The Scorpio Illusion (42 page)

Hawthorne studied the gatehouse itself. The stone structure was square; the windows were of thick glass on the two sides that he could see, and a decorative turret reminiscent of a medieval castle completed the roof. The late Van Nostrand, a.k.a. Neptune, was a cautious man; the entrance to his extraordinary estate was break-proof, bulletproof, and heaven help the misguided penetrator who scaled the stockade fence. He’d be nuked until he was charred black flesh.

There was no one to be seen in either window, so Tye raced across the open space, hugging the stone of the gatehouse once he reached it. Slowly, very slowly, he inched his head to the left side of the impenetrable thick glass. What he saw not only stunned him—it made no sense! Seated in a chair, his body slumped over a Formica desk perhaps ten feet from the entrance, was a uniformed guard, his head covered with blood. He had been shot not once but several times in the skull.

Hawthorne circled the building to the door; it was open. He rushed inside and tried to assimilate everything there was to see. It was a kaleidoscope of high technology: three tiers of television screens, all in continuous motion, covering every area of the compound, even to the extent of picking up sound. The chirps and caws of birds mingled with the flapping of windblown leaves and the rustle of the tall grass in the outer perimeters of the enormous estate.

Why had the guard been killed?
Why
? Where was the benefit? And where were his backups? A man like Neptune, much less his paranoid chief of security, would never assign a main gate to one individual alone; it was crazy, and neither Van Nostrand nor the coldly efficient
Brian was crazy—warped, perhaps, but not stupid. Tye studied the equipment, wishing that Poole were in the gatehouse with him; various markings on different machines indicated that audio as well as visual tapes were in operation. Answers might be found if the right buttons were pressed, but conversely, everything could be erased if the wrong ones were activated.

The most mystifying fact was that the place was deserted. What did they know that caused them to run away? The gunfire? That did not make sense; the patrols were armed, as witnessed by the dead man in the chair, his holster still housing a .38 revolver. And Van Nostrand obviously hired and paid for complete loyalty; why hadn’t his overpaid, loyal troops rushed to protect their benevolent employer? On cursory observation, it was doubtful they would find better jobs.

The gatehouse telephone rang, not simply startling Hawthorne, but shocking him into inaction.…
Impose a freeze control on yourself, Lieutenant. Ice cold, and in neutral. If the unexpected happens, make fucking sure you convey the fact that it’s perfectly natural
.

Words from an early trainer in deep-cover naval intelligence, words Tyrell himself had passed on to so many others behind him … in Amsterdam.

Tyrell picked up the phone and coughed several times before speaking.
“ ’N’eahh
?” he said, his voice indistinct, in the tone of a hostile greeting.

“What’s happening out there?” a woman shouted over the line. “I can’t reach anybody, not Mr. Van or Brian or my husband in the car—
nobody
!… And where have you been for the last five minutes? I keep ringing—nothing!”

“Lookin’ around,” replied Hawthorne gruffly.

“Those were gunshots, lots of ’em!”

“Huntin’ deer maybe,” said Tyrell, recalling Poole’s game of Watch-the-Possum with the two pilots.

“With a machine gun? At night?”

“Different strokes, different folks.”

“Crazy people, everybody’s crazy here!”

“Yeah—”

“Well, if you reach Mr. Van or any of the others, you tell ’em I’m staying right here in the kitchen with all these heavy doors locked up tight. If they want dinner, they can call me!” With that declaration, the estate’s chef slammed down the phone.

The status quo was even more bewildering if only because the woman confirmed it—everyone had fled, perhaps killing the one man who would not join them, who might implicate the others. It was as though the specter of some Armageddon had spread through the compound in whispers.
The time has come. It’s tonight. Save ourselves
! What else could it be?… Still, there were answers here, but the only true answer, the sole connection to Bajaratt, was in the dead cells of the dead Van Nostrand’s brain.

Hawthorne removed the blood-splattered .38 from the slain guard’s holster; he held it between his thumb and forefinger, carrying it into the small open bathroom, where he wiped it with paper towels and shoved it into his belt. He walked back out to the gatehouse’s equipment and once again studied it, concentrating on the panel above the counter nearest the entrance, presuming it would operate the road barriers. There were six outsize colored buttons forming two triangles, side by side, each identical. The buttons on the lower left were green; to their right, brown; and above, somewhat larger than those below, they were bright red. Beneath each was a yellow plaque with black lettering; in sequence, they read:
OPEN, CLOSE
, and under the red button above, the letters larger,
ALARM
.

Tyrell chose the triangle on the left and pressed the green
OPEN
; the nearest barrier rose slowly. He pressed the brown; it returned to its lateral position. The left triangle was obviously for vehicles entering the estate, the right for those departing. To be certain, he repeated the procedure on the second triangle; the far barrier rose
and fell. So much for high tech; there was no point in activating the alarm and every reason not to.

He had made up his mind, assuming the risk was minimal, at least temporarily. He would rendezvous with Neilsen and Poole at the airstrip and announce his decision. They could either fly out with the pilots and follow up the Charlotte, North Carolina, connection—find out who specifically came out to escort Van Nostrand to his international departure gate—or they could stay with him and tear apart Van Nostrand’s study. The option was theirs, either alternative a positive step. The airport “clearance” could come from any number of people, its origin bureaucratically buried or falsely attributed, but a specific escort could be traced upward. On the other hand, Tyrell could use two additional pairs of eyes to scrutinize whatever they might find in Van Nostrand’s study, as well as in his living quarters. A man leaving his home under the stressful conditions self-imposed by this lord of the manor could easily become careless, forgetful.

Hawthorne pulled the dead guard off the blood-drenched desk, gripped him under the armpits, and dragged the corpse into the small bathroom. He had stopped to wash his hands in the tiny sink when he heard the sudden roar of a car’s engine—loud, even furious, screeching to an abrupt stop.… Was he wrong? Were the police answering an emergency? Barely thinking, he raced out of the bathroom, grabbing the guard’s cap off the floor, and stood facing the thick window; he was instantly relieved. The blue Chevrolet was civilian, and it was not entering the compound, it was leaving. He looked at the counter, at the buttons, instinctively knowing he would choose the one to the right, the exit triangle.

“Yes?” he said, flipping the toggle switch next to the built-in microphone.

“What the hell d’ya mean, yes, you dumb ninny?” came the excited voice over the gatehouse speakers. “Let me out of here! And when that jackass husband of mine
comes back in the limo, tell him I went to my sister’s; he can reach me there.… Hey, wait a minute! Who are you?”

“I’m new, ma’am,” said Tyrell, pressing the green button on the second triangle. “Have a pleasant night, ma’am.”

“Loonies, you’re all lunatics! Planes flyin’ in, guns goin’ off, what next?” The Chevrolet raced out into the darkness as Hawthorne lowered the far barrier. Glancing around, he wondered if there was anything he should do, anything he should take.… Yes, there probably was; on the Formica desk, wet with glistening blood, was a large ringed notebook. He opened it and turned the loose-leaf pages; they held the names, dates, and times of Van Nostrand’s guests going back to the first of the month, some eighteen days. In his haste, or anxiety, Neptune may have made his first mistake. Tyrell closed the notebook, put it under his arm—then suddenly, the obvious striking him, he slammed it back down on the desk and quickly flipped through the pages to that night’s entry. The limousine that had sped away with two escaping passengers from the farthest guesthouse. Only one name was listed, but it was enough to set Hawthorne’s brain on fire! For within it was part of a name the visitor had no idea her hunters were aware of, yet her maniacal ego demanded that it be there, a trail for official commissions and scholars of history to follow. She would not be denied that ultimate recognition.

Madame Lebajerône, Paris.

Lebajerône.

The Baj.

Dominique.

Bajaratt
!

19

T
yrell left the gatehouse door ajar and ran up the road toward the break in the enormous lawn where he would cut across to reach the airstrip. Once on the grass, however, he slowed down, bewildered but not at first sure why; then he understood. He instinctively expected to see a wash of amber light the nearer he came to the runway. It was not there; there was only darkness. He resumed running, faster than before, racing through a narrow space in the tall hedgerow that bordered the edge of the field.

He had presumed that Neilsen and Poole would be waiting for him in plain sight on the strip with the two pilots. There was no one; something was wrong. He shoved the gatehouse log book under a bush, covering it with dirt, and looked up, studying the airfield.

Silence. Nothing. Only the yellowish-white outlines of the Gulfstream jet.

The
something
… movement! Where? It had come from the corner of his eye—to the right, obliquely across the tarmac, beyond it. He focused on the area, the shafts of moonlight now helping him, for the beams were reflected as if by mirrors. It was the control tower, inaccurately named, for it was not a tower but a one-story structure, mostly glass, with a dish antenna rising far above and anchored by wires to the roof. Someone had moved behind one of the large windows, caught in a refracted instant of a cloudless moon.

The darkened sky returned and Hawthorne lowered himself to the grass, scrambling back to the tall hedgerow,
where he stood and began running from broken space to broken space, around the end of the strip. In less than a minute he was within a hundred yards of the ground-level “tower,” gasping for breath, the sweat rolling down his face and neck, drenching his shirt. Had the two pilots overpowered Cathy and the armed, young air force lieutenant? Considering Poole’s skills, it did not seem likely without gunfire, and there had been none.

Movement again! An opaque figure, or the shadow of a figure, had swiftly approached the huge glass window, then just as quickly receded from view.… They had seen him when he had run through the break in the hedgerow, and were watching for him now. Suddenly a recent memory came back to Hawthorne, the memory of three days ago—three nights ago—on an unnamed island north of the Anegada Passage.…
Fire
. One of the most potent images for man or animal, confirmed by the racing, snarling attack dogs on the
padrone
’s fortress in the sea.

Remaining behind the hedgerow, Tyrell scraped the ground for dried twigs and fallen brush burned by the summer sun, then reached up, feeling within the thick foliage for brittle, breakable branches; the farther up he went, the more plentiful they were. In roughly four perspiring minutes, he had built a mound nearly a foot in height and two feet wide; it was a “starter” that could ignite wet charcoal. He reached into his trouser pocket for his ever-present book of matches—ever-present from his heavy smoking days; he tore one off, cupped his hands, and struck it. He lit the base, shoving the match-book into the pyre, then scrambled away on his hands and knees, circling deep to his right, behind the next section of the broken hedgerow, to the next after that. He was now parallel to the mostly glass structure, its metal door less than eighty feet away.