Willing Hostage (20 page)

Leah sighed. He was determined to ruin her stroll. “We walked mostly. He wasn't talkative. He asked me about my life so that I wouldn't ask him about his.” She owed Welker nothing but trouble. She wouldn't tell him about Norton and the Denver
Post
.

In front of them Brian's head kept turning from side to side as if he scanned the area for snipers, reminding Leah of secret servicemen guarding the President on television. She looked over her shoulder to see another man doing the same thing behind them, keeping pace, a cigarette hanging from his lips. Didn't they notice how they stood out in their conservative suits in an area like this?

“You're hot, Leah,” Welker said, noting her glances. “We'll protect you. But you must help us do that, you know. Those men are guarding your life … as Sheila did.”

“From who?”

“Everyone after Glade will soon know, if they don't already, that you spent a week in the wilderness alone with him. There are leaks in any camp.”

They walked along a path through a line of scrub bush to a patch of trees.

“Now, I want to know—”

“Mr. Welker, you were going to give
me
information. Remember? Are you working with Charlie and his friends? Or against them? What do those goons want with Glade? Why do you think I can be of any further use to you? Why are Charlie and Bradley operating in Colorado at all? I want to know everything about Glade. I want to know everything period … or I want to know nothing and go back to Chicago. You have a choice.”

To her chagrin, Joseph Welker began to answer her questions. They weren't going to let her go back to Chicago. “Glade and his older brother, Cal, were raised on their father's ranch some miles out of Meeker, Colorado. Glade was used to isolated living, hard work, being bused long miles to school. A hardy family background, conservative in political and social outlook.…”

Welker's voice descended into an impersonal steady monotone as if he were reciting from memory a written dossier on Glade Wyndham. The thought struck Leah as chilling.

“As I said, life was rugged and the men of the family were big and stolid. Unfortunately, the mother was frail and died when Glade was twelve of what the doctor termed exhaustion. The older brother married and brought his young wife home to care for the bruisers. She took two years of it and left. She also left behind another Wyndham … a baby boy, Glade's nephew Jerry. Glade was fifteen at the time.” He stopped his ambling and looked at Leah squarely. “This seems to have affected Glade's opinion of women … permanently.

“Glade was an excellent student. His father paid fully for a college education and while Glade was off studying to become a mining engineer, a neighbor accidentally backed over the father with a wagonload of hay. It killed him. The brother got the ranch. Glade was free and set up with an education. He dated women and enjoyed them but carefully avoided long-standing attachments while in college and ever since. He has a preference for blondes and next comes redheads, brunettes, and whatever else man and nature can concoct.
He
—”

“What about his other job?”

“He was recruited in college and spent most of his time abroad after that.” Welker rarely mentioned the CIA by name.

“Working at two jobs.”

“Yes. About ten months ago, he unexplainably rifled his company's safe and disappeared with some papers. He also withdrew all his money from a bank account.”

“Why was he working for an American company in the U.S. ten months ago?”

“That company hired mining engineers. What could be simpler?”

“But why was a CIA agent working for this company in the United States?” Leah insisted. Welker could be as evasive as a politician.

“That, I'm afraid, Miss Harper, is not in my domain.”

“It isn't theirs either, is it? And Colorado certainly shouldn't be.”

“It's understandable, though. Glade is their renegade. Of course, they want to clean up their own affairs.”

“The FBI and CIA are after the same man and the same papers but they're not even working together. Seems a little inefficient, doesn't it?”

“I have orders to get to him first, to save his life and to retrieve the papers.”

“And the goons?”

“We think they have orders to stop him outright. They already know what the papers contain.”

“You mean you don't? You don't even know what you're after?”

“Unlike you, Miss Harper, I do take some things on faith. I'm reliably informed that the contents of those papers are a matter for investigation by the bureau, that untold harm would be done to the nation if they were made public before this investigation … they were stolen, remember, from a large and respected company—”

“Which sends out hoods to kill ex-employees:”

“That I find deplorable also and am trying my best to see that they don't succeed. But men in Glade's line of work have been considered fair game, whenever caught, since time immemorial.”

At a break in the trees, Brian stopped them with a raised hand. Another mountain rose before them, wide swaths slashed through its trees for winter skiers. A stilled chair lift angled up its side and another lift sat idle in the distance. To the side and beyond the ski runs, the jade-green valley led away to Oak Creek with its river snaking through herds of grazing cattle and an occasional brown haystack shaped like a soggy loaf of bread.

“We'll turn back here, I think.” They started for the condominium complex, slowly. “Now I've told you a great deal, Miss Harper. Will you help us? I want to know what's in those papers. I want to find Glade Wyndham before any harm can come to him. If I could just talk to him. Why did he steal the papers to begin with?”

“I don't know where he is or where he's going.” Leah felt suddenly exhausted. Her tennis shoes shuffled stones loose from the earth. If she told him just a little, would he let her go? “He was ordered by the CIA to photograph those papers and return them to the safe. Instead he took them and ran. They have something to do with oil shale … a deal between the government and the oil company. That is all I know, Mr. Welker. Please let me go back to Chicago.”

“A deal … you're sure?” They walked in silence back to the parking lot. “A deal?” He stood staring at the peaked aluminum roofs of Steamboat Springs. “This makes it all the more imperative that I talk to him. If we could just flush him. I'm afraid I can't send you back to Chicago just yet. But I will take you out to dinner tonight,” he added thoughtfully.

That night they dined at the Iron Horse, a group of connecting railroad cars lined up behind a motel. It had mirrors along one wall and windows along the other. A narrow aisle parted a single row of tables on each side. The damage to the carpeting matched that in her apartment in the complex … ski boots.

Their waiter was a male ski bum working to exist through summer. Leah had seen the type during two expensive weekends away from New York when she'd dabbled in skiing at a Vermont lodge … young, unattached, year-round tan, perfect teeth, handsome … a ski bum was a ski bum east or west apparently. But from her glimpse of the dizzying slopes and their incredible lengths that afternoon she figured the bums had a lot more fun in the West.

Leah refused a cocktail. She ordered eggs Benedict to Julie's disgust. Sitting between Welker and Brian, she could see Welker in the mirror opposite.

“You have to be careful of cholesterol,” Julie pointed out as Leah broke a yolk.

“Replace that gauze after you bathe tonight,” Brian offered through a mouthful of sirloin.

“He's got to run out of cash soon,” Welker said over lobster. “He'll have to go somewhere and we've got his brother covered. He emptied one bank account ten months ago. The only way anyone found him was that we were all waiting for him to dip into the other one.”

“That's why it took ten months?” Leah tried a sip of wine on her ulcer.

“Yes. He was living in a rented cabin in a place called Rustic. It's in the canyon between Ted's Place and Cameron Pass, where you met him in that fishing cabin. Eventually he wrote a rent check on that secret account.”

“Secret account?”

“He thought it was secret. Actually there are few secrets from Uncle Sam … but Glade had been out of the country for ten years.” Welker was sipping his third martini with his second glass of wine. Face on, he looked relaxed. In the mirror opposite he looked drunk.

Leah, of the sober set, felt it was high time she took advantage of someone else. “You have access to bank accounts?”

“The law reads that banks must photograph checks for over a certain amount. It's a way to trace money leaving the country. But it's such a hassle, banks just photograph all checks. Retrieval is a problem, but it can be done.”

Leah couldn't finish her eggs Benedict and had trouble sleeping that night. She couldn't rid herself of the mental image of shadowed eyes, the rich sound of deep laughter, the … she knew she'd been wise to leave him, but as usual she'd ran to the wrong place.

The condominium was as poorly built as everything else in this age and she heard sounds from the next apartment through the walls. She was on her way to the bathroom when Brian shouted from the hall, “He's here! He's got it.”

In the bathroom, Leah heard Joseph Welker on the other side of the wall ask, “Is it complete, college organizations, bank …” and a flushing toilet drowned out the rest.

Leah walked through the bed-sitting room to the sliding-glass door and opened it slightly. The screen was kept locked but the door opened for ventilation because there was no other window. The balcony guard was just opening the sliding door next to hers.

“What's going on?” he asked between puffs on his cigarette.

“The Harper file is in,” Welker answered with satisfaction. “Have we got anything?”

“Well, we had trouble at the bank,” a strange voice answered. “But I think we've got most of it.”

As the balcony guard listened at the open door next to her, Leah listened at her own to a detailed rundown of her life.

Leah Harper listened to the Harper file and felt naked. Innocent transactions, pastimes, and family life sounded sinister, even criminal, when recited by the new voice. Her father's death, the family removal to a poorer section of town, Leah's employment record, men she had dated, even Jason, Suzie's abortion. Everything was there.

“And then she went to the Hagstard Publishing Company.”

“Publishers?” Welker exploded in the next room. “Wyndham's spent a week in the wilderness with a publisher's representative? This is worse than I thought. Everybody's after renegade agents' memoirs these days. And with the property, too? Jesus God!”

“She hasn't worked for them for two years—”

“What do you want to bet?” It sounded like he threw something against a wall. “How about college organizations, anything there?”

“Nothing remotely subversive.” The strange voice went on to her mother's suicide.

“Who found her?”

“The subject. No foul play indicated. Clear case—”

“Maybe we can work on that. Guilt … her own mother. Have you completed the bank work?”

“Yes. It's all here. A Chicago and a New York bank.”

“The mother's death … go over it again.”

Leah repeated the horror of her mother's death with them.

“That and the publisher. Work on them and get going.”

“I just got here. I need sleep.”

“Sleep on the plane. We'll get you to Denver. Can you imagine Glade Wyndham's memoirs published? And the Enveco papers?”

Leah slid through the opening in the sliding-glass doors and hit the screen. Her hair stuck to it and pulled as her body slid to the floor, a buzzing in her ears, fresh salt-tainted blood shooting up her throat and through half-parted lips.

Chapter Twenty-five

Leah was being carried. She could feel the jerky movement of someone else's walk. A small low building … brick and lighted windows.

A sign painted on window-glass …
PLEASE REMOVE SKI BOOTS AT THE DOOR
.

Leah was in the building, in front of a desk under a round glaring light.

“You should have taken her directly to the emergency room and called first,” someone said disapprovingly.

Soon there were other glaring lights overhead.

“Ulcer. Bleeding. I must ask you all to leave. This could be serious. No stress … no questions.”

Leah awoke in a strange white room, in a strange white bed. A woman leaned over her.

“There, I thought you were coming around,” she said cheerfully. “Are you hungry? You've slept so long. How about a nice poached-egg-on-milk-toast?”

The woman fed it to her by slow patient spoonfuls. “There now, you can sleep some more. I can see you're still tired. Rest is the best thing for you.”

An oblong pill with the texture of plastic slipped onto Leah's tongue followed by the edge of a paper cup with water. “Don't worry now, my dear. You're fine. The bleeding has stopped. Just rest. Ulcer shouldn't worry, should it? Nothing too bad, you just overdid, didn't you? You must be careful to take care of yourself with your problem.”

“Look, I don't care if you're Lieutenant Columbo. She stays another day.” The young doctor's wire-rims glared back at Welker's horn-rims.

Welker snapped the wallet closed on his intimidating badge and replaced it in an inside breast pocket. “Listen, there is …” he began patiently but was interrupted by Brian Kruger's rush through the door.

“We've got him! They just picked him up.”

“Who?”

“The State Patrol. They grabbed Wyndham out of a telephone booth in Craig. We'll have to spring him.” Brian and Joseph Welker disappeared.

The doctor turned to Leah. “I don't know what kind of trouble you're in. But I've won you and your stomach another twenty-four hours.”