Dr. O (27 page)

Beside her, like so many potatoes in a bag, Riley felt like dead weight. He was likely struggling just as she was with the effects of the deprivation drug. Boas had said not to fight it, but she was damned if she could do anything but fight it. Still, only her mind seemed able to function. All of the other sense organs had shut down completely. Her fingertips felt like so many Paper-Mate pens attached to the club of her hand, none of it flesh and blood.

But while she felt cold, she was not shivering. The drug was doing its job. Now she had to place her trust in providence. But her breath seemed gone along with her feelings, and if she had stopped breathing...

TWENTY -FOUR

Cornwall, Canada

"I have many misgivings, believe me," Donna Thorpe wrote on the motel letterhead where she was staying in Cornwall, Canada, awaiting word from Dr. O. It was her final line in a letter she had postmarked for Robyn Muro in care of the Department at Quantico. In the letter she spoke of her regrets about Bateman, Sykes, Joe Swisher, and everyone else this evil had touched. She also explained that she intended to die if she must, but that she would take Ovierto with her. "Just be certain to bury me with the remains of my parents," she had finished.

She called the desk and asked if there had been any messages for her. Nothing.

"Can you get me a taxi?"

"Where is it madame wishes to go?" asked the French Canadian at the other end.

"The dam?"

"Do you mean the Saunders Dam?"

"Yes, I suppose."

"Ahhhh, that is no problem."

Thorpe considered this a moment. "Is there another dam?"

"There are many along the seaway. Iroquois, In- gleside, Long Sault..."

"Which is the largest."

"Oh, Saunders, madame."

"Where is the Robert Moses dam?"

1Ahhh, but the Saunders dam is the Moses dam! One half Canada, one half America." His manner seemed to say she was a fool.

"That's the one."

"Ahhhh, that is not difficult, madame."

"Thank you, I will be ready in fifteen minutes."

"I will have a cab for you then."

"Thank you."

"You are welcome."

"Oh, and the Eisenhower Locks? Are they at the dam?"

He laughed and quickly apologized. "No, no, madame, they are on the American side. You will have to go through customs over the bridge that you may see from your window."

She glanced out at the arching, towering bridge that spanned a section of the great seaway, crossing to what was called Cornwall Island on the map she had spread before her, a Mohawk Indian Reservation that straddled Canada and the United States. The Indians went freely across the border and through customs, being residents of both countries. That was how Ovierto would get the bodies where he wanted them to go, she supposed, if he indeed actually had them. He would use well-paid Mohawks who would ask no questions.

She only wished she knew the destination. Would he bring them to the dam on the Canadian side? The American side? Or would he take them to the locks? She did not know.

She quickly freshened up her face before going out to the waiting cab. Beneath her cream-colored jacket her .38 bulged. She had loaded it with ammunition that would explode outward on impact. Her purse bulged, too, with the bogus Pythagoras papers, which were stuffed with plastique explosives.

After a brief, pleasant drive, she was soon standing on the enormous wall of the dam, staring out over the superstructure from an observation tower that wrapped completely around it. A guide pointed out that halfway across began the American side, staring back at them through observation glasses, were the Americans visiting the Robert Moses dam.

She placed a quarter into one of the machines and viewed the panoramic plain along the mammoth sea-way, a restful place overlooking the calm waters below, where fishermen in boats came dangerously close to the dam's intake valves. She asked a guide to point out the locks, and she found them in the near distance, east of the dam. From here it looked like any ordinary factory, though without the accompanying waste products being thrown up by the Reynolds Aluminum plant and the GM plant over on the American side. Still, the Canadians joined in the smog-making here in Cornwall, where a complete cumulus cloud with soft white edges, made of a stifling, malodorous sulfur from the wood pulp mill, billowed thick enough to throw a large portion of the old district into shade.

She had hoped she would be contacted somewhere along her tour of the dam, and she wasn't disappointed. She turned her attention to the American side, the dirty commercial field glasses shutting down just as she saw the man on the American side staring back at her. It was Ovierto.

She fought to find another quarter in her purse, the papers there in her way. She finally got the machine working again and stared at the empty window opposite some two hundred or so feet in the observa-tion tower at the Moses side of the dam. The bastard knew exactly where she was. It was up to him now.

A man near her bent over to pick up some piece of paper that seemed to materialize from his palm. He then cleared his throat and said in a thick Indian accent, "You dropped this, missy."

The man hurried off as soon as he pushed the crushed paper into her hand.

She Opened it and read the message that was clearly in Ovierto's hand:

Welcome to Canada. Now, proceed to the locks, alone. Wait there until further instructions reach you.

For the first time she was truly afraid. She checked for the cyanide capsule which she need only burst with her teeth to end everything. She didn't intend to be taken alive by Ovierto, if that was his intention.

Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw the guard on duty here staring at her, but maybe she was just getting paranoid now.

She rushed back down, taking the stairs. Too impatient to wait for a crowded elevator to arrive, she searched the expansive parking area for the taxi she'd asked to wait, but it was gone.

"Damn, damn," she muttered before rushing back inside and asking the guard on the ground floor to call a cab for her. In a rather haughty manner that made him look more like a butler than a guard 1 he indicated the pay phones. She went to the book, which was less than half the size of the D.C. phone book, and she located a cab company and called.

While she waited, she found a tourist map which showed the way clearly from here to the locks. When the cab arrived, she became instantly suspicious of the driver, who was rather clean-shaven, with closely cropped hair, broad shoulders, and a white shirt stuffed into black pants. She smelled Mounted Police all over him, and she guessed it was Robyn Muro's doing, siccing these guys on her for "protection." Damn her anyway, she said to herself.

As the cab pulled out she asked to be taken to see the Indian Crafts Museum on Cornwall Island. This was halfway across the border. Here she got out and pretended interest in the jewelry and art of the Mo-hawks, realizing that much of the crafts were imported from other tribes, some of it as far away as New Mexico. Shortly, as she watched the driver putter about outside, getting bored and starting to come in, she located the ladies' room in the back. As she had hoped, there was a window, through which she climbed, tearing her suit in the process.

She rushed around the back stairs, dodging windows, and was in the cab before the Mountie knew he was being duped. She tore from the sand lot parking area, kicking up a cloud of dirt which the Mountie stood in, outlined in her rearview mirror. It was nearing dusk when she went through the customs gate, where she merely flashed her FBI badge and was waved through.

Thorpe followed the signs that led her from the bridge spanning the enormous St. Lawrence River. They brought her out onto Highway 34, going west toward Massena, New York, but then she was sent on a divergent route that would take her toward the American side of the dam that she had seen from the Canadian side. But the sign also said she was on the path for the locks.

Tension mounted in her with each mile that brought her closer to the rendezvous with Ovierto. She had taken every precaution, and she believed she was ready for him. She had already made certain concessions to him, concessions he knew nothing about, such as the fact she no longer believed that there was any chance of regaining the remains of her parents. She had made that concession, and it was bound up with her certainty that Ovierto must die at any cost —any cost—including her own life.

She had made arrangements to that end.

She put a hand to her breast, her breathing coming in starts and stops. It only calmed when her fingers wrapped around the snub-nosed .38 beneath her jacket.

All around her was the brilliant blue of a lovely winter's sky. Winter birds took up chase in the branches of the denuded trees, and on each side of the winding road she saw the evidence of an area that had many lovely fishing holes. How she'd love to go fishing. Instead, she was hurtling along toward her death.

Looming ahead, cutting into the countryside like some strange underground laboratory, were the government buildings of the locks, along with the inevitable high fences. One area was turned over to an electrical station. Straight ahead there was a tunnel which went below the locks and under any ship that happened to be in the locks at the time, which surfaced on the other side. Far from there, on the winding, park like road, the Robert Moses Dam was hidden beyond the trees.

Just short of the tunnel a sign told visitors to turn in, and she did so. The visitor's center was all parking lot and a two-story viewing stand, surrounded by fences and warning signs; below there were a hot dog/hamburger stand, a phone booth, restrooms, and a blackboard listing the incoming and outgoing ships along with their names, time of arrival, cargoes, ports of call, and registry. There were also a handful of the viewing devices she had seen at the dam. Litter from gum wrappers to cigarette packs was given wing by sudden thunderous gusts of wind. From the concrete main deck she could see far and wide, but the island on which the dam was built covered her view of the dam. She did a double take when she realized that one of the huge buildings in front of her was steadily descending and some of the windows that had been over her head were now at eye-level. Then she realized the mammoth structure looming over her, casting its monstrous shadow, was a freighter idled and silent, sitting in the cradle of the locks, being lowered to the level of the seaway by the controls being worked somewhere out of sight.

The superstructure of the great freighter, flying a Canadian flag along with several flags she did not recognize, dwarfed the viewing stand beside her. She now saw men on the ship, some of them waving to the tourists here, but most ignoring the hubbub of the locks, going quietly about their business.

She watched the process of lowering the hulking ship, finding it fascinating. The dimensions of the locks had to be enormous to take such a huge monster into its belly and either lift or lower by virtue of the water level. Now she saw the ship's name, Bruha. It was of Puerto Rican origin, she realized. The Canadian leaf had been hoisted to pay a quiet tribute to the Canadians along their route as they'd arrived at the locks. At the aft, an American flag flew, looking like a mainstay rather than an afterthought.

Now getting a little bored with the mechanical show, she did as the other tourists did. She found the blackboard and read about the ship before them. The Witch, in English, had been filled with a capacity tonnage of eighty thousand tons of coffee, but was returning now with that much in tons of manganese, iron, aluminum. Thorpe guessed that much of the cargo was actually cocaine, heroin, and other drugs camouflaged as coffee. The ship had already made stops at every major U.S. city along the route —Detroit, Toledo, Chicago, Milwaukee —as well as their Canadian counterparts.

She tried to eat something, but the smell of the burger and her knotted stomach conspired to send it to the trash bin. She returned to the viewing area, wondering if she should stay below or pay the dollar toll to go above. Where did that filthy bastard want her? Her eyes fell on the ship again, and it was astonishingly low, the "building" of before now below her feet. She looked down on the dark men who had moments earlier been looking down on her. They were burnt black from the sun, most of them donning neckerchiefs and looking like Latin swashbucklers. Despite her situation, despite her emotions, she allowed herself a moment's fantasy as she watched one thin young man who looked a bit like Errol Flynn roam the decks below her.

Separating her and everyone else from the ship was a fence that reached up over her head, perhaps eight feet high. It was littered with signs prohibiting anyone's climbing on it. On the other side there was a mere four feet to the edge, a sheer drop. From her vantage point, the ship itself seemed almost to touch the wall of the locks.

Across, on the other side, a few men worked in an area that was restricted to authorized personnel only, and beyond them were the administrative offices which housed the main controls. She was beginning to wonder again what Ovierto was up to, bringing her to this strange place merely to make a drop and exchange. The men working the other side busied themselves now with detaching lines, for the Puerto Rican ship had revved its engines and a large metal gate at the east end of the locks opened for the ship to pass through safely toward the sea hundreds of miles away.