The Traitor

CHAPTER EIGHT

The night was cold, almost freezing. I was sitting in a car with Willie the Wire examining Rodet’s chateau through the night vision goggles. I couldn’t see any people on either the ambient light or infrared setting.

“It’s three o’clock,” Willie said. “How long you gonna wait?”

“I don’t know. I wish I had a few more nights to scope out this place.”

The night vision goggles were amazing. Even though evergreens and branches obscured much of the lawn, I could see a dog wandering along, stopping, moving at random, then lifting a leg on something. Actually I could see his thermal image, which is almost the same thing.

As we sat there Willie had been regaling me with his romantic adventures. “Fella I know gave me some of those four-hour peter pills,” he informed me now. “I took one last night.”

“Four hours?”

“You know, the ones they advertise on TV. You get a hard-on that lasts more than four hours, you gotta go see a doctor.”

“Talk about a great advertising campaign!”

“I don’t know how the doc gets it down. Don’t want to find out, neither.”

“Gives you a different perspective on technical progress, doesn’t it?”

“We’re marchin’ on to the happy ever after.”

The dog was probably going to spend the night outside. No sense waiting. I just hoped he was alone. “Okay, give me the backpack.”

Willie dug it out from behind the passenger seat. I took off the goggles and looked it over. I had packed it, but I wanted to check where everything was one more time. I was going to have to locate most of this stuff by feel.

Inside the pack were two small two-way radios, each built into a headset that contained an earpiece for the wearer’s right ear and a small boom mike that stuck out a couple of inches. I turned them both on, then handed one to Willie. As we put them on, I heard him say, “You get caught in there, I’ll send you a card every year on your birthday.”

“You don’t even know when my birthday is,” I replied, and heard my own voice in my ear.

“The Fourth of July, then.”

“You have the grenade?”

“The gonad cooker? Yeah, but I’m thinking about throwing it.”

“Put it in position, right at the base of the pole, then drive off. There’s a sixty-second delay — that’ll be plenty.”

“Why me?” Willie whined. “How come I got elected for this?”

“I knew you could do it. But with fried gonads and a petrified dick, you’re going to be in a hell of a shape when you get home.”

I had put tape over the switch that activated the car’s interior dome light when the passenger door was opened, so the light stayed off when I opened it.

I checked my watch. Eight minutes after three. “One hour from now. Right here.”

“I’ll be here.”

I closed the door and walked away. Willie got the car under way. It was about a mile to the pole with the transformer on it.

The lane along the fence was deserted. There hadn’t been a car in two hours. The temperature was in the midthirties, and there was a breeze blowing. My black jacket, pullover wool cap, and gloves felt good. As I walked I got a Snickers bar out of my jacket pocket and stripped off the wrapper. The wrapper I put back in my pocket. I swung my arms to get the blood circulating.

The dog had scented or heard me. He was behind the brush, but with the goggles, I could see his thermal image, which appeared as a shape, with the hotter spots more intense. His tail was almost a shadow, yet his tongue was quite prominent. He was silent, paralleling the fence.

I came to the spot I wanted, where a tree limb had come down on the barbed wire that topped the chain-link fence. This was where I would cross.

The dog was over there, pointed right at me, waiting, not even growling. He was big, at least fifty pounds. And oh, yes, this one was well trained, waiting silently there in the darkness in the hope I would cross that fence and he could have the pleasure of tearing my throat out.

I toggled the goggles from the thermal to the night vision setting. It took a few seconds for an image to appear. Now the yard and trees and shrubs glowed with a greenish light. I could see everything except the dog, which was behind a clump of bushes. I moved along another ten feet or so to a gap in the dark limbs. The lights of the house glowed like headlights in the goggles. I found myself squinting. I tossed the candy bar over the fence. I saw and heard it hit a tree branch, then drop in the fallen leaves that coated the ground.

Here came the dog. Now he was in view. I watched him sniffing that candy bar. I was pretty sure he would eat it. No doubt he was trained to avoid raw meat, the logical bait. Never saw a dog yet that didn’t like Snickers bars.

He looked like he was eating. His head was down.

I was waiting for him to lie down when I heard a distant pop, like a backfire, and all the lights in the chateau went out. The place became instantly dark, lit only by outside ambient light. Willie had popped the electromagnetic grenade, which emitted one short, intense pulse of energy. That pulse tripped the circuit breaker in the transformer.

The dog moved a little, walking slowly, then stumbled, tried to rise, and lay still.

The drug should keep him down for an hour or so, if he ate the whole bar. I could only hope he did.

I switched the goggles to infrared, scanned carefully, then went up the fence with my hands, grabbed the limb and scrambled across. I checked the dog, which hadn’t moved. Then I dropped to the ground.

Silence.

After one last scan on infrared, I switched the goggles back to night vision. The dog lay under a tree. I pulled him over under a bush, just in case someone came looking. Then I jogged across the lawn for the house.

Approaching the house, I found a tree and got behind it. Now I shifted the goggles back to infrared. The walls of the house were cool. I played with the control knobs, adjusting the setting. I wanted to see people inside, if there were any to see. The insulation of a building’s exterior walls would interfere with infrared transmissions, a fact the user had to understand and work with.

Still, the goggles were magic. The insulated interior hot-water pipes became visible as fixed lines. I saw the glow of the kitchen: The stove still retained a detectable amount of heat even though it had probably been off for hours.

Someone was moving around inside on the first floor. I could see the human figure walking … going down a set of stairs — to the basement, probably, to check the circuit breakers or fuses.

There was another figure, faint, apparently in a room on the far side of the house. It was sitting. I stared and reached for the goggle controls. Oh, he or she was putting on shoes. Or boots. There was no time to waste.

The porch had a roof. I trotted over, found the balcony, leaped to the rail and pulled myself to the roof. Almost lost the goggles. I paused to readjust them and tighten the straps.

Once I reached the side of the house above the porch I realized that the house was built of cut stone. There was probably little or no insulation in the walls. This shack was a couple of hundred years old, at least.

There was a window overlooking the roof, and a peek through it revealed no heat sources in the room. Which was good. I didn’t want someone wrapped in a comforter to start screaming when I made my entrance.

I flipped the goggles back to ambient light and waited for the picture to blossom. The window, two panels of panes, was locked, of course. I forced a shim into the gap between the panels and started prying.

Just as I felt the latch give, I heard a whistle. High-pitched. Then a human whistling. Now a male voice called for the dog. I couldn’t make out the critter’s name, but the tone of voice was the same in any language.

I eased the window open and stepped through.

Once I was inside with the window closed and latched, I looked down onto the lawn. The man had a flashlight and was casting the beam around, calling the dog.

If he found him, this gig was going sour fast.

I put the goggles back on the infrared setting and began looking around for heat sources. The interior walls were wooden, and much thinner than the cut-stone exterior walls, so I had to diddle with the adjustment knob.

There was a person in the next room, obviously lying down. No, two people, apparently in bed together — and not moving. Asleep, I hoped.

No one in the hallway beyond the door, which wasn’t locked. I opened it and scanned the dark hallway.

There were at least six bedrooms leading off the hallway. Only the one beside me contained a person.

Out in the hallway I looked downward, trying to see if there were people on the floor below.

No.

The hallway and stairs were carpeted. Still, I eased down the stairs, staying to one side in case there was a creaky board. A building this old, I bet there wasn’t a nail in it — just pegs.

Taking my time, exploring, I worked through the lower floor. There was a kitchen, a formal dining room, a couple of sitting rooms, a library with a television, a couple of small bathrooms that looked like they might have been closets way back when, an office and a master bedroom suite. The master suite contained people, two, apparently asleep. Mounted in corners in every room were surveillance cameras, and here and there a motion detector. Without power they were useless, but if the power came back on…

There was a safe in the office, a floor-mounted job about three feet high. I noted the brand and model number, just in case Jake Grafton got another big idea.

Then I attacked the office. Working as quickly as I could, I installed a key logger on the computer keyboard cord, under the desk and out of sight, then installed audio bugs on the curtains, up as high as I could reach, and put one mounted on a pin on the back of an upholstered chair. It would be good to know who was using the computer, so I installed three video bugs facing the desk. They would essentially cover the room.

“There’s a car coming.” That was Willie’s voice in my right ear.

I headed for the library, then the sitting rooms and dining room, and installed audio bugs in each one. These were top of the line, so small that they fit nicely on the head of a pin. I worked a couple into the edges of the carpets.

“He’s slowin’ down and lookin’ me over, Tommy.”

The bed room was the place I wanted into, though, and there were people in there. I tried the doorknob. It was locked. As I bent down to examine it with the goggles on the ambient light setting, I heard a noise: a door closing somewhere in the building.

Back to infrared. As I waited for the picture to change I groped for the stairs.

I had just reached them when I saw him, coming around the corner from the kitchen. He had a flashlight, which looked like a tiny glowworm in infrared. He opened a doorway and began descending the stairs.

“Okay, he’s goin’ on. Might call the police, though. Maybe you’d better hurry up and get your sneaky ass out of there.”

Call it intuition, but I just knew the man in the house was going to the basement to fire up an emergency generator.

Flipping the goggles to ambient light, I came back down the stairs and made for the kitchen and the door that led out the back, the one the man had just entered. It was unlocked, of course. I pulled it shut behind me.

Turning, I saw a dog coming at a dead run, a speeding green shape against the light green background, and, quicker than thought, he was there! I just had time to set my feet. He growled as he leaped for my throat.

I balled my right hand into a fist, pivoted on my left foot and hit him in the side of the neck with everything I had. By sheer dumb luck my timing was perfect — I couldn’t do that again if my life depended on it. The impact of the blow deflected him to the left, and his tail slapped me on the side of the face as he went flying by.

The dog splattered against the ground — didn’t try to break his fall. Lay there motionless. Didn’t even whine.

Oh, man, I hope to hell I didn’t kill him!

If I killed this damn dog they would search that house from stem to stern after they found him.

I started for the corner of the house. The garage was back here, a two-story thing with living quarters on the top floor. A paved driveway led around front.

Then I changed my mind and went back to the dog. He must have weighed fifty pounds. I picked him up and put him over my shoulder. He was still limp. If he came to while I was toting him, he was going to give me a serious hickey.

I went around the house, staying on the driveway, and then angled across the lawn for the spot in the perimeter fence where I came in. I knew I was leaving tracks in the soft sod, but it couldn’t be helped. Maybe the guard, if that was who he was, would think they were his.

The dog didn’t twitch. I could tell by the way his head flopped that I had broken his neck.

I changed my mind again, turned and hotfooted it for the main gate, which was a wrought-iron affair about ten feet high, and tried to stick the dog’s head between two of the iron uprights, but they were too far apart.

I forced his head under the gate. It was a really tight fit, but the dog didn’t protest. When I had him wedged in as tight as I could get him, I trotted for my tree.

The other dog was stirring.

I scrambled up that tree and out the limb as fast as I could go, leaped toward the ground and twisted my ankle a little when I hit. I rolled over and was rubbing my ankle when the lights in the house came back on.

I keyed the mike button on my radio. “Where are you, Willie?”

“Where I’m supposed to be.”

“Come get me. I’m beside the fence.”

“Okay.”

I was on my feet waiting when Willie pulled up. I opened the door and threw my backpack in. Then I collapsed in the passenger seat. He didn’t even wait for me to get the door closed before he accelerated away.

“How’d it go?” he asked as I struggled to take off my goggles and radio headset. My hands were shaking and I was feeling the effects of an adrenaline overdose.

“There were two dogs.”

“They get a piece of you?”

“No.”

“You lucky fucker.”

“Yeah. Shot with luck.”

“I mean it. You’re the luckiest fucker I know.” That was Willie— he always could put things in the proper perspective.

“Let’s go to Paris,” I said. I reclined the seat and closed my eyes, which shut him up. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. That dog — wheeyooo, that was close.