The Blackbird

Seventeen

It was a long rustic room with a high cathedral ceiling and with blazing fireplaces at both ends. Moose heads and color panoramas of mountain lakes decorated the walls, and fur rugs were scattered here and there on the floor and furniture. Multiracial groups of men were clustered, standing and seated, around the two fireplaces, leaving the center of the room, into which Grofield and the others now came, unpopulated.

Some people turned their heads when the door opened and the new group came in, but then they returned to their hot drinks and quiet conversations. All except one short and very fat man in a maroon uniform with gold piping and many, many medals clinking together on the chest and a long sword hanging down from his left side, who came trundling over from the fireplace to the right, arms outstretched for a bear hug. “Grofield!” he shouted, in melodramatic Spanish-accented enthusiasm. “The man who saved my life!” A few others turned to watch, attracted by the shout, while the fat man rushed up and embraced Grofield, burying his face in Grofield’s chest, wafting upward the aromas of food and brandy and perspiration.

“Hello, General,” Grofield said, struggling to keep his balance. Apparently the General didn’t remember that the only other time he and Grofield had been in each other’s area they hadn’t exactly become fast friends. That had been on the General’s yacht, and the General had been spending his days in bed, recuperating from a bullet in the chest.

But if the General now wanted to believe that Grofield was a long-lost buddy, it was perfectly all right. No harm done. So Grofield said, “It’s good to see you again, General. All recovered?”

“Of course!” the General cried, releasing Grofield and stepping back to pound himself on the chest. “Can a pig kill General Pozos? Nonsense!” He spied Marba then, beside Grofield, and shouted, “You know this man! Didn’t I send him to you in Puerto Rico?”

“You certainly did,” Marba said. “And he was a pleasure to watch.”

The General lowered his head and stared meaningfully at Marba through his eyebrows. In a completely different tone he said, “We must talk.”

“No doubt,” Marba said drily.

“Your Colonel is a very stubborn man.”

“I agree,” Marba said. “But I don’t believe we should discuss business in front of our friend Grofield.”

“Don’t mind me,” Grofield said.

The General looked at Grofield. The happy reunion was over, and the General’s eyes were cold and impatient. “You will go now,” he said.

Marba said, “I’ll have someone show you to your room.” He turned to one of the black men who’d come in with them and spoke to him in what sounded like the same language he and Vivian Kamdela had used together in the hansom cab. The other man nodded, and gestured to Grofield to come with him.

“See you later, General,” Grofield said.

The General nodded brusquely, impatient for Grofield to be gone.

Grofield followed the black man away from there. They crossed the room and went through a doorway into a library lined with books and warmed by another huge fireplace. A few people sat around reading books, and didn’t glance up as Grofield and his guide passed through.

The library was followed by a hall, which was followed by a door to the outside world. Feet had worn a path in the snow, a long, parabolic curve to a neighboring low building. The entrance was at one end of the building, and the interior was a long hall lined with doors. It looked like a fifth-rate motel, with wall partitions of cheap plasterboard, a floor of black linoleum apparently laid directly on plywood, and a ceiling of blank wooden panels. A row of fluorescent lights gave illumination.

The doors even had numbers on them, starting with 123 on Grofield’s left and 124 on his right. The numbers declined as he and the black man walked down the hall, and it was number 108 that the black man finally opened, gesturing to Grofield to go in. Grofield did, and the door was closed behind him. He turned around, surprised, and heard a padlock being snapped shut.

Oh, nice. After all he’d gone through to avoid prison, now look.

He heard receding footsteps, creaking and squeaking on the linoleum-and-plywood, and waited a full minute before trying the door. Then it opened, very slightly, and caught with a little clink sound. Grofield pushed experimentally, not very hard, and nodded to himself. It was a hasp lock, at about the height of his waist, held with a padlock. That sort of arrangement would be no better than the wood into which the screws had been driven to hold the hasp lock pieces on, and judging from the general tone of the construction around here that wood was unlikely to be too awfully good.

All right. He pulled the door shut again and turned around to look at his new home.

He didn’t like it. The bed was narrow and hard-looking, with metal headboard and footboard, a thin pillow, and scratchy-looking, thin gray blankets. A small rag rug was on the floor beside the bed, the rest of the floor continuing the linoleum-over-plywood theme from the hall. There was a battered metal dresser opposite the bed. A wooden kitchen chair completed the furnishings.

To Grofield’s right there was a curtained partition. He pushed the curtain to one side and looked at a toilet with an overhead water closet. There were a number of clothes hooks on both side walls, so apparently this cubicle doubled as a closet.

The outer side of the partition wall contained a sink, with a somewhat distorted small mirror hanging crooked above it. On the opposite wall was a window, with a view of snow, and under the window an electric radiant heat unit. Since the room was a bit chilly Grofield went over and checked the unit and its one dial was turned to high.

Well, this would never do. He went across the room again and kicked the door open. It took three kicks, one more than he’d expected. He walked back down the corridor to the exit, and followed the curving path again back to the main building, holding his overcoat lapels closed under his throat while in the open air. He retraced his steps through the hall and the library into the main room, looked around, and saw Marba and General Pozos and two other men sitting in a cluster in two facing sofas near the fireplace on the left. He walked over there and said, “I’m sorry, Marba, but I don’t like that room.”

They looked at him in astonishment, and Marba looked quickly around, but Grofield said, “Oh, he locked me in. But the locks are no good in a place like this, you ought to know that.”

The General was glowering. The other two men, one Oriental and one black, were looking puzzled and annoyed. Marba got to his feet and said, “Are you out of your mind, Grofield? Do you want to force us to kill you?”

“Marba, face it. I’m not going to get away from here on my own. As far as I’ve seen, I’m the only Anglo-Saxon in the joint, so I ought to be easy to spot. Just leave me alone. I’ll sit in front of the fire, read a book, play checkers with somebody. There’s nothing I can do to help the United States Government, and there’s nothing I can do to help myself, and I know that, and I’ll be a very good guest.”

Marba stood there frowning, considering things. Finally he shook his head and said, “You’re too unorthodox, Grofield, that can’t be good.”

“Have you seen that room? Would you go in there without a radio, without a book, without even a watch, and not know how long you’re expected to stay, and just sit on that bed in there and be a good boy and wait?”

“There are worse places to be,” Marba said.

“We could put you outside,” the General said, and pointed a finger at Grofield. “You know I don’t like funny people,” he said. “Don’t be funny people, Grofield. Go back to the room.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Damn,” Marba said. “Gentlemen, I’ll be right back. Come along, Grofield.” He started quickly away, taking Grofield’s arm, and Grofield felt the General’s eyes on him as he went. Marba was saying, under his breath, “Don’t antagonize General Pozos, you damn fool. He will put you outside.”

“I’d just come back in.”

Marba stopped and looked hard at Grofield. “Don’t say what you’ll do or what you won’t do. You’re a prisoner here, don’t you know that?”

“As Oscar Wilde once said, ‘If this is the way the Queen treats her prisoners, she doesn’t deserve to have any.’”

“I like you, Grofield,” Marba said. “You’re a very interesting and a very amusing variant of human life. But you must understand that several of the men up here this weekend are used to being in supreme command, they come from nations they rule with a whim of iron. If you irritate them, they won’t think twice about getting rid of you. And if it becomes dangerous for me to protect you I’ll leave you completely on your own. So do try to restrain yourself.”

“I’ll try,” Grofield agreed. “But I’m not going to be locked up in that Hoover village out there.”

“I don’t understand the reference,” Marba said, then added, “But never mind. Just come along. And let me do the talking.”

“Fine by me.”

Their route lay through the library again, and this time one or two of the readers frowned in puzzlement at Grofield as he went by. He was, as he’d said, the only Anglo-Saxon here, and very noticeable, and he did tend to keep going back and forth through this room. He didn’t know what any of them might think of it exactly, but he reminded himself of the mechanical bear at the shooting gallery: hit it, and it turns around and travels the other way. Under the circumstances, not an encouraging image.

After the library, this time the course ran differently, up narrow stairs to a second-floor corridor and through a door into a small anteroom very full of a large black man who bore many similarities to Sonny Liston. Marba said something in his native language to Sonny, who looked without expression at Grofield and slowly nodded. He was standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, harem-guard style, and he was all biceps and a yard wide.

Marba said to Grofield, “Wait here.”

“Anything he says,” Grofield agreed, nodding at the guard.

Marba offered his thin smile, and went through the other door, in the opposite wall. Grofield considered idle conversation with Sonny and decided not to try it. Instead, he sat down on the brown leather sofa that took up all of the room not occupied by Sonny, and tried to make believe he was taking it easy.

Would it have been better to stay in that stinking room? Safer, maybe, but better? No, no matter what, it was better to be away from there, it would have done bad things to his personality, he would have emerged from that room on Monday a pessimistic old man with false teeth. Improperly fitted false teeth.

And there was something else to consider, and that was Ken. Would Ken believe that he’d been kidnapped? Would Ken believe anything other than that Grofield had tried to get away again and this time had managed to give his pursuers the slip? One way or another, Grofield was going to have to go back to Ken with some sort of demonstration of his own sincerity and willingness and hard work. The best thing would be information on what this weekend’s get-together was all about, but failing that much of a plum there had to be some sort of earnest of his good intentions he could pick up here this weekend and give Ken as a peace offering on Monday. But he couldn’t do it if he was wasting away in that God-Is-Love Shelter for Homeless Men back there.

Of course, if General Pozos and the other bigwigs decided to shove him outdoors to freeze to death the whole problem would become academic, and he would be very sorry indeed he hadn’t stayed in his nice little room, but at the moment he had high hopes — or at least medium hopes — that he could work this bloodless rebellion and get away with it.

While thinking about this, and giving himself qualified encouragement, the inner door opened and Marba came back out, shutting the door behind himself. He looked worried, and that made Grofield worried.

Marba sat down beside Grofield on the sofa. Speaking softly, he said, “What did you do to Vivian Kamdela?”

“Me? Nothing.”

“She dislikes you.”

“I know.”

“Why?” Marba asked him.

“Because I’m not a patriot,” Grofield said. “We had a little discussion, and I’m not patriotic enough to suit her. I tend to worry about myself first, and she doesn’t approve of that. Why?”

“She’s in there talking against you,” Marba said. “If I could get Colonel Rahgos to vouch for you, you would be given fairly free rein here.”

“Colonel Rahgos. He’s your president, isn’t he?”

“Yes. Generally he’d go along with my recommendation, but Vivian is arguing against you, quite forcibly. So he wants to see you for yourself, and whatever you do, be polite. The Colonel doesn’t like flippancy.”

“I’ll be good,” Grofield promised.

“The idea is to get the Colonel to like you.”

“Should I give him a lock of my hair?”

“No,” Marba said flatly. “It’s the wrong shape.”

“Oh, wonderful,” Grofield said, and Marba took him to his leader.