The Man with the Red Bag (11 page)

I nodded. Should I ask if she'd started liking him again? Better not.

It was kind of pally, sitting with her like this. I was almost enjoying it. Almost forgetting why we were sitting here in the first place.

She sighed. “Okay. I think I'm ready to go to sleep now.”

“Oh, no, you're not. That's not the point of this. YOU MUST NOT SLEEP.”

“Right. Absolutely. I won't.”

I gave her Grandma's cell phone number, gathered my comforter around me, took my clock, and stood up. “Maybe I'll set my alarm for five and come get you. Remember, if he comes down those stairs wait till he goes out the door, then run up and get me. First door on the right.”

“I'm there.” She shivered and pulled her quilt tighter around her.

I started for the stairs.

“You really think some guys would think I'm okay-looking?” she whispered after me.

“They might,” I said. “Who knows?”

I went quietly up the stairs and into my room, all pumped up now. I decided I'd write a bit in my mystery notebook, make myself some notes. Pretty soon I'd be weaving a story out of all that had happened and anything that would happen from now to the end. That would be the climax of the story. The crisis came first and was the part where the hero had to decide which way to turn, what to do next. I had a feeling the crisis and the climax were almost here.

I opened the notebook and spread out my map one more time. Here we were at the Lazy Y Ranch. I finger-traced my way up tomorrow's route, which in some places overlapped the Big C, and then I stopped, my heart pounding against my rib cage.

Oh my gosh!

Of course.

That's what he was after. I knew it for sure. His mission.

Tomorrow would be the crisis.

Tomorrow night, the climax.

I went down to tell Geneva. There was no way I could sleep.

I
n the morning I was woozy and fuzzy. Not enough sleep again. I sat in the bus with Grandma. Sometimes I'd look back at Geneva and her dad. She was dozing, her head on her dad's shoulder, her fingers playing with the turquoise butterfly on its chain.

“We're going to see some of the world's biggest sculptures today, carved right into the face of the mountain,” Declan said. He was wearing a flag shirt, Old Glory, the stripes and stars marching across his chest and back. In honor, I guess, of what we were to see. “One of the sculptures is still a work in
progress,” he went on. “A gigantic carving of Crazy Horse, great chief of the Oglala Sioux. Crazy Horse led the Sioux and Cheyenne in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where Lieutenant Colonel George Custer and his command were wiped out. The carving of the chief on his horse will be six hundred forty-one feet long and five hundred sixty-three feet high when it's completed. But first”—he paused—“Mount Rushmore.”

I looked to the left and saw Stavros. He was clutching the red bag so tightly that the knuckles of his unbandaged hand were white and shiny. Oh, yes, Mr. Stavros.
This
is what you've been waiting for.

“Mount Rushmore,” Declan repeated. “I defy anyone on this bus to be unmoved when we first catch a glimpse of the heads of four of our most famous presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, carved so powerfully into the rock. We will spend this afternoon at Mount Rushmore. Tonight we'll stay in a delightful little motel in a small town called Hill City, only a few miles from the monument. You will find all kinds of information about the carvings in the
museum, right in the park. But I thought I'd fill you in a little bit before we get there.”

He went on to tell us about the sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who'd had a vision of a national monument hewn out of the mass of rock known as Mount Rushmore. The words and faces of the four chosen presidents would be “carved high, as close to heaven as we can.”

“It was quite a job,” Declan added. “I like to say it was accomplished with drills and dynamite and dreams.”

As Declan talked, I watched Stavros. I could only see the side of his face as he stared straight at Declan, concentrating on every word. What was he thinking? That he could turn those dreams into rubble? That there'd be a gigantic boom and the four leaders of America would be gone? Almost as good as blowing up the Statue of Liberty. Or the World Trade Center. And his name would be hated by us and admired by other terrorists.

I was suddenly too hot, boiling hot, steaming hot, sweating inside my jacket. Who did I think
I
was to stop him? Too risky. Way too risky.

I eyed Declan. No good. I'd tried him before. What if I whispered to the Texans, and to Buffo, and to Geneva's dad and Mr. Dove, and—oh, yes—Millie? “He's going to blow up the monument.” What if we rushed Stavros the way the guys in the plane had rushed the hijackers? They wouldn't believe me. What proof of anything did I have? None. It sounded too outrageous. Millie would believe me. She'd want to. But suppose, suppose, suppose I was wrong? No, Geneva and I were on our own. I glanced up at the paper-wrapped shovel. What if I stole it as we were getting out of the bus? Would that stop him?

We were driving up a winding road. Wildflowers bloomed on either side. Ponderosa pines swayed in a little breeze. The Black Hills of South Dakota surrounded us. Someone shouted, “Eagle!” and I looked up and out and there it was, circling overhead, so magnificent, so calm, so in its own place.

“You are in the sacred land of the Sioux, almost unchanged since the beginning of time,” Declan said softly.

And then Scotty slowed the bus and Declan said, “Gutzon Borglum prophesied, ‘American history
shall march along that skyline.' Ladies and gentlemen, there it is.”

There was total silence as we saw for the first time the four great carved faces on Mount Rushmore.

Grandma stopped knitting.

She leaned over and kissed the top of my head, something she never does in public.

“Makes you proud to be an American, now don't it?” Buffo asked in a gravelly voice.

Charles Stavros sat, unmoved.

W
e walked along a wide pathway, lined on both sides with the flags of all the states in the Union. Ahead of us, pushing against the blue prairie sky, were the sculpted heads of the four remembered presidents. I know in ordinary circumstances I would have had that lump in my throat, but I didn't have time to be sentimental or patriotic. I wasn't looking at them, I was looking at Charles Stavros. And I was seeing something different. Today he had a camera. In all of the trip so far I hadn't seen a camera in his hand. I hadn't seen him take a single
picture. Today he was taking a lot. He'd stop, set the red bag between his feet, focus, and click. It was a Polaroid camera and he'd stand with one picture in his hand for a few seconds waiting for it to process. Then he'd slide it into an envelope and slip that into his pocket.

He's in a hurry to view them, I thought. I imagined him in his motel room later, the photographs lined up on top of his dresser, choosing his spot. How creepy was that?

I took a deep breath.

A bighorn sheep was climbing an outcropping of rock. Midge stopped to quickly sketch it. Tourists took pictures. Stavros strode on. He wasn't interested in bighorn sheep, just in Mount Rushmore. I saw him turn so he could get a picture of the wooden paths that wound around and far below the gray stone heads. My throat went tight. He was casing the area, finding the best place to stash the bomb, photographing, getting ready. He wouldn't try anything now in daylight, bright sunshine streaming down.

Along the pathway, uniformed rangers spoke into their walkie-talkies, answered questions from the tourists.

Not now. I remembered the flashlight. He'd be back.

Declan had told us to enjoy, to walk up as far as we were allowed, to visit the shops and the museum and the amphitheater.

“You mean we can't actually climb
on
the heads?” Blessing sounded put out.

Declan smiled a superior smile. “Definitely not. The only ones who can climb up there are the animals. And of course the workmen who keep the sculptures in good shape. They use scaffolding and swing themselves down on ropes when they have to make repairs. Winters are brutal up here and there are always cracks to fill in.” He reached out and tweaked Geneva's nose. “Thomas Jefferson needed a nose job a couple of years back. He didn't complain a bit.”

Geneva glared up at him. “Hey, buddy!” she said. “I'm complaining. Leave my nose out of it.”

Declan grinned. “Sorry, ma'am!”

We gathered around him on the big flagstone patio below the monument. “I want to get a group picture,” he said. “If you could all stand by the wall…”

We stood. The four Texans knelt in front.

Millie and Beth were next to me. “Let's see Stavros hide himself in
this
picture,” Millie whispered to me. “Too late now to send it back home, but I'll get him later. No kidding. There'll be no way to hide from the FBI. They can trace him.”

“Too late,” she'd said. She didn't even know how late that could be.

I watched him stand at the end of the line, squinting into the sun, and I thought that was one of the scariest things of all. He didn't mind having his picture taken now. Why? Because there was no one to stop him now. Only Geneva and me. And he didn't even know about us.

“Say ‘sweet,' everyone,” Declan ordered, and we chorused it together as his camera clicked.

“Bee-utiful!” He held up a hand. His star-spangled-banner shirt looked just right in this setting. “I'd like to meet back here at four o'clock. We'll go see the Crazy Horse Monument and then on to our motel.
It's very close, so if anyone wants another visit tomorrow before we leave for Rapid City, I'm sure Scotty will be willing to take you.”

It was hard to look at Geneva, who was looking at me. Tomorrow! Would there even be a tomorrow for Mount Rushmore?

Our group split up.

I knew I was finally in one of the most remarkable places in America. I knew Grandma was reliving the time she'd been here with Grandpa. I knew this was one of the main reasons she'd brought me, to share in this, to feel the inspiration of it, and I really tried. But my mind kept screaming back to Stavros. Was there anything,
anything
I could do to stop him? Last night I'd thought about how the crisis came toward the end of a story. This was probably it. Close to the end, and for sure I didn't know what to do.

Grandma put an arm loosely around my shoulders. “This is part of your heritage, Kevin. The heritage of all Americans.'”

I nodded and the lump in my throat came anyway.

Grandma decided she wanted a cup of coffee, and she and Midge sat at one of the small outdoor tables.
Soon most of the others had joined them. Geneva and I got ice-cream cones and leaned across the wall, looking up at the granite faces, so lifelike, so incredible. I'd seen pictures of the Sphinx of Egypt and I could tell it wasn't any greater than these guys! Declan had told us how, during construction, drillers had bored holes in the rock and pushed in dynamite. As they neared the finish of the faces, the eyes and the cheeks and the chins were chiseled out with air tools. It seemed impossible.

Awesome.

I liked it that Geneva was quiet beside me.

“There's no way he can get up there to blow up those faces,” she said at last. “I didn't think they'd be so high. It's like they're carved on top of Mount Everest.”

“I know. Maybe he's going to bomb the observation deck. I saw him take a picture of it.”

“That wouldn't be worth anything. The deck could be fixed. But if he destroyed the heads the whole mountain would come down. And the four presidents would be gone forever.”

I dumped the end of my cone in a trash can and
leaned my head on my arms, staring up. A mist had begun to creep up over the mountain, making the shrouded figures above us even more mysterious. Geneva was right. There would be no way to get up there.

How was he going to do it?

Beside us a ranger was talking to a group of Japanese tourists. Everything he said in English an interpreter repeated in Japanese.

“George Washington was the first president to be sculpted. But Abraham Lincoln was Borglum's favorite because he had held our country together during the Civil War. That is why many people think Lincoln's is the best-defined portrait on Mount Rushmore.”

There were nods all around.

“We've got to tell,” I told Geneva. “We've got to.”

No use trying to explain any of this to one of the rangers. Too weird and too vague. The locked red bag that Stavros talked to; the hiding his face from photographs; the way he kept to himself, wouldn't talk, took the bag everywhere; his conversation with the doctor in Cody. The shovel, the flashlight. They'd
think he was a little strange, that's all. They'd think
I
was a little strange.

“We have to make one of the rangers look in Stavros's bag,” I said to Geneva. “That will convince them. Then it's up to them. Is that cool with you?”

After all, she'd been part of this almost from the beginning. It was only fair that she should have a say in the way it would end.

Geneva nodded. “I think it's too risky for us to do by ourselves. All along I thought we could. But now, when it's about to happen…”

I stuck out my hand and she shook it.

“Pact,” I said.

“Pact.”

But even as we agreed, and even though I knew this was the right thing to do, I was disappointed. Heroes didn't do this. Saint George was supposed to slay his own dragon and I was passing the sword to somebody else. But the stakes were too big.

I waited till the interpreter was interpreting a long, long sentence and then I touched the ranger's arm. “There's something I have to tell you. It's urgent. See that man over there? He's got some
thing—something dangerous—in his bag.”

The interpreter's voice faltered. She glanced at me, then went on hesitantly. I knew she'd heard.

The ranger took my arm. He had a red, round face and a bushy mustache. His ears stuck out. Dark sunglasses hid his eyes.

“Excuse me,” he said to the Japanese group, and he pulled me a little away. Geneva came, too.

“What do you mean, dangerous? Do you have information that he's carrying drugs?”

I stared up at him. Drugs! I'd never thought of that.

“Was he trying to sell? To you? To the girl?”

“No.” I shook my head and then wished I'd said yes, because then for sure he'd have checked out that bag.

“Then what?” He was staring over at Stavros, who was sitting at a table alone, reading one of the Mount Rushmore pamphlets. The ranger's grip on my arm tightened. “Does he have a gun?”

“I don't think so. But I don't know.”

I looked to Geneva for help. She didn't give me any.

“What, then? I hope you don't think this is some kind of joke?”

“We know it's not a joke,” I blurted. “We've been watching him since the first day of our trip. He's going to do something really bad.” Oh, man! No way did I sound like a detective. More like a whiny kid. Which I'm not.

The ranger took off his sunglasses, I guess so he could inspect us more closely. “Are you making this up to get back at him for something?”

He was still holding my arm as if he truly was going to drag me off to the nearest prison.

“Just take him somewhere and open the bag,” I said desperately. “Please. See for yourself.”

The ranger pulled down his uniform jacket and put his sunglasses back on.

“Okay. The two of you stay here. Don't move. You made a report to me. I guess I have to follow through.”

We watched him walk toward Stavros.

“He doesn't believe us,” Geneva said. “It's because we're kids. Nobody takes kids seriously.”

I took a deep breath. “Think how he'd have been if we'd told him about the bomb. I think we took the right course of action.”

We saw him stop by Stavros and point to the bag.

Stavros stood and the two of them walked toward a building close to the gift shop. They disappeared inside.

“If he does find—,” Geneva began, then corrected herself. “
When
he does find the bomb, we have to be sure we get credit—”

“Oh puh-lease,” I said. “Get over yourself!”

We paced across the patio and back. “Will he take Stavros—,” Geneva began, and then said, “Uh-oh, here they come.”

Stavros and the ranger came out of the building. They were talking in an okay way, not as if one of them was a cop and the other his prisoner. There were no handcuffs, no gun.

My stomach lurched.

“I don't think he found the bomb,” Geneva whispered. “What did Stavros do with it? He must have hidden it someplace around here.”

“No way,” I said. “I watched him every minute.”

Stavros sat again at the table where he'd been before. The pamphlet he'd been reading was still there. So was his glass of lemonade. I couldn't tell by
looking at him if he was angry or not. Maybe he was used to being searched because of the way he looked. Maybe he was always pulled out of the security line at the airport. He must hate it. Still, that was what security was for. I wasn't going to start feeling sorry for him. I couldn't wait for the ranger to come and tell us what he'd found in the bag and when he'd arrest Stavros.

He didn't come to us directly, which I thought was smart. You should never do that when an informant had informed. It's a giveaway. There might be retaliation. That was a theory from my mystery-writing book.

After a few minutes he came over, stopped on the way to speak to a man and woman, pointed out something to them on a map, then leaned on the wall beside us.

“I should give you two a citation,” he said coldly. “One thing I hate is to be guilty of discrimination. And I have to ask myself if I would have paid any attention to what you said if Mr. Stavros had looked different. That doesn't make me feel so great about myself.”

I felt myself cower as I looked up at him. His face was redder than ever.

“Yes, sir,” Geneva said. “But about the bag? Could we ask what's in it?”

“You could not.” He looked so fierce, I took a step back. “What's in there is none of your business. Now be good kids and go back to your parents and give this a rest. You can be grateful that I have teenagers of my own who sometimes get themselves into stupid situations. Though if they ever pulled something like this, I'd tan their hides.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

It was more than a relief when he turned and walked away. Thank goodness he hadn't demanded to talk to Grandma. That would really have been bad.

“What do you think?” I'd never heard Geneva's voice so small and shaky.

“I still think he has a bomb. He must have hidden it somewhere. Maybe he remembered how many rangers would be hanging around.”

“But what about ‘I'll never let you go again?'” Geneva whispered.

“I don't know. But I think he's going to do it
tonight,” I said, surprised at how strong and tough I sounded. My detective instincts had taken over again, big time. “And I think now we're the only ones who can stop him.”