Cold Frame

TWENTY-THREE

Av woke up as if from some kind of trance. He blinked his eyes and then looked outside. It was just about full dark. Surprised, he looked at his watch: almost six P.M.

Damn, he thought — I slept that long? There was a soft knock at the door and the butler, Thomas, stuck his head in.

“Drinks in the communications room when you’re ready, Detective Sergeant,” he announced. “Have a good kip?”

“I guess so,” Av said, sitting up and stretching. “Had no idea I was that tired.”

Thomas beamed. “Very good, sir. Come down whenever you’re ready. The room’s right behind the library.”

“Um,” Av said. “I’m not sure I’ll be dressed for the occasion.”

“Not to worry sir. It is a large house, but Mister Walker much prefers to keep things informal. You’ll be fine.”

“Thomas,” Av said. “Are you ex-military?”

Thomas smiled proudly. “Special Boat Service,” he replied. “Twenty years.”

“Wow — even I know what that is. I think I saw something about that outfit in a movie?”

“Lots of illusion in those movies, sir,” Thomas said, and then closed the door. Av got up, stretched again, looked for his clothes. His room looked out over that strange-looking jungle covering the five acres in front of the house. In the descending darkness, the driveway showed up as a pale ribbon bisecting a mass of plants, shrubs, and trees. Beyond the wall he saw the top of a white Virginia Electric Power utility truck parked next to a telephone pole. Then the lights went out.

Hiram and Thomas sat in the communications room and scanned the electrical circuit screens to make sure all the externally visible lights had gone out. They could feel the big generator down in the basement humming along nicely. Hiram sat in a large, comfortable chair, while Thomas sat at the main communications console.

“Show me the eagle’s nest, please,” Hiram said.

An infrared image quivered onto the center screen. Down below the tree three VEPCo utility workers pretended to be doing something at the side of the truck, while a fourth was getting the embarked cherry-picker arm ready to come back down from a trip to the pole’s crosstree.

“Those will be the operators,” Hiram said. “See the backpacks?”

“Yes, sir,” Thomas said. “It looks like they’re carrying some kind of submachine guns on their chests. I’m thinking MP5s.”

Hiram nodded.

“Who’s got MP5s?” Av asked from the doorway.

“Come in, Detective Sergeant,” Hiram said. “I believe we’re about to have visitors.”

Av came over and sat down next to Hiram in one on the armchairs and stared at the screens. “VEPCo’s issuing ski masks now?” he asked.

“Not VEPCo, we’re pretty sure,” Hiram said. “I think this is a team of operators sent by Mister Mandeville to retrieve you.”

“Wonderful,” Av said. “Maybe it’d be better if I just went down to the gate and said hi. No point in bringing guys like that in here to tear up your house.”

Hiram smiled. “Let’s just see what they do and how far they get. You said it was U.S. Marshals who took you to Petersburg. If these people have been sent by Mandeville, they are probably not marshals.”

“Yeah, but still: there’s no reason for you to get involved,” Av said. “This isn’t your problem — it’s my problem, even if I’m not sure what that problem really is. Can we contact Ellen?”

“Remember that Ellen brought you here, Detective Sergeant. She may have been expecting that Mandeville would try to scoop you up. Doing that here is going to be much harder than those people out there think. Ah, they’re moving now.”

The three of them watched the screen as the little camera, whose image was swaying gently in a small night breeze, tracked the team of three down past the gates and to the left front corner of the wall.

“Switching,” Thomas said. The image went dark and then resumed, this time from what appeared to be a wall-mounted camera. It showed the men moving swiftly at the very base of the wall, and then stopping about halfway down to the river, just out of sight of the camera.

“Shit, it lost them,” Av muttered.

“We know exactly where they are, don’t we, Thomas.”

Thomas switched the display to reveal a graphic outline of the estate’s entire perimeter. Nothing was displayed within the walls, but there was a green band of video all along the outside of the wall. “Not all of my plants are inside the walls, Detective Sergeant,” Hiram said. “There’s ivy all along the outside face of the bricks. Wherever they stop to throw up a rope or something, the ivy will reveal it to a network of sensors monitoring cellular fluids within the stems. That will tell us where they are and which inside-perimeter camera we need to turn on and where to point the infrared spotlights.”

“The plants are part of your security system?”

“The plants are the security system,” Hiram said. “Some of the things growing out there are dangerous, so I can’t have anyone scaling these walls and trampling through what looks like a jungle but in fact is the outside portion of my laboratory.”

“Got ’em,” Thomas said, pointing to a segment of the wall, where little red lines were appearing.

“Did you happen to notice if they were wearing night vision devices?” Hiram asked. Thomas hit some keys and replayed a segment of the eagle’s nest camera recording. “I don’t think so,” Thomas said after studying the images. “I thought those were just ski masks.”

“I’d say they are,” Av said. “We have some like that — it’s like a skullcap with a boom mike on it, only the boom contains a monocular NVD. They can pull it down, look into the dark, then flip it back up. I think it’s called a near-infrared device.”

“Then it needs an IR illuminator,” Thomas said. “Mister Walker, we may not need the IR floods.”

“Good,” Hiram said. “Now let’s see if Yucca gloriosa does its job. That’s Spanish dagger to you, Detective Sergeant. Once they get to the top of the wall and look down they’ll see a band of Spanish dagger plants, all over six feet tall, at the base. Wouldn’t want to climb down into that.”

“So they can’t get in?”

“Yes they can, but only where I want them to get in. There’s a gap in the Spanish dagger planting about twenty feet down the wall toward the river from where they are now. Assuming they find it, they’ll try to get in right there.”

“They’re going the wrong way,” Thomas commented, as the little red squiggles lit up along the outline of the wall. “Now they’ve turned around. Here we go. About thirty feet.” They watched in silence as the display tracked the intruders’ progress along the top of the wall.

“No razor wire or shards of glass up top?” Av asked.

“No, it’s just a flat concrete cap so that the stems of the ivy can come up and over, along with some microfiber mesh underneath those stems. They can’t feel it, but the mesh can surely feel them. Here we go, they’re stopping.”

“Camera five coming up,” Thomas said, switching the display again. At first there was nothing on the display, and then a flash of greenish light, followed by a second, that seemed to be emanating from the operators’ shoulders. “They’re taking a look,” he said. “I’m going to bring up a low-level IR illuminator in that sector as soon as they turn off their own, see if they notice.”

Gradually, Av saw a picture beginning to emerge on the center display. One man was already on a rope, descending quickly with the rope wrapped around one leg to the inside base of the wall. Then the second, and finally, the third. Thomas saw a hand go up to flip its monocular down, and dimmed the IR floodlight to its lowest setting. The man took a quick sweep, then flipped the boom back up against the side of his head. Thomas turned up the IR flood again.

“What’s down there?” Av asked.

“They’re standing on the banks of a moat, actually,” Hiram said. “Not much of one, maybe ten feet across and not very deep. It’s covered by a mat of water-hyacinth plants that have been crossbred with kudzu. The mat’s about two feet thick, and right where they are, the mat has been sectioned into a float of sorts. Once one of them steps onto the mat, he’ll realize that’s it’s not terra firma, but: it will support him until he gets out to the middle, which is when the mat is going to flip over on itself and trap him underwater.”

“Uh,” Av began.

“Remember, the water’s only four, four and a half feet deep. All he has to do is stand up and claw his way back out.”

“They’re communicating with someone,” Thomas announced.

“Can we eavesdrop?” Hiram said.

Thomas shook his head. “They’ll be using encryption.”

They saw a second man’s hand reach up to drop his boom. This time Thomas left the tree-mounted IR flood on. The man took a long look, and then pushed his boom back up. One of his partners clipped a rope to his harness. Then he stepped out onto the mat as his partner paid out the rope. He stood for a moment on the spongy mat, and then began to move carefully across, until, suddenly his arms began to windmill, producing a blur of IR light as the mat rolled over. The two men back on firm ground started pulling hard, and soon the first man emerged from under the mass of wet greenery and flopped down on the banks of the water channel.

“Bubblers,” Hiram said.

Thomas switched to the control panel for the wide area network of pipes and tubes that underlay the entire garden. He switched on a CO2 source and soon there were bubbles rising invisibly through the extended mat of hyacinth. In response, the matted mass of vegetation began to move here and there, as if there was something large moving around under the matted mass of vegetation. Av grinned as he saw the men back up against the wall. One of them was gesticulating as he radioed back what they’d encountered.

“Is there a way around the hyacinth bridge?” he asked.

“There is,” Hiram said. “It’s just to their right. Hopefully they’ll find it. Thomas, turn off the CO2 in the moat. Leave the IR lights at their present level and warm up the UVB matrix.”

Av watched the three men huddled at the base of the wall. Their images were in and out of focus. Every time they moved, things went a bit fuzzy.

“Thomas mentioned drinks,” Av said, spying a liquor cart.

Hiram turned in his chair. “Quite right,” he said. “The best part is yet to come. Over there, in the corner. I’ll take a small Scotch. You have one, too, but not too much. You may still have to run for it.”

Av went across the room to the small bar on wheels. There were three decanters. He sniffed the first one: bourbon. The second one smelled like a peat bog. He fixed two glasses of that and brought one to Hiram. Run for it?

“Good,” Hiram said. “Now, watch this.”

The three men were on the move again up on the big screen, easing their way along the hard ground at the base of the brick wall. Without the stimulation of the CO2 matrix, the hyacinth beds had settled down. They finally encountered a wall of Spanish dagger and stopped. One of them pointed into the jungle: a large tree had come down across the moat, its trunk almost three feet thick. Its upper branches were smashed all along the base of the wall, but the trunk was intact. A bridge. Clearly a bridge.

“That’s convenient,” Av commented.

“That’s planned,” Thomas replied from the console. “It’s not a real tree.”

“Damn,” Av said. “Looks real.”

“The intent, Detective Sergeant,” Hiram said, “is to nudge intruders into areas where they will encounter some of my more interesting creations. The whole idea is to scare any intruders so badly that they leave.”

“What’s coming?” Av asked.

“Know what a Venus flytrap is?” Hiram asked.

“Yes, sir,” Av said. “A plant with teeth, a big mouth, and some strong digestive juices. Insects land, the flaps close, and then the juices go to work.”

“Quite so,” Hiram said. “I’ve created a mutation, using a plant whose popular name is elephant ears. Watch.”

The first of the operators was edging sideways across the tree trunk, roped up to one of the men waiting at the base of the wall. He stepped off, tested the footing, then took off the rope and flung it back to the second man. Once they got across, all three activated their night vision devices. From what Av could make out on the screen, they were standing in a grove of what looked like small, blurry Christmas trees all along the inner edge of the moat. The plants were about man-high, but Av could not make out individual branches, only the dark green mass of the plants themselves.

“UVA spot to full power on that plant nearest to the group,” Hiram ordered.

The men were huddled together, consulting what might have been a map or diagram of the estate. They could probably see the wall across the moat, but behind them there was just an undifferentiated mass of dark vegetation. Thomas entered some control information and Av waited for something to happen.

“You can’t see the ultraviolet light on this IR screen,” Hiram said. “But that plant can definitely see it. Think of it as an artificial sunrise.”

Suddenly, one of the men turned around. Right behind him one of those “Christmas” trees was opening to reveal two vertical, kidney-bean-shaped lobes, as tall as the plant and hinged at the middle. The edges of the lobes were spiked, and apparently, the inside of the plant was much warmer than the outside, because those spikes were clearly visible on the screen.

The man stepped back and nudged his partners. All three backed away from this sudden apparition.

“UV spot to low,” Hiram said.

As the three men stared at this thing that was gaping at them, the two lobes slowly began to fold inward until it once again looked like a fat Christmas tree on the screen. The men talked some more, consulted the map again, and turned to head into the jungle. The camera lost sight of them, displaying only faint blobs of warmth when there was enough contrast with the vegetation they were pushing into.

“Full UV matrix,” Hiram said.

Again, nothing seemed to happen. Then there appeared to be a commotion off to one side of the screen, as IR blobs came in and out of focus. Only then Av realized that a lot of that vegetation consisted of the giant flytraps, which were now all opening wide. One man pushing through all the vegetation inadvertently stuck his arm into one of the lobes, causing the plant to close on his arm. He tugged frantically but could not get it loose. A second man pushed closer, wielding a large knife, and began to cut into one of the lobes. After a few seconds of hacking away, the trapped man was able to pull his arm out of the plant, but then he frantically began to wipe some substance off his arm as if it was burning his skin.

The man who had cut him out backed into another set of gaping lobes, which snapped shut, trapping the backpack he was wearing.

“Where’s the third guy?” Av asked, as the two intruders struggled in jerky motions on the green screen. The man trapped by his backpack shrugged out of the straps and stepped away from the plant and turned around to yank it out of the plant’s grasp. The first man was pouring water out of his canteen all along his forearm, which was showing up as being much warmer than the rest of him.

“Strong stuff, digestive juices,” Hiram noted. “Dissolved his shirt sleeve and probably burns like hell right now. Ah, there’s number three.”

The third man came into the frame, dragging a lobe of one of the plants behind him that was attached to his right foot. The second man had taken his knife out again and was hacking his way into the plant to release his backpack.

“Gotta say,” Av said. “I’d be shittin’ and gittin’ right about now.”

Hiram smiled. “We’ll let them get clear of their personal flytraps,” he said. “If this doesn’t persuade them, we’ll stimulate the spider plants.”

“Aw, shit,” Av said. “Spider plants?”

“Well, they’re not spiders of course, but if we stimulate their root systems with a sudden dose of electrolytes, they begin to flex their branches. The branches hang down from a central trunk, like a weeping cherry. From a distance, they look like a big spider standing up and getting ready to come at you.”

“In the dark?”

“It’s not dark to the plants right now, Detective Sergeant. Remember the UV light. And those guys are all on night vision devices, which distorts the real picture even more.”

The three intruders were once again huddled together, with the leader appearing to be back on the radio. The flytraps around them waited like baby birds, lobes agape and weaving slightly. The leader was gesticulating now, clearly arguing with whoever was on the other end of that comm link. The other two were still dealing with patches of the sticky fluid from the flytraps.

“How far are they from the spider plants?” Hiram asked.

Thomas switched to a new, diagrammatic screen. Av saw now that the estate’s defenses were in concentric rings, beginning with the wall and the Spanish dagger, then the moat, then the flytrap band, and a band inside of that showing trees and small, star-shaped objects between the larger trees. “Ring four,” he said. “Hydroponics are ready to go.”

“Let’s see if they’re ready to call it off,” Hiram said. “What’s eagle’s nest showing?”

Thomas switched screens again. The utility truck was still there, but now there were four other vehicles parked along the road. “There’s plan B,” Av said. “If the stealth crew can’t get in, they’ll break down the main gates and stage a frontal assault of some kind. See that big one? That’s the federal version of a SWAT command vehicle. They will get in.”

Thomas had gone back to the camera watching the three operators, who apparently had been told to press on despite all the alien things snatching at them.

“Okay,” Hiram said, wearily. “Send the electrolytes and restart the CO2 bubblers in the vicinity of the fake tree crossing. Add some pure oxygen.”

The leader took a swig out of his canteen and passed it around, as the other two had exhausted theirs. They started forward, spread out now, pushing through vegetation and keeping a respectful distance from the flytraps.

“Electrolytes are going in. Do we want sound?”

“Not yet,” Hiram said, finishing his Scotch. “If they run from the spiders, then activate the approaching-crowd sounds behind them.” He glanced over at Av, whose face was a study in amazement. “I’ve had years to build all this,” Hiram said. “The really important stuff is in the main laboratory and up in the greenhouse. These mutations were mostly for fun, up until I realized what I had achieved in the lab.”

“Audio?” Av asked.

“Sure. Remote speakers, programmed to play a variety of digitally produced sounds. Remember the movie 2001, A Space Odyssey? They had an organ playing a single note in the background just to spook things up a little. We can do that. Or, we can generate the noises made by a distant crowd of men pushing through brush and calling to one another. The screech of a bobcat from a tree right above you. The hiss of a king cobra from directly behind you. Combine things like that with darkness and the phantoms of night vision, plants that seem to be moving on you — most humans will just bolt.”

“This human would have bolted a long time ago,” Av said, finishing his whisky as he studied the screen. And then he saw them: green blobs rising from the forest floor and swaying back and forth like drunks. At the top of each blob there were eight “eyes” reflecting back at the IR light from the floods. The three men saw them at just about the same moment and stopped cold.

“Eyes?” Av asked.

Hiram grinned. “Reflectors. Tape. As everyone knows, spiders have lots of eyes. Pretty cool, huh?”

The three intruders didn’t think so. One unlimbered his MP5 and got ready to fire. The other two called him off, consulted briefly, and then all three turned back in the direction of the wall. As they entered the area of the flytraps, the plants near them began to close and then open again. That apparently did it. The man who’d been ready to start shooting did just that as he backed up in the direction of the wall. The muzzle blasts were brilliant in the IR image as he shot some flytraps to pieces and blew up one spider plant for good measure. They could just barely hear the stutter of the rifle outside.

“Eagle’s nest!” Hiram ordered, leaning forward.

Thomas switched cameras and they saw men tumbling out of the SWAT vehicles and start moving toward the main gates at the sound of gunfire. The command vehicle backed up in a cloud of diesel smoke to allow the vehicle that looked like a cross between a tank and a small bulldozer through on the lane.

“Thomas — time to get him to the river.”

Thomas switched to the screen that covered the estate’s main gate. Then he got up and beckoned for Av to follow him. Av didn’t hesitate: that SWAT team or whatever they called themselves would be in the house in less than two minutes.

Thomas and Av trotted down the house’s main central hall and then turned into a stairwell. Taking the steps two at a time, they raced down to the basement level. As they passed a coatrack Thomas grabbed some raingear and threw it in Av’s direction.

“Where we going?” Av asked.

“To the river. There’s a tunnel from the house down to the boathouse. Chop-chop!”

They went through two steel doors, which Thomas locked behind him. When they came to a third door, Thomas entered a code and opened the door to reveal what looked like a concrete utility tunnel: there were insulated pipes, electrical cables, and water lines running along the ceiling and on both walls. The steel door shut itself behind them as they trotted down a gradual slope, their passage lit by glass-enclosed lightbulbs at twenty-foot intervals. Av saw some branch tunnels headed off the main passage, also filled with a great deal of plumbing.

After a five-minute downward-sloping jog they came to another steel door. Thomas again punched in a code that opened the door, admitting a wave of cool air. They were looking at a boathouse. Outside, Av could see the wide expanse of the Potomac River shimmering in the darkness, almost a half-mile wide at this point. Thomas took him to the U-shaped dock, where Av saw a small motorboat hanging on a lift frame. Thomas activated the lift. A winch began to grind away and the boat lowered down to the water’s surface.

“Put that stuff on,” Thomas said, indicating the raingear. As Av got into the light vinyl pants-and-coat combination, Thomas clipped a strobe light to the coat’s collar. Then he handed Av an inflatable life jacket and a set of diving gloves. Av put the jacket on and then the gloves. Thomas handed him a diver’s knife, encased in a rubber sheath. He indicated that Av should attach it to his right leg, using the Velcro straps on the pants.

“Okay, sunshine: listen up and listen carefully. That’s the Potomac River out there.”

“Got it,” Av said, half jokingly.

“Good,” Thomas said. “Because it’s a man-killer. Most blokes have no idea how many people this river has killed along here, but it’s a surprisingly large number. We are two miles upstream of the Great Falls of the Potomac. You must not go through that cataract under any circumstances. You cannot survive that in a boat. So: take this boat out across the river and head toward the Maryland side and stay there until you’re past the Great Falls.”

“It’s dark,” Av said. “How will I know?”

“Once you’re out on the river and about two thirds of the way across, turn off the engine. Let the current carry you downstream. The big roaring noise to your right will be the cataract.”

He told Av to get into the small boat and then handed him an eight-foot-long pole.

“The Maryland side is full of rocky channels, but nothing like the big cataract. With the engine off the current should carry you through the open channels, but you’ll need that pole to fend off the bigger snags. Once you hear the cataract behind you, your next challenge is the Little Falls Dam. There’s a patch of quiet water between the Great Falls and the Little Falls. Once you hit that, start the engine again, turn left, and then beach the boat on the Maryland side. After that you’re on your own, mate.”

“Oka-a-a-y,” Av said, not at all confident about his navigating skills on the darkened, man-eating Potomac.

“One more thing: make that turn earlier rather than later. If you hit the Little Falls, no one will ever find you. As soon as you think the Great Falls are behind you, turn left toward the Maryland side and get out of the river. Crank it up, now.”

Av turned to the little outboard engine as Thomas instructed him on how to start it. The engine caught after two pulls. As Av was wondering whether he needed to warm it up, Thomas cast him off and shoved the boat with his right foot out into the current. Av pointed the little boat across the black mass of streaming water. He saw flashes of light up on the grounds of the big house. He wondered if Hiram had any idea of what a SWAT team did when it broke into a house. On the other hand, he wondered if the SWAT team had any idea of what Dr. Frankenstein might have waiting for them when they tried it.

While Thomas was seeing to their guest’s getaway, Hiram took over the main console and upped the magnification on the main gate area. That team was definitely getting ready to do something. The street tank had arrived in front of the main gates and was pointed at the house. Several other figures were deploying on either side of the gates, while a smaller team was headed down the wall in the direction of the intrusion team.

Hiram switched the cameras again to find the terrified threesome climbing back over the wall, with two of them on the rope and the third man covering their rear with his submachine gun while standing on the end of the rope.

Back to the treetop camera. The assault team, for that’s what it looked like, were all in position, but, for some reason they weren’t moving. He searched the scene for a command vehicle, and thought he saw one back up the lane.

What were they waiting for? Orders? Or did they want to debrief their intrusion team first to see what the shooting had been all about.

He was relieved when Thomas came back into the room.

Once clear of the boathouse and the Virginia bank of the Potomac, Av pointed his little boat on a diagonal across the big river, already feeling the strength of the current. The engine was small but it sounded like it was happy. He was glad for the raingear. His jeans and T-shirt outfit weren’t meant for a fall night on the big river.

Av’s knowledge of the Potomac was limited to MPD barbecue outings down on Haines Point, where the river was a silvery lake, with no hint of violence. If someone fell in at Haines Point, the immediate worry was what he might be covered in when they got him back on the bank. This was very different and he could feel the current’s strength. It made him wonder what would happen if he tried to go back upstream and if the little engine was big enough.

Av knew that several miles upstream at Harper’s Ferry, the entire Shenandoah River added its stream to what was coming down from the eastern slopes of the Alleghenys. As it approached the palisades along Great Falls, that huge volume of water was funneled into rocky gorges some sixty to eighty feet high. Moving water confined becomes fast water, and, with the bottom made of slate, shattered over the eons into rows of underwater crevasses, the river there was no place for swimmers or, for that matter, small boats.

AV could sense that his boat seemed to be going faster, if the lights along the Virginia shore were any indication. He pointed the bow of the boat to the left to compensate for what felt like an out-of-control surge in the current. Then he heard the low rumble of the Great Falls cataracts to his right. He recalled taking a young lady out to Great Falls Park for a picnic date. He remembered the sign on the rocks above the booming cataract: if you go into the water, you will die. He’d never seen such a stark sign at any park, but one look at the rocky gorge confirmed the message.

He pointed the bow of the little motorboat farther to the left to make sure he wasn’t being swept into the deceptively calm open channel above the cataract. Then he remembered his instructions: get left of the center channel, kill the engine, let the river take you through the fast-moving channels until that menacing rumble was behind you. Then, light the engine back off and run for the Maryland shore.

Okay, he thought. He reached over and switched off the outboard. The first thing he realized was that the rumble of water going down the Great Falls gorge was louder than he’d thought. Too soon? he wondered. But no, it was to his right and sliding behind him. Loud, powerful, threatening, but passing behind him. Ahead was a wide expanse of river, spattered with small white ripples as the current ran over rock snags. He grabbed the pole and prepared to fend off obstacles, but then realized he couldn’t see anything that resembled obstacles. Then he learned that the obstacles had a purpose of their own as the boat banged off a rock, and then another one, swerving in the current and jinking in different directions as if totally out of control. He felt ridiculous holding the pole. What good was it if he couldn’t see the rock coming?

Then the boat stopped suddenly, pinned by the muscular current against a rock ledge. The water began to rise up on the upstream side of the boat, certain to swamp it. He lunged with the pole and, when it hit solid rock, he pushed. The boat swirled in place, dropping him into the middle of the boat, and then it whirled again and swept downstream. He got back on the single gunwale, trying to get his bearings, and then the boat hit the next snag, again dumping him onto the aluminum bottom. The pole sailed out of his grip with the impact. He tried to regain his footing, but the boat was nothing but a cork now as the big river’s current flung it downstream, banking from snag to snag, sometimes hard enough to make him wonder if the small craft could take much more.

Little Falls Dam. In his effort to stay upright, he’d forgotten all about the Little Falls Dam.

He scrambled to the back of the boat and set the ignition switch. The boat hit something really solid and almost backed up in the current for a moment before shooting through a chute of white water. He felt a swirl of icy water on his feet. The hull was punctured; he was sure of it. Regaining his footing, he started pulling on the rope as hard as he could.

Choke. You have to choke it.

He set the choke and tried again. He smelled gasoline. Dammit! Flooded it.

The boat went sideways and stopped suddenly, heeling over at an alarming angle. Water began to sweep in as he kept yanking on the cord. Then the engine caught. He grabbed the handle and gunned the engine. More water came in, so he turned the handle, urging the boat across the current and out of the narrow chute of white water. It made it, but he felt that the boat was getting logy and unresponsive. Too much water onboard.

Where was Maryland? Which way? He had no idea.

Then the sky above him exploded into white light as a helicopter swooped down over his position, its rotors punishing the air over his head and blowing huge clouds of spray everywhere. Blinded by the spray, he pushed the handle hard over, trying to get out from under the roaring machine that seemed to be right over his head. He could smell the acrid stink of JP-5 from the turbine exhaust. Then a rope or wire slapped him in the chest before flying off to one side of the boat.

Rope? He realized the situation was totally out of control. He had no idea of what to do next. The downwash from the hovering helicopter continued to blind him and he was still going downriver. How far was that dam?

Then a man dropped into the boat, almost capsizing it in the rushing current. He was wearing a dark jumpsuit and a compact helmet with a wraparound face shield. The weight of two large men in the boat began to sink it. A second man appeared, still on the rope, dangling just above the boat and pointing some kind of weapon at Av’s face. A second wire appeared, with a horseshoe-shaped collar dangling from the end. The man in the boat braced himself and slipped the collar over Av’s head and under his armpits, and then made a signal. Before Av had a moment to realize what was happening, the wire tightened and he was dangling over the boat and the river, and then being hauled up toward a black, rectangular hole in the side of the hovering helicopter. He felt himself slipping out of the wet horseshoe collar and quickly grabbed the sides.

He looked down through all the downwash spray blowing in the harsh white light and thought he saw the rolling curl of the Little Falls Dam just fifty feet from the now twirling boat. The water going over the low dam was deceptively calm as it dropped over the eighteenth-century rock abutment into a dark coil of white water. The man who had dropped into the boat was beneath him, riding a second wire back up.

He looked up. The wire was being stabilized by another man who was leaning out of a side hatch in the aircraft. In the clouds of downdraft spray under the helo he saw the little boat pop over the falls, drop straight down into that roiling black water, and then disappear without a trace. He bumped up against the side of the aircraft, and then someone pulled him in, removed the horse collar, dropped a cloth hood over his face, and pushed him away from the hatch until he bumped up against a bulkhead. The helicopter continued to hover for a few more seconds until the man below him was hauled in. Then it lifted urgently away from the river’s surface, banked hard, dipped its nose, and accelerated.

Hiram watched the crowd of menacing vehicles converging at the front gates, their strobe lights flashing a whole spectrum of color. Nobody was moving, yet.

“Thomas,” he said. “I think we should go ahead and open the gates. Not sure we could find any more like those.”

Thomas flicked on the main entrance lights and then commanded the gates to open. Hiram reached over to a side table and picked up a telephone.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

“Home invasion,” Hiram stated, matter-of-factly. He gave the address for Whitestone Hall, and then added: “Shots fired.”

Thomas raised his eyebrows. “Always wanted to say that,” Hiram said, his hand over the telephone’s microphone. The operator wanted to know how many people were in the house and where they were located. Hiram told them two and that they were in the library. She asked how many intruders were at the scene. “About thirty,” Hiram said, and then hung up. “Now get me the news-tip hotline number at WTOP,” he told Thomas, who punched the station’s name into a computer.

“877-222-1035,” Thomas said. Hiram dialed the number as he watched the screen. The crowd at the front gate didn’t seem to know what to do now that the big gates were open and they were all standing under floodlights.

“WTOP: news hotline,” a young woman’s voice announced.

Hiram told her that one of the mansions out in Great Falls was being assaulted by a government SWAT team, and gave her the address. “There are reports of gunfire,” he concluded and then hung up.

Out front a line of armed men in bulky defensive gear had started through the gates and were spreading out on either side of the driveway.

“Not too far, boys,” Hiram muttered. “Stay on the road.”

Then one of the unarmed vehicles turned in and headed for the house. The rest of the vehicles remained clustered around the front gates, while one SUV, bristling with antennae, crawled slowly down the lane toward where the intrusion team had first climbed the wall. The tank had backed out of the scene when the gates opened.

“Showtime,” Hiram said, getting out of his chair. Thomas got up as well but Hiram waved him back down. “Stay on the consoles, watch the walls. They may try again.”

Thomas reached under his cable-knit sweater and produced a handgun.

Hiram smiled and shook his head. “That would be all they’d need,” he said. “No, I’m going to do a little monster Kabuki. See how they like that. Unlock the front doors.”

The screen showed the SUV had reached the area of the front portico. Three men were getting out of the vehicle, two in defensive tactical gear with weapons, and one in just a suit, a small portable radio visible in one hand. Hiram walked through the library and down the main hall of the house, pausing only to pick a pretty pink flower from a vase. He squeezed the flower and then applied the resulting fluid to his closed eyes. He felt a mild stinging sensation, and then the surface of his eyes went numb. He glanced in a mirror as he walked toward the front doors. His eyes were now bright red.

He stopped halfway to the door and waited. There was a tentative knock on the front doors, and then, after a long minute, someone tried the right-hand door and swung it open. The three men stepped into the darkened hallway, and that’s when Hiram drew himself to his full height and began to walk toward them, affecting just the slightest limp.

“Holy shit!” one of the armed men said when he saw Hiram approaching. All three of them stopped in their tracks. The two armed men adjusted their grips on their weapons and moved away from the man in the suit. Hiram focused on that man: he had to be the boss. He walked up to within three feet of the suit, leaned forward, and opened his eyes wide.

The suit made a noise and stepped back away from this glaring, red-eyed apparition leaning over him.

“What do you want?” Hiram asked in his best imitation of a sepulchral voice. He resisted the temptation to put a Boris Karloff accent in play, something he had mastered a long time ago.

“We — um — we want Detective Sergeant Kenneth Smith of the Metro Washington Police Department,” the suit said. He was about forty, pasty-faced, and incongruously out of shape considering the company he was keeping.

“Where is he?” the man asked.

One of the armed men pressed a hand to his head and listened to a message from the front gate. Then he spoke up. “Fairfax County cops are on scene?” he announced.

The suit hesitated, and then asked Hiram again: where was the detective sergeant?

“He was here and now he is not,” Hiram said, inching closer to this obviously frightened civil servant. “He came by boat, he left by boat. He’s on the river. How is your intrusion team?”

“Wha-a-t?” the man answered. “What intrusion team?”

“The ones who fired automatic weapons in my gardens,” Hiram said, leaning forward. The man practically quailed. “They are lucky to be alive. Did you know that? That is a venom garden. The plants out there can eat and digest humans. I suggest you leave now.”

“I must search this house,” the man said in a weak voice.

“Show me your search warrant,” Hiram replied.

“I don’t have one,” the man said. “Actually, I don’t need one. This is a matter of national security. The FISA court can backdate—”

At that moment the sounds of a helicopter could be heard coming through the open front doors. It made a waspish sound, not military at all. The guard who’d received the first radio message again pressed the side of his helmet to his ear.

“News chopper,” he said, looking worried for the first time.

Hiram chose this moment to step forward and get so close to the suit that the man had to literally bend his neck back to look into Hiram’s massive face. “Do you wish to become immortal?” Hiram whispered, baring his huge teeth just a little.

“Wha-a-t?” the man squeaked.

“Whoever sent you would want you to leave now, before all of you become national news. Think of me appearing on national television and telling the world what your people did tonight. Without a warrant. Without informing the local police forces. Climbing a wall and invading a private residence. Firing automatic weapons — against plants.” Hiram straightened up. “Go now, while you still can.”

He then turned his back on them and walked back down the hall into the gloom at the other end. To his immense satisfaction he heard them scampering out the front doors.

He glanced up at the surveillance camera at the end of the hall. “Oscar, yes?” he asked the watching Thomas. “At least an Emmy.”

He could hear Thomas laughing all the way from the comm center.

Back in the communications room Thomas had been watching the scene unfold at the front gates as the Fairfax County police argued with all the unmarked federals. Hiram wished he had an audio feed from the gates. Then a second news chopper appeared, this one a bit more bold than the first one. The aircraft swooped down over the trees along the river and then came slowly up the wall with its landing lights on. The first helicopter immediately maneuvered to take advantage of the lighting to film the entire cluster-fuck going on out on the lane. They’ll all be bailing out pretty soon, Hiram thought. The black world of counterterrorism feared nothing so much as the sudden arrival of the media.

“Boss?” Thomas said.

Hiram turned around and looked at the screen. A ghostly green figure was moving up the western side of the defensive garden.

“Well, well,” Hiram said. “All the Hollywood out front was, what — a diversion?”

“Apparently so,” Thomas said. “But look where he’s headed.”

“Ah,” Hiram said. “You know what, Thomas? These people are beginning to annoy me.”

“God help them, then,” Thomas muttered.

Av felt the aircraft settling in altitude as it flew in what seemed like pretty much a straight line. His back was against a bulkhead, and he was still hooded. No one had done anything to restrain him, but he felt the presence of large men in tactical gear sitting on either side of him. The inside of the helicopter smelled of sweat, gun oil, hydraulic oil, and ozone in about equal proportions. That side hatch was still partially open, which helped.

He forced himself to relax. They were waiting for me, he thought. As soon as he’d made it halfway across the river, there they were, and probably a good thing, too. He’d been a lot closer to that dam Thomas had warned him about than he’d known. He could still see the little boat going over what looked like a nothing waterfall and just disappearing in a roil of shiny black water.

So: who were “they”? Mandeville’s people? Tactically trained operators from the other side of that mythical Chinese wall between the DMX and the real work?

He felt the men on either side of him move away from the bulkhead.

“We’re going to land now,” one of them said, leaning in to speak through the hood. “Then we’re going to get out. Do we need to restrain you?”

Av said no. The hood was secured by tight elastic around his throat. Where was he going to go?

“Be cool,” the man said. “Don’t make me break one of your legs.” As if to emphasize the point, the invisible man tapped what felt like an iron rod on his shinbone. Av resisted the impulse to cry out. That really hurt.

The helicopter did some banking and turning and then pitched up slightly, the rotors gaining power as the machine flared out to make its approach. A moment of sideslipping, lots more noise from the rotors, and then he felt the aircraft bump gently down onto the ground. Almost immediately the engines began to whine down. The rotors followed suit, spinning down from full RPM to an almost gentle whop-whop as they shed lift and airspeed. Av could almost see them starting to droop.

He heard doors sliding fully open on both sides of the aircraft and then he was hoisted upright. Someone removed his sheath knife.

“Steps,” the man said. “Wire handrails on either side. Go down, slowly.”

Av stepped out and down onto the first step. He reached for the wires and found them.

Once on the ground, both of his escorts moved in and walked him up what felt like a grassy slope. He could still smell the jet engine exhaust through the rough cloth of the hood. Then he stumbled when his right foot hit concrete. The men kept him from falling and then told him to stop.

“Bench,” one of them said, turning him around and then pushing him down onto what felt like a wooden park bench. The other one took hold of Av’s right forearm and pressed it down onto the bench. Av felt some kind of restraint slip over his hand and then click down onto the bench. Then he sensed he was alone, although the two men made no sound as they walked away.

It was cool, wherever he was. The helicopter was silent now, although not very far away. He could hear its engines clicking in the night air as the turbines cooled down. He thought he could hear another, lower-register sound in the distance. The river? Yes, that’s what it was. So they were somewhere along the Potomac, probably on the Virginia side since the river noise seemed to be coming from way below where he was sitting.

Nothing happened for about fifteen minutes, but then he heard the sound of a heavy automobile crunching its way over gravel and coming in his direction. The vehicle stopped not too far away. He waited for the sounds of doors opening, but now there was just the sound of the river pushing through the palisades. He heard some radio communications chattering from a speaker in the direction of the helicopter. He caught a whiff of cigarette smoke, which told him that whoever was nearby, they weren’t exactly excited by what they were doing.

He surreptitiously tried the arm restraint, which seemed to be working just fine. The bench was rock solid and probably bolted to the ground. Not going anywhere soon, he thought. Still no noises from the vehicle, but definitely more cigarette smoke. They were obviously all waiting for someone. He thought he knew who that someone was going to be.