The Questor Tapes (19 page)

“Dr. Gorlov, you already know all I intend to tell you at this time. And you already know it will do you no good to try to trace this call or locate me by triangulation. I’ve taken care of that. In short, replay this message to your . . . friends . . . and remember it yourself. Don’t call me. I’ll call you.” He slammed down the phone. “Idiots! Suspicious, hostile, power-grabbing—”

“What’s the difference?” Jerry interrupted. “Twenty-eight hours isn’t enough for them to do any damage.”

Darro tapped his fingers on the phone, then took a deep breath and leaned forward to rub his fatigue-reddened eyes. “I’ve already made arrangements to clear the area he selected in the Sahara. He was right. The wind currents are perfect. Fallout will be highly restricted. The only danger might be to wandering tribes who entered the area by mistake.”

Jerry stood up, angrily. “What the hell are you, the Atomic Energy Commission? You’re talking about the death of my friend!”

Darro looked at him dubiously. “Your
friend
is a practical man, and so am—” He paused, realizing something. “I called him a man, didn’t I?”

“He is,” Jerry said quietly. “The best one I know.”

Jerry returned to the townhouse slumped, weary, despairing. Forbes came to the door to let him in when he rang. “Where is he?” Jerry asked.

Forbes answered immediately, without hesitation. There was really only one “he” in the townhouse. “Mr. Questor went out.”

“Out?”

“I believe he said something about the park, Mr. Robinson.”

“Central
Park?”

Forbes shrugged helplessly. “He seems to have a peculiar liking for the place, sir. He’s gone there several times in the past few days.”

Jerry didn’t stop to hear the rest of it. He turned and ran down the steps to wave the always-waiting limousine up to the curb. He hopped in and directed the chauffeur to Central Park.

He found Questor tossing crumbs to a flock of cooing pigeons who fought for the bread morsels with an invading band of sparrows. Questor looked around as Jerry pounded up to him and skidded to a halt on the slick grass.

“Questor, it isn’t safe here. They could find you.”

“No.” The statement was so flat, no argument could be mounted against it. Questor clearly saw no way anyone could harm him now. He gestured toward the squabbling flock of birds, and he shook his head sadly. “They always seem so hungry, shouldering one another out of the way even though there is enough for all.”

Jerry’s voice shook, and he tried to control it—but failed. “It’s . . . Questor, it’s time to go.”

Questor nodded slowly, reluctant to leave. He looked around, taking in the friendly trees and shrubs and the far-off laughter of playing children. Suddenly he froze, staring at the play area.

“Questor, what is it?”

Questor raised a hand to gesture him silent. The children were climbing all over a sturdy reproduction of Noah’s Ark. It was a dozen feet long, ten feet high, with wooden animals dutifully marching up the ramp. Suddenly Questor saw the missing pieces of the puzzle fall into place.

“A boat from a legend, Jerry.” He turned back to Jerry with an expression that could be called excited. “Vaslovik! I know his location now.” He hurried toward the limousine, with Jerry running after him.

“It’s halfway around the world, Questor!”

Questor slid into the limousine, half pulling Jerry after him. “All the more reason to hurry, my friend.”

1 6

A
radio beeper with a directional device sat before Darro, softly emitting its steady, pinging signal. Darro swayed slightly as his car took a sharp corner, racing for the airport. Fortunately, he had been able to have Questor’s limousine bugged as well as the townhouse. Therefore he had been able to pick up Questor’s instructions to have the private jet standing by at Kennedy International and he learned that Questor and Robinson were leaving immediately. Their destination had not yet been determined. Neither had mentioned it aloud. Darro had called ahead to have a radar jet with Air Force personnel waiting for him. He began to have a ridiculous feeling that he was playing tag with a mischievous child. But he knew time
was
running out for Questor; he had no doubt of that fact. If Vaslovik—and the answer to the puzzle—could be found before that, only Questor could do it.

Jerry was strapped in the right-hand seat, with his eyes screwed shut, when Questor got his takeoff clearance from the flight controller in the tower and began taxiing down the runway. The jet lifted off and surged upward. Jerry opened one eye and risked a peek out the window. They had not only made it, they were apparently having no problems at all. He looked across at Questor, who sat easily in the left-hand seat, piloting the plane.

Questor caught the look and managed a reassuring smile at Jerry. It was one of the few times he had even tried to smile, and it worked surprisingly well. “You see, my friend? What can better understand a machine than another machine?” He reached cruising altitude and put the jet on automatic pilot. “You have the maps?”

Jerry nodded and spread out detail maps of Turkey, Iran, and Soviet border areas. He studied one in particular for a moment, then pinpointed a spot with his finger. “Here it is—an abandoned emergency wartime strip at approximately latitude forty-four degrees twenty seconds, longitude forty degrees fifteen seconds.”

Questor glanced at the map, taking it in with one look, then nodded. He had the position in his computer banks and would not need the map again. “Lady Helena has arranged a land vehicle as requested?”

“A fully gassed, four-wheel-drive jeep will be waiting for us at the airstrip.” He studied the map again and tapped the point they had decided upon. “Are you certain this is it?”

“Mount Ararat, where legend says the Ark of Noah came to rest.”

“And Vaslovik is on that mountain?”

Questor nodded, absolutely certain. “He is there—somewhere. And if I don’t find him in time”—he looked at Jerry and enunciated the last words a bit too clearly—“that mountain will become a molehill.”

Jerry tilted his head slightly to the right in unconscious imitation of Questor’s habit. “What?”

“It was meant to be humorous,” Questor said earnestly.

Jerry stared at him; and a grin spread across his mouth, crinkling up the corners of his eyes as it stretched. “I don’t think automation is going to worry the Comedians’ Guild.”

The larger Air Force jet that carried Darro remained a carefully discreet distance behind the private plane Questor flew. An Air Force colonel was bent over a map beside Darro, tracing out a projected course. “Bearing due east exactly. Following along that line—Azores, Lisbon, Rome, Athens, Ankara.”

“And?” Darro asked.

The colonel shrugged. “That’s all we can project from this point. We can get more as we move further east.”

“What’s the standing on surveillance?”

“His plane will be under constant radar surveillance. French stations will pick it up over the mid-Atlantic, then we’ll catch it again. British and Russian stations at the same time. The Chinese will just have to take our word for it.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Darro snapped. “Repeat to all concerned my earlier message. Under no circumstances is that plane to be interfered with. Wherever it wants to land, let it land—and let it take off again.”

“Yes, sir,” the colonel said. “Sir, may I ask . . . why not just grab him?”

Darro looked up at him with cold, veiled eyes. “Do you hunt, Colonel?” The officer shook his head. “Well, you should still know you need a hunting dog to flush a bird. In this case, the bird has been reluctant to show his face for three years. Now we have the hunter to make him break cover.”

“Uh . . . yes, sir. If you’ll excuse me?”

Darro nodded, and the officer left to confer with the pilot. Darro knew his explanation hadn’t really explained anything, but there wasn’t any easy way to tell someone that the man you were following was a walking bomb.
Man.
Darro frowned in annoyance as he realized that he had been referring to Questor as a human again.
Damn Robinson!
The young engineer’s insistence on Questor’s “humanity” was starting to get to him, too. Darro let his eyes wander to the steadily ticking beeper device. It reassured him. No
man
would have a radio transmitter sealed deep inside him.

Questor’s eyes routinely scanned the radarscope and noted the blips coming in from three directions. He turned to Jerry and tapped the screen of the scope. “We are being followed by aircraft directly behind us, and smaller clusters of aircraft to the right. Darro, I presume.”

Jerry suppressed his surprise and shrugged. “I presume. Of course, it could be just routine air traffic.”

“I think not, Jerry. It is most unusual for a private jet to be escorted by squadrons of Mysteres and Phantoms.”

“You’re right,” Jerry said reluctantly. “Darro could call out that kind of show.”

“Yes,” Questor said. “A capable, ingenious man. And so are you, my friend.”

Jerry snapped a look at him, startled. And he wished Questor had said anything in the world but that.

Questor put the plane down for refueling in Lisbon and took off again as soon as the ship was gassed. As Darro had instructed, Questor’s requests were carried out immediately and no one interfered with him. Jerry managed to sleep all the way to Athens, where Questor again landed to top off the fuel tanks. The android was as quiet as possible, but Jerry woke when the plane’s engines whined up to top power for takeoff. He stretched and straightened in the co-pilot’s seat and rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

“You get any rest?” he asked sleepily.

Questor concentrated on the takeoff until he was safely out of the traffic pattern and pushing the jet up to specified altitude. “Jerry,” he said, “even if I required rest, which you know I do not, I could not stop now.”

Jerry let him fly silently for a moment, then he asked, “How much more time?”

“Four hours, fifteen minutes, twenty-one seconds,” Questor replied automatically.

The private jet landed at the abandoned airstrip three hours later. It wasn’t the smoothest landing Jerry had ever been through. The old runway had been strictly an emergency landing site to begin with, and it hadn’t been touched for thirty years. As the jet bounced over the rough ground, Jerry could see the jeep waiting, unattended, near the end of the landing strip. Questor cut the engines. The two men then climbed down out of the plane and ran to the jeep.

Questor reached it first, and had it started and into first gear when Jerry jumped in beside him. The android shifted gears rapidly and headed the vehicle down a winding path that had no business calling itself a road. A mountain range thrust up toward the sky in the near distance. Lady Helena’s scouts had already been over the path and assured them, through her, that the jeep could navigate all the way to the foot of the mountain.

A jet soared overhead, skimming low. Jerry pulled out a pair of field glasses and managed to hold them to his eyes despite the jouncing and swaying of the jeep. The big plane settled toward the earth and angled in for a landing at the emergency airstrip.

“Darro,” Jerry said.

Questor merely nodded and continued to maneuver the vehicle over the ruts and stones toward Mount Ararat. Jerry put the binoculars up to his eyes again to scan a rising cloud of dust on the horizon line. He could not make it out at that distance, especially fighting the tilt and jolt of the jeep; but that much dust could mean only one thing . . . a vehicle column heading in their direction. Probably troop carriers and weapons trucks.

Jerry had guessed correctly. As Darro’s plane touched down and rolled to a halt, the first of the columns had reached the landing strip. A jeep-load of officers wheeled up as Darro climbed down out of the big jet. One of them, an American Army colonel named Hendricks, jumped out to join Darro.

“Which way are they headed?” Darro asked sharply.

“Roughly toward Mount Ararat, sir.”

They had reached the side of the jeep, and Darro stopped, staring strangely at Hendricks for a second.
Boats. That frantic search for boats. That was what it meant—the key to the location of—what? Vaslovik? Something else?
Darro shoved the jeep driver out of the way and took the wheel himself. The other officers cleared out at a motion from Hendricks, but the colonel chose to jump in beside Darro as he gunned the jeep toward the mountain.

The road had stopped, petering out to a goat path and then disappearing altogether. Questor had merely shifted down and kept on, skillfully taking the jeep over rough, seesawing terrain that climbed higher into the foothills of the fabled mountain. Jerry anxiously glanced at his watch.

“Half an hour left.”

Questor, intent upon his driving, stared straight ahead. “Twenty-nine minutes, thirty-one seconds,” he corrected mechanically.

Jerry nodded. Questor was right, of course. Suddenly the android braked the jeep to a stop and turned to him. “Get out now, my friend. There is rock shelter here in case I fail.”

Jerry was still, staring stubbornly back at him. “I’m not leaving.”