Scone Island

by Frederick Ramsay

  “Listen, Charlie, I do have another big problem, Ruth refuses to leave the island. She has it in mind we should go out back to back, guns blazing.”

  “Archie’s stuff should have included some choral hydrate. Knock her out and tuck her away in the basement until it’s over.”

  “It’s a thought. Thanks.”

  “Okay. One last thing and then we’d better drop this. I’ve been scouring the files that describe ops the four of you worked. I think the thing traces back to one of three operations the four of you ran in Nigeria, Libya, or Bosnia. Do you remember them?”

  “I think the Nigeria business was a sting. We provided guns in exchange for conflict diamonds, only the guns were bogus. I’m a little vague on the Bosnia one. It was connected somehow to a United Nations thing—or not. Libya had to do with Lockerbie.”

  “In Nigeria, you’re right, the sting went south. The diamonds were never delivered.”

  “Okay, yes. We were to work with a local doctor. He had a hospital or clinic near the beach, and he brokered the deal. We dropped the guns—they didn’t have firing pins and something else, right? We stacked them in the clinic and then Archie and the doc got into a pissing match. You know Archie. He tried to bluff everybody for one thing or another. He would imply he knew a whole lot more about the person he was dealing with than he really did. It must have backfired because the next thing I remember the place was crawling with guys in uniforms carrying Uzis and machetes. We were lucky to get out of there alive.”

  “Do you remember the doctor’s name?”

  “I’d have to think about that.”

  “Was it Ostrofsky?”

  “Sounds right. Sneaky little bastard, if I remember correctly. As I said, he ran a clinic of some sort. Weird sort of place. It had a fence like a prison around it, you know, topped with razor wire? There were all kinds of crazies running loose on the continent then. He told us he put up the fence to keep them out, or if they came in, they did so only at his invitation. Still, a razor wire fence seemed a little over the top. Oh, and armed guards in the compound, too.”

  “That’s all?”

  “All? I’d have to think on it a while, but yeah, the patients didn’t look all that sick. I wondered about that at the time. I expected to see people in beds and those hospital gowns that don’t cover your butt and tubes running in their arms and other miscellaneous orifices, but most of them were walking around. They looked beat up, like they’d been in a fight lately, pistol whipped maybe, but only a few were in beds and bandaged.”

  “They had been in a fight? Maybe they were fleeing the Congo.”

  “Possible, but they looked like civilians, you know. I would have sworn that some of their bruises were rifle butt strikes. I don’t know, Charlie. It was long ago and another life.”

  “I understand. Do you think the doctor might be a link to what is going down now?”

  “Ostrofsky? Like I said, I don’t know, Charlie, Besides, I thought he was dead, so how would that work?”

  “It wouldn’t, I guess. Call it a hunch. Do you think it’s possible he might have double crossed you and kept the diamonds?”

  “Anything is possible. Those were crazy times. Maybe someone on the other side tipped off the gun buyers and that’s when we had to boogie out of there. What about Bosnia?”

  “Nothing solid, but the director served as military liaison on that one. Do you remember him?”

  “You’re kidding. He did? Hell, Charlie, I must be getting old, you’d think I’d remember that, wouldn’t you. He was there?”

  “I have a picture that says he was. I don’t know what that means. You should try to remember if there was anything that happened that would not have made its way into the file.”

  “Okay, first, I do not remember the Army guy being the director. He wasn’t on the scene often enough to make an impression. What would he have been doing there anyway? The operation had to do with supporting a local partisan group that the Company believed was composed of true blue democracy lovers. They weren’t, by the way. Red as a fireman’s BVD’s. I have no idea what interest the DoD might have had in that beyond coordinating some air strikes. We were doing a lot of that back then.”

  “Nothing new there. Okay, can you tell me anything about Libya? This file is a little vague as well.”

  “It was a recruiting mission. Remember, we had a sea change in the country’s position regarding Colonel Qadaffi about that time. The agency had him pegged as all show and no-go. After Lockerbie, we had to reconsider. The pooh-bahs in State thought we needed better eyes in Libya. We went in to find some.”

  “Names?”

  “Come on, Charlie. They were hard enough to keep straight at the time. You think I remember now? No way. Archie would know, but he’s dead. Aren’t they in the file?”

  “Blacked out. Since the Little Colonel’s ouster, who knows what’s up in that country? It’ll be years before it all shakes out. The fact that some of the folks now moving into power positions may have at one time been on our payroll could play hell with their ability to move upward in the new order. It looks like someone with the clout to make the names disappear did not want to that to happen.”

  “If the names are blacked out, that’s probably why, that or someone is looking for something else—deniability maybe.”

  “Or special and therefore useful knowledge to be trotted out on some future occasion. Okay, here’s the big question, is the possibility that the four of you could remember any of those names a threat serious enough for someone to want to kill you?”

  “There’s no way to know. Possibly, but even if it is, would they have the capacity to pull something like what happened here and in Baltimore from Libya?”

  “If they had help, they could. Who would be interested enough and in a position to do it? To answer that question and others like the doctor, for example, I’ll need to dig deeper into files, and I can’t do that at present. I have been sent to my room, or rather to Colorado.”

  “At the moment, none of this is important to me. The killers are in the hunt, and that’s the only thing that matters, not the why.”

  “Exactly…but if it is an inside job…” Charlie let the words hang.

  “For this to end, Charlie, you will have to figure that out. In the meantime, if you do manage to send help, there is an old down-easter here named Henry Potter. He is our watchdog. He will be expecting a password. They should say, ‘I’m a friend of the VanDeVeers.’ He will be logging in any and all strangers to the island. If your people say that, he’ll send them to Ruth and me. If they don’t, he’ll flag them.”

  “‘I’m a friend of the VanDeVeers.’ Got it. Be talking later, when you’re ready to be found.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Before he left Washington, Charlie booked his motel in Barratt through the agency’s travel service being careful to follow regulations to the letter. Once in Denver, he picked up his rental car and set out for Barratt. But before he’d cleared Denver metro, he’d pulled in at a Salvation Army store and made a few purchases: a suitcase and a job-lot of clothes. After he’d arrived in Barratt at his officially sanctioned motel room, he opened the case and removed a few pieces at random. He hung jackets in the closet, stuffed shirts and socks into drawers, and scattered laundry on the floor. In the bathroom he removed the wrappers from the little bars of soap, dumped half of the shampoo down the drain, ran the shower, left a damp towel on the floor, and returned to the room and rumpled the bedclothes. It wouldn’t fool an experienced eye, but he guessed or hoped the director wouldn’t waste an experienced team on the Barratt end of the business. He wasn’t sure about the other party, if there was one. He glanced around and satisfied that, to the less perceptive, he was in residence; he drove away and paid cash for another room in a non-chain motel a few miles away from Barratt. He really did not want an agency babysitter. After checking in with a false ID, he drove on to Barratt. It was time to find out what happened to Bernstein.

  If h
e tried hard enough, Charlie thought he could make out the scent of mountain pine and spruce. The Rockies were certainly well within sight. He smiled at the thought. Except for the Rocky Mountains looming on its near horizon, Barratt, Colorado could have been any small town in any state in the union. There was little else to smile at in Barratt. An east-west street ran straight through the town, intersected at its midpoint by the predictable cross street, guarded only by four-way stop signs. It, in turn, shot north and south. Both thoroughfares came from, or went to someplace important. Like dozens of forgotten towns across the country, Barratt looked tired and down on its luck, another victim of the Eisenhower administration’s decision to build an enormous interstate highway system in the mid-twentieth century. Countless towns and villages that dotted the old historical routes north and south, east and west—Route 1, the storied Route 66—were now all gone to seed or well on their way, left behind, bypassed, and forgotten. They either changed or died. Most, like Barratt, died.

  He found the police station a block south of the main drag, located in a forlorn two-story brick building that might once have been a bus station. It was a municipal building typical to small, economically depressed towns everywhere. Of course, that assumed at one time Barratt might have been an important enough venue to warrant a bus station. The evidence that it was not could be seen in the badly patched potholes and nearly invisible lane markers in its streets.

  He pushed his way through the station’s double glass doors. Painted in semigloss institutional green, the entry boasted a counter running its length and an old cop behind it. The area reeked of stale cigarette smoke. So much for a smoke-free environment. That bit of progressive doctrine had not survived the trip west, it seemed. The cop behind the counter had to be double-dipping—Social Security and this job. He was grizzled in the way of old men who’ve skipped their morning shave for a day or two. It wasn’t the neo-stylish grunge look affected by male celebrities, clothing models, and their wannabes, but rather the carelessness of old age or a throwback to an era when men bathed and shaved once a week—on Saturday night. It was rural Colorado, after all.

  Charlie flashed an ID that declared him to be a Special Investigator from the Colorado state police. He felt sure that these folks would have had little to do with the state cops if possible, so he should get an entrée without much in the way of verification. It was the best cover he could think of in his haste to leave D.C.

  The old guy peered at his card and badge through reading glasses with lenses that resembled a fingerprint array more than an aid to vision.

  “Bit out of your jurisdiction ain’t you, Inspector?” the old cop said.

  “Well, that depends, Sergeant. It is sergeant isn’t it?” The old man nodded and puffed up a bit—as much as he could, given his advanced years and obvious tobacco-induced emphysema. “Not an official visit, you know. My chief sent me down here to ask one or two questions about a reported accident out this way a week or so ago. It seems the family isn’t satisfied or something. You know how that goes.”

  The old cop nodded and gave Charlie a knowing look.

  “So, I thought I’d just pop in and see iff’n y’all might have a thing or two to tell me.” Charlie, when called on, could speak country cracker as well as the next man.

  “Well, sir, I can sure appreciate that, I can, but I ain’t so sure it’s up to me. I’ll have to check with the chief.”

  “How about you do that, Sarge.”

  “Yep…well, sir, here’s the problem. He ain’t here.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “No telling. The trout are running real good up-country and the chief, well, he don’t miss getting him his rainbows when they’re running, no sir.”

  “He’s fishing for rainbow trout? So, who is here that can help me?”

  “Jack Morris, that’s Lieutenant Morris, is the second-in-command, you could say, but he ain’t here either. He was called out to a ruckus over to the Bailey’s Motel.”

  “That’s the motel on the other end of town, right? Can you raise him on the radio? All I need is his okay to read through a file.”

  “I can try. What file would that be?”

  “A climbing accident involving Neil Bernstein.”

  The desk officer’s expression shifted from ingenuous affability to poorly concealed cunning. “I believe that there file is sealed or something.”

  “Sealed? What do you mean it’s sealed?”

  “I believe there is this court order that’s done been slapped on it. Something to do with the…” The old man seemed to search his limited imagination for an appropriate reason. Charlie could almost hear the wheels spinning. “Homeland Security,” he blurted.

  “Homeland Security had a court order placed on a file to seal the accidental death of a young rock climber? Sergeant, I don’t think so. Really?”

  “Yep. It were something like that. So, I don’t have to call the lieutenant on account of it’s all hush-hush.”

  Charlie noticed a young officer doing his paper work at a steel desk that had seen its best days well before it turned up at the federal surplus property center to be claimed by this back-country outfit. He did not look happy. Whether his unhappiness had anything to do with the conversation at the desk or what lay on his desk, he couldn’t tell, but Charlie felt sure the cop had overheard the conversation and knew something. Would he share?

  “Well, okay,” Charlie said loudly enough so the cop in the corner could hear. “I expect I’ll pick me up some dinner over at that diner on Main Street. If the chief or the lieutenant can help me out, maybe they could drop by or give me a call.”

  “I’ll tell them, but don’t hold your breath, Inspector,” the old cop said and grinned revealing a set of tobacco-stained dentures. That would explain the clicking that followed his every sibilant.

  Charlie nodded, dropped his bogus business card on the counter, and shot the young cop a look. He pushed back through the glass doors and out to the street. Did he want to call Ike yet? His cell phone indicated enough signal strength to make the call. He shrugged and made for the diner. Diners are an American institution, and Charlie began to relax in the mixed aromas of frying bacon, coffee, and canned gravy. He found an empty booth, ordered coffee, the Salisbury steak dinner, and a slice of apple pie. The pie had been billed as homemade. The menu, like the old cop, lied. The place that pie had called home was more likely a factory in Denver than the diner’s attached kitchen. He shoved it aside and ate his dinner…and waited. Whether his wait would be for Ike, the young cop from the station, or perhaps another, more important local cop, he couldn’t say. But he didn’t have to wait long. The young officer from the station stepped in and sat down at the counter.

  ***

  Sandy Ansona settled onto a stool and ordered a burger, fries, and coffee. He scanned the mirror opposite and found the state inspector sitting in a booth in the corner and watching him. He looked away. He had a decision to make; one that could, if he had it wrong, end his career. Did he dare talk to this guy? Would he do any more than his brother could, or would this guy cover the “thin blue line” and their respective rear ends? The town needed a deep cleaning, as his dentist would say. What were the chances this man from Denver would be the means of getting it done? He chewed his burger and drank his coffee. Then, his mind made up, scribbled a message on his napkin and headed to the restrooms. As he passed the inspector, he staggered slightly and bumped his table. He apologized, stooped and retrieved a napkin which apparently had dropped to the floor and placed it on the table. He proceeded to the restroom.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  The days grow longer in Maine as May makes its transit to June and the earth tilts toward the summer solstice. If it were not so, Ike and Ruth would have been stumbling around in the dark on the footpath that crossed the island while lugging Archie Whitlock’s duffle and satphone.

  “What are we doing?” Ruth struggled to keep up with Ike. She’d been recklessly nonchalant when describing h
er tolerance to pain, but she could not pull back now or Ike would surely pack her off to Picketsville, threats of a marital breakup notwithstanding. In fact, she wondered why he hadn’t done so already. He knew her threat was merely rhetorical. She preferred not to think about it even as she acknowledged she had no power to refuse were he to insist, so she grunted along in his wake trying, but failing, to ignore the painful jolts that shot up her barely healed broken leg.

  “We’re looking for lurks.” Ike slowed his pace, either in response to her grunting or because he had seen something.

  “Looking for what? What did you say we’re looking for? A lurk? What’s a lurk?”

  “You’ve seen leopards in trees?”

  “Not lately, Schwartz. Very few big cats make it to Picketsville. Or are you suggesting that African fauna have taken up residence on this island? They’re after the deer perhaps?”

  “Don’t go all smarty-pants with me, kiddo. Leopards lurk in trees to avoid danger and to wait for prey. We need places to do the same thing if a massacre is to be avoided. We will find cover and good lines of fire in a variety of spots here and there. We will stock those spots with some of Archie’s stuff. Then as the scenario unfolds we will have places we either can retreat to that are defensible and stocked with the things we need to hold out, or where we lie in wait for the nasties to come to us.”

  “That’s a lurk? Are you speaking spook talk or did you make that up?”

  “The latter. Look there.” Ike pointed to a shallow defilade next to the path. “That depression can be made secure. Go gather some brush. I saw a good-sized log back along the path. If we put it across the front here, then…” He didn’t finish his sentence but jogged down the path in the direction they’d come. Ruth wasn’t sure why, but she gathered armfuls of brush and piled them up next to the soon-to-be lurk. A moment later Ike hove into view dragging a sizable tree trunk.

  “Holy cow, Ike, that thing is as big around as me.”