CHAPTER IV

“We’re searching on a proper grid, Frau von Fahlendorf… That makes it more likely that we’ll find your brother’s prison, but we’re working in ignorance… I don’t think you need fear that our police efficiency isn’t up to the task… Yes, ma’am, that is correct, but we cannot tell our journalists what to say. We have freedom of the press, and the trashier ones tend to make things up if the story isn’t dramatic enough… I agree, this is one story doesn’t need embroidering, but… Thank you, Frau von Fahlendorf… Good afternoon.”

“Phew!” Helen exclaimed, putting the phone down. “They really do think they’re the only ones can do anything, don’t they? She’s an autocrat, the Frau. She either suspects or knows that the kidnappers are German, so she’s on the defensive. Was I okay, sir?”

“You did well,” said Carmine. “What intrigues me is that the family von Fahlendorf hasn’t sent someone to Holloman, though they’ve had the weekend to do it. It’s where Kurt is, no matter where the kidnappers are. That raises some possibilities: one is that Dagmar knows Kurt is already dead, and another, that Dagmar knows they’re going to get Kurt back alive. I ask myself, is someone in Germany, acting for the kidnappers, in direct contact with Dagmar, who would rather trust villains from her own part of the world than good guys from a country she doesn’t know? A country, moreover, that stole her beloved Kurtchen. She’s forgotten it was his choice to emigrate.”

“To me, the most important point,” said Delia, “is why the family hasn’t sent someone here? What if we find Kurt alive? The poor chap won’t be greeted by one family face, and that positively stinks. Even my potty papa would come for me.”

“That tells me they know he’s dead,” said Nick.

“They’re going to refuse to pay the ransom?” Helen asked.

“It kind of looks that way,” Carmine answered.

“In which case, why does Dagmar keep trying to get the bank and account number out of us?” Delia asked.

“So they can say we gave it to them,” Carmine said.

“They could say that anyway,” Nick said.

“That’s true,” from Delia. “The other answer is that there’s no one to send here. Dagmar must suspect her husband is behind it, the Baron is senile, and the mother is retiring and giving her money to the grandchildren. She might be senile too.”

“That flies,” said Nick.

“He tried to steal her industrial secrets once. I imagine Dagmar must suspect Josef of the kidnapping,” Carmine said.

“She genuinely may not suspect him.” Helen squeezed her hands together. “Oh, I wish I knew the family! I wish I was there!”

“I couldn’t agree more, Helen,” said Delia. “Not knowing the suspects, how can we solve the case?”

“What about the FBI?” Nick asked. “They have better foreign contacts than the police department of a small city.”

“Not a brass monkey, according to Hunter Wyatt,” Carmine said. “Like us, he’s convinced it’s a German job.”

Corey and Abe came in.

Corey was looking haggard. Everyone in Detectives knew why; he had to face an enquiry over Morty Jones’s death, and he had also to face Carmine. Both were postponed until the search for Kurt von Fahlendorf was over, but that moment was drawing closer with every tick of the clock.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

Abe Goldberg didn’t look hopeful, and that was a bad sign. As he had an uncanny instinct for hidden doors and vents going nowhere, he was Carmine’s secret compartments expert; for that reason Carmine had allocated him a strip of territory to the south and west of Holloman Harbor, an industrial wasteland beyond the airport where functioning factories and workshops were mixed with buildings and sweat shops long abandoned. Though it had streets, it was a wilderness of sorts, bounded by the Holloman jail and I-95.

“Not a sausage, as you’d say, Delia,” Abe said. “I’ve been searching for four days without a twitch or a tremble, and that’s bad. I don’t think he’s there, but I haven’t finished, so I’ll keep on going, Carmine.”

“You do that, Abe. If he is there, you’ll find him.”

Today was Tuesday, October 22, and the search had been in full swing since dawn of last Friday. Desdemona was taking his place today, allowing Carmine time to check up on the Dodo. The first phase of this consisted in a short walk to the Medical Examiner’s; Patrick was in his office. When his first cousin came in Patrick’s face lit up and he pointed at the coffee pot. “Just brewed,” he said, putting his pen down.

“The autopsy on Melantha Green,” said Carmine, sitting with a mug of fresh coffee. “The last of the bloodwork hadn’t come through when Kurt von Fahlendorf was kidnapped, and we’ve been on that non-stop ever since. What goes?”

“Nothing helpful,” Patrick said, pouring himself coffee. “She had amphetamine in her bloodstream, I suspect self-administered to keep awake and on top of a crushing workload. There was no other substance present. His anesthetic was crude-a clip on the jaw that probably stunned her but didn’t knock her out. She was known to have a black belt in judo, hence the clip, which wasn’t hard enough to cause any meningeal bleeding. Her death was due to asphyxiation.” Patrick sipped. “The young man was killed by someone who can shoot. The throat shot was perfect, the second bullet overkill. He used a.22 pistol.”

“No one heard the shots, yet the other apartment was tenanted and its inhabitants were actually awake-the wife was sick to the stomach,” Carmine said. “He used a silencer.”

“Must have done, but not a home-made device. I doubt the Dodo was interested in the young man. Two shots, then he went back to cleaning up after Melantha.”

“Did he wash Melantha with soap and water?”

“No, he simply wiped her down with xylene. That you know.”

“Good coffee, cuz, but bad news,” said Carmine, smiling. “Anything else on any other case?”

“No, but something else on the Dodo. I think you should go talk to Nick and Delia.”

“I just left them!”

“Sorry about that.”

“Shit!” Carmine put his half drunk coffee down. “Maybe I can catch them before they go searching their grid.”

But it was Corey he encountered in the parking lot. His lieutenant flinched, but had the sense to stop.

“You’re in big trouble, Cor.”

“I don’t see why.”

“A man on your team is dead.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“In one way, it is. Several other people noticed that Morty was depressed, and I even spoke to you about it. You sneered.”

“Now isn’t the time to have this, Carmine. I’m going to my search area right this second.”

“You’re only piling up demerits, Cor.”

“Fuck the demerits!”

Carmine watched him go, then got into his Fairlane and drove off toward the shoreline of Busquash Bay, where his list said Nick and Delia were searching on the far side of the peninsula from the Inlet and getting close to the neighboring district of Millstone, home to Delia.

He found them walking along the rocks at the base of the low Busquash cliffs, and paused to take in the sight before they knew he was in the offing. Nick had changed into shorts, a tee shirt and tennis shoes, but Delia possessed no leisure apparel in her lavish wardrobe. She was paddling along bare-legged, her miniskirt hitched up a few inches, something like a multihued crab with two pallid rear legs; her dress was marbled in bright green, orange, cyclamen and ultramarine blue.

“Hi!” he yelled. “It’s lunch time, see you in the Lobster Pot-Nick, you’re okay dressed like that!”

“What on earth do you hope to find literally foot-deep in water?” he asked when they were settled in a booth.

“Old gun emplacements,” said Delia.

“They went years ago, Deels.”

“You’d be surprised. How many have we found, Nick?”

“Four so far, east of the Carew-East Holloman boundary. Ben Cohen and his team found nine in East Holloman, on the point, mostly. The guns are all gone, the emplacements are cunning,” Nick said. “I guess no one sees them, so no one bothers about them.”

“The things you learn!” Carmine said.

Nick and Delia were ravenous, and made short work of their lobster rolls; Carmine let them eat in peace. Over coffee he broached the reason for seeking them out.

“Patsy says you know something about the Dodo.”

“No, about the kidnap,” Nick said, lighting a cigarette and inhaling luxuriously. “Tell the man, Delia.”

“We think we found the spot where the kidnappers jumped Kurt-not really important, as it offers no clues of help, but interesting. We can show you if you like.”

One hand waving for the check, Carmine looked eager. Nick and Delia piled into their unmarked and Carmine ranged his Fairlane behind them, forcing himself to a sedate pace as the two cars headed for Persimmon Street in Carew. There Nick and Delia pulled into the kerb, Carmine following suit. Once he joined them Delia pointed to the intersection with Spruce Street. Curzon Close was clearly visible two hundred yards away.

“It was here, on this corner,” Nick said. “See the skid marks? I checked, the tires are Michelin and the right size for the Porsche. Von Fahlendorf’s a good driver, he came out of the skid slowly, and left us some pattern. See here? Glass from a Porsche parking light, forensics told us. And see this? It’s blood, the same type as Kurt’s.”

“Look at these bushes,” said Delia, leading Carmine over to the corner house, where tall smoke bushes grew along the edge of the sidewalk. “They pounced when he got out of his car, and he must have reeled before he lost consciousness. Someone landed heavily in the bushes. We took photos of everything.”

“Why haven’t you mentioned this?” Carmine asked.

“Since we’re looking for him, we couldn’t see a good reason why,” said Delia. “We dealt with the forensics in case it was ever needed in the future-you had enough on your plate, boss, when this blew up.”

“How could the kidnappers stage their abduction between ten and ten-thirty on a busy street in Carew?”

“Persimmon and this side of Spruce are concealed and dampened by trees,” Nick said. “All they needed were a couple of minutes.”

“But the collision?”

“Was staged, we think. Someone stepped out in front of Kurt, he braked in a well driven skid, and when he got out of the car, they jumped him. The blood is his, whether from a head blow or the finger amputation, who knows?”

“Well done,” said Carmine. “Kurt was loaded into their car, one of the two drove the Porsche, and they accomplished whatever they had to do in two and a half hours. By one, both of them were putting the Porsche in Kurt’s garage. All they needed to do then was walk around the corner to their own vehicle. A pity Gordie Warburton went back to bed.”

“It looks like two kidnappers to me,” said Nick.

“And to me,” said Carmine. “The gall! Whoever they are, they have superb confidence in themselves.”

Mention of Gordon Warburton prompted Carmine to go and see Amanda Warburton, who was in her shop and looking well.

“I continue to enjoy a trouble-free existence,” she said.

“Did you get a museum expert to look at the glass teddy bear, Miss Warburton?”

“No,” she said, and laughed. “Even if he is as valuable as you say, Captain, he’s as much a fixture in my window as Frankie and Winston. People don’t believe that he’s priceless.”

“Business is good?”

“Very good.”

“And the twins? How are you getting on with them?”

“What a shock when they turned up! I don’t have any idea why they moved to Holloman and then didn’t tell me, except that it’s not money, I gather.” She smiled. “To answer your question, I’m on good terms with them. Perhaps they’re not ideal nephews, but now they’ve confessed that they’re down the road in Carew, they are behaving delightfully. I’ve decided to leave them in my will as my heirs, which solved a dilemma.”

He concealed his alarm. “You didn’t tell them, I hope?”

“No, Captain, I won’t do that. Let it come as a surprise-oh, thirty years from now.”

“Take care of yourself.”

“I do, honestly.” Her eyelids dropped, she looked a little inscrutable. “Hank Murray is a great help to me.”

He left carrying an image of her pretty, smiling face, and decided to see Hank Murray before he left the Busquash Mall.

Hank was dressed casually in jeans and an open-necked shirt; Carmine caught a glimpse of a sparsely hairy chest, and decided that if he himself were to wear a chest toupee, it would sport better hair than Hank Murray’s! Hank’s chest hair, he concluded, was the real thing.

“You look as if you’re going on a picnic,” he said.

Hank grinned. “No, Captain. I’ve been out searching for Professor von Fahlendorf. Captain Vasquez roped in quite a few local men to comb the vacant lots and houses of Carew. Mark Sugarman, Mason Novak and I all volunteered. Kurt was a friend.”

“How’s Miss Warburton?”

“She’s well.” Hank went red. “I see her most evenings-just dinner and a board game or cards. She and Marcia Boyce don’t have many friends, which I guess is the fate of single women working every day. It’s especially hard for Amanda, working weekends. As Tuesday is the slackest day, we both take it off, and go somewhere.”

“That’s good. Have you met the twins?”

“Pah! What poseurs!”

“Interesting word, poseur. If they present as that, what do you think they are underneath?”

“Something creepy, Captain. Or slimy-words like that. Amanda was in two minds about them, but of late she seems to be coming down on their side. They’ve managed to impress her.”

“Well, they’re blood kin after all. Maybe they’re late bloomers.” Carmine went to the door. “Keep in touch if you have any worries, Mr. Murray.”

“Any news about the bank robbery?”

Carmine shrugged, “Not a thing,” he said.

And more than that he couldn’t do.

Now it was off into Dodo territory. Mark Sugarman would probably be home.

Mark Sugarman was. He looked tired, and not a lot had gone on at the drawing board.

“Searching for Kurt?” Carmine asked.

“Yes, but also walking, Captain. If the Dodo strikes within his usual three weeks, we’re running out of time. October 15 means he’s due to pounce up to and including the presidential elections. A lot more people vote in presidential years.”

“I’m beginning to realize that.”

“An omen, huh?” Sugarman asked.

“No, not that, Mr. Sugarman. More that there’s likely to be increased foot traffic around polling stations.”

“How’s Maggie Drummond?”

“Pretty good,” Carmine said. “The Chubb psychiatrist has made a difference to all the Dodo’s victims already.”

“Tell me about it!” A look of content came over Sugarman’s attractive face. “Leonie trusts me again-she’s behaving more like her old self. I wish she’d seen Dr. Meyers earlier.”

“Better late than never, pardon my hackneyed comment.” Carmine walked over to the big windows displaying Spruce Street. “Sir, were you up last Wednesday night about half after ten?”

“I think so,” said the President of the Gentleman Walkers, looking puzzled. “I’d made supper for Leonie, and delivered her back upstairs around ten. Even after the hassle of checking all her locks, I would have been back down here by ten-thirty.”

“Did you hear the noise of a collision at the intersection of Persimmon and Spruce?”

“No, not a collision, Captain. I did hear a screech of brakes and some yelling-it happens all the time at that intersection.”

“Thank you,” said Carmine, looking pleased.

“Will you find Kurt?”

“We’re all praying so, sir.”

“Good afternoon, Frau von Fahlendorf,” said Helen at seven on Wednesday morning, October 23. “No, I am afraid not… That is unfair, ma’am! We have tied up huge resources in the search for your brother-as you would have seen for yourself if you or any member of your family had come here… No, I am not rude, I am fed up-indignant, do you understand that word? Good!… At midnight tonight, American Eastern Standard Time, Special Agent Hunter Wyatt of the FBI will telephone you on your home number and give you the details of the Swiss bank and account number, but I entreat you not to pay the ransom early! To do so won’t make any difference to his chances of surviving… Special Agent Hunter Wyatt will also forward you a written report on our activities… Thank you, ma’am. Goodbye.”

The receiver went down with a bang. “Bitch!” said Helen. “She has the hide to blame us-us! I could cheerfully kill her.”

“She’s under great stress, Helen,” Carmine soothed. “We still have two full days of search-well, one full day and a few hours. Time zones are a pain in the ass.”

Corey and Abe came in.

“Corey?” Carmine asked.

“The most suspicious things we’ve found are a few cow pats, but we still have sheds, barns and bunkers to deal with on the north side of North Rock. Old Ray Howarth has a bomb shelter, or so I’m told.”

“Actually we’ve found quite a number of bomb shelters,” said Carmine. “I never realized how paranoid some people are about The Bomb. I saw one the day before yesterday that had Persian carpets and air conditioning. It hadn’t occurred to the owner that if The Bomb went off, electric power would be cut off. He was expecting to run his shelter on mains.”

“Like my potty papa,” Delia said. “If Richard Nixon gets in, he’s moving permanently into his shelter-he’s convinced that the first Nixonian presidential action will be to push the button.”

They all rolled their eyes at each other, but the light moment faded fast.

“Abe?” Carmine asked.

“I just have to check around the outskirts of the jail,” Abe said. “Nothing so far.”

“Have you heard what Patrick found in the Porsche, guys?”

“Nothing-it’s so clean it might have come from the dealer’s showroom,” said Nick, “except that there’s some gravel wedged in the tire tracks. Nonspecific, but not the kind of gravel you’d get from a crumbling road base. No asphalt component.”

“Which says they drove the car somewhere off-road, but it could have been anywhere. Holloman is full of gravel, even has three quarries. Does it come from them?”

“Some of the uniforms checked them, but didn’t think to take samples,” Corey said. “They asked me, but I couldn’t see any virtue in sending them back to do it.”

“What color and size is it, Carmine?” Abe asked.

“Pink granite, so it’s not from our quarries. It sounds more like something you’d find in a monument mason’s yard.”

“File that in case you see it. Incidentally, Joey Tasco, who had that section to check, told me that none of the quarries had a septic tank. They use chemical toilets, so don’t go back there, Corey. Keep on into virgin territory.”

It might have been because Carmine said “septic tank”, but when Abe Goldberg, Liam Connor and Tony Cerutti reached the West Holloman industrial estate, Abe wasted a good hour going back to check that they hadn’t left an old, buried septic tank unexplored. They had not; Liam, who understood how Abe’s mind worked, did not grudge him the wasted time, but Tony, younger and a more restless type, was inclined to grumble until Liam shut him up by treading heavily on his foot.

They had emerged from the streets and functioning factories into a relatively vast area that had been demolished in the aftermath of the Second World War with the intention of building a prison. Beyond it sat Holloman Jail, which was a jail, not a prison. Short-term, that is, lacking the architecture and facilities necessary for the high security confinement of intractable criminals. These were sent up-state, but from time to time new noises were made in Hartford to go ahead with Holloman Prison, an institution no resident of Holloman wanted. Bad enough to have a jail!

The area did not resemble a war zone, unless that war be an atomic one; there were no shells of buildings, just gigantic heaps of stony detritus that rose and fell like the foothills of a red rectangular mountain range, the jail.

“We need a minidozer with a blade,” Liam said. “A bucket as well, but not attached. If there’s anything under the edge of one of these piles, we’d never find it unless we have something to move the crap around, but a bulldozer might be too heavy.”

“Good idea,” said Abe, who was feeling a little dizzy. “I’ll radio the Captain, see if he can arrange a miniature dozer.”

Tony Cerutti produced a set of blueprints from the back seat of their car. “These are the plans of the mooted prison as they saw it in 1948,” he said, spreading the huge sheets on the hood and anchoring them with hunks of old brick.

“Did they actually get as far as starting to build?” Abe asked, staring fascinated at several pentagons connected by thick passageways. “Make a good Meccano project.” His sons were avidly into Meccano, and buying it was keeping him poor.

Came a squawk from the radio. When Abe returned to the plans he looked content. “We’ll have a little dozer here in about an hour, blade attached, bucket in reserve, backhoe just in case. In the meantime, guys, we walk. Liam, you go toward the east end of the jail. Tony, take the middle. I’m going west.”

Tony laughed. “Yeah, a long time ago!”

Liam and Tony set off; still conscious of an alien dizziness, Abe lingered to take another look at the plans of the west side. He didn’t know why he felt so strange, except that in some way it was important. Then the headache hit, and Abe fell to his knees.

Two walls were full, Kurt had moved on to his third wall; he had sharpened ten of his pencils down to stumps, but the last five were the longest and best, deliberately saved. His mouth was utterly dry and his ears rang on an internal sound, but the excitement of putting his life’s work on his tomb walls had not faded. Egyptian pharaohs were reduced to pictures of their lazy existence, interspersed with an occasional battle, but not one of them could equal his feat! Not one of them could display a life so filled with intellectual incident and triumph.

The bucket his captors had left him for his bodily functions had not filled, but it stank. Though the room was cold, Kurt had sacrificed his coat to throw over it, blanket the stench. They said a human being got used to smells, but so far he hadn’t. At least the chill meant that he lost no moisture through sweat, but Kurt was conscious that it was becoming difficult to stand. His back ached intolerably and he was forced to lie down at increasingly frequent intervals, but the work went on.

Time for a break; he sat gazing around the closely written walls, the smile on his lips spontaneous. Thank God for work! What if he hadn’t owned the mentality or the professional training to occupy himself through what he was sure had mounted into days? How would someone who processed copies of the same form for a living manage to survive this imprisonment ending in death without going mad? He believed devoutly in a properly Catholic God, but few people had the kind of mind that could dwell upon God day in and day out, especially with death as its conclusion. That seemed a contradiction, but no man was ever ready for death unless he were a saint, and Kurt knew he was no saint; modern men could never be saints because modern living negated the concept.

But I, thought Kurt, head spinning, have never harmed the world, even by my nuclear research. The damage is done… He lay flat out, his head too heavy to keep aloft, a mist swirling before his eyes. Slowly they closed; he slept, woke with a jerk, saw the third wall almost pristine, got to his feet and picked up the equations where he had left them. His body was failing, yes, but his mind was still capable of seeing mathematical truth.

I wish, he thought, pausing, that I could hear some Bach one last time!

The headache disappeared as suddenly as it had come. The plans, the plans, Abe thought in a quiet frenzy. A number of straight, parallel lines traveled from the prison itself toward a square that said in tiny print that it was a sewage holding tank. Much larger than a septic tank, this thing was the size of a Holloman PD drunks’ tank cell.

Suddenly Abe stiffened. His skin began to prickle in a way it never had, and he understood. This is the first time I’ve looked for a living, fully grown man! The life in him is big enough to affect me! I am staring at a prison-a real prison! They built this holding tank, they probably put in some of the inlets, the outlet, the vent-it’s there, under a thin layer of rubble. He’s there! Kurt von Fahlendorf is there!

Abe had a whistle on a cord around his neck; he put it to his lips and blew a shrill blast. Liam and Tony came at a run, while a guard toting a rifle on his back leaned on the railing of a watchtower atop the jail wall and followed their antics.

“We have to find the sewage holding tank,” Abe said, “and I’m not waiting for machinery. But first we find the gravel-the tank won’t be far from the pink gravel.”

A more confused directive than they were used to from Abe, but neither Liam nor Tony misunderstood. All three men went in different westerly directions.

“Here!” Tony shouted, appearing around a huge hillock.

And there it was, an expanse of pink rubble about a hundred feet long and fifty feet wide. Beyond it lay more flat ground, but smothered in ragged pieces of concrete.

“They stopped on the pink because this concrete’s sharper,” Liam said. “What happens now, Abe?”

“We look for pipes or vents,” Abe said, the master at this kind of work. “Watch around your feet, you won’t see anything from a distance. My vibes say von Fahlendorf is alive, which means the vent is open and you’ll see it. You remember that rain storm we had last Monday and cursed? Well, it might have shifted things hereabouts, so look. Look!”

Abe found it, a round four-inch hole that originally had been covered by a concrete slab that had slipped off it in the brief but torrential rain; the signs were unmistakable, for whoever had put the little slab in place was no construction worker. It had probably never done its intended job, to block the ingress of air.

“A gap is all that’s needed,” Abe said, that terrible daze vanishing just as the headache had.

The little bulldozer arrived, but by then Tony had raced to the jail and phoned in their find to Carmine; soon the wasteland in front of the jail was crawling with cops and machinery.

“He’s alive!” came Patrick O’Donnell’s voice from below.

A cheer went up, men hugged each other.

“Carmine, you have to see what’s down there,” said Liam in an awed voice, emerging.

Carmine squeezed through the trapdoor in the holding tank roof and climbed down the few steps of a ladder to join a jubilant Abe. Cameras were flashing constantly.

“Holy shits!” Carmine whispered, staring at the many hundreds of penciled equations. “What the hell is it?”

“The unified field theory, for all I know,” said Abe. “The work, Carmine, the work! Von Fahlendorf can’t have the original, but he’ll have to have photographic copies. What a feat!”

“How many Masses have you committed me to, John?” Carmine asked the Commissioner an hour later in his office.

“Fifteen, the old-fashioned way.”

“I’ll wear my knees out!”

“So will I. So will Mrs. Tesoriero, God bless her. She’s been praying night and day. When I commit you to Masses the old-fashioned way, Carmine, the cause is very urgent. But you and Mrs. Tesoriero always come through. Miraculous!”

“It’s Abe Goldberg comes through, and he’s Jewish.”

“That guy is spooky, I admit. How does he do it?”

“He doesn’t know. He says he gets a feeling, but not always.”

“A pity cops can’t claim rewards. Without Abe Goldberg, von Fahlendorf would be dead and ten million bucks would have wound up in a Swiss bank account.” Silvestri assumed his cat-got-the-cream expression. “I did explain to Frau von Fahlendorf that she could show her deep appreciation for the excellent work of Lieutenant Goldberg by setting up a college fund for Abe’s sons. Really bright boys, from what I hear.”

“I forgive you, and I’ll do the Masses the old-fashioned way, down on my knees instead of a donation.”

“That means all three of us will be in St. Bernard’s for the next fifteen mornings. Oh, my arthur-itis!”

“We’ll never nail his kidnappers,” Carmine said.

“I know. Tell me why it’s a German operation.”

Carmine leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees. “Too unnecessarily complicated, John. Like a German motor-over-engineered. Americans would have used a car trunk, whereas these bozos went to the trouble of finding that sewage holding tank. Who got the prison plans from County Services? Why stand out in the open with surveyor’s gear to pinpoint its location? The way they see the world tells them that complicated is better. The risk taking isn’t seen as risk taking, but as normal activities. They’re too obsessive to be American kidnappers. Simple is better.”

“I do see what you mean.” Silvestri sighed. “In which case, we haven’t the hope of a snowflake in hell of nailing them.”

“The important thing is that we got von Fahlendorf back in one piece, and the ransom wasn’t paid. So now I’m free to ask questions and expect answers.”

“A minute ago you were the soul of pessimism, Carmine. What’s changed inside that minute?”

“I’ve just realized that I have a weapon, John. The adorable Helen MacIntosh-or, at least, Kurt thinks she’s adorable. I happen to know that she has an income of a million dollars a year, so a trip to Munich isn’t going to bust her bank. Kurt has ideas of marrying her. What if I could persuade Helen to talk Kurt into making a visit home with his fiancée on his arm?”

“You devious schemer!”

“She wouldn’t like committing herself maritally to Kurt, but she’d wear it for two reasons. The first, she’s quite cold-hearted in a MacIntosh way, so it won’t grieve her overmuch to break the engagement on her return from Munich, and the second, that she’s panting to run her own case. If she has three or four days in Munich, she has a chance to find Kurt’s kidnappers. In fact, if she takes Kurt into her confidence, she needn’t promise to marry him in reality. He’s livid enough to co-operate.”

“You get more devious by the second!”

“I do, don’t I? Well, think about it, John. Two shits we don’t know had us running in circles and spending a lot of money we’ll never see again. The von Fahlendorfs will keep their ten million, but the several million finding Kurt cost us-goodbye!”

“Do it, Carmine, do it.”

“Will you be in it, Helen?” Carmine asked his trainee the next morning. “I know you’d have to fund your trip yourself, but would you consider the expense worth it if you could find the kidnappers?”

Her eyes were shining. “Captain Delmonico, I’d walk up the Spanish Steps on my knees to get iron-clad evidence on Kurt’s kidnappers! And he’ll co-operate, I know he will. He was a little disappointed when no member of his family was there to see him come out of his cell, but Dagmar managed to sweet-talk him around. In fact, she seems to have sweet-talked him so efficiently that he’s already muttering about taking a trip home to check up on the folks.”

“Then you have a case, Helen, that entirely depends on you for a solution. If you can’t crack it, no one can.” Carmine nodded at a chair. “Sit down, sit down! It’s going to take some time to organize. In the meantime, what have you deduced?”

“They did their homework, sir, that’s foremost. They must have known that green card holders have fingerprints on record in Washington, D.C. They knew enough to get the prison plans from County Services archives. They knew how much money was going to be freed up as a trust for the grandchildren, and the date it was happening. They knew enough to allow a week for the gathering of the ransom, for no other reason, I believe, than that they assumed people like the FBI would expect a week for such a huge ransom. In actual fact, they could have made their time span an hour. But that would have pointed toward Germany and away from America. A lot of their information about how things are done here came from movies and television.” Her brow creased. “However, there are anomalies, sir. The air vent wasn’t closed firmly enough to survive a downpour, which says the villains are not familiar with downpours. Or it may be saying that one of the two didn’t really want to see Kurt die. He was left water that would have lasted longer if he hadn’t guzzled some and spilled some. Was it a form of torture or a hope that Kurt would be found before he died? One of the two is a real hater, Captain, but the other is a weakling. And which one left a bucket? You don’t leave a bucket for someone you expect to die, though I don’t think the bucket had anything to do with Kurt’s living or dying. I believe that whoever left it knows Kurt personally, and didn’t want him to endure the indignity of looking at his own excrement. If there is a personal link, then both kidnappers know Kurt. The weakling is under the domination of the hater, but doesn’t like how he or she feels. It may be that cutting Kurt’s finger off tipped the balance, hence the water and the bucket. The hater can’t have realized their significance, or maybe the weakling threw a tantrum, as weaklings can.” She stopped. “How did I do?”

“Very well, but I’m a pussycat,” said Carmine with a grin. “It’s Kurt you have to fool, Helen.”

“When do you think we should go?”

Carmine frowned. “Today is the twenty-fourth, and the Dodo is due to attack Tuesday or Wednesday of election week. Provided he’s on schedule, you have time to go before, though I’m not sure what his schedule is going to be now he’s killing.”

“Yes, if it’s two weeks, he’s due next week,” Helen said. “If we go tomorrow, Friday, we can be back by Monday night.”

“Passport? What if you need a visa?”

“Sometimes it’s handy to be my father’s daughter. I can get whatever I need, and Kurt’s all set up.”

“That doesn’t leave you much time for investigations at this end, Helen.”

“I have this afternoon. It’s enough.”

“You realize you’re off the Dodo until I can close the kidnappers, even if the kidnappers are never arraigned?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Then I won’t delay you any further.”

The Captain’s departure left Helen pondering her logistics; this afternoon she had to buy two airline tickets to Munich, and that meant Lufthansa, not TWA; then she had to find out how the kidnappers got hold of the Holloman prison plans. She saw her way about the travel almost immediately, and picked up the phone to dial a number she knew better than her own-her father’s. But not to speak to him. She wanted his secretary. Ten minutes of cajoling later, and it would all be done for her, though she still had one thing to do on that front; she called Tiffany’s and had them send the dear woman a pair of ruby earrings.

Next, a call to Kurt, home from the hospital.

“Darling,” she cooed, “how about I bring over Chinese tonight and we have a quiet evening?”

“Helen, yes, please!”

“Six o’ clock, with a bottle of Moët?”

“Yes, please!”

Good, that was organized. Slinging her bag over her shoulder, Helen set out for a different part of the County Services building to find out who had obtained a copy of the prison plans.

After drawing a blank at three of the five sections holding those plans, she hit paydirt at Correctional Institutions, the new euphemism for places where people were incarcerated apart from society in general. It included juvenile detention centers and the parole system, but it also housed penal archives.

A middle-aged clerk manned the enquiry counter, a mournful fellow who, thought Helen, would remember nothing of the people fronting up to his desk. But when he beheld this beautiful young woman in her immaculate, tasteful clothes, every memory cell in his brain opened in a flood of information. Shabby lawyers and desperate parents did nothing for him, but a girl with stunning apricot hair that never came out of a dye bottle-!

“The lady who asked for blueprints of the prison plans? Oh, yes, I remember her, officer. Who couldn’t?”

“What made her memorable, apart from asking for those particular blueprints?” Helen asked, smiling seductively.

“Well, she was such a lady. Beautiful clothes in a maroon shade that suited her. She even wore a hat and gloves, both in the same shade of maroon. The gloves were finest French kid, and the hat screamed Paris. Not vulgar clothes, like modern trash,” the clerk said, warming to his theme. “Her suit looked like Chanel or Balenciaga, and her shoes were Charles Jourdan.”

“You’re amazingly conversant with women’s fashions, sir.”

He simpered. “My wife is a keen follower of fashion, Miss. She and I design clothes as a recreation.”

“I wish more of our witnesses did! What was her face like?”

“Hard to see-her hat had a maroon net veil that covered the top half of her face, and it had little furry bobbles on it. Stylish!”he exclaimed, sighing. “Her lipstick was maroon and didn’t really follow the outline of her lips-she preferred being in fashion to anatomical accuracy, I guess. Her hair was a light brown and beautifully cared for.”

“Did she have an accent?”

“Yes. Foreign, more northern European than southern.”

“Like German?”

“Exactly!”

“Would you know her again, sir?”

“By her clothes, anyone would.”

“Who is the best-dressed woman in the world?”

He looked amazed at Helen’s ignorance. “The Duchess of Windsor, even if she is getting old.”

“What about Audrey Hepburn?”

“Can’t hold a candle to Her Highness,” he said fervently.

Hmm, thought Helen, leaving Correctional Institutions. So a very haute couture woman collected the plans! A German accent, as we suspected. No real description of her face. We have two kinds of cases on our files at the moment. One is prompted by sex, and the other by greed. So far greed hasn’t led to murder, since Kurt survived, but why do I think it will? I mustn’t forget the glass teddy bear, a reason for greed too. And nothing is what it seems! The German woman isn’t poor-that funny little guy knew enough about fashions to put what she was wearing at about five thousand dollars. Per annum a Chubb technician lives on that.

She still had some time, and two Holloman watchtower guards had information to offer.

“A man and a woman appeared several weeks ago with surveyor’s gear and measured up the vacant ground outside,” said the first guard. “They concentrated on the gravel area and the ground beyond it. Must have been there most of a day.”

“Can you remember the date?”

“The week of September 16 to 20.”

“Did you put the glasses on them?”

“No need for the binocs, officer. They were two surveyors in coveralls with city lettering on the back. One was a man and one was a woman. Women do all kinds of jobs these days.”

“I saw one of them baby bulldozers pushing rubble around,” said the second guard. “The date was September 30-I know because it was the last day of the month and it fell on a Monday. My wife works at Chubb, only gets paid twelve times a year, on the last day of the month. Lousy system!”

“Yes, Chubb workers do it hard on long months. What do you think the baby bulldozer was doing?”

The guard shrugged. “We figured they were going to start building the prison, except no one heard nothing on the grapevine. And after that one day, no one never came back.”

So, said Helen to herself as she unearthed her latest notebook, I now know that the kidnappers went to considerable pains to locate a cell for Kurt, and that they made their on-site preparations so far back that no one would associate two surveyors and a baby bulldozer with Kurt von Fahlendorf’s disappearance. On the night they drove in quietly and without headlights; the cars were hidden from the jail by mounds of rubble, and they’re undoubtedly not the only cars to use the area-it’s a great place for steaming up the windows. Kurt was unconscious when they arrived, and they were probably not there longer than ten minutes. Holloman Jail isn’t a high security institution. Its wall guards are slapdash unless there’s genuine trouble, when they snap to attention efficiently enough, the Captain says.

One of the two surveyors was a woman; women occupied all kinds of jobs these days, the first guard said. Indeed they do, sir! Look at me.

Her journal was open, her colored pens arranged; Helen began to write, quite a lot of it in purple for her own theories.

At six o’clock she rang Kurt’s bell, laden with Chinese food and a jeroboam of French champagne; she had decided that the huge bottle was more seductive than several ordinary ones, which had to be opened-a noisy procedure with champagne. The jeroboam meant one kept on pouring from an open vessel.

Her first impression was that Kurt looked wonderful, rather than someone who had suffered over five days of imprisonment, most of it without water, all of it without food, and enduring pain as well as blood loss from a hacked off finger. His pale blue eyes were dancing with life; even his flaxen hair sparkled, and his tanned skin was smooth and supple.

It was no hardship to kiss those full red lips; Helen was tall enough not to need to stand on tiptoe for a near six-footer, and fitted her mouth into his with pleasure, if not with passion. Why wasn’t there any passion? That was something she wondered about a great deal without so far finding an answer. In all her life, she reflected, no man had ever stirred her to passion. She had never had an orgasm; M.M.’s children would have died sooner than masturbate. Auto-eroticism was hideously shameful; it was, besides, unnecessary. Somewhere in the world lay that elusive state called a climax. She could wait.

“Ice bucket, if it will fit,” she said, breaking the kiss. “Are you hungry? Shall we eat now, or heat the food up later and eat then?”

“Later,” he said, busying himself with an oversized ice bucket and then opening the bottle. “Is this designed to get us drunk?” he asked. “If so, I’m all for it, my beautiful Helen. I miss the days when you wore your hair loose, therefore I have no love for your police career. So I shall get you drunk and undo it.”

“Glass for glass,” she said with a challenge in her voice.

He poured; they toasted with clinking glasses.

“I know they’re going out of style, but I much prefer these saucers to the flutes,” he said, savoring the wine. “Neither you nor I has a big nose, admittedly, so we could drink comfortably from flutes, but think of those who do have big noses!”

“Good lord!” she exclaimed. “You have a sense of humor!”

“Of course I do.”

“Well hidden.” She sipped. “Oh, I do love champagne! And, Kurt, I can’t think of a better reason to wallow in a saucer than celebrating your liberation. You look so good!”

“I feel good,” he said.

“What went through your mind during those nearly six days?”

The handsome face hardly changed. “My life’s work. I had no room for anything else, and I never did finish. They have promised me a photographed wall-I do not know how else to say it, but I gather they connect each small photograph to those all around it in a way which makes it look like wallpaper. Then I can finish, and I will. I had never realized how important it is to have every single step of my research mathematically expressed as a continuum. I had reached within my last year, and so far I now know I have made no errors in my thinking. When my results are spread over three dozen papers, often repeated to make a paper legible, it is easy to lose track. To miss that one little step makes sense of it all.” The face had grown animated, enthusiastic. “If there are errors, they are in this last year of research, but I do not think so. I am right, Helen, I am right!”

“Well, at least you’ve shown me where your priorities are.”

“In the proper place, yes.”

“So it wasn’t the specter of death loomed largest?”

“Yes-and no. I just wanted to get my work completed before I died. Work was more important, even if death was certain.”

“No wonder your colleagues admire you so much.”

“You exaggerate,” he said.

“No, I don’t. I’ve spoken to them throughout this business, and every last one of your colleagues is consumed with admiration for your passion-” She stopped, looked astonished. “Of course! That’s where the pass ion is! In our work!”

“You have lost me.”

“I know, and I’m going to leave you lost. Drink up, Kurt.”

Three glasses, she decided, were optimum for her purposes: Helen struck.

“Do you feel vengeful?” she asked as he took off her shoe and stocking; she had come garbed for seduction, no pantyhose.

“At this moment,” he said, dunking her forefoot in his champagne, “I am more concerned with limiting my drinking by sucking champagne off your perfect toes.”

She squealed and giggled. “Kurt, don’t! I’m ticklish!”

“Wriggle away. I love it,” he mumbled.

“Okay, but only for five minutes.”

At the end of the five minutes she counted him down to zero, then grabbed his ears and pulled his head up.

“Ow!”

“If you had longer hair, I could use that, but a crew cut means it has to be your ears. No, sit up, Kurt, and pay attention to me! I want to be serious for a moment.”

He obeyed, curiosity aroused. “Okay, my lovely Helen.”

“Do you feel vengeful about your kidnapping?”

“Yes, natürlich. Not so much for the inconvenience they caused me as the grief and anxiety they caused my family.”

“Do you have any ideas or theories about who did it?”

He looked puzzled. “No, not really. I was too consumed with writing my work on the walls.”

“I have some ideas and theories.”

He had reached for the jeroboam, but jerked his hand away. “No, I must not drink more. Tell me, Helen.”

“Captain Carmine Delmonico isn’t just another small-city policeman, Kurt. He’s a fine detective-fine enough for me to choose the Holloman PD for my training as a detective. He came to conclusions that I share. The first is that your kidnappers are German, not American.”

She had caught him; he was staring at her, confounded. “But that cannot be! German?”

“Accept the fact that when it comes to crime, you’re a very ordinary guy,” Helen said. “Delmonico is the expert and I’m learning to be one. Believe me when I say that American kidnappers would have behaved differently from yours. And if they’re German, by extension they know you personally. Otherwise they wouldn’t have fixed on you, we think. With Baader-Meinhof running around in Germany, local kidnapping thinking would be going in quite a different direction. There’s also the fact that they knew when this trust fund for the grandchildren was going to be set up, and, compounding that, they have the pull to open an account with a prestigious Swiss bank. Riff-raff they’re not.”

“Josef,” said Kurt in the back of his throat.

“As to that, we don’t know. We’re not in a position to do any detective work in West Germany. Unless…”

“Unless what?” Kurt asked, attention pricking.

“Unless you conspire with me in a scheme that may not get any hard evidence, but will identify them.”

“I am interested.”

“First off, when are you due back at work?”

“Whenever I feel up to it, Dean Gulrajani said. I said, at once.” Kurt grimaced. “I need to finish my walls.”

“How about next Tuesday? “

“Why? That’s four full days away.”

“Four full days during which you and I can fly to Munich and I can do some investigating.” Her eyes, a much deeper blue than his, caught and held them. “I know your family would love to see you. It’s so small that there was no one to send here while you were missing, damn it, so I know they’d love to see you. And I know that you’re always telling Dagmar that you want to marry me. Well, I don’t say I will, but I am willing to go to Munich with you pretending to be your fiancée. It gives me a perfect reason to be with you. While we’re there, you can manufacture plenty of excuses to be alone with your family for hours at a time. I can use those hours snooping, but not in a way that will alert the Munich cops. On that, you have to trust me.”

Kurt had listened the way highly intelligent people did, processing the content of what Helen said as she said it; now that she was ended, he had already made up his mind.

“That is an excellent scheme,” he said, smiling, “but I am afraid we have left our run too late. Plane bookings have to be made, and tomorrow’s plane may be full.”

“Plane bookings are made, the tickets are in my bag, and the plane isn’t full in first class,” said Helen.

First class?” He looked aghast. “Helen, that is wasteful! I do not mind traveling coach.”

“You stingy old Scrooge! You’re a rich man, you can afford first class.”

“It is a principle,” he said stiffly.

“Then isn’t it lucky I’m paying? Miser! That’s a good reason not to marry you.”

“You have your own money, it would not be a problem.”

“Does this mean that if we were to visit Paris, you wouldn’t take me to the Tour d’ Argent?”

“Most assuredly,” he said with that typical, slightly wrong choice of phrase. “Paris is full of restaurants just as good but far less expensive.”

“I hereby serve you notice, Kurt, that if in future we ever need to fly together, I’ll be in first class and you in coach.”

“I do not understand you, Helen.”

“You don’t have to. Will you call Dagmar first thing tomorrow morning and tell her that we’re coming for the weekend?”

“Of course. And, Helen?”

“Yes?”

“It is an excellent scheme.”

“You mustn’t tell any of them, even Dagmar.”

“I understand that. She is wonderfully loyal, but some of that loyalty is given to Josef. Were it not, she would have sent him packing when she found out about his industrial espionage.”

“Good. Shall I heat the food?”

“I think so. Your news has stimulated me to hunger.”

“I’ll need a car,” she said later, as they ate.

“You can use my Porsche.”

“I might have known you’d have one stashed over there!”

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