Fellowship of Fear (11 page)

He jotted a few numbers on a piece of paper. "Total height, 1615 millimeters," he said. More jotting. "About five-four."

"All you have to do is know the formula? That’s all there is to it?"

"That’s what Watson was always saying to Holmes… after the fact."

"Except that Sherlock Holmes was always right." The enthralled student was giving way to the skeptical cop. "No offense, Doc, but you sure made a lot of unverifiable assumptions there. Maybe they’re okay when you’re measuring ten-thousand-year-old Neanderthals. Who could prove you were right or wrong? But this stuff would never hold up in court."

John was quite right, Gideon knew. He’d often had similar thoughts about prehistoric finds. But he also knew somehow that his estimate was accurate. "I may be an inch or two off, but no more. You can count on it." Pettishly he added, "And the Neanderthalers are a lot closer to fifty thousand years old than to ten."

"Okay, Doc, you’re the expert. Only I’m still not convinced. But what are you suggesting? That it’s the little one, Marco?"

"Marco?" Gideon had forgotten that John wasn’t aware of the rest of his findings. "No, it’s not Marco. Marco was about twenty. This one was nearly forty. And Japanese. And built like a wrestler, say 145 pounds."

All this was put rather more confidently than the data warranted, but a strong front seemed appropriate. Then the coup de grace:

"And, if it’s of any interest, he was left-handed and he smoked a pipe."

The effect was more than Gideon had hoped for. John’s mouth dropped open and he actually stammered. "You’re telling me you know all that from… some… some skull bones and a…a piece of leg bone? You don’t have any hand bones—any, any arm bones! How can you know he’s left-handed?" John was chopping at the air with both hands, his quirky temper on the rise.

"Gently, John. I’m not pulling your leg."

Slowly, simply, Gideon began explaining his conclusions. John was testy, however, and querulous, arguing every point. Gideon didn’t have the energy for it. After a few minutes his enthusiasm had drained away. "The hell with it, John; I don’t give a damn if you buy it or not. Solve it all yourself. Look, could we go back? I’m really bushed." He could feel the torn muscles in his cheek sagging, blurring his speech. His ankle had begun to throb again, and it felt grossly swollen.

"Fine," John said, sounding as if he didn’t give a damn either. "If it’s all right with you, we’ll stop at the Security Office on the way in to see if anything new has come in."

Gideon didn’t answer. It wasn’t a question.

   IN the car, he sulked most of the way. John was silent and fidgety. As they neared the base, John suddenly said, "Look, Doc, I know you know a lot of things about bones. If this was some old fossil skeleton, I wouldn’t argue with you. What do I know? But I can’t just blindly accept what you’re telling me. What am I supposed to put in my report? ‘Professor looked at burned piece of jawbone and identified victim as five-foot-four-inch male Japanese with a birthmark on his left ear and a pimple on his ass’?"

Gideon’s eyes were closed. He opened them. "Five-four was wrong," he said slowly. "That formula was for male Caucasians. This guy was Mongoloid—he’d have a shorter leg length relative to total body size. That means I underestimated. He’s probably about five-five. And change his weight to one-fifty."

"Come on, Doc—!"

"John, don’t worry about it, will you? I’m just talking to myself. Believe whatever you want."

He was quiet again for a while, dozing a little in the late afternoon sun. Then, after the brightly smiling Italian guards had waved them through the base gate, he said, "John, I have a favor to ask. Nobody else calls me Doc. Nobody
ever
called me Doc. Nobody calls
anybody
Doc. My name’s Gideon."

John lit up. "Okay, you’re on, Gid."

"
Gid?
Oh God,
please
. If we have to choose between Gid and Doc, I’ll take Doc." He shook his head. "Gid! Jesus Christ!"

"What a prima donna," John said. They both laughed, glad to be friends again.

"If I have to choose between Doc and Gideon, I’ll stick with Doc. Takes less time to say."

"So be it," Gideon said. "I’m resigned."

At the Security Office, John left Gideon in the car while he went into the white frame building. A moment later he returned and leaned into Gideon’s window.

"Nothing new. There’s a telephone call for you from Heidelberg. Do you want to go in and call back?"

"Heidelberg? Gosh, I forgot!" Dr. Rufus had called him two days before, full of avuncular concern and reassurance. Gideon was not to worry about the Heidelberg lectures that week; when news of Gideon’s "accident" had reached them, they had contracted with a German professor from Heidelberg University to deliver them through an interpreter. "Not quite the Oliver eclat," Dr. Rufus had said, "but adequate."

As for the following week’s lectures in Madrid, they would take care of those, too, if necessary. Gideon was to concentrate only on getting well at his own pace.

Gideon, however, did not intend to spend the next couple of weeks in a hospital bed. Putting what little verve he had into his voice, he had told Dr. Rufus he’d be ready to fly to Madrid by the next weekend, but that he’d call in a day or two to confirm. Then he’d forgotten all about it.

John handed the message to Gideon. A routing slip stapled to it showed that the call had come in to the Education Center yesterday. The message had been forwarded to the hospital and then to Security. It was from Eric Bozzini, not Dr. Rufus, and it said "Pls call back. Impt." For a moment he couldn’t place Eric Bozzini. When he did, he wondered why the laid-back Californian should be telephoning him—with an Impt. Call, no less.

Even using his cane, he needed a steadying hand from John to get out of the car, up the three steps, and into the office.

"My God, I feel like I’m a hundred years old," he muttered as he fell into a chair behind a battered wooden desk with a telephone on it.

John went to talk with the shore patrol personnel while Gideon telephoned. To his surprise he got through on the first try.

"Hello, Eric, this is Gideon Oliver."

"Hey, Gid!" shouted Eric. Gideon raised his eyes ceilingward, but said nothing. "What do you say, man? Hey man, what’s happening? You had an accident, huh? You okay now?"

"Yeah, Eric, I’m fine. What’s up?"

"You know, I was in Sig on Friday," Eric said. "Tried to see you, but they said no visitors."

"I’m a lot better now. What’s up?"

"Rufe said to check with you about whether you were going to do the Spanish gig." Gideon almost laughed. Eric was laid back farther than ever.

"Sure, Eric. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to call back earlier."

"Fantastic, man. We figured you’d say that. Like, the show must go on, right? Well, I’ve been working on your logistics—I don’t know if you knew Cindy Poretzky had to go back to the States, so I’ve been made acting logistics director?"

"Uh huh," said Gideon, although he had no idea what Eric was talking about. He began to be sorry he hadn’t waited until tomorrow to return the call.

"So I’ve been working on your logistics. Believe it or not, the easiest way for you to get from Sicily to Spain is to fly back to Germany and take a direct shot from Rhein-Main to Torrejon. So—"

"Wait, I’m getting mixed up. I thought I was going to Madrid. Where’s Torrejon?"

"Torrejon’s the name of the base you’re going to. Twenty miles from Madrid. Groovy place. Fantastic chicks." Amazing, Gideon thought; he must get his vocabulary from 1950s movies.

"Yeah, man," Eric said, with a leer Gideon could feel over the wire. "Get all the Spanish pussy you want."

Change that to 1970s movies, Gideon thought. "Fine," he said. "What do I do?"

"Well, if you’re able to fly tomorrow, we got you a special dispensation for a military flight out of Sig to Rhein-Main. Then come on down to Heidelberg for a couple of days—we got you a BOQ reservation at Patrick Henry. Then on Sunday you fly commercial out of Frankfurt to Madrid. Air force bus’ll leave for Torrejon an hour after you get there, and we’ve already set you up in the BOQ."

Gideon was impressed in spite of himself. "That’s really helpful, Eric, thanks. I hadn’t even thought about how I’d get there."

"We got our act together here, man. Service is our motto, right? Look, I hear John Lau from NSD is out there on something. Can you connect with him?"

Gideon smiled. "I believe so."

"Okay, get a hold of him and let him set it up for you to come back with him. It’ll save you a lot of paperwork."

"Will do, Eric. Thanks again."

"Take it easy, man. See you in Heidelberg."

Gideon hung up and swiveled around in his chair to see John sitting on the edge of a desk in the midst of a group of shore patrol men, looking at him with an oddly calculating expression. Without asking, John took a sheet of paper, some form, from the hand of the man sitting behind the desk and walked over to Gideon, never changing his expression. Silently, he held the form out.

It gave Gideon a nervous, guilty feeling. "What is this, John? What’s the matter?"

"Read it." Gideon half-expected him to toss the paper at him, but he laid it carefully on the desk.

The form was unfamiliar. Gideon shifted in his chair to ease the pain in his ankle. "Is this a missing person’s report?"

John nodded, still watching him with that peculiar expression. "One of the base cafeteria workers. Been missing since last Friday."

"John, I’m not up to fooling around. Will you tell me what’s going on, please?"

"Read this part." He put his forefinger a third of the way down the page. "Read it out loud."

Gideon was annoyed with the game-playing. He read it silently:
Name
Kenneth Ito;
Height
5’5"
Weight
148…At that point he couldn’t keep from shouting. "
Race
Asian! That’s the guy!" Under circumstances that were less grim, he would have whooped with triumph.

John nodded. "It’s him," he said in an almost comically respectful tone. "Shore patrol tells me he worked nightshift and took the Dump Road home. They must have killed him, planted him in the car, and then burned it. So the police would think the driver was still in it and not bother to search for him." He shook his head. "Goddamn, Doc, that’s really something."

Gideon read further:
Age
38;
Handedness
Left. The guesses had all been right, remarkably right. "This
Distinguishing Characteristics
section," he said. "They forgot to say he smoked a pipe."

John turned and called to the shore patrol. "Hey, did this guy smoke a pipe, do you know?"

One of them shouted back, "That’s right, I forgot. He always had his metal pipe, one of those air-cooled jobs, stuck in his mouth! Hey, how the hell did you know?"

John turned back to Gideon. "That is really something," he said again. "I never saw anything like it. I owe you an apology." He shook his head. "I can hardly believe it. From those little pieces of bone. Doc, how
do
you know he smoked? How can you tell he was left-handed?"

Gideon smiled. "You know my methods, Watson."

"No, seriously."

"Oh no," Gideon said. "I tried to explain it once before, and you gave me nothing but a hard time. I think I’ll just keep a few tricks up my sleeve."

"Hey, don’t be like that." John suddenly smiled. "Anyway, you were two pounds off on his weight."

Gideon frowned. "Hmm," he said, "that’s impossible. He pretended to scrutinize the form worriedly. "Ah, here," he said with feigned relief, "this explains it. He had thinning hair. When I said one-fifty I was assuming he had a full head of hair. No way I could tell otherwise. Allow a couple of pounds for hair and you get one-forty-eight." He handed the form to John.

John’s dumbfounded expression was the most delightful thing Gideon had seen all day. "Does hair weigh that much? Doc, are you kidding me?"

"Would I kid you?" Gideon said.

   THE trip to Heidelberg was smooth and easy. They left Sigonella at 11:00 a.m.; at 5:00 John was back at his office and Gideon was in the lobby of the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters, trying to reach Tom Marks by telephone. He had quite a few questions to ask him, and John had advised him to go ahead and ask, although he doubted that he’d get any answers.

Mr. Marks was not in, Frau Stetten informed him. Perhaps Dr. Oliver could come the following day? The following day was Saturday, Gideon said. Was Mr. Marks at his office on Saturdays?

"We work when we must," was the lofty Teutonic response, and across Gideon’s mind there flashed an image of the wrought-iron
Arbeit macht frei
that once greeted newcomers to Dachau. "We will say nine o’clock, yes?"

"Fine," Gideon said. "Thank you very much." Silently he added, "Heil Hitler."

He had hung up the telephone and was standing there frowning at himself for being subject to such groundless, stereotypical thinking when he became aware that Janet