“I didn’t hear anything.”
Paul studied the darkness that seemed to pulse around them. He squinted as if that would help him penetrate the inky pools in the comers and the purple-black shadows elsewhere. The atmosphere was Lovecraftian, a dank seed bed of paranoia. He rubbed the back of his neck which was suddenly cold.
“How could you have heard anything with all that racket we were making on the stairs?” Sam asked.
“I heard it. Something…”
“Probably the wind. ”
“No. It was too loud for that. Sharp. It sounded as if — as if someone knocked over a chair.”
They waited.
Half a minute. A minute.
Nothing.
“Come on,” Sam said. “Let’s go.”
“Give it another minute.”
As Paul spoke a particularly violent gust of wind battered the east side of the church; and one of the ten-foot-high windows fluttered noisily in its frame.
“There you are,” Sam said. “You see? That’s what you heard. It was just the window.”
Relieved, Paul said, “Yeah.”
“We’ve got work to do,” Sam said.
They left the church by the front door. They went east on Main Street to Paul’s station wagon, which was parked in front of the general store.
As the station wagon reached the mill road and its taillights dwindled to tiny red dots beyond the west end of town, Klinger left the church and ran half a block to the telephone booth beside Ultman’s Cafe. He paged through the slim directory until he found the numbers for the Big Union Supply Company: twenty of them, eight at the logging camp and twelve at the mill complex. There wasn’t time to try all of them. In what part of the mill would Dawson establish his HQ? Klinger wondered. He thought about it, painfully aware of the precious seconds ticking by. Finally he decided that the main office was the location most consistent with Dawson’s personality, and he dialed that number.
After it had rung fifteen times, just as Klinger was about to give up, Dawson answered it warily. “Big Union Supply Company. ”
“Klinger here.”
“Have you finished?”
“He’s dead, but I didn’t kill him. Edison and Annendale got to him first.”
“They’re in town?”
“That’s right. Or they were. Right now they’re coming for you. And for me. They think we’re both at the mill.” As best he could in less than a minute, the general summed up the situation.
“Why didn’t you eliminate them when you had the chance, in the church?” Dawson asked.
“Because I didn’t have the chance,” Klinger said impatiently. “I didn’t have time to set it up right. But you can set it up just perfectly. They’ll probably park half a mile from the mill and walk in to you. They expect to surprise you. But now you can surprise them.”
“Look, why don’t you get in a car and come up here right away?” Dawson asked. “Come in behind them. Trap them between us.”
“Under the circumstances,” Klinger said, “that makes no military sense, Leonard. As a group of four, three of them armed, they’d be too formidable for us. Now that they’re split into pairs and puffed up with self-confidence, the advantage is ours.”
“But if Edison and Annendale know the key-lock phrases, I can’t keep guards posted. I can’t use any of these people up here. I’m alone.”
“You can handle it.”
“Ernst, my training is in business, finance. This is more your line of work. ”
“And I’ve got work down here in town.”
“I don’t eliminate people. ”
“Oh?”
“Not like this.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not personally. ”
“You brought guns back from the camp?”
“A few of them. I’ve posted guards.”
“With a rifle or shotgun, you can do what’s necessary. I know you can. I’ve seen you shoot skeet both ways.”
“You don’t understand. It’s against my beliefs. My religious beliefs.”
“You’ll have to set those aside for now,” Klinger said. “This is a matter of survival.”
“You can’t just set aside morality, Ernst, whether or not it’s a matter of survival. Anyway, I don’t like being here alone. Handling this alone. It’s no good.”
Trying to think of some way to convince the man that he could and should do what had to be done so that he would get off the phone, the general hit upon an approach that he recognized at once as custom-tailored for Dawson. “Leonard, there’s one thing that every soldier learns his first day on the battlefield, when the enemy is firing at him and grenades are exploding around him and it seems like he’ll never get through to the next day alive. If he’s fighting for the right cause, for the just cause, he learns that he’s never alone. God’s always with him.”
“You’re right,” Dawson said.
“You do believe ours is a just cause?”
“Of course. I’m doing all of this for Him.”
“Then you’ll come out just fine.”
“You’re right,” Dawson said. “I shouldn’t have hesitated to do what He so obviously wishes me to do. Thank you, Ernst. ”
“Don’t mention it,” Klinger said. “You better get moving. They’re probably leaving the station wagon about now. You’ll have ten minutes at most to prepare for them.”
“And you?”
“I’ll go back to the church.”
“God be with you.”
“Good luck. ”
They both hung up.
10
Saturday, August 27, 1977
12:10 A.M
The wind raised a steady, haunting whooooo! in the highest reaches of the trees. Thunder rumbled frequently, each peal louder and more unsettling than the one that had come before it. Above the forest, the sky periodically blazed with lightning; the electric glow pulsed down through the canopy of interlaced branches and left in its wake a series of stroboscopic images that dazzled the eye.
In the dense underbrush, small animals scampered this way and that, busily searching for food or water or companionship or safety. Or perhaps, Paul thought as one of them dashed across the path and startled him, they were frightened of the oncoming storm.
Paul and Sam had expected to find armed guards rather than animals at the edge of the woods that surrounded the mill, but there were none. Although all of the lights were on in the main building, the structure seemed — as did the land around it — deserted.
They circled through the woods. Eventually they came to the employee parking lot and studied the scene from behind a thick clump of laurel.
The helicopter was there, on the macadam, thirty feet away. A man stood beside it in the darkness, smoking a cigarette, watching the lightning and the fast-moving clouds.
Paul whispered: “Dawson or Klinger?”
“I don’t think so,” Sam said.
“Neither do I. ”
“Then he’s the pilot.”
“You see a gun?”
“No. Nothing.”
“Move in now?”
“Wait.”
“For what?”
“The right moment.”
They watched.
A few seconds later the pilot dropped his cigarette and crushed it under the sole of his shoe. He put his hands in his pockets and began to walk aimlessly about, just killing time. At first he came toward the trees, wandered within ten or twelve feet of them, then turned and went back the way he’d come.
“Quickly,” Sam said.
Paul stood up. He eased through the laurel and ran after the pilot.
The man heard him and turned. His face was a black mask, but his eyes seemed phosphorescent. “Who—”
“I am the key,” Paul said.
“I am the lock. ”
“Speak softly.”