Chapter 6. Midnight Swim in the Ice Water of Lake Superior
`There's a dead man lying on the ground right by our place!' exclaimed Amanda.
`Who is he?' asked her mother while taking the gun and her son from Amanda.
`Some gangster trying to extort money out of Wolfgang, I suppose. Maybe he was shot accidentally by one of his friends,' said Amanda
`Where's your father?' her mom asked next.
`He left to check on Maria. Wolfgang asked him to go to make sure that she was all right. Wolfgang said he would stay with me and Al. He went to look around, after the gunshot. He came back. He said he didn't find anything. Then he fell asleep. Then he woke up. Then he left but he didn't come back! I couldn't sleep waiting for him to come back. I checked the ground further away from the house. That's when I found the dead man. It was just Al and me all alone. I was real scared. So I wrote Wolfgang a note telling him about the dead man, and saying I was taking Al and leaving to find my mom.'
`Is that the dead man's gun?' asked Sovant.
`Yeah' said Amanda. `Maybe the dead guy is the guy that shot you two weeks ago. See, I thought some of his friends might also come to the cottage. I got Al and myself out of there fast. I wanted some protection but I couldn't carry both Al and our shotgun, so I took the dead man's gun.'
`We got a corpse, probably a gangster, with no gun, lying outside of your cottage,' said Sovant, thinking out-loud. `And you took his gun. This might get out-of-hand.'
`Should we throw the gun into the lake?' asked Amanda.
`We can always throw it in, but we can't always get it out if we need it for some reason,' said Sovant. He was drunk but this was simple stuff to an intoxicated ex-spy.
`You say Wolfgang was with you when you heard the gunshot?' asked Pamela.
`Yeah, he was taking a nap on our sofa,' said Amanda.
`Were you sleeping or half-asleep?' asked Pamela. `Could Wolfgang have shot him and then returned to the sofa without you seeing him?'
`I heard the shot. I mean I woke up when I heard it. Then I went to see if Al was ok. Both he and Wolfgang were still sleeping! That tells you how tired they were.'
`Perhaps it was Johann or Gaston who shot him,' said Sovant, alluding to another body guard who was usually stationed inside the Castle. `Perhaps he couldn't stop at the cottage because he was in pursuit of someone.'
Sovant and Pamela then went into some detail explaining to Amanda that they had two major concerns: 1) they didn't want the news to get out that Al and Amanda's parents were body guards, because they didn't want the news to get out that Amanda and Al were the children of these body guards, as this would make them targets for mob revenge, because the mob might assume that one of Von Hellemann's body guards killed their friend. And 2) they told Amanda that she had to keep secret the fact that she was the one who took the dead man's gun, as the cops would certainly question her. If she told the cops the truth, and if gangsters learned that she took the gun, then nothing but trouble could come from that.
A few minutes after they finished explaining these matters to Amanda they heard the sound of someone crashing through the woods, though he was far away from them. After a few more minutes elapsed, they heard a second person moving in the woods. It was too dark to see anything but the sound of people crashing through the undergrowth was unmistakable.
`Drink up,' said Sovant, handing a bottle of bourbon to Pamela.
`Why?'
Sovant explained why they would have to swim to get out of the trap they were in. It was too dangerous where they were. To move down the path was to risk being killed by a sniper. Yet one had to stay on the path because it was impossible to move through the woods and not make noise when one wasn't on a path. If they stayed where they were, a gangster might kill one of the kids with either bullets or even a grenade. These words didn't scare Amanda, but Sovant scared her when he explained again how they had to escape from where they were. Sovant tried to be patient in going over his drunken logic. If they tried to hike to Wolf's Lair one or more of them might be shot. The path was too dangerous. It was too easy for a sniper to kill them if they took the path. And it was impossible to move silently through the undergrowth. They could not escape by land. And there was no cover nearby where they could hide. They could hide behind a fisherman's shack but that would risk having someone inside killed with a stray bullet. Haakon was insisting that their best chance was to swim a few hundred yards to the lighthouse at the end of the pier. The water was ice cold so they had to drink whiskey to be able to endure the cold. Haakon was insisting there was no real danger involved, merely a little discomfort.
Pamela hated the idea but Sovant insisted it was better than the alternatives. He was saying they would get insulation from the ice water from their woolen sweaters and blankets even when these were drenched. They would be well bundled up but still the water would be shockingly cold when it first hit their flesh. They could find some driftwood for added buoyancy. They had the whiskey to deaden the pain of the ice water against their skin. Without the alcohol it would be a brutally uncomfortable swim to the lighthouse, but not bad at all when drunk. Sovant was now talking about his 24-foot sailboat moored in the harbor and he was explaining that he had a stove on the boat which they could use to warm themselves up.
Amanda took a slim purse out of her back pocket and handed it to Haakon. He wrapped the purse and their weapons in plastic bags and stuck these inside his rucksack. They took up their blankets and then descended to the shore. There was no moonlight, only starlight and a little city glow, and therefore the surface of the lake was quite black and opaque - indeed one could hardly see anything 50 feet away from one. With a dark and drenched blanket tossed over their heads they would be invisible to anyone looking out over the lake from the shore.
Once on the beach Sovant busied himself fetching a large piece of driftwood. Amanda and Pamela set to work wrapping Al in plastic and then in wool blankets. Once Haakon had the driftwood ready in the shallows, and once they took a few more gulps of bourbon before wading into the water, they were ready to shove off. By the time they had waded out to the depth of Amanda's neck, she was crying with pain from the ice water. Pamela let her take as many gulps of whiskey as she needed, and then they started swimming in earnest away from shore.
They kicked and pulled as silently as they could, while clinging to the driftwood. Sovant had to do most of the work in dragging them along, as Pamela could only cling to the driftwood and hold Al, and Amanda could only cling to the driftwood and hold a whiskey bottle while she kicked feebly.
Pamela had to put her hand over Al's mouth whenever he started to cry. Al cried, not because he was cold, but because he was burning up, being wrapped up in so many layers of plastic and wool. Only when the blankets in which Al was wrapped had been drenched for long minutes in ice water did Al become cool enough to be comfortable. When they were half way to the lighthouse they had to stop and rest and finish off a bottle of bourbon. The water became so painful they had to open a second bottle before they reached their destination. They were all shivering uncontrollably, even Al, when they finally reached Sovant's sailboat.
Haakon climbed over its gunwales of his sailboat and then pulled the others aboard. It was cramped as it was only a 24-footer, but it had a paraffin stove in the cabin right where Sovant had last left it. Soon enough they were huddled round the flame trying to cure their uncontrollable shivering. Amanda retrieved her purse from Haakon's rucksack. While Haakon and Pamela were making sure Al was getting warmed up, Haakon suddenly noticed that Amanda was no longer with them. He climbed out of the cabin to search for her; he arrived on deck in time to see Amanda, reeling from all the bourbon, staggering over the pier and heading into town.
`Damn!' swore Sovant under his breath.
Sovant had no doubt that she was headed for the beer-hall because she would want to warn her father that another assassin, or the same assas
sin who shot him, was on the loose again. She had to be terrified by all the recent shootings, and no doubt she feared her father might be the next victim.
Amanda was staggering and lurching so precariously that Haakon feared she would fall and crack her skull on the concrete pier. He jumped back into the cabin and told Pamela what Amanda was doing. Then he sprinted after her. In jumping from his boat to the peer - the boat was in a little slip - he nearly plunged himself into the lake because of his own inebriated state. Then he tripped and fell and slammed himself on the concrete pier. By the time he picked himself up, now groggier than ever, as he had hit his head on the concrete, he staggered down the pier, and was soon stumbling from shadow to shadow along the sidewalk, trying to stay out of the sight of any gangsters. It occurred to him that Amanda was as stealthy he was, because he had lost sight her. He was somewhat thankful for this, or at least thankful that she was being stealthy. He could see all the way to Wolf's Lair, but she wasn't on that street. Sovant feared the twelve-year-old might have plunged into the lake unseen when he jumped back into his boat's cabin to tell Pamela that Amanda was staggering down the pier and that he was going after her. Sovant went back to the pier to see if she had fallen in. He feared she hit her head on the concrete as he had, and then rolled into the water, and was now drowning. Sovant cast his gaze over the water, searching carefully for her, but he couldn't find any trace of her. Sovant walked back to the main street. Not seeing her, he walked to several other streets. Still not finding her, he walked back to the main street, and, there, at last, he saw her leaving a 24-hour drug store, two blocks away from him. Sovant noticed that she was walking with more control than she had on the pier. She was not staggering and stumbling quite so much as before. Sovant was about twenty seconds behind her when he followed her into Wolf's Lair.
Half the people in the establishment must have witnessed Amanda as the twelve-year-old staggered through the corridors of the beer-hall, stumbling in her drunken condition, with her bedraggled blonde locks and wet clothes, looking terribly lost herself while searching for her lost father, who she still feared was in imminent danger of being murdered. But Sergio was still alive when he finally met up with his intoxicated daughter.
Scores of scandalized beer-hall patrons hooted in sincere indignation or in sarcastic fun at Amanda's inebriated state, not failing to damn the laissez faire attitude of her permissive parents with crude insults and no end of self-righteousness commentary. In the meantime, Maria and Haakon had joined Amanda and Sergio. The two sober adults looked upon the drenched and drunken adult as they would have looked upon any lunatic. It was too riotous to hear any of his explanations inside the beer-hall, and therefore the adults ushered Amanda up the stairs and out of the huge portals while the beer-hall patrons jeered contemptuously at them. The throngs were however compassionate enough to also shout some words of commiseration and encouragement to the poor little girl who was saddled with such a low-life for a mother, as they assumed Maria was her mother. They were saying all sorts of nasty things about her. As for Amanda, the comments weren't all jeeringly negative.
`Keep your head up, dear!'
`I wonder if she's a sweet child when she's sober. She looks darling!'
`Hey you little alcoholic kid - when you have brats of your own someday don't be a worthless drunk like yer old lady. And learn what a towel can do for you too, you hear me little drunken kid?'