“It is,” she called back over her shoulder, a loud whisper, “nothing less than a secret passageway. I discovered it on my own one day looking for a place to put trash cans. It’s not easily noticed, the door fits very flush and the latch is recessed into the wood and the hinges are on the inside …” She stopped: “Do you hear a squeaking noise? Like a rat?”
“Not really but then I’ve been busy with the hanging creepers—”
“Well, I’ll pretend I didn’t hear it, then.” She pointed the cone of light ahead into the darkness. “We’re underneath and between the’ buildings on Chestnut, which is to our right, and Beacon Street to our left. We’re going downhill … just before we get to the cross street there are some steps which go up into a brick courtyard behind some tall town houses, sort of hidden in behind a couple of garages—it’s all most unorthodox but I really don’t think anyone ever uses the passageway for anything.” She turned and pushed on in the wake of the torch. “It may have been a way servants and tradesmen moved from one dwelling to another a long time ago, or it may have been something else altogether, something quite ulterior … Anyway, it’s getting us out of trouble.”
They came out into the mossy brick cul-de-sac blinking, glad for the fresh cold air. The wind swirled in the trees above, carried a constant, clinging damp. The narrow street was quiet, traffic moving sluggishly on Beacon Street. They quickly headed off toward the Common, crossed Beacon and began the grassy descent. Out of breath they stopped at the bottom of the hill. The huge wading pool lay empty and gray like a concrete trap on a green, hilly golf course. Sheltering under a giant tree they looked nervously back up the hill: the red Pinto was, of course, nowhere in sight.
“Okay,” he panted. “You go to see Nora at the Parker House. I’ll go meet Hugh and pick you up at the Faneuil Hall flower stall … on the corner—”
“I know, I know.” She touched his arm: “Now be careful … Those guys are everywhere.” The irises of her eyes were large and almost black in the gray glow of afternoon. She gave him a squeeze and a tight smile.
“Don’t worry. And stay in crowds getting to the hotel. And have the doorman at the hotel get you a cab to Faneuil Hall and don’t take any bullshit from the cabbie. Give him five bucks, a buck a block—”
She was nodding: “I have been out on my own before. I’ll be fine.”
He watched her go, convinced she was safe: in less than ten minutes she’d be in Nora’s room. He turned, tightened his grip on the duffel bag and struck off toward the Ritz-Carlton far across the Public Garden. Crossing the arched bridge over the Frog Pond he thought briefly of the swan boats which would be gliding on the still glassy waters a few weeks from now. It had been a long time since he’d ridden a swan boat, watched the couples sprawling on the grass verges, enjoyed the ducks and the explosions of color in the flowerbeds. The innocence of such an afternoon’s occupation struck him as distressingly distant from the moment at hand. But Polly, he bet himself, would enjoy it.
The imposing equestrian statue of George Washington loomed gigantically ahead of him.
“George,” he said, “what’s your country coming to, baby?” He looked up into the noble, determined visage, farsighted, but sightless forever now. The statue was waterstained from the rain. He seemed to be the only one noticing George, surely the only pedestrian talking to him. His Rolex said three-fifty. He was meeting Hugh in forty minutes. “George,” he said, “I’m doing my best.”
He crossed Arlington, decided against waiting in line for a taxi at the Ritz-Carlton, and leaned into the wind, made his way across Newberry to the Boylston Street corner. No luck. He walked up Boylston, crossed at Trinity Church and damned near buckled in the gale whistling down from the open expanse of Copley Square. He waited beneath the icy upward thrust of the John Hancock Building; finally, at four-oh-seven he flagged down a taxi going in the right direction and settled back, sweating and cold and getting vaguely accustomed to the gnawing mixture of fear and anticipation which had come to live in his stomach. Polly would be with Nora by now.
The huge Indian, arms outspread, greeted him silently at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The taxi pulled away in a cloud of noxious fumes. A streetcar wheezed into view. “Hi,” he said to the Indian, wondering if there was a one-day record for speaking to equestrian statuary. “George says hi from the Public Garden …”
He paid and went through the turnstile and on up the long clicking stairway and on to the Egyptian collection.
Hugh was nowhere to be seen. Chandler moved on in the rooms he had almost to himself. A guard yawned, smiled wearily. The end of a slow Saturday. Chandler waited by Lady Sennuwy, the most beautiful woman in the world. Four thousand years and still the most beautiful …
It was fifteen minutes before Brennan lumbered through the door.
“Christ,” he puffed, wiping his nose. “I’m sorry I’m late. Foul-up at Avis. Fucking wizard blew a fuse, I don’t know … How the hell are you?”
“I’m fine. The car’s downstairs?”
“Ah, yeah. Look, Colin, were you talking to this?” He jerked a thumb at Lady Sennuwy.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Chandler said.
“I’m a nervous goddamn wreck,” Brennan announced with a stifled sneeze. “But it’s also fun in a sick sort of way. I got you a brown car, just a brown, dumb-looking car. I don’t even know what kind it is … Look, are you doing anything really stupid? I mean, dangerous?”
“What can I say?” Chandler shrugged: “I somehow found myself in this thing—I’m not looking for trouble, if that’s what you mean. But I can’t ignore Percy Davis, can I? It’s a legacy … two men have died and this is what they’ve left me, this thingummy on the kitchen table in Kennebunkport. I can’t just ignore it.”
Brennan nodded, glumly, apparently unconvinced.
“You haven’t noticed the guys in the red Pinto, have you?”
“Not since they passed my house—hell, it may have been another red Pinto—”
“If you believe that, you’ll believe anything … Right now they’re parked outside Polly’s place, waiting for God only knows what.”
Brennan fumbled for a veteran Kleenex, rubbed his reddening nose: “It’s hard to believe …”
“Well, we’ve shaken them now, thanks to you and the Wizard of Avis. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
They went out the main entrance. The darkness had fallen fast and there was a faint mist. Brennan produced the keys and led the way to the brown car. The parking lot was almost deserted, a curiously wet and dispiriting place. Water stood in puddles.
“Good luck,” Brennan said, coughing. His trilby was pulled down tight against the tops of his ears. His sinuses were clogged. He looked miserable. “Be careful.”
“Cheer up,” Chandler said, chucking the duffel bag into the back seat. “Go home and take something for your cold. I’ll be in touch.” They shook hands. “I’ll get this all straightened out and everything will be fine.”
As he eased the brown car out of the lot and into the street, he caught sight of the bulky, raincoated figure standing at the trolley stop. The headlights picked him out and he looked up like an enormous, primitive boar, his eyes reflecting red. Then Chandler turned and waved as he drove back toward downtown Boston, the stout figure of his friend fading quickly into the night’s gloom.
“Jeez, my face is fuckin’ killing me,” Ozzie whined, his chins wobbling, his fingers hooked and raking across the bandages covering the left side of his face. “Feels like my skin is all bubbled up.” He moaned softly, sucked on the last cherry-flavored Tiparillo which was doing his adenoidal condition no good at all. “Not that you give a shit.”
“I do give a shit,” Thorny wheezed, “but it’s hard for me to talk, you know that. So get offa me, okay? Besides, under the bandage your skin is all bubbled up … and your hair’s gonna fall out. So, fuck it.” He lay his battered, grease-stained copy of The Final Days on the dashboard and stared up at the light in the bay windo
w of Polly Bishop’s apartment.
The gray day had wizened into a dark, wet evening and Thorny suspected that his chest and ribs were at least as painful as his partner’s burn. The cramped little car had become their torture chamber: it had been a long day. Worse: he was afraid Ozzie was going crazy …
“Fuck it yourself,” Ozzie muttered deep in his chest.
“Funny thing,” Thorny said. “I haven’t seen a shadow up there for the past couple hours.”
“Maybe they’re in the sack,” Ozzie groaned, shifting his huge bulk. The seat creaked. “Jeez, I’d like a crack at that broad … Wham.” His fingers crawled upwards yet again. His pale eyes flickered like trapped maddened things.
“But the Jag’s still there,” Thorny continued along his own track. “Now how the hell else could they get out? Why would they bother to sneak out anyway? They don’t know we’re here …” His fingers tapped on the steering wheel. He was doing his utmost to think it through without breathing. Breathing hurt like hell.
“I wouldn’t put nothing past that bastard,” Ozzie said. His face and scalp felt as if the bubbles were bursting, itching, peeling away. He took a final drag on the tiny cigar and dropped it out the window. “Maybe they spotted us. Why not? I’m so hungry I could puke.” He took a plastic bottle from his coat pocket and swallowed a pain-killer.
“If we lose them, the old man will have our nuts.” Thorny’s fingers drummed on. “If we confront them, he’ll have our ass.” He looked at the pained pudding of a face next to him, a few blisters bulging beyond the white bandage. He didn’t know which was worse, the smell of the cherry cigar or the grease applied to the coffee burns. The odors he’d spent the day inhaling forced his decision. He opened the car door and inhaled deeply. “Let’s go up and have a look.”
Ozzie lumbered up the stairway after Thorny picked the outside door lock. Thorny’s labored wheezing rasped like a mechanical device in the narrow hallway. They were pursuing action in an attempt to get their minds off the pain. Ozzie stood puffing at the top, staring dumbly down at Thorny’s crablike progress, his hand clutching his chest.
“What the hell do we do now? Knock?”
“Sure, knock,” Thorny gasped.
“What should I say if somebody answers?”
“Just knock for Chrissake! I’ll do the talking—”
But the sudden hammering produced no audible result.
Thorny picked the lock and eased the door open: he had no idea what he’d say if Polly came airily around the corner demanding to know what was going on. And he wasn’t at all sure he could control Ozzie, given his gigantic colleague’s present state of mind. Oh, to be clear and away and safe with nobody mad at them …
They stepped into the apartment’s vestibule, moved cautiously on into the sitting room. The music played, the lights cast a cheery, warm glow. Tiptoeing Thorny peered into the kitchen, then the bedroom, which was when he heard Ozzie’s strangled scream. Returning to the sitting room he found Ozzie squared off facing a cat which had reared up, back arched like a curved handle, on the back of a chair.
“I’m gonna kill this fuckin’ cat,” Ozzie moaned deep in his throat. “Little bastard scared me … I’m gonna wring its neck …”
“And the old man will wring yours, meathead!” He put his hand on Ozzie’s arm: “Forget the cat.” Ozzie yanked away.
“I wanna do some damage, goddamn it!” He still eyed the cat which had begun to stretch, ignoring the bandaged man as merely a large sputtering, harmless creature.
“Not here. Not anyplace.” Thorny spoke in gasps. “Use your head.”
Ozzie turned away from the cat and kicked viciously at the couch.
“The question is, where the hell are they?”
“And how did they get out …”
“Everybody’s disappearing,” Thorny said, heading for the kitchen where he took a glass from the cupboard and filled it with tap water. “Underhill’s secretary …” He sipped water, swallowed carefully, grimacing. “Now these two. And we’re still in the dark.” He sipped again. “Who’s left? We need a lead. You want a drink?”
“Shove your drink,” Ozzie said.
“Let’s go back to Cambridge,” Thorny said at last. With his handkerchief he wiped the glass clean, the cold water tap, and, as they left, the doorknobs.
At Kenmore Square Chandler nosed the brown car through the mist, straining to watch the traffic in the penumbra of his headlamps, blurring in the mist. Down Commonwealth to Arlington, then right with George Washington still on horseback, watching him. Around to Boylston, left on Charles Street, right up Beacon, irresistibly into Chestnut … The red Pinto was gone. The yellow glow still shone in the bay window of Polly’s apartment. The wipers beat past his gaze. The red Pinto was gone! He turned back onto Beacon Street, crested at the State House, cast a glance down toward Nat Underhill’s shop, and pointed into the perpetual traffic clog where School Street intersected Tremont. Past the Parker House with the doorman in breeches and tricornered hat sheltering beneath a black, glistening umbrella, he took a left and jogged through the area of pale, futuristic, massively antiseptic government buildings.
As always there was activity on Union Street and behind the glassed-in Faneuil Hall flower market. Crowds were heading toward Durgin Park and the Union Oyster House, swirling damply through Faneuil Hall and emerging with packages and paper cones full of bright bouquets. He stopped at the curb, waiting. He couldn’t see her and, of course, she wouldn’t recognize the car. Finally he got out, leaving the motor running and went inside among the flowers and ferns and trees.
“Hey, mister—over here.”
She was peering from among what seemed to be a pot full of swaying, dyed ostrich plumes. She winked as he stared.
“Get out of there,” he said. “This is no game—”
“But we must retain our senses of humor when those around us are losing theirs,” she said, taking his arm as they went back to the car. “What kind of car is this, anyway?” He held the door for her.
“Brown,” he said. “Hurry up.”
“Nora’s safe at the Parker House,” she offered as he pulled away.
“But not having any great deal of luck. The time is all wrong to be calling Europe. It’ll be better for her Monday … but she’s all right, settled in for the duration.”
“The red Pinto was gone. I just checked.”
They drove northwards in silence, pushing slowly through the seemingly endless trails of brightly lit restaurants, furniture stores, shopping centers, the Bunker Hill monument to the left, on and on through the steady drip of the rain and the smack of the wiper blades. Slowly, traffic began to thin out and the night began to grip them.
She took his arm. A peculiar sense of exhilaration overcame him, simultaneously, as if they were children: the funny, off-guard sort of moment when a sense of well-being and inevitable happiness swells, fills your chest. It had a good deal to do with her and something to do with the snug, warm interior of the brown car, and the sense of adventure which finally struck Chandler as lacking in danger. They were free of the men in the red Pinto. No one knew where they were going. The macguffin was waiting at the other end and, once they had established what was actually going on, things would just naturally sort themselves out. And he’d have the time to do something about this unusual creature holding his arm.
It was five o’clock on a Sunday morning when Maxim Petrov was wakened at his dacha outside Moscow. He was routed from bed by the ringing of the telephone; then he’d had to wait for Krasnovski to arrive with a briefing on the problem which was to Petrov’s way of thinking—at least in the beginnings of the day’s events—typically trivial, unclear, and desperately boring. Two hours later, he’d begun feeling as if he’d somehow stuck his foot in it, though he wasn’t quite sure how.
“If you’ll excuse my saying so, sir,” Krasnovski had said, crossing his legs and brushing nonexistent lint from his perfectly pressed slacks, “it’s your sense of humor that’s
done it.” The word again was implied in his young associate’s tone of voice.
“Shut up, will you?” he said testily. The white kitchen reminded him of an operating room, modern and spotless with a bluish tinge to the light. “You sound like a wife—my wife. My sense of humor is all that keeps me sane. It may well be my best quality.” He watched impatiently as the last of the coffee dripped into the pot. Outside, much to his amazement, there seemed to be a swatch of lightness across the horizon where for weeks there had been only a dull, dark gray. A touch of spring was enough to pull him back from a severe slackness of mind, even a depression, at just such a time as this. He poured coffee and cream, added sugar, and motioned to Krasnovski to pour his own.
Pulling his heavy terrycloth robe tight around his lean, well-muscled body, he left the kitchen for the heated sun porch which presented the view of a broad field, still snow-covered, leading down to a gentle stream where in the summer, beneath the vast oaks, he sailed toy boats with his grandchildren. He was still watching the horizon when he heard Krasnovski padding up behind him. He wondered if this young man looked at him as he in his time had looked at Beria? With the yearning to break his neck? But, of course, that was ridiculous: Beria had had no sense of humor whatsoever.
“You are going to have to do something, you know.” Krasnovski sipped his coffee noisily.
“Don’t lecture me,” he said.
The younger man shrugged: “It’s a matter of mutual trust. We can’t have our people killing innocent civilians … It’s bad for Sanger’s people, it’s bad for us, and we certainly don’t want the police getting too curious. A wave of murders—”
“Two is not a wave,” Petrov said wearily. But there was no point in quibbling. “There’s no doubt that they’re our people?”
“None. They have no idea who they’re working for, that goes without saying—”
“Then don’t say it.”
The Glendower Legacy Page 14
