The Music of the Machine (The Book of Terwilliger 2)

by Michael Stiles

  Ed hesitated. “Nothing.”

  Mason inhaled sharply and scratched his beard. “Nothing at all?”

  Ed looked into the darkness of one of the cracks in the ground. It was easier than looking at Jonathan. “He said Novus was closed down. It’s gone.”

  “It’s not gone. We know that. They must have moved it somewhere else.”

  “If Kissinger knows where it is, he’s not telling. And I don’t think he knows.”

  “He knows! Goddamn it, he knows and he’s not saying.” Jonathan paced back and forth, suddenly enraged. “Can’t be trusted. Damn him! Damn him!” He was so angry that he was shaking.

  “Jonathan,” Ed said. “Take it easy.”

  Mason curled his hands into fists, breathed deeply, and let the anger drain away as he stared at the distant, roiling clouds. “I’m sorry. You don’t need to see me like that.”

  “There’s more. Kissinger knows about Elmer Nosgrove. He’s been hunting Nosgrove for a long time.”

  Jonathan shook his head firmly. “An obvious lie. They’re working together.”

  “He said he’s only pretending to be on Nosgrove’s side. He wants me to keep working with the Plumbers to find out what they’re up to.”

  “And at what point,” said Jonathan, “does he want you to stop helping them?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  Mason arched his eyebrows to indicate that his point had been proven. “So. You help the Plumbers with another break-in. If you’re lucky, you don’t end up in prison. What then?”

  “I think I’ve got a way to draw Nosgrove out of hiding,” Ed said.

  This statement got Mason’s attention; his eyes went wide and the eagerness was clear on his face. “How?”

  “By threatening him with the only thing that scares him: shining a light on his secrets.”

  Jonathan nodded slowly. “You’re a smart boy, Ed. You’ve thought of everything, I’m sure. Such as, what will you do with him once you find him?”

  “I was hoping you’d have some ideas.”

  * * *

  On Wednesday night, Ed met Leonard Garbanzo on a dark corner in Georgetown at a quarter after ten. Leonard had his camera bag with him, full of supplies, and was wearing a false pair of eyeglasses. Ed had arrived without a disguise, so Leonard had pulled out a fake mustache and pasted-on sideburns and waited while Ed put them on. They set off toward the address Watership had supplied. Along the way, they passed the car where Mason and Driscoll were waiting, just in case Ed needed help. He avoided looking at them and prayed that Leonard wouldn’t notice the two men sitting in the parked car.

  “Why are you limping, Leonard?” Ed said, mainly to keep the man’s attention occupied. “Hurt yourself?”

  “You need to learn a thing or two about fieldcraft,” Leonard replied as he stopped to adjust his toupee. “If anybody sees us from a distance, the limp is the first thing they’ll notice.”

  “Clever,” Ed said. When they started walking again, he saw that Leonard had switched his limp to favor the other leg.

  It was easy to spot the townhouse as they came up the block, because it was the only one that was completely dark. The reporter, Wilson, was supposed to be away for the whole week, covering a story in New York. Ed and Leonard ascended the steps. There were small, vertical window on either side of the door; Ed waited while Leonard peeked through one of these. Then Leonard rang the doorbell and waited. Once he was satisfied that no one was home, he rummaged noisily through his bag until he found a pouch containing some lock-picking tools. As he removed it out of the bag, the pouch slipped out of his hand and spilled its contents all over the steps. A few of the smaller pieces rolled off the edge and into the garden in front of the house. The clatter was alarmingly loud.

  “Horseshit,” Leonard said.

  They both got down on hands and knees to pick up the tools, which took quite a long time because there was no light to see by. Leonard soon lost patience with the search and said, “Find the rest. I’ll get the door open.” He began inserting the tools into the lock and jiggling them in an ineffectual way. Ed, who had been considering making a pointed observation about Leonard’s lock-picking skills, decided instead to hold his tongue. He felt around for the lost tools in the dark, but only found a few.

  A young couple strolled by, engaged in quiet conversation. They looked up in curiosity at Ed and Leonard at the top of the steps. Ed pretended to ignore them, holding his breath until they went away.

  Leonard suddenly stopped his work. “Bismuth,” he said quietly, “are you any good with doors?”

  Ed, who had decided he’d found all the pieces he was going to find, stood up and rubbed his back. “Move over,” he said. “Let me try.”

  “Should be no problem for you, right?” said Leonard, sounding much more nervous than he had a moment earlier.

  “What did you do to this lock?” said Ed. In the faint yellow glow of a nearby streetlight, he could see that Leonard had badly marred the metal of the lock as well as the wood next to it. “And is there something stuck inside?” He tried inserting a flat tool into the keyhole, but it seemed there was already something in the opening that was blocking the way.

  Leonard mumbled a reply that Ed couldn’t make out.

  “What did you say?” said Ed.

  “It broke off inside the lock. Can you get it out?”

  Ed got down on one knee and peered at the keyhole, but it was too dark to see inside it. “Nice work, Leonard,” he said. “Give me a flashlight.”

  “No flashlights until we’re inside.”

  Ed made himself take three big, deep breaths. He wanted very much to hit Leonard in the eye again, but he held himself back. Instead, he took off his jacket, wrapped it tightly around his hand, and punched the small window to the right of the door. It took three hard blows to break the glass. Then he unwrapped the jacket, reached carefully through the window, and unlocked the door from the inside.

  “Jesus, Bismuth!”

  “You already destroyed the lock. Who cares about the window? Get inside before the neighbors come looking.”

  They both went into the house and shut the door. Their shoes crunched on the broken glass as they walked across the hardwood floor, Leonard following close behind Ed. Then Leonard remembered that he was supposed to be in charge. He took the lead, speaking softly into his walkie-talkie. “We’re in,” he said. The only reply he received was two clicks from Watership, who was waiting in a car down the block. To Ed he said, “Look for an office or a study. Someplace where he would keep his papers.”

  Leonard found a study on the first floor at the back of the house. Against the far wall was a large desk made of dark wood, with a typewriter and a large quantity of papers on the desktop. There was a filing cabinet in the corner. Leonard switched on a flashlight, placing it on the corner of the desk to illuminate the whole room. Then he opened the filing cabinet and began removing folders. “I’ve got this. You go through the stuff on the desk. Don’t spend a lot of time reading. Look for key words: Russia, USSR, Brezhnev. If you see anything suspicious, something that links Wilson to the Reds, you tell me. Everything else is irrelevant. Got it?”

  “If Wilson’s working for the Soviets, wouldn’t he be communicating in code or something?” said Ed. “You don’t think he’d be dumb enough to keep papers like that lying around, do you?”

  Leonard froze for a moment, thinking hard. A little of the smoke trickled out of his toupee just above his right ear. “I don’t know.” He seemed suddenly full of doubt. “I don’t know. Just do the job.” Leonard opened the first file on his stack and started reading.

  “Hey, Garbanzo,” Ed said. Leonard held up a finger until he was done scanning a document, then looked up. “Where did you get those gloves?” Ed asked him. “Nobody gave me any gloves.”

  Leonard looked down at the soft leather gloves on his hands. “Watership told me to wear them. Didn’t he say the same to you?”

  “No.” Ed tried to remember every
thing he had touched. The railing outside, the lock, the doorknob to the study… was there anything else? The papers. He had touched several papers already. Long ago, in his previous life, he had used iodine fuming and ninhydrin to bring out prints that had been left on porous surfaces. Why had he not thought of that before he’d started touching things?

  The papers on Emanuel Wilson’s desk were not very interesting—drafts of recent columns, mainly—and Ed had significant doubts about the allegation of conspiring with the Soviets. It sounded more like the Plumbers were looking for a way to punish him for publishing something they didn’t like. If that was the case, there was little chance that they would find anything incriminating in his papers. So he spent most of his time flipping through papers without really looking at them, touching just the edges whenever possible. He nearly forgot the most important thing he had to do. Leonard was engrossed in one of the documents, so Ed quietly slipped his own folded paper out of his jeans pocket and pretended to pull it out of the desk drawer. Then he smoothed it out and stared at it for a minute or two.

  “Leonard,” he said, “what do you make of this one?”

  Garbanzo took the paper and scanned through it quickly. After a moment his expression changed, and Ed saw his eyes go back to the top as he read it again, more carefully. “It’s about us,” he said. “Names and dates. How did he get all this? Who’s been leaking?” Then he read a bit further. “Elmer Nosgrove. Have you heard that name before, Bismuth?”

  “No.”

  Leonard took several photographs of the memo, muttering all the while about traitors and spies. He stopped his muttering when they heard a soft crunching sound from the front of the house. They both froze and listened. “Bismuth,” Leonard whispered, “was that you?”

  “How could it be me? I’m right here.”

  They waited in silence, but no more sounds came. Leonard began packing up his camera. “That’s it,” he said. “I’m done. If Watership wants more, he can come here himself.”

  Now they could both hear the unmistakable sound of heavy footsteps. Leonard squeaked like a small animal, dropped his camera, and began stuffing equipment into his bag as fast as he could. Ed was in the process of reaching over to switch off the flashlight when a man appeared in the doorway, surrounded by a dense haze of black smoke. The beam of the flashlight reflected off of the lenses of his thick glasses.

  “Cruller!” Leonard exclaimed in a voice that was an octave higher than usual. “What are you doing here? Watership was supposed to―”

  “I told Mr. Watership to go home for the night. I’m done with him.”

  “We were just finishing up,” said Leonard.

  “Take your things and go,” Cruller told him. When Ed started to get up, he added, “Not you, Terwilliger. You stay.” He smiled as he spoke. It was the same smile that was often on his face, but in the present context Ed found it more than a little frightening.

  Leonard shot Ed an apprehensive glance as he packed up his equipment. The camera had a broken piece hanging off of it, and its lens appeared to be cracked. Cruller waited patiently until Leonard finished and left. Then he picked up the paper Leonard had been photographing and read it. “Nosgrove,” he said. “That’s a funny name to find in Emanuel Wilson’s files.”

  The stench of the smoke was nearly unbearable, but Ed resisted the powerful urge to cough. His eyes were starting to water. “Do you know that name?” he said. But before Cruller could answer, another thought popped into his head. “What did you just call me?”

  “You know very well what I called you.” Cruller folded and pocketed the paper. From another pocket he drew a pair of black leather gloves, which he put on his hands. “That paper wasn’t in Wilson’s files, was it? You brought it with you. To set a trap. Am I right?” He was still smiling.

  Ed was edging sideways, hoping to slip past Cruller on his way out the door. “Leonard found it,” he said.

  “No, he didn’t. You wanted to trap me. And now I’ve trapped you!”

  His words seemed to hang in the air for a long time, as though they were echoing, but there was no echo in this small room. Ed’s ears were playing tricks on him. “Nosgrove,” he said. “You’re Elmer Nosgrove.”

  “It’s a nice name, isn’t it? Sometimes I use it. Sometimes I use others.”

  “Thornwood.”

  Black smoke was filling up the tiny study like a rancid fog. “And another name,” said Cruller. “An older name.”

  “Urizen.” It came out as a whisper.

  Cruller lunged forward like a striking snake. Ed almost fell over backward in his attempt to get away. But Cruller was not lunging toward Ed. He seized the handle of the top drawer of the filing cabinet and pulled it all the way out, scattering papers everywhere. He tossed the empty drawer aside, then did the same with the bottom drawer. Not quite satisfied with the mess he had made, he began pulling books off the bookshelves and throwing them about the room.

  “Why are you doing that?” said Ed.

  Cruller didn’t seem to be acting out of anger. In fact, he seemed quite calm. That incongruous smile was still on his face. “Looks like there was a struggle in here,” he said. The flashlight cast strange shadows on his face, making him look monstrous. Smoke poured out of the top of his head, his ears, even his nose. A dark cloud filled the room, blocking out the light. “Your fingerprints are everywhere, Terwilliger. Why did you do it? Why did you kill him?” As Ed was trying to make sense of this, Cruller seized the flashlight and switched it off.

  This struck Ed as a fine opportunity to leave the premises. In the darkness, he misjudged the location of the doorway and bumped into the wall next to it. Cruller laughed a high-pitched laugh. Ed rubbed his forehead where he’d bumped it, felt his way along the wall, and found the doorframe. Then he was running through the house, colliding with furniture and walls as he went.

  “Come back!” Cruller called. Ed could hear the man coming after him. Cruller navigated the dark rooms easily, as though he needed no light to see. “You have to wait for the surprise!”

  Ed reached the front door and began to open it, but Cruller slammed it shut and grabbed his arm. With running away no longer an option, but his fight-or-flight instinct still going strong, Ed opted to fight. He yanked his arm out of Cruller’s grasp and started swinging. But Cruller was no longer there. He was now standing to Ed’s right. Ed turned and threw another punch, but found only air again. He lost his balance and fell.

  “I’m over here!” said Cruller. This time his voice came from the far side of the room. How had he gotten over there so quickly? Ed got to his feet, dazed, and looked for him.

  The house was almost totally dark, but Ed could see a faint square of light coming from a window. His eyes were growing used to the darkness. He could just make out the shape of Cruller’s shadow next to the window—but in an instant the shadow was gone, and Cruller was behind him.

  “How are you doing that?” Ed snapped, turning to face him again. “Stop it!”

  “Who are you talking to? I’m over here!” said Cruller, this time from the front door.

  He was moving around the room like a ghost. That wasn’t possible. Even Urizen had to obey the laws of physics. Then a thought occurred to Ed: it wasn’t that Cruller was moving fast; Ed’s perception was moving slowly. Now that he was focusing on it, he could sense Cruller’s touch on his mind, slowing him down. “Smoke and mirrors,” said Ed, laughing. The laugh was forced, and it sounded forced, but he wasn’t about to let the man know he was terrified. “You’re just using magic tricks on me.”

  “Quiet!” Cruller whispered. “It’s time for your surprise!”

  At that moment, the front door opened. A man entered the house and turned on the light. Ed recognized him; he had seen Wilson’s face before, printed in the papers next to his columns. Wilson swore under his breath as he stepped on the broken glass. Cruller was standing right in front of him, almost close enough to touch, but the man couldn’t see him.

  “Ema
nuel Wilson,” Cruller said. He was smiling again. “Goodness, he’s home early. He won’t be happy to see you in his house, Terwilliger.”

  Sure enough, Wilson turned to his left and saw Ed. He looked Ed up and down, apparently deciding he wasn’t much of a threat. “Who the hell are you?”

  Ed tried to speak, but his mouth suddenly wouldn’t work. It felt like someone had stuffed a sock down his throat. He opened his mouth wide, trying to speak.

  The reporter’s jowls were shaking with anger. “You stay right where you are. I’m calling the unnnng.” The last word faded into a groan as Cruller hit him in the head with a small but heavy bust of Beethoven that he’d picked up from the other room. Wilson’s legs went limp and he fell to the floor with a loud thump. Cruller bent down and hit him with the statue a second time, and a third.

  “You’re going to kill him,” said Ed, who found that he was now able to speak.

  “Surprise!” said Cruller. He wrapped his arm around Wilson’s neck and squeezed.

  “No!” That was all Ed managed to get out before his throat closed again. His legs suddenly buckled and he fell heavily to the floor. He tried to crawl toward Cruller and the reporter, but his arms wouldn’t move. Cruller was touching his mind again. He fought back, raged against Cruller’s control. The man was too strong for him. All the while, he could hear the sound of Cruller laughing and laughing.

  Cruller finally released Wilson’s neck and let his head flop to the floor. “Night-night,” he said. Then he got to his feet, picked up the bust of Beethoven, and hefted it in his hand as he walked over to Ed. “This is yours.” He placed the statue in Ed’s hands and wrapped Ed’s fingers around it.

  Ed looked up at him helplessly. He could feel the pressure of Cruller’s grip on his mind. It was as if his brain was being squeezed inside his skull. Where was Mason? Jonathan was waiting right outside, along with Driscoll. Had they seen Cruller and Wilson entering the house?