The Croning Part 9

"Gosh, I wouldn't be able to venture a guess," Don said. A small lie; he'd seen Noonan's name on the manifests and felt a twinge of curiosity regarding the man's presence on an involved, if pedestrian, feasibility study.

"Have you met Dr. Herman Strauss? Old evil German scientist, did big things at R&D for the company back during the height of the Red Scare-became Herr Director, in fact. There's the secret to how we won World War Two-our n.a.z.i scientists were better than their n.a.z.i scientists."

"Er, no. Should I know him?"

"Hah, well, maybe. Mrs. Miller interviewed him for her first book. The interview got edited for content or length, or whatever. Very interesting fellow, Herman Strauss. Specialized in mind control and unorthodox applications of medicine and technology. Heh, if he hadn't gotten press-ganged by the Allies, he'd probably be sipping mint juleps on one of those plantations in South America."

Mr. Claxton tried next. "Hey, ever hear of a physicist named Nelson Cooye? Great big Lakota Indian. Chummy with Plimpton. He did research for Caltech, Stanford, MIT. A real stallion for an egghead."

"Never met him," Don said, trying to picture Cooye. He had the unhappy premonition that the guy was famous and something bad had happened to him and that somehow this terrible thing presaged something equally dreadful for Don himself. He recalled a newspaper photo, two and a half inches of print, rumors of uncontrollable violence, of public tirades. He didn't normally keep track of physicists.

"Ah." Mr. Claxton nodded. "But you hearda Cooye. Rather a renowned figure among the radical elements, the lunatic fringe. He was buddies with that one dude, Tos.h.i.+ Ryoko, guy that made a movie about his expeditions in the Far East. Another cla.s.sic, lemme say. I heard a rumor he's in the planning stages for a trip to some deathtrap of a wildlife preserve in Bangladesh. Bet he gets a n.o.bel if he can find backers."

"Oh, Tos.h.i.+," Don said. Everybody in the civilized world knew of Tos.h.i.+ Ryoko the same way everybody knew of Jacques Cousteau or Dian Fossey. "Did something blow up in his doc.u.mentary?"

"No. It's about an expedition, is all. Nothing to do with the price of tea in China. Anyhoo, Cooye was a smidge wacko; a saucer watcher. Got himself and a few radical kids from Stanford arrested for trespa.s.sing on a government research facility in Nevada. Nothing important there, by the way-it's the thought that counts."

"Yeah, I don't recall. Who do you gentlemen work for? FBI? CIA?"

"CIA doesn't operate on American soil," Mr. Claxton said. "That's the line, anyhow. National Security Agency."

"Uh-huh. Y'know, my grandfather always warned me to never talk to spooks."

"Yep, he was a smart guy, your gramps. We'll get to him. Back to Cooye. He rolled in a teeny Volkswagen. Can you imagine this six-eight dude jamming himself into one a those contraptions? Went off the road near Eureka. Burned up on the rocks."

"When?"

"About six weeks ago. Sad, sad, y'know. Wonder what he was thinking about on the way down."

"The highway patrol couldn't locate the body," Mr. Dart said. "Cops say he was thrown from the wreck and taken out to sea."

"Yep, like a commode flus.h.i.+ng." Mr. Claxton mimed pulling a chain. "There's a bore tide along that stretch of coast. No way they'll ever find him unless he washes up somewhere, which I doubt. But on to the good parts: Plimpton," and here the agent gestured to encompa.s.s the party being thrown in the dead man's honor, "and Cooye moonlighted for the CIA during the '60s. Cooye was a few years younger than you. CIA likes'em young and dumb. Your granddad knew Cooye pretty well, like a grandson, in fact; we're confident Luther handled him during his tour in Bali. Course this is speculation-the company boys don't play nice. But we're betting Luther was the control. Small, small world, ain't it."

Don hadn't given the matter much thought since he was a kid-it was simply a dab of color in the magnificent canvas of his grandfather's larger-than-life persona, a childhood fascination stowed in the trunk where such dusty recollections languish. "I never met Cooye, despite the fact you say he was close to my grandfather. Granddad didn't work for the CIA. The bra.s.s forced him out years before the company or the NSA even formed."

"He worked for Army Intelligence. Same diff."

"He was old, decrepit. Died not long ago... 1977.

"1977, there's an excellent year."

"For some, I guess."

"Well, three years, you should be done with the grieving and on with the spending of that inheritance loot. Old bird had a few bills stuffed under the mattress, I'd bet my left nut on that." Mr. Dart grinned when he said it, like he was relating a dirty joke. "This leads to the next piece of the puzzle and how your wife was Plimpton's star pupil and all those mysterious vacations they took together."

"I'll thank you to consider very carefully what you say about my wife." Don loosened his tie and turned slightly sideways. His hands flexed, loosened, flexed.

The agents exchanged a glance. "Don't get crazy, Miller," Mr. Claxton said.

"Let's see some ID," Don said, and that also hit him with a powerful sensation of deja vu. He glimpsed, a shadow in his mind's eye, some rough men laughing, then wearing devilish masks while the fires of h.e.l.l burned away the darkness. He swayed as the room dilated and contracted.

"h.e.l.l, man. We're undercover. We don't carry badges undercover."

"Hey," Mr. Dart said, "I'm curious-you ever ask yourself what the connection is between the Wolvertons, Rourkes, and Mocks? Other than big fortunes?"

"You gotta include the Redfields too," Mr. Claxton said. "Although, I don't know how deep that goes."

"Let me think...They all live in Olympia?" Don said. "The Mocks aren't moneyed."

"Oh, come on," Mr. Dart said. "Those old b.i.t.c.hes are sitting on millions. Besides, I said it isn't just the money. And Plimpton mixed with them. His line was almost as mind-numbingly boring as yours. How did he fit in? Look at these clowns-they drove hundreds of miles to this joint in Timbuktu to pay homage to a lab jockey. Not like the guy did anything s.e.xy-no n.o.bel, no famous dino discovery, no Einsteinian breakthroughs on the true nature of reality...he always just plugged along researching the mundane stuff that only excites other lab jockeys and review boards. Odd, huh?"

"Wake up, Miller," Mr. Claxton said. "We're watching out for you. Something's rotten in Olympia and these rich a.s.sholes are in cahoots."

"Cahoots?" Don blinked and tried to wrap his mind around the notion. "You mean like spies and Deep Throat? Cloak and dagger? Commie moles?"

Mr. Dart smiled. "Everybody knows who the commie moles are. You see them in small-town obituaries all the time."

"Think worse," Mr. Claxton said. "Think bigger."

"I don't know what my grandfather was into," Don said. A half lie-that Granddad and Dad had done dirty business of the U.S. of A. was implicit in their very nature, the artifacts they'd left behind. He'd heard of the secret government black lists, and not only the kind McCarthy reserved for the un-American Activities Committee. Oh, no; the FBI kept tabs on all kinds of people from environmental activists to Pinko college professors to subversive authors and reformed hippies. Thus, in a way, given his relatives' exotic background, and the company Mich.e.l.le had kept over the years, he wasn't entirely surprised to occasionally encounter federal law enforcement types sniffing around like jackals on the scent of blood. His family had surely collected enemies.

"Here's the inside scoop. Plimpton committed suicide," Mr. Dart said. "The coroner's report is a dummy."

"Baloney. Lou had a heart attack."

"Wrong, my friend," Mr. Claxton said. "Any idea why the good doctor would want to off himself?"

"I wasn't close to the man. I don't believe you, though."

"That's okay, Miller. Your wife might have an answer."

"Sure. She'd be the one to ask."

"We're not allowed to speak with her," Mr. Claxton said. "She's an untouchable."

"You can't talk to my wife?"

"Nope, indeed we cannot. It's a real pain in the a.s.s."

"She's in the parlor, last I noticed. Not a hard lady to find..." Don trailed off, belatedly noting how serious Frick and Frack were.

"Don't you get it, Miller?"

"He doesn't."

"This is what we're trying to make you understand. Mich.e.l.le Mock isn't...How shall I put it delicately?" Mr. Dart paused and stroked his chin. "She's got powerful friends. I don't often run across people blessed with the kind of friends as these. You?" He nodded to Mr. Claxton.

Mr. Claxton said, "I've shot at potentates who aren't as secure as your woman. Truth be told, this whole visit is unauthorized. Our superiors would have our guts for garters if they knew we were here gathering intelligence. Spying on Mrs. Miller. Warning you."

"That's why we decided to pay our respects and get to know you, Mr. Miller. Of all these splendid folks you're the only one who isn't protected by the forces of darkness. The only one who's in a vulnerable position."

"Protected from what?"

The agents stared without answering.

Don had had enough. "This is the G.o.dd.a.m.ned Osterman Weekend or you two are having me on. And I don't see Bob Ludlum anywhere, so... Please excuse me, I'm going to take a p.i.s.s now."

"More like Rosemary's Baby writ large. Illuminati level s.h.i.+t. The Mayans vanis.h.i.+ng en ma.s.se and leaving us a calendar that rolls over to zero in about thirty years."

"Easy does it. Man's got to p.i.s.s, man's got to p.i.s.s." Mr. Dart's lachrymose expression became pleading. "This I have to know-what went on in Mexico?"

"The records say you were playing chicken with the reaper," Mr. Claxton said. "Somebody used you for a pinata. Almost bit the dust is what I get from the file."

"Nothing happened." Don slumped with exhaustion. Mexico, 1958. He'd gotten lost in a bad neighborhood and some thugs ha.s.sled him. Alcohol was surely involved. Mich.e.l.le played deaf whenever he started reminiscing about their trip to Mexico City. The truth was, most of the details were fuzzy. "I had a nice time with my wife. Drank a wagon load of Coronas. Came home with a sombrero. It's hanging on a hook in my den."

"See, we heard that in between the Coronas and hanky-panky you lovebirds were spotted lurking in interesting places with the wrong kind of people." Mr. Claxton wasn't smiling anymore. "Are you aware that your wife went to an enclave of a certain n.a.z.i scientist who'd managed to escape the Mossad? Or that Plimpton, Josef Wolverton, the former owner of this magnificent estate, and several luminaries in the fields of eugenics and tinfoil hat science theory were invited to that party? There were also several of those scary people who play with Tesla coils and test tubes in their bas.e.m.e.nts, trying to design homemade atom smashers. Best of all, no fewer than nine all-pro pract.i.tioners of the occult made the trip. I'd give a t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e to find a video of that little hoedown."

"Yep, she's sipping champagne and schmoozing with Anton LaVey and the Goering fan club. Meanwhile, you're playing f.u.c.k-f.u.c.k with some dirty agents in Mexican intelligence." Mr. Dart shook his head. "You drop off the radar and resurface a couple of days later, covered in blood, raving mad, though nothing that a week in the loony ward and a few high-powered injections couldn't fix. Two of them Mexicans were heavy hitters, by the way. Double-breasted sonofab.i.t.c.hes I surely wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley. Contract killers, the lot of 'em. Kinder, during his troubled youth, was chief torturer for el Presidente. Ramirez specialized in political executions. He loved b.u.mping foreign nationals. The authorities spared no expense searching for the bodies. Neither hide nor hair was ever found."

"h.e.l.l of a mystery," Mr. Claxton said.

Don said, "Excuse my language, but I don't have the first d.a.m.ned clue what you're on about. This is a fantasy."

"I'm on Black Beauties and copious amounts of blow," Mr. Dart said. "We're here to save the free world. We're all that stands between your overeducated a.s.s and the Not With a Bang, But A Whimper ending of the world. We're also high on vengeance. A couple of our brother agents recently disappeared while investigating Plimpton's death. Kind of how them loggers went poof in 1923 and them Mexicans disappeared after they tried to snuff you, Don."

Claxton sneered. "Man, your wife was at an overnight c.o.c.ktail social with a member of the Third Reich and a cabal of Satanists while you're getting kidnapped and tortured and you don't bat an eyelash. You need a f.u.c.king clue all right."

"It's a conspiracy," Mr. Dart said. "I'm guessing you're exactly the rube she needs to maintain her cover as a cute little lady scientist. Who'd suspect her of anything with Gomer Pyle hanging around? She didn't fool your grandpa. Remind me to let you listen to the piece of audiotape I found in the archives. Ol' Luther was chatting with his handlers in Was.h.i.+ngton. This was '76. Not even five years ago. He wanted clearance to terminate a certain unnamed female in-law with extreme prejudice. Pretty sure he was talking about Mrs. Miller. Was.h.i.+ngton denied the request, apparently."

"Yeah, and here's the kicker. You don't know Cooye, but you wanna take a wild stab in the dark at who was really chummy with the dude? I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't count."

Don gaped at the men. His faculties were fried. He didn't trust his mouth to form words without spluttering or foaming. Everything the agents said was penetrating, digging furrows into his gray matter. He just hadn't registered the impacts yet. "I don't think so. No way." He shook his head in the stubborn and ungainly fas.h.i.+on of a man who'd drunk or smoked to the point of believing himself sober.

"Goodbye, Don." Mr. Claxton dusted his sleeve and flashed his lion smile. "We'll see you later."

"By later, he means real, real soon," Mr. Dart said.

"G.o.d, I hope not," Don muttered.

Don returned to the bar and hunted for Mich.e.l.le who was nowhere to be seen. He managed to catch the host, Connor Wolverton's attention and that worthy informed him the house was enormous, the lady could be anywhere. Had he checked their guest room-third floor, eighth door on the left near a stuffed bear head. Their luggage awaited them and a bed was laid out. If not there, Connor couldn't hazard a guess. But never fret! She was likely kibitzing in one of the antechambers with some of the girls and would doubtless turn up as bad pennies always did.

Don rubbed his numb cheek and tried to shake the uncomfortable feeling this was the latest occurrence in an ongoing pattern between him and his wife. He did stumble upstairs and poke his head into what was actually a decadent suite, and sure enough, their bags were piled near the poster bed and the sheets were laid down. No sign of Mich.e.l.le, however. So, back down to the reception and more trudging from room to room, interrupting conversations with his a.s.suredly haggard countenance and protuberant red-rimmed eyes-his drinking face.

The smoothly neutral expression of each guest he approached to inquire if that person had seen her got under his skin, but vaguely, mitigated by the booze and the dope. The only useful intelligence he gathered in fifteen minutes of wandering was from one of the servants who informed him Mr. Arden and his chauffeur had retired to their room for the evening.

He climbed a spiral staircase with a fluted marble bal.u.s.trade and crossed a landing of marble veined with gold. The pungent aroma of marijuana tickled Don's nose and ahead and to the left someone moved in the shadows and pushed open a door and disappeared.

Poster-sized photographs of Wolverton luminaries hung upon the walls like pieces at a museum and indeed, though the hall was empty but for the photos and small potted trees, he too pushed through an ornate blood-red door and entered a large, twilit gallery.

Tall gla.s.s cases were arrayed long one wall where the vaulted roof angled downward to create a seam. The gla.s.s appeared thick and tiny dim track lights, similar to the kind on airliners, glimmered dimly at the base of the daises and did more to suggest than actually illuminate. In the first two cases were models of leafless trees. A badger, stuffed and lifelike, crouched at the base of one tree while several large hook-billed birds perched among the branches of the next. He wasn't familiar with either species, but recognized them to be extinct. They reeked of the Stone Age, if not an epoch of deeper, darker antiquity.

The contents of the next cage stopped him cold. Suspended from a delicate and nigh-invisible frame of wires draped the skin of a humanoid figure, emptied and stretched on a rack as if it had been ripped whole from the muscle and bone of its previous owner. Eye sockets, nostrils, mouth, sagged agape; coa.r.s.e, wiry hair spread thick across the loose curve of chest and belly. Stacked to one side, an array of spears with rudely chipped flint broad-heads, arranged and labeled.

A placard indicated the fellow was unearthed from a cave in upstate New York in 1949. Impossible, and thus this was a hoax, a PT Barnum special calculated to impress the rubes. That fit-celebrity mediums, seances, paying guests jaded out of their minds; similar shenanigans went back to the Edwardian Era, maybe farther. Connor Wolverton possibly wasn't as wealthy as his digs might represent. He wouldn't be the first aristocrat to find himself with a castle and no gold to pay the utilities. Such men would go to extravagant lengths and perpetrate intricate charades to pull in the dough while maintaining the illusion of royalty at leisure.

Nonetheless he lingered, enraptured by the exhibit. The skin, desiccated, yet oddly thick and weighty in appearance, gave him the creeps despite his confidence it was a fraud. Mich.e.l.le mentioned the mansion's museum earlier. Had she seen this before? He very much desired to know what she thought, if so.

The whiff of gra.s.s grew stronger and Don spied Bronson Ford seated cross-legged upon the floor in the shadows of a heavy oak table. A cloud of smoke swirled around his head and rendered him more inscrutable than ever.

"Hi, Bronson. Fancy b.u.mping into you here."

Bronson Ford laughed. He tossed the stub of his joint into a ceramic pot that allegedly originated in Tibet and hopped to his feet and approached Don with a queer, hitching stride that was nonetheless rapid. He tapped the gla.s.s of the exhibit. "It is real." His voice was strange; pitched like an old man's and rusty from disuse. "Those men, those government men... You shouldn't talk to people like them." He grinned at Don and his teeth were crumbling and black. "My kin will get them soon. Never fear."

Don said, "You got any more gra.s.s?" After Bronson Ford produced another joint and lighted it and they'd each toked heavily, Don wiped his eyes, fascinated at the odd blurriness of the lighting and the background textures while the boy, or whatever he was, became sharper and more in-focus.

An ineffable something about the boy disturbed him on a more immediate and much deeper level. Don couldn't recall ever attributing the word evil to a casual acquaintance, but that appellation fit. It was evil that animated Bronson Ford's smirk, the light glittering in his eyes, the hateful merriment of his tone. As this sank in, Don noted how lonely and isolated the gallery was; the two of them might as well have hunkered on tree stumps around a fire in the wilderness.

Bronson Ford regarded the caveman exhibit and his expression shone with the light of unholy joy. "They took his skin and wore it for a while. It's not real skin. More of a hide. Yes. They made a suit from his hide the way my own people skinned lions once upon a time. The way my people wore lion hides as capes, took the claws and fangs for jewelry. Yes, yes."

"They."

"Them, they. The Children of Old Leech."

"The children of what? What tribe were they?" At that moment, trying to regain mental equilibrium and regain some control of the conversation, he felt akin to a swimmer who finally glances back toward a distant sh.o.r.e and realizes the tide has carried him into cold, bottomless water. It's the dope, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with your mind. You're going to wake up in the morning and discover this whole evening was a trip on the magic bus.

"Don't you know? Isn't it why you came? This is for the special people."

"No, kid, I really don't know. Who are these children?"

"Friends of Mum and Dad." Bronson Ford crow-hopped to the next case and pressed a b.u.t.ton. The curtain parted and a dim track light flickered on. "A sea cave in the Shetlands, spring of 1969."

"Bronson, you're freaking me out, man," Don said, and meant it. The object in the case might've been a behemoth of a quadruped in its life; a bear, a small elephant, a giraffe. He couldn't get an intellectual fix because his perception of the object s.h.i.+fted with quicksilver fluidity-ten or eleven feet on the vertical axis, three feet wide, multi-limbed, elongated neck, the powerful torso of a large land animal, a cranium of prodigious girth. Another skin, or in this case a pelt, also stretched on wires. Its fur was black against bone-white flesh. A bear, miraculously skinned as the Cro-Magnon had been skinned, nothing particularly special about taxidermy or the furrier trades...He sweated and the animal skin gathered height, loomed over him. "Why does the skull..." He couldn't, wouldn't take it a syllable farther.

"It doesn't come from the Shetlands. I'm not from Ethiopa." Bronson Ford wore a dreamy, maniacal expression; the smile of an elderly s.a.d.i.s.t trapped in a child's body. "The suit just got left there in that wet old cave when They returned to the dark."

"Another b.l.o.o.d.y fake," Don said. His stomach heaved and he covered his mouth. His boozing on the Yukon, all the partying he'd done during the drive and here at the mansion was coming home to roost. His gorge settled and he repeated, "b.l.o.o.d.y fake," in case it might make him feel better. "Where are you from, really?"

"Russia. The mountain on the plain. Coldest f.u.c.king place you've ever seen."

"No s.h.i.+t?"

Bronson Ford rolled up his sleeve, revealing a cla.s.sy stainless steel wrist.w.a.tch. Also, a livid white scar that arrowed from his wrist along the ulna toward his elbow; a raised zipper seam. "Oops, it's past my bedtime." The boy saluted with three fingers and sidled away, slipping through the blood-red door and leaving Don alone with the horrors of the gallery.

Not horrors, d.a.m.n it. Sideshow fakes. He only lasted a few seconds before the nausea threatened, and he fled. Frick and Frack were waiting on the other side of the door. He caught them with their backs turned, one peering north, the other south. A sack dangled from Mr. Dart's fist. Mr. Frack brandished a syringe.

Don pin-wheeled his arms for balance in silent terror and at the last moment managed to stop short, recover and pull the door shut again, and as he did, he glimpsed Connor Wolverton ascending the stairs, smoking a pipe and waving at the agents. Don locked the door and his stomach finally won the battle and he vomited onto the carpet. Heart convulsing, he sucked air and listened for the thud of fists on paneling that would indicate his hunters were alert to his presence; but nothing of the sort occurred. The gallery was a velvety tomb.

He tried to regain his composure with some sensible and rational self pep talk. The very notion that the two men were plotting to kidnap him was preposterous; surely his perceptions were askew. It beggared belief that such an event could even conceivably involve a n.o.body such as himself, and in the middle of a mansion crawling with guests. Right, right-bag and a needle and two creepy strangers who seemed to get their jollies menacing you earlier. Better find a service door, my friend.