Cradle (44 page)

Carol nodded and laughed a little. ‘It certainly makes better sense than your idea
that Troy was working for the Russians.’ They opened the doors and climbed out of
the car. ‘So how much do you think they have left?’ Carol asked as they headed for
the lift.

‘Who knows?’ Nick answered. ‘Maybe they stole three million out of five.’ He thought
for a minute. ‘They must still have a bunch. Otherwise Greta would have split by now.’

The lift doors opened and Nick pressed the button for the third floor. Carol heaved
a big sigh. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘I’m exhausted,’ she said. ‘I feel as if I’m on a carousel that’s spinning faster
and faster. So much has happened in the last three days. I’m not sure I could deal
with much more. What I need now is a second wind.’

‘Magic days,’ Nick replied as they walked out of the elevator. ‘These are magic days.’

She looked at him with a curious expression. He laughed. ‘I’ll explain an old theory
of mine later,’ he said. He entered a sequence of numbers into the small plate on
his door and the lock disengaged. Nick moved to the side with feigned gallantry and
let Carol enter first. What she saw was chaos.

The place was a total shambles. In the living room, just beyond the kitchen area,
all of Nick’s precious novels had been scattered randomly about on the floor, the
couch, and the chairs. It looked as if someone had taken each book out of the bookcase,
held it up and shaken it (trying to find loose papers perhaps), and then either dropped
it or thrown it across the room. Nick pushed past Carol and stared at the destruction.
‘Shit,’ he said.

The kitchen had been plundered as well. All the drawers were open. Pots, pans, and
tableware were strewn on the counters and on the floor. To Nick’s right, the cardboard
boxes containing his memorabilia had been pulled into the middle of the second bedroom.
Their contents had been partially dumped on to the floor around them.

‘What hurricane hit this place?’ Carol asked as she surveyed the mess. ‘I didn’t expect
you to be a good housekeeper, but this is ridiculous.’

Nick was unable to laugh at Carol’s comment. He checked the master bedroom and found
that it also had been ransacked. He then returned to the living room and started picking
up his beloved novels and stacking them neatly on the coffee table. He winced when
he found his worn copy of
L’Etranger
by Albert Camus. The spine of the book was destroyed. ‘This is not the work of vandals,’
he said as Carol knelt down to help. ‘They were searching for something specific.’

‘Have you found anything missing yet?’ she asked.

‘No,’ Nick replied, picking up another novel with a mutilated cover and shaking his
head. ‘But the bastards have really screwed up my books.’

She stacked his Faulkner collection on the easy chair. ‘I can see why Troy was impressed,’
she said. ‘Have you really read all these novels?’ Nick nodded. Carol picked one up
that had fallen under the television stand. ‘What’s this about?’ She held up the book.
‘I’ve never even heard of it.’

Nick had just arranged another dozen books on the coffee table. ‘Oh, that’s a fantastic
novel,’ he said enthusiastically, forgetting for a moment that his flat had just been
trashed. ‘The whole story is told through this exchange of letters among all the principal
characters. It’s set in eighteenth-century France, and the main couple, socially prominent
and bored, cement their weird relationship by sharing details of their affairs. With
other lovers of course. It caused quite a scandal in Europe.’

‘That doesn’t exactly sound like your typical romance,’ Carol remarked, trying to
commit the title of the book to her memory.

Nick stood up and walked into the smaller bedroom. He began to sort through the contents
of the cardboard boxes. ‘There are things missing in here,’ he called out to Carol.
She stopped arranging books and joined him in the bedroom. ‘All my photographs of
the
Santa Rosa
treasure and even the newspaper clippings are gone. That’s odd,’ he said.

Carol was beside him on the floor, in front of the boxes. She frowned. ‘Is the trident
still on the boat?’

‘Yes,’ he answered. He stopped riffling through the papers. ‘Down in the bottom drawer
of the electronics cabinet. You think there’s a connection?’

She nodded. ‘I think that was what they were after. I don’t know why. It just seems
right.’

Nick picked up a large yellow folder that had been on the floor and replaced it in
one of the cardboard boxes. A photograph and some sheets of typing paper fell out.
Carol picked up the picture while Nick scrambled after the papers. She studied the
photo and read the French inscription. She was surprised to feel a twinge of jealousy.
‘Beautiful,’ she commented. She noticed the pearls. ‘Also very rich and sophisticated.
She doesn’t look like your type.’

She handed Monique’s photograph to Nick. Despite his attempt to be nonchalant, he
was blushing. ‘That was a long time ago,’ he mumbled as he hastily stuffed the photo
back into the folder.

‘Really?’ Carol said, eyeing him carefully. ‘She looks as if she’s about our age.
It couldn’t have been too long ago.’

Nick was flustered. He packed some more loose material in the boxes and glanced at
his watch. ‘We’d better leave soon if we’re going to meet Troy at your hotel.’ He
stood up. Carol remained kneeling on the floor, looking up at him with a steady gaze.
‘It’s a long story,’ he said. ‘Someday I’ll tell you all about it.’

Carol’s curiosity was piqued. She followed Nick out of his apartment and into the
lift. He was still ill at ease.
Bullseye
, she thought to herself.
I think I have just discovered a major key to Mr. Williams. A woman named Monique
. She smiled as Nick motioned for her to precede him out of the lift.
And the man does love his books
.

Carol’s room at the Marriott had two entrances. The normal approach to the room was
by way of the corridor that led to the lobby. But there was another door that opened
on to the garden and the pool. When she exercised in the morning, Carol used the garden
entrance.

Nick and Carol were talking casually but quietly as they came toward her room from
the lobby. She pulled out her electronic card key just before they arrived. As she
started to insert the card into the lock, they heard an unusual sound, like metal
banging against metal, from the inside of her room. Before Carol could say anything,
Nick shushed her by putting his finger to his mouth. ‘You heard it too?’ she whispered
softly. He nodded his head. Using gestures, he asked her if there was another entrance
to the room. She pointed out the door to the hotel grounds at the end of the corridor.

Palm trees and tropical hedges covered most of the area to the east of the Marriott
swimming pool. Nick and Carol left the walkway leading to the pool and crept up to
the windows of her room. The Venetian blinds were drawn but they could still see into
the room through a crack under the bottom of the blinds. At first the room was completely
dark. Then a solitary beam from a flashlight reflected for an instant off one of the
walls. In that split second they saw a silhouetted figure in the neighbourhood of
the television set, but they could not identify him. The flashlight came on again
and it paused for a moment on the door to the corridor. The door was bolted. In the
brief flicker of the light beam, Carol also saw that all her dresser drawers were
open.

Nick crawled over next to Carol in the flower bed just under the windows. ‘You stay
here and watch,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll go get something from the car. Don’t let them
know you’re here.’ He squeezed her shoulder and disappeared. Carol stayed glued to
the window. Once more the flashlight came on, illuminating electronic parts spread
out on the far bed. Carol strained for a look at who was holding the flashlight. She
couldn’t see him.

She became acutely aware of the passage of time. Her intuition told her that the intruder
was getting ready to leave. She suddenly realized that she was completely exposed
sitting out there underneath the window.
Come on, Nick
, she said to herself.
Hurry it up. Or I may be chopped liver
. The figure in the room moved toward the garden door and then stopped. Carol felt
her pulse rate increase. At just that moment Nick returned, out of breath. He had
brought back a long crowbar from the boot of his car. Carol motioned to him to stand
by the door, that the intruder was about to come out.

She saw the figure put his hand on the doorknob and she flattened herself against
the dirt. Nick was behind the door, poised to deliver a powerful blow to whoever exited
from the room. The door opened, Nick started to strike. ‘Troy,’ screamed Carol from
the flower bed. He jumped back just in time, barely missing the downward swoop of
Nick’s crowbar. Carol was on her feet in an instant. She ran up to a shaken Troy.
‘Are you all right?’ she said.

His eyes were wide from fright. ‘Jesus, Professor,’ he said, glancing at the crowbar
that Nick was wielding, ‘you might have killed me.’

‘Shit, Jefferson,’ Nick replied, the adrenaline still coursing through his system,
‘why didn’t you tell us it was you? And what were you doing in Carol’s room?’ He looked
at Troy accusingly.

Troy backed into the room and turned on the lights. The room was a disaster. It looked
like Nick’s flat when Carol had first walked through the front door.

Carol turned to Troy. ‘Why on earth….’

‘I didn’t do it, angel,’ he replied. ‘Honest Injun.’ Troy looked at his two friends.
‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘This will only take a second.’

Meanwhile Carol’s eyes were scanning the room. ‘Crap,’ she said angrily, ‘all my cameras
and film are gone. And virtually the entire telescope system, including the postprocessor
unit. Dale will shoot me.’ She looked in one of the open drawers. ‘The assholes took
my photographs from the first dive as well. They were in a large envelope on the right
side of this top drawer.’

Carol sat down on the bed looking a little dazed. ‘All the film from the photographs
that I took inside that place has been stolen. So much for my sensational story,’
she said.

Nick tried to comfort her. ‘Who knows. Maybe they’ll turn up. And besides, you still
have all the negatives from the first dive.’

Carol shook her head. ‘It’s not the same thing.’ She thought for a minute. ‘Damn it,’
she said, ‘I should have kept the exposed film with me when we left the hotel to go
to Troy’s apartment.’ She looked at the two men and then brightened a bit. ‘Oh well,’
she said. ‘There’s always tomorrow.’

Troy was still waiting patiently to give his explanation. He indicated for Nick to
sit down on the bed next to Carol. ‘I’ll make this short and sweet,’ he said. ‘Just
the facts. I arrived here about seven o’clock. I came early because I wanted to make
some modifications to your television set. I’ll explain why in a minute.

‘The people in the hotel wouldn’t give me a key to your room so I came down here and
fooled the card reader.’ He smiled. ‘It’s no problem for someone who knows how these
things work. Anyway, as soon as the green light came on and the guard bolt released,
I heard the garden door slam. Someone had been in the room while I was opening the
door. I caught a fleeting glimpse of him as he hightailed it around the corner of
the building. He was a big man, not someone I recognized immediately. He was moving
with difficulty, as if he were carrying something heavy.’

‘Part of the ocean telescope,’ Carol said.

‘Go on,’ added Nick. ‘What happened next? I want to hear why you were in Carol’s room
working in the dark. I bet you’ll come up with a good story for that too.’

‘That’s easy,’ Troy said to Nick. ‘I was afraid the thief or thieves might come back.
I didn’t want them to see me.’

‘You’re amazing, Jefferson,’ Nick responded. ‘You’re the kind of person who would
tell a cop that you were exceeding the speed limit because you wanted to get to a
filling station before you ran out of gas.’

‘And the cop would believe him,’ Carol remarked. They all laughed. The tension in
the room was diffusing.

‘All right,’ said Nick. ‘Now tell us what you’ve done to the television. Incidentally,
how did you get inside it? I thought these hotel sets were all alarmed.’

‘They are,’ Troy replied, ‘but it’s very simple to disable the alarm system. It always
cracks me up. Somebody sells the hotel the idea that they can protect their property
with these alarms. But the burglars can easily find out what system has been installed,
buy the circuit data sheets, and completely disable the protection.’

Troy glanced around the room. He then checked his watch carefully. ‘Let’s see,’ he
said. ‘Why don’t you two move over here in these chairs. I think you’ll be able to
see better.’ Nick and Carol exchanged puzzled looks and arranged themselves as Troy
had requested. ‘Now,’ he continued in a surprisingly serious tone, ‘you will see what
I believe is incontrovertible proof that my story about the aliens is true. They have
told me, through this bracelet, that they are going to televise a short programme
from inside the vehicle at exactly seven-thirty. If I have translated their directions
properly and made the correct modifications, this television should now be able to
receive their transmission.’

He turned on the set and put it on channel 44. There was nothing but snow and static.
‘This is great, Troy,’ Nick commented. ‘It will probably steal rating points from
soap operas and music videos. Watching this requires even less intelligence—’

A picture suddenly appeared on the screen. The lighting was poor, but Carol immediately
recognized herself in the scene. She was standing with her back to the cameras, her
fingers moving around on top of what appeared to be a table. An orchestral version
of ‘Silent Night’, featuring an instrument not unlike an organ, accompanied the picture.