The Vanishers (7 page)

Traffic density increased as we approached the District of Columbia. At last I cut out of formation at the proper exit, and drove for a while through residential districts that varied from luxury homes with green lawns and shade trees to shabby old apartment buildings right on the sidewalk. My own domicile fell into the latter category, but if people were laying for us, that was one of the places they could be waiting, although you won’t find my phone number, or address, in the white pages. Self-preservation. I chose a route that would pass a few blocks away.

Astrid Watrous sat up at last, and raised her seat back a bit. She tucked in her shirt and patted her hair into place, healthy feminine reactions.

“Feeling better?” I asked.

She shrugged. “After spending so many days in bed, my legs were starting to atrophy, I think. Where are we?”

“Washington, D.C. Tell me more about Lysaniemi.”

“I do not know any more.”

“Where did you get the name?”

“I am not able to tell you that.”

I glanced at her irritably. “Nor where it is?”

“That I do not know. Truly. I am sorry.”

I said, “A Finnish name. North of the Arctic Circle, you said. It probably wouldn’t be in Alaska or northern Canada; I don’t think many Finns settled up there. It could be in western Russia, near the Finnish border—languages particularly place names, have a habit of slopping across national boundaries—but that would make access pretty awkward for our conspirators unless it’s all a sinister Russky plot, and I haven’t been getting that impression. That leaves Norway, Sweden, and, of course, Finland. I guess we’ll have to check them out.”

She said, “You are very crazy if you are thinking what I think. I cannot possibly travel… She paused and frowned at me. “Is this what you really had in mind when you asked about my passport?”

I shrugged. “Maybe, but I wouldn’t have dragged you out of bed so soon if there had been a choice. But since we’re running anyway, why not there? All you have to do is sit. The Scandinavian Airlines System, or whatever, will do all the work.” I glanced her way. “Think about it. It’s as good a way of keeping out of people’s way as any. People who apparently want to kill us, motives as yet undetermined. But you’re a strong girl. You can do it. We’ll find a place to rest you up once we’re across the big water, before we get into any strenuous Arctic exploration.”

She was silent for a little; then she said, unsmiling, “Well, you could get another man to carry the feet.”

I said, “With a skinny wench like you, who needs another man? I’ll just toss you over my shoulder and walk off with you.”

“Now you are boasting,” she said. “All right, Mr. Helm. I will go along on your crazy expedition, just to see what you really do when I faint in your arms.”

“Good girl.”

She shook her head irritably. “Will you please to refrain from that smart-girl, strong-girl, good-girl nonsense? I do not need any pats on the head, thank you very much. I am not that sick, and my morale is very tremendous. Where is this pharmacy for which we are looking, anyway?”

From the pay phone at the corner of the lot, I could see the station attendant filling the tank of the little Ford. He was a young fellow in reasonably clean brown coveralls sporting the Chevron insignia. Waiting for the fuel to run in, he attacked the windshield with a squeegee, and then proceeded to clean the other glass surfaces including the mirrors, something that happens all too seldom these days even if you pick the lane marked “Full Service.” But the miracle didn’t end there. With the windows clean, he actually went so far as to open the hood and check the oil, using a rag to hold the hot dipstick after burning himself on his first try. Somebody ought to warn the kid to straighten up and fly right, or he’d be kicked out of the Service Station Attendants’ Society for coddling his customers, instead of treating them like the dirt they were.

It had been quite a drive. After picking up Astrid’s medicine, and a bottle of 7Up with which to wash down her ten-o’clock dose only half an hour later, I’d had her bring her seat back upright and pull her safety harness tight. We’d picked up a leech at last. Losing us in Hagerstown, somebody must have got right on the ball and determined that we’d need medicine, even on the run, and that it was medicine that required a prescription, which we didn’t have. Somehow they’d known where I lived and which nearby drugstore would bend the rules for me a bit… They’d known too much, too soon, for a bunch of kidnappers who might be interested in Mac but weren’t likely to have dossiers on everyone working for him. However, that was something I could worry about later. At the moment, the significant fact was that they were right behind us in their white Honda. Two large men. No small blonde girls.

I’d expected, with my sporty little car and my knowledge of the city, that I could easily shake the even smaller car behind; but it had turned out to have more power than I’d thought, and a good wheelman. I’d had to use all the boost of the EXP’s crazy little turbocharger, and all my driving skill, to get clear, perhaps because I came to front-wheel drive cars late. I’m still not used to the idea of having the same tires doing both the steering and the pulling, since you never know—at least I don’t—if applying a lot of power in a corner is really going to drag you through it the way the 4WD advocates claim, or just break the front end loose and let you go sliding off into the boonies. Back in the days when the power went to the rear wheels, you could kick them loose or not as you pleased, while the front tires kept right on steering the heap unless you got unreasonably violent.

Anyway, it had been a bit hairy while it lasted. However, in the end we’d managed to lose them, at least for the moment, and without picking up any cops in the process. Now I was standing at the open-air phone feeling exposed and vulnerable, and wondering whatever happened to those nice sheltering booths the phone company used to pamper us with. It seemed to be my day for nostalgia.

I listened to the instrument ringing in my ear and presumably also down in Florida. None of the cars or people on the street seemed to be interested in me. I’d already triggered the emergency-communication routine by an aborted call to Doug Barnett’s St. Petersburg number from the drugstore where I’d picked up Astrid’s pills. Five rings and hang up. That had let Amy Barnett, covering the number for her absent dad, know that she should await my next call at a safe phone we’d arranged to use a long time ago when we were setting up our crisis system.

Standing there, I watched Astrid emerge from the restroom and open her purse to get out some money. Smart girl. Credit cards have names on them; but a twenty is anonymous. I was counting rings. The suspense was considerable; but on the tenth ring, as prearranged, the instrument was picked up at the other end.

“Me,” I said.

It was no time for a lot of secret-agent nonsense. If there was someone at the other end who didn’t recognize my voice, we had real trouble.

Amy Barnett’s voice said, “Well, I’m glad
me
finally got around to calling this super-duper secret number. I’ve been waiting around here for practically hours; I thought maybe I’d misremembered the instructions Dad gave me. Matt, are you all right?”

I said, “I didn’t know you still cared.”

She spoke impatiently: “Don’t be silly; I wasn’t asking for myself. But Daddy seems to have run into big problems in Washington.”

“What problems?”

“You know he flew up there to form… well, I guess you’d call it a caretaker government in the absence of the man you all call Mac, who’d suddenly gone missing.”

I said, “Yes, we knew that was coming; that’s why I alerted Doug.”

“It didn’t work.”

I frowned. “What do you mean, it didn’t work?”

“Daddy said to tell you that the king has departed as expected, but the scheduled royal succession has hit a snag. If that makes sense to you.”

“Did he name the snag?”

“Yes. He said it was somebody you knew better than he did; somebody with reason not to like your and Daddy’s organization in general, and you in particular. That was why he was especially worried about you. He said that if you remembered a man named Bennett you could probably figure it out for yourself.”

“Oh, Jesus!” I said. “Just goes to show what being softhearted gets you. Bennett? I should have shot the pompous, scheming, big-nosed bastard while I had the chance.”

“You mean there’s one bastard you didn’t shoot when you had the chance? I thought you were the clean-sweep man.” Her voice was expressionless, but it was of course the rock upon which our relationship had crashed, her uneasy suspicion that I was basically a homicidal maniac. She went on: “Anyway, I’m supposed to help you set up a rendezvous with an agent called Joel. I suppose that’s a code name, like your Eric. Joel will brief you in detail.”

Bennett’s name explained a lot of things, of course. If he’d managed a political coup and taken over Mac’s desk in Mac’s absence, shunting aside Doug Barnett, who was a good agent but no politician, he’d have the agency dossiers at his disposal; it was no wonder the white Honda had picked me up so fast. So now we had two hostile forces to deal with, the kidnappers who’d taken Mac, and Bennett, who’d usurped Mac’s position in the agency and was apparently using it to settle old scores. With me, and presumably others.

Which left one big question mark: Joel. Now that Mac had vanished, as expected, Joel was supposed to track him directly to the lair of the vanishers while I sneaked up on them by another route, the Watrous route, independently.

I said, “First things first. Have you got something for me? I left a name with Mac at the special number, reporting from Hagerstown. I asked to have it checked out. Did he or your pop manage to get a report on it from Research before things went haywire? It would be close timing, but…”

“You’re in luck,” Amy said. “Daddy said it was just about his first and last act as prince regent. He signed for a communication for you, a quick preliminary survey of the problem; they’re still working on it. Unless Bennett has stopped them now, of course. Daddy read it to me over the phone and I took some notes. Just a minute…” I heard paper rustle a thousand miles away. “Oh, here it is. How do you pronounce that name, anyway?”

“Leesanyaymee, more or less.”

“Well, you called it Finnish, and you were right.
Lysa
doesn’t mean anything in Finnish, apparently; but
niemi
means ‘cape’ or ‘point.’ Like Rovaniemi, a sizable city in northern Finland, on a point where two rivers meet. There’s a query here: how reliable is your informant?”

“Totally unreliable, but with a charming Finnish-Swedish accent.”

“I suppose she’s blonde.” Amy’s voice was tart.

“What else?”

“Young and pretty, too, I bet.”

“An old hag of thirty-two.”

“An old bag of thirty-two, did you say?” Amy laughed shortly. “Well, to proceed, the name is Finnish, but the town is on the Swedish side of the border.”

“So it does exist. I wasn’t quite sure somebody wasn’t kidding me.”

“You’d better apologize to your blonde. It’s a small village up in the wilderness well north of the main road through the area, Highway E4. That’s the one that runs around the Gulf of Bothnia from Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, up to Haparanda at the very top of the gulf, and then down to Helsinki, the capital of Finland. If you’ve come up through Sweden, you turn off E4 before you come to Haparanda, which is on the border, at the little town of Porkkala, spelled with two
ks.
You take an unpaved road inland a hundred and twenty miles in the general direction of the North Pole, which isn’t actually so awfully far away. You’ll hit Lysaniemi, a metropolis of a hundred and fifty inhabitants, it says here, shortly after you cross the Arctic Circle.”

I frowned at the phone. “Miles? Last time I was in Scandinavia, they worked their distances in kilometers.”

“Just a minute, let me check my notes.” There was a pause; then Amy’s voice said ruefully, “So sorry. You’re perfectly right. A hundred and twenty kilometers it is. Point six two miles per kilometer, right? Roughly seventy-five miles.”

“And this is the only Lysaniemi they were able to find?”

“How many do you need?” Then she said quickly, “I’m sorry, Matt. Smart aleck me.”

I said, “The trouble is, the damn’ name came to me too easily. I don’t trust anything I’m handed on a platter like that. Here I was expecting to have to work like hell for it, and it was whispered in my ear before I was well started on the operation. I have a sneaky feeling that people are being very cute at my expense or think they are:
Let’s have some fun with the stupid government mercenary who carries his brains, the few he’s got, in his trigger finger.
Not an entirely original estimate of my character, is it, Miss Barnett?”

She laughed softly, way down in Florida. “I never called you stupid, Matt.” She hesitated, and changed the subject: “What about that Joel person? What should I report to Daddy when he calls back?”

“Tell Doug that Joel will have to catch me at Dulles Airport. National Flight three-oh-seven to Kennedy, departing two fifty-five. Say I’ll see him at the gate; it’s too late to set up anything more complicated. And I’d better put it on the road right now if I’m going to get there in time to talk at all before we board.”

“Matt, be careful.”

“Aren’t I always?”

I heard her laugh disbelievingly as I hung up, but I don’t know what she found so funny. When a man in my line of work lasts to my age, he’s got to have been very, very careful. Astrid was waiting in the car. I got in and drove directly to the nearest freeway. Turning my back on Dulles Field, southwest of the city, where I was expected, I headed for the Washington/Baltimore International Airport, northeast of it, where I wasn’t. The New York connection there was by way of Frontier Flight 74 to LaGuardia. Not quite as convenient for catching a transatlantic flight, but safer.

Like I said, careful.

Flying SAS first class across the Atlantic is about as good as it can get, which still isn’t very good. I mean, no matter how much they pamper you, it’s a long, long flight; and comfortable or not, you’re still six or seven miles up in the air with several thousand miles of ocean, several thousand feet deep, beneath you, and not a damn’ thing you can do if things go wrong.