Double Helix

by Sigmund Brouwer

  Del seethed hatred.

  “In fact,” the man mused aloud, “I think I could get you on your tiptoes...”

  Del grunted agony as the steel wire bit into his skin. Pride made him fight the urge to rise onto his toes for as long as possible. Pride lasted less than three seconds. Pain lanced through the throbbing fogginess of Del’s head.

  “Good,” the freak whispered as Del balanced on his toes. “I like cooperation. Now, ahead again.”

  Almost to the end of the hallway, the man jerked Del to a stop. Still holding the pole with his right hand, he fumbled at a door handle with his bandaged left hand until the door popped open.

  “Meet your new roommate,” the man said. He pulled Del backward, then pushed him into the room.

  A gray-haired, elderly man, strained to exhaustion, sat on the edge of a bed on one side of the room. A matching steel-framed bed hugged the opposite wall. The man’s wrists and ankles were bound in a similar manner to Del’s. The only difference was the steel cord looped around the man’s waist and attached to a ring bolted to the wall behind him.

  “To the other bed,” came the strained whisper.

  Del saw an identical waist cord waiting there. It was a slack straight line, its free end consisting of a small unlocked hasp.

  Del stood beside the bed.

  “Face away from me,” the orders continued.

  The freak slid the pole in his hand to shorten the grip while keeping the pressure on the wire as he moved closer to Del’s back.

  “Take the end of the cord.”

  Del had just enough slack in his hobbled hands to obey. He lifted it from the bed.

  “Around the front of your waist and give it to me.”

  If Del had any thoughts of resistance, the tightness of the wire around his neck kept him from the foolishness of action. The freak took the end of the cord and locked it around itself behind Del’s back.

  Finally, the noose slackened as the man lowered the pole and lifted the wire away from Del’s head. Del was now a prisoner within the five-foot circle that the waist cord permitted him.

  “Introduce yourselves,” the scar-faced man whispered. “Become lifelong friends.” He snorted amusement. “Which should last less than a week.”

  ***

  “All the comforts of home,” the gray-haired man said. “You’ll find a potty under the bed, and meals served three times a day.”

  Del ignored him with the silence he’d maintained for the ten minutes since the scarred man’s departure.

  “By the way,” the man said, “my name is Ben Austad, I’d offer to shake your hand, but I don’t think we can reach.”

  Del still ignored him. His head hurt from the lingering effects of the drugs that had zombied him; he was trying to absorb the information that the freak had delivered with such pleasure just before moving him to this cell; and he was frantically worried about Louise.

  “You must be one of the good guys,” Austad said. “Your police uniform.”

  Del finally looked over. “No such thing as good guys and bad guys. Just winners and losers. And we’re not exactly odds-on favorites.”

  “Bad guys and good guys,” Austad insisted with a grin. “We’ve got lots of time. I’d be happy to debate Judeo-Christian ethics.”

  Del grunted. He knew they didn’t have time. Just before their trip down the hallways, the spooksville freak had taken tremendous pleasure in outlining to Del the organ-donation system they used here. It hadn’t given Del much satisfaction to find out he was worth eighty grand dead through the sale of his body parts.

  “I’d also be happy to trade stories,” Austad said. His voice was oddly bright, as if he were fighting to keep the edge of sanity from slicing him apart. “I’m a Latin professor. From Santa Monica.”

  Del cast a disbelieving glance across the small room. “Latin?”

  The man nodded. “I got this call out of the blue from a guy named Slater Ellis. He had some triplets who spoke a weird language...”

  “Slater Ellis?” Del started to pay attention.

  Del listened to the rest of the story with full attention. He didn’t figure knowing the situation would do much good, but it took his mind off Louise and how limp and vulnerable she’d looked lying on the floor of the van.

  The guy wrapped up his story by describing how the scarred man had taken him and two kids from his house in Santa Monica.

  “Two?” Del said. “I thought you said triplets.”

  “Slater had the third. I hope he’s all right.”

  Del felt his first real interest. “You’re saying Slater is still out there?” Weird, Del thought, going from a determination to kill the guy for information to cheering for him from a bleak set of sidelines.

  “I don’t know,” Austad said. “But they spent a lot of time questioning me about what he might have told people. Or about what I’d told. I’m pretty sure they used some drugs on me, because I was telling them everything, including the name of the first girl I kissed in seventh grade.”

  “Slater’s out there?”

  “He isn’t here, and it seems like they stuck the good guys together.” Austad frowned. Old as his face was, the intensity of the frown gave him innocence. “You are a good guy, aren’t you? This isn’t like the movie Stalag 17, is it, where they put an informer in the barracks?”

  Del didn’t feel like one of the good guys. Not only that, he’d just discovered how easily he could disappear. The spooksville freak had also taken delight in describing how they’d made it look like he and Louise had left on a sudden, extended second honeymoon, and how they already had a successor groomed to step into the county sheriff position, a successor less likely to give them trouble.

  “Sure, I’m a good guy,” Del said, knowing he was lying. He groaned and rubbed his face, too conscious of the shackles that followed his hands upward. “But don’t expect no movie ending.”

  Del almost told him about the doctor’s appointment he could expect but decided there was no sense in adding to the professor’s misery.

  “Look,” Del said. “Does Slater have any idea where we are?”

  “Do you?” Austad answered.

  “Somewhere near Los Alamos,” Del said. “Other than that...”

  “Which is probably as close as Slater might guess. He’d said he found the boys nearby.”

  Del rubbed his face again. Why had he even begun to hope? What could a civilian like Ellis accomplish against spooksville?

  Del settled back into his dark silence. Whenever his thoughts turned to worries about Louise, he speculated again on the doctor approaching him with a scalpel. It was less unpleasant to think about the horror of his own approaching death than to contemplate what might have happened to his wife because of his stupidity.

  Zwaan found Van Klees wearing a white jacket over jeans in one of the laboratory rooms on the fourth floor of the Institute. Behind Van Klees, the counter was lined with test tubes of various colors and sizes, placed in a line of exact precision. Van Klees hated wasting time and had mixed two solutions while waiting for Zwaan.

  The general and his forces managed to get us a trace on Slater Ellis,” Van Klees announced. “So much as I dislike risking an appearance out there, as you suggested, it was worth my efforts.”

  Zwaan raised his damaged hand and stared at the bandages. “Good. Let me get him then. By tonight, he will have lost several of his own fingers. Which I will simply consider a good start.”

  “You are wrong, my friend,” Van Klees said. His eyes glittered with what passed as amusement on his cold face. “Not tonight. Tomorrow morning. And you will have no need to search for him. He’s coming to us.”

  Zwaan squinted puzzlement.

  “Ellis stayed at a local motel. He billed some long-distance calls to his home number,” Van Klees explained. “Only by the time I was alerted, he was no longer there. He’d checked out an. hour earlier. With the boy.”

  “Then how –”

  “Patience. Follow me to
my office.”

  They walked the hall down to his office, a room large enough to appear uncramped despite the large leather couch at one end and a massive oak desk at the other. Two matching abstract prints – devoid of any warm hues of orange, red, or yellow – Filled one wall. The desk was empty, save for a black telephone, a thick daytimer open to the current date, and a single sheet of paper.

  Van Klees pointed at the sheet of paper. “Read it.”

  Zwaan lifted the sheet from the desk and studied the numbers listed in Van Klees’s precise printing. “A dozen calls. Six I can guess by the area code – Florida. One, also out of state, but I don’t know where. The first five have New Mexico area codes. I don’t recognize them.”

  “Sante Fe numbers. All dialed from his motel room.”

  Zwaan scanned the sheet. “Traced them?”

  “Of course. Wholesale grocers.”

  “What?”

  “You might find it interesting to note there are at least a dozen wholesale grocers listed in Sante Fe.”

  “I might,” Zwaan said in a voice that, with his scarred vocal cords, approximated a growl. “Especially if you’ll quit with these games. I’m in no mood to play.”

  “Ask yourself why he stopped calling grocers at five. If he was price shopping, why not contact all of them? And ask yourself why he went as far as five. If he wasn’t price shopping, no need to go past one.”

  “I am in no mood to play.”

  “The last Sante Fe phone number belongs to Winokur and Sons.”

  Zwaan’s eyes widened. “Our supplier,” he said with immediate comprehension of that significance. Zwaan set the paper back on the desk. “So Ellis called only until he found out which supplier delivered to the base. After he found Winokur and Sons, there was no reason to check further.”

  “Precisely.”

  “That’s not good,” Zwaan said. “He knows our location.”

  Van Klees shrugged. “Maybe he knew all along. After all, he did immediately fly back to this area.”

  Unaware of how the gesture acknowledged Slater, Zwaan cradled his stumped fingers in the palm of his right hand. He paced the office several times, mumbling under his breath.

  “Why would he want to know who supplies us with food, you’re asking yourself;”

  “You can guess?” Zwaan asked.

  “Of course. His mind is a baby’s compared to mine.”

  “And?”

  “He’s the one who first found the boys. He also knows you’ve got Austad. The Florida numbers show he was also trying to reach Paige Stephens from his motel without success, and that has to tell him she’s also gone. Still, he hasn’t gone public. And he won’t, not with his past. I believe he thinks he’s Rambo, ready to take us on by himself.”

  “But why call a grocer?”

  “He wants in, Zwaan. Can he ring the doorbell? Or plant dynamite? Think! What truck do we allow past the gates every Sunday?”

  Zwaan nodded. “He finds a way to sneak into the trailer at Winokur’s warehouse.”

  “Or bribes the driver to let him on. Tomorrow, he rides past our security gates and up to the loading dock. I can see him thinking he’ll be able to find a way in from there.”

  “Our security is airtight.”

  “Have fun with this,” Van Klees said. “Open up the security lid. Let Ellis inside. Give him hope and then slam the lid.”

  “A nice touch. But what about the boy?”

  Van Klees smiled. Instead of answering, he consulted the list of phone numbers and dialed one. Van Klees listened for less than twenty seconds, and when he spoke next, his voice was official and warm.

  “Mrs. Cassell,” he said. “How is the weather up in Wisconsin today?”

  Van Klees nodded as he listened, the consummate actor slipping into a new role. “Consider yourself fortunate, ma’am. Here in New Mexico, the sun has been merciless.”

  A pause. Van Klees grinned at the reaction on the other end.

  “Yes ma’am, I did say New Mexico. I should let you know this is Agent Lifton from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and I’m afraid I have to inform you that I know this is not the only call you’ve received from here in the last two days.”

  Van Klees held the telephone away from his ear so that Zwaan could share the loud response on the other end.

  “Ma’am?” Van Klees cut in with firm politeness. “Ma’am, we know about your son. And we believe he’s trying to involve you in another federal crime.”

  Zwaan was motionless now, intent on guessing through the side of the conversation he could hear.

  “Ma’am, please admit you found it peculiar that he would call out of the blue after years on the run.”

  Van Klees gave her time to admit to the fact before continuing. “We happen to know he’s been using an assumed name. And if our guess is right, he’s asked you to shelter a boy,”

  Van Klees nodded at Zwaan as the answer came in.

  “Yes ma’am. I’m afraid to say he’s involved with a kidnapping, which is why the bureau was called in.”

  In the next silence, Van Klees rolled his eyeballs for Zwaan’s benefit. He also lowered his voice to sympathetic concern as he spoke.

  “Ma’am, he might have warned you that the kid doesn’t speak English. It’s part of a foreign embassy thing and it almost worked. Your son was expecting national security needs to work in his favor. I mean, our government would rather pay ransom than risk embarrassment, and if we hadn’t traced him...”

  Van Klees waited again.

  “Ma’am, I appreciate the information. May I ask instead that you meet the boy yourself at the airport.”

  Brief pause.

  “Yes. Go ahead as agreed. It’s important to the case. And can you do me a personal favors” Van Klees winked at Zwaan as he said it. “Be good to the kid. He’s just a boy, probably scared, and can use all the help he gets. When it’s wrapped up on this end, we’ll send someone there to bring him back to his parents at the embassy in B.C.”

  Van Klees winked again at Zwaan. “And ma’am, it goes without saying that you must keep this extremely secure. In fact, we have a budget to reward you for your silence. If, after a month, it’s obvious nothing has been leaked to the media, you’ll receive a ten-thousand-dollar gift from the embassy. And remember, to keep it from the media, you shouldn’t let this call go beyond you and me.”

  Van Klees listened to the response, then hung up the phone. “I am the master of everything, am I not?” He said it, naturally, as a rhetorical question. “Why else would he contact her except to find a safe place for the boy? She’ll keep him for us until you can go up there and eliminate them both.”

  Then his face lost its warmth and became a mask of scorn. “I’d like to see Ellis when you get him. Afterward, damage Ellis all you want. But don’t kill him. When the good doctor comes in to handle that oaf of a sheriff in your care, have him do the same to Ellis and Austad. A triple shipment of organs can begin to recompense us in a small way for the difficulties he’s caused.”

  Van Klees straightened his arms and tugged on the sleeves of his lab jacket. Zwaan recognized it as a signal that Van Klees was impatient to get back to the laboratory.

  “Tomorrow afternoon I fly to New York to deal with some tedious paperwork for the Hammond identity,” Van Klees said as he inspected the creases of his lab coat. “Then back to Chicago to tend to some of the undergraduates at the university. I have some interesting research questions from here I’d like them to pursue.”

  He flashed a sinister grin at Zwaan. “On a theoretical level, of course. We’ll save the practical applications for here, won’t we?”

  Chapter 13

  Sunday, May 26

  From the high, stiff-springed seats of a diesel cab, and with sunlight instead of a quarter moon providing light, the base looked much different to Slater than it had during the midnight visit with the kid.

  “Like I said,” the truck driver told Slater above the deep-voiced country lamentat
ions that blared from the truck radio, “it usually takes us only half an hour to unload the pallets. You’d. best be quick.”

  Slater nodded, not taking his eyes from the low, squat buildings ahead of them. If it hadn’t been for the kid’s panicked reaction to the base, Slater wouldn’t be here. Instead, Saturday night’s hike into the woods had proved what Slater didn’t want to believe, The triplets had indeed fled from this base on their way to Seven Springs.

  Not that it had been easy getting there to confirm. They’d checked out early from the motel to do most of the hiking during daylight. Slater had taken the topography map, a compass, and a light knapsack of food, and they’d driven as close as possible, then cut cross-country from the parked vehicle. Five hours of hard hiking had brought them to a compound fence that marked the northwestern perimeter of the government’s land. By leaning a deadfall tree against the fence, both had been able to climb over the barbed-wire top. There they’d waited until dark, finally creeping the last half-mile into the base, guided by the moon and discreet use of flashlights. At their first glimpse of the bare pavement that surrounded the base’s buildings, the kid had frantically pulled at Slater’s sleeve, trying to keep him from going nearer.

  That had been the confirmation Slater needed.

  They’d retreated then, slowly moved back to the compound fence, found another rotting tree to push over as a convenient ladder, and begun the laborious job of retracing their way out again. Once Slater had deemed them safely away, he’d stopped to wait for dawn to keep traveling. From there, Slater had driven the kid to the Sante Fe airport. Their parting had been difficult – Slater didn’t have the ability to explain why he wanted the kid to go alone on an airplane. Only the warm smile, and protecting arm who promised her help in making the necessary connections, of a stewardess convinced the kid to go with her. Slater only hoped his mother would be on time and equally compassionate. Explaining everything to her later would be hell because he’d have so much of his past to clean up while doing it. But Slater prayed he’d have a chance to face that hell. It would mean he had survived this crazy attempt to rescue the boy’s brothers.