Monster: Tale Loch Ness (38 page)

"The telegram was sent from a precinct on the north side of Glasgow. We located the particular office and questioned the clerk. The clerk remembers the man who sent the telegram, a working man, muscular, stern-faced, lowest of class, Unfortunately, Glasgow is filled with such men."

"Why didn't the clerk notify the police when he saw the

telegram?" Whittenfeld asked.

"Precisely my first query," MacGregor replied. "But you will notice the cryptic language. My associates in Glasgow informed me the clerk was of meager intellect—a veritable twit—so you can imagine his difficulty with words posed in such a manner."

"What else did you uncover, detective?" Whittenfeld asked, interrupting the detective's train of thought.

"We spoke to our informants," MacGregor declared. "They confirmed that Sutherland's death invoked a great deal of anger among known Jacobite sympathizers and operatives. But we were unable to uncover any evidence of planned reprisal. Nevertheless, the reprisal came very quickly—within the day—which only supports a suspicion of legitimacy to the Jacobite message. The Jacobites are particularly capable of mounting a strike on short notice due to the widespread nature of their organization and its top-heavy inclusion of zealots."

"So far, you've told us nothing," Whittenfeld declared.

"I'm sorry you feel that way," MacGregor said.

"What do you intend to do now?"

"Follow the leads. Examine the bomb fragments. Discover the identity of the man or men who did this."

"What about my executives? How will you protect them?"

MacGregor lit a cigarette and breathed deeply, inhaling the harsh tobacco fumes. "Apart from Mr. Bruce, I can only protect them through diligence and a thorough investigation. I trust your Mr. Lefebre can provide for internal cover. However, we will supply Mr. Bruce with an escort."

"Forget it," Scotty said. "I don't want an escort. I would prefer to protect myself. So far, because of your efforts, I am now both a murder suspect and an assassination target."

MacGregor raised his brow disconcertedly. "As you wish," he said, preparing to leave.

"There is one more thing," Whittenfeld declared.

"What?"

"I would like our people to assist you in the investigation."

"Absolutely not!"

"Lefebre and his team in particular."

MacGregor fumed. "This is the province of the Criminal Investigation Division. I will tolerate no interference from private parties."

"We can be of great help," Whittenfeld advised. "We have ways—"

"I'm sure you do. But you will dream about them." He pivoted to Whittenfeld. "I will not tolerate a repetition of the worker-melee incident. Nor will anyone else in an official capacity around here. You will keep your security men within the confines of Geminii base. They are not to sortie out into the general area. Nor are they to engage in any pursuits properly within the jurisdiction of the police." His expression was hard, definitive. "I trust I make myself clear. But if I don't and your security people do roam where they should not be, I will have them arrested, and I will ask the procurator to prosecute. Understand?"

Whittenfeld did not reply. MacGregor left Travis House.

Angry, Whittenfeld departed a short time later. Scotty called Jerry Foster and asked him to expedite the shipment of Mrs. Munro's remains back to her home. Foster advised he had already contacted Mrs. Munro's immediate family and had arranged to send the body out on the eight P.M. train.

Scotty then contacted Mary MacKenzie at the Cam Dearg and told her what had happened. She was shaken; she wanted to come right over. He stopped her, preferring she meet him at the railroad station that evening.

Shortly before eight, he drove a company car through the darkness and a damp, penetrating mist to the terminal, situated in the center of the city. Jerry Foster had already left after seeing to the particulars. Mary MacKenzie was still there.

She embraced him, squeezing tight, refusing to let go, tears running down her face.

"I'm scared for you," she mumbled. "And ashamed for Scotland."

They stood in the mist together, then walked to the northbound train. An empty hearse was sitting next to a freight car. They looked into the car. Mrs. Munro's coffin was inside, propped securely.

"The poor woman," Mary MacKenzie said. "I can still hear her voice. You know, she was very un-Scottish in many ways. Her sternness better fit a big Irishwoman. Yes, she had an Irish way about her."

The train belched a cloud of smoke; it began to move.

"She was some piece of work," Scotty said as a requiem. "I'll miss her."

Scotty and Mary MacKenzie spent the night together again at the Carn Dearg Inn. He stayed until the morning, leaving the inn at seven A.M. and arriving at Geminii base shortly after nine.

A message from Bill Nunn was waiting. He had hit pay dirt, a hard chert-silica formation, and was on his way to shore. Scotty summoned Dr. Rubinstein and Dr. Fiammengo.

The two researchers arrived at the complex just after Nunn; Scotty immediately forbade discussion of the assassination, attempt.

"The chert-silica samples are identical," Nunn declared as he led Scotty, Dr. Rubinstein, and Dr. Fiammengo into the base geology office.

Numa broke open a package he had in his hand along with several he'd removed from the cutting shelves. He placed four samples on a microscope stand.

"The two on the left," he explained, "were taken from the return flow of mud at the time of the first attack. The two on the right came out an hour ago. I took the initiative. The rotary is down."

Scotty looked through the microscope and manipulated the slide. "That's it!" he declared.

Dr. Rubinstein and Dr. Fiammengo looked next. They agreed. Nunn read his composition breakdown; it matched the controls.

"Does this mean we're on?" Dr. Rubinstein asked, knowhag the answer already but wishing to hear it out loud.

"Yes," Scotty said. "As soon as we get the Lyon bit in place, we're on."

The submersible swung into position, Johannes Aard noted the fathometer reading and set the ballast tank controls to depth.

Dr. Rubinstein's voice echoed through the communications equipment, corroborating a position fix.

Malcolm Conner, who lay next to Aard, looked out the forward porthole; as usual, visibility was minimal.

The air-purification unit hummed softly. Static rippled through the comm-phones. Sound blips ticked off the control meters.

Conner reset the position of the exterior tape cameras. Aard put on a sonic receiver headset. He listened to the purr of the
Magellan
's mud pumps, then checked his sound-oriented DME. They were three hundred feet due south of the
Magellan
's riser, lying two hundred feet below the surface. All propulsion systems were still active. If anything was sighted approaching, they would shift position to intercept, manipulating ballast and thrusters.

Aard felt the buoyancy, the sensation of weightlessness. One never quite got used to it. He could also feel their center of gravity shift counter to the intermittent upthrusts of the engines, which held the submersible in position against the current.

He and Conner had both felt uneasy that morning. It wasn't the operation's requirements. Rather, it was the whole concept. Though they had enthusiastically accepted the assignment, they'd begun to have second thoughts. Neither could pinpoint anything in particular that had set them off. Nothing extraordinary had happened yet; rather, their imaginations had started to run rampant. Damn, it was creepy—the anticipation of a confrontation with the unknown.

Aard moved close to the observation window. He could see suspended particles of peat dancing in the water. Christ, what a hell hole. That something huge might live in it was almost unimaginable.

Almost!

Scotty mated disjointed stimuli, the movement of the barge, the sight of the floating pontoon rafts, the sense of tension in the command room, snips and pieces of conversation. Alone, they meant little; together, everything.

He placed his hands on Dr. Fiammengo's shoulders. She looked up, touched his arm. She was dedicated, as hardworking as Dr. Rubinstein, who was running back and forth across the room, supervising the start-up. It occurred to him he'd never gained an insight into the mechanism that drove the researcher. All he knew was that a man of boundless scientific skill had decided to devote a large portion of his time to monsters.

Dr. Rubinstein approached, holding out a clipboard. Scotty grabbed it, and taking off his headset, picked up a different set of communication gear. It was time to contact the sonar tug and the
Magellan
.

They were ready!

Captain Eamonn Harrigan felt a surge of excitement. Several seconds before, he'd received Scotty Bruce's operational command.

He looked out the window toward the
Magellan
. Off her port, the submersible was lying waiting, its position indicated by the radio buoy. He glanced at one of the side-scan printouts. There she was, the sub, her needle-shaped nose pointed toward the deep loch trench.

He massaged the curled ends of his beard. There were beads of sweat on his palms. He hadn't been told anything specific, but Mr. Bruce had made it clear they were looking for something other than a submersible.

He looked up—ominous black clouds, borne by fierce winds aloft, traversed the Scottish sky—then walked through the bridge cabin, his communications headset linked to its console by a long cord. He scanned several scopes and monitors, sat, removed a rubber band from his pocket, wrapped it around his fingers, and began to wait.

A communications officer relayed Scotty Bruce's operational order. Tony Spinelli, who'd been given only the bare essentials of information, walked toward the drilling platform.

"Start the rotary," he ordered.

Moments later, a roar of machinery exploded, and the rotary table began to turn, twisting the Lyon TX-1 bit at the bottom of the bore.

It had begun.

Johannes Aard listened carefully to the sounds punching through the headset. He could still pick up the muffled roar of the
Magellan
's mud pumps, but the preeminent sounds were now issuing from the rotary engines and the drill itself.

He glanced at Conner. Conner seemed transfixed, his face pressed up against the viewing porthole.. Aard looked out, too. Nothing.

"Anything worth hearing?" Aard asked, taking off the headset.

Conner cracked a smile.

"No. Not really."

"You're smiling about something."

"I'm trying to keep my mind on the job," he said. "On this thing out there, assuming it exists. And I get funny thoughts. Kind of ridiculous."

"Like what?"

"I have a vision of a beautiful mermaid swimming up to the front porthole and embracing the manipulators."

"You're nuts."

"It's no more unimaginable than the chance of a giant wanker appearing. And I'd much rather have the mermaid. This wanker may not be very cordial. It wasn't to the
Colmnbus
."

"We're mobile. The
Columbus
wasn't."

"How mobile?"

"Mobile enough."

"No bets! We're going to stick ourselves right in the wanker's way if it appears—if it exists—and the wanker may not like it. You think about that. I'll think about mermaids. At least till we're put to the test, I'll keep me cubes warm."

Aard laughed.

"Captain!" the chief sonar officer screamed.

Harrigaa appeared. "What?"

"Take a look at these printouts and sectascans."

Harrigan studied several traces. "What's its position?"

The engineer pointed first to one set, then another. "Here it's right in the center of the trench at about eight hundred feet. Here it's at six fifty. Here it's at the same depth, but it's moving northwest."

"Toward the
Magellan
?"

"Can't tell yet."

Harrigan checked with the other engineers. Nothing had shown up on their heat or noise scopes, and as expected, nothing had registered on the subsurface sensors, either. Harrigan called the command barge.

"How big is it?" was Scotty's first question.

Harrigan caucused with the sonar engineers. More traces had been taken. The velocity of the target object had increased. It had also moved up to six hundred feet, and its direction was now more determinable. It was heading right for the
Magellan
.

"An estimate? A hundred feet or more."

Harrigan checked the printouts again, then, biting his lip, nervously, walked to the bridge cabin door. He looked at the loch. It seemed so serene, so peaceful.

It was hard to believe they were confronting the unknown beneath its waters.

The tension was palpable. Technicians worked in a frenzy. The cabin was nearly silent.

Aard and Conner had been informed the target object was rapidly moving in their direction.

The television eyes had not yet picked up anything. Neither had the barge's own simple sonar unit.

Scotty felt a lump rise up his throat, cutting off the air, a feeling of suffocation.

He looked at Dr. Rubinstein and Dr. Fiammengo. Both were white, drained of color.

The lead sonar tug relayed additional data.

The target object had moved closer.

Tony Spinelli nervously peered out at the command barge. One. Two. That was it. Two blips from the barge's beacon.

"Shut down the rotary," he ordered.

Johannes Aard and Malcolm Conner quickly worked their controls while watching their sonar unit and the view through the porthole.

Moments before, they'd started to broadcast the vibrations, coincident to a shutdown of the
Magellan
's rotary.

"Anything yet?" Scotty asked, his voice their only contact with the surface.

"We have it on sonar," Aard replied.

"It will be coming up below you just a bit," Scotty advised. "About two hundred feet off your bow and a hundred feet beneath."