Carrion Comfort (55 page)

Saul squinted at him. “Is this a credit card commercial?”

Haines kicked Saul behind the knees, dropping him to the deck. “You can leave us, Richard.”

Haines and the others left. Saul rose painfully to his feet. “Do you know who I am?”

“You’re C. Arnold Barent,” said Saul. He had bitten the inside of his cheek. The taste of his own blood mingled with the scent of tropical vegetation in Saul’s mind. “No one seems to know what the C stands for.”

“Christian,” said Barent. “My father was a very devout man. Also something of an ironist.” He gestured toward a nearby deck chair. “Please sit down, Dr. Laski.”

“No.” Saul moved to the railing of the balcony, bridge, what ever the hell it was. Water moved by in a white bow wake thirty feet below. Saul grasped the railing tightly and looked back at Barent. “Aren’t you taking a risk being alone with me?”

“No, Dr. Laski, I am not,” said Barent. “I do not take risks.”

Saul nodded toward the distant castle blazing in the night. “Yours?”

“The Foundation’s,” said Barent. He took a long sip of his cold drink. “Do you know why you are here, Dr. Laski?”

Saul adjusted his glasses. “Mr. Barent, I don’t even know where ‘here’ is. Or why I am still alive.”

Barent nodded. “Your second statement is the more pertinent,” he said. “I presume the . . . ah . . . medication is out of your system sufficiently for you to think through to some conclusions on that.”

Saul chewed at his lower lip. He realized how shaky he actually was . . . half starved, partially dehydrated. It would probably take weeks to get the drugs completely out of his system. “I imagine you think that I’m your avenue to the Oberst,” he said.

Barent laughed. “The Oberst. How quaint. I imagine that would be the way you think of him, given your . . . ah . . . unusual relationship. Tell me, Dr. Laski, were the camps as bad as the media portrays them? I have always suspected that there has been some attempt— perhaps subliminal— to overstate the case a trifle. Expiate subconscious guilt by exaggeration perhaps?”

Saul stared at the man. He took in every detail of the flawless tan, the silk sports coat, soft Gucci loafers, the amethyst ring on Barent’s little finger. He said nothing.

“It does not matter,” said Barent. “You’re right, of course. You are still alive because you are Mr. Borden’s messenger and we want very much to talk to the gentleman.”

“I am not his messenger,” Saul said dully.

Barent moved a manicured hand. “His message then,” he said. “There is little difference.”

A series of chimes sounded and the yacht picked up speed, turned to port as if it planned to circle the island. Saul saw a long dock lit with mercury vapor lamps.

“We would like you to convey a message to Mr. Borden,” continued Barent.

“There isn’t much chance of that while you keep me doped up in a steel cell,” said Saul. He felt a stirring of hope for the first time since the explosion.

“This is very true,” said Barent. “We will see to it that you have the best possible opportunity to meet him again . . . ah . . . at a place of his own choosing.”

“You know where the Oberst is?”

“We know where . . . ah . . . he has chosen to operate.”

“If I see him,” said Saul, “I will kill him.”

Barent laughed gently. He had perfect teeth. “This is very unlikely, Dr. Laski. We would, nonetheless, appreciate it if you would convey our message to him.”

Saul took a deep breath of sea air. He could think of no reason why Barent and his group would require him to carry messages, could see no reason for him to be allowed to use his own free will to do so, and could imagine no way that it would profit them to keep him alive once he had done what they required. He felt dizzy and slightly drunk. “What’s your message?”

“You will tell Willi Borden that the club would be most pleased if he would agree to fill the vacancy on the steering committee.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes,” said Barent. “Would you like something to eat or drink before you leave?”

Saul closed his eyes a minute. He could feel the surge of the ship up his legs, through his pelvis. He gripped the railing very tightly and opened his eyes. “You’re no different than they were,” he said to Barent.

“Who is that?”

“The bureaucrats,” said Saul, “the commandants, the civil servants turned
Einsatzgruppen
commandos, the railway engineers, the I. G. Fabens industrialists, and the fat, beer-breathed sergeants dangling their fat legs in the Pit.”

Barent mused a moment. “No,” he said at last, “I suppose none of us is different in the end. Richard! See Dr. Laski to his destination, will you please?”

They flew by helicopter to the large island’s airstrip, then north and west by private jet as the sky paled behind them. Saul dozed for an hour before they landed. It was his first unrigged sleep in a week. Haines shook him awake. “Look at this,” he said.

Saul stared at the photograph. Aaron, Deborah, and the children were bound tightly but obviously alive. The white background gave no clue to their location. The flash caught the children’s wide eyes and panicked expressions. Haines lifted a small cassette recorder. “Uncle Saul,” came Aaron’s voice, “please do what they ask. They will not harm us if you do what they ask. Carry out their instructions and we will be freed. Please, Uncle Saul . . .” The recording ended abruptly.

“If you try to contact them or the embassy, we will kill them,” Haines whispered. Two of the agents were asleep. “Do what you are told and they’ll be all right. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” said Saul. He set his face against the cool plastic of the window. They were descending over the downtown of a major American city. By the glow of streetlights, Saul glimpsed brick buildings and white spires between office towers. He knew at that second that there was no hope for any of them.

S
heriff Bobby Joe Gentry was angry. The rented Ford Pinto had an automatic transmission, but Gentry slammed the shift selector from second to third gear as if he were driving a sportscar with a six-speed transmission. As soon as he exited the Beltway to I-95 he kicked the protesting Pinto up to seventy-two, defying the green Chrysler that was following him to keep up and daring the Mary land Highway Patrol to pull him over. Gentry tugged his suitcase into the front seat, fumbled in the outer pocket a minute, set the loaded Ruger in the center console, and tossed the suitcase into the backseat. Gentry was angry.

The Israelis had kept him until dawn, interrogating him first in their damned limousine, then in a safe house somewhere near Rockville, then in the damned car again. He had stayed with his original story— Saul Laski hunting for a Nazi war criminal to settle an old score, Gentry trying to tie it all into the Charleston Murders. The Israelis never resorted to violence— or, after Cohen’s first remarks— the threat of violence, but they worked in teams to wear him down through sheer repetition. If they
were
Israelis. Gentry
felt
that they were . . . believed Jack Cohen to be exactly who he said he was . . . accepted the fact that Aaron Eshkol and his entire family had been murdered, but Gentry
knew
nothing for sure anymore. He knew only that a huge and dangerous game was being played by people who must view him as little more than a minor nuisance. Gentry whipped the Pinto up to seventy-five, glanced at the Ruger, and slowed to a steady sixty-two. The green Chrysler stayed two cars behind.

After the long night, Gentry had wanted to crawl into the huge bed in his hotel room and sleep until New Year’s Eve. Instead he used a lobby pay phone to call Charleston. Nothing on the tape. He called his own office. Lester told him that there had been no messages and how was his vacation? Gentry said great, seeing all the sights. He called Natalie’s St. Louis number. A man answered. Gentry asked for Natalie.

“Who the hell is this?” rasped an angry voice. “Sheriff Gentry. Who is this?”

“Goddammit, Nat told me about you last week. Sounds like your basic Southern asshole cop to me. What the fuck do you want with Natalie?”

“I want to talk to her. Is she there?”

“No, goddammit, she’s not here. And I don’t have time to waste on you, Cracker Cop.”

“Frederick,” said Gentry. “What?”

“You’re Frederick. Natalie told me about you.”

“Cut the crap, man.”

“You didn’t wear a tie for two years after you got back from Nam,” said Gentry. “You think mathematics is the closest thing to eternal truth there is. You work in the computer center from eight
P.M.
to three
A.M.
every night but Saturday.”

There was a silence on the line. “Where’s Natalie?” pressed Gentry. “This is police business. It concerns the murder of her father. Her own safety may be in jeopardy.”

“What the hell do you mean her . . .”

“Where
is
she?” snapped Gentry. “Germantown,” came the angry voice. “Pennsylvania.”

“Has she called you since she arrived there?”

“Yeah. Friday night. I wasn’t home, but Stan took the message. Said she was staying at a place called the Chelten Arms. I’ve called six times, but she’s never in. She hasn’t returned my calls yet.”

“Give me the number.” Gentry wrote it in the little notebook he always carried.

“What kind of trouble is Nat in?”

“Look, Mr. Noble,” said Gentry, “Miss Preston is searching for the person or persons who killed her father. I don’t want her to find those people or those people to find her. When she comes back to St. Louis, you need to make sure that— a) she doesn’t leave again and b) she isn’t left alone for the next couple of weeks. Clear?”

“Yeah.” Gentry heard enough solid anger in the voice to know that he never wanted to be on the receiving end of it.

He had wanted to go up to bed then, get a fresh start that evening. Instead he had called the Chelten Arms, left his own message for the absent Miss Preston, arranged for a rental car— no easy trick early on a Sunday morning— paid his bill, packed his bag, and driven north.

The green Chrysler stayed two cars back for forty miles. Just out of Baltimore he exited onto the Snowden River Parkway, took it a mile to Highway I, and stopped at the first diner he saw.

The Chrysler parked across the highway at the far end of a large lot. Gentry ordered coffee and a doughnut and stopped a busboy as the youngster walked by with a tray of dirty dishes. “Son, how would you like to earn twenty dollars?” The boy squinted suspiciously at him. “There’s a car out there I’d like to know more about,” said Gentry, pointing out the Chrysler. “If you’d get a chance to take a stroll that way, I’d like to know what the license number is and anything else you could notice.”

The boy was back before Gentry finished his coffee. He reported breathlessly, finished with, “Gees, I don’t think they noticed me. I mean, I was just takin’ out the garbage to the Dumpster like Nick usually has me do at noon. Gees, who are they, anyway?” Gentry paid the boy, went to the rest room, and used the pay phone in the back hallway to call the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel Authority. The main offices were closed on Sunday morning, but a tape recording gave a number for emergencies. A woman with a tired voice answered.

“Shit, I shouldn’t be calling’ ya, ’cause they’d kill me if they knew,” started Gentry, “but Nick, Louis, and Delbert just left here to start the revolution by blowing’ up the Harbor Tunnel.”

The woman’s voice no longer sounded tired as she demanded his name. Gentry heard a background beep as a tape recorder started.

“No time for that, no time for that!” he said excitedly. “Delbert, he got the guns and Louis got thirty-six sticks of dynamite from the construction site an’ they got it stuck in the hidden compartment in the trunk. Nick says the revolution starts today. He got ’em the phony IDs an’ everything.”

The woman squawked a question and Gentry interrupted her. “I gotta get out of here. They’ll kill me if they find out I tol’. They’re in Delbert’s car . . . a green ’seventy-six Lebanon. Mary land license DB7269. Delbert’s driven’. He’s the one with the mustache, wearing a blue suit. Oh, Jesus, they all got guns and the whole damn car’s wired to go up.” Gentry broke the connection, ordered a coffee to go, paid his bill, and sauntered back to the Pinto.

He was only a few miles from the tunnel and in no particular hurry to get there so he drove up to the University of Mary land campus, let the Pinto wander through the Loudon Park Cemetery, and drove down along the waterfront. The Chrysler had to stay far back because of the sparse Sunday traffic, but the driver was good, neither completely losing sight of Gentry’s car nor becoming too obvious.

Gentry followed signs to the Harbor Tunnel Thruway, paid his toll, and watched in the rearview mirror as he pulled slowly into the lighted tunnel. The Chrysler never got to the toll booth. Three highway patrol vehicles, a black van with no markings, and a blue station wagon boxed it in fifty yards from the tunnel entrance. Four other police cruisers stopped traffic behind them. Gentry caught a glimpse of men leaning across hoods with shotguns and pistols leveled, saw the three men in the Chrysler waving arms out windows, and then he was busy driving as fast as he could to get out of the tunnel. If it was the FBI behind him, they could probably extricate themselves in a few minutes. God help them if they were Israelis and armed.

Gentry got off the Thruway as soon as he was out of the tunnel, got lost for a few minutes near the downtown, oriented himself when he saw Johns Hopkins, and took Highway I out of town. Traffic was light. He noticed an exit to Germantown, Mary land, a few miles out of town, and had to smile to himself. How many Germantowns were there in the United States? He hoped that Natalie had chosen the wrong one.

Gentry reached the southwest environs of Philadelphia by 10:30 and was in Germantown by 11:00. There had been no sign of the Chrysler and if someone else had picked up the surveillance, they were too smooth for Gentry to pick out of the traffic. The Chelten Arms looked as if it had seen better days on the Avenue but would not last long enough to see them return. Gentry parked the Pinto half a block away, slipped the Ruger into his sports coat pocket, and walked back. He counted five winos— three black, two white— huddled in doorways.

Miz Preston did not answer a call from the front desk. The clerk was an officious little white man, mostly nose, who combed his three remaining strands of hair from just above his left ear to just above his right ear. He clucked and shook his head when Gentry asked for a passkey. Gentry showed his badge. The clerk clucked again. “
Charleston?
Friend, you’re going to have to do a lot better than some dime store badge. A Georgia policeman wouldn’t have any jurisdiction here.”

Gentry nodded, sighed, looked around at the empty lobby, and turned back around to grasp the clerk’s greasy tie four inches below the knot. He jerked only once, but it was sufficient to bring the man’s chin and nose to within eight inches of the countertop. “Listen,
friend
,” Gentry said softly, “I’m here working liaison through Chief of Detectives Captain Donald Romano, Franklin Street Precinct, Hom i cide. That woman may have information leading to the apprehension of a man who murdered six people in cold blood. And I’ve been awake for forty-eight hours getting here. Now do I call Captain Romano
after
I bounce your goddamn face off the wood a few times just for the hell of it, or do we do it the simple way?”

The clerk fumbled behind himself and produced a passkey. Gentry released him and he bounced up like a jack-in-the-box, rubbing his Adam’s apple and swallowing tentatively.

Gentry took three steps toward the elevator, wheeled, took two long strides back to the counter, and got a second grip on the clerk’s tie before the red-faced man could back away. Gentry pulled him close, smiled at him, and said, “And son, Charleston County is in South Carolina, not Georgia. Remember that. There’ll be a quiz later.”

There was no corpse in Natalie’s room. No bloodstains other than a few remnants of squashed bugs near the ceiling. No ransom notes. Her suitcase lay open on the fold-out rack, clothes neatly packed, a pair of dress shoes on the floor. The dress she had worn to the Charleston airport two days earlier was hanging in the open closet. There were no toiletries set out in the bathroom; the shower was dry although one bar of soap had been unwrapped and used. Her camera bag and cameras were not there. The bed either had been made already or not slept in the previous night.

Guessing at the efficiency of the Chelten Arms, Gentry thought that it had not been slept in.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed his face. He could think of nothing clever to do. The only path that made much sense was to start walking through Germantown, hoping for a chance encounter, checking back at the hotel every hour and hoping that the clerk or manager would not call the Philly police. Well, a few hours of walking in the brisk weather wouldn’t hurt him.

Gentry took off his coat and sports coat, lay back on the bed, set the Ruger next to his right hand, and was asleep in two minutes.

He awoke in a dark room, disoriented, feeling that something was terribly wrong. His Rolex, a gift from his father, read 4:35. There was a dim, gray light outside, but the room had become dark. Gentry went into the bathroom to wash his face and then called down to the front desk. Miss Preston had not come in or called for her messages.

Gentry walked the half block to his car, transferred his suitcase to the trunk, and went for a walk. He went southeast on Germantown Avenue for a couple of blocks, past a small, fenced park. He would have loved to stop somewhere for a beer, but the bars were closed. It did not feel like a Sunday to Gentry, but he could not decide what day of the week it
did
feel like. It was snowing lightly as he stopped to get his suitcase and walked back to the hotel. A much younger and more polite clerk was on duty. Gentry checked in, paid thirty-two dollars in advance, and was ready to follow a porter to his room when he thought to ask about Natalie. Gentry still had the passkey in his pocket; perhaps potato-nose had gone off duty without mentioning it to anyone.

“Yes, sir,” said the young clerk. “Miss Preston picked up her messages about fifteen minutes ago.”

Gentry blinked. “Is she still here?”

“She went up to her room for a few minutes, sir, but I believe I just saw the lady go into the dining room.”

Gentry thanked him, tipped the bellhop three dollars to carry his bag up, and walked over to the entrance of the small dining room bar.

He felt his heart leap as he saw Natalie sitting at a small table across the room. He started toward her and then stopped. A short man with dark hair and an expensive leather jacket was standing by her table, talking to her. Natalie stared up at the man with a strange look on her face.

Gentry hesitated only a second, then got in line for the salad bar. He did not look in Natalie’s direction again until he was seated. A waitress bustled over and took his order for coffee. He began eating slowly, never looking directly at Natalie’s table.

Something was very wrong. Gentry had known Natalie Preston for less than two weeks, but he knew how animated she was. He was just beginning to learn the nuances of expression that were so much a part of her personality. He saw neither animation nor nuance now. Natalie stared at the man across from her as if she had been drugged or lobotomized. Occasionally she spoke and the rigid movements of her mouth reminded Gentry of his mother’s last year, after her stroke.

Gentry wished he could see more of the man’s face, something other than the black hair, jacket, and pale hands folded on the tabletop. When he did turn around, Gentry caught a glimpse of hooded eyes, sallow complexion, and a small, thin-lipped mouth. Who was he looking for? Gentry picked up a newspaper from a nearby table and spent several minutes becoming a lonely, overweight salesman eating his salad. When he looked over toward Natalie again he was sure that the man with her was the focus of attention of at least two others in the room. Cops? FBI men? Israelis? Gentry finished the last of his salad, speared a runaway cherry tomato, and wondered for the thousandth time that day what he and Natalie had blundered into.