Patricia Potter (26 page)

His mouth worked. The stark agony of this moment would never go away. Never.

“Be happy,” he finally said as he pushed back his chair and left.

Meara would never know how she spent the rest of the afternoon. She wandered aimlessly about the grounds. She thought about going to the beach, but she couldn’t stand the thought of the loneliness. Not now. Not this afternoon. Instead she moved under the moss-covered oaks and stared into the salt marshes beyond Jekyll Creek.

It was over. She had never stopped hoping for a reprieve, never stopped believing in one. But now she’d stopped believing. He was going. And he had made it clear he wouldn’t be back.

She finally went back to the house. Cal and Elizabeth were dressing. The couple had been invited for cocktails at one of the cottages.

Elizabeth took one look at Meara’s face and asked whether she and the children would like to eat at the cottage. They would order food from the clubhouse. Meara nodded indifferently. She didn’t think she could ever eat again.

Elizabeth whispered something to Peter and Tara before she and Cal Connor left. The children went to the study where they turned on the radio, and Meara was mercifully alone. Images, bright and shining, haunted her, as did Michael’s face, sad and troubled, as he had said, so finally, his farewell.

She heard a knock on the door and slowly went over to it, opening it to see a man in coveralls. She had noticed him before, a new gardener, one she hadn’t seen before this latest trip to Jekyll.

His face look frightened. “A man fell…I think he might be hurt,” he mumbled. “He told me to come here.”

Seized by fear, Meara didn’t think to ask why he had come here and not the clubhouse. “Michael!” she exclaimed.

“I don’t know his name. He just told me where to find you.”

“I’ll send the children for help.”

He shook his head. “He said he didn’t want to bother the others…something about a war injury.”

Meara didn’t hesitate any longer. He wanted her. Only her. She went in the study. The children would be all right for a few minutes. She told Peter she’d be gone only a short while.

The man quickly led the way. The door into the power plant was open, and the man stood aside. “I helped him in “there,” he said.

Meara went first and was just inside, looking frantically around when a dirt-encrusted hand covered her mouth with a handkerchief. She smelled ether and she struggled against its sickening odor. Everything started to go black. She could feel herself falling. Michael, she tried to call. Michael. It was the last thought she had.

Chapter Thirteen

H
ANS LOWERED THE
woman and looked at her with satisfaction before tying her hands and feet. Although unconscious, she was breathing easily. He had purposely kept the dosage small.

Now for the children.

But first the telephones. He had earlier located the cables which went over to the mainland. After one last look toward the woman, he moved silently to cut the island’s contact with the outside world, slicing the cords with his gardener’s shears. He wasn’t worried about reaction at the clubhouse. The phones were frequently out, particularly in bad weather.

After severing the connection, he quickly returned to the DuBignon cottage, and he rapped sharply on the door. When answered by a boy of ten or so, he said haltingly. “Miss O’Hara said for you two to come with me.”

“But why?”

Hans shrugged dumbly.

Peter hesitated. He had been warned repeatedly about strangers, but this was Jekyll Island, and nothing happened on Jekyll Island.

“She said to hurry.”

The last sentence convinced Peter. He called for Tara, who was always ready for an adventure.

“Come with me,” the man said, and Peter was glad that the man didn’t try to touch him. There was something about the gardener he didn’t like, but if Meara wanted them, or needed them….

Peter puffed up with importance as he shut the door and hurried alongside the man. They were moving toward the power house. Peter looked toward the large clubhouse. “Shouldn’t we…,” he started.

But the man only walked faster. The door to the power house was closed but unlocked, and the man opened it, waiting for Tara and Peter to go inside.

“Meara,” Peter called out apprehensively. He didn’t like the darkness, didn’t like the man who had brought them. He started to back up, but the man caught him, and a foul-smelling rag was pushed against his nose and mouth. Peter attempted to jerk away, trying to get loose, trying to give Tara time to run. But he couldn’t call out because of the cloth in his mouth, and everything was getting fuzzy.

The boy went limp in Hans’s arms, and the little girl was screaming. Hans shut the door with his foot, effectively cutting off the noise. He dropped the boy to the floor, then used the rag on the girl. In seconds, she was still.

Hans turned on the switch inside the room. The woman and two children lay on the floor. The woman should wake soon; the children would take longer.

Hans took the rope he had stolen earlier from one of the storerooms and quickly tied the two children, just as he had tied the woman. He gagged the woman, but not the children. He didn’t want them to choke to death, not yet, not before von Steimen arrived. Then he didn’t care what happened to them.

He sat down, carefully taking the gun from the trousers he wore under the club coveralls. Like Michael’s, it was an American military pistol which, if it had been found, he could explain away as a souvenir of a former soldier.

He looked at his watch. One hour before von Steimen was to meet him. By then the girl should be awake. He could barely wait to see von Steimen’s face. Or hers when she found out who her hero really was.

Michael spent the afternoon visiting with various members of the club. He saw Sanders Evans and invited the man to his room for a drink at six.

Sanders readily agreed.

At six exactly, there was a knock at Michael’s door. He had changed into his evening clothes, and he had completed all his preparations. He had taken the small vial he’d extracted earlier from the suitcase and poured a portion of the liquid into the bottom of a glass on a table near the window and slid it into the shadows behind the bottle of Scotch.

He glanced quickly around the room. A servant had started a fire in his fireplace since the evening was chilly. The room looked warm and inviting.

Sanders was also dressed in evening clothes, the cloth and style not as elegant as Michael’s, but they fit Sanders’s muscular body well.

“What will you have?” Michael said. “Scotch, brandy, port, even gin.”

“I’ll take brandy,” Sanders said. “Gin is for you British.”

“Canadian,” Michael corrected easily. “I prefer Scotch.”

He went over to the table where the bottles and glasses were, the one with the drug slightly behind the bottles, and he quickly poured brandy into it, swirling it gently. He then poured himself some Scotch.

Michael handed the drink to Sanders and sat in an elegant armchair across from the one Sanders had selected. He sipped at his Scotch.

Sanders crossed his legs comfortably. “When does your ship leave for England?”

“Two weeks, if there are no complications.”

“From New York?”

Michael shook his head. “Canada. I’m taking the train from Brunswick tomorrow, then another from New York up to Quebec.”

Sanders grinned. “I’m probably on the same one. At least to Washington.”

“We’ll have company then.” Michael’s gut tightened. Sanders would be neck deep in trouble Sunday. He took a sip of his Scotch, watching as Sanders did the same.

Michael looked down at his watch. “I’m afraid I have to meet someone at seven. I hadn’t expected it.”

Sanders took the hint and another sip of the brandy, a longer one. “Dinner?”

“With the Lees.”

“High-powered company.”

Michael grimaced slightly. “They’re friends of the man who sponsored me here.”

“It seems to have been beneficial,” Sanders observed, his eyes moving down to Michael’s leg.

Michael looked at the cane in the corner. He hadn’t used it now for days, not even in the late afternoon or evening. “Yes.”

Sanders took another sip of the drink, and his free hand suddenly gripped the arm of the chair. He shook his head. “What…” He tried to focus on Michael. “The drink…”

The glass slipped out of his other hand. He tried to rise, but he fell back. “The drink…drugged…?”

Michael watched emotionless, but his own hand clutched his glass tightly as he saw the accusation, the sudden awareness in Sanders’s eyes.

“Who…are you?” It was all Sanders could manage.

Michael said nothing, only watched as Sanders tried again to struggle to his feet, a groan escaping his lips as he fought so hard to move but failed.

“Poison…?”

“No,” Michael said, not knowing whether Sanders understood or not as the agent’s eyes closed and his body slumped in the chair.

Michael looked at his watch. Fifteen more minutes before he was to meet Hans. He rose and went to the window, waiting until he was sure the drug had completely taken effect. He looked down at the glass that had dropped from Sanders’s fingers. A pool of liquid was spreading over the rug. He was slightly surprised at how fast the drug had worked, at how little was needed. It was more potent than he’d been told.

When he was certain Evans was soundly under, he went over to the chair and picked the agent up, staggering under the weight. He carried the man to the bed, laying him down carefully and checking his pulse. Evans was breathing easily. Thank God for that, at least.

Michael took several of his ties from his suitcase and quickly tied each of the agent’s hands to a bedpost, doing the same to his feet, until the man was spread-eagled. Still another tie, his next to last, was used to gag Sanders. The latter was probably not necessary; Evans should stay asleep for hours. But Michael couldn’t take any chances.

He wiped his hands and went out the door, locking it behind him. Michael limped toward the stairs.

He saw a number of the club members and their families collecting in the elegant lobby, around the great fireplace with its carved wood mantel and a wild boar’s head hung over it.

He could almost see the animal’s knowing, malevolent eyes directed straight at him.

He murmured some greetings and stepped outside into the cool air. Rain had been falling periodically during the day, and now it was evening. The sky was not the rich blue it had been the first days of his visit, but a violent, frothing, angry gray. There was no light, not the first twinkling of a star. But gas lamps lit the grounds, and he stepped off the porch as if getting some fresh air. He moved silently into the shadows of giant live oak trees, and then his pace quickened, despite his leg. He was learning to adjust.

The submarine would be close now, waiting for the tide to allow it entrance. Waiting for the tide and the final transmission. It would not enter Jekyll Creek until the contact was made and the final code word given.

The foul, threatening weather had completely cleared the grounds. Those going to dinner from the cottages had already made the short trip to the clubhouse. The power plant was toward the back of the grounds, behind and slightly right of the stables. The door was closed.

Michael looked at his watch. Five minutes late. As he reached the small building, he heard the beginning of a scream inside and pushed open the door.

Meara woke slowly, her stomach turning over and her head aching. She tried to move but she couldn’t, and she didn’t understand why. Then she felt the harsh burning of ropes on her wrists as she struggled to open her eyes. Heavy and sluggish, they didn’t want to open. Through sheer force of will, she finally forced them and they slowly, painfully, focused through a dark, hazy cloud.

They found a man dressed in a gardener’s uniform, his hands fondly caressing a pistol, his eyes paler and colder than any she had ever seen. Slowly, she remembered her last conscious moments. The gardener. But he didn’t have that cold, vulture look then. He had looked simple, helpful. He had said something about…Michael.

Michael.

She tried to speak, but a cloth filled her mouth, and she suddenly gagged, choking on the foreign substance. Meara felt raw panic. Panic and fear as she sought desperately to breathe, only to pull the cloth deeper in her throat. She thought she was suffocating and fought the bonds around her wrists until they tore into her, ripping her skin.

The man walked slowly, lazily, toward her and leaned down, taking the gag from her mouth, but there was no pity in his eyes, only a fanatical fire.

“Fräulein,” he said mockingly.

Meara’s eyes widened at the odd title. “What…?” Her mouth was so dry she could barely get the question out.

“I thought I would invite you on a little journey.”

Meara tried frantically to arrange her thoughts, to understand something of what was going on. But her mind was still fuzzy from the drug. “The…children…?”