purple velvet. By the time they started serving drinks again I had dozed off.
It was noticeably chillier in Minneapolis when we landed, and I saw that the Twin Cities Airport runways and ramps were wet and puddled. But in the last dying light of the setting sun, I could see that the clouds were hurrying off eastward and the sky was clearing.
Nobody at the rent-a-car booth in the airport had ever heard of the North Lake Research Laboratories, the place that Wyatt had touted me onto. The woman who was making out my car rental forms even phoned the University of Minnesota, and drew a blank there. I knew it was just outside the town of Stillwater, though, so she gave me a map and directions for getting there. Even phoned ahead for a reservation at the Stillwater Inn.
Driving up the Interstate on my way to Stillwater, I had more than an hour to size up my situation.
Point number one: I was acting like a damned fool. Okay, but I was doing what I felt I had to do. Maybe it was the old newshawk instinct. More likely just a combination of fear and curiosity about the unknown. All I knew was that I had to see McMurtrie and Klienerman and find out for myself what in hell was going on.
Point number two: Nobody in the whole world knew where I was. Correction. Robert H. H. Wyatt knew. Or did he? His Holiness knew I was trying to get in touch with McMurtrie. I never told him I was coming up here in person. Didn’t even tell Vickie. Wyatt could figure it out soon enough tomorrow, when Hunter called in for the morning press briefing instead of me. But not until tomorrow morning. No reason for him to miss me tonight.
Which led to point number three: Nobody at the North Lake Research Laboratories knew I was going to drop in on them. I decided to use an old newsman’s trick and just show up at their doorstep tomorrow morning, unannounced and unexplained, and demand to see the top man. Hit ’em before they can phony a story together.
I nearly missed the turnoff onto 1-94 as I suddenly realized what my mind was doing. I was counting Wyatt, McMurtrie, Klienerman, and whoever runs North Lake Labs as possible suspects. Potential assassins. Traitors plotting to take over the Presidency.
Which brought me to the logical conclusion of all my logical thinking. I realized there was absolutely no one I could trust. Not McMurtrie or Wyatt or Laura or even the President himself. I was totally alone. I couldn’t even be sure of Vickie.
I glanced at the bare-branched trees whipping by in the twilight. I felt as if I were alone and naked out there, clinging to one of those dead bare branches. It felt lonely, cold, and damned dangerous.
As the moon came up over the wooded hills, I saw that the highway had now swung along the bank of the mighty Mississippi River. I think they call this part of it the St. Croix, locally. It was a magnificent, wide, beautiful river, cutting through the rolling hills that were dotted with the tiny scatterings of lights that marked little communities and, sometimes, individual homes. The river looked much stronger and somehow younger up here, not like the weary old sick stream that meandered sluggishly past St. Louis. And I knew that a thousand miles southward it finally flowed into the Gulf of Mexico.
I found the city of Stillwater at last and, after a couple of wrong turns on its quiet streets, located the Stillwater Inn. It was a lovely, graceful place, kept up as it must have looked in its prime a century ago. As I parked the car in the unattended lot alongside the inn’s white clapboard side wall, I started thinking again.
I hadn’t pulled any rank at the airports, just used my regular personal charge card to get the airline tickets and the rental card. No fanfare, no Washington connection. But no cover-up, either. Wyatt, or somebody else, could track me down easily enough if he wanted to. But so far, I hadn’t called attention to myself.
I checked in at the hotel, paid cash in advance, ate dinner in their Bavarian-styled paneled dining room, had a drink in the coziest little bar I’d ever seen, and then went to my room. Despite all my suspicions and fears, I slept very soundly. I don’t even remember dreaming, although I woke up the next morning at dawn’s first light, soaked with sweat and very shaky.
SIX
North Lake Research Laboratories was perched on a bluff overlooking the St. Croix, about a half-hour’s drive above Stillwater. There were no road signs showing the way, and nobody at the hotel had seemed to know anything about the lab. I had to find the local fire station and ask the old man who was washing down the town’s shiny new pumper. Firemen always know what’s where, and the quickest way to get there.
From the highway you could see the lab buildings, low and dun gray, hugging the top of the bluff. Midcentury cement and glass architecture, Saarinen by way of Frank Lloyd Wright. My rented car climbed the switch-backed driveway slowly; battery was running down. There was a riotwire fence around the lab enclosure, with a sturdy-looking gate blocking the driveway and a sturdier-looking guard posted in a little phone booth of a sentry box alongside the gate.
I pulled up and he came out, leaned his face down to my window.
“Yessir, what can I do for you?” Very polite. He had an automatic pistol holstered at his hip.
“I’m here to see Mr. McMurtrie and Dr. Klienerman,” I said.
The names seemed unfamiliar to him. He looked politely puzzled.
“Dr. Klienerman’s from Walter Reed Hospital. Mr. McMurtrie’s from the White House.”
“Oh… yes…”
“My names Albano,” I said, before he could ask. “Meric Albano.” I fished out my ID, the one with the Presidential Seal on it.
He started to whistle, impressed, but caught himself. “Just one moment, Mr. Albano. I’ll phone the reception lobby.”
He did that, came back still looking puzzled, but opened the gate and waved me on. I drove up another half-mile of blacktop, pulled up on a graveled parking area, and walked from the car to the reception lobby. There were fewer than a dozen cars in the parking lot; either their staff was incredibly small or there was another parking lot for employees tucked off in the back somewhere.
The reception lobby was equally quiet. Nobody there at all. A curved desk with all the paraphernalia of a busy receptionist: phones, picture screens, computer access keyboard, plush little wheeled chair. The lobby was paneled in warm woods, furnished with leather couches and chairs. There were even fresh flowers in vases on both low-slung wood slab tables. But no people.
A door in the wood paneling opened and a smiling, tall, handsomely dressed man came out. About my age, maybe a few years older. The suave public relations type: touch of gray at the temples, precise manner of speech, self-confident stride. A very
“Mr. Albano,” he said in a well-modulated voice that was somewhere between a confidential whisper and a throaty tenor. “We
My estimation of him went up. Scratch pick-pocket. He was a confidence man.
I let him shake my hand. He had a very firm, manly grip.
“My name is Peter Thornton.I’m Dr. Pena’s assistant—”
“Dr. Pena?”
He almost looked hurt. “The director of this organization. Dr. Alfonso Pena. Surely Dr. Klienerman has explained—”
I cut him off with a nod. He was pumping me, and I decided to be the pumper, not the pumpee.
“Where is Dr. Pena? I’d like to see him. I don’t have much time, you understand.”
“Of course. Of course. But the gate guard said you were asking for Dr. Klienerman and Mr. McMurtrie.”
“That’s right. I’m part of the investigating team. We’ve got to make certain that we can handle the media from a knowledgeable basis.”
“Oh, yes, certainly. That is important, isn’t it?”
“Right.” But we hadn’t moved a centimeter from where I’d been standing all along. The door to the laboratory proper was still behind Thornton, and he was making no effort to take me through.
“This is a
