His eyes wandered to the overhead floodlights. They gave out a dim yellowish halo, but the edges had a prismatic effect and displayed the colors of the rainbow. From where he stood, about midpoint on the thirty-foot dock, the Eagle was completely hidden by the oppressive mist. Not even her deck or mast lights were visible.
Polaski walked over the weatherworn boards, occasionally stopping and listening. But all he heard was the gentle lapping of the water around the pilings and the soft hum of the yacht’s generators. He was only a few steps from the end of the pier when the Eagle finally materialized from the gray tentacles of the fog.
He called softly to agent Lyle Brock, who was manning post seven on board the boat. “Hey, Lyle. Can you hear me?”
A voice replied slightly above a whisper. “What do you want?”
“How about a cup of coffee from the galley?”
“The next post change is in twenty minutes. You can get a cup when you come on board and take my place.”
“I can’t wait twenty minutes,” Polaski protested mildly. “I’m already soaked to the bones.”
“Tough. You’ll have to suffer.”
Polaski knew that Brock couldn’t leave the deck under any circumstances, but he goaded the other agent good-naturedly. “Wait till you want a favor from me.”
“Speaking of favors, I forgot where I go from here.”
Polaski gave a quizzical look at the figure in the shadows on the Eagle’s deck. “Look at your diagram, numb brain.”
“It got soggy and I can’t read it.”
“Post eight is fifty yards down the bank.”
“Thanks.”
“If you want to know where post nine is it’ll cost you a cup of coffee,” Polaski said, grinning.
“Screw you. I remember that one.”
Later, during the next post change, the agents merely waved as they passed each other, two indistinct forms in the mist.
Ed McGrath could not recall having seen fog this thick. He sniffed the air, trying to identify the strange aroma that hung everywhere, and finally wrote it off as a common oily smell. Somewhere in the mist he heard a dog bark. He paused, cocking one ear. It was not the baying of a hound in chase or the frightened yelps of a mutt, but the sharp yap of a dog alert to an unfamiliar presence. Not too far away, judging by the volume. Seventy-five, maybe a hundred, yards beyond the security perimeter, McGrath estimated.
A potential assassin would have to be sick or brain damaged or both, he thought, to stumble blindly around a strange countryside in weather such as this. Already, McGrath had tripped and fallen down, walked into an unseen tree branch and scratched his cheek, found himself lost three times, and almost got himself shot when he accidentally walked onto a guard post before he could radio his approach.
The barking stopped abruptly, and McGrath figured a cat or some wild animal had set the dog off. He reached a familiar bench beside a fork in a graveled path and made his way toward the riverbank below the yacht. He spoke into his lapel microphone.
“Post eight, coming up on you.”
There was no reply.
McGrath stopped in his tracks. “Brock, this is McGrath, coming up on you.”
Still nothing.
“Brock, do you read me?”
Post number eight was oddly quiet and McGrath began to feel uneasy. Moving very slowly, one step at a time, he cautiously closed on the guard area. He called faintly through the mist, his voice weirdly magnified by the heavy dampness. Silence was his only reply.
“Control, this is Cutty Sark.”
“Go ahead, Cutty Sark,” came back Blackowl’s tired voice.
“We’re missing a man on post eight.”
Blackowl’s tone sharpened considerably. “No sign of him?”
“None.”
“Check the boat,” Blackowl said without hesitation. “I’ll meet you there after I inform headquarters.”
McGrath signed off and hurried along the bank to the dock. “Post six, coming up on you.”
“Aiken, post six. Come ahead.”
McGrath groped his way onto the dock and found agent John Aiken’s hulking figure under a floodlight. “Have you seen Brock?”
“You kidding?” answered Aiken. “I haven’t seen shit since the fog hit.”
McGrath dogtrotted along the dock, repeating the call-warning process. By the time he reached the Eagle, Polaski had come around from the opposite deck to meet him.
“I’m missing Brock,” he said tersely.
Polaski shrugged. “Last I saw of him was about a half-hour ago when we changed posts.”
“Okay, stand here by the dockside. I’m going to take a look below decks. And keep an eye peeled for Blackowl. He’s on his way down from Control.”
When Blackowl lurched out into the damp morning, the fog was thinning and he could see the faint glimmer of stars through the fading overcast above. He steered his way from post to post, breaking into a run along the pathway to the pier as the visibility improved. Fear smoldered in his stomach, a dread that something was terribly wrong. Agents did not desert their posts without warning, without reason.
When at last he leaped aboard the yacht, the fog had disappeared as if by magic. The ruby lights of the radio antenna across the river sparkled in the newly cleared air. He brushed by Polaski and found McGrath sitting alone in the deckhouse, staring trancelike into nothingness.
Blackowl froze.
McGrath’s face was as pale as a white plaster death mask. He stared with such horror in his eyes that Blackowl immediately feared the worst.
“The President?” he demanded.
McGrath looked at him dully, his mouth moving but no words coming out.
“For Christ’s sake, is the President safe?”
“Gone,” McGrath finally muttered.
“What are you talking about?”
“The President, the Vice President, the crew, everybody, they’re all gone.”
“You’re talking crazy!” Blackowl snapped.
“True… it’s true,” McGrath said lifelessly. “See for yourself.”
Blackowl tore down the steps of the nearest companionway and ran to the President’s stateroom. He threw open the door without knocking. It was deserted. The bed was still neatly made and there were no clothes in the closet, no toilet articles in the bathroom. His heart felt as if it were being squeezed between two blocks of ice.
As though in a nightmare, he rushed from stateroom to stateroom. Everywhere it was the same; even the crew’s quarters lay in undisturbed emptiness.
The horror was real.
Everyone on the yacht had vanished as though they had never been born.
Part II
The Eagle
13
Unlike actors in motion pictures, who take forever to wake up and answer a ringing telephone in bed, Ben Greenwald, Director of the Secret Service, came instantly alert and snatched the receiver before the second ring.
“Greenwald.”
“Greetings,” said the familiar voice of Oscar Lucas. “Sorry to wake you, but I knew you were anxious to hear the score of the soccer game.”
Greenwald tensed. Any Secret Service communication opening with the word “greetings” meant the beginning of an urgent, top-secret report on a critical or grave situation. The sentence that followed was meaningless; a caution in case the telephone line might not be secure — a real possibility, since the Kissinger State Department had allowed the Russians to build their new embassy on a rise overlooking the city, vastly increasing their telephone eavesdropping capacity.