The Talbot Odyssey (62 page)

Ann said, “Word for word. I can tell when you’re reciting your message and when you’re deviating. Speak.”

Nikolai Vasilevich stood, head and eyes fixed straight ahead, and recited in a monotone, as he’d done for Viktor Androv. When he finished, Ann summarized in English, then said to Pembroke, “So it
is
Molniya, and it is tonight. But we knew that. What we didn’t know is that Talbot Three will be here—or is already here.”

Pembroke nodded thoughtfully, then stared at the Russian, who was sweating now. He said, “It’s no longer customary to kill the bearer of bad news, but—”

Ann put her hand on his rising pistol. “No, Marc.”

He looked at her sharply.

“I promised.” She added, “Besides, he’s sexy.”

Pembroke smiled slowly, then said to Sutter, “Stow him under this staircase.”

Sutter produced a Syrette and approached the Russian. The man took a step back. Sutter said, “Sleepy time, Ivan. Let’s see some skin.”

Ann spoke to him soothingly in Russian and the man hesitated, then held out his arm.

Sutter rammed the Syrette in with more force than necessary, then led the Russian to the small closet beneath the staircase and stuffed him inside as he began to pass into unconsciousness.

Pembroke looked up the narrow, dimly lit staircase, which ended at a top landing. Beyond the landing was a steel door that he knew led to the south end of the main attic. There were three other attic staircases, all ending in steel doors that were cross-barred on the other side. He said softly to Ann, “The Holy Grail is beyond that door.”

She smiled at him. “Keep it. I’m interested in the radios. I must speak to Washington and Moscow sometime before midnight.”

Pembroke looked at his watch and replied, “We shall do our best.”

Llewelyn was at the top of the stairs, fixing charges of plastic explosives around the steel casement frame.

Ann said, “You must keep the shooting to a minimum up there. Those electronics are crucial.”

“I understand.”

She looked at him closely. “If we succeed here, I don’t want a massacre, Marc. I just want to get out.”

“And if we don’t succeed?”

She stared into his eyes as she spoke. “Then, as George said, we’ll take as many with us as we can. There will be no reason to leave here.”

Pembroke nodded. “How do you want your father? Dead or alive?”

She spoke without hesitation. “I want him put back in his grave where he belongs.”

“Thorpe?”

“Alive. I want
him
alive.”

“Any other instructions?”

“Yes. If Talbot Three is actually here, find him.”

Pembroke nodded, then said, “Before I’m through here, this house will give up all its secrets.”

The big Sikorsky helicopter headed south toward the coastline of Long Island. The jumpmaster, Farber, called out, “Target, three miles due south!” He added, “Winds gusting from the north to nine miles an hour at sea level. Ten to fifteen miles up here. Partial cloud cover, obscuring a three-quarter moon. Rain clouds tracking this way. Target is well lit and easily identifiable. Don’t land on George’s property by mistake or he’ll shoot you.” Farber laughed, then called out, “Line up!”

Grenville stood and approached the sliding door. Behind him were Pembroke’s men, Stewart and Collins. Behind them the old boys, Johnson and Hallis. Grenville knew enough about tactical parachute jumps to know that the buddy system was very important. Stewart and Collins were buddies. He guessed that Johnson and Hallis were buddies too. Only Tom Grenville seemed to be missing a buddy.

The cabin lights suddenly went out and the lights from the cockpit dimmed to near darkness. The pilots drew blackout shades around their side windows and shut off the outside navigation lights, a move that Grenville thought was highly dangerous. Farber seemed to read his thoughts and said, “Don’t worry, boys, no one else is crazy enough to be flying at this altitude tonight.”

The blackened helicopter stopped its forward motion and hovered nose up into the wind. The buffeting became worse and the cabin pitched steeply to port and starboard. The men held on to overhead straps. Farber called out, “Target one mile, due south.”

Grenville checked his equipment and adjusted the sling of his M-16. He peered out the door window. The sky was still flashing jagged lightning, and dark clouds passed by the windows.

Farber shouted, “Altitude five thousand, five hundred feet. Target one hundred feet above sea level, give or take a chimney or two.”

Grenville decided he did not like Farber’s humor. He also decided in a clear flash of reason that he wasn’t going to jump. He turned and found himself staring into Stewart’s black eyes, which reflected the thin moonlight coming through the window.

Suddenly, Farber rolled the sliding door open and a blast of frigid air flew into the darkened cabin. The noise of the rotor blades was deafening, and Grenville couldn’t hear himself speaking to Stewart, telling him to get the hell out of his way.

Stewart smiled at him. Farber gave a thumbs-up and flashed a green penlight. Stewart reached out and pushed Grenville through the open door.

Tom Grenville felt that there was no longer any floor beneath his feet, a feeling that always made him unhappy. He felt himself tumble head over heels, then righted himself and spread his arms like a bird, experiencing the exhilaration of free fall. He soared above the moonglow on the Long Island Sound, the wind carrying him toward the coastline a mile below and a mile forward. He thought,
I
didn’t collide with the fucking pontoon, Stewart.

He looked back and saw that Stewart and Collins were soaring above him. Then Johnson dived out of the cabin, followed by Hallis.

In the dark cabin, Farber watched Hallis clear the helicopter, then grabbed the handle of the rolling door.

A hatch on the bulkhead of the aft stowage compartment dropped open and a man emerged. Farber sensed the movement and looked up as the shadow approached. The black-clad man in a parachute harness stood in front of Farber, who was holding the door half-open. The man said, “Hello, Barney.”

Farber’s eyes widened in surprise as the man reached out and seized Farber, who had no parachute, and pushed him out the open door. The man dived after him.

Tom Grenville looked down at the approaching coastline. He hoped they would spot the Russian house, though he wasn’t certain he himself was going to aim for it. Like other combat parachutists who had come to their senses on the way down, he could miss his target and explain that he mistook the lights of the country club for the Russian mansion.

The air warmed as he descended, and the wind slackened. To his front he saw the village of Glen Cove and the strands of crisscrossing roads that surrounded it like a net of white blinking Christmas lights. Beyond the village were suburban housing tracts, and here and there the large houses of country estates surrounded by dark blotches of woodland and fields. Grenville spotted the Russian estate and saw that there was no mistaking anything else for it.
Scratch that idea,
he thought.

Grenville looked down. The ground was coming up fast now, as it always did at the end. He realized he could pop his chute at this moment and guide himself to a safe landing outside the enclosed thirty-seven acres of the Russian estate. A few more seconds and he wouldn’t be able to move laterally far enough to do that. He put his hand on his rip cord.

But something Van Dorn had said made him hesitate. Beyond all the patriotic hoopla, and the assurances of a favorable promotion review, Van Dorn had said, “If you and Joan make it back, everything will be all right between you two for a long time to come.”

Grenville knew instinctively that was true. He really did love her. They’d just gone off the track. They had to share something special to put the spark back in their relationship. Like a commando raid.

Grenville heard himself saying, “I can’t let her go in there alone. I have to go too.”

He looked down at the big floodlighted area around the house. It was very close now, and it was too late to avoid his rendezvous with it, his rendezvous with death or with life. “Oh, shit. . . .”

He looked at the quickly changing red LED numbers on his altimeter: one thousand feet above sea level, nine hundred, eight hundred. He pulled his rip cord and felt the deceleration as the skydiver chute filled with air. He looked up at his chute, spread like black bat wings above his head. He felt himself drifting slowly, updrafts keeping the altimeter at five hundred feet. “Shit!” He didn’t like the idea of hanging above the target. Even though the skyrockets had stopped on schedule, and he supposed no one below was looking up anymore, he felt very exposed. The altimeter read four hundred and fifty feet. Much too slow a descent. He began to guide his chute toward the house.

Grenville looked back over his shoulder. The Sikorsky wasn’t visible any longer. Grenville suspected it was still there, monitoring their fall, but its gray camouflage paint and its darkened lights made it impossible to see.

The four other chutes were close behind him. They were maneuvering also, closing in on the house. Grenville turned back to his front, then his head swung around quickly. He counted:
One, two,
three, four . . . five!
That wasn’t right. He counted again and again and came up with five. “What the hell . . . ?” He thought,
Farber?
But Farber hadn’t been wearing a chute and couldn’t have gotten into one quickly enough to be that close. Who the hell was that? Maybe they had a buddy for him. But Grenville could see that the other men had swiveled around also and were watching the unknown chutist above and behind them. Instinctively he knew that the sixth man was not one of them. He was no buddy.

Stanley Kuchik held the cable tighter as the grade became steeper. He thought he should be nearing the end of the conduit by now. He called out softly to Joan, “You still there?”

“In body only. I projected my spirit to the Côte d’Azur.”

“Oh . . .” Stanley said, “don’t let go. If you do let go, tell me first. I’ll let go too.”

Joan thought the boy seemed frightened. She said, “You’ll be the first to know.”

Stanley was silent as the cable carried him through the conduit. He felt something brush over his helmet and face and heard the tinkling of metal chimes—the signal marker that meant he had ten seconds before his fingers reached the return pulley. He quickly released one hand from the cable and felt around the top of the conduit, finding the first of the handgrips embedded in the pipe. He released the moving cable with his other hand and reached back for the next grip, pulling himself, hand over hand, through the conduit, the trolley still beneath him.

He heard the chimes again and heard Joan feeling for the first overhead grip. Stanley said, “I’m pulling myself through.”

“Me too.”

Stanley felt her head come into contact with his feet. He said, “Hold it there.”

Stanley heard the return pulley spinning above his face. “Christ, talk about tight. . .
.
” He found the next handgrip and pulled himself another foot along, feeling his helmet come into contact with the concrete plug that the Russians had poured into the conduit. He drew a deep breath. The air was foul and he felt dizzy. He whispered, “I hit the wall.”

“Well, ram through it.”

“Okay. . . .” Bergen had explained that his men—the midgets—had used muriatic acid to eat away most of the concrete plug, leaving just a two-inch shell. Stanley gave a mental shrug.
Nuts
.

He began a difficult turning motion, thrusting his body around until he lay facedown on the trolley. He found a recessed handgrip in front of him, buried his gloved fingers in it, and pulled. He and the trolley traveled forward, sending his helmet into the concrete wall. The brittle acid-eaten concrete shattered immediately and fell noisily to the floor of the boiler room.

Light flooded into the conduit and Stanley was almost blinded by the sudden glare. Cool air bathed his sweaty face as he squinted into the lights. He drew his pistol and aimed it to his front.

If anyone was in the boiler room, or came in to investigate the noise, he was to call out “Red!” and they’d both push off, sending the trolleys rolling back to the basement of the tennis court.

Stanley stared at the closed door of the boiler room twenty feet away. He realized that he was the only one who would ever know whether or not that door opened. He kept staring at it, praying, but not knowing if he was praying for it to open or stay closed.

Joan whispered urgently, “Green or red?”

Stanley replied, “Yellow.” He waited for some time, his eyes adjusting to the light as he stared at the door, considering his options, then suddenly blurted, “Green! Green!”

Joan replied, somewhat unhappily, he thought, “Understand. Green.”

Stanley stuck his pistol into his chest pouch, then pulled the small trolley from under his body and dangled it over the edge of the conduit. He let it fall and heard a soft thud as the rubber trolley hit the floor.

Stanley knocked off a few clinging fragments of concrete, then pulled his head and torso out of the conduit. He glanced around the big boiler room, lit with naked incandescent light bulbs. He looked down. Bergen had said it would be a three- or four-foot drop, but it was at least five feet.
Shit.

He worked his body out farther and bent at the waist, pushing his palms against the wall until his weight and gravity took over and he felt himself sliding down, face first, to the floor. He hit with his hands and somersaulted away from the wall, ending up on his feet. He drew his pistol quickly and backed up to the wall again. He called softly up to the conduit. “Okay. I’m in. Hold on a minute.” He went to the boiler room door and listened. There were sounds in the distance, but he couldn’t make them out. Stanley turned from the door and made his way silently around the large concrete room. He found a handmade wooden bench and carried it to the wall. He stepped up on it and peered into the conduit. He saw Joan’s head and shoulders a few feet away. She was still lying on her back, the trolley beneath her. Looking at her stuffed in there, he didn’t see how either of them had got through. No way, he thought, would the Russians expect this. He called out, “Okay, I’m here—”