A Darker Justice

by Sallie Bissell

  “Anything not your standard camp?”

  “Nothing beyond the orphans and that oddball castle.”

  They walked on in silence, Walkingstick slipping through the woods, as casual as if he were on a Sunday stroll. Safer followed him more warily, watching for anyone who might be posted as a lookout.

  Twenty minutes later, they crested the ridge. The moon was higher and whiter in the sky. Jonathan took cover behind a huge oak tree and beckoned Safer forward.

  “There. Camp Unakawaya.”

  From their vantage point, they could see the castle rising from the cove below like a huge mother ship, with smaller cabins dotting the earth behind it. To one side of the great castle stood an oblong, ivy-covered building glowing with bright lights.

  “That’s the gym,” Jonathan told Safer. “I picked up the computers there.”

  “How do they get all this electricity up here? That place looks like Madison Square Garden.”

  “Some rich old German built this place. Wurth told me he put in some kind of underground electrical system.”

  “Way before his time, huh?”

  Jonathan nodded. “Out of his time. Out of his mind, too, if everything I’ve heard about this place is true.”

  The men watched as boys hurried in and out of the ivy-covered building like worker bees in a hive. Some hauled sheets of white cloth in, while others carried scrap lumber out. Others worked from a flatbed truck, unloading long spools of electrical wire and a gasoline-powered generator. They all wore dark green camouflage suits, and they worked not as boys in happy camaraderie, but as humorless men determined to complete a task. Safer recalled the flickering old newsreels he’d seen of Hitler Youth.

  “What the fuck are they doing?” whispered Walkingstick, his eyes locked on the frenetic activity.

  “I don’t think they’re planning a rockin’ New Year’s Eve,” Safer replied. “Come on. Let’s see if we can get closer.”

  They waited until most of the boys had gone inside, then slipped through the trees to the far side of the gym. Keeping to the shadows, they crept up to the building itself. A shoulder-high window permitted an unobstructed view of the interior. At one end of the highly polished floor, Wurth’s boys had built a platform. In the middle of the platform rose a T-shaped stand constructed of two-by-fours. Around the platform clustered an array of klieg lights and video cameras, all hooked up into one massive electrical panel. A strange eagle-and-cross version of the American flag hung from the ceiling at the back of the platform, and on each side of the structure, two boys stood guard over a pile of M-16 rifles.

  Safer groaned softly. Suddenly it all fell into place. Heads were going to roll in the mountains. By the looks of it, from right here, and very shortly.

  “What are they doing?” asked Walkingstick in a whisper.

  “I think that sometime between now and midnight Wurth is going to strap Irene Hannah to that stand and whack her head off. Judging by the lights and cameras, I’d say he’s going to broadcast it on the Internet.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s what we don’t know yet,” said Safer brusquely.

  “So what are we going to do?” Walkingstick’s voice grew urgent.

  Safer checked his watch. “It’s eight-thirty. Until Tuttle gets here, we wait. If Wurth starts the party early, we need to take out anybody who tries to walk Judge Hannah up those steps, I don’t care how old they are. We’ve got clear shots at the door from here.”

  “What about Mary?”

  Safer looked at him with troubled eyes. “Walkingstick, I don’t have a clue what this all means. All I know is that it’s big, and we’ve got to stop it.”

  “So Mary’s just an acceptable loss?”

  Safer glared at him. “Of course not. I intend to get both these women out, if in fact Mary Crow’s here.”

  “How about we make a deal, Safer? You take care of Judge Hannah, and I’ll worry about Mary Crow.”

  “Fine,” said Safer. “However you want to cut it is fine with me.”

  “Actually, Big Dan, you guys won’t have to worry about either one.”

  Safer froze as chill metal pressed against the back of his skull. The cocking of a gun’s hammer snapped through the air. He reached for his Glock, but it was useless. Rough hands pried it from his grasp, as even rougher hands yanked him and Walkingstick up and spun them around. Mike Tuttle, the agent he had given his last orders to, stood grinning at him, dressed in the uniform of Wurth’s army. Four brawny young teenagers stood behind him, pointing Uzis directly at them.

  CHAPTER 40

  The hall seemed to stretch for miles as Mary stood breathing hard, trying to clear her lungs of the ductwork’s sooty air. With its twelve-foot ceilings and polished floors, the corridor would have made the ideal spot for fencers to parry and thrust up one side and down the other. Walnut-paneled doors opened along one wall, and between them hung old portraits of handsome young men in World War I Army uniforms—the German youths looking rakish and cocky, the British boys aristocratic and sad. Mary wondered if the subjects had been painted from memory, before their long, aquiline features had been blown off and their dreamy, blue-gray eyes opened to the brutal realities of war.

  She wiped a fine film of grit from her face. Her crawl through the furnace pipe had left her disoriented. The castle walls seemed to tilt at odd angles, while the gleaming oak floor felt corrugated instead of smooth.

  She tiptoed down the hall, all the while listening for the return of the thundering herd. Where had Wurth’s foul little army gone? Two of them were supposedly guarding her in the basement. The rest must be patrolling this house. But where? And when would they return?

  She crept on, passing one of the burled walnut doors. She was tempted to open it, in hope that it might lead outside, but as she neared it she kept on moving. She’d learned that the doors at Camp Unakawaya often revealed unpleasant surprises. She didn’t know if she could stomach another one.

  She saw an open doorway, down the hall to the left. Maybe it would lead her to the flag-draped foyer and front entrance beyond.

  She picked up her pace, instinctively trying to hurry away from the feeling that something was following her. Just a few more steps, she thought. Just a few more steps and she would be there . . . .

  Then she heard a tiny click. She whirled. Behind her, the walnut door swung open. She clenched her fist, ready to fight. She would die before she would let anybody strap her down to a table again.

  A tall, thin figure peeked from behind the door. A boy. But not one of the older ones who’d tormented her and sliced off her hair. This boy had poorly mended glasses that magnified his blue eyes and his dark brown hair curled in unruly cowlicks on the top of his head. Without thinking she leaped forward and grabbed him by the neck, shoving him against the wall so hard, the back of his head bounced against the paneling.

  “Not one word, you little bastard! I’m headed for the front door. Don’t fuck with me and you’ll be fine.”

  The boy opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Sweat beaded on his upper lip. Up close, Mary realized that he truly was different from the other boys. Where they were thick-necked and had shoulders like football players, this one seemed barely strung together with nerves and thin wire. Suddenly she recognized him—this was the bookish sweeper who had first welcomed her to Camp Unakawaya. She loosened her grip on his throat. He began to sputter.

  “Y-you came here after that old w-woman, didn’t you?” His voice covered several octaves in one sentence.

  “What if I did?”

  “N-nothing.” The boy’s eyes had an edgy, haunted look. “I just thought I recognized you.”

  “Do you know anything about her? Is she still alive?”

  “She was about fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Where?”

  The boy pointed upward. “Third floor. I can take you to her.”

  Mary frowned at the boy. Did they know she had escaped? Were they using him as bait for some trap
? Maybe he’d been sent to lead her to the third floor—and back into the arms of those thugs from the amphitheater. “Why should I trust you?”

  The boy shrugged, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Because I want to get out of here just as bad as you do.”

  He spoke the trusting mountain speech of her childhood, but she drilled him as if she had him squirming on the witness stand. “And why is that?”

  “Because I’m not like these others.” He glanced over his shoulder as if invisible hands might grab him at any moment.

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because I’ve got the same marks on my backside that are all over your face,” he confessed, now blushing a furious crimson. “Tallent and them jerk my britches down every night. Sometimes they beat me with that whip thing. Sometimes they do worse.”

  Mary considered his words. She did not have much experience with teenaged boys, but she knew that macho stoicism was the code they lived by. Telling a female that you had your ass whipped every night had to be an act of true desperation.

  “That Wurth ain’t fit to live,” the boy added flatly, as if clarifying some basic principle of physics. “Someday I’m going to kill him.”

  Knock yourself out, kid, she thought. The sooner the better.

  “So if I take you to her, will you help me get out of here, for good?”

  Yew. Mary had to smile. Years ago she had sounded exactly like him. Though she had no reason to believe anything this boy said, she did. Anyway, her options were growing fewer with each passing second. “What’s your name?”

  “T-Tommy Cabe,” he answered, his voice full of quiet pride. “From Harlan, Kentucky. And someday I am going to kill Sergeant Wurth.”

  “Okay, Tommy Cabe. For now let’s just work on getting Judge Hannah out of here. We can worry about killing Wurth later.”

  “Come on, then.” The boy held the door open. Mary stepped forward, trusting Tommy Cabe with her life.

  “Where did you say Irene was?”

  “Up on the third floor.”

  “Then where are we now? Near the front door?”

  “Pretty close, but you’d never have walked through it alive.”

  “Why not?”

  “Tallent’s posted there. He would kill you before you could stick a toe outside.”

  Tallent. That was the grinning blond ape who’d cut her hair. “Okay. Then get me to the third floor.”

  “Right this way.”

  She followed him as he opened another door and led her into an old storage room. Shelves rose to the ceiling, all filled with industrial-sized cans of food, cases of paper towels, and countless rolls of toilet paper.

  “A friend and I used to spend a lot of time in here.” He gave her a sly grin. “You’d be surprised what you can find out working in a kitchen.”

  He walked over to the shelves of toilet paper and reached high, behind the top shelf, and worked a small hinge. Suddenly the whole structure swung forward, revealing a minuscule elevator, set deep inside the wall.

  Mary looked at the boy, delighted. “That’s an old dumbwaiter.”

  “I don’t know what it is, but it runs on pulleys and ropes. If you get in it it’ll carry you up to a closet on the third floor.”

  Mary eyed the box dubiously, again wondering what surprises might be awaiting her on the third floor. “Who gets to go first?”

  “I will. Then I’ll send it down to you.”

  “Won’t somebody hear us?”

  “They’ve only got a few patrols in the house right now. Wurth and most of the Troopers are working in the gym.”

  “Working on what?”

  Tommy Cabe looked at her in amazement. “Don’t you know? They’re fixing to chop your friend’s head off. At midnight tonight.”

  Mary’s knees wobbled as a wave of urgency swept through her. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Tommy hopped up on the edge of the dumbwaiter and folded his long legs inside. “When I get there, I’ll send it back for you.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “Not long. You’ll see.”

  She watched as the box rose, squeaking, carrying Tommy upward. For far too long she watched the old ropes that ran the contraption, then, just as she was about to decide the boy had set her up to be found by Wurth’s Troopers, the box creaked back down to her.

  She hopped inside the crate, crouching like an animal inside a cage. At first nothing happened, then she felt a shudder as she began to rise. The box slowly rose past the old floor joists and she thought of Irene, trapped in some room above her. Hang on, Irene, she prayed silently. I’m coming as fast as I can. Another moment and the crate stopped with a bump. She crouched there, eye to eye with Tommy Cabe.

  “See?” Tommy grinned proudly. “I told you it would work.”

  Mary clambered out of the cramped space and into the linen closet, a small room with empty shelves that smelled of camphor and dust. “Where is she?”

  “Come on,” he murmured. “I’ll show you.”

  She followed close behind as he walked to the closet door and cracked it open. He peered into the darkness beyond, then quickly reclosed the door.

  “Honeycutt’s still out there.” He mouthed the words. “We’ll have to wait till he takes a break.”

  She wanted to ask Cabe how many boys guarded this castle, but she didn’t dare make a sound. Beyond the door she heard the sound of young male laughter. She shrank back as it seemed to move closer, then suddenly, she heard footsteps, as if someone were walking away. Her breath snagged in her throat. Cabe put his finger to his lips.

  “Come on,” he whispered, cracking the door open again. “Honeycutt’s taking his break. We’ve got about four minutes to get her out of there.”

  They crept into the hall. Here, old linoleum covered the floors, and the walls glowed with a sickly shade of white paint. Even now, almost a century after Baron von Loessing’s damaged young soldiers, the scent of suffering hung in the air.

  “Hurry, Tommy,” Mary whispered, feeling like a lizard was crawling up her spine.

  They whisked on, passing door after door, silent as nurses on night duty. Finally, at the door with an empty chair beside it, Tommy stopped.

  “In there,” he told her. “You’ll find what you’re looking for.”

  CHAPTER 41

  An old-fashioned examination table stood in the middle of the room. On that table lay Irene.

  At first Mary thought she was dead, then, she noticed the slight rise and fall of her breathing. Straps of thick leather bound her arms and legs, and she wore the same kind of black pajamas that Mary did. Though her silvery hair still curled softly around her face and her flesh did not bear the marks of the muchi, two thick wads of surgical gauze covered the stumps where both her little fingers had been, and angry red cuts covered her hands and wrists.

  Wurth’s been instructing his Troopers, Mary realized, a wave of nausea rising. They’ve been practicing on Irene. She rushed to the table and bent low over her old friend.

  “Irene?” She brushed her lips against Irene’s forehead. “Can you hear me?”

  The pale eyelids fluttered. “Hi, baby,” she whispered. “Did you feed the horses?”

  Mary pressed her cheek against her old friend’s hair. Her body gave off a sour, dry smell. She wondered if Wurth had allowed her as much as a glass of water after he’d sliced off her fingers.

  “Irene? It’s Mary. Can you hear me? Can you talk?”

  Irene opened her eyes. They looked bloodshot, but returned her gaze with recognition.

  “Mary? What are you doing here?”

  Mary could barely speak. “Bodyguarding you.”

  “What happened to your face? Your gorgeous hair?”

  Mary shook her head. She could not recount all that had been done to her.

  “All that pain for my judicial principles,” Irene said softly. “I’m so sorry, Mary.”

  “Don’t think about it now.” Mary kissed her cheek. “Do
n’t think about it, ever. We both did what we had to.” For a moment she simply relished the warmth of Irene’s cheek against hers, then she asked a question.

  “Can you walk?”

  “I haven’t walked in days, but they haven’t smashed my kneecaps or anything. I think they’re saving me for some greater purpose.”

  If you only knew, Mary thought grimly as she looked over at Tommy, who stood near the door. “Help me get her up. Unbuckle her straps on the other side of the table.”

  Tommy hurried over and began to pick at one unyielding buckle. “We need to move fast. Honeycutt’ll be back any second.”

  The old leather was thick and stiff from years of disuse. Tommy and Mary frantically pulled at the straps, then at last the stiff leather worked loose. As the straps fell away from Irene’s arms, they helped her upright.

  “Thank God!” Irene rubbed her wrists. “Do you realize what a blessing it is to be able to move?”

  “Actually, I do.” Mary glanced warily over her shoulder at the door. “Particularly away from here. How are we doing, Tommy?”

  “I figure he’ll be back in about two minutes.”

  “Help me, then.” Together, Mary and Tommy supported Irene by her arms as she rose from the table. For an instant her knees wobbled as if she’d been at sea. Slowly Irene limped across the room, stopping when she nosed up against an old German anatomy poster entitled “Die Hand und Der Fuss.” She walked stiffly, but her steps were steady and sure.

  Thank God, thought Mary. Now if we can just get past Honeycutt! She looked at Tommy. “Ready?”

  “Let’s go.”

  Half carrying Irene between them, Tommy opened the door and they inched back the way they’d come, Mary just waiting for a loud male voice to shout “Stop!” Though their steps seemed thunderous, they kept moving, not stopping until they came to a door that was different from the others—rather than having a knob and lock, it swung freely. Tommy pushed it open; the trio stepped inside.

  Years ago it had been a communal shower. Hexagonal tiles covered the floor and a line of old-fashioned fixtures sprouted from one wall. A large drain was sunk in the middle of the room, and a tall, narrow window at the far end of the room.