Time for a break; he sat gazing around the closely written walls, the smile on his lips spontaneous. Thank God for work! What if he hadn’t owned the mentality or the professional training to occupy himself through what he was sure had mounted into days? How would someone who processed copies of the same form for a living manage to survive this imprisonment ending in death without going mad? He believed devoutly in a properly Catholic God, but few people had the kind of mind that could dwell upon God day in and day out, especially with death as its conclusion. That seemed a contradiction, but no man was ever ready for death unless he were a saint, and Kurt knew he was no saint; modern men could never be saints because modern living negated the concept.
But I, thought Kurt, head spinning, have never harmed the world, even by my nuclear research. The damage is done… He lay flat out, his head too heavy to keep aloft, a mist swirling before his eyes. Slowly they closed; he slept, woke with a jerk, saw the third wall almost pristine, got to his feet and picked up the equations where he had left them. His body was failing, yes, but his mind was still capable of seeing mathematical truth.
I wish, he thought, pausing, that I could hear some Bach one last time!
The headache disappeared as suddenly as it had come. The plans, the plans, Abe thought in a quiet frenzy. A number of straight, parallel lines traveled from the prison itself toward a square that said in tiny print that it was a sewage holding tank. Much larger than a septic tank, this thing was the size of a Holloman PD drunks’ tank cell.
Suddenly Abe stiffened. His skin began to prickle in a way it never had, and he understood. This is the first time I’ve looked for a living, fully grown man! The life in him is big enough to affect me! I am staring at a prison-a
Abe had a whistle on a cord around his neck; he put it to his lips and blew a shrill blast. Liam and Tony came at a run, while a guard toting a rifle on his back leaned on the railing of a watchtower atop the jail wall and followed their antics.
“We have to find the sewage holding tank,” Abe said, “and I’m not waiting for machinery. But first we find the gravel-the tank won’t be far from the pink gravel.”
A more confused directive than they were used to from Abe, but neither Liam nor Tony misunderstood. All three men went in different westerly directions.
“Here!” Tony shouted, appearing around a huge hillock.
And there it was, an expanse of pink rubble about a hundred feet long and fifty feet wide. Beyond it lay more flat ground, but smothered in ragged pieces of concrete.
“They stopped on the pink because this concrete’s sharper,” Liam said. “What happens now, Abe?”
“We look for pipes or vents,” Abe said, the master at this kind of work. “Watch around your feet, you won’t see anything from a distance. My vibes say von Fahlendorf is alive, which means the vent is open and you’ll see it. You remember that rain storm we had last Monday and cursed? Well, it might have shifted things hereabouts, so look.
Abe found it, a round four-inch hole that originally had been covered by a concrete slab that had slipped off it in the brief but torrential rain; the signs were unmistakable, for whoever had put the little slab in place was no construction worker. It had probably never done its intended job, to block the ingress of air.
“A gap is all that’s needed,” Abe said, that terrible daze vanishing just as the headache had.
The little bulldozer arrived, but by then Tony had raced to the jail and phoned in their find to Carmine; soon the wasteland in front of the jail was crawling with cops and machinery.
“He’s alive!” came Patrick O’Donnell’s voice from below.
A cheer went up, men hugged each other.
“Carmine, you have to see what’s down there,” said Liam in an awed voice, emerging.
Carmine squeezed through the trapdoor in the holding tank roof and climbed down the few steps of a ladder to join a jubilant Abe. Cameras were flashing constantly.
“Holy shits!” Carmine whispered, staring at the many hundreds of penciled equations. “What the hell is it?”
“The unified field theory, for all I know,” said Abe. “The work, Carmine, the work! Von Fahlendorf can’t have the original, but he’ll have to have photographic copies. What a feat!”
“How many Masses have you committed me to, John?” Carmine asked the Commissioner an hour later in his office.
“Fifteen, the old-fashioned way.”
“I’ll wear my knees out!”
“So will I. So will Mrs. Tesoriero, God bless her. She’s been praying night and day. When I commit you to Masses the old-fashioned way, Carmine, the cause is very urgent. But you and Mrs. Tesoriero always come through. Miraculous!”
“It’s Abe Goldberg comes through, and he’s Jewish.”
“That guy is spooky, I admit. How does he do it?”
“He doesn’t know. He says he gets a feeling, but not always.”
“A pity cops can’t claim rewards. Without Abe Goldberg, von Fahlendorf would be dead and ten million bucks would have wound up in a Swiss bank account.” Silvestri assumed his cat-got-the-cream expression. “I did explain to Frau von Fahlendorf that she could show her deep appreciation for the excellent work of Lieutenant Goldberg by setting up a college fund for Abe’s sons. Really bright boys, from what I hear.”
“I forgive you, and I’ll do the Masses the old-fashioned way, down on my knees instead of a donation.”
“That means all three of us will be in St. Bernard’s for the next fifteen mornings. Oh, my arthur-itis!”
“We’ll never nail his kidnappers,” Carmine said.
“I know. Tell me why it’s a German operation.”
Carmine leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees. “Too unnecessarily complicated, John. Like a German motor-over-engineered. Americans would have used a car trunk, whereas these bozos went to the trouble of finding that sewage holding tank. Who got the prison plans from County Services? Why stand out in the open with surveyor’s gear to pinpoint its location? The way they see the world tells them that complicated is better. The risk taking isn’t seen as risk taking, but as normal activities. They’re too obsessive to be American kidnappers. Simple is better.”
“I do see what you mean.” Silvestri sighed. “In which case, we haven’t the hope of a snowflake in hell of nailing them.”
“The important thing is that we got von Fahlendorf back in one piece, and the ransom wasn’t paid. So now I’m free to ask questions and expect answers.”
“A minute ago you were the soul of pessimism, Carmine. What’s changed inside that minute?”
“I’ve just realized that I have a weapon, John. The adorable Helen MacIntosh-or, at least, Kurt thinks she’s adorable. I happen to know that she has an income of a million dollars a year, so a trip to Munich isn’t going to bust her bank. Kurt has ideas of marrying her. What if I could persuade Helen to talk Kurt into making a visit home with his fiancee on his arm?”
“You devious schemer!”
“She wouldn’t like committing herself maritally to Kurt, but she’d wear it for two reasons. The first, she’s quite cold-hearted in a MacIntosh way, so it won’t grieve her overmuch to break the engagement on her return from Munich, and the second, that she’s panting to run her own case. If she has three or four days in Munich, she has a chance to find Kurt’s kidnappers. In fact, if she takes Kurt into her confidence, she needn’t promise to marry him in reality. He’s livid enough to co-operate.”
“You get more devious by the second!”
“I do, don’t I? Well, think about it, John. Two shits we don’t know had us running in circles and spending a lot of money we’ll never see again. The von Fahlendorfs will keep their ten million, but the several million finding Kurt cost us-goodbye!”
“Do it, Carmine, do it.”
“Will you be in it, Helen?” Carmine asked his trainee the next morning. “I know you’d have to fund your trip yourself, but would you consider the expense worth it if you could find the kidnappers?”
Her eyes were shining. “Captain Delmonico, I’d walk up the Spanish Steps on my knees to get iron-clad evidence on Kurt’s kidnappers! And he’ll co-operate, I know he will. He was a little disappointed when no member of his family was there to see him come out of his cell, but Dagmar managed to sweet-talk him around. In fact, she
