Pressure Drop (51 page)

“
Yo soy turisto
,” Matthias said.

“That's not going to work.”

He smiled and motioned her forward.

It was raining hard. The path down the bluff was slippery. They scrambled and slipped to the bottom. Ahead lay a lawn of Bermuda grass and the small house Nina had seen from the top. It was a tidy house, with white walls, blue trim, lace curtains in the windows and a screened verandah. At the end of the verandah sat a baby carriage.

“Run,” Matthias said.

They ran: out of the bushes, across the Bermuda grass, past the verandah, to the side of the house. They dropped to their knees beneath a window, slowly raised their heads and looked inside.

Nina saw a kitchen. Three men sat at a table, eating scrambled eggs and drinking coffee. Two looked like blond Elvis Presleys, thick-necked and stocky. The third was older and trimmer. Nina had never seen any of them before, but she recognized the leathery-skinned woman frying bacon at the stove: it was the hospital volunteer with the strange accent who had offered her candy, tricked Verna Rountree into leaving the nursery, taken her baby and left a Cabbage Patch Kid. Nina's heart beat wildly.

Matthias tugged her back down. He crawled around the corner of the house. Nina crawled after him. They stopped at a door. From its position, Nina knew it must open directly into the kitchen. Matthias rose. Nina rose too, conscious of nothing but her pounding heart: a scared creature trapped in her chest. Matthias looked at her. “Keep me out of trouble,” he said in a normal tone. Then he rocked back and kicked the door in. It flew into the kitchen, hinges, screws and all.

And then they were standing side by side in the room. At the table, the two thick-necked men were looking up in surprise, one of them revealing a mouthful of yellow egg, but the older man was already rising from his chair, his eyes, Nina saw, on a shotgun in the corner. Matthias pointed the spear gun at him. “Let's do this right, Gene,” he said. The man sat down. Matthias backed toward the corner and picked up the shotgun, as though he had known it was there from the start. “Hands off the frying pan, Mrs. Albury,” he said to the woman, not looking at her. “Take a seat between Billy and Bobby.” Wiping her hands on her apron, the woman moved toward the table and sat.

“Where is my baby?” Nina said to her.

Mrs. Albury's eyes narrowed. For a moment, Nina thought she was getting ready to spit. But Mrs. Albury didn't spit. She turned away and said nothing.

“That's not doing it right, Gene,” Matthias said.

“I don't know what you talking about, fella.”

Matthias opened the shotgun, knocked out the shells and tossed them through the doorway. Then he raised the gun and smashed it over the stove, breaking it in half. He approached the table, holding up the barrel. “Don't make me angry, Gene. I won't be able to stop.”

Gene Albury opened his mouth, but before he could speak his wife said, “You keep your mouth shut.”

Albury closed his mouth. The three men at the table looked at Matthias, then at Mrs. Albury. Nina understood why she had been chosen to kidnap her baby. The woman couldn't be scared. Matthias moved closer to the table. Nina realized he was capable of striking the first blow. Everyone else knew it too. It was quiet in the kitchen; Nina heard nothing but the wind and the rain. And something else: a crying baby.

She ran from the kitchen, down a corridor, into a room at the end. A crib stood in the corner. And a fair-haired baby boy lay in it. He was on his stomach, raising his head and crying when he couldn't keep it up. He wore the blue sweater that Inge Standish had knit, and had blue eyes like Happy Standish's.

Her baby.

Nina reached for him, picked him up, held him. He stopped crying. Nina forgot everything; everything that had happened, everything that might happen. For a few moments she dwelt in a now of perfect peace, her arms wrapped around her baby and her baby wrapped within them. Her fingers stroked his fine hair, so long at the back. They had remembered the feel of it exactly. To feel his hair again was to be restored.

“Nina?”

She heard Matthias calling and carried the baby back to the kitchen. “Got him?” Matthias said.

“But not her,” Nina replied. She faced Mrs. Albury. “Where is Clea?”

“Clea?”

“Laura Bain's baby. The one you stole from her backyard in Dedham.”

Mrs. Albury started to speak, stopped, began again. She couldn't hold in her reply. “Six-feet under,” she said.

“You killed her?”

“Not hardly. She was defective right from the start.”

“Did you get her treatment?”

Mrs. Albury met Nina's gaze but didn't speak.

“That's the same as killing her,” Nina said. She heard hatred in her own voice. “And you're going to pay for it.”

Mrs. Albury summoned up some hatred of her own. Nina realized the woman had vast reserves. “You're all talk,” she said.

“Then how come I've got my baby back and you're going to jail?”

“I think not,” said a voice behind Matthias. “I've made all the sacrifices I'm going to.”

Inge Standish stood outside the door, with a rifle aimed at his back. Matthias didn't even turn to look. He sent the shotgun barrel spinning backwards through the doorway. It caught Inge Standish on the side of the head. She staggered but didn't fall, didn't drop the gun. Out of the corner of her eye, Nina saw Mrs. Albury move. The woman reached into her apron, pulled out a fish knife and darted toward her. Nina was turning her body to shield the baby when something silver flashed across the room and shot through Mrs. Albury's leg, pinning her to the wall.

“Ma,” cried one of the younger men. Then the table tipped over and the Alburys were up and moving. Matthias threw the empty spear gun at them and started running toward the hall. He grabbed Nina as he went by.

The rifle cracked behind them. Wood splintered. They ran down the hall into the baby's room. There were no windows on the back wall. Matthias lowered his shoulder and ran through it. Nina followed him. With the baby in one arm, she ran as hard as she could, across the Bermuda grass, up the bluff, down the other side. The sea looked rougher than before, the boat smaller and farther from the beach.

“Here,” Matthias said, reaching for the baby.

Nina wouldn't let him go.

“It'll be quicker,” Matthias said.

Nina gave him the baby. They swam to the boat. Even with the baby he was there before her, holding him in one arm while he raised anchor with the other. Nina pulled herself over the transom and fell on the deck. Figures appeared on the hill. Something tore a chunk of fiberglass off the console.

“Stay down,” Matthias said, handing her the baby and switching on the engines. He spun the boat around and shoved the throttles all the way down. The boat surged forward. Then something shattered the casing of one of the outboards. It stopped running and began to smoke. The boat slowed. Matthias glanced back at Two-Head Cay. “She's good,” he said. He knelt on the deck, unclamped the ruined motor and pushed it into the sea. The boat went faster, but not like before, Nina thought.

They rounded the tip of Two-Head Cay and started back across the Tongue of the Ocean. “Take the wheel,” Matthias said. “Aim for that bluff straight ahead.”

Nina got up and took the wheel with one hand. She held the baby in the other. She looked for a bluff straight ahead. She saw nothing but watery peaks on the move. They lifted the boat up and threw it down. She turned the wheel this way and that, but nothing she did made the ride any smoother. She glanced down at the baby. He was asleep.

Matthias had opened the bow storage compartment. He threw things overboard—scuba tanks, lead weights, the anchor. Then he returned to the console, took the wheel. He peered ahead. “Right on course,” he said. He looked back. The expression in his eyes made Nina look back too. She saw a rooster tail rising off the water between the two heads of Inge Standish's island. “The cigarette,” Matthias said. His hand moved to the throttle. It was already all the way down. He pushed at it anyway.

Nina wanted to say, “How much farther?” but she held her tongue, and from the top of the next wave glimpsed a long low smudge in the distance. It grew with every wave they passed, in size and detail. Nina distinguished a hill, a point, a bay. She hugged the baby. “Come on,” she said softly. Then she looked back. At first she saw nothing but the sea, and thought they were safe. A moment later, the cigarette boat came flying over the crest of a wave, so close that Nina could see the eyes, all focused on her, of everyone on board: Gene Albury at the wheel, his sons in the stern, Inge Standish raising her rifle to firing position.

“Matt!”

Matthias jerked the wheel, flinging
So What
sideways, knocking Nina to the deck. She clung to the baby. He started to cry. She saw the dark sky, Matthias's face, the rooster tail rising behind him. Then Inge Standish's gun cracked and the compass ball exploded. Matthias swerved again. The cigarette went by, in a flash of black and red. Nina rose to her knees. Zombie Bay lay just ahead. The cigarette sliced a curving path through the water and roared back at them. Matthias cut to the right, steering
So What
not toward the dock, which Nina could now see, but toward the point at the northern end of the bay. He said something. Nina thought it was, “Hope it's low tide,” but she wasn't sure. Then the cigarette was behind them again and Inge Standish was firing. Matthias angled to the left. The cigarette followed, swinging slightly wider because of its greater speed. The next moment it rose sharply into the air, high overhead, spun slowly stern over bow and crashed deck first on the sea. Matthias threw himself on top of Nina and the baby. She heard a booming sound and saw a ball of smoke and fire take shape in the air. Bits of metal fell like rain. Then, despite the wind, the sea, and their own motor, it was quiet.

They got up. Matthias circled back. Red and black wreckage floated on the water, but there wasn't much of it. Inge Standish, Gene Albury, his sons; they were all gone. The sea hissed and bubbled.

Nina looked at Matthias.

“The Angel Fingers,” he said. “It happens all the time.” He patted the baby's head.

When had she last slept? Nina couldn't remember. It didn't matter anyway. It wasn't even lunchtime yet and the baby didn't want to sleep. He wanted to lie in her lap. He wanted to play pat-a-cake. He wanted a bottle. He wanted to stare at his hands. He wanted to stare at her. He wanted to stare at all the people who came into the bar at Zombie Bay.

A constable named Welles.

A sergeant named Cuthbertson.

A lawyer named Ravoukian.

They all patted Nina's baby on the head, as though he had done something remarkable. He batted his fists in the air. Nina held him. After a while she tried rocking him. He seemed to like it. She kept doing it.

The lawyer spoke to Matthias, used the phone, spoke to Matthias again. Matthias nodded. The lawyer smiled a congratulatory smile and held out his hand. Matthias barely hesitated before shaking it. A bottle of Armagnac appeared. It was wonderful.

The sergeant and the constable took a police launch and searched Two-Head Cay. They overturned the little stone in the graveyard and dug up the body of an infant girl. They arrested Betty Albury and took her to the Conchtown clinic. Later everyone looked at the pictures in waterlogged scrapbooks. Wilhelm von Trautschke had aged but Nina recognized him. He was the appraiser she had seen in Laura Bain's house. The sergeant and the constable returned to Two-Head Cay, searched it again, found no one.

The constable drove his Land Rover through Blufftown. He came back with an old man named Nottage. Everyone looked at the scrapbooks again. Nottage recognized Wilhelm von Trautschke too, but thought he was a gardener named Fritz who had taken his job away a long time ago.

“Did you see the submarine?” Matthias asked.

“It be night.”

“But you watched from the Bluff, didn't you?”

Nottage nodded.

“And you lent him your boat.”

“He paid me fifty dollars. I didn't have no job.”

“Did you help him load the explosives?”

“But I don' know what he be doing.” Nottage hung his head. “I was needing that fifty dollars bad,” he said. “I be a young man then, with ambitions.”

Nottage went away. Matthias walked on the beach with his son. Night fell. The baby slept. Nina wrapped him in a blanket and put him on the couch in Matthias's living room. She lay in Matthias's bed. The sheets were sandy. Matthias returned, stood on the deck outside the open sliding door of the bedroom. The wind blew the clouds away, then died down. The stars came out. Nina turned on her side and watched Matthias staring out to sea.

“You must be sleepy,” Nina called to him.

“No.”

“You don't want to lie down?”

“That's different.”

He came in and lay beside her. The sea grew calm. Nina heard it splashing lightly on the rocks. “I don't know what to say to you,” she said.

“Say, ‘Give me a kiss.'”

“Only if it leads to something more.”

He gave her a kiss.

45

“So this is the guy,” said Detective Delgado the following afternoon. “What's his name?”

“I'm still working on that,” Nina replied.

Detective Delgado drove Nina, Matthias and the baby into the city from Kennedy. Her car smelled of cigarettes and she glanced from time to time at the open pack tucked behind the visor, but she didn't light up. Nina wondered if that was her way of apologizing.

“We've turned the house in Connecticut upside down,” Delgado said. “The FBI's involved and Interpol's been notified. Along with everything else, he'll probably stand trial as a war criminal for the Auschwitz stuff—they've got a huge file on him. Plus there's evidence he stole vast sums confiscated from Jewish prisoners. We're watching the airports, the train stations, the bus stations. It's a matter of time.” They came out of the tunnel, into Manhattan. “Where to?”