Simple Genius

Chapter 76

Toby Rucker called Horatio back while he was packing up. He’d been successful, he’d told the psychologist.

“Around the time you’re talking about, a car was found abandoned about an hour’s drive from here, up in the Smoky Mountains. I was just a freelance reporter at the time, but after reading the story from the archives I remember it fairly well.”

“Who was the car registered to?”

“A William Joyner, sergeant in the Army. He was assigned to the recruitment office they used to have down here. This was back in the late Seventies.”

“And what happened to him?”

“Nobody knows,” Rucker said. “They found the car, but not him. Local police investigated, and the Army sent its people down, but they never did uncover anything.”

“Was Joyner married?”

“Nope. He was in his late twenties. Joined the Army at eighteen. Fought in Vietnam, stayed in the military and had been back in the States about six years when he disappeared.”

Horatio said hesitantly, “Any romantic involvement? Girlfriend?”

“Nothing in the archives about that. Why, you know different?”

“No,” Horatio said quickly.

“Can I ask what your interest in this is? South didn’t fill me in on that.”

“Just call me a curious soul. So the investigation simply hit a dead end?”

“It often does when you can’t turn up a body. Maybe Joyner got tired of the Army and found a better opportunity somewhere else and went AWOL. It happens.”

Horatio thanked the man and clicked off. It looked like William Joyner had had an affair with Frank Maxwell’s wife and then disappeared. His body, assuming he was dead, had never been found. What had Michelle seen all those years ago that had damaged her so badly? Horatio knew the only place he would get those answers was from Michelle herself. Even if her conscious mind had long since buried the memory, he also knew her subconscious would never forget it.

Sean and Michelle pinched some tools from the garage and hid them in a bag. They walked up to the mansion and explained to the guard there that they had come for Horatio. “We’re clearing out, like Champ said to.”

The guard let them through and Michelle and Sean raced up the stairs to the top floor and down the hall toward the room that Sean had first stayed in. Going inside the room, they stopped in front of the wall where Viggie had calculated the secret room, if it existed, would be located.

Sean said, “There has to be a door somewhere, but we don’t have time to find it.” Attacking the wall with their tools, they methodically cut a large hole in it. Shining a flashlight through Sean peered in the hole. “Damn!”

“What is it?”

“You’ll see,” he replied. “Hurry!”

With renewed vigor they attacked the wall. Soon they stepped through a large hole and stared at walls of electronic devices. On the other side of the wall there appeared to be a door. Sean pointed at it. “It’s accessed from the other room, the one that was dead-bolted.”

There was a bank of TV screens against one wall that was showing the interior of all the huts.

“That’s Hut Number One,” Sean said, pointing to one screen.

“And Champ’s Hut Number Two,” Michelle said, pointing to another screen.

She motioned to a bank of computer screens against another wall. Streams of numbers were flowing across all of them.

“They’re secretly recording the data on the computers in Champ’s hut,” Sean exclaimed.

“So Len Rivest was right. There is a spy at Babbage Town, an electronic one,” Michelle said. She glanced up at a red light blinking on a device on one wall. “Oh, shit, is that what I think it is?” she cried out.

They plunged through the hole and ran toward the stairs as the silent alarm burned red.

“What about Horatio?” Michelle called out.

Sean stopped dead, turned back and raced down another corridor. He pounded on Horatio’s door. When Horatio opened it Sean grabbed him and hustled him down the hall.

“Why are we running?” Horatio puffed.

“Avoiding death,” Michelle snapped.

At that, the little psychologist put on an enviable burst of speed.

“How are we getting out of here?” Michelle asked. “The front entrance is guarded.”

“By boat,” Sean answered. “Come on!”

The three made their way quickly down to the boathouse catching only two glimpses of guards along the way and neither one seemed to know about the break-in at the secret room.

“Are we sure that silent alarm was even working?” Michelle said.

“Should we call Sheriff Hayes?” Horatio suggested.

“I’m not trusting anyone right now,” Sean replied firmly.

They reached the boathouse and Sean broke open the storage shed, grabbed the keys for the Formula boat, lowered the lift and they were soon in the water and drifting down the York on idle throttle with their running lights off.

“Keep a lookout,” Sean warned.

Michelle seemed puzzled.

“What’s the matter?” Sean asked as he looked at her from the captain’s chair.

“Why did Viggie come down to the boathouse, get in a kayak and paddle out into the river?”

“You said she didn’t say why.”

“We’d come down here once before and gone out on the kayak. She said it was one of the best times she’d ever had. Then we raced back to the house after making a bet: If I beat her she had to talk to me about codes and blood. I did win, she got a little ticked off and started playing the song crazy, but she did play it.”

“So?”

“So why did she come back to the river?” she asked again.

Horatio warned, “It’s a little dangerous to try and figure out what Viggie was thinking, Michelle.”

“Why do I think she was trying to tell me something? Why do I think she was trying to get me to come down to the dock?” Michelle stood there looking across the water at Camp Peary. “Something else was really odd. Viggie told me this story out of the blue.”

“What story?”

“That she knew that Alan Turing had killed himself by eating a poisoned apple. She told me how it reminded her of the Snow White story. You know the wicked old queen turns into a hag, takes a boat down the river and tricks Snow White into eating the poisoned apple and Snow White almost died. Like Viggie almost died on the river. She said something like whoever holds the apple is definitely powerful. Why would she tell me that?”

“I don’t know, but how does that help us?” Sean said.

Michelle suddenly exclaimed, “Omigod! Boat? Apple?” She raced to the Formula boat’s stern, leaned over and stared down at the name stenciled on the transom: “The Big Apple,” she read.

“The Big Apple as in New York,” Sean said.

“No, the apple as in Snow White,” Michelle corrected. “Come on, we have to tear this boat apart.”

“Why?” Horatio asked.

“Just help me! Help me.”

An hour later, the three of them sat in the stern seats staring at it. The rolled-up paper had been hidden in the enclosed head of the boat, behind spare rolls of toilet paper in a storage compartment.

Michelle said, “She must’ve come down here that day to hide the document. She probably planned to leave me another clue or maybe just bring the document to me like she did the others if I said the magic words. Only she never got the chance.”

Horatio added, “And the fact that she thought she needed a hiding place suggests she was afraid.”

“Well, her fears turned out to be well founded, didn’t they?” Michelle said bitterly.

“It’s old,” Sean said, as he held the document. “Second World War old. This must be what Henry Fox aka Heinrich Fuchs gave to Monk Turing when he visited him in Germany.”

“It’s a map,” Horatio said, studying it.

“Of Camp Peary or what it used to be when the Navy ran it. I recognize the topography from the map in South Freeman’s office,” Michelle added.

Sean pointed at a line that ran from near the river’s shore into the heart of the facility. “The only thing is there’s no inlet there. The map must be wrong.”

“It’s not wrong if the line isn’t delineating an inlet of water,” Michelle countered.

“A road then.”

She turned the document over. There was written the initials “H.F.”

“Heinrich Fuchs,” Horatio said.

“And there’s writing down here, but it’s in German.”

“Look over there,” Sean said, pointing to fresh writing done in another hand.

Michelle added, “It’s in English. Maybe Monk Turing’s. Look, there are compass points, directions, everything.”

“Right, but to what?”

Michelle flipped the map back over. “To that line, it has to be. Wait a minute. Sean, if you’re right, Fuchs escaped from Camp Peary.”

“Okay.”

“So how did he do it?”

“I don’t know. I guess the best way was to get to the river. If he went by road or even through the fields and forest the scent dogs could follow him. Water nearly always makes a clean escape, but you have to get to it first. And I’m sure they had a lot of guards back then.”

“I’m sure they did, above ground,” she said.

“Above ground?”

“Sean, that line may represent a tunnel, right into Camp Peary. Or in Heinrich Fuch’s case, a tunnel right out of Camp Peary, and freedom. A tunnel is a pretty popular way of breaking out of prison.”

“But why would Monk go to all that trouble to get a map of a tunnel leading into Camp Peary? He was killed.”

“They didn’t kill him in the tunnel. They must have caught him after he got out of the tunnel. They might not know anything about it.”

“That doesn’t answer why he would risk going in the tunnel in the first place.”

Horatio spoke up. “Maybe Fuchs told him about something there. Something located at Camp Peary. Something, I don’t know, something valuable.”

“This all sounds crazy, Michelle, but the discovery of this map provides us with one very critical thing: a way to get into Camp Peary.”

“So you really do think Viggie’s there?”

“Even if she isn’t, we might be able to find out something important. Important enough to use it as leverage with those people so they’ll release Viggie.”

“But what if I’m wrong and they do know about the tunnel?”

Sean looked at the other two solemnly as he carefully folded up the map. “Then I’m afraid we’re dead.”