“Why are you going on like this?” a clearly frustrated Henry Britland asked, his voice pitched at a dangerous level. “None of this matters. We know who our man is.”
“But sir,” White interrupted, “we have to — ”
“You have to help me find my wife. Once you do that you can analyze the situation all you want to. Do I make myself clear? I don’t want a psychological profile; I want a plan of action.” He paused, his face now only inches from the startled CIA man’s. “Now, have you two agreed on a common strategy?”
The analyst who had been silent during White’s explanation responded. “With all sympathy for the plight of Mrs. Britland and for your frustration, I’m afraid that all we can do is give you our best estimate of what we think Klint might be thinking and what he might respond to.” He paused, nodding toward White. “My colleague and I both feel that we should announce to the media that we know that the man we are looking for is Wexler Klint, and make part of that announcement the government’s promise that he will be given safe and careful treatment when he surrenders, and, of course, safely returns your wife.”
“You both agree on this?” Henry demanded.
White spoke up again. “Except I feel that there is obviously a strong family feeling between the Klint brothers, and that an added inducement to surrender peacefully might lie in our promise that the two brothers be given visitation fights to each other’s prisons.”
The suggestion hung in midair as Henry continued to stare at the man.
With a look that expressed both disgust and incredulity, he left the two men and crossed the room to where his successor was talking with several others. “Des, we’ve got to get going. I have a terrible sense that we don’t have a lot of time. We haven’t heard from this creep in hours. There is no telling where Sunday could be by now.” He turned to Marvin Klein. “Marv, isn’t there any word yet on where Klint may have been living?”
“Not yet, sir. Our people are grilling Sneakers in the state prison in Trenton, but he keeps insisting that he doesn’t know where his brother is. Says that he hasn’t seen or heard from him since that last day in court. Unfortunately, the men I spoke to there think that he may be telling the truth.”
Jack Collins spoke up. “What we do know is that the family no longer lives in Hoboken, where they were when Sneakers was convicted. We found that place. It would appear that gentrification caught up with them and they were forced out. Sneakers was able to tell us that his mother had an ailing sister in the D.C. area who had her own house, and he suspects his mother may have moved there. As for his brother, he said that he always had grandiose schemes about ‘getting even’ with the government for all sorts of wrongs he felt he had suffered, and of doing something that would get him into the history books. He said that their mother had always been a little nuts, and he thinks his brother may be that way too.” Collins shook his head. “ Anyway, we are checking out the D.C. lead, looking for some record of the sister and where she might live.”
From across the room there came a shout of exultation. “Sir, we’ve located the sister’s house. She apparently died recently, but we think the Klint brothers’ mother is there, and very probably Wexler Klint as well.”
“Let’s go!” Henry shouted. “I bet that’s where we’ll find Sunday.”
Twenty minutes later, a dejected Henry Britland stood in the basement of a rundown Georgetown house. In his hand he held Sunday’s jacket. The chair in which she had been photographed had the ends of ropes still tied to the rungs and back. He watched as the agent who had been photographing the area suddenly stopped and squatted down beside the chair.
“What is it?” Henry demanded.
The agent hesitated. “I’m afraid it’s blood, sir.”
Heartsick, Henry visualized what had happened. Carelessly cutting the ropes that held Sunday to the chair, her kidnapper had sliced her leg. His body shaking with rage, the former president turned away. I will kill him, Henry silently vowed. I will find him, and I will kill him.
Jack Collins examined the smear of blood. “Sir, I wouldn’t worry about this too much; given how little actual blood there is, I would suspect that the cut is superficial. It almost looks as though she may have intentionally smeared the blood here.” He straightened up. “Sir, it’s nine o’clock. What have you decided to do?”
Henry clenched and unclenched his hands on the tweed jacket that still held the faint hint of one of Sunday’s favorite scents. “I want to talk to the mother.”
“You won’t get much out of her, sir. She’s frightened and confused. All she seemed to be able to tell us is that her son brought a lady home, but that he wouldn’t let her go down to the basement to meet her.”
Henry found the elderly woman sitting on a dilapidated couch in the small living room of the narrow row house. Her face had a faraway, vaguely sad look to it, and she sat rocking as she hummed softly to herself.
He sat beside her and took her hand. Rich or poor, he thought, it’s all the same when your mind is going. His own grandmother had suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.
Remembering how he had spoken to his grandmother, he took Mrs. Klint’s frail hand in his. “That’s a nice song you’re humming,” he said. “ ‘Three Blind Mice,’ isn’t it? Why are you singing that?”
She looked at him. “Everybody’s angry at me,” she said.
“No one’s angry at you,” Henry said, his voice comforting. He felt the tension in her hand begin to ease.
“I spoiled the milk. My son told me to sing along with him. But then he got angry with me. I spoiled the milk.”
“That’s not such a bad thing. He shouldn’t have gotten mad,” Henry told her. “Where is your son now?”
“He said he was taking his lady friend swimming.”
Henry felt his throat tighten with sudden fear. The envelope with Sunday’s hair soaked in seawater — of course, he should have made the connection. He managed to ask, “When did he take her swimming?”
“They’re going swimming when the plane takes off. I wanted to go too, but he said it was too far. Is New Jersey far away? I’m from there, you know.”
“New Jersey,” Henry said. “Do you know where?”
“I know where. But it’s too far.” She paused and looked at her hands. “Is Long Branch too far? I liked it there. I liked my house there better than the one we had in Hoboken. It was close to the ocean. After the plane goes away, they’re going swimming.” She closed her eyes and began to hum again.
Patting the woman’s hand, Henry stood up. “Be gentle with her,” he directed the agent at the doorway. “And for God’s sake, sit next to her, keep talking to her, and listen to her.”
* * *
At ten minutes before ten o’clock, from a secure distance, television cameras recorded the procession of dozens of Secret Service agents escorting the former president of the United States, Henry Parker Britland, and terrorist Claudus Jovunet across the tarmac to the waiting SST.
When they reached the steps, the agents stood back and watched as Britland and Jovunet ascended the steps alone and then closed the plane’s door behind them.
“Jovunet has informed the government that he will not disclose his destination until he has been served brunch,” Dan Rather informed television viewers. “The menu he has demanded includes oysters on the half shell, a caviar omelet, chateaubriand with asparagus, and a selection of pastries, accompanied by suitable vintage wines, all to be followed by fine port. The chef from Le Lion d’Or boarded the plane earlier to make preparations and will, of course, deplane when service is complete. The former president will then file his flight plan and they will be off.
“We have been told of no further word from the captors holding Mr. Britland’s wife, Congresswoman Sandra O’Brien Britland, but our sources indicate that they expect her to be released only when the plane has landed at its yet-to-be-announced destination.
“And so,” Rather went on, “the drama continues to unfold. Through the courtesy
of a viewer, we have been fortunate to receive home-movie footage of Congresswoman Britland as she appeared in her fourth-grade dance recital. We are pleased to share that with you now.”
Oh my God, Sunday thought as she viewed herself prancing about on a stage, wearing a green tutu and carrying a sparkling wand. They’ve got to be kidding.
Her head had still been covered when Klint brought her here, but they appeared to be in yet another cellar, although, if possible, this one seemed even more seedy. Klint had brought his television set with him and had plugged it into the same outlet the dim bulb was hanging from.
The metal chair she was tied to had sharp, rusty edges, but she was beyond caring. The only thing that mattered was that Henry had picked up her message. She was positive that had not been Henry in coveralls and flight jacket. It probably was the agent who sometimes used to stand in for him when they wanted people to think they had seen the president board a helicopter headed to Camp David.
She also recognized the talk about brunch as being a stall tactic. But did Wexler Klint suspect anything? Cautiously she glanced to the side of the room where he sat sprawled on a moldy mattress, the monk’s robe beside him. He had changed into a wet suit, and kept impatiently plucking at the tight-fitting material.
Sunday fought back the sense of rising panic. If Henry followed my clues and went to my old files, Sneakers’s name would have popped up, she thought as she struggled to reassure herself. I’m certain he’s looking for me right now. Otherwise he would be on that plane.
Some fifty miles away, Henry’s private helicopter was circling over Long Branch, New Jersey. Dozens of agents were swarming over every inch of oceanfront property. Others were ringing doorbells and searching every house that appeared to be empty.
“Sir, if she’s here, we’ll find her,” Marvin Klein said for the fifth time in less than half an hour.
“But if there was any semblance of reality in what that poor old woman said, then why can’t we find any record of them living here? There’s no record of a deed registered to Klint in or even near Long Branch,” Henry said, the frustration showing in his voice. “The whole thing could have been just a figment of her imagination.”
Time is running out. Time is running out, he said over and over in his mind. There isn’t a shred of evidence to indicate that this is anything other than a wild-goose chase. Klint could have her on a beach as far away as North Carolina by now. They might not have even owned a house here; they might have just rented. Or they might have used a different name. We just don’t have time to follow up on all the possibilities.
“Get me Trenton State Prison on the phone,” he said to Klein. “I want to speak to Sneakers again.”
As time passed with absolutely nothing happening, newscasters were reduced to repeating the known bits of the crisis over and over again. The camera remained focused on the SST sitting on the distant runway.
“Now that it’s almost noon, the brunch must be nearly over,” Tom Brokaw informed his viewers. “We should see the chef emerging from the plane any time now.” What he didn’t say was that he, along with many other experienced newsmen, had begun to suspect that this was merely a delaying action.
“If that plane doesn’t take off by 12:30, you won’t be around to wave bye-bye to your husband,” Wexler Klint said angrily. “I’m tired of this. I’m starting to think that they’re playing with me.” He stood up and walked to the cellar door and looked outside. “Getting cloudy again. Real windy, too. That’s all to the good. No one’ll be out on the beach today.”
He left the room and returned with an old-fashioned alarm clock. He wound the noisy mechanism and set the hands to the proper time. Then he set the alarm. Placing the clock on the floor in front of her chair, he looked at Sunday and smiled. “At 12:30 you and I take our swim.”
Claudus Jovunet finished the last of the caviar he had brought with him to the plane. There was, of course, no actual chef on board the SST, just the former president’s stand-in and a bunch of federal agents, including the one who had impersonated the chef for the benefit of the media. Nonetheless, he had enjoyed the repast he had been able to scrape together from yesterday’s leftovers. “My, my, my, how I do miss the good life,” he said with a sigh. He looked with longing around the comfortably appointed plane cabin. Then his gaze turned to the Vuitton luggage, which held his beloved new wardrobe. Since it was part Of the whole ruse, the agents had acceded to his request that it be allowed to accompany him on board.
“Do you suppose that when they return me to Marion, in gratitude for the cooperation I have given them, they might allow me to keep the Belois ties?” he asked Henry’s stand-in.
“Mr. President, if I could help you, I would,” Sneakers Klint said plaintively. “I mean, these guards here ain’t always the easiest people to get along with, if you get my drift.” He paused. “Look, here’s all I know. Mama had Wex when she was forty-three, me when she was forty-five. Our dad? Who knows? I never knew him, and Mama never talked about him. Ran out sometime right after I came along, I guess.”
“I’m aware of your family history,” Henry said, anxious to learn something, anything new.
“But I wanna reiterate again — ’cause it wasn’t Mama’s fault. Wex and I both kinda got in with a bad crowd, but Mama tried. She made us go to school, and for a while Wex even hung around with some college types. We was both smart, and I mean smart. But hey, what can you do? Right?”
“Look, did your mother ever own a house in Long Branch, New Jersey?” Henry snapped. “That’s all I want to know.”
“Listen, Mama’s pushing ninety. Give her a break. She didn’t know if I was going to prison or off on a Carnival Cruise. She’s out of it. So’s my brother, of course, only he can’t blame it on old age. He’s just plain nuts.”
“Stop it,” Henry said, nearly shouting now. “I don’t care! All I want to know is if your brother might have had a place in Long Beach.”
“You said Long Branch before. Which did you mean?” Sneakers said. “As a matter of fact, we did used to go to Long Beach Island. Wex and Mama liked it there. I’ve been thinking. He always was saying that someday people were going to know who he was. Always had harebrained schemes for doing something that he said would make him go down in history. He once got into trouble because he threatened to kidnap the mayor of Hackensack . . . His name was — get this — Obie Good. Short for Obious Good. What a moniker, right? Wex always used that dopey name as a sue-de-nim. O-period B-period Good.”
Henry had stopped listening. Long Beach Island. I wonder if Mrs. Klint could have made the same slip? At least she has a good excuse, he thought.
Long Beach Island was only fifty miles or so south of Long Branch, but it might as well have been a thousand given how little time they had left.
He scrawled a note to Marvin Klein. It ready simply, “Long Beach Island. Check listing for O. B. Good.”
Ten seconds later the entire fleet of helicopters had turned south, rushing to cover the distance between Long Branch and Long Beach Island, New Jersey. It was 12:28 P.M.
Dan Rather was on camera this time, with the shot of the SST appearing on a screen behind him. Clearly it still sat on the runway, and there seemed to be no activity anywhere around it. He shuffled a few papers he had in front of him, then looked to his right as if to check for instructions. Turning back to the camera, he said, “Well, our latest information is that the flight plan has been filed, but that an unexpected glitch in the engines has delayed the departure of the aircraft. President Desmond Ogilvey is about to make a personal appeal to the abductors of Congresswoman Britland requesting that they be patient and give the ground crew time to take care of this mechanical problem.”
The television was now the only light in the dank basement room at the New Jersey shore. The sound of President Ogilvey’s voice made a hollow sound as it bounced off the walls of the room. There was no one there to hear him.
* * *
T. S. Eliot wrote that the world d
oesn’t end with a bang but with a whimper, Sunday thought as she was shoved and prodded across the beach to the ominously gray Atlantic Ocean, but I’m damned if I’m going to whimper now! Her arms were tied in front of her, and while her feet were still tied together, there was enough slack in the rope to allow her to hobble through the sand. Propelling her was Wexler Klint, now fully encased in his wet suit, complete with diving mask and air tank. He had his arm around her and was rushing her toward the water’s edge.
It’s got to be freezing in there, Sunday thought. Even if I had a chance, I wouldn’t have a chance. I’ll end up with hypothermia. Or do I mean hydrothermia? Oh, Henry, I thought I’d do something with my life. I thought I’d do good things for deserving people and then come home to you. It would have been so wonderful, and I am so sorry to miss it.
They had reached the water’s edge, and she felt the icy surf hitting her feet.
Oh God, it’s so cold, she thought, her alarm growing.
A wave splashed around her knees.
From the time I was a little kid, I always loved the ocean, she remembered, thinking for a moment of herself as a little girl at the Jersey shore, always heading toward the water. Mom used to say she needed eyes in the back of her head to keep track of me on the beach, she thought. I could sure use those eyes on me now. Good-bye Mom; bye, Dad.
She was up to her waist in the swirling water; the undertow was starting to drag at her feet. “Henry, I love you,” she said to herself.
His eyes distant and mechanically cold, Klint continued to force Sunday out farther and farther from the shore. The fight seal of the wet suit and the roar of the water kept him from hearing the faint drone that approached from the northern end of the beach, growing louder by the second.
It was Wexler Klint’s plan to drag Sunday into deep water, drown her far from shore, then float her body far enough out to be caught in the fast-moving current. It might wash up somewhere in a few days, or a month, but what difference would it make? She would be dead, and that was all that mattered. He didn’t even care if he got caught eventually. He would make his mark. He would have his place in the history books.