Free Live Free

The man in the duffel coat shook his head. “The President’s not one of the key people. Never has been. Basically a front man. These were the decision makers. High Country’s the code name for the plane, you see. A lot of it was wood. Saved stratetic metals for bombers and fighters. Even back then they were working on it, making it bigger in flight. Harry Hopkins, I think it was, made some joke about spruce growing at ten thousand feet. You get it?”

Stubb nodded. “Sure. Am I supposed to laugh?”

“In those days, they had to land and take off again every eight hours or so. But while they were in the air, nothing could get them unless Goering figured out a way to get his high-altitude fighters over here. So one of the things they worked on was ways to keep the plane up longer. Maybe you heard of Howard Hughes’s Spruce Goose? The big seaplane? That was an idea that didn’t work out. Now they never have to land at all, and pretty soon they’ll be too high for—”

A younger man opened the door and peered into the room. “We need you out here, General.”

The man in the duffel coat glanced at him. “Trouble?”

“Not serious, sir.” The younger man shrugged. “But maybe you can think of something.”

“You people stay where you are,” the man in the duffel coat told them. “I don’t want to lose you, and if you leave this room, one of the sentries will probably shoot you.” He shut the door behind him, and they heard the snick of the lock.

Barnes was the first to speak. “Well, what did you think of that?”

Stubb stroked the bruise on the side of his head. “What do you think?” he said. “I’m tired of being smart. I think I ought to listen to somebody else’s ideas for a while.”

Barnes hesitated. “In the first place, Mr. Free came off that plane. ‘The High Country’—that’s what he said, right?”

“Or he wanted us to think that’s where he came from. Or they want us to think that’s where he came from. But, yeah, maybe he did. Is there any of that Scotch left?”

“This?” Barnes held up the flask, which was decorated with interlacing triangles. “About one good shot, I think.”

“You want it, Madame S.?”

The witch shook her head.

“Then I’ll take it.” Stubb wiped the top of the flask with the palm of his hand. “Let me ask you both a question, and I’m not doing it just to keep myself entertained—though God knows I’ve been on that trip often enough. This time I really want to know. Why us?”

Neither answered.

Stubb upended the flask, swallowed, and shook himself. “Smooth. But now suppose this general was giving us the straight goods. What makes us so damn important that these guys who fly around up there all the time want to see us? Or suppose he was lying—that makes it worse. Why’d he want us to think that plane was where Free came from?”

The witch said, “I have a better question. Better because you know the answer. Before you heard the young man say general, you employed an honorific. You knew him for an officer, or at least suspected. How?”

“Nothing spectacular, Madame S. He had on plain-toed brown shoes with a spit shine, and that girl I told you about said her father was a general. Maybe he’s not her father, but she probably thinks of him as a father or an uncle—she said his name was Samuel, so that would be Uncle Sam—and when most people have to make up a lie in a hurry, they use whatever they’ve got their minds on at the time.”

Barnes asked, “You didn’t believe him?”

Stubb shrugged and drank the last sip from the flask, then paused staring at its decorated silver sides. “It seemed like he was the boss. Would they pick a guy to run things who’d get shaky and start fighting a bottle? Hell, maybe they would, you never know. Maybe he’s bankrolling them, and they had to. But if he was really a smart guy, the kind you’d expect to find in charge, and he wanted to lay a number on us, that might be a pretty good way to do it. He knows we’re going to ask why’s he telling us all this? So he gives us an answer—because he’s smashed.”

The witch said, “That is very wise. But why does he wish us to believe these things?”

Now Loading

“All right, Lieutenant, what is it?” the man in the duffel coat asked.

“She’s here, sir. We’ve got the shuttle plane warming up.”

“I know, I can hear it.”

“Only we can’t get her out of the car, sir.”

“You mean she has a weapon in there? Use gas.”

“She’s already unconscious, sir, or nearly. We just can’t get her out.” As they stepped into the freezing night, the younger man pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead.

The black Cadillac stood dark and silent upon the snow while two men and two women peered through its windows. The younger man indicated the men. “They brought her here, sir.”

One stepped forward, hand extended. “I’m John B. Sweet, General Whitten. Vice President, Sales, Mickey’s Jawbreakers Corporation.”

The man in the duffel coat shook hands with him, letting the Thompson hang from his left hand, its muzzle pointing at the trampled snow. “We’ve spoken by telephone,” the man in the duffel coat said.