by James A Ross
Twenty white knuckle minutes later, Tom spun the wheel to starboard and pushed the throttle toward the deck. A half-pipe of water corkscrewed over the transom and hurled the boat sideways through the mouth of Pocket Cove.
They were in.
CHAPTER 30
Two snow-wet Dobermans drifted silently from the woods and stood over Tom as he secured the bow and stern lines to the seawall at the back of the cove. The dogs looked at Hassad and nowhere else. He shouted something to them in a language that Tom did not understand, and the dogs leapt to the deck, baring large, slavering teeth.
“They can swim,” said Hassad. He pressed his gun to the back of Tom’s head and marched him toward a switchback of stone steps that led to the top of the bluff. From there, a beaten path led to a glass and concrete structure perched on a rocky precipice overlooking the water.
Several winters in a row, a teenage Joe Morgan and friends had broken into the bluff top house that was Pocket Island’s only structure and its only winter occupant other than the colossal beech and pine trees that surrounded the island to the water’s edge. Tom had never been inside. But from his brother’s long-ago description he assumed that the interior was similar to the Falling Water House that its famous architect had built a decade earlier. Joe had described built-in, patterned concrete everything, spectacular views, unbreakable furniture and a cleverly hidden liquor cabinet.
But Hassad did not turn on a light when they got inside. All Tom could see was a large open space broken by a freestanding fireplace and surrounded by floor-to-ceiling glass. Hassad put a hand on the back of Tom’s head and shoved him toward a darkened stairwell. “Move!” he hissed.
A spider web at the top of the stairway caught Tom’s face. He raised a hand to brush it away, and Hassad brought his pistol down on top of Tom’s head. “Hands down!” Tom tumbled the length of the steps. Head, hands, shoulder and knees collided with concrete at the bottom. Hassad’s outline loomed above.
Clink. Something landed at Tom’s feet. “Pick it up,” Hassad ordered.
Tom’s fingers found a piece of flat, serrated metal the size of his thumb. A door key. He tried to picture it a weapon.
“Turn around, find the keyhole and open the door.”
If Hassad was going to kill him, this was an opportune time and place. But the moment provided no choice other than obedience, and no strategy other than watchful waiting.
* * *
Joe strained to see through the veil of snow. Somewhere behind it, a faceless parka held a gun to Tommy’s head—if he was still alive. The Coldwater patrol boat was gone. A call to Johnsen would bring another boat, as well as choppers, guns and overwhelming manpower. But a decade of zoo-keeping Coldwater’s menagerie of small-time criminals, had taught Joe what punks do when cornered. They panic; and the killers among them kill. It would not take an army to save Tom. But that is what Johnsen would send, and that’s how Tommy would get dead. Joe would not call for help.
“Idjit!” A voice began to scream. The voice was angry… almost crazed. “You goddamn moron!” The voice was closing fast, followed by what sounded like a swarm of bees.
“You had to make one more trip!”
“Shut up, Mickey! I’m not the goddamn weatherman.”
“We almost drowned!”
As the swarm grew louder, an aluminum jon boat appeared out of the storm. A vibrant humming seeped from a padded wooden box fitted over its outboard engine. The wet, familiar faces in the boat gaped at the figure poised on its toes at the end of the dock.
“Clever muffler, Mickey. Keep the salmon. Leave the boat.”
* * *
Hassad turned a dial beside the cellar door. Yellow light revealed a wall of empty wooden racks. Stacks of surplus ammunition boxes covered a rough plank table in the center of the stone floor. Two metal footlockers filled the space beneath it.
“Bring everything to the boat,” he ordered. “Carefully.”
Tom worked as slowly as he dared… hands numb… knees cracked and bleeding. A knot of throbbing flesh swelled the back of his head where Hassad had clubbed him with the pistol. Other than to keep from freezing inside his soaking clothes, there was no reason for Tom to hurry. As soon as he ran out of jobs, Hassad would surely kill him.
The insides of the metal boxes clinked like wind chimes as he carried them up the stone steps. The two Dobermans rode his heels, snarling at his every twitch. Hassad screamed caution and speed at the same time, and when Tom couldn’t budge a pair of footlockers, he shoved him to the floor and tested their weight himself. The professor’s nerves were frayed, and Tom wondered how long before they snapped.
Hassad grabbed the canvas strap at one end of the locker and ordered Tom to take the other. Their combined strength was enough to haul the heavy trunk out of the cellar and across the snow to the top of the bluff, though the effort exhausted them both.
Tom tried to visualize how he might unbalance Hassad on the steps leading down to the cove and, with luck, send him tumbling onto the rocks. A kick to the knee? He shook his head and tried to clear his mind. And a bullet to the face, if you miss. Think! But his mind was as numb as his body, and it took all his energy and focus to hold onto the heavy trunk. He licked a snowflake from his swollen lips and ran his eyes along the steps leading down to the cove and the rocks below. Why not just shove the trunk into his chest? He looked up to see Hassad watching him.
“You first,” said Hassad, gesturing him forward. Placing his pistol along the top of the trunk, he added: “If you so much as stumble, or even hesitate… I can manage from here on my own.”
Tom willed himself to remain alert for weapons and opportunity. But nothing that his exhausted brain proposed had any reasonable chance of success. He could turn the boat broadside to the swells outside the cove and try to capsize it. After that, he could try to swim to shore before he froze to death or drowned. But neither capsizing nor survival seemed likely. And the professor remained vigilant.
Hassad marched Tom back to the house and ordered him to drag a Morris chair to the plate glass window overlooking the lake. From a pocket inside his parka, Hassad took a roll of duct tape and ordered Tom to wrap his ankles to the chair’s front legs and his right wrist to its flat wooden arm. Ocher liquid oozed through tattered cloth as Tom forced his crusted knees to bend one more time. Hassad wrapped the final appendage and fortified the others with extra turns of tape. “Now we wait.”
Tom didn’t ask for what, or who. Hassad couldn’t handle a boat in this weather. He’d need someone who knew the lake to take him wherever he needed to go next. When Susan showed up, if she showed up, he’d have one more pilot than he needed.
At the risk of having Hassad use the duct tape on his mouth, Tom began to probe. “If you don’t mind me asking, did the NeuroGene owners know what they were handling for you?”
Hassad’s answer was curt and dismissive. “I should think you’d have other things on your mind.”
Tom tried to smile, but the effort made his temple ache where Hassad had clubbed it with his pistol. “What’s in the trunks, then? It felt like cement, but it’s not, is it?”
Hassad’s eyes widened. “Call it justice, Mr. Morgan.”
“As in the ‘free exchange of ideas and resources’?”
“Excuse me?”
“The shit you were shoveling in your office.”
“You would think that,” he dismissed.
“I don’t think it’s grandma’s crystal clinking around in those little boxes? What is it? The plague?”
Hassad’s face grew hard and his voice irritated. “Dark skin, foreign accent? That must mean something nefarious, mustn’t it, Tom?” The slip to informal address was pointed, but not friendly.
“The gun and the duct tape don’t mean good times… Suliman.”
Hassad scowled.
“Justice for what?” Tom demanded. “From who?”
“Surely you know. Surely Susan has told you about me. About us?”
Tom
shook his head. The effort made him dizzy.
“I find that hard to believe. She’s spoken so much about you.”
“It doesn’t seem to have done me any good.”
“No. And frankly, it’s irritating. That and her inflated view of your intelligence.”
Shit. “Susan and I were over a long time ago,” said Tom. “If you think I’m standing in the way of something now…”
Hassad waved the pistol at his duct tape handiwork. “Hardly.”
“Then why did you drag me out here, at gunpoint? For what?”
Hassad eyes locked on his. “Why don’t you guess, Tom? I’m told that you’re exceptionally good at games. Is that true? Or is Susan confused about that too.”
The chill from the concrete floor spread through Tom’s torso. Shit, shit, shit. He cocked his head as far as his neck would allow. “And what do I get if I win?”
“Another gold star. I’m told they’re important to you. Almost the only thing.”
Fuck you. Sweat dripped from Tom’s temples, though the temperature inside the glass and concrete room was low enough that he could see his breath. But what was the alternative?
“Okay, I’m game. Let’s see if she’s right.” He took as long as he could and then began. “First, even if this is personal, which I can’t believe, you don’t need anything on that boat to get rid of me.” He lifted his chin toward the gun in Hassad’s hand. “You could have used that at Joe’s cabin and saved yourself a dangerous boat ride.”
“And that tells you what?” Hassad’s tone was mock pedantic. “Show me Susan isn’t exaggerating.”
“It tells me you’re not just pissed at me. And that your hit list is long enough for a boatload of mystery boxes to come in handy.”
“Anything else?”
“That there’s a chance that the folks on your list will be in the same place at the same time, so you can use whatever’s in those boxes on them.”
“Perhaps. What else?”
“That you’re mad enough to risk your life to have a chance to do it.”
“Angry not mad. But otherwise excellent. You’re not just a pretty face, after all.” Tom’s ears flushed at the line Hassad could only have gotten from Susan. But further banter was forestalled by the opening bars of Vivaldi’s Le Quattro Stagione trilling from Hassad’s cell phone. Hassad pressed the keypad and walked to the far corner of the large open space. Tom couldn’t overhear words, but the tone was diffident and cautious.
Dobermans began to howl. A door slammed. Tom twisted his limbs beneath the tape without result. Minutes passed. Then a draft of cold air swept across the floor, followed by footsteps. “We should leave soon,” a new voice said. “I was out there a long time. Someone may have seen me.”
Tom squeezed his eyes and lifted his head. Only his mother’s voice could have been more unnerving.
* * *
Hassad raised his arm toward the row of windows. “There’s a large police boat tied up at a dock at the bottom of that cliff. Can you drive it?”
“Yes,” said Susan.
“Are you sure? It’s still snowing.”
“It’s just a squall. They pass quickly. When the wind dies down, we can go.”
“Good.” Hassad raised his gun to the back of Tom’s head. “You don’t have to watch this.”
Tom tensed for the sound or sensation, or whatever was going to come next and last. Though instead of the blast of a handgun at close range, or a half-hearted plea on his behalf, what came next was more Vivaldi trilling from Hassad’s cell phone.
Footsteps retreated. All Tom could see was snow swirling through trees. All he could hear was Hassad arguing loudly with whoever was on the other end of the phone. He waited for Susan to say something, to offer excuses, or help. But she said nothing… did nothing.
He knew that he did not have time to be angry. Intent on survival and with mind and voice his only tools, Tom began to riff. “Do you remember the Barney and Fred story you told me?”
She didn’t answer, but Tom continued as if she had.
“I have another version. I want you to listen carefully.” He spoke quickly, almost sarcastically. “Fred leads his group on a hunt for a new home. Night falls, the temperature drops and a drizzle that’s been falling all day turns to freezing rain. The little Freddies are wet and hungry. But the group gets lucky and Fred stumbles across a deep, dry cave. Everyone except Barney rushes in.
“Something about the cave gives Barney a bad feeling. He shouts after the others. But only Betty and Bamm-Bamm pay any attention. Barney convinces them to go back out into the rain to look for another shelter.
“Barney doesn’t have a word for the instinct that warned him not to go into the cave. But it’s what saved him and his family. A pride of Saber Tooth tigers had found the cave first and ate Fat Fred and all the little Freddies for dinner.”
Susan was silent. He ploughed ahead and hoped that she was listening, and even more that he was making sense.
“You and I are the great, great grandchildren of intuitive Barney, Susan. Not Fat Freddie. Do you see the difference between that and the story you told me?”
From the next room came the sounds of harsh, guttural arguing. Susan remained mute. Tom could not tell if she had heard his little parable, or if she was listening to Hassad and whomever. He could not tell if she was tuned-in at all.
“Listen to me, Betty,” He prompted. “Your instincts have got to be screaming at you now. Listen to them! When does Solomon start asking what you’ve done for him lately? How soon before his fanatical buddies tell him to kill anybody who knows anything… including the infidel girlfriend?”
“Suliman,” said Susan quietly. “His name is Suliman. He loves me.”
Tom felt lightheaded, almost breathless, his lungs shrunken and shredded. “Non-overlapping immune systems? High energy?” He hectored his own reflection in the floor to ceiling glass. “Is this the happiness you were preaching to me about? What’s your goal here, Susan? Mass murder?”
Her voice was a whisper. “Peace.”
“What?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Susan, the only peace that comes from what’s on that boat is Eternal Peace.”
“That’s not true.” Susan’s voice trembled, but the tone was defiant. “We have biological weapons in this country, and worse. But we’ll never need to use them because it’s enough that everyone knows we have them.”
Tom felt his heart galloping. “Susan! A trunk full of toxins isn’t a national defense. It’s the arsenal of a hit squad. I don’t know what this Suliman told you, but this isn’t about peace. It’s about settling old scores here in Coldwater. He was bragging about it, just before you got here.”
Hassad’s side of the phone call had grown louder and angrier. He was screaming at someone now, and it was clear that that they were screaming back.
“He won’t kill you,” Susan whispered. “He’s a scientist, not a murderer.”
“Susan! His finger was squeezing the goddamn trigger when his phone rang!”
“He’s not like that. You don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t. Frankie would have beat Billy to a pulp… not poisoned and drowned him.” He spoke to the window, to the snow that had stopped falling and the trees that no longer swayed. “That peaceful ‘scientist’ out there killed your brother.”
Susan said nothing.
“Or you did.”
* * *
Darkness fell. He could no longer see the lake, only the trees, and above them the stars. There was nothing left to say. He waited for an answer and strained to hear it when it came.
“He broke one of the packages,” Susan whispered. “It was an accident.”
Tom squeezed his eyes and locked onto her voice.
“Suliman was bringing one of his colleagues – a doctor. But Joe showed up first on his way to work and Billy chased him away. Joe called me from the patrol car and said that if I didn’t get Billy to the hospit
al, he would come back and drag him there himself.”
Susan’s voice drifted behind his back. He closed his eyes and locked onto it.
“Suliman told me to get Billy to the island and that he’d meet me there. By then, Billy was hallucinating. I got him down to the boat and wrapped him in that sleeping bag.”
“With two cement blocks in the bottom?” He almost snorted, but he kept his voice low, whisper for whisper.
“He was delirious,” said Susan. “The transom on that boat is only knee-high. I had to make sure he didn’t fall overboard.”
“But he did.”
“I know.” Her voice cracked and all but disappeared. “We were almost through the cove when the patrol boat came out from the marina. I turned off the lights so your brother wouldn’t see us. He started fanning a spotlight, so I shut off the engine and let the boat drift.”
He let the silence swell and then prompted, “Go on.”
“As soon as I shut off the engine, Billy went berserk, screaming and flopping all over the place. The patrol boat turned and came straight toward the noise. I had to hold Billy’s head over the side to muffle the sound.”
“Go on,” he whispered.
“That’s how he went over.”
“What do you mean, ‘That’s how he went over? ’”
“When the patrol boat came alongside, it threw up a wake. We tipped in it. Billy overbalanced and I couldn’t hold onto him. He fell over.”
It was Tom’s turn to be silent, his brain too fried and his body too numb to evaluate this last iteration. Whether it was even partly true didn’t really matter. Hassad was going to kill him just as soon as he came back to the room.
“You haven’t answered my question.” Tom’s voice recovered its volume and urgency. “What do you think is going to happen here next? What are your instincts screaming at you right now? Not your heart. Your gut.”
