Oasis of Night (42 page)

It hit me like a big, cartoon hammer, and I sat up straight, everything else forgotten. Of course Picco's men were searching Topsail beach. It fronted directly on the bay, and everybody knew German submarines regularly patrolled the waters around Bell Island. Before the war, German ships had often arrived to pick up precious iron ore from the Island's mines, so they'd know every nook and cranny of Conception Bay. Callan had mentioned reports of “tin fish”—German submarines—in Newfoundland waters and how this was a cause for concern. Only a couple weeks before, the passenger ferry, the SS
Caribou,
was sunk by U-69, killing a hundred and thirty-seven people.

Maybe the Greek ship was intended as a diversion, something to keep the Constabulary busy while the Germans sent their men ashore from a concealed sub, but Picco wasn't that stupid. He'd have sent a man or two down there, possibly to do some investigating, but mainly to make it seem like he'd taken the bait. It wasn't hard to launch an inflatable raft from a submarine, and as a mode of transportation it was quick and quiet. Pick yourself a night when there's no moon, get your raft and your men in the water, and nobody's the wiser. Picco knew this, and he probably knew or suspected a whole lot more, which meant only one thing: I had some work to do.

I left the folder on Picco's desk and went out the same way I'd come in. The wind was steady out of the northeast, and tiny snowflakes were fluttering out of a steel-gray sky. I left Fort Townsend and headed east toward Barnes Road. It was hardly the sort of day for a leisurely stroll, but I needed time to clear my head before I went back to the Heartache. Callan had told me there were rumors of enemy saboteurs in the city, and I'd heard it said by more than one customer the Germans were planning something nasty. I'm not the sort of person who puts much stock in rumor or innuendo, but my investigation of Picco's case notes pointed past the rumors and toward a singular truth: something bad was coming, something big. The men who'd attacked Chris had come looking for me, which meant somebody saw me as a threat, so the quicker I could sort this thing out, the better.

I had just crossed Rennie's Mill Road into Bannerman Park when the tiny hairs on the back of my neck started to prickle, and not because of the cold wind, either. It's the kind of feeling you get when you're sure somebody's looking at you. I did a quick survey of the park, and sure enough, a man in a long, dark coat was standing by the southwest corner of the Colonial Building. I wasn't close enough to make out his features, but there was something oddly familiar about his stance and the set of his shoulders; I could have sworn I'd seen him somewhere before. I couldn't puzzle out why he was just standing there like that: he didn't have a dog with him, and on such a cold day, there was nobody else in the park. He could have been waiting for someone, but most people would have chosen a more prominent spot—the front steps of the Colonial Building, say, or the fountain that fronted on Military Road. He stood very still until I was maybe five feet away from him. Then he took his hands out of his pockets and started forward.

“Chilly morning for a walk, Mr. Stoyles.”

He was waiting for someone, all right. He was waiting for me. The man standing in front of me, his hand outstretched in greeting, was none other than Jonah Octavian. Again.

 

 

I'
M
NOT
ashamed to say I turned and ran like a scared kid, all the way back to Constabulary headquarters. I'd be damned if I let that bastard get away again. I found Picco sitting at his desk, drinking a cup of tea and talking on the phone. He held up a hand when he saw me, so I waited till he'd laid down the receiver. “Jonah Octavian's alive. I just saw him in the park.”

Picco's eyebrows climbed toward his hair. “Jonah Octavian is dead. Are you drunk?”

“No, dammit, I'm not drunk. Listen to me, would you? He even greeted me by name.” I told him how Octavian had been standing there, almost like he'd been waiting for me. “He was killed in Egypt. I saw him die myself.”

Picco gazed at me for several long moments. “Sure he did. And he somehow came back to life and was waiting for you in the park.”

“Not just in the park. He showed up in the Heartache one night, with some guy.”

Picco shuffled some papers on his desk. “Stoyles, don't be wasting my time with your foolishness. I got enough on my plate. I did what I could for you, now go on home out of it.”

“You have to listen to me. Goddammit, Picco, put that down!” I yanked the folder out of his hand so hard it cut him. “I'm sorry.”

He sighed and reached for a Kleenex. “Stoyles, look. You're not a bad sort of fellow. Sure, you're a Yank, but unlike the rest of 'em around here, I like Yanks.” He sucked the blood away from the cut, watching me over the edge of his hand. “But you got no respect for proper protocol.”

“Picco—Phonse—this is the same guy who snatched you off the street and stuck you in a cave over on the Southside. You know how dangerous Octavian is.”

“Octavian's dead.” He sat back in his chair and regarded me wearily. “Do you think we haven't been keeping an eye on him? I know everything that's happened to him since he left last year. He is dead—I didn't need you to tell me that, by the way—so whoever you saw in the park, it wasn't Jonah Octavian.”

“Phonse, you gotta listen—”

“Jack!” He stood up, and we were suddenly eye to eye and toe to toe. “That's enough. Octavian is dead. I got a copy of the signed death certificate from the Egyptian officials, forwarded here by priority air post the day after he was killed. I even contacted the head of the Cairo police force and had him check the teeth. Octavian is dead, and that's the end of it.”

“Yes, but couldn't there have been some mistake?” I was, I knew, grasping at straws, but the sight of whoever that was in Bannerman Park had shaken me to the core. It was starting to feel like Octavian's ghost was chasing me. “Maybe the Egyptians got something mixed up. Maybe they only thought Octavian—”

“Good-bye, Mr. Stoyles.” Picco stepped away from his desk, took my arm in his strong policeman's grip, and steered me to the door.

“You're making a mistake.” The door closed and I was on the outside of it. I heard the key turning in the lock. “Fine, if that's the way you want it.” I waited to see if Picco would change his mind, but there was no sound from behind the door. It was already well after twelve, so I used the phone at the front desk to call a cab and waited outside until it pulled up: a rickety black-and-white number with a skinny guy at the wheel.

“Where to, buddy?” His graying hair was combed straight back and secured with something that looked and smelled like axle grease. His face was seamed like a crumpled paper bag, and he was chewing a toothpick so old it was probably a sliver of the True Cross. He reeked of old booze and too many cigarettes—the kind of guy who'd benefit from a strong gargle and some good, thorough dentistry.

I gave him the address of the Heartache and sat back. The inside of the cab hadn't been cleaned since the horse-and-buggy days, but I didn't have time to be picky. I'd left Tex alone to prep for the lunch crowd, and with Chris out of commission, I needed to get back before the afternoon rush. “You can head straight down Prescott if you like—that'll probably be the fastest.” But he bypassed the hill and kept going east, toward the Newfoundland Hotel. “Hey, wait a minute! I'm already late as it is.”

“Don't worry, my son. I knows a shortcut. You'll be there in plenty of time.”

Something about this was making me very, very nervous. I'd grown up in Philly, and I knew cabbies often tried to take the rubes for a ride by going the long way around, but this was just weird. He swung around the hotel, heading south toward the waterfront, past the long line of red brick houses on Devon Row, and down the steep incline of Temperance Street. “Hey! Where are you going?”

He caught my eye in the rearview mirror and nodded at me. “Don't worry, Stoyles. This way you'll beat all the dinnertime traffic.”

“How'd you know my name?” I reached for the door handle. “Put the brakes on. I'm getting out.” The handle wouldn't budge: the door was jammed shut. “Stop this car! I want to get out.”

He turned around to face me, giving me the weirdest, most disturbing smile I'd ever seen in my life. “I'm going to get out, Mr. Stoyles, but you won't be going anywhere. See, I got 'er rigged so she gets 'er gas even if I'm not pressing on the pedal.”

The view out the front windscreen was chilling: a wide expanse of dark, dirty water. We were heading for the harbor unless I managed to stop this thing in the next few seconds. “Hey! You can't just leave me here!”

He wasn't listening to me. His narrow shoulders jerked as he yanked on the handle, trying desperately to get the door open. “It won't come open. Why won't it come open?”

“Put the brakes on, dammit! Put the brakes—”

There was a loud thump as the underside of the car struck the dock, and then we were airborne, the sea and the sky hurtling around me in a sickening kaleidoscope. We hit the water, and as the car began to sink, I remember thinking this was a stupid way to die.

 

 

W
HEN
I
woke up, it hurt to swallow and I had the worst headache of my life; I tried to talk but there was something down my throat.

“Rest. Do not try to speak. You are in Grace Hospital. You have been through a terrible ordeal, Jack.” Sam Halim looked about the same as always—perhaps a little older, perhaps a little wearier, and there were new lines around his eyes. “My darling. Why do you do this to yourself?”

Sam
. My eyes were full of tears, and I reached for him with both hands: he was real.
I missed you.
I wanted to talk to him and couldn't; whatever was down my throat was getting in the way, and I tried to get at it.

“You mustn't take out the tube.” He stroked my cheek, leaned in, and kissed my forehead. “It's very late. Sleep now, and I will come to you when I am able.”

Don't go.
The darkness was clawing at me, pulling me under. I tried to fight it, but my eyelids felt like garage doors, and before I knew it, I was out.

When I woke up again, it was later, and a trim young nurse in a starched white uniform was yanking open the curtains with the kind of grim efficiency you only ever see in such places. She picked up my wrist and felt for my pulse, then lifted my open eyelids and peered into my eyes.

“Mr. Stoyles, you have had a very close call. A very close call indeed. The next time you decide to go swimming in the harbor, I recommend you wait till at least July.”

“It wasn't my choice.” They'd apparently removed the tube sometime earlier, which explained why my throat felt like I'd been gargling with broken glass. “Can I have a drink of water?”

She came around the other side of the bed and fluffed my pillows. “Nothing by mouth until the doctor's seen you. You had nearly half the harbor down your lungs.”

“Any of it get into my stomach?”

She wasn't amused. “Nothing till the doctor's seen you.”

“You're no fun, sister.” I lay back on my pillows and tried to figure out why a cab driver, a stranger to me, would want to kill me by driving into the harbor. I'd developed a theory or two when Sergeant Picco arrived, looking like he hadn't been to bed for ages. Since this was an official visit, I lost no time in telling him my version of events.

“Why would Rocky Power—the cab driver—want to kill you?” Picco sat on the edge of the hardbacked hospital chair, trying desperately to convey an image of self-assured command. “Did you do anything to him?”

“No. I never saw him before in my life.”

“Hm. So how come he wanted to kill you?” His expression said he wondered why more people didn't try to kill me.

“I don't know, but he did.”

Picco scribbled something in his notebook. “Mm.”

“You sound like you don't believe me. Goddammit, Picco, they fished me out of the harbor.” I still didn't remember anything that happened after we hit the water. Everything after the accident, from then until I'd woken up in hospital, was a complete blank.

“I never said I didn't believe you,” he said tiredly.

“Then put me in touch with this Power guy. I'll get the truth, supposing I have to beat it out of him.”

“That's hard to do. As far as we can tell, you somehow managed to free yourself from the car before it went to the bottom. Power wasn't so lucky. He's dead.”

“Huh.” That probably hadn't been part of his plan. “How'd I get here?”

“You were found lying on the American army docks, soaking wet and suffering from exposure. An anonymous call came through our switchboard, saying a man had been fished out of the harbor. Sounds like someone was looking out for you, Stoyles.”