Code to Zero (27 page)

Explorer
’s elliptical orbit will take it as far as 1,800 miles into space and swing it back within 187 miles of the earth’s surface. Orbiting speed of the satellite is 18,000 mph.

Anthony heard a car. He looked out of the front window of Luke’s house and saw a Huntsville taxicab pull up at the curb. He thumbed the safety catch on his gun. His mouth went dry.

The phone rang.

It was on one of the triangular side tables at the ends of the curved couch. Anthony stared at it in horror. It rang a second time. He was paralized by indecision. He looked out of the window and saw Luke getting out of the cab. The call could be trivial, nothing, a wrong number. Or it could be vital information.

Terror bubbled up inside him. He could not answer the phone and shoot someone at the same time.

The phone rang a third time. Panicking, he snatched it up. “Yes?”

“This is Elspeth.”

“What? What?”

Her voice was low and strained. “He’s looking for a file he stashed in Huntsville on Monday.”

Anthony understood in a flash. Luke had made not one but two copies of the blueprints he had found on Sunday. One set he had brought to Washington, intending to take them to the Pentagon—but Anthony had intercepted him, and Anthony now had those copies. Unfortunately,
he had not imagined there might be a second set, hidden somewhere as a precaution. He had forgotten that Luke was a Resistance veteran, security-conscious to the point of paranoia. “Who else knows about this?”

“His secretary, Marigold. And Billie Josephson—she told me. There may be others.”

Luke was paying the driver. Anthony was running out of time. “I have to have that file,” he said to Elspeth.

“That’s what I thought.”

“It’s not here, I just searched the house from top to bottom.”

“Then it must be at the base.”

“I’ll have to follow him while he looks for it.”

Luke was approaching the front door.

“I’m out of time,” Anthony said, and he slammed down the phone.

He heard Luke’s key scrape in the lock as he ran through the hall and into the kitchen. He went out the back door and closed it softly. The key was still in the outside of the lock. He turned it silently, bent down, and slipped it under the flower pot.

He dropped to the ground and crawled along the verandah, keeping close to the house and below window level. In that position, he turned the corner and reached the front of the house. From here to the street there was no cover. He just had to take a chance.

It seemed best to make a break for it while Luke was putting down his bag and hanging up his coat. He was less likely to look out of the window now.

Gritting his teeth, Anthony stepped forward.

He walked quickly to the gate, resisting the temptation to look behind him, expecting at every second to hear Luke shout, “Hey! Stop! Stop, or I shoot!”

Nothing happened.

He reached the street and walked away.

The satellite contains two tiny radio transmitters powered by mercury batteries no bigger than flashlight batteries. Each transmitter carries four simultaneous channels of telemetry.

On top of the console TV in the living room, beside a bamboo lamp, was a matching bamboo picture frame containing a color photograph. It showed a strikingly beautiful redhead in an ivory silk wedding dress. Beside her, wearing a gray cutaway and a yellow vest, was Luke.

He studied Elspeth in the picture. She could have been a movie star. She was tall and elegant, with a voluptuous figure. Lucky man, he thought, to be marrying her.

He did not like the house so much. When he had first seen the outside, and the wisteria climbing the pillars of the shady verandah, it had gladdened his heart. But the inside was all hard edges and shiny surfaces and bright paint. Everything was too neat. He knew, suddenly, that he liked to live in a house where the books spilled off the shelves, and the dog was asleep right across the hallway, and there were coffee rings on the piano, and a tricycle stood upside down in the driveway and had to be moved before you could put your car in the garage.

No kids lived in this house. There were no pets, either. Nothing ever got messed up. It was like an advertisement in a woman’s magazine, or
the set of a television comedy. It made him feel that the people who appeared in these rooms were actors.

He began to search. A buff-colored Army file folder should be easy enough to find—unless he had removed the contents and thrown away the folder. He sat at the desk in the study—
his
study—and looked through the drawers. He found nothing of significance.

He went upstairs.

He spent a few seconds looking at the big double bed with the yellow-and-blue covers. It was hard to believe that he shared that bed every night with the ravishing creature in the wedding photo.

He opened the closet and saw, with a shock of pleasure, the rack of navy blue and gray suits and tweed sport coats, the shirts in bengal stripes and tattersall checks, the stacked sweaters and the polished shoes on their rack. He had been wearing this stolen suit for more than twenty-four hours, and he was tempted to take five minutes to shower and change into some of his own clothes. But he resisted. There was no time to spare.

He searched the house thoroughly. Everywhere he looked, he learned something about himself and his wife. They liked Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra, they read Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald, they drank Dewar’s scotch and ate All-Bran and brushed their teeth with Colgate. Elspeth spent a lot on expensive underwear, he discovered as he went through her closet. Luke himself must be fond of ice cream, because the freezer was full of it, and Elspeth’s waist was so small she could not possibly eat much of anything at all.

At last he gave up.

In a kitchen drawer he found keys to the Chrysler in the garage. He would drive to the base and search there.

Before leaving, he picked up the mail in the hall and shuffled the envelopes. It all looked straightforwardly official, bills and suchlike. Desperate for a clue, he ripped open the envelopes and glanced at each letter.

One was from a doctor in Atlanta.

It began:

Dear Mrs. Lucas,

Following your routine checkup, the results of your blood tests have come back from the lab, and everything is normal.

However . . .

Luke stopped reading. Something told him it was not his habit to read other people’s mail. On the other hand, this was his wife, and that word “However” was ominous. Perhaps there was a medical problem he should know about right away.

He read the next paragraph.

However, you are underweight, you suffer insomnia, and when I saw you, you had obviously been crying, although you said nothing was wrong. These are symptoms of depression.

Luke frowned. This was troubling. Why was she depressed? What kind of husband must he be?

Depression may be caused by changes in body chemistry, by unresolved mental problems such as marital difficulties, or by childhood trauma such as the early death of a parent. Treatment may include antidepressant medication and/or psychiatric therapy.

This was getting worse. Was Elspeth mentally ill?

In your case, I have no doubt that the condition is related to the tubal ligation you underwent in 1954.

What was a tubal ligation? Luke stepped into his study, turned on the desk lamp, took from the bookshelf the
Family Health Encyclopedia,
and looked it up. The answer stunned him. It was the commonest method of sterilization for women who did not want to have children.

He sat down heavily and put the encyclopedia on the desk. Reading the details of the operation, he realized that this was what women meant when they spoke of having their tubes tied.

He recalled his conversation with Elspeth this morning. He had asked her why they could not have children. She had said, “We don’t know. Last year, you went to a fertility specialist, but he couldn’t find anything wrong. A few weeks ago, I saw a woman doctor in Atlanta. She ran some tests. We’re waiting for the results.”

That was all lies. She knew perfectly well why they could not have children—she had been sterilized.

She
had
gone to a doctor in Atlanta, but not for fertility testing—she had simply had a routine checkup.

Luke was sick at heart. It was a terrible deception. Why had she lied? He looked at the next paragraph.

This procedure may cause depression at any age, but in your case, having it six weeks before your wedding—

Luke’s mouth fell open. There was something terribly wrong here. Elspeth’s deception had begun shortly before they got married.

How had she managed it? He could not remember, of course, but he could guess. She could have told him she was having a minor operation. She might even have said vaguely that it was a “feminine thing.”

He read the whole paragraph.

This procedure may cause depression at any age, but in your case, having it six weeks before your wedding, it was almost inevitable, and you should have returned to your doctor for regular consultations.

Luke’s anger subsided as he realized how Elspeth had suffered. He reread the line: “You are underweight, you suffer insomnia, and when I saw you, you had obviously been crying, although you said nothing was wrong.” She had put herself through some kind of personal hell.

But although he pitied her, the fact remained that their marriage had
been a lie. Thinking about the house he had just searched, he realized that it did not feel much like a home to him. He was comfortable here in the little study, and he had felt a start of recognition on opening his closet, but the rest of the place presented a picture of married life that was alien to him. He did not care for kitchen appliances and smart modern furniture. He would rather have old rugs and family heirlooms. Most of all, he wanted children—yet children were the very thing she had deliberately denied him. And she had lied about it for four years.

The shock paralyzed him. He sat at his desk, staring through the window, while evening fell over the hickory trees in the backyard. How had he let his life go so wrong? He considered what he had learned about himself, in the last thirty-six hours, from Elspeth, Billie, Anthony, and Bern. Had he lost his way slowly and gradually, like a child wandering farther and farther from home? Or was there a turning point, a moment when he had made a bad decision, taken the wrong fork in the road? Was he a weak man who had drifted into misfortune for lack of a purpose in life? Or did he have some crucial flaw in his character?

He must be a poor judge of people, he thought. He had remained close to Anthony, who had tried to kill him, yet had broken with Bern, who had been a faithful friend. He had quarreled with Billie and married Elspeth, yet Billie had dropped everything to help him, and Elspeth had deceived him.

A large moth bumped into the closed window, and the noise startled Luke out of his reverie. He looked at his watch and was shocked to see that it was past seven.

If he hoped to unravel the mystery of his life, he needed to start with the elusive file. It was not here, so it had to be at Redstone Arsenal. He would turn out the lights and lock up the house, then he would get the black car out of the garage and drive to the base.

Time was pressing. The launch of the rocket was scheduled for 10:30. He had only three hours to find out whether there was a plot to sabotage it. Nevertheless he remained sitting at his desk, staring through the window into the darkened garden, seeing nothing.

One radio transmitter is powerful but short-lived—it will be dead in two weeks. The weaker signal from the second will last two months.

There were no lights on in Luke’s house when Billie drove by. But what did that mean? There were three possibilities. One: the house was empty. Two: Anthony was sitting in the dark, waiting to shoot Luke. Three: Luke was lying in a pool of blood, dead. The uncertainty made her crazy with fear.

She had screwed up royally, maybe fatally. A few hours ago, she had been well placed to warn Luke and save him—then she had allowed herself to be diverted by a simple ruse. It had taken her hours to get back to Huntsville and find Luke’s house. She had no idea whether either of her warning messages had reached him. She was furious with herself for being so incompetent and terrified that Luke might have died because of her failure.

She turned the next corner and pulled up. She breathed deeply and made herself think calmly. She had to find out who was in the house. But what if Anthony was there? She contemplated sneaking up, hoping to surprise him, but that was too dangerous. It was never a good idea to startle a man with a gun in his hand. She could go right up to the front door and ring the bell. Would he shoot her down in cold blood, just for being there? He might. And she did not have the right to risk her life carelessly—she had a child who needed her.

On the passenger seat beside her was her attaché case. She opened it and took out the Colt. She disliked the heavy touch of the dark steel on the palm of her hand. The men she had worked with, in the war, had enjoyed handling guns. It gave a man sensual pleasure to close his fist around a pistol grip, spin the cylinder of a revolver, or fit the stock of a rifle into the hollow of his shoulder. She felt none of that. To her, guns were brutal and cruel, made to tear and crush the flesh and bones of living, breathing people. They made her skin crawl.

With the pistol in her lap, she turned the car around and returned to Luke’s house.

She screeched to a halt outside, threw the car door open, grabbed her gun, and leaped out. Before anyone inside might have time to react, she jumped the low wall and ran across the lawn to the side of the house.

She heard no sound from within.

She ran around to the back, ducked past the door, and looked in at a window. The dim light of a distant street lamp enabled her to see that it was a simple casement with a single latch. The room seemed empty. She reversed her grip on the gun and smashed the glass, all the time waiting for the gunshot that would end her life. Nothing happened. She reached through the broken pane, undid the latch, and pulled open the window. She climbed in, holding the gun in her right hand, and flattened herself against a wall. She could make out vague shapes of furniture, a desk and some bookshelves. This was a little study. Her instinct told her she was alone. But she was terrified of stumbling over Luke’s body in the dark.

Moving slowly, she crossed the room and located the doorway. Her dark-accustomed eyes saw an empty hall. She stepped cautiously out, gun at the ready. She moved through the house in the gloom, dreading at every step that she would see Luke on the floor. All the rooms were empty.

At the end of her search she stood in the largest bedroom, staring at the double bed where Luke slept with Elspeth, wondering what to do next. She felt tearfully grateful that Luke was not lying here dead. But where was he? Had he changed his plans and decided not to come here?
Or had the body been spirited away? Had Anthony somehow failed to kill him? Or had one of her warnings got through?

One person who might have some answers was Marigold.

Billie returned to Luke’s study and turned on the light. A medical dictionary lay on the desk, open at the page about female sterilization. Billie frowned in puzzlement, then put aside her questions. She called information and asked for a number for Marigold Clark. But after a moment the voice on the line gave her a Huntsville number.

A man answered. “She gone to singing practice,” he said. Billie guessed he was Marigold’s husband. “Miz Lucas is down to Florida, so Marigold conducting the choir till she come back.”

Billie recalled that Elspeth had been conductor of the Radcliffe Choral Society, and later of an orchestra for black kids in Washington. It seemed she was doing something of that sort here in Huntsville, and Marigold was her deputy. “I need to talk to Marigold real bad,” Billie said. “Do you think it would be all right if I interrupted the choir for a minute?”

“Guess so. They’re at the Calvary Gospel Church on Mill Street.”

“Thank you, I sure appreciate it.”

Billie went out to her car. She found Mill Street on the Hertz map and drove there. The church was a fine brick building in a poor neighborhood. She heard the choir as soon as she opened the car door. When she stepped inside the church, the music washed over her like a tidal wave. The singers stood at the far end. There were only about thirty men and women, but they sounded like a hundred. The hymn went: “Everybody’s gonna have a wonderful time up there—oh! Glory, hallelujah!” They clapped and swayed as they sang. A pianist played a rhythmic barrelhouse accompaniment, and a large woman with her back to Billie conducted vigorously.

The pews were neat rows of wooden folding seats. She sat in the rear, conscious that hers was the only white face in the place. Despite her anxiety, the music tugged at her heartstrings. She had been born in Texas and, to her, these thrilling harmonies represented the soul of the South.

She was impatient to question Marigold, but she felt sure she would
get a better response by showing respect and waiting for the end of the song.

They finished on a high chord, and the conductor immediately looked around. “I wondered what happened to disturb your concentration,” she said to the choir. “Take a short break.”

Billie walked up the aisle. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said. “Are you Marigold Clark?”

“Yes,” she said warily. She was a woman of about fifty, wearing fancy spectacles. “But I don’t know you.”

“We spoke on the phone earlier, I’m Billie Josephson.”

“Oh, hi, Dr. Josephson.”

They walked a few steps away from the others. Billie said, “Have you heard from Luke?”

“Not since this morning. I expected him to show up at the base this afternoon, but he didn’t. Do you think he’s all right?”

“I don’t know. I went to his house, but there was no one there. I’m afraid he might have been killed.”

Marigold shook her head in bewilderment. “I’ve worked for the Army twenty years and I never heard of anything like this.”

“If he is alive, he’s in great danger,” Billie said. She looked Marigold in the eye. “Do you believe me?”

Marigold hesitated for a long moment. “Yes, ma’am, I do,” she said at last.

“Then you have to help me,” Billie told her.