Clan Novel Setite: Book 4 of The Clan Novel Saga

by Kathleen Ryan

  “You still,” said Thompson, “haven’t told me why you changed the plan. I was under the impression, even tonight, that we were going to continue the family game. No changes.”

  “Miss Dimitros is a very perceptive woman. I knew as soon as I saw her with the Asp that Raphael had no hope of deceiving her. He is limited. Gabriel is much the better actor; that’s why I prefer to keep him in the townhouse. My visitors there can look through brick walls, given time….” He trailed off. “Remind me, at sundown, to readjust our arrangements there. I’ll need to speak to Janet about the Greywhethers Building.”

  “But Elizabeth?”

  “Let her be. Give her time.” He rose. “Gild the cage.”

  The bunker door shut behind him.

  Elizabeth lay in bed, pretending to sleep. Her body remained in the position it had held when she regained consciousness. Her mind was busy taking stock of her situation. She visualized Baltimore on the map, and tried to remember the details of the drive out. She thought about the house, and the cameras, and the woods around the farm. She thought about Hesha, and she acknowledged the blind spot there—she absolutely could not analyze him; could not predict his reactions. She couldn’t reach him unless he allowed her to.

  But there were other things.

  Elizabeth slid out of bed, weakly, and into the desk chair. She reached for the phone, picked it up, and listened. There was a dial tone. She punched in the number for Amy Rutherford’s house and waited for the connection. The line opened…and closed with a click. A voice came to her clearly and crisply over far shorter wires.

  “Good afternoon, Liz. Do you need something?” It was Thompson.

  “I’d like to call New York. How do I get an outside line?” she asked, letting go the fact that she’d needed no extra codes to do so before.

  “I’m sorry, Liz.” He waited, holding the phone in his room, ready with prepared explanations, excuses, orders from above.

  “I think I understand.” She replaced the receiver. Strike one, Dimitros, she thought. Idly, she turned over the books and tools on her desk—Vegel’s desk. One drawer held office supplies: pens, pencils, erasers, staples, cellophane tape.

  Elizabeth unplugged the phone, set the roll of tape down thoughtfully, and began—maddeningly slow and inexplicably light-headed—to search her room.

  Thompson dropped stiffly into the wide console chair. The lights were green, the cameras on and tracking well. The Asp was long gone, but a litter of crumbs and wrappers testified that he had, in fact, spent the day on duty. Ron swept the trash away, and settled in to make check-up calls on his agents.

  He’d finished the last when Elizabeth came out of Vegel’s apartment. She was empty-handed, but wearing a light jacket—a kind of photographer’s vest—that had several large pockets. With experienced eyes, he determined that she wasn’t carrying anything in them.

  The girl paused on the edge of the museum floor. She still held the doorknob; nervously, she looked around.

  There was no one there, by order of the boss himself, but the little table the Asp had put her dinner on before had been moved to stand beside her door. The tray on top of it held breakfast…lunch by now. She lifted one of the covers away, scrutinized the food on the plate, and dropped the dome back over the sandwiches. After a moment, she lifted the tray and disappeared with it into her room.

  Thompson shifted cameras and watched as she put it on the bed. The desktop was empty, he noticed. Why not put the food there?

  Elizabeth came back out, closed the door behind her, and walked, with faltering steps, to the studio. She went through the drawers and bins quickly. Thompson put the workshop on the central monitor and zoomed in on her. Aha. That’s what the jacket was for. She filled the pockets with her tools—Q-tips, bottles of solvent, masking tape, the discard tray, a magnifying glass, soft brushes, stiff brushes—and picked up the smallest of the paintings under restoration. She left the studio, returned to Vegel’s apartment, and spread her loot out on the desk.

  Thompson nodded to himself. Good. Work would take her mind off things. He rubbed his eyes, stretched, and went off in search of more of that remedy himself.

  “Thompson.”

  “Sir.” Ron stood up; he’d been waiting, not in his customary position by the door, but resting as well as he could on Vegel’s stone bench.

  “You’re looking better.”

  “I feel better, sir.”

  “Where is the Asp?”

  “On the desk. He’s been filling Janet in on the situation.”

  “Good.” Hesha sat down on the bench. “Janet.”

  “Here, sir. Shall I patch in Mr. Mercurio?”

  “Yes, please.” More white noise filtered in. “Report.”

  Thompson began. “The townhouse and the city holdings are secure. The Asp reports no visitors. He says he’s bored, sir. Bored and healthy.”

  Janet Lindbergh cleared her throat. “The last refugee is off our hands, sir. Mr. Vargas departed his safe house this evening with tickets for Seattle. He left a note for you; I’m sending it by courier.”

  “Good.”

  His secretary went on: “Dr. Oxenti’s clinic has received a small commendation for volunteer services from the local Red Cross. The Doctor would like to return to Baltimore for the ceremony.”

  “Tell her no.” Hesha replied immediately. “And keep an eye on bookings for flights in and out of Anchorage until after the presentation. Freeze her accounts if necessary. Other business?”

  “Miss Dimitros tried to call out this morning. New York number—”

  “James and Amaryllis Rutherford, 6724 Lake Park Drive,” Janet interjected—

  “I told her she couldn’t. She seemed to take it very well, sir. She took in lunch and one of her paintings at three o’clock; since then she’s been quiet as a mouse and twice as well-behaved.”

  Over the intercom, there came the sound of snorting laughter.

  “Asp?”

  “You have a comment, Mr. Mercurio?”

  The Asp laughed again. “She’s taking it well, sir. Oh, she’s behaving herself beautifully. Quiet as a mouse. But we’re not going to be able to see her being quiet anymore, Ron. She’s found all the cameras in Vegel’s room, and she’s sticking masking tape over every goddamn one of them. Found the microphone, too.”

  The conference broke up shortly after that.

  The Asp lowered his tray onto the table outside Vegel’s apartment and knocked once. With the family flair for stealth, he slipped away again.

  After a long delay—two minutes, at least—the door to Vegel’s room opened a crack. The woman inside peered out. A hand mirror poked through. Its reflection flashed around the basement. The door closed again.

  After another five minutes, Elizabeth herself emerged, pale, thin, and nervous. Warily, she took up the tray. She backed into her hole like a badger, and the door shut immediately. The lock clicked after her, and through the thick wood came the sound of something heavy being dragged across the boards.

  In his study, the master of the house watched his prisoner’s movements.

  In the bunker, Thompson saw Liz gather in her dinner, he saw the Asp wolf down his, and he saw Hesha—sitting perfectly, unnaturally still—watch Elizabeth.

  Monday, 12 July 1999 3:18 AM

  Laurel Ridge Farm

  Columbia, Maryland

  Elizabeth maneuvered the canvas through the barricade at her door. She set it down on the “room service” table and then locked the apartment behind her. She picked up the painting, headed for the studio, and puttered around inside the workroom for a few minutes. She pulled another piece, an oil panel, from the flat drawers. With that in hand, she walked back into the main room. Lunch had appeared on the table, but there was no one in sight. Good, she thought.

  She propped the panel beside the little table and headed for the stairs. She checked the kitchen—empty—and tried the mud-room door. It was locked, and the deadbolt needed a key. She saw why. Even a novice hou
sebreaker like herself could smash the glass above it and turn latches from the outside.

  Elizabeth listened. The house was silent. She turned right, into the colonial wing and through the main hall. The front door had no windows set into it; there was just a chance that the bolt was simpler. She turned the knob. No luck. Perhaps she could find a spare key? Of course, this was hardly a house whose inmates would leave their spares lying around. Elizabeth bent to examine the shape of the keyhole and saw that it was parallel to the ground. Hadn’t the kitchen door bolt been vertical?

  She went back. After a minute, she found the problem; there were three bolts altogether. One turned with the handle and could be set by a spring catch. She’d fixed that. One was near the floor and turned with an odd-shaped knob—she hadn’t noticed it the first time. The keyed bolt had been open when she tried it; in an instant the door was open, too. Liz double-checked the snap lock; if she couldn’t find civilization in one hike (the word escape occurred to her and was promptly dismissed) she didn’t want to have to ring the doorbell to get in the house.

  The sun shone down through a bleached, thin blanket of clouds. The watery-gray ripples in the cover were moving quickly, but at ground level the air was stultifying: humid, thick, and still.

  Elizabeth’s eyes stung her. She’d forgotten how dark it was in the house. Through the faint blue afterimage, she set out up the hill. With slick fingers, she pulled open all the vent zippers in her photo jacket. It was bulky and uncomfortably hot inside it; already she was drenched with sweat. Still, she felt better—ludicrously better—knowing that every pocket was stuffed with something useful. The tools she’d gleaned from Vegel’s desk and the studio weren’t much, but…

  In ten minutes she crested the ridge. It was a worn-out mountain, no longer even a foothill, but it was the backbone and a stump or two of rib from an old Appalachian. The granite spine of the giant lay exposed on the hilltop. Elizabeth rounded the curve of it and found a place to climb. The little wall’s slope was too steep for the dirt to find much hold, and the blackberry brambles that grew solidly up the other sides were thinner here. She pulled herself up and looked around.

  Damn. The landscape was beautiful; it was dark green, rolling country. It was full of trees, and between the contours of the country and the height of the trees, there wasn’t much of what she had come to see…not even the house or the drive up to it.

  She sat down on the highest point, pulled out a battered brass compass, and found northeast. Baltimore would, or should, lie in that direction anyway, and if she kept her eye out for the broadcast tower as she walked, she’d hit something sooner. She hoped she knew the road to the house well enough to know it if she came to it. The last thing she wanted was Thompson driving up beside her in the sedan just as she reached the mailbox.

  Elizabeth set out cross-country.

  In a shadowy niche among the brambles, the Eldest watched her go with lazy eyes.

  Elizabeth came out of a rhododendron thicket covered in spider webs. She wiped away the strands and dislodged a few hitchhikers. Struggling a little with the thick carpet of old, shiny brown leaves underfoot, she reached out to a wrist-thick sapling for support. It helped her with the descent, and when she had crossed the damp patch at the bottom of the gully, she used the thick roots of the oak above her for a ladder.

  The Asp waited on the other side of the tree. He let her pass, and then he broke a dry branch between his hands. It sounded like a shot in the still air.

  “Hello, Lizzie.” The words were friendly; the tone was not. “Going somewhere?”

  Strike two, she thought. “Nice day for a walk,” she said aloud.

  “Has been.” Raphael paused, pursing his lips. “Looks like a storm coming in now, though. You’d better go back to the house. Don’t want you getting caught out in it.”

  “Thanks.” She shifted her weight uphill, and took a step farther away from the Asp, his tree, and the farm behind them. He watched her from half-closed eyes. “Liz…you don’t want to go that way.”

  She took another step. “I think I do, actually.” Raphael reached out a hand for her wrist. He was quick, but she was jumpy enough to be quicker. She eluded his grasp and they stopped, facing each other, two yards farther from the creek.

  “You’re supposed to be a smart girl, Lizzie.” He lunged again, and this time his trained reflexes won out over her nervous instinct. He pulled her down the slope and onto the slanting trunk of the oak, not gently. “You didn’t think it was going to be easy, did you?” He pushed his face up to hers. There was an inch, no more, between them, and the tight, hard gaze of the Asp flickered from eye to eye…left, right…back again. Liz stared back. Her wrist hurt her; he was holding it in a tight twist.

  “Come on,” he said. “This way.”

  The pain rotated around her hand. Raphael pushed her easily by the elbow along a path on the edge of the gully. The trees thinned out as they went. They descended into a hollow and began to cross the wetter ground at its base.

  “Mercurio!” The shout came from the Asp’s shoulder, as far as Liz could tell. “Goddamn it, Asp. Let her go.” Static crackled around the voice. It was Thompson. “Let her go this minute. Fuck it, Raf. What if he checks these tapes tonight?”

  Raphael released Elizabeth’s wrist. She turned and put three yards between them, then stopped, chafing her burned skin. Neither of them displayed any expression. “She was trying to leave, Ron. I got a job to do.”

  “I know. I’m criticizing your style, not the performance. Hand me over to Liz for a second.”

  The Asp reached into his shirt pocket and retrieved a very small, flattish, black disc. He tossed it to her. The disc turned out to be a phone. “Hello, Liz,” said Thompson’s distant voice. “Do me a favor?”

  “Maybe,” she answered.

  He sighed. “You know the path you were coming down? Get back on it and follow it to the drive. I’ll pick you up in the car and bring you home.”

  “To Manhattan?”

  Static. Then, “No.”

  “How far’s the walk?”

  “Fifteen minutes, twenty, tops.”

  “See you then.”

  “Thanks. Give me back to the maverick, there. He and I need to have a talk before the boss wakes up.”

  “Coffee?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “If you’re having some.” Thompson clattered around the counter for a few minutes. With the steam rising and the pot filling, he leaned crookedly against the cabinets and watched the girl. She’d taken off her bulging jacket and hung it over the chair back. She sat with both elbows on the table, casually, and her hair was tucked behind her ears. Her hands traced the grain and scars of the battered wooden tabletop, stroking out the same patterns over and over.

  Ron pulled two mugs off the rack and set them on a tray. Sugar, milk, the coffeepot, cookie tin. He scooped up the tray in one corrugated fist.

  “Mind if we take these down to your room?

  Why?” she snapped.

  “Because I think you might enjoy a little privacy. It’s against all my own regs, but hell—if something comes up through the floor, you run and sound the alarm.” Liz said nothing. “I’m not kidding, girl. There’s a reason we’ve got cameras every five feet. And the doors wired so we can keep track of the ones the cameras don’t see.” Elizabeth’s eyebrows united in disbelief.

  Thompson shook his head. “You’ve seen him. Let me start you out easy. Imagine…two of him. Twenty of him. Weaker breeds in six-packs like bad beer. The invisible man sneaking in to steal stuff. God only knows. Now can we go downstairs?”

  She led the way. At the steps down to Vegel’s apartment, she paused to fish a key out of her jacket. She opened the door and shifted the barricades aside.

  “What the hell have you got in there? There wasn’t that much loose furniture in the…” Ron ground to a halt. Awestruck, he laughed. “Good job, Liz. Damnation.” Every one of the fancy cabinet doors—some floor-to-ceiling closet pieces, some as small as
a medicine chest—had been removed from its hinges and piled up against the entrance. The heavy bathroom door leaned on the secret panel to Vegel’s crypt, and its base was reinforced with pieces of the bed frame.

  “The tray fits on the desk,” Elizabeth directed. “Give me a minute and I’ll liberate another chair.”

  They poured, and mixed, and sipped, and when she’d relaxed enough to explore the contents of Gabriel’s cookie tin, he let her get through two chocolate monstrosities before he tried to talk.

  Thompson cleared his throat. “Thanks for letting me come in here. I appreciate it.”

  “Thanks for pretending my carpentry would do a damn bit of good if you decided you wanted in.”

  “It would slow us down. And it was clever.” He hesitated. “But really…I’m glad we’re here, and not in the kitchen. I’ve got a few things to say I don’t want the Asp—or the boss—listening to later.”

  Elizabeth gave him steady, stony, sphinx-like attention.

  “First—let me say I’m sorry,” he began slowly. “I know that doesn’t mean a damn thing to you now…but I’ve got to say it because I do really mean that.” He ruffled his grizzled hair, pushing on. “And I want you to know that I…well, I can’t say that I—we—haven’t all lied to you in one way or another, right from the start. But what I told you about my hometown, about my folks and my high school and why I joined the police and why I left the Force to start my own business—that was all true, every word of it.” He paused, and a kind of hopeless look filled his face. “Believe it or not, I like you. And I’ve got to say I like you even better since this thing blew up in our faces. You’ve fought it, but you haven’t panicked after that first night, and if you’re feeling sorry for yourself I can’t see it on the surface.” He grinned. “Not even the boss was expecting the masking tape, Liz.”

  The faintest echo of a smile played across her lips. Thompson, uncertain how to keep a good thing going, took a long, hard look into his coffee cup. He shrugged with his hands, and reached for a cookie.