Stairway to Forever

by Robert Adams

  Every light and alarm had come to full, glaring, blaring life by the time the dead flare came to earth and the wobbling, swaying, swerving truck reached

  and turned a comer of the bumpy, potholed, ill-lit street.

  Fitz dialed the private number that Sheriff Vaughan had left him, and the sheriff himself answered on the first ring. "Mister Fitzgilbert, what the everlovin' hell is goin' on out there? You fightin' off Injuns or suthin'? I done got three calls so far, my own se'f, and the other number s ringin' off the hook. They says it sounds like a fuckin' war out there/'

  One of the deputies found the Browning near the corner of the fence, in the grass between it and the street. He brought it to Vaughan, who stood sipping some of Fitz's coffee in the driveway.

  "What in tarnation you use this stuff for, Mister Fitzgilbert, battery acid, mebbe. You got a mile of guts, though, that's all I can say. If you was so damn sure they was comin' back, you should oughta give me a call, that's part my job, you know.

  "What is it, huh? What you turn up, Colley?"

  "Watch it, Sheriff! 9 ' Fitz said just a little too late to do any good. The three rounds of 9mm ripped out of the barrel and, fortunately, found lodging in Fitz's manicured front lawn.

  "Keerist on a fuckin' crutch!" the startled lawman exclaimed, now gingerly holding the pistol by the butt, between thumb and forefinger, keeping well away from the trigger. "Thishere thing is illegal as all hell, it's a fuckin' machine pistol, is what it isl You mean it was really them four guys from U.S. Customs and Interpol used this thing for to shoot up your house tonight? You know, I dint like them from the word go,' 'specially that one furriner, the Vitinellis or whatever his name was. And that feller, Biscuitt, he was just as slick as dog shit, I could of told you he

  was a wrong 'un. I knowed it. But then, I gotta be able to peg folks for what they is, quick-like, it's part my perfession, you know."

  Vaughan's repeated telephone calls and visits filled Fitz in on all that followed that hellish night. The truck had been stolen from the lot of a power company branch office. It was found, abandoned, on a narrow dirt road that led down to the river, dusty, rather battered, riddled with bullet holes and covered with drops and smears and splashes of dried blood. One of the rear axles had suffered severe damage because the truck had been driven at speed over bad roads with two flat tires, and Vaughan averred that the power company was looking for more and fresher blood than had been found on their wrecked truck.

  The Interpol agent, Lekos Vitenelis, had been dumped at the door of the emergency room of the county hospital, in shock and nearly bled dry. Vaughan, himself, had not yet been allowed to question the man, but he had learned as much as he could from the medical staff.

  He shook his head and shuddered as he told of his learnings. "I tell you, Mister Fitzgilbert, whatever he done, whatall happen to that pore fucker shouldn' ought to of happened to a fiickin' dog, is all I can say. The way his damn legs was tore up was bad enough, but I just hope he's got a unnerstandin' wife back at home and a whole lot of kids already, 'cause he ain't never gonna get no more babies on nobody, they says over to the hospital.

  "That damn wire got 'tween his legs, somewheres along the way, too. And heavy as he was and fast as the truck must've been goin', thet bobwire came

  damn close to slicin' his whole body right up the fuckm middle, they tells me. The doc, he thinks they can save one his balls, but thet won't do him much good, cause of how bad his pecker was tore up. All I can think about is what the Good Book says, 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lawd. I will repay.' God save us all from His awful vengeance, Mister Fitzgilbert, God save us all."

  A few weeks later, both Fitz and Gus were much relieved to hear the news that G. Rowland Biscuitt and company had been caught and turned over to the appropriate authorities. All, that is, save the Greek agent; upon being apprised of the nature and the full extent of his grievous injuries, the big man had waited until night, then managed to open an important artery and bleed to death before the next shift checked in on him.

  Fitz had breathed a silent prayer for the repose of the suicide's soul. Gus had just snorted, "That so? Well, now he's another good damn commie, it should oughta be a whole lots more just thet good, tool"

  Near the end of the month, Fitz returned from town with a heavily loaded Jeep Wagoneer to find a car bearing government plates parked on the shoulder of the street just beyond his gate. Clearly recalling the last automobile that had been outside his gate with similar plates—a certain black Ford sedan— and in no mood to trifle or be trifled with by anyone, he handled the short-barrelled .357 magnum he now wore in a cross-draw, belly holster underneath his jacket.

  As he slid out and unlocked the gates and swung them wide enough for the Jeep to pass easily through, he heard car doors open and close and footsteps

  behind him. Making certain that he was standing with both feet on his property, he spun around and drew his revolver all in one movement, although he did not point the piece directly at the two men now slowly approaching . . . not yet.

  The younger man, trailing a little behind and to the left side of the other, slowed perceptibly at sight of the threatening gesture, but the older man, in the lead, just kept pacing forward, carrying a briefcase in one hand, the other holding his suit coat gaped wide to show an empty clamshell holster, a hesitant smile on his face. That fece looked to be about Fitz's own age, though the man's hair showed quite a bit more grey than did his and he walked with a slight limp.

  Fitz said, courteously but very coldly, "If you want to talk to me, sir, please get back into your car, the both of you, until f ve gotten my Jeep inside the gate. I'd hate to have to use this thing so early in the day . . . but I can and I will, and that's no bullshit, gentlemen."

  "Why, of course we will, Mister Fitzgilbert," said the older man, adding, "and please believe me, I quite understand and sympathize with the reasons for your understandable trepidations. Come on, Agent Irby, we're not here to make the man nervous or provoke any more incidents.''

  Not until he had parked the Jeep in the garage beside the Mercedes did Fitz walk back toward the gate, his revolver once more out and ready. The two men had once more quitted their car, but they both stood at the corner of the open gate, having made no move to enter it uninvited. Two points for this pair, thought Fitz.

  "Mister Fitzgilbert," said the older man with the briefcase, "I am Lester Harland, representing the

  Customs Service of the United States. If I may reach inside the pocket of my coat, I'll show you my identification."

  Fitz nodded and lowered the revolvers muzzle a few millimeters, then bent closer to scrutinize the leather folder, with its badge and laminated I.D. card. "All right, that says you're who and what you say you are. Now, what do you want with me?"

  Despite his cool brusqueness, Harland did not evidence any resentment or loss of self-assurance. "Mister Fitzgilbert, you have been made to suffer grievously at the hands of miscreants representing the Customs Agency. I am here to offer the Agency's profuse apologies for the wrongs done against you in its name and to do whatever can be done to rectify those wrongs."

  Grinning, Fitz said, "Some fat cats up in D.C. are smelling lawsuit' and are crawfishing around to get out from under, right? Well, tell them not to worry, I consider the incident will be closed as soon as I get back the antique knife and cup that were stolen from my home by Agent Biscuitt and his pack of thieves."

  "Mister Fitzgilbert," said Harland, smoothly, soothingly, "your attitude is completely understandable and your forbearance most commendable. But please, I wonder if we might continue this chat in your house, where we can all sit down?"

  "Sure thing," Fitz shrugged, "that is, if you two don't mind doing your chatting over this loaded revolver I intend to keep holding. Oh, and let me see an empty holster on your partner, too, first."

  When Agent Irby had reluctantly passed Fitz his revolver—almost a twin toi Fitz's own new one, save that the government issue was blued, rather than ni
ckeled—he ushered the two into his home and

  waved them to the couch, where they must constantly look at the three bullet holes in the wall. Born to and reared in the Catholic Church, Fitz owned full understanding of the uses of guilt in intimidating human beings, having seen it practiced by the clergy for so many years.

  Clutching the briefcase on his knees, Agent Har-land stared for a long moment at the scarred wall, then asked, "Those . . . ahh, those holes, Mister Fitzgilbert, they are from . . . ahh, that night?"

  "Oh, no, not a bit of it, mister," said Fitz, broadly sarcastic, "we have gunfights around here every day and twice on Sundays." Then, sobering, he nodded. "Yes, those represent the first burst fired from the machine pistol that Biscuitt's Greek buddy was packing. He was sure some sweet character. Are all Interpol agents that nasty?"

  Harland looked and sounded a bit embarrassed. "Mister Fitzgilbert, the late Doctor Vitenelis, although then working for Interpol, was not and had never been an agent for that organization. He was simply an expert on loan from the Greek government and, as such, he should not have been carrying a firearm of any sort. Agent Biscuitt should have seen to that . . . But that's all now in the past; the doctor is dead and Agents Biscuitt and Grossman are both incarcerated and awaiting trial in federal court.

  "Agents Biscuitt and Grossman and the two Interpol agents, Brazzi and Levrek, have been thoroughly, exhaustively debriefed on all their activities, both the legal and the many onerous illegal. Biscuitt swears that he was tempted and led astray by Doctor Vitenelis, while Grossman swears that his temptor was Biscuitt. Neither of the others, either the Turkish agent or the newer come Italian agent, seemed to

  have been aware that anything of an irregular nature was going on until that power company truck was hot-wired and stolen that night; they had been given to understand by their superiors that Agent Biscuitt was in charge of the operation and they, being good agents, simply followed his instructions."

  He opened the briefcase and laid out on the leather top of the cocktail table two items sealed in clear plastic bags and labelled with combinations of numbers and letters. One of the bags contained the big rusty knife, while the other held the small copper cup and the doctored copper ashtray, which latter was now badly dented on one edge, looking as if it had possibly been thrown hard against something solid.

  "These are your property, Mister Fitzgilbert, and before we leave I would greatly appreciate it if you sign a receipt for them. The Service deeply regrets the manner in which they were . . . ahh, seized from you, of course. The longish delay in their return was necessitated by the fact that the Service had to seek out experts to confirm the suspect findings of the late Doctor Vitenelis."

  "And these experts of yours said?" prompted Fitz, curiously.

  "They said that, whatever else he might have been, the late doctor did know his period of specialty in great detail. The small cup was crafted on the island of Cyprus at some time between 800 A.D. and 1050 A. D., more likely earlier than later. The style of the knife blade is Thracian, but it appears to have been hiked elsewhere, probably in Byzantium. Although the case fits it well enough, it was not made for the knife, but rather for another with a blade of slightly different shape and thickness. They are not in com-

  plete agreement on the place the case was made, but the current consensus is that it was fashioned somewhere on the northern coast of Asia Minor. Its bronze fittings, however, are of well-known Celtic patterns and far predate case, knife or even cup, probably approaching an age of twelve to thirteen centuries before us. These items are, of course, of quite some value—priceless, indeed, in many ways—and I know that several museums intend to bid on them, once your legal ownership is firmly established."

  Oh, boy, thought Fitz, here we go again!

  "We have investigated in the Republic of Ireland the information you gave to Agent Biscuitt, earlier on the night of this . . . ahh, most regrettable incident." He waved at the bullet-pocked wall, then took a small notebook from out the briefcase, opened, riffled and then began to read.

  "Robert Emmett Dempsey seems to have been a well-to-do man for the times and the place, having been a master brick- and stonemason and also done some contracting of a general nature. However, during the Insurrection of 1916, he was detained by one of the units of the British Army who were just then maintaining order in Dublin and found to be carrying a revolver and two hand grenades. He was tried by a military court and sentenced to death; however, that sentence was never carried out and he was released after nineteen months in prison.

  "From that time until his death, he continued to work off and on at his original trades, as well as at demolishing buildings damaged during the 1916 Insurrection ..."

  Fitz interrupted, finally, "It was not called an insurrection . . . except, maybe, by the damned British. It's known to history as the Easter Rebellion, Agent Harland."

  "Yes . . . well," Harland went on, "Robert Em-mett Dempsey was shot and killed on the afternoon of the eighteenth of July, 1921, on O'Connell Street, in Dublin, by person or persons unknown. Although his wife and seven children died during 1917 of influenza, he seemingly had many relatives and friends, for the Dublin newspapers of the period note that his funeral services and interment were quite heavily attended.

  "Persons who knew him—and there are not too many of them left, after all this time, more than fifty years—all seem to recall that he kept in his home many strange and curious and often valuable things that he had found while demolishing old houses, which may very well be where he acquired these artifacts and the gold coins. And who, at this late date, could decide whether or not his acquisitions were strictly legal? We still, however, are endeavoring to discover just who sent you the carton containing them, but I do not know how successful we will be in that search, for two rather elderly, distant relatives of yours have died since the date you think you received it—one, one of Dempsey's sisters, and one, the widow of one of his brothers.

  "All things considered, Mister Fitzgilbert, I tend to believe your story—it sounds just implausible enough to be truth, strange truth, but still truth— and I know that most of my superiors agree, so unless we find someone in Ireland who is willing to swear that a man now dead for nearly fifty-four years never in fact owned the treasure and the artifacts, then I think that we all can agree that they are yours in both senses— de facto and de jure. So I doubt highly that you will be seeing agents of my service again, although you may be subpoenaed to give testi-

  mony at the trials of former agents Biscuitt and Grossman.

  "Now, if you would be so good as to sign this receipt for your artifacts . . . ?"

  Fitz could hardly believe it, any of it. Dead certain that he was sure to be found out in his web of lies, possibly prosecuted and jailed for a plethora of crimes, including that of making false statements to federal agents, he was stunned that investigation had sufficiently corroborated his fables to get him out of a very sticky situation. He had, actually, known damn all of his long-dead half-great-uncle, he had simply pulled the name out of his dim memories as a way to slow down the Biscuitt Bunch. Fitz had not been quite a year old when Robert Emmett Dempsey had been murdered; who would ever have thought that the fiery patriot of Irish freedom he had always been pictured to Fitz would turn out to be a man who squirreled away and kept odd things he had found in the course of tearing down old edifices?

  Just as they reached the gate, Harland smote his forehead and exclaimed, "Mister Fitzgilbert, I almost forgot, here." He fished a long government envelope from an inside pocket and proffered it. "I was asked to give you this by a chap from another agency, there in the Federal Building, when I happened to mention that I was driving out here today."

  The envelope was rumpled and did not seem, when Fitz accepted it, to contain very much. When he opened it, after the Customs agents had driven off, he found that it held only an oversized card, noting that he had an appointment at the Federal Building in the city with a Henry Fowler Blutegel, of the Intern
al Revenue Service.

  Mounted on the bigger, longer-range bike, carry-

  ing spare fuel, water, sleeping bag and supplies in the sidecar, Fitz rode days and many miles up and down the sandy plain that lay beyond the dunes, finding that the plain seemed to be just as endless as the beach on the other side of those dunes. By following the tracks of some of the small herds of wild ponies, he found three spring-fed pools of fresh water, a salt lick and one good-sized fresh-water lake, all of these located near the inland edge of the plain, however—half a day's journey at the top speed he considered to be safe over the rough surface in which holes and irregularities often were concealed by the stands of grasses until he was too close to avoid them.

  More than just ponies dwelt on or beneath that plain, he quickly discovered. There were hordes of lizards of a dozen or more varieties, rodentlike, burrowing beasts ranging upward from the size of meadow mice and voles to animals which were the size of and maintained mounded "towns" of burrows like prairie dogs. There were what he soon began to call "flying rabbits"—creatures that launched themselves with the long, muscular hind legs of a Western jackrabbit, then spread wide membranes grown between fore-and hind legs to prolong the distance covered by gliding through the air.

  There were a plethora of insects—flying, crawling and hopping—hairy, huge, burrowing spiders, scorpions of varying sizes, and some of the largest, longest centipedes Fitz had ever seen. There was a profusion of birds of every size, shape, color and habits he could imagine. There were also some very singular flyers about and he could not decide whether they were bird or beast or reptile, as they bore at least some resemblance to all three.

  Another peculiar case was that of the flocks of what he called, for want of a better name, "rat-tailed ostriches." They looked about as big as an ostrich, most of them, they walked or ran at speed on two legs like an ostrich, true enough, but they had no feathers or plumes like an ostrich, rather a growth of fluffy, fuzzy, very fine hair. They also grew tails—thick, up near the body, but tapering along a scaly length of six or seven feel to a point.