Under the Beetle's Cellar (27 page)

“Yes.”

“I gave her a complete Dickinson to send to Walter. It would be in there. Molly, do you have it with you?”

Molly shook her head. “No. I’m afraid I left it at home.”

“Well, if you’ll wait, I’ll find it for you and I’ll read it to you. Just a minute …”

“Tape this, Holihan.” Lattimore’s face was white with concentration. “But keep trying on-line, Curtis.”

Theodora came back on. “Let’s see if I can find it. I don’t remember the number, so I’m looking under first lines. Here is it. Number 949. Are you ready for me to read it?”

“Yes, go ahead,” Lattimore said. “We’re taping this, Miss Shea.”

Theodora read in a clear slow voice:

“Under the Light, yet under,

Under the Grass and the Dirt,

Under the Beetle’s Cellar.

Under the Clover’s Root,

Further than Arm could stretch

Were it Giant long,

Further than Sunshine could

Were the Day Year long,

Over the Light, yet over,

Over the Arc of the bird—

Over the Comet’s chimney—

Over the Cubit’s Head,

Further than Guess can gallop,

Further than Riddle ride—

Oh for a Disc to the Distance

Between Ourselves and the Dead!”

“Miss Shea,” Lattimore said, “what do you make of that message?”

“The first thing that comes to mind, of course, is that they’re being held underground. He’s trying to tell you where they are, so you can go in there and rescue them before it’s too late. I fervently hope you will do just that, Mr. Lattimore. Without delay.”

“We will do our best. Please stay home near your phone, Miss Shea, so we can reach you if we need to. Will you do that for us?”

“I certainly will.”

“Thank you.” The agent nodded to Curtis to break the connection. “Transcribe that right away, Curtis, so we can all have copies.”

Grady Traynor turned to face Molly. “While he’s doing that, Molly, this would be a good time to pass on the information you have.”

Molly was startled. “What?”

“The circumstances of Donnie Ray Grimes’s birth. I already told them the general outlines this morning. Fill it in for us.”

She looked at him hard.

“Go ahead, Molly. All bets are off now.”

He was right, of course. With forty-eight hours left and Annette Grimes’s revelation, they needed to know everything. But she was reluctant to give it up. Once she did, it might lose its potential power. “Okay.” She felt suddenly exhausted. “Is there somewhere I could sit?”

Grady gestured to the old armchair and she sat in it. She looked directly at Patrick Lattimore. “All right. Yesterday I talked with Dorothy Huff.”

“The grandmother in Elgin,” Lattimore said.

“Yes. She told me Donnie Ray was adopted by Evelyn Grimes, as a baby.”

Lattimore scowled. “I really don’t understand how our intelligence group missed this.”

“If you doubt it, I have the papers to prove it.” Molly summarized her conversation with Dorothy Huff. Then she told about Grady’s unearthing the old patrol report, about Hank Hanley and the Greek letters, and her extraction of information from Betty Larkin, the Pi Alpha
Omega housemother. She watched their expressions for disapproval, but the men all looked unperturbed, as if this was just business as usual.

“Thelma Bassett believes that mothers are a real obsession with Samuel Mordecai and I do, too. He searched desperately to find his birth mother. It’s enormously significant to him. If we could come up with her identity now, I’m sure we’d have something of value to trade to him.”

“Maybe,” Andrew Stein mused. “God knows we haven’t been able to tempt him with anything else. What were you planning to do next?”

From her bag Molly pulled out the directory and the list Betty Larkin had given her. “Well, I took the summer school list and checked to see if there were any members who were there that summer and have a current address in Austin. There are two of them, but one, Nancy Saint Claire, was a sorority officer—VP of Special Events—and might have been more actively involved in sorority life. I was planning to call her and ask if we could talk.”

“What would you ask her?” Stein asked.

“Well, I hadn’t decided how to proceed.” Molly thought for a minute. “What I want to know is who in the sorority was pregnant in the summer of ’62. I could say I’m doing a piece on how sexual morality has changed in the past thirty-five years and I’ve been talking to a sophomore Pi Alph who is pregnant out of wedlock and I want to compare her feelings and experiences with someone who was in that situation in ’62.”

The room was silent. She looked around.

“No,” Andrew Stein said. “Too convoluted. Why lie if you don’t have to? The best lies are as close to the truth as you can make them.”

Molly flushed. Stein was right. “What if I said I was looking for the birth mother of a man who needed that information desperately and we have reason to think the mother is a Pi Alph who was at summer school in 1962. I’ll ask her if she was aware of any pregnancies.”

“That’s more like it, close to the facts. All true, really,” Lattimore said. “We’ve got almost no time left. This may not be worth fussing with. What do you all think? A woman who’s kept a secret this long is unlikely to give it up now. And Grimes may have moved on to other obsessions. This may be worthless.” He looked around the room.

Stein shrugged. “It’s worth a try. If it doesn’t take away from our other efforts.”

“Definitely worth a try,” Grady agreed. “We could let Miss Cates do it.”

Lattimore’s cool eyes were assessing Molly. “Do you want to have a go at it? Or shall we take it over? I could send Holihan.”

Molly looked at the broad-shouldered Bryan Holihan. The agent was
probably thirty, with a square head and pug nose. “Let me. If I can’t get anything, you could always take over.”

Lattimore looked around at the others. Curtis shrugged and Andrew Stein said, “I think it’s more likely that a woman would tell a secret like that to Miss Cates than to Holihan.”

Lattimore sighed. “We haven’t discussed confidentiality yet, Miss Cates. I realize you’re a member of the press. I don’t know what you intend to write about when this is over, but anything we’ve discussed in this room is strictly off-limits.”

“I have no intention of writing about this,” Molly told him.

Grady moved away from the wall where he’d been leaning. “Lattimore, you don’t realize it, but you’re lucky to be standing there with your nuts still intact. This is not a woman you dictate to.”

“I’m not dictating,” the agent said to Grady. He looked back at Molly. “Sorry to be heavy-handed. I just wanted to make sure you knew how we play these things.”

“I’m glad to know,” she told him. “But just for interest’s sake, how would you stop me if I did want to write about this?”

“We couldn’t stop you. But we’d deny everything. And we could make your life a living hell after the fact.”

“How?”

“For starters, we’d get the IRS to audit every detail of your taxes for the past eight years.” With a sly smile, he asked, “You remember what it was like when you got audited in ’89?”

Molly’s face must have betrayed her astonishment because he continued: “Oh, yes. It took Curtis about twenty seconds to get that. Makes you wonder if Mr. Mordecai has got some valid points about the menace of computers.”

“Well,” Molly said, “I survived it in ’89 and I could survive it again.”

“Maybe, but the audit they would do this time would make that one seem like a love feast. This time they’d ask for every receipt, every scrap of paper for every tiny deduction, every canceled check and deposit slip, going back eight years. They would find irregularities that required an even more rigorous audit. You’d be spending all your time rummaging through your records and meeting with accountants, getting friends and business associates to make affidavits about this and that business expense. We’d do the same thing to your magazine and make sure the publisher knew that you were the reason. Shall I go on?”

Molly managed to squeeze out a smile. “No. I’m convinced. Maybe the IRS is the weapon to use against Mr. Mordecai.”

He didn’t smile. “Oh, we tried that early on. It usually gets people’s
attention right quick, but Mordecai didn’t even flinch. When you really believe the world is ending, taxes lose their sting.”

Grady Traynor said, “If she says she won’t write about it, she won’t. But in light of this morning’s attack and the known viciousness of the Sword Hand of God, she needs … an escort.”

“Definitely,” Lattimore said. “Holihan is your new best friend, Miss Cates. I hear your truck got disabled, so he’ll drive you. Curtis, do your magic on that computer and find us personal data on Nancy Saint Claire. And, Curtis—ASAP.”

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

“It’s safer to believe. If you’re wrong, well, there’s nothing lost. But if you choose
not
to believe and you’re wrong, there’s hell to pay.
”

H
ARRIET
C
ATES
C
AVANAUGH
,
TO HER NIECE

As Jake Alesky wheeled himself across the threshold, Molly felt a stillness descend on the room. They must have known of his condition, but Jake’s presence clearly caused discomfort. It would be the very devil to have to face that reaction day after day, she thought.

Lattimore leaned down to shake his hand. “Mr. Alesky, I’m Patrick Lattimore. Thank you for coming. Sorry for all the rush and secrecy, but we are running against the clock here.”

“I’ll do anything I can to help Walter,” Jake said.

“We talked to Walter on the phone this morning and he sent you a message. I want to play it for you.” He nodded toward the tape player. “Holihan, make it so.”

Holihan flipped the switches and the phone call played again.

Molly watched Jake’s face. When it came to the part about Granny Duck, his jaw tightened and his prominent Adam’s apple bobbed. “Oh, Christ.” When it was over, he put his long fingers to his forehead as if shading his eyes from some glare.

Patrick Lattimore said, “We know Walter Demming has no living grandparents, or parents. So who is Granny Duck?”

Jake opened his mouth, but no sound emerged. He seemed to have no breath to propel the words.

“Could we get you a glass of water or coffee, Mr. Alesky?”

“Yes. Coffee black. Thanks.”

Holihan left the room, sliding the door shut behind him.

Jake wheeled his chair to the wall with the compound diagram and studied it. Then he licked his lips and said, “Is he being held … underground?”

The five people in the room all came to attention, like dogs on point.

“Why do you ask?” Lattimore said evenly.

“Granny Duc, that’s D-u-c. Vietnamese. She survived by staying underground. In 1968. Trang Loi, this village on the Batangan Peninsula.”

“Ow,” said Lattimore, “bad-luck place.”

“Real bad,” Jake agreed. “And this village was the worst, the province headquarters of VC activities. A snake pit. Weapons and supplies hidden in hootches and tunnels, VC behind every tree, booby traps everywhere.” He stopped, clearly still struggling to get his breathing under control.

Everyone was silent, waiting for him to go on.

He licked his lips again. “This old woman, this Granny Duc—she was the only person to survive the destruction of Trang Loi. A survivor. The ultimate survivor.”

Holihan returned with a Styrofoam cup. He handed it to Jake.

“Thanks.” Jake took a sip. “Granny Duc hid underground, in one of the tunnels under the village. Other people hid down there, too, but they came out too soon. After the main destruction, but while we were still … in the killing mode. You know?” He looked around the room.

“Oh, yes,” Lattimore said, “I know. I did a tour in ’69.” The two men studied one another. Molly felt the flow of empathy passing between them.

Jake went on: “She didn’t come out until two days after. And we … let her live. By then we’d had enough. I think Walter is sending you a message. He’ll stay underground through whatever happens. I think he wants you to destroy the compound, and he’ll keep the children out of the way for as long as it takes.”

Lattimore started to pace the room. He stopped next to Jake in front of the diagram of the Jezreel compound. “I wish he could have told us exactly where he is. Although such precision may be a bit much to expect of someone in such adverse circumstances.” He put his finger on the main building. “Mr. Alesky, the tunnel that this Granny Duc hid in—it was underneath the village?”

“Yes. The entrance was in the floor of one of the hootches, hidden under a big storage bin.”

Molly’s brain was racing. She hadn’t been asked and she was just a visitor, but she had a hunch so overpowering she couldn’t stop herself. “I think they’re under the barn,” she said, walking over to look closer at the
diagram. “Because it’s consecrated ground. He’s purifying them. Like the babies. For fifty days.”

Lattimore’s finger moved slowly to the left and settled on the outline of the barn. “If you’re right, we could increase our chances of getting them out alive by maybe ten percent. We’d target the barn and neutralize everyone there first.” He pressed down on the barn, turning his index finger as though he were grinding a bug. “What do you think, Andrew?”

Andrew Stein closed his eyes and let his head fall first to one shoulder, then the other, to loosen his neck. “I’m inclined to agree with Miss Cates. If they’re underground, and I think they are, it’s the barn. Here’s why. First, a practical reason: The Jezreelites can get there from the house without being seen because of that breezeway structure, so they’ve been able to take them food without our surveillance picking it up. But mainly it’s the associations I get from the poem. ‘Under the beetle’s cellar’ makes me think of barns. You know—dung beetles, barns, animals live there and make dung. ‘Under the clover’s root’ suggests root cellars, storage, and I associate both cellars and barns with storage, and we know there is no cellar in the compound, and the entrance to the tunnel in Trang Loi being under a storage bin—well, it just feels right. Also, ‘Under the light, yet under’ suggests two layers of being underneath something, and barns are dark inside. To be buried under a barn roof is like two layers of darkness. Anyway, it’s the largest structure in the compound and the only one likely to have a dirt floor.”