7

9:00 P.M.

AT DUSK, when the thunderstorm temporarily abated for the fourth time that day, a streamlined executive helicopter, painted bright yellow and black like a hornet, already gleaming with green and red running lights, fluttered into the east end of the Black River valley. It was flying low, no higher than sixty feet above the ground. It followed Main Street toward the town square, chopping up the humid air. A flat echo of the stuttering blades rebounded from the wet pavement below.

In the bell tower of the all-denominational church, also sixty feet above the ground-—but safely hidden in the deep shadows that were cast by the overhanging belfry roof—Rya, Jenny, Paul, and Sam watched the aircraft as it approached. In the penumbral, purple-gray twilight the helicopter seemed dangerously close to them; but no one in it was looking their way. However, the waning daylight was still bright enough to allow them to see into the flight deck and into the cozy passenger cabin behind it.

“Two men besides the pilot,” Sam said.

At the square the helicopter hovered for a moment, then swept across the municipal building and settled into the parking lot ten yards from the spare police car.

As the evening quietude returned in the aircraft’s wake, jenny said, “Do you think those men are connected with Salsbury?”

“No doubt about it,” Sam said.

“Government?”

Paul said, “No.”

“I agree,” Sam said almost happily. “Even the President’s chopper is military-style on the outside—although probably not on the inside. The government doesn’t use sleek little executive machines like that yellow and black job.”

“Which doesn’t rule out the government’s having a part in this,” Paul said.

“Oh, certainly not. It doesn’t rule out anything,” Sam said. “But it’s a good sign.”

“What now?” Rya asked.

“Now we watch and wait,” Paul said, his eyes fixed on the white-brick municipal building. “Just watch and wait.”

The damp air still held an unpleasant tang of the helicopter’s exhaust fumes.

Up in the mountains, thunder rumbled menacingly. Lightning arced between two of the higher peaks as if they were terminals in Frankenstein’s laboratory.

To Paul time seemed almost at a standstill. Each minute ticked on and on and on.

Each second was like a tiny bubble of air rising slowly through the bottle of glucose on the intravenous-feeding rack that he had watched for hour after leaden hour at Annie’s hospital bedside.

Finally, at 9:20 two cars came down Main Street from the municipal building: the second police cruiser and a one-year-old Ford LTD. The four headlamps sliced open the crescent darkness. Half a block beyond the church, they parked at the curb in front of the general store.

Bob Thorp and two men with handguns climbed out of the squad car. For a moment they stood in the splash of amber white light from the LTD; then they went up the porch steps and disappeared beneath the veranda roof.

Three men got out of the second car. They left the engine running and the doors open. They didn’t follow Thorp; they remained at the LTD.

Because they were standing behind the headlights, they were for the most part in darkness. Paul couldn’t tell if they were armed or not. But he knew for certain who they were: Salsbury and the two passengers from the helicopter.

“Do you want to go down there and take them now?” Paul asked Sam. “While they have their backs to us?”

“Too risky. We don’t know if they’ve got guns. They might hear us coming. And even if we did catch them by surprise, one of them would get away, sure as hell.

Let’s wait a bit.”

At 9:35 one of Bob Thorp’s “deputies” came down the porch steps and joined the three men at the second car. They talked, possibly argued, for a few seconds.

The deputy remained at the LTD while Salsbury and his associates mounted the steps to the general store.

9:50 P.M.

 

Turning away from the bookshelves in Sam Edison’s study, Dawson said, “All right then. Now we understand how they might have pieced it together. Ogden, do they know the code phrases?”

Shocked by the question, Salsbury said, “Of course not! How in the hell could they know?”

“The little girl might have heard you use them with Thorp or with her brother.”

“No,” he said. “Impossible. She didn’t Step into that doorway until long after I gave up trying to get control of her brother—and long, long after I’d already assumed control of Thorp.”

“Did you try to use the phrase on her?”

Did I? Salsbury wondered. I remember seeing her there, taking a step toward her, being unable to catch her. But did I use the code phrase?

He rejected that notion because if he accepted it he would have to accept defeat, complete destruction. “No,” he told Dawson. “I didn’t have time to use the phrase. I saw her. She turned and ran. I ran after her, but she was too fast.”

“You’re absolutely certain?”

“Absolutely.”

Regarding Salsbury with unvarnished disgust, the general said, “You should have foreseen this development with Edison. You should have known about this library, this hobby of his.”

“How in the hell could I foresee any of it?” Salsbury asked. His face was flushed. His myopic eyes seemed to bulge even more than usual behind his thick glasses.

“If you had done your duty—”

“Duty,” Salsbury said scornfully. Half of his anger was generated by his fear; but it was important that neither Dawson nor Klinger see that. “This isn’t the stinking military, Ernst. This isn’t the army. I’m not one of your oh-so-humble enlisted men.”

Klinger turned away from him, went to the window, and said, “Maybe we’d all be better off if you were.”

Willing the general to look at him, aware that he was at a disadvantage so long as Klinger felt safe enough to turn his back, Salsbury said, “Christ! No matter how careful I’d been—”

“That’s enough,” Dawson said. He spoke softly but with such command that Salsbury stopped talking and the general looked away from the window. “We haven’t time for arguments and accusations. We’ve got to find those four people.”

“They can’t have gotten out of town through the east end of the valley,”

Salsbury said. “I know I’ve got that sealed tight.”

“You thought you had this house sealed up tight too,” Klinger said. “But they slipped past you.”

“Let’s not judge too harshly, Ernst,” Dawson said. He smiled in a fatherly, Christian fashion and nodded at Salsbury. But there was only hatred and loathing in his black eyes. “I agree with Ogden. His precautions at the east end are certainly adequate. Although we might consider tripling the number of men along the river and in the woods now that night has fallen. And I believe Ogden’s also covered the logging roads well enough.”

“Then there are two possibilities,” Klinger said, deciding to play the military strategist. “One—they might still be in town, hiding somewhere, waiting for a chance to get past the roadblock or the men guarding the river. Or two—maybe they’re going to walk out through the mountains. We know from Thorp that the Annendales are experienced campers and hikers.”

Bob Thorp was standing by the door, as if he were an honor guard. He said, “That’s true.”

“I don’t see it,” Salsbury said. “I mean, they have an eleven-year-old girl with them. She’ll slow them down. They’ll need days to reach help that way.”

“That little girl has spent a big part of the last seven summers in these forests,” the general said. “She might not be as much of a drag on them as you think. Besides, if we don’t locate them, they’ll do the same damage whether they reach help tonight or not until the middle of next week.”

Dawson thought about that. Then: “If they’re trying to walk out through the mountains, sixty miles roundabout to Bexford, how far do you think they’ve gotten by now?”

“Three, maybe three and a half miles,” Klinger said.

“No farther than that?”

“I doubt it,” Klinger said. “They’d have to be damned careful leaving town if they didn’t want to be seen. They’d move slowly, a few yards at a time for the first mile. In the forest they’d need a while to really hit their stride. And even if the little girl is at home in the woods, she’d slow them down a bit.”

“Three and a half miles,” Dawson said thoughtfully. “Wouldn’t that put them somewhere between the Big Union mill and the planned forests?”

“That’s about right.”

Dawson closed his eyes and seemed to mutter a few words of silent prayer; his lips moved slightly. Then his eyes snapped open, as if sprung by a holy revelation, and he said, “The first thing we’ll do is organize a search in the mountains.”

“That’s absurd,” Salsbury said, although he was aware that Dawson probably thought of his plan as a divine inspiration, the very handiwork of God. “It would be like—well, like hunting for a needle in a haystack.”

His voice as cold as the dead boy in the next room, Dawson said, “We have nearly two hundred men at the logging camp, all of them familiar with these mountains.

We’ll mobilize them. Arm them with axes and rifles and shotguns. Give them flashlights and Coleman lanterns. We’ll put them in trucks and jeeps and send them a mile or so beyond the logging camp. They can form a search line and walk back. Forty feet between the men. That way, the line will be a mile and a half from one end to the other—yet each man will have only a small area of ground to cover. The Edisons and the Annendales won’t be able to get by them.”

“It’ll work,” Klinger said admiringly.

“But what if they aren’t up there in the mountains?” Salsbury said. “What if they’re right here in town?”

“Then we’ve nothing to worry about,” Dawson said. “They can’t get to you because you’re surrounded by Bob Thorp and his deputies. They can’t get out of town because every exit is blocked. All they can do is wait.” He smiled wolfishly.

“If we don’t find them in the mountains by three or four o’clock in the morning, we’ll begin a house-to-house search here in town. One way or another, I want this whole affair wrapped up by noon tomorrow.”

“That’s asking a lot,” the general said.

“I don’t care,” Dawson said. “It isn’t asking too much. I want the four of them dead by noon. I want to restructure the memories of everyone in this town to cover our trail completely. By

noon.”

“Dead?” Salsbury said, confused. He pushed his glasses up on his nose. “But I need to study the Edisons. You can kill the Annendales if you want. But I’ve got to know why the Edisons weren’t affected. I’ve got—”

“Forget that,” Dawson said brusquely. “If we attempted to capture them and take them back to the laboratory at Greenwich, there’s a good chance they’d escape along the way. We Can’t risk that. They know too much. Much too much.”

“But we’ll have so damned many corpses!” Salsbury said. “For God’s sake, there’s already the boy. And Buddy Pellineri. Four more. . - And If they fight back, we may have as many as a dozen to bury. How are we going to account for so many?”

Obviously pleased with himself, Dawson said, “We’ll put the lot of them in the Union Theater. Then we’ll stage a tragic fire. We’ve got Dr. Troutman to issue death certificates. And we can use the keylock program to keep the relatives from requesting autopsies.”

“Excellent,” Klinger said, grinning, lightly clapping his hands. Sycophant to the court of King Leonard the First, Salsbury thought sourly.

“Really excellent, Leonard,” Klinger said.

“Thank you, Ernst.”

“Christ on a crutch,” Salsbury said weakly.

Dawson gave him a nasty look. He was displeased with such strong profanity. “For every sin that we commit, the Lord will have His awful retribution one day.

There’s no escaping that.”

Salsbury said nothing.

“There is a hell.”

Looking at Klinger, finding no support nor even a wink of sympathy, Salsbury managed to keep quiet. There was something in Dawson’s voice—like a well-honed knife hidden in the soft folds of a priest’s gown—something hard and sharp that frightened him.

Dawson glanced at his watch and said, “Time to be moving, gentlemen. Let’s get this over with.”

10:12 P.M

 

The helicopter rose from the parking lot behind the municipal building. It swung gracefully over the town square where several people stood watching it, and then it clattered westward toward the mountain, into the darkness.

In a moment it was gone.

Sam turned away from the street and slumped with his back to the belfry wall.

“On their way to the mill?”

“Looks like it,” Paul said. “But why?”

“Good question. I would have asked the same thing myself if you hadn’t.”

“Another thing,” Paul said. “What if they’ve figured out how we escaped? What if they realize we know the code phrase?”

“That’s not very likely.”

“But if it’s the case?”

“I wish I knew,” Sam said worriedly. He sighed. “But remember that even under the worst circumstances, it’s just us against them. If they realize how much we know, we lose the advantage of surprise. But they’ve lost the advantage of an army of programmed bodyguards. So it balances out.”

Jenny said, “Do you think both of Salsbury’s friends are aboard the helicopter?”

Sam held his revolver before him. He was unable to see more than the outline of it in the darkness. Nevertheless, studying it with dread fascination, he said, “Well now, that’s another thing I sure wish I knew.”

Paul’s hands were shaking. His own Smith & Wesson felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds. He said, “I guess we go after Salsbury now.”

“It’s past time we did.”

Jenny touched her father’s hand, the one that held the gun. “But what if one of those men did stay with Salsbury?”

“Then it’s two against two,” Sam said. “And we sure as hell can handle that.”

“If I went along,” she said, “it would be three against two, and that would have to improve the odds.”

“Rya needs you,” Sam said. He hugged her, kissed her on the cheek. “We’ll be okay, Jen. I know we will. You just watch after Rya while we’re gone.”

And if you don’t come back?”

We will.

“If you don’t?” she insisted.

“Then—you’re on your own,” Sam said, his voice almost breaking. If there were tears in the corners of his eyes, the darkness hid them. “There’s nothing more I can do for you.”

“Look,” Paul said, “even if Salsbury does know how much we’ve learned, he doesn’t know where we are. But we know exactly where he is. So we still have some advantage.”

Rya clung to Paul. She didn’t want to let him go. She spoke in a quiet but fierce voice, and she virtually demanded that he not leave her in the tower.

He stroked her dark hair, held her tight, spoke softly to her, calmed and reassured her as best he could.

And at 10:20 he followed Sam down the tower stairs.