Mason had estimated the time en route at an hour, forty minutes, carefully ignoring the fact of what we might find when he tried to let down. Those things he could think about when he got there. One bridge at a time. Somewhere up ahead another plane and other people were facing the same situation. Mason’s calculated voice told me the answers he had worked out on his computer. The Comanche’s start was a good one. There was a probability he could find a hole in the overcast and make the field. Maybe not. Leesville would have to be selected by dead reckoning and both planes would face the same difficulties. The best he could say was that it looked like a tie. We could overcome the time lag, but getting on the ground was going to be the big problem.
Time, always that time element, always pulling it up to the last impossible second. I closed my eyes and sat back, letting Mason do the worrying until the time came, and thought about Rondine.
What would she tell me she wouldn’t reveal to the others? What was so important? Her assignment was simple and could have given me a lead if the right answer hadn’t broken under my nose. She couldn’t have made contact with anyone out of the ordinary, but there was always that outside chance that it happened. The Soviets weren’t playing this one on a solo basis. Their teams were in there the way our own were, every man alerted, every possible phase of action being explored regardless of how remote it seemed. They had their own experts, their own killers ready to move when necessity demanded it and were forced to do what they had to do to win this crazy game.
Their philosophy for winning was better, too. It was the combat philosophy that the end justified the means and no matter how softly they talked or broadly they smiled in those conclaves at the U.N. they treated the play as war and geared their moves to fit it.
And now they found themselves right on the goal line because we had fumbled the ball through the fault of a player, and they were going to take every advantage of their position and try for the touchdown strategy even if they had to sacrifice their players to do it.
I was the safety man.
Great.
The wind was at their back and the dirt was in our eyes. We couldn’t afford to lose, but neither could they. In one sense, we could lose by winning, so if the laws of luck and circumstance turned back to us again it would all be a game played in front of a blindfolded audience. They’d only know the score if they won.
Twice, Mason let down through the overcast, feeling his way on the instruments. The second time he waved and pointed toward the ground and I saw the bleak rain-drenched expanse of a field, but there were no identifiable landmarks.
He switched to intercom and said, “The crosswind was stronger than I thought. We’re too far west.”
“What now?”
“We’ll turn east, pick up the ocean and beat up the coast until we locate ourselves. Ceiling here is too low to mess around in. Hundred feet tops and goes right down to the ground in places.”
“Let’s go then.”
It took another fifty minutes before he found a small summer resort nestled in the sand dunes and circled it, then, satisfied, picked a southwest heading and hugged the treetops at minimum altitude, tensed for anything that might jut up out of nowhere. Once he hurtled a power line, then followed it to a road, banked ten degrees away from it until he reached another highway and stayed with the dull white concrete ribbon several minutes before starting a slow turn to the left.
I looked down, following his glance. Directly below us was the outline of an airstrip, the tracks of three wheels gouged into it before slithering off to one side where the Comanche sat mired in the mud.
There was something else, too.
Face down beside it, half covered by a pool of water, was the body of a man.
Mason said, “They beat us, Tiger. That pilot knew the area too well.”
“Can you get in?”
“No chance in that slop. We’d do better grinding in on a paved road.”
“Any around?”
Mason shook his head. “None on the map. All dirt roads between here and Leesville.”
“Then let’s get as close as we can. Our boy would have gotten transportation one way or another. It’s ten miles between here and Leesville and he’s had the time to do it in. We haven’t.”
“Ever tried this before?” Mason asked me flatly.
“There’s always a first time for everything.”
“Sometimes it’s the last. It’s a good thing I’m a company man,” he said. “Damn.”
Leesville was only a cluster of stores, a gas station and a few houses at a crossroads. We went over it, flaps down at traffic pattern speed, looking for any cleared area that gave a reasonable chance of a landing, both of us trying to fight the restricted visibility that was turning the whole thing into a joke.
I saw Mason nod and his eyes met briefly with mine in the mirror. “Button up.”
I yanked the harness as tight as I could, set myself as he picked his spot, dumped full flaps and came in nose high over a grassy pasture that had taken on the appearance of a lake.
He made a beautiful job of it, the tail dragging first, then the fuselage pancaking down with a heavy thud as a crazy scream came from the engine as the prop bit into the earth and the blades bent back in despair. The roar of the Merlin was wiped out almost instantaneously, replaced by water and mud tearing at the metal, biting out pieces and spewing them back into our faces. The seemingly interminable slide came to an end at the rise of a drainage ditch embankment and both of us were out of the cockpit in a second, running for cover in case something blew.
We stopped fifty yards away and Mason looked back ruefully. “What a hell of a thing to do to a lovely airplane.”
“Grady’ll buy another,” I said.
Overhead the sky chuckled with a faint roll of thunder. Mason pointed the direction out and we started walking toward Leesville a half mile away.
The old guy in the jeans and flannel shirt at the gas station took the twenty dollar bill from my fingers, looking at it suspiciously a moment before tucking it in his pocket. He had a languorous drawl that couldn’t be pushed and an attitude that any strangers walking in the rain were open to question before they got any answers. I simplified it by saying we were stuck down the road and he agreed with that, though what we were doing there at all puzzled him.
“Come to think of it now,” he said, “a car did go by some time ago. Old pickup truck. Used to belong to Henny Jordan. Sold it last year though. New feller on the Dexter Road bought it.”
“Near the airfield?”
The man made a surprised grimace and nodded. “That’s the one. The crop dusters use his place sometimes. Not much business so he runs a farm on the side.”
“He ever come over here?”
“Never see him outside his own place. He deals at the Dexter stores.”
I looked at Mason and saw by his face that he knew what had happened too. I took out a cigarette, lit it and said, “There’s supposed to be a fish house around here...” The old man cut me off with a wave of his hand. “Only open in the summer. Guy who runs it has a shack in the woods right back of it. You know him?”
“No, but I’d like to talk to him.”
“Well now, you might just do that. He’s there, all right. Stocks up for the whole year with groceries and magazines right after Labor Day and just sits it out nice and cozy.”
I reached in my pocket and took out the photo of Louis Agrounsky. “Ever see this man before?”
His eyes got cagey and he barely glanced at the photo until I dropped another twenty in his palm, then he studied it carefully. “Lot of tourists come to fish here in the summer. Surfcasters.”