“An omen, huh?” Sugarman asked.
“No, not that, Mr. Sugarman. More that there’s likely to be increased foot traffic around polling stations.”
“How’s Maggie Drummond?”
“Pretty good,” Carmine said. “The Chubb psychiatrist has made a difference to all the Dodo’s victims already.”
“Tell me about it!” A look of content came over Sugarman’s attractive face. “Leonie trusts me again-she’s behaving more like her old self. I wish she’d seen Dr. Meyers earlier.”
“Better late than never, pardon my hackneyed comment.” Carmine walked over to the big windows displaying Spruce Street. “Sir, were you up last Wednesday night about half after ten?”
“I think so,” said the President of the Gentleman Walkers, looking puzzled. “I’d made supper for Leonie, and delivered her back upstairs around ten. Even after the hassle of checking all her locks, I would have been back down here by ten-thirty.”
“Did you hear the noise of a collision at the intersection of Persimmon and Spruce?”
“No, not a collision, Captain. I did hear a screech of brakes and some yelling-it happens all the time at that intersection.”
“Thank you,” said Carmine, looking pleased.
“Will you find Kurt?”
“We’re all praying so, sir.”
“Good afternoon, Frau von Fahlendorf,” said Helen at seven on Wednesday morning, October 23. “No, I am afraid not… That is unfair, ma’am! We have tied up huge resources in the search for your brother-as you would have seen for yourself if you or any member of your family had come here… No, I am not rude, I am fed up-indignant, do you understand that word? Good!… At midnight tonight, American Eastern Standard Time, Special Agent Hunter Wyatt of the FBI will telephone you on your home number and give you the details of the Swiss bank and account number, but I entreat you not to pay the ransom early! To do so won’t make any difference to his chances of surviving… Special Agent Hunter Wyatt will also forward you a written report on our activities… Thank you, ma’am. Goodbye.”
The receiver went down with a bang. “Bitch!” said Helen. “She has the hide to blame us-
“She’s under great stress, Helen,” Carmine soothed. “We still have two full days of search-well, one full day and a few hours. Time zones are a pain in the ass.”
Corey and Abe came in.
“Corey?” Carmine asked.
“The most suspicious things we’ve found are a few cow pats, but we still have sheds, barns and bunkers to deal with on the north side of North Rock. Old Ray Howarth has a bomb shelter, or so I’m told.”
“Actually we’ve found quite a number of bomb shelters,” said Carmine. “I never realized how paranoid some people are about The Bomb. I saw one the day before yesterday that had Persian carpets and air conditioning. It hadn’t occurred to the owner that if The Bomb went off, electric power would be cut off. He was expecting to run his shelter on mains.”
“Like my potty papa,” Delia said. “If Richard Nixon gets in, he’s moving permanently into his shelter-he’s convinced that the first Nixonian presidential action will be to push the button.”
They all rolled their eyes at each other, but the light moment faded fast.
“Abe?” Carmine asked.
“I just have to check around the outskirts of the jail,” Abe said. “Nothing so far.”
“Have you heard what Patrick found in the Porsche, guys?”
“Nothing-it’s so clean it might have come from the dealer’s showroom,” said Nick, “except that there’s some gravel wedged in the tire tracks. Nonspecific, but not the kind of gravel you’d get from a crumbling road base. No asphalt component.”
“Which says they drove the car somewhere off-road, but it could have been anywhere. Holloman is full of gravel, even has three quarries. Does it come from them?”
“Some of the uniforms checked them, but didn’t think to take samples,” Corey said. “They asked me, but I couldn’t see any virtue in sending them back to do it.”
“What color and size is it, Carmine?” Abe asked.
“Pink granite, so it’s not from our quarries. It sounds more like something you’d find in a monument mason’s yard.”
“File that in case you see it. Incidentally, Joey Tasco, who had that section to check, told me that none of the quarries had a septic tank. They use chemical toilets, so don’t go back there, Corey. Keep on into virgin territory.”
It might have been because Carmine said “septic tank”, but when Abe Goldberg, Liam Connor and Tony Cerutti reached the West Holloman industrial estate, Abe wasted a good hour going back to check that they hadn’t left an old, buried septic tank unexplored. They had not; Liam, who understood how Abe’s mind worked, did not grudge him the wasted time, but Tony, younger and a more restless type, was inclined to grumble until Liam shut him up by treading heavily on his foot.
They had emerged from the streets and functioning factories into a relatively vast area that had been demolished in the aftermath of the Second World War with the intention of building a prison. Beyond it sat Holloman Jail, which was a jail, not a prison. Short-term, that is, lacking the architecture and facilities necessary for the high security confinement of intractable criminals. These were sent up-state, but from time to time new noises were made in Hartford to go ahead with Holloman Prison, an institution no resident of Holloman wanted. Bad enough to have a jail!
The area did not resemble a war zone, unless that war be an atomic one; there were no shells of buildings, just gigantic heaps of stony detritus that rose and fell like the foothills of a red rectangular mountain range, the jail.
“We need a minidozer with a blade,” Liam said. “A bucket as well, but not attached. If there’s anything under the edge of one of these piles, we’d never find it unless we have something to move the crap around, but a bulldozer might be too heavy.”
“Good idea,” said Abe, who was feeling a little dizzy. “I’ll radio the Captain, see if he can arrange a miniature dozer.”
Tony Cerutti produced a set of blueprints from the back seat of their car. “These are the plans of the mooted prison as they saw it in 1948,” he said, spreading the huge sheets on the hood and anchoring them with hunks of old brick.
“Did they actually get as far as starting to build?” Abe asked, staring fascinated at several pentagons connected by thick passageways. “Make a good Meccano project.” His sons were avidly into Meccano, and buying it was keeping him poor.
Came a squawk from the radio. When Abe returned to the plans he looked content. “We’ll have a little dozer here in about an hour, blade attached, bucket in reserve, backhoe just in case. In the meantime, guys, we walk. Liam, you go toward the east end of the jail. Tony, take the middle. I’m going west.”
Tony laughed. “Yeah, a long time ago!”
Liam and Tony set off; still conscious of an alien dizziness, Abe lingered to take another look at the plans of the west side. He didn’t know why he felt so strange, except that in some way it was important. Then the headache hit, and Abe fell to his knees.
Two walls were full, Kurt had moved on to his third wall; he had sharpened ten of his pencils down to stumps, but the last five were the longest and best, deliberately saved. His mouth was utterly dry and his ears rang on an internal sound, but the excitement of putting his life’s work on his tomb walls had not faded. Egyptian pharaohs were reduced to pictures of their lazy existence, interspersed with an occasional battle, but not one of them could equal his feat! Not one of them could display a life so filled with intellectual incident and triumph.
The bucket his captors had left him for his bodily functions had not filled, but it stank. Though the room was cold, Kurt had sacrificed his coat to throw over it, blanket the stench. They said a human being got used to smells, but so far he hadn’t. At least the chill meant that he lost no moisture through sweat, but Kurt was conscious that it was becoming difficult to stand. His back ached intolerably and he was forced to lie down at increasingly frequent intervals, but the work went on.
