Monster: Tale Loch Ness (48 page)

Lefebre and Whittenfeld climbed out.

Three security men were guarding a small submersible chariot that contained the primacord, explosives, and automatic timing detonation device. There were two divers, equipped with scuba gear and compressed air cannisters.

The top of the trap was lying at one hundred feet below the surface. The explosives and primacord would be set on the trap at 140 feet. The timing device would be cut into the electrical cable from the command barge, which operated the trap clamp mechanism. Planned operation was one hour at depth. On the way up, the diver crew would stop the submersible chariot for decompression. The dive time would be just under two hours.

It was one o'clock. They would be finished by three if everything went well. The command barge was scheduled to reactivate its sonar and television systems at four-thirty. They had little time to lose. They could not allow Dr. Rubinstein, Dr. Fiammengo, or Scotty Bruce to discover the existence of the explosives. Of course, Captain Harrigan and his sonar tugs would normally have picked up the presence of the submersible chariot, but Lefebre had already seen to Harrigan's cooperation and discretion, the shutdown of the tugs' sonar systems during rigging and Harrigan's eventual total silence.

Lefebre spoke to the divers. Everything was in order. The two divers mounted the saddles on the chariot. Lefebre and Whittenfeld returned to the car. The divers started the submersible's engine. The submersible moved out into the loch, then descended and disappeared.

The station wagon departed.

A rooster crowed. A car roamed by, its engine screaming. Scotty opened his eyes. Morning light invaded the den window. He looked at his watch: 7:30 A.M.

Goddamn! He'd fallen asleep at the desk and had slept through the night.

He raced into the bathroom, threw some water on his face, then returned to the desk and once more tried to locate Mary MacKenzie. After several calls, he became convinced she was not in Inverness.

He called Edinburgh, the Scottish Office, and asked for Peter Droon. Droon's secretary answered the phone. He asked to speak to Droon. The secretary said that that was impossible. Droon was dead; he'd been killed in a hit and run accident in front of his home the day before. Shocked, Scotty asked the secretary if Mary MacKenzie was in Edinburgh. The secretary said that as far as she knew, MacKenzie was not.

He hung up, shaken. Droon dead.

It suddenly occurred to him that if Mary MacKenzie had phoned Droon from Travis House, using the bugged phones, she would have signed Droon's death warrant. And certainly her own.

However, there was little he could do now.

The safety of the drill ship and the men had primary importance. Even if he raced all over Scotland looking for Mary, there was no assurance he'd find her, alive or dead.

He had to be out on the loch by nine to test the trap.

The snatch was scheduled for one o'clock.

He stood and looked out the den window. The fog was still there, lying off the coast.

It was as if Scotty were looking at the world through a dream. The command barge cabin, the instruments, the faces, the anticipation—all of it seemed to be veiled in a haze of suspended time.

They had been there before. But then the submersible operation had been no more than a dry run. This was the highpoint of ambition.

The comand barge moved gently in the swells. All systems were functioning. The morning test had been perfect. It was five o'clock. They were four hours behind schedule. A post-test short in an electrical connection had caused the delay.

Dr. Rubinstein, who had always been a waterfall of upbeat emotions, suddenly seemed introverted, almost paranoid. Though the doctor was still tearing at his nails and twitching relentlessly around the room, there was something stoic about his movements. Perhaps after all the anticipation, the reality had cauterized his explosive energies.

Scotty had not escaped the tension, either, but his emotions were divided. This was not finality for him. It was only an intermediate stage. Once the preliminary drama had played itself out, the beast caught and removed from the loch, then the real end-run maneuverings would start.

Though he was unsure of exactly what he would do beyond possibly securing Mary MacKenzie's safety, there was no way he was going to allow Whittenfeld and Lefebre to march like heroes into the sunset.

Where was Mary? Why hadn't he heard from her? Or about her? The obvious answer was too terrible to consider; he had to focus on one thing at a time. First, the ship and the crew, then Mary.

He joined Foster in the rear of the room.

"This will be quite a story when it can be told," Foster said, his stomach protruding over the waistband of his red polyester pants.

"Do you have it written yet?" Scotty asked, pulling an unlit cigar from his pocket.

"The beginning and middle," Foster said. "I'm waiting for the end."

"Where does it start?"

"It starts with Kreibel, Reddington, and myself."

"It starts with death. Let's hope the ending is better."

"You don't sound optimistic."

"I'm not optimistic. Or pessimistic. I'm realistic."

"Do you know something I don't?"

"No. I just appreciate the difficulties better. See me after the whole thing is over. Don't write the ending until you do."

Foster smiled circumspectly. "I remember when you first arrived here. You were excited. You had great expectations. What happened?"

"I told you. Reality."

Foster cleared his throat, confused. "Someday you'll explain all the double talk to me."

Dr. Rubinstein walked over. "We're going to turn on the monitors," he said.

The techs activated the flotation-raft cameras and the trap cameras. The monitors checked in simultaneously.

"As soon as we get a corroboration from the
Magellan
," Dr. Rubinstein said, "we can begin."

Capt. Eamonn Harrigan stood on the bridge of the lead sonar tug examining several side-scan printouts. There were a series of bizarre traces of the underwater trap.

He tried to control his discomfiture. He had a foreboding feeling, much of it attributable to the contradiction and secrecy. Just the day before, he'd been contacted by Pierre Lefebre, informed about the gelatin dynamite, warned to keep the information to himself.

The level of intrigue was frightening. Bruce, Rubinstein, Fiammengo, the three individuals who had organized the operation, were being kept in the dark about its most critical stage. God knows what other Machiavellian maneuverings

were underway.

He could only wonder if Captain Olafsen had encountered similar difficulties. Did deception contribute to Olafserfs death?

Did his sonar tugs and their crews face the same gruesome end? He could only go about his job and hope that that end was not inevitable.

Dr. Fiammengo felt relieved as she looked around the
Magellan
's command room. Technicians were in place, as were Bill Nunn and Mike Grabowski. But it was Pierre Lefebre's absence—he'd left just moments before—that allowed her to breathe easily again.

There was something about Lefebre that unnerved her; perhaps the constant facial twitches, the Antarctic-cold eyes, or the penetrating glare those eyes produced. She'd never seen anyone like him before and certainly had never felt so dissected by a man's attention. Lefebre reminded her of a rabid animal. She sensed that beneath his silence was a reservoir of hatred and malice, most of which was directed at Scotty Bruce.

She looked up at the monitors. Finally, it was about to happen. They had drawn up plans for the trap three years before. Though they had taken painstaking care to design the mechanism properly, the entire design team had doubted the effort would ever come to fruition.

It had been a pipe dream. It was now reaching fulfillment. There was an incredible feeling of destiny about it.

She picked up her comm-phone.

She could report to the command barge that they were ready.

William Whittenfeld walked along the main deck. The mud pumps were running. The drill crew was on the drill floor. Tony Spinelli was with them. The deck was ringed with security guards equipped with high-powered rifles and grenades. The ship was also outfitted with extra lifeboats. The depth-charge ejection racks were armed, primed for use to repel the creature in the event the trap failed.

He was ready for the public reaction. But more important, he had already charted the moves toward the resumption of normal operations. After the creature's destruction, covert instructions would be given, and Dr. Fiammengo and Dr. Rubinstein would be escorted off the vessels, returned to shore, and prohibited from entering the Geminii complex. Anything they had to say or do would have to be done elsewhere. Press silence would be maintained until Jerry Foster had issued a brief but clear-cut official version of the exercise. Then he would channel his efforts toward official outrage, and, hopefully, they would be able to resume drilling within a matter of hours.

Drilling. The loch. His child. The petroleum reservoir hidden beneath the surface. That was all that mattered. All that had ever mattered. The rest was a nightmare.

Lefebre called his name. He turned.

"Look," Lefebre said, handing Whittenfeld a pair of binoculars.

Whittenfeld trained the glasses on Lochend; the fog had moved slightly inland.

"The wind has shifted," he said.

"Not the fog," Lefebre countered. "The launch."

Whittenfeld tilted the glasses downward. There was a police launch headed directly toward them, throttled at full speed.

"Goddamnit," Whittenfeld said.

Dr. Rubinstein suddenly felt as if someone had encased him in ice. It was his recurring fear translated to fact, the constant threat of interruption, something going wrong. As he watched the police launch approach the command barge, he could see all his years of work passing before him like an escaping cloud of gas.

"We've got to get them out of here!" he said.

"I know," Scotty replied. "I'll find out what they want." He pointed to the trap monitors. "Turn those off."

Dr. Rubinstein ordered the technicians to deactivate the cameras.

"Could they know about the operation?" he asked.

"Anything's possible," Scotty said, shrugging.

They walked out of the cabin as the launch pulled up. The command barge crew tied mooring lines. Superintendent MacGregor and Chief Inspector MacKintosh climbed on to the barge.

"You seem to have a big operation going," MacGregor said, without his usual smile.

"The web," Scotty declared.

MacGregor glanced at the shore installation. A police helicopter was hovering over one of the helipads. "I hope you're not essential to its fulfillment, Mr. Bruce," he added.

"I'm not," Scotty said.

"We'd like you to come with us."

"Is this an invitation, too?"

"No, it's a demand!"

Scotty turned to Dr. Rubinstein. "You'll have to begin without me."

"I'd prefer we didn't have to. But we must start."

Scotty moved toward the launch. "What's this about, MacGregor?"

MacGregor sighed. "I'd like to wait until we reach our destination to give you an explanation, and I'd appreciate it if you would accommodate me."

Scotty dropped on to the launch. He knew the explanation already, knew it suddenly with a tremor of fear and horror. But he had to get the police out of there. He could not press now.

The police officers followed him on to the vessel, The mooring lines were cast off. The launch pulled away,

The police helicopter moved south past the loch. Scotty was seated directly across from MacGregor. Since he'd joined the officers, no one had said a word.

The chopper crossed the shore's rising mountains. He could see a small, high-altitude loch ahead. The chopper slowed over an isolated meadow. He looked down. A group of constables were moving near a gravel path. Most of the activity, however, was hidden under a cluster of trees. There were no cars. Everyone had obviously been transported to the site by the helicopter.

The chopper landed; the pilot opened the chopper door.

"Would you please step down, Mr. Bruce?" MacGregor suggested.

Scotty left the helicopter.

MacGregor and MacKintosh followed. MacGregor pointed up the road to the cluster of trees. They walked ahead.

A body lay on the gravel, covered by a sheet. Nearby was a mound of dirt next to an excavated grave. MacGregor glared at the covered corpse, then back at Scotty, saying nothing.

Suddenly, Scotty couldn't breathe.

A constable removed the shroud.

Mary MacKenzie lay naked, her throat slashed, her body covered with blood and dirt, her death mask crying defiance.

Scotty held in the scream that suddenly tried to escape from his throat. The suffocating feeling became so intense he felt as if he were going to die. Tears poured down his cheeks.

MacGregor ordered the body covered once more.

"We were lucky to find her," MacGregor explained. "The grave was expertly concealed. Unfortunately for the murderer or murderers, a young shepherd boy happened by on the footpath high above during the final stages of interment and saw a solitary man dropping the body into the excavation."

Scotty said nothing, trying to stop himself from grabbing Mary's body and embracing it one last time. Had she died hating him?

"Who did it?" MacGregor asked.

Scotty looked at the superintendent. He knew the answer. But he was going to say nothing to the police right now. He could not allow the police to race back on to the loch and possibly dangerously interfere with the trap operation. But, more importantly, he was going to be the instrument of revenge for Mary MacKenzie's death—not the police.

"You don't suspect me of this, do you?" he finalIy asked.

"Officially, I must suspect everyone," MacGregor replied. "So must the procurator's office. But unofficially, no. Of course not."

"Then I can go?"

"Unfortunately not. We want to talk to you. So do the procurator's people. You may be able to help us. We will fly back to Inverness and talk for a while. Then, of course, you may go. And Mr. Bruce. I want you to know I understand the hurt you feel."