canisters of napalm.
There was no cargo plane, no sign of the five surviving commandos. There was also no sign of Veil, although we knew he had to be out there someplace.
Puzzled but relieved at the absence of any kind of pursuit, we checked our compasses, then started off to the east. With a little luck, I thought, the Jeep would be where we'd left it, and it would start.
A half hour later two New York State Police helicopters appeared in the distance, heading toward the fires.
'Do we want to be rescued?' Garth asked as we stood inside a shadowy copse of fir trees and watched as a third helicopter passed almost directly overhead.
After some consideration, I shook my head. 'I don't think so.'
'It could save us a long hike, and a very cold night in the mountains; we can't risk a fire.'
'We need time to think about what we're going to do next and who we're going to see. I think we're better off if we keep our options open. If the State Police get hold of us, they'll have an awful lot of questions I'm not sure we want to answer yet-at least not to them.'
'You're right. Why don't you open the packet and see what the hell's in there?'
'I was thinking it might be better to open it in the presence of at least one official witness. It's sealed pretty good, and as long as we leave it that way there are tests that can establish the fact that it's been sealed and underground for a few years. That could be important.'
Garth nodded his agreement. 'You sure the Jeep is in this direction?'
'Ask me in a day or two,' I said, and started down the side of the mountain.
We'd headed in the right direction, and the Jeep was where we'd left it; unfortunately, we never got a chance to see if it would start. New York State troopers were waiting for us-in force-when we emerged from the forest on a ridge just above the place on the highway where we had parked the Jeep almost a week before. Suddenly, grim- faced men in blue and gray uniforms seemed to be popping up or out all over the place, surrounding us with their guns drawn.
'Freeze!' a tall, burly state trooper standing fifteen yards ahead of us shouted as he leveled a shotgun between Garth and me.
We froze, slowly raised our arms in the air.
'Where's the other one?!'
'What other one?' I asked. 'Look, Officer, we were just out for a little hiking.'
'With a submachine gun?'
He had a point. Almost as an afterthought, Garth relaxed his fingers and the Uzi clattered to the frozen ground. One of the troopers quickly stepped forward and snatched it up. Then we were grabbed, hustled down to the road, slammed up against a car, and roughly frisked.
'You're making a mistake, Trooper,' Garth said in his most reasonable tone of voice. 'Look in my wallet; you'll find a detective's gold shield. My name's Lieutenant Garth Frederickson, and I'm on special assignment for the NYPD. This is my brother, the criminologist Dr. Robert Frederickson.'
'We know who you are, Frederickson,' a big, black trooper growled from somewhere behind and above my right ear. The man found my Beretta and Seecamp, relieved me of both. 'But you're no longer on assignment for anyone, and it's likely that both you and your brother are going to be learning a lot more about criminology from the inside of a prison. Both of you are under arrest for violation of the Federal Espionage Act. Now, where's your buddy?'
'We don't know who you're talking about,' Garth replied in a low, rasping snarl that no longer sounded quite so reasonable.
'Veil Kendry. When and where did you split up?'
Garth and I both started to turn around, stopped when a rifle barrel knifed down between us and smashed against the hood of the car.
'Who's Veil Kendry?' I asked, and heard Garth softly grunt his approval. These were definitely not the right people to talk to or show anything.
'Shut up, you little bastard,' the trooper behind me said as he prodded me hard between the shoulder blades with his rifle butt. 'He's the man you and your brother have been selling our country's secrets to for the past five years, and he works for the Goddamn Russians. Don't bother trying to deny it, because the government people have you cold. All three of you are fucking spies.'
It seemed the rope I thought Orville Madison was supposed to be hanging himself with still had a few kinks left in it.
18
Garth and I were handcuffed, bundled separately into the backs of two State Police cars, and given a speedy ride-complete with wailing sirens-to a headquarters building just off the Thruway, near Albany. We were strip- searched and all our possessions taken away. We were placed in separate cells in a small lockup facility at the rear of the building, given a meal, and allowed to sleep under the supervision of a trooper sitting in a chair in the corridor just outside our cells.
In the morning we were served a breakfast that was surprisingly good for jail food. A few minutes after the dishes were taken away, I heard the cell door on the opposite side of a tile partition open and close, and then two sets of footsteps walking away down the corridor, toward the front of the building.
Garth was brought back about an hour later, and a young, attractive female trooper came through a door to my right, opened my cell, and motioned for me to come out. I was led down the corridor to a pale green door which the woman opened for, and then closed behind, me.
The small interrogation room was bare except for a metal desk and chair set back against the far wall, and a second folding metal chair placed in the middle of the room. A heavy set trooper in a uniform with a captain's insignia sat very erect behind the desk. To his right was a tape recorder, which he turned on as I entered the room, and on the desk top in front of him was a yellow legal pad and felt-tipped pen. The man had close-cropped brown hair, and dark, expressive eyes. I went to the chair and sat down, crossed my legs and smiled at the trooper. He didn't smile back. We sat and stared at each other for close to five minutes, while the recorder kept running.
'I know,' I ventured at last. 'I just don't look like a spy. That's why I'm so good at it; people don't take me seriously. Garth is the one who looks like a spy, and that's always been a problem. I insisted that the Russians hire him, too, as kind of a package deal. He needed the money.'
'You think this is a joke?' the trooper asked in a low voice that was surprisingly lilting. His nameplate said McGarvey. Irish.
'I think the idea of Garth and me being spies is a joke.'
'I take you very seriously, Frederickson. I won't bullshit you if you don't bullshit me.'
'Somebody's already bullshitting you, Captain, and it isn't me.'
'What the hell's going on?'
'Didn't my brother tell you?' I asked with more than passing interest.
'You tell me. What happened up in those mountains? We found seven corpses up there; one was really just a pile of burned bones.
Six of those men were dressed in uniforms and armed to the teeth; they'd all had their throats slashed and their right thumbs severed. It also looks like somebody was dropping firebombs from a plane; I've seen burn patterns like that before, in Viet Nam. It looked like a Goddamn war zone up there.'
It appeared that Garth hadn't told the man anything, which didn't surprise me. 'That's because there was a war, Captain.'
'Will you tell me what's going on, Frederickson?'
'I'm the one who should ask you that. Your men said that Garth and I are wanted on espionage charges. Somebody's pulling your chain, not to mention a lot of strings. I think you know that, or at least suspect it strongly.'
