The Snake Flag Conspiracy

Chapter Twelve

Pittsfield was too close. I drove the Volks south out of Lenox to Monterey, took Route 23 to Otis, Route 8 to New Boston and, finally, Route 57 through Granville and Southwick. They’re all country roads. At that hour of the night there was no traffic on them.

Julie was my silent companion for the first part of the trip. Silent and dead. Between Otis and New Boston, I found a deserted stretch of road, pulled over and took her from the car. I propped her against a tree where she would be found soon and continued my lonely journey. Now there was more driving me on than just my duty to AXE. There was more than just a feeling of responsibility not to let Bradford — or whatever his true Russian name was — get away with the Kremlin plot. From the time I found Julie dead in the Volks, I began to burn with an intense, personal hatred for the man. From that moment on, my mission was revenge and retribution!

In Springfield I had an early breakfast, dawdling over coffee until the stores opened. Not wanting to call undue attention to myself, I didn’t want to be the first customer of the day. It was around eleven o’clock before I entered.

The shop specialized in sporting goods. I bought a pair of 7×50 Zeiss binoculars. I looked at a couple of pistols. They had a Luger that balanced in my hand almost as beautifully as Wilhelmina did. I hefted a Winchester 70 with a Browning 2-7x scope that would have been perfect, but I had to discard them both. Hawk’s words of warning were clear in my mind: It has to look like an accident!

I can’t really say that the idea was full grown in my mind. It was just an impulse, I guess, but I’ve learned to trust my impulses. I bought an air gun.

It wasn’t the sort of air rifle kids play around with. It was a Feinwerkbau 300 match rifle that fired .177 calibre pellets. The barrel was of rifled steel, nineteen and a half inches long. In that type of gun the barrel and receiver recoil together, independently of the stock, so that there’s no recoil to feel. You hand cock it by pulling a side lever and, even though it’s a single shot, you can work it pretty fast. The muzzle velocity of that little .177 pellet is 575 feet per second, which isn’t much slower than a .45 calibre pistol. And it’s built for accuracy. The palmswell pistol grip, combined with a Monte Carlo gunstock, makes it fit into your arm and shoulder like a part of you. I guess that’s why you shell out some $200 for one of these weapons.

Before I left town, I gassed up the Volks and picked up a map of the area at the service station. It didn’t give me enough information about the terrain, so I drove out to the airport and picked up an Airman’s Sectional Chart, which pinpoints every hill, road, pond and landmark — and gives you its exact height above sea level.

Then I drove out to the mountain that Julie had told me about.

It took me until almost four in the afternoon to circle my way around by way of Pittsfield and come in from the north. I left the car at the foot of the mountain, hidden in a grove of trees, and started my climb. By five o’clock I was lying prone on a ledge near the crest of the mountain. Almost a mile away was Bradford’s estate. The 7×50 binoculars pulled in every detail.

Julie had been right. There was only one road into the area. Through the glasses I could see that it was patrolled by Massachusetts State Troopers. I remembered the two bogus troopers we’d met yesterday, and I knew that these were more of Bradford’s private army.

Around the perimeter of the estate were two double fences. Each pair of fences consisted of a chain-link fence and a wire mesh fence. The inner pair of fences had another foot and a half of barbed wire on top of them. Between the inner and the outer pair of fences was about thirty feet of space.

The layout was familiar to me. I’d seen it before in the Soviet Union. It’s the kind of set-up they’d copied from the Nazis, who used it to surround many of their concentration camps and all of their stalags — the prisoner of war camps. Which meant that the inner fence was electrified! Then, through the glasses, I spotted the dogs. In five minutes I counted eight of them. They ran free between the fences, which provided a runway for them to roam at will. Doberman pinschers usually run in pairs. They’re fast. Once they hit a man, they’ll take less than two minutes to rip him to death. In the dark no man stands a chance against them.

No one — and I mean, no one at all — could get down that road, past the troopers, climb the first pair of fences and try to get over the second pair of fences without it costing him his life. If he made it over the outer fence, the dogs would tear him to shreds before he reached the inner fence. If they didn’t, he’d just damn well electrocute himself the second he laid a hand on the wire.

The estate itself, the manor house, sat in lonely splendor in the midst of an enormous expanse of closely-clipped lawn. It was 200 yards to the house from the nearest point of entry — 200 yards of wide-open terrain without an inch of cover! It was a safe bet that at night the grounds were crisscrossed with electronic sensor beams.

Alexander Bradford had made sure that no one was going to get at him!

After awhile, I rolled away from the crest of the mountain and went back down to the Volks. I had to think this one out carefully. In spite of Bradford’s precautions, there had to be a way to get at him. I had to find it. Every defense has a built-in flaw. What was his?

I drove away from the area, back toward Pittsfield, stopping at a small diner to eat a sandwich, have a cup of coffee and think this problem over.

One way of looking at it was to assume that Bradford was keeping the world away from him. The opposite point of view was that he was just as much a captive in his own private stalag as any prisoner! If he’d set up so impregnable a defense, I figured he wasn’t going to run away from it before D-Day.

I knew I couldn’t get to him in daylight. For whatever good it would do me, I needed the cover of darkness. Most of all, I needed some way of getting past the bogus troopers, past the dogs and over the fences to the house.

It’s strange where ideas come from. I was sitting in a small booth in the diner, finishing the last of my second cup of coffee and not paying much attention to anyone else. Across the aisle from me was a family of four. Nice, tourist types. The father was in his middle thirties, I guess. His wife held a baby in her arms. The other child was a boy about five. Idly I watched them. The little boy’s father was occupied with folding a paper place mat. When he was finished, he held it up, showed it to the kid and then flipped it into the air.

It swept across the room, soared up in a zoom, circled and came diving down again. A simple delta-wing paper airplane.

There it was. The answer to how I could get past the road patrol, the fences, the dogs and the electronic sensor beams!

Maybe.

If I could find the equipment.

I paid my bill, got into the Volks and set out for the airport at Pittsfield. If what I needed was to be found anywhere, it would be at an airport in the mountain country, because that’s where you find swift air currents and where the sport is most popular.

It’s called “hang-gliding.” You’re suspended by an aluminum framework from a giant delta-wing kite covered in ultra-light nylon fabric. You’d be surprised how far you can hang-glide and how long you can stay aloft. I’ve done it a few times. It’s quite a thrill to soar through the air without a sound, except for the whisper of wind in your ears, and nothing — not even the cockpit of a glider — around you.

I was lucky. At the airport I found a man who sold me his personal kite. He also charged me too damned much for it, but I had the kite. A big son of a gun. Big enough, with the currents you get in the Berkshire mountain country, to lift me and the equipment I needed.

At dusk I was back at the foot of the mountain. Once again I left the Volks in the grove of trees. Once more I climbed up to the peak. According to the airman’s sectional chart, it had an elevation of 1,680 feet. The valley below — Bradford’s private valley — was about 300 feet above sea level. With good air currents, taking off from that height, I could fly several miles. Much more than I needed to get to Bradford’s estate.

I assembled the aluminum and nylon framework of the kite before it got completely dark. Then I made myself comfortable and waited.

While I waited, I mentally reviewed another problem. That damned manor was big! The house had at least sixty rooms. Two L-shaped wings branched off from the main section, which was three stories in height. Assuming I got in, where the devil would I find Bradford? I just couldn’t go roaming down the hallways, asking people where he was!

I rolled over, uncased the binoculars again and began to study the house in detail, memorizing it.

At midnight I put the binoculars in their leather case and left them on the mountain ledge. I had no further use for them. I slung the Feinwerkbau pellet rifle over one shoulder. I crisscrossed the battery pack of the sniperscope I’d taken from George’s dead body over my other shoulder. I carried the kite to the very edge of the mountain ridge, fastened myself into its aluminum frame seat, and — taking a deep breath — I launched myself into the night sky!

For a moment I plunged sickeningly downward before I could correct my balance. Then the updraft sweeping along the side of the mountain caught me, lifting me a hundred feet higher. The equipment made it awkward at first, but I finally found the right position. And then I was a giant bat in the sky, soaring effortlessly through the dark night. Through the sniper-scope sight I had no trouble spotting Bradford’s mansion. I could make out every detail of its flat-surfaced, semi-mansard roof. I could actually count each individual chimney and flue that stuck up through the tiles. Every eave and window was as brightly delineated as if it were daylight!

Below me “police” cruisers guarded the road as I crossed high over their heads. The attack dogs sniffed and snarled against the metal of the chain-link inner fences, furious at their inability to get at the “troopers” patrolling along the outside of the fences. The invisible beams of the ground sensors crisscrossed the lawn uselessly.

Had anyone looked up at the sky, he would have had a difficult time seeing me, because the covering of the hang-kite was black nylon. I was just a darker shadow against the blackness of the sky, and tonight there was no moon to silhouette me.

I banked the huge kite to lose altitude. It doesn’t take long to fly a mile in a hang-kite, and I had almost 1500 feet of altitude to lose before I could touch down on Bradford’s roof. Presently I was a 100 yards away and perhaps fifty feet above it. At the last moment I took my eye away from the sniperscope finder, grabbed both aluminum sidebraces with my hands and got ready for the landing impact.

When you touch down with a hang-kite, you come in at a run. I didn’t have much room on that roof to run. I was just damned lucky I found enough space for the half-dozen paces I needed to come to a stop without breaking a leg.

Taking a deep breath, I unlatched the safety belt, laying the hang-kite down on the roof surface. I unslung the sniperscope battery pack and equipment, placing them on top of the hang-kite. The framework, the equipment and the Feinwerkbau pellet gun I wrapped in the nylon covering, stowing the. whole package away neatly beside one of the chimneys.

Cautiously I made my way across the roof to the edge. An eave was directly below me. I swung onto it. The window was no problem. Since it was on the third floor of the mansion, no one had bothered to lock it against intruders.

Then I was inside, treading carefully across the darkened room to the doorway. Easing open the door, I peered into the corridor. The hallway was empty. Walking softly, I made my way to the far end.

Sixty rooms, and where was Bradford?

The corridor ended at a railing. Above me was an enormous skylight. Three stories below, the main hall of the manor spread out, with the stairwell circling the sides all the way down. Corridors branched off the stairwell at each landing.

Somehow the layout seemed vaguely familiar. I knew damn well I hadn’t been there before, but I kept getting the feeling that I knew the place!

Then I remembered. The mansion had originally belonged to one of the earliest and richest of the families in the region. Over the years the family had made the estate into one of the great showplaces of New England. Its halls were hung with the finest collection of early American art in the world. Two original Stuart portraits of Washington were in the collection. Most people know the Stuart painting of George Washington that’s on dollar bills and postage stamps. There were others. Two of the best hung in this collection.

It was no coincidence that I remembered so much about the manor house. It had been the subject of a lengthy article, complete with color photographs and floor plan, in American Heritage magazine.

You wouldn’t know it to look at Hawk, who dresses in crumpled clothes and smokes cheap, foul-smelling cigars, but he’s one of the best-read men I’ve ever known. Just a few months ago, over a drink in his home, he had dragged out that particular issue of American Heritage and had made me read the article about “Pentwick Hall” — the name of the estate Alexander Bradford now owned. Hawk had wanted to show me photos of the collection of paintings.

What I remembered was the floor plan of the mansion. Now I knew exactly where to find Alexander Bradford! It took me a moment to sort through my memory and to orient myself. Then, as silently as I could, I stole down a flight of stairs to the second floor and took the corridor on the right to the master suite.

To my surprise, there was no one guarding the halls, but then, why should there be? With troopers on patrol, with a double electrified fence, with savage attack dogs and sensor beams, who’d think protection was necessary inside the house?

Bradford’s bedroom was actually a full suite with a huge salon opening onto the hallway and a large bedroom to the right of the salon.

Quietly I turned the door knob. I inched the door open, stepped inside and carefully shut it behind me. I was in a small foyer. I could see part of the room, lit comfortably by the warm glow of table lamps and wall sconces. The furniture was genuine Sheraton and Hepplewhite, the rich woods polished by age, wax and hand rubbing to a deep, glowing patina.

I moved into the salon — and stopped. Sitting in an armchair facing me was a distinguished-looking, lean-faced man with black hair streaked with gray. His eyes were deep-set and burned with an inner intensity. He was wearing a brocaded dressing gown. In his lap rested a large, very old, leather-covered book.

In his hand, pointing at me, was a large, very modern automatic pistol!

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said in a well-modulated voice. “You are Nick Carter?”

I nodded.

“I lost my bet,” he said with an almost whimsical smile. “I didn’t think you could do it.” His accent was pure Harvard-Boston. It sounded almost English. “I wagered that you’d not be able to get through the defenses I’d set up. I seem to have underestimated you.”

“Who’d you bet with?” I asked.

“With me.” Sabrina’s voice floated across the room to me. She was sitting in a corner in an armchair, a delicate crystal wine glass in her hand. “I knew that if anyone could do it, it would be you, Nick. Would you tell us how you managed it?”

Bradford murmured, “It really doesn’t matter, my dear. The point is, he’s here.” He eyed me appraisingly. “No weapons? I’m surprised.”

“He has a knife,” said Sabrina. “It’s strapped to his forearm.”

Bradford lifted an eyebrow. “Oh? How did you find that out, my dear?”

“I made love to him,” Sabrina answered.

Bradford lifted the gun. “Take it off,” he ordered. “And be sure to move slowly.”

I unstrapped Hugo and let the knife and its sheath fall to the floor.

“No other weapons?”

“Search me,” I said.

Bradford laughed. “Not a chance. Take off your shirt.”

I took off Raymond’s shirt. I stood there, nude from the waist up.

“My God,” said Bradford, fascinated, “the man’s covered with scars!” He continued his observation for a moment. Then he said, “You know, Carter, you intrigue me. I doubt if there’s another man alive who could have gotten to me at all — let alone in the short time you’ve taken to learn my identity and seek me out. Nor could anyone else have escaped my men as you’ve done. Several of them are among the best mercenary soldiers in the world.”

“How’d you know I was coming?” I asked.

Bradford’s saturnine face turned toward Sabrina. “She told me to expect you. She said you were good.” Sabrina crossed the room to sit on a hassock beside Bradford’s knee. She rested her cheek against it.

“Sabrina’s quite a useful person,” he said, putting his hand on her head, almost as if caressing a trained hunting leopard. “Did you know she killed your little friend?”

I managed to hide the quick flash of fury I felt. “Julie was your god-daughter,” I pointed out.

Bradford shrugged indifferently. “She was in the way,” he said. “She had to be disposed of.”

I didn’t want to think about Julie just then. I changed the subject. “The KGB will be proud of you,” I commented. “Do they give you a special medal?”

Bradford broke into a laugh. “The KGB? Good Lord, Carter, when the KGB find out what’s actually going to happen, they’ll start hunting for scapegoats! Heads will roll at 2 Dzerzhinsky Square!”

I didn’t understand what he was talking about. “Would you let me in on the joke?”

Bradford smiled. “Why not? It’s much too good not to share. So far Sabrina’s the only one who knows the story. After you’re dead, it can never be told again. Sabrina, do get the man a glass of brandy!”

Sabrina rose lithely, crossing the room with her catlike tread to bring me a brandy snifter. Napoleon. Only the best for Bradford.

He indicated a chair some ten feet from him. “Sit down, Carter, but don’t try anything. I’m an excellent shot. The gun is a .357 magnum. At this distance I couldn’t possibly miss hitting you.”

Bradford eyed me carefully until I was seated. “How much of the story do you know, Carter?”

“I know what the Russian found out,” I said. “You’re a plant. You were switched with the real Alexander Bradford when he was in a Nazi military prison hospital that was liberated by Soviet troops in 1945. Since then you’ve lived here in New England, completely assuming his identity. You’re one of the power elite in Boston—”

“In the whole country,” Bradford interjected.

“—and I know that shortly you’ll try to trigger the economic collapse of the United States.”

Bradford nodded agreement to each of my statements.

“All for the sake of Mother Russia,” I added, a sour taste in my mouth.

Again Bradford broke into a laugh.

“That,” he said with great amusement, “is where you’re quite wrong! It’ll be for the sake of the United States of America!”

I stared at him in astonishment.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Bradford leaned back, still keeping the gun on me. “At first,” he said, “even though I acted the role of Alexander Bradford, I still felt like myself — Vasily Gregorovich Sudarov, born in Leningrad, educated at Moscow Technical Institute, and a member of the KGB. Then, as the years passed, something in me changed. I actually felt more like the real Alexander Bradford than he would have himself if we hadn’t killed him! I continued Bradford’s hobby of delving into every facet of the American Revolution of 1776, especially the ideals and goals of the original members of the Sons of Liberty.” A tone of fervor began creeping into his voice.

“As I began to get deeply into this hobby, I wondered what would have happened if this country had not gotten off the track its original founders had tried to set it on.”

His voice took on a hard, angry pitch. “The little people have taken over! The uneducated and the illiterate own this country! The vote of the dirtiest, scummiest drunk is just as valid and just as important as the vote of the most educated, most brilliant man! Does that make sense to you? No wonder this country’s in the trouble it’s in now!

“So I began to ponder about what would happen if one man took over. One man, completely indoctrinated in what the founding fathers really wanted! Did you know that some of them favored a king? An American king? Yes, Carter, they did! And George Washington came within a hairsbreadth of being the first American dictator!”

Bradford could no longer contain himself. Excitedly he got to his feet and began pacing the room.

“So I laid my plans. Bradford was rich. Bradford was well connected. I spent years in developing even more contacts among the most influential men in this country. Secretly I created an organization of men who believed as I do — the new Sons of Liberty! Their motto is—”

“Don’t Tread on Me!” I broke in. “And the emblem is the Snake Flag!”

Bradford stared coldly at me for a moment, then he let a superior, arrogant smile touch his lips. “Very good, Carter. You’re right. Now there are several thousand of us. When the time is right, we will arise in revolt and take over the country! We are the new American patriots — the true descendants of the American Revolution!”

“And you will be at their head?”

“Yes, I’ll be at their head,” Bradford acknowledged.

“Where do the Russians fit into this scheme?”

“They don’t,” said Bradford. “They showed me how to disrupt the economy of this country to a point where an armed revolt will succeed. The plan will be put into operation on Monday.”

I really wasn’t surprised that D-Day was so soon. “The day after tomorrow?”

“Yes. On Monday we issue the first sell orders. By the end of the week, there will be complete financial chaos throughout the country. Within a month the time will be ripe for the Sons of Liberty to take over the government in Washington. Almost exactly 200 years to the day this country was founded!”

“Who gives the word?” I asked.

“I do,” said Bradford. “No one else knows who the others are.”

“And if you’re not around to give the word?”

Bradford looked sharply at me, then chuckled. He shook his head. “Oh, no, Carter. Don’t even think you can do it! I assure you, I will be around on Monday to give the word. It’s a shame that you won’t be here for the occasion. Your public execution is set for tomorrow.”

“Public execution?”

“Tomorrow at high noon,” he stated, “you will be the first traitor to the new American Revolution to be executed! You’ll go down in history, Carter — the history books to come, that is!”

I had barely enough time to assimilate his wild remarks. Bradford reached for the bellcord and gave it a sharp tug. Almost immediately the door was flung open and half a dozen men marched in.

I swear to God, for a moment I thought I was hallucinating. Every man jack of them was dressed in colonial costume! They wore knee breeches, white stockings, black leather shoes with big square buckles and square toes, sleeveless leather jackets and white powdered wigs topped by tricorn hats! And every one of them carried a muzzle-loading flintlock rifle or pistol!

“Take him away,” said Bradford. “Lock him up!”

In seconds they had me in their midst, two of them at each arm. We were at the door when Bradford spoke up again.

“Carter, I haven’t told you the end of our plans.”

They let me turn around to face him.

“We realize that the only enemy this country has,” he said slowly, “the only thing that stands in the way of our dominating the Western world, is Russia. Once we have taken over, when we feel the time is ripe, when we have complete control of the government and of the armed forces—”

He paused dramatically to let the effect of his next phrase sink in.

“—we will then unleash a total atomic attack on Russia that will paralyze her for centuries to come! The United States and the Soviet Union cannot live together in the same world! I have been taught that since childhood!”

His words were still ringing in my ears as they took me down several flights of stairs and locked me into an old stone wine cellar.