What surprised me was the wild landscape, acres of wooded hills, swamps, kettle ponds and corn stubble. Before today, when I heard the name Long Island, I pictured Brooklyn slums, not a hundred miles of glaciated seacoast, dunes and archaic farms.
I hoped Will Chaser was still alive and on the loose. There was space here to hide from men who had every reason to kill him. Seeing a roadful of cops might not lure a boy with his background from hiding. He had been arrested twice for dealing grass and was also suspected of growing it. And he’d almost gone to jail for stealing a quarter-million-dollar horse. I had discovered all that and more about William J. Chaser, J for Joseph.
The kid was a survivor. The more I learned, the more I wanted to meet him. Not just to save him-I am a rescuer by nature, or so I’m told-but to find out how the boy had managed to escape, if he had indeed escaped. He was unusual and I wanted to know how… and why.
“It’s because you see yourself in the kid,” Tomlinson had told me on the plane. “Or want to. Not all homeless kids are functioning, independent adults by the time they’re sixteen. You were. Maybe Will is, too. But it’s unfair to hang those kind of expectations on him, man.”
I had chided Tomlinson, accusing him of being in a foul mood because the plane didn’t serve booze. That’s what got him started. Maybe he read my refusal to debate as an admission of guilt. Or disinterest. Whatever the reason, it irritated him and he pressed the issue.
“If Will outsmarts the people who snatched him, it validates you, Doc. If he’s too tough for them to break, it validates your totally unsympathetic view of what makes a man strong. Of what constitutes ballsiness in a real man.”
When I replied, “Are you thirsty or just going through withdrawal?,” his irritation escalated a notch.
“I’m talking about your definition of manhood, not mine. You say you’re interested in the boy because he’s different? Baloney. You have no interest whatsoever in people who are really different: old souls with artistic sensibilities, a telekinetic awareness of other dimensions and previous lives.”
I shouldn’t have smiled, because he interpreted my skepticism as derision.
“Laugh all you want, but you’re too honest to say it’s not true. If the kid really is different, it’s not because he has unusual qualities. It’s because he lacks the common qualities that make people human. That’s what you’re hoping anyway. It fits with your Darwinian, no-emotion, no-excuses, start-thinking, quit-whining view of what constitutes a competent male. Competent: the ultimate compliment when you speak of a man. Did you realize that?”
I had almost finished the thought, “Next trip, I pack a pint of rum instead of extra socks…,” but Tomlinson’s voice drowned me out.
“I knew you were hooked the moment you said the kid fired back at you, the way your eyes lit up. Then, on the phone, Otto Guttersen saying the boy was as fearless as an alley cat. Self-reliant, independent. Doesn’t take shit off anybody. What it sounds like to me is, the boy’s a certifiable thug if someone gets in his way or crosses him, because you two share the same simple rules of life: The weak survive only if the strong prevail. And all damn quitters should be eaten like breadsticks along life’s highway.
“You don’t think I know why you’re pulling for young Will Chaser, Doc? What you see as ‘different,’ others might define as ‘deviant.’ If the kid’s anything like he’s been described, you two are like peas in a fucking pod!”
Tomlinson calmed a little when I said, “He’ll need to be shrewder than I was at fourteen to survive. And a lot tougher to stay sane if they do what they’re threatening to do.”
It was unfair to play a rational, serious card while Tomlinson was on one of his irrational tirades venting because of the stress.
But he laughed when I added, “What might help you is attending a meeting. You stand up and say, ‘Hi, my name’s Sighurdhr.’ ”
I pronounced it correctly-Sea- guard -er-which was risky because few people know his first name. He thought the name was pretentious, he had once confided. Associated it with his aristocratic roots and the privileged, yacht-club society he had spent his adult life denouncing.
I knew Tomlinson was okay when he responded with a cheerful, “Screw you!,” then resumed his nervous finger drumming, twisting and gnawing at a strand of his hair.
He was right about a couple of things, though. The kid had his hooks in me. Whether he was different or deviant, I was interested. Science is fueled by anomalies. I am driven accordingly.
I had learned something else while on the phone: William J. Chaser scared people. Ruth Guttersen had told me the boy sometimes made her nervous but sounded more than nervous when she explained, “He’s a completely different child when he gets mad. He’s so… silent!”
His teacher tried to hide it, too, but twice during our conversation paused to remind me, “This conversation is confidential, right? You’re not going to tell Will… Right? ”
The information provided me with a secret, speculative hope… until just before we landed when my phone rang.
It was Harrington. A security camera outside the Explorers Club had produced grainy images of the kidnappers. One was Choirboy. But the FBI couldn’t identify the other two.
Harrington’s sources could. No surprise. They had access to cross-reference files that included people the FBI had no reason to log.
“The Cuban Program,” Harrington said. “How much do you know?”
I knew enough to feel an adrenal charge.
“Castro trained three interrogators. All graduated from medical school, University of Havana. The staff that worked for them varied, but one of the three took on an apprentice late in the game. Vietnam, Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan-the team got around. Twenty years spent learning their craft.”
“Medical research,” I said. I meant “experiments”-an attempt at maintaining code protocol.
“The campers gave them nicknames. That’s never been made public.”
Campers were POWs.
Harrington asked, “Remember the Nestle’s commercial, the ventriloquist-nice guy, seemed like-and Farfel?”
A floppy-eared puppet came into my mind, Farfel the dog. Snap a wooden ruler on a table, that was the sound Farfel made when his mouth slapped shut. “Choc-laaaate”- snap.
“One of the interrogators had the same mannerism,” Harrington told me. “He clicked his teeth to make a point. Farfeclass="underline" His real name is Rene Navarro.”
Another interrogator was nicknamed Hump because of a subcutaneous horn growing from his forehead-a pathology less rare in the Caribbean than in other parts of the world.
“In the security photo, Hump should be a lot older,” Harrington said. “Either Hump hasn’t aged or Farfel is using Hump’s son. A relative maybe.
Or a Soviet special edition: part human, part something else. They tried that, you know.”
Yes, I knew.
Harrington had given physical descriptions to the FBI, minus details about the Cuban Program. There’d been rumors, but the information was still classified. “Not many POWs survived, but the few left don’t want it made public what Farfel and the other two did to them. The Americans called them Malvados, a Spanish word.”
Fiends. I didn’t have to ask why.
I said, “You’re sure about this.” I was thinking, They’ll torture the boy before he dies. Just for fun.
“I’m convinced. It’s their way of showing they’re serious about getting the library. It’s political.” Harrington’s warning tone again.
I said, “Screw protocol. A fourteen-year-old boy from Oklahoma is alone with Soviet-trained sociopaths.” Damn. “The gloves come off, right?”
Harrington said, “Rules are rules,” then switched subjects, his way of closing the door. He was asking, “Did you see the news story about the football player they thought drowned?,” as I hung up.