Transylvania's Most Wanted (20 page)

He came out shortly and then walked back to
the station where Red promptly handed the bag over to Chief Rogers
who had arrived there in the meantime.

“I read this note,” Chief Rogers said as he
handed the bag off to a sergeant. “It asks for these items, but
there are no instructions on where she wants it delivered or how to
get in touch with her.”

“I guess she’ll contact us again soon,” Red
told him as he stepped away. He told Tom then that he was headed
home. “Why don’t you go home too, pack a bag, have dinner with your
wife.”

“I’ll do that,” Tom said.

Tom told him he felt like walking and left
then, but instead he hurried to his car and waited for Red to leave
so he could follow him.

Red drove home and parked in his driveway as
Tom watched from down the street, and then the blinds inside the
house were shut tightly. It was not difficult to figure out what
was going on. Tom figured he must have Miss Kensington concocting
some kind of spell with the items he had taken out of the bag in
the bathroom and hidden inside his coat pockets.

Twenty minutes later Red came back out,
jumped in his car and drove to the Sokoloff Funeral Home. He was
not inside long before he stepped outside with Mr. Sokoloff, who
locked the doors behind them. Red got back in his car then and
drove away.

Tom followed him to The Fountain hotel and
watched him go inside. He knew why Red had gone there. He’d told
him already that Mr. Jordan was staying there and expecting he
might be there awhile, Tom drove home.

Chapter 37

The Transylvanian
Gambit

When Red came out of The Fountain Hotel,
based on what he had learned there, he began to hatch a plot. If he
had run it past any of the great chess masters they would have
cringed at it; too risky, too many moves required, and too many
pieces to be at just the right place at the right time before the
trap was sprung. All while hoping his opponent didn’t realize what
he was up to.

The first of those moves needed to be
undertaken right then. He drove so Red drove to the library. Just
inside the door he looked around, hoping Tom was not there. He did
not spot him, so he approached the main counter and asked for
Rebecca. He was told she was attending a lecture in the main hall.
He went in, sat just behind her and tapped her on the shoulder.
When she turned to look behind her, Red asked her to step
outside.

“I’m sorry to make you miss your lecture,”
he told her once they were out of the room. “Is there somewhere we
could talk privately?”

“Has anything happened to Tom?”

“No,” Red said assuredly. “I just need your
help with something.”

She led him to a small room for private
reading and shut the door behind them. “How can I help?”

“Turns out there is something very sinister
going on here in Transylvania City.”

“What?”

“We believe the princess’ life is in grave
danger. We have identified the man who hired Krakov to kill her and
we are certain he will try again.”

“How?”

“A bomb, I believe.”

“A bomb?”

“Yes and that’s where I could use your
help.”

“My help?”

“Yes.”

“How can I help?”

“This man, he calls himself Mr. Darcy, is
very clever. We have him under surveillance presently, but I think
he knows we are watching him. What he doesn’t know is that I
suspect he has plans to deliver not just one bomb, but two, and I
want him followed when he goes to deliver the second one.”

“And you want me to follow him?”

“Something like that.”

“Why me?”

“Like I said, he’s very clever. I want him
to believe he’s delivered the second bomb without being watched. I
believe he has spotted the men following him already, but I don’t
think he would suspect a young woman to be following him.”

“I see.”

“This could be dangerous.”

“Is Tom involved in this?”

“Yes, but not as much as you might
think.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are certain things I’ve purposely
kept from him.”

“Why?”

“I can’t explain that right now,” Red said.
“I have a good reason for choosing you for this assignment.”

“What?”

“If Mr. Darcy does happen to spot you
following him, I do not, in fact I’m almost certain he would not
hurt you. I’m afraid he would kill anyone else following him. He
has to be certain that he delivered his second bomb without anyone
from the TCPD knowing. I believe he would kill anyone caught
following him – except you of course.”

“Why me?”

“Because you are Inspector
Flynn’s wife and I think they need him aboard the
Dauntless
. If you were
to be found murdered – that would foul up their plans.”

“Oh,” Rebecca said. “Mine as well.”

“Of course you will not be in any danger,”
Red told her. “I’ve arranged for that.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see. Can you come to the station
with me now?”

“I suppose.”

“And of course you can’t say anything to Tom
right now,” Red told her. “He must not know anything about
this.”

“Is he in any danger?”

Red looked at her. “Yes, I’m afraid so, but
I’m doing everything I can to help with that.”

Chapter 38

A bomb is a simple enough device to
construct. A ticking time bomb is an entirely different matter.
Somehow, at precisely the required moment, if you want to be seen
as a competent bomb maker anyway, you need the bomb to explode
without help of human hands. The trick is to fashion a mechanism
that will strike the percussion cap, igniting it, which will then
set off the real explosive. With a good alarm clock a bomber is
halfway there. He need only adapt the part of the clock meant to
set off a couple of bells ringing, to instead strike the cap,
causing it to ignite and then for that fire to detonate whatever
explosive material you are working with.

This is what Mr. Slang built that night. The
trick, if you were to ask him, is selecting the proper gage of
nail. Neither one too sharp that it slips inside the cap without
causing a spark, nor one too blunt that it does not penetrate the
cap. Of course he would tell you the careful application of
nitroglycerin can help with this matter. Once the cap is ignited,
it is the job of the fuse to carry that flame into the explosive.
The trick here is to strip the fuse to a width neither too slim
that it will not carry the fire into the dynamite, or too thick
that the cap igniting, fails to light the fuse.

Mr. Slang though had constructed many such
bombs in his four lifetimes, and he was glad that as he passed from
one lifetime to another, his knowledge of how to make them remained
with him, while the loss of several fingers did not.

Chapter 39

Red escorted Rebecca up to the fifth floor
holding cells. Miss Kensington was there already. No one else was
present. Red looked at his watch. It was nearly 11:00 pm. He told
his wife the time and she nodded encouragingly.

“Tom will be arriving downstairs shortly,”
he told Rebecca. “I had Constable Andrews go over and pick him up
at your home. I told him we had identified the man who had hired
Krakov and that we have him under surveillance.” Red looked at his
watch again. “Oh, I almost forgot,” he said pulling a photograph
out of his pocket.

He showed it to Miss Kensington and Rebecca.
Rebecca looked at it and saw it was of Tom, coming down the aisle
of the courtroom.

“I had Lou Mitchell take this photograph for
me,” Red explained. “This man here is Mr. Darcy,” he said pointing
at a man in the background, standing against the side wall of the
courtroom. “That’s the man I want you to follow.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and go now,” Miss
Kensington told him then. “Rebecca needs to change out of her
dress.”

“All right dear,” he said. “Constable
Andrews will come up and get Rebecca when the time comes, hopefully
it will be a little while yet,” he said looking at his watch again,
He approached Miss Kensington then and gave her a kiss. “I love you
dear.”

“I love you too,” she said. “I’ll see you
before too long.”

Red went downstairs then to the inspectors’
offices and found Tom and Constable Andrews standing by his office
door.

“Dunne, Jones and McElroy may have
identified the man who was working with Krakov,” Red told Tom.
“Presently he’s in his room at the Strigoi hotel, but I have reason
to believe he’s planning on delivering a bomb somewhere in the city
later. I suspect the Hotel Triumph since that’s where Prince Marko
is staying.”

“A bomb really?” Tom said trying to act
surprised. “How did they find this man?”

“A search of Krakov’s room turned up a slip
of paper with the name Mr. Darcy on it. I had Dunne, Jones and
McElroy check with every hotel then and we found a Mr. Darcy
staying at the Strigoi. We’ve been following his every move since
this afternoon. He bought an alarm clock at a shop today and then I
got a call from a detective Rohev with the Vampire Force. He called
to let me know some dynamite had been stolen from the Tunnel Like
Hell mine offices out there. That was just about the time Dunne
lost Mr. Darcy when he slipped away from the tour group he had been
with. He showed up back at the Strigoi three hours later though and
I suspect he’s putting a bomb together right now.”

“
What are we going to
do?”

“We’ll let him plant his bomb,” Red said.
“We’ll just sit here until McElroy gives me a call letting me know
Mr. Darcy has left the Strigoi. They’ll follow Mr. Darcy from there
and then McElroy will give us a call when Mr. Darcy arrives at his
destination. You might as well wait with us,” he told Constable
Andrews.

He looked at the clock on the wall then.

Chapter 40

When Mr. Slang was done with his creations,
which was near midnight, he looked over them and was pleased. He
packed his bags then, taking only the most important items with
him, which of course included his bombs, and slipped out the back
of the hotel, certain he was being watched. He went to the end of
the alley, crossed the street, went down another alley and hailed a
cab from that spot. He told the driver to take him to the Hotel
Triumph.

Once there he went up to the front desk and
rang the bell at the late hour. When the clerk appeared, he asked
for his key. Or rather Mr. Emmerson asked for his key. He went up
to the room then and set his suitcase on the bed. He opened it and
withdrew one of the bombs. He set the alarm to go off at 6 am. He
slipped the bomb under the bed then, closed up his suitcase and
decided he’d wait just a few minutes before he slipped out the back
of the hotel.

Chapter 41

“Have I ever told you this is my third life,
not my second?” Red asked as they sat in his office waiting for the
phone to ring a second time. Inspector McElroy had called a few
minutes before, letting Red know that Mr. Darcy had left the
Strigoi Hotel.

“No,” Tom said. “You never told me
that.”

“I was not there long,” he said, “this other
realm.”

“What was it like?”

“Much like India when the British were in
control there.”

“Sounds nice,”

“The country yes, but there was a battle
being waged for the hearts and minds of the people there. Each side
committing terrible acts and then claiming the other side was
responsible.”

“Why would you be sent to such a place?”

“I like to think I was needed there. Certain
…ugly, but necessary jobs needed doing there and I like to think I
did them with the least collateral damage possible.”

“But you were not there long?”

“No,” Red said. “And you must remember I
would have been a young man when I was there.”

“How were you killed?”

“I trusted someone with some information. A
woman I had fallen in love with, who I thought believed in what we
were trying to accomplish there, but she betrayed me and
unfortunately this act lead to my death. But I did learn much
there.”

“Like what?”

“That you must anticipate what step your
enemy will take next, but also what steps they have already
taken.”

“She was only pretending to love you?”

“No,” Red said shaking his head. “But she
loved the cause she was fighting for even more.”

The phone rang. Red picked it up and
listened a moment. “We’re on our way,” he said hanging up then. “It
appears the package has just been delivered to the Hotel Triumph,”
he told Tom. “Let’s head over there.”

Red looked at the clock on the wall and saw
it was just before midnight. He put his hat and coat and nodded at
Constable Andrews before following Tom down the hall.

As they drove to the Hotel Triumph, the
bells of St. Paul’s rang out the hour. They parked in the circular
driveway in front of the hotel and headed for the entrance. As soon
as they stepped inside, McElroy approached them. A few guests were
playing cards still, but other than them the lobby was empty.

“
Where is he?” Red
asked.

“Room 420,” Mac said. “Dunne is in the
stairwell near there, Jones is the other end of the hallway.”

“Let’s wait here until we hear from Dunne or
Jones.”

They waited in a dark alcove of the massive
hotel lobby, where they would not be seen.

“That’s him,” Mac said just barely tipping
his head toward a man stepping off the elevator. The man headed for
a side exit, walking briskly, but not so fast as to draw attention.
“Should I tail him?”

“No,” Red said. “Let him go.”