The Snake Flag Conspiracy

Chapter Eleven

Tanglewood at night under the stars with the soft summer evening breeze coming across the valley; the open-sided acoustic shell glowing under the spotlights; the full panoply of one of the world’s great symphony orchestras playing as a single finely-tuned instrument is something that can take your breath away. All around are wooded hills, and the valley is fragrant with the sharp resin scent of pine needles. And because the groundskeeper had mowed the expanse of lawn around the old, green-painted house that was the original Tanglewood estate, that night the pungent odor of newly-cut grass was in the air.

There were well over a thousand people. Some from Boston, some from New York, Albany, Pittsfield — the rest from the inns and hotels of the middle Berkshires where they had been vacationing. The parking lot was filled with cars; the road had been jammed with couples walking to Tanglewood; the grounds swarmed with clusters of people of all ages chattering away at each other.

Now — except for the sound of the orchestra sweeping triumphantly toward the conclusion of Beethoven’s Ninth — all was tranquil. It should have been the one place in the world a man could relax completely.

But it wasn’t.

The conductor swept his baton across the air in front of him, cutting off the final note. The audience rose to its feet, shouting, clapping, cheering. The lights came up. The crowd began filing out for the intermission.

And suddenly they were there. Half a dozen brawny young men. In less than a second I was surrounded by them as I stood in the aisle. They isolated me completely from the crowd, none of whom suspected anything out of the ordinary.

One of the men came up to me. It was John Norfolk, the young lawyer who’d tried to bribe me. The last time I’d seen him, he was scuttling away from me in fear of his life. Apparently, the presence of the others gave him a great deal of confidence.

“You remember me, Mr. Carter.” It was a statement, not a question.

Maybe that’s why they’d sent him along — to let me see a face that I didn’t associate with a threat to my life.

“We’d like you to come with us.”

“Are you taking me to Bradford?” I asked.

Norfolk met my stare. “You’ll meet someone,” he said.

I looked around. Unless I wanted to start one hell of a commotion. I didn’t have a chance. It was like being in the middle of the Minnesota Viking offensive team huddle. They were big.

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Grim-faced, they formed a phalanx around the pair of us as we walked to the parking lot.

Two cars were waiting there. One was the green Ford station wagon. Beside it stood the phony FBI agents. Norfolk gestured for me to get into the other car, a black Mercury four-door sedan. He climbed in beside the driver. The two men who pot in the back seat — one on either side of me — were all muscle.

With the station wagon following us, we drove out of the parking lot, gravel crunching under the tires. We turned onto the country road heading away from Tanglewood and Lenox.

No one said anything. I was surprised that they’d made no attempt to disarm me. Maybe they figured that, pinned in between the two men, I wouldn’t be able to move fast.

The cars swept on through the night, taking one lane after another. Inside the sedan there was nothing but silence.

Off in the distance I could see the dark mass of the mountain Julie had shown me on the map. It was outlined against the lighter, star-flecked darkness of the night sky. I kept it in view as a reference point. We seemed to be heading in its general direction. Maybe they were taking me to Alexander Bradford’s place, after all. My gamble might be paying off.

And just about the time I made that assumption, the driver of the sedan spun the wheel. The car lurched, swaying into a tight turn. We drove off the road and down a lane about a hundred yards or so before coming to a stop. The driver flicked on the dome light and turned around. The gun in his hand was a Colt .45 automatic.

Norfolk opened his door and got out. So did the man on my right.

“You just sit still,” said the driver, aiming the pistol at my forehead. His hand was shaking.

I sat very still. I didn’t want to make him any more nervous than he already was. You never know what an amateur will do. They can kill you without meaning to.

“Get his gun,” the driver ordered the man on my left.

I didn’t want him searching me too closely. I said, “It’s in my belt behind my back.”

“Shut up!”

The man on my left pushed my head forward almost into my lap, flipped up my shirttail and found Reilly’s .38 revolver. He let me sit up again.

Norfolk poked his head in through the open door on my side of the car.

“This is as good a place as any,” he said.

It was pretty clear that they had no intention of taking me to Bradford. Norfolk’s words were the final proof — if I needed any. My gamble hadn’t paid off.

The Ford station wagon came up behind us, jouncing heavily on the ruts of the narrow lane. Its headlights were on high beam as it rolled to a stop a few feet in back of us. The glare came through the glass of the big rear window of the Mercury, shining directly into the eyes of the driver facing me. It must have been like looking full into a battleship searchlight at that short distance.

The driver winced involuntarily, closing his eyes and ducking his head away from the blast of light. In that instant I whipped my right forearm across his head, jabbed my left elbow into the ribs of the man next to me and made a flying leap out the open door. I dived headlong into Norfolk, sending him stumbling against the other man who’d been on my right. They both went down. I was out in the open, away from the dangerous confines of the sedan.

They could see all this very clearly from the station wagon, because the Ford’s headlights lit up the scene brilliantly. But they hadn’t as yet opened the doors.

There’s one thing about a pro. He doesn’t care what he smashes when he’s out to do a job. Amateurs have an ingrained respect for property that they haven’t been able to shake.

There I was in the full glare of the headlights. Bumping into Norfolk slowed me for a second or two. It took another three or four seconds for me to race to the security of the trees to the left of the sedan. And yet, in all that time — and four or five seconds is long enough to give you time to draw, aim and fire — no one thought of shooting at me through the window glass of the station wagon!

The six of them got in each other’s way as they tried to throw open the doors and pile out into the open before they began shooting. As I plunged into the underbrush, I heard them shouting at each other.

“He’s getting away! God damn it, shoot!”

By the time the first shot came, I was ten feet into the brush, angling away so that the trees would protect my back. I had one other advantage. They had been light-blinded by the headlights, and I’d been facing away when the station wagon came up. I still had most of my night vision.

When they finally started shooting, they were wide. Twenty yards wide. I took a rolling dive under the cover of a fallen oak tree, stretched out and lay absolutely still.

“Hold it! Damn you, hold that fire!”

The gunshots died away.

“Where the hell’d he go?”

“Shut up and let me listen!”

There wasn’t a sound. The night noises had died away. The gunfire had frightened the night creatures into silence.

“We lost him!”

“No, we haven’t. He hasn’t had time to get far enough away.”

“Well, there aren’t enough of us to go chasing him in the dark!”

One of the voices took command. “You three stay here. Keep him pinned down. He must be close by. You hear a noise, you start shooting.”

Another voice spoke up. The accent was deep South. “Mr. Essex, Ah got me a hi ol’ sniperscope rifle in the back of that wagon. Ah kinda think Ah oughta stay, ’steada Greg. Ah kin shoot the head off n a squirrel at a hundred yards even if it’s blacker’n a coal mine at midnight without no lights.”

There was a flurry of talk. Mr. Essex — whoever he was — cut it short. “Charlie’s right. He stays. He’s got the rifle. George stays, too. He’s a Nam vet. If he could take care of himself in the jungles, then this patch of woods is just his meat. Jerry comes with me. We’ll go back and get more men. We’ll need them to pin down this son of a bitch! The rest of you — spread out along the lane! Don’t move around. Just keep him from getting out of the area! Got it?”

I saw Charlie open the tailgate of the station wagon and take out a U.S. Army rifle with an infra-red sniperscope mounted on it. He slung the battery pack over his shoulder. George, the Viet Nam veteran, pulled out an M-14 carbine. Christ! You’d have thought they were taking on an army instead of just one man!

The green station wagon started up, backed out of the lane and disappeared. Charlie and George took off into the woods, one striking out to my left, the other to my right. They were going to outflank me and trap me between them. The other men remained where they were.

Charlie worried me. He was dangerous with that infra-red sniperscope. He could use it like an invisible searchlight to sweep the woods hunting for me, and I’d never know when the beam lit me up as a target for him. Not until a bullet came slamming into me!

George was an unknown factor. I didn’t know how good a woodsman he was. I heard Charlie crashing around to my left. If he were that clumsy in the woods, he’d give me ample warning if he came anywhere near me.

I went after George.

Not directly. Even though I knew that time was on their side, I couldn’t be impatient. I had to lure George into a trap.

The leader had been wrong. There’s one hell of a difference between the jungles of Southeast Asia and the forests of New England. The jungles are wet and damp and thick. They hide footsteps, swallowing up sound, so that you can’t hear a man until he’s right on top of you. I know. I’ve been there. New England forests are dry, except right after a rain. Leaves rustle; fallen twigs crackle when you step on them.

I took off Raymond’s boots. His socks were thick enough to give me the protection I needed and still let me feel my way. I was going to discard them, but as I was loosening the long rawhide laces, I had another thought. I took time to pull each lace free and tucked them into my hip pocket.

Then I set out after George.

I made a long sweep in his general direction. I wanted to get as far away as I could from Charlie with his dangerous sniperscope rifle. It took me about ten minutes to get where I wanted to be. Occasionally I heard movement. George wasn’t living up to his reputation as a jungle fighter.

I finally found the spot I wanted. It was next to a small clearing. Two trails led into it. They were both narrow and lined with young, second-growth trees. As quietly as I could, I used Hugo to trim some of the branches from one of the saplings. Then I bent it in an arc, fastening it with a slipknot to a fallen log with one end of a rawhide lace. The other end was in my hand. I lay down behind the log.

When you set a trap, you’ve got to bait it. The bait was me. I had to be sure that Charlie and his damned sniperscope were nowhere around. About five minutes went by. I heard a shot come from about 200 yards away.

Faintly I heard someone shout, “You get him?”

There was no answer. The only sound came from more than a mile away. So faintly you could hardly hear it, the strains of the Boston Symphony Orchestra playing a Brahms concerto came floating across the valley on the light breeze. I wondered what the audience would think if they knew about the deadly manhunt going on within a mile or two of them!

Charlie had sense enough not to give his position away by answering. But now I knew that he was nowhere nearby.

I tossed a rock into the middle of the glade. I wanted some noise, not too much. Just enough to make it sound as though I’d stumbled.

Nothing happened.

I let another few minutes go by and then baited my trap again. The stone landed, rolling a few feet. The noise was barely discernible.

Then I heard the soft scrape of a boot on the trail. I tightened my grip on the rawhide lace whose other end slipknotted the bent sapling. The second rawhide lace was doubled, the ends wrapped around each of my fists with two feet of slack hanging down.

George came down the trail. He was quiet; he moved slowly. I would never have seen him if I hadn’t been expecting him. He came abreast of me and stopped.

Animals have an instinct that tells them when an enemy is near. So does man. George sensed something, but he thought I was in front of him somewhere in the clearing.

He moved forward two steps more, and I pulled the rawhide lacing. The slipknot pulled free. The sapling whipped erect with a swoosh of branches in front of his face. George recoiled from what he thought was an attack.

Under the cover of the noise, I leaped to my feet. From behind I flipped the loop of the second rawhide lacing over his head and around his neck. The garrote was effectively deadly. It cut off the sound that tried to burst from his throat. Clawing desperately with his fingers at the leather thong that bit mercilessly into his flesh, he flung the M-14 away from him in a spastic jerk. The carbine landed somewhere deep in the brush. I maintained the pressure. George had no chance at all, but then he would have given me none, either. When I lowered him to the ground, the stench let loose from his uncontrolled sphincter muscle filled the air.

I tried to find the carbine, but it was no use. It would have taken me all night, and time was my enemy. Charlie and his deadly sniperscope were next, and all I had were two rawhide laces. I knew I couldn’t pull the same trick on Charlie. He had a sniperscope to look through. The closest I could get to him might be ten or twenty yards — if I were lucky.

Which meant that I wouldn’t be able to use the garrote again, or Hugo.

Or could I? The thought intrigued me.

I moved off the trail, going deep into the underbrush. My eyes had become almost totally accustomed to the darkness. The starlight gave me more than enough light. I found what I was looking for. It took me a few moments to cut down a six-foot length of supple branch about as thick around as my wrist. I trimmed it. Hugo’s sharp blade made the work go fast. I cut away the thin bark, except for the center section, where I had to be sure my grip wouldn’t slip. Tapering the branch, I cut a groove in each end. The branch was so thick I had to use all my strength to bend it into an arc. I took a rawhide lace and fastened it to each notched end, and when I was finished I had a rough but highly effective bow!

The arrow took me a little longer to make. I had to find a branch that was straight enough. When I’d found one suitable, I trimmed it clean, cutting off one end squarely and then carving a vee into it to take the rawhide bowstring. I had no vanes to make it fly without a wobble, but then vanes are needed only if you’re shooting over a considerable distance. I’d be only a few yards away — that is, if I got a chance to use it at all!

Hugo was my arrowhead. With part of the second lace, I bound the stiletto to the end of the crude arrow. When I was through, what I had, in effect, was a crossbow bolt that would be propelled by a version of the English longbow! The short pull required almost every ounce of my strength, but it would hurl the arrow with force enough to penetrate two inches of lumber!

I wanted to test the rig to see how it would shoot, but that was impossible. I had to go after George hoping the makeshift weapon would do its job. Arrow notched into the bow, I stalked down the narrow trail of that New England undergrowth. Overhead the sky was lighter than the darkness of the forest. The trees were black hulks in the night.

I finally found him. A sniperscope is an unwieldy weapon at best. I heard him thrashing around with the gun in his hand, striking low-hanging branches with the barrel as. he swept the scope from side to side, using it as an invisible searchlight to scan the forest for me.

I sank down beside the trail and waited. If he spotted me first with that damned beam, I was dead. No matter how you looked at it, all the advantages were his.

George came down the trail, the rifle held to his shoulder, his eye against the sight of the scope, using it as a flashlight. He would take a few steps, stop, sweep the path ahead of him and then take another few steps. I lay burrowed in the thick undergrowth beside the trail and didn’t move a muscle. An ant crawled across my face. It explored my lips. I still didn’t move. The ant moved over my upper lip and then into my nostril. The tickling sensation was overwhelming. I used all my self-control not to sneeze.

George came closer. He stopped only inches away from my head. I blanked out my mind, The ant bit. Fire raced through my nostril. And I took it. The techniques of yoga concentration enabled me to place myself away from my body. The itches and pain my body felt had nothing to do with me. I was somewhere else.

George took three more paces down the trail, and I came back to my body, rising silently to my feet. With every ounce of strength I had, I drew back on the bowstring. The heavy, crudely carved branch reluctantly bent into an arc until the haft of the stiletto was even with the handgrip.

The branch creaked slightly as it bent, and George spun around, aiming the rifle at me. I released the bowstring at almost the exact instant he pulled the trigger.

The short, heavy crossbow bolt whipped through the few yards that separated us. The explosion from George’s gun blasted my ears. There was a burning sensation along my left shoulder, and then, almost in slow motion, George let the heavy sniperscope rifle fall from his hands. His knees crumpled. He collapsed awkwardly on the trail, both hands fastened around the shaft of the arrow.

Hugo had been driven into his chest the complete length of the slender blade. If the haft of the knife hadn’t prevented it, the arrow would have gone completely through him!

I went over to George and took the rifle. Dismantling the scope from the weapon, I took it and the battery pack from his body and set off back through the woods.

Now the advantage was mine. Now I had no trouble in spotting where their men were and avoiding them easily. I made my way to the main road, skirting the last of their flankers.

It was almost dawn before I reached Lenox on foot. I knew that Julie must have been waiting impatiently for me to return and that the strain on her nerves must have been brutal. I wanted to take her in my arms and let her know that I was safe. I wanted a hot bath and a dressing put on the shallow flesh wound of my left arm.

In the darkness of pre-dawn, I came tiredly up the twisting, narrow village streets of Lenox. The Volks was parked about fifty yards from the inn, under a street lamp. Curiously I peered into it as I passed. And stopped.

Julie was sitting in the driver’s seat, her head thrown back against the headrest as if she had fallen asleep.

But she hadn’t. Someone had broken her neck, and she was dead.