admirable discipline.

  On we climbed, from one mountain level to another: from beautiful, unexpected glades full of ferns and mountain flowers to high rock escarpments, where the Prowler sometimes skidded a bit on the moss that grew atop the stone. And although such motions drew small cries of theatrical terror from Lucas, we were never in any danger throughout the full fifteen or twenty minutes that it took us to pass first two thousand feet, then twenty-five hundred, and finally to the three-thousand-foot mark, where the Taconics reach their interconnected and surprisingly pastoral summits. Once we gained this mark, new trails became visible before us, more clearly worn than any we had thus far used. Some showed signs of small, nearly buried railroad ties: the most clearly preserved remnants of the routes used by the carts and, later, the steam trolleys of Colonel Jones’ charcoal business. We were nearing our destination, and with a powerful new snarl, the Prowler engine answered as I called for greater speed along the ridgetop, so much so that we were soon doing an improbable forty miles an hour through the high forest—in darkness, for the night had finally overtaken us. At that pace, our goal quickly became visible: an impressive group of semi-ruined, seemingly ancient structures in the middle distance, lit, now, almost exclusively by the Prowler’s headlights.

  “Whoa,” Lucas said in wonder. “What the fuck are they?”

  “The old charcoal kilns that the Colonel built,” I said.

  And at last I slowed down just a bit, Marcianna chirruping again in anticipation of our coming to a halt. In moments Mike and Gracie were right up on us, and I indicated the ruins ahead with motions of my left hand. Mike nodded, and together we sped down the last stretch of old road until the great brick structures—five in total, each the size of a small, round, domed house, and all but one collapsed to greater or lesser extents—stood before us. I pulled up to the most intact structure, shut the Prowler down, and got a firm hold of Marcianna’s leash, locking the handle of her retractable lead. She did not, after all, know Gracie yet, and I wanted to make sure that she didn’t consider our guest either an enemy or yet another creature of the wilderness to be hunted—particularly if Gracie’s fear and confusion, which would only excite my companion, completely got the better of her. For there was, as I had told Lucas, still a bit of the savage in Marcianna; and although I had no more interest in removing it from her soul than I had in purifying my own spirit of the lifelong rage that had almost cost Frank Mangold a cracked skull a mere forty-eight hours earlier, I certainly did not want to see it unleashed on Gracie.

  Mike, I soon discovered, had finally given in and explained to Gracie just who and what Marcianna was, on their trip up the mountain; and, given that we had now reached our remote destination, I, too, decided that our guest had been through enough. I carefully guided my young colleague over to my companion, telling Gracie to put her hand before Marcianna’s nose so that she could get her scent and grow used to the fact that she was simply one more human that was not to be either feared or attacked. Gracie, to her considerable credit, braved this introduction well: she had indeed grown into quite a brave and intrepid woman, since the time I had known her as a young apprentice in New York City. Indeed, by the time Marcianna turned away from her, fi
xing her predatory attention on the forest that had long since encroached on what had once been a bustling little industry on the ridgetop, Gracie had in turn shifted her focus from the improbable presence of a cheetah in the Taconics to the origin and purpose of the ruined kilns. What, she wanted to know, could possibly have warranted the building of such ambitious structures in so remote a location?

  “Charcoal fuel,” I said simply, as I wrapped and tied the now-unlocked handle end of Marcianna’s twenty-five-foot lead around a slender young maple tree outside the most intact of the kilns.

  “Charcoal? Come on, they didn’t exactly have barbecue grills in those days,” Gracie observed, quite accurately. “So what else would you need charcoal for?”

  “Well,” I answered, indicating the narrow entrance to the kiln, “to heat homes, early on; but when the steel industry first arrived in the Northeast, charcoal was used to fire the furnaces.”

  “They didn’t just use coal?” Gracie asked. “And are you positive that it’s safe inside there—it won’t collapse?”

  “The roof’s already collapsed about as much as it’s going to, in our generation,” Mike explained. “And the walls on this one are surprisingly secure.”

  “And to answer your first question,” I added, “charcoal has always been a much better fuel than coal for furnaces, whether the old pot-bellied jobs you still find in a lot of local basements, or the big beasts that powered the steel mills in Fraser, Troy, Schenectady, all those cities and towns. But when really cheap coal, backed by big money, arrived, the charcoal industry died off.”

  “Hunh!” Gracie determined, staring at the kilns again. “But—to build these things, I mean, how did they get all the bricks up here?”

  “Well, Gracie,” I said, indicating one of the stretches of ground where the faint outlines of small railroad ties could be seen. “The first thing the Colonel constructed was a very narrow-gauge railway, one that ran from the kilns all the way down the mountain.”