The Faberge Egg

by Robert Upton

  His eyes returned McGuffin’s fierce stare, then all but disappeared in crinkled flesh as a soft chuckle built from his bowels to a wheezing laugh. “By God, sir, I think you would, too,” he said finally. “I can see you’re crazy about that little girl. As crazy as Otto and Toby,” he added, followed by a final roll of laughter. “It would seem, sir, that we are both about to embark on a most dangerous enterprise.”

  “It adds spice,” McGuffin said, taking the bills from Vandenhof’s hand. He slipped them into his pocket, next to the gun, without counting them.

  “You are a find, Mr. McGuffin. You are a find indeed. I think we may be able to do some business in the future. Assuming I have a future,” he added with a laugh.

  “How do we go about finding him?” McGuffin interrupted.

  “We,” he said pointedly, “will do nothing. I, on the other hand, will contact certain members of our community and ascertain the whereabouts of Otto. When I’ve learned this, I’ll be in touch with you.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Not long. Our community is a small one.”

  “The gay community is small?” McGuffin asked, incredulous.

  “Gay German war veterans,” Vandenhof qualified.

  “Gay German war veterans?” McGuffin repeated. “You people really are organized, aren’t you?”

  Vandenhof smiled, laid a hand on McGuffin’s shoulders and led him to the door. “Don’t worry, Mr. McGuffin, you will soon have your daughter back. And I will have my egg.”

  “If Otto’s got your egg, I’ll get it,” McGuffin assured him as they walked to the front door. “And when I do, how do I get in touch with you?”

  Vandenhof gave him his number, and McGuffin handed him his card. Toby was lurking halfway up the stairs like a scolded child, glaring malevolently at him, McGuffin saw, when they halted in the doorway.

  Vandenhof looked up from the card with a puzzled expression. “What is this - Oakland Queen?”

  “I live on a ferry boat,” McGuffin answered.

  Vandenhof smiled. “How very nice for you,” he said, reaching for McGuffin’s hand.

  McGuffin shook hands and said goodbye, then walked down the stairs to his car. During the drive down the hill in the dark, he again had the strange feeling that he had been there once before.

  When McGuffin returned to the Oakland Queen a little less than an hour later, he found an envelope taped to the wheelhouse door. Certain that it was the ransom note, he tore it from the door and clumsily ripped it open.

  “Shit,” he muttered, seeing it was not from Otto Kruger but from his landlord.

  Dear Mr. McGuffin,

  You will recall that as a condition of free domicile aboard the O.Q., you agreed to perform certain minimal security duties, which, due to your recent Caribbean sojourn, has resulted in yet another office burglary aboard the Queen.

  Seeing as how I’ve had more burglaries with a security guard than without, I thought that at the very least, the matter deserved some polite discussion, which I attempted earlier this evening, only to be violently attacked and knocked to the deck, resulting in a severely sprained back.

  You will kindly therefore pack your bags and be off my ship by the end of the week, or face civil and criminal prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.

  Sincerely, Elmo Bellini

  McGuffin crumpled the note and let it fall to the deck, then opened the door and stepped into the wheel-house. He would deal with Elmo later, just as he had, successfully, so many times before. Or, was that the push that had at last broken the landlord’s back, McGuffin wondered, as he pulled off his jacket. Eviction from home and office was a serious matter, but he couldn’t afford to think about anything now except his daughter’s welfare. And Marilyn’s.

  She had put him through a lot during their marriage, but now the rancor was gone, replaced by a fondness that was in some ways more comfortable than love had been. A taste of the single life, it seemed, had changed Marilyn for the better. She was more relaxed, not as full of conflicting ambitions as she was when they were first married, ready now to be a wife and mother. At their last meeting, McGuffin had the impression that she was ready to give their marriage another try - although she would never be the one to propose it. And that’s where it stands, McGuffin thought, kicking off his shoes and letting his pants fall to the floor.

  Down to his shorts, he walked into the tiny bathroom and splashed water on his face. This wasn’t his first missing child case - he had tracked down more than a few kids who had been taken by one disgruntled parent or the other - but it was the first time the object of the search was both daughter and client to the detective. It was, he knew, the kind of case that should be referred to an objective, third-party detective. But he didn’t have that luxury. There was no one he could trust. Not the police, not the FBI. Otto Kruger was a German land mine who could go off at the slightest tremor, and McGuffin, despite his personal stake, was the only demolition expert available. Stay calm, get a good night’s sleep, and wake up with a clear head, he told himself, as he slid into bed.

  But sleep wouldn’t come. He lay stiff as the mattress on his narrow cot and listened to the foghorns on the bay while the worst possible scenarios played over and over in his brain. He thought of getting up for a drink, just to calm his nerves and put him to sleep so he’d be fresh in the morning, but managed to disabuse himself of that rationalization. There was nothing to do but ride it out, count the foghorns, and try to think of something pleasant. Like pushing Hillary on the swing in the park at the foot of Telegraph Hill when she was three or four, and filled with an unending source of unanswerable questions. The few answerable ones all seemed concerned with death or sex and required evasive answers anyway. He couldn’t remember the questions. He remembered pudgy legs and white socks and little red sneakers, and the way she turned her head, jerkily, like a pigeon, and looked up to him for everything. But everything could never be enough.

  Now he saw her swinging again, the timid smile changing to fear as she climbed higher and higher with each shove, higher than the bar until the chain went slack and snapped her with a jolt. She began to cry, then scream as the swing twisted from side to side, soaring high above the bar, then plummeting each time with a cruel jolt before beginning again. McGuffin tried to stop the swing, then realized he was not pushing. He was looking on from another place, unable to get to her as she twisted and turned, pushed by an invisible hand or the devil himself. Then he saw - it was Otto Kruger, dancing and laughing as he pushed Hillary higher and higher into the air, until it seemed the chains would snap and she would hurtle into the sky.

  At the sound of the phone, McGuffin bolted upright, damp with sweat, and fumbled for the receiver.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” a voice greeted.

  “Afternoon?” The dark sky and lead-gray rain knocking against the glass insisted otherwise.

  “I trust you have had a restful night after our little talk,” Klaus Vandenhof said.

  McGuffin’s head cleared in an instant. “Did you find him?”

  “I did, sir,” the old soldier replied smartly. “It seems he has taken refuge with an old comrade in the hills of the wine country near -”

  “Is my daughter there?”

  “This I was unable to determine,” Vandenhof replied. “But I should say it’s a good bet. My informant tells me that Otto has made several mysterious trips to and from the vineyard since arriving there directly after his discharge from hospital.”

  “Which vineyard?” McGuffin asked, reaching for pen and paper.

  “The Hans Hauptmann Vineyard near St. Helena. Hans and Otto are old friends. Apparently the doctors were not entirely convinced that Otto was completely stable, but they decided eventually to release him into Hauptmann’s custody because they thought he was too old to harm anyone.”

  “He must have lied about his age,” McGuffin mumbled as he wrote. “Do you know this guy - Hans Hauptmann?”

  “I know him, but that i
s all,” Vandenhof answered coolly.

  “It doesn’t sound as if you’re friendly.”

  “Let us say his wine is too sweet for my taste.”

  “Let us say a little more than that,” McGuffin countered. “If I’m going to bust into Hauptmann’s vineyard, I want to know what kind of people are going to be guarding the gate.”

  “Efficient,” he answered, after a short pause.

  “I might have known - how do I get there?”

  Vandenhof recited directions while McGuffin scribbled. “You do remember our agreement, do you not?” he asked, when he had finished. “No matter what state you find your daughter in, you will still return my egg.”

  McGuffin dropped his pencil and inquired in an even voice, “Do you know something you’re not telling me?”

  “I’ve told you all I know,” Vandenhof assured him. “I just want to be sure you don’t forget our deal.”

  “And I just want to be sure you don’t forget my promise.”

  Vandenhof’s wheezy laugh faded and disappeared as McGuffin replaced the phone.

  The road to Napa is paved with good temptations.

  Markers of the great California vineyards line the highway that twists through the vine-covered hills, urging the traveler to stop and sample the grape in the cavernous tasting rooms at the foot of the terraced slopes. And to accompany the wine, restaurants, inns, cheese factories, bakeries, and other provisioners of foodstuffs occupy every quaint old building along the Silverado Trail, as well as some not so old. Most of the restaurants serve mediocre food - in the summer when millions of voracious tourists invade the valley, there’s little time or reason for anything better - but there are a few inns that serve decent meals.

  McGuffin knew where most of them were located, but today, he thought, as he pushed the old coupe through a twisting turn, I’ll be stopping at none of them. When he confronted Otto Kruger and his Nazi winemakers, he would be lean as the hunter and quick as the cat. He tried not to think of the great wines that rested in the cool aging cellars and distracted himself instead with the zany estate houses that poked occasionally through the grapes, like ragged chunks of cork floating in a glass. One resembled a Spanish mission, one a Greek villa, one a Victorian gingerbread, and another a Gothic pile. One looked as if it might have been moved, marble block by marble block, from the hills of Sicily, while another looked as if it had been plucked from beside the Loire and placed at the crest of the Napa range. Most of the traditional European houses were built in the nineteenth century by French, German, and Italian immigrants who, with little idea of the soil or climate that awaited them, nevertheless nurtured and carried their vines by ships and wagons, all the way from their homelands to California. Did they envision a wine industry? McGuffin wondered. Or did they just want to make sure they had something to drink with dinner? Probably the latter, he thought, because almost all of the original families were now out of the business, victims of earthquakes, Prohibition, gentleman vinters, or corporate acquisition.

  McGuffin slowed at the town limits and drove carefully down the main street of St. Helena, the 1890s museum-piece town that was the center of wine country. The gray rain still pelting San Francisco was but a distant memory in this leafy, sunny place. Like the random architecture that dotted the green hills, St. Helena looked as if it, too, had been torn whole from another place and planted in the center of this California valley. The shops and taverns and frame houses that lined the main street made McGuffin think of a prim New England village, the way Walt Disney would have done it. If I lived in a town like this, I’d always be afraid of breaking something, McGuffin thought, as he watched it recede in the rearview mirror. But given the choice of the wine town or Calistoga, the next town up the road, where the health nuts came to take the waters, he’d take the wine town every time.

  The road to the vineyard, just past the Old Bale Mill, was marked by a peeling sign – HANS HAUPTMANN VINEYARDS, NO VISITORS. Achtung! McGuffin said to himself, as he glided past the gravel road that zigzagged up the side of the vine-covered hill. The large stone house and barn at the crest of the hill were all but obscured by a lonely stand of tall eucalyptus trees. Around the turn and out of sight of the house, McGuffin pulled the car off the road and stopped. He reached into the pocket of his brown tweed jacket for a spiral notebook, flipped to a clean page and printed in block letters: DISABLED CAR. GONE TO HAUPTMANN VINEYARD FOR HELP. If I don’t come back, the cops will at least know where to come looking for me, he thought, as he tore the page from the book and placed it under the windshield. Then he reached under the seat and came up with his Smith 8c Wesson 9mm automatic, which he slipped into his jacket pocket as he slid out of the car. He walked quickly across the roadside clearing and was swallowed up in an instant between two rows of thick, grape-heavy vines.

  Although the grapes were not yet ready to be harvested, they gave off a sweet smell in the hot sun as McGuffin made his way stealthily up the side of the furrowed hill. By the time he reached the first terrace, less than halfway up the steep hill, his back was damp with sweat. He wanted to remove his tweed jacket but didn’t, knowing that his white shirt might be seen through the foliage, even though the house was still several hundred yards above and to the right. When he saw a wagon perched on the ledge directly beneath the house, he struck out diagonally across the vineyard, ducking under the wire strung from post to post. He was now dripping wet, and his shoes and pants legs were covered with clay dust by the time he reached the point he estimated to be directly below the house. He changed his course, heading straight up the hill until he was stopped by a dirt embankment some five or six feet high.

  When McGuffin peered over the top of the embankment and through the spoke wheels of the wooden cart at rest on the dirt road, he saw a young man digging at the vines across the road. And beside the young man, ears pointed skyward, stood the largest German shepherd McGuffin had ever seen. He lowered himself and pressed against the embankment while he considered his next move. There would be no crossing here, nor anywhere else, if that dog was part of a cadre of guard dogs and not just a single house pet. Getting past a human guard, even an efficient German, was always a possibility, but getting past a pack of junkyard dogs, and McGuffin had the scars to prove it, was as likely as running through the Chicago Bears.

  Deciding to look for another place to cross, McGuffin got to his feet and, head down, began to run along the embankment. He had gone only a short distance when he stepped into a hole and sprawled face down on the grass, accompanied by a suppressed but painful grunt. Ignoring the pain in his leg, he pulled the gun from his pocket and rolled over on his back, expecting the German shepherd to leap off the embankment and eviscerate him at any moment. But no dog appeared, nor did any sound come from the terrace above. He waited for a minute, then climbed to his feet and gingerly tested his knee. It was tender but workable.

  It was then that he saw what had tripped him - a recessed hatch cover, all but concealed by blown silt and sparse grass. An old well or cistern, McGuffin thought, until he remembered that some of the vineyards he had visited, Inglenook and Beringer among them, had subterranean storage tunnels carved deep into the rock, running for great distances under the vineyards. The entrance to the tunnel, if this were one, would logically be from one of the buildings above, the barn or the main house.

  McGuffin slid the gun into his pocket and dropped down to examine the hatch cover, wincing but otherwise ignoring the pain in his knee. He dug the loose soil from around the edge of the wood, found a fingerhold, and tugged. A cool rush of damp air blew up from the black hole as he lifted and slid the cover to one side. The low sun poked only several feet into the black before being swallowed up. He dropped a clod of yellow clay into the hole, heard the soft, dry thud of exploding dirt, and estimated the drop to be about twenty feet, too far for a free fall into an unknown void.

  The detective sat back on his haunches and pondered his problem. He could go back to town for a length of rope, or, he though
t, surveying the long rows of vines strung from post to post on baling wire, make do with what was available.

  He scrambled through the dry dust on hands and knees to the first post, then followed the wire hand over hand from post to post until he found its end. He unwound the wire from a rusty nail, then returned to the first post and began pulling the wire toward him, as one by one, each grape-laden plant fell softly to the ground. When some thirty feet of wire lay in a loose coil at his feet, he wrapped it twice more around the post and began feeding it into the hole. When it was all played out, he sat on the edge of the hole and prepared to lower himself, until it occurred to him that lowering 175 pounds on a strand of wire could be harder on his hands than the worst dishwashing liquid. He moved the gun from his jacket to his pants pocket, removed the jacket, and wrapped it around the wire. Then he pushed off and slid to the floor of the cave faster than a probationary fireman. The bad knee complained, but he had survived, he realized, as he peered up at the circle of light, a much longer drop than he had anticipated. He felt around the floor, found his jacket, and put it on, then moved forward slowly in the darkness until he found a stone wall.

  Walking and feeling his way along the stone wall, his hand struck a cool metal pipe after some one hundred feet. It was an electric conduit, he realized, when he found the switch box at the end of it. When he flipped the switch, a sparse necklace of hooded bulbs flashed yellow cones of light down a long tunnel of oak casks. Once again, McGuffin removed the gun from his pocket and limped cautiously in the direction of the last light at the end of the tunnel. Lesser tunnels spoked off left and right, but he stayed to the main stem, until at the end, he found himself in a large cave filled with racks of bottled wine. He walked across this room to a second tunnel and stairs, then climbed cautiously to the top, emerging finally in a cavernous barn crammed with grape-stained wagons, farm machinery, and a black Mercedes. The barn door was partly open, revealing the house across the yard in the gathering dusk, a great stone jumble of turrets and spires.