He checked out of the hotel, drove out to the airport, and presented his pilot's license and medical certificate to the renters of the Bonanza. Then he took half an hour's checkride, to show them he could handle the airplane.
"You'll do," the other pilot said, and Todd performed a respectable landing. He gave the people his credit card number and was given the keys to the airplane.
He turned in his rental car, tossed his bag into the rear of the Bonanza, started the engine, and took off in perfect weather. He didn't file a flight plan; instead, he flew toward Stone Mountain, the second-largest piece of granite in the world, at two thousand feet above ground level, in order to stay under the Class B airspace of Atlanta, then, when he was clear, climbed to twelve thousand and leaned out the engine. The airplane would do better than 180 knots, and he had a decent tailwind, too.
As he flew south and east the landscape flattened and became more agricultural, and two hours later he was descending, with Cumberland Island in sight. The island was the typical leg-of-lamb shape, with the pointed end at the south, and he was at two thousand feet when he spotted the airstrip. As he anticipated, half a dozen of the island's wild horses were grazing on the strip, and he flew over at fifty feet to scatter them before he turned and lined up for landing. He had to dodge a couple of potholes left by the rooting feral pigs that were common on the island.
He saw the rented pickup at the end of the field, taxied up to it, and cut the engine. He locked the aircraft and looked around for others. There were none in sight. He got the pickup started and drove slowly around the perimeter of the field, checking to be sure that no airplane was tucked away in the trees.
Satisfied, he drove south on the island's only road toward the inn. Cumberland Island had been bought after the Civil War by Thomas Carnegie, brother of the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, as a family retreat. Carnegie buit a large mansion for his family, manned by a village of three hundred workers who tended to the house and the island. He had no sons, but as his daughters grew into womanhood, he built a house for each of them, one of which, Greyfield, was now the inn.
He parked in front of the colonial house, with its huge live oak trees out front, dripping with Spanish moss. He checked into his room, found a book in the inn's library, and sat in a rocker on the front porch reading and listening. Any airplane landing on the island could be heard from here.
A young woman brought him a glass of iced tea, which he accepted gratefully. "Tell me," he said, "have any other airplanes landed on the island today or yesterday?"
"None at all," she replied, "though we're expecting a couple tomorrow, carrying a wedding party. The wedding is day after tomorrow, and some of them are staying here."
"Thanks," he said, and went back to his book.
As midafternoon passed, Todd got into the pickup again and drove north. Using a local map he found the slave village, where he stopped and got out. There were a few tiny cottages, all unoccupied, and the church. Todd walked around it, looking underneath, where there was only a crawl space behind latticework. He walked into the church and found an elderly black woman sweeping it out with a homemade broom.
"Good afternoon," she said to him.
"Good afternoon, ma'am. You getting ready for the wedding tomorrow?"
"That's right, suh," she said in the low-country accent of the locals.
"It's a pretty church," he said, looking around.
"We likes to think it is," she replied.
"Good day, then," he said, and left.
"And de same to you, suh," she replied, and went back to her sweeping.
She was the only person Todd had seen on the island outside the inn, and he didn't think Teddy Fay was good enough at disguises to pass for an old black lady.
Todd drove on north, stopping once to watch a couple of good-sized alligators in a stream. He passed Plum Orchard, a Palladian mansion built by Carnegie for one of his daughters, now unoccupied. He saw deer, armadillos and other small wildlife, and hundreds of birds. He reached the beach and drove farther north, passing what must have been a flock of five hundred brown pelicans grouped on the beach.
He turned around and drove south on the beach at thirty miles an hour and saw not a soul until he reached the turnoff for the inn, where he saw a man filling potholes on the narrow road. He was back at the inn in time for a nap, and he left his window open to catch the sound of an airplane, which didn't arrive.
He had an excellent dinner at a long table in the dining room with other guests and chatted with a few people. He had an after-dinner brandy, then retired to his room and his book.
Todd dozed off, then woke and switched his bedside light off and slept.
He was wakened in the night by the sound he had been waiting for. A small airplane was flying over the island to the north. He checked the bedside clock: three-ten a.m. Todd got out of bed, dressed, strung his holster on his belt, and crept out of the inn. He got the pickup started and drove north. There was a moon out, and he didn't need headlamps, so he switched them off.
He stopped the truck in the trees a hundred yards from the airstrip and got out, taking care not to slam the door. He walked to the edge of the moonlit field and looked around. No sign of an airplane. He stood still and listened. No sound of anyone walking or coughing or talking. Taking his time, he walked the perimeter of the field, staying in the trees. Once he awakened a rattlesnake a few yards away, which gave its warning noise, then slipped away into the woods. He was glad he hadn't stepped on it.
It took him an hour to walk around the whole field, but finally he was satisfied that no airplane had landed there. He walked back to the truck and drove back to the inn, then returned gratefully to bed.
TEDDY, ON THE OTHER HAND, was still at work. Judging the airstrip to be too far from the slave village to carry his equipment, he had landed on the beach in the moonlight and had pushed the aircraft between two dunes and partially covered it with brush.
Then he had picked up his case and the other gear and begun walking up a rutted road that led to the slave village. He did his work there, then returned, less burdened, to the airplane, where he got out a sleeping bag and made his bed under a wing, having first slathered himself with mosquito repellent and donned a sleeping mask.
It was mid-morning before he woke, ready to do what he had come to do.
57
WILL LEE SAT UP IN BED, A BREAKFAST TRAY IN HIS LAP, AND WATCHED CNN. THE news network had somehow gotten hold of a videotape of a closed talk given to a group of his faithful by the Reverend Henry King Johnson, who was nakedly gouging them for money for his new monument to himself. This went on and on, for some twenty minutes, before they cut back to the anchor.
"Also on the campaign front," the anchor was saying, "our investigative reporter Jim Barnes has unearthed a document from public records showing that the Reverend Johnson had legally changed his name when he was in his early twenties, adding the middle name King. Many people had apparently thought that he was somehow related to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which is not the case. Members of the community in Reverend Johnson's neighborhood are expressing shock that he had never denied the relationship."
Will switched channels to find the same stories playing elsewhere.
Kate came into the room, still dressing. "That's good timing," she said, fastening her belt. "I hope it will have the desired effect."
"The name-change thing won't make much difference," Will replied, "but after that tape has been played a few hundred times on TV and the Internet, Moss Mallet thinks it's going to have a very big effect. I think that now we can concentrate on Bill Spanner's lack of a record, without worrying so much about Henry Johnson."