To Catch a Spy (25 page)

Grant pulled off to the side to let a couple of cars pass us and found a space a few yards off the road under a sagging tree.

We got out. It was dark, but there was a half-moon and a clear sky. I had the .38 in one pocket and my small flashlight in the other. We waited till there was no traffic and crossed the road.

The driveway was narrow, covered in crushed stone, leading into the darkness. Maybe forty or fifty yards down, there were some lights. We headed for them, keeping to the right side. Our footsteps crunched on the crushed stone.

No dogs barked. A good sign.

We came to a stone wall. Not a good sign.

The wall was about eight feet high.

We inched our way along the wall into bramble and small boulders. I held my flashlight low, leading the way. We came to a stop when we hit the end of the wall. There was nowhere to go but down, straight down into the canyon.

“The other way,” Grant whispered.

We went back past a solid wooden gate as high as the wall and moved to the left. It turned out to be pretty much the same as the other side. Toddhunter’s house was on a piece of land over the reservoir, a plot surrounded on three sides by a drop into the canyon and on the other side by a tall stone wall.

“Well,” said Grant. “I guess we go over.”

“Might be wire or glass up there,” I said.

“You’ve got the bad arm,” he said. “Get on my shoulders and take a look.”

I tried to think of another way, even considered ringing the bell and saying something like, “You’re surrounded. Give up while you can.” It never worked for David Harding, Counterspy, on the radio, so I doubted it would work for Toby Peters. With David Harding, at least, the command was usually true.

Grant bent his knees and held out his hand to me. I pocketed the flashlight, took his hand, and put my palm against the stone wall expecting to topple backwards as he stood up. I didn’t know if he could stand up under my one hundred seventy or so pounds.

He didn’t even wobble. I put my hands carefully on the top of the wall and looked over. No glass or wire. The wall was about a foot thick. Beyond it about thirty more yards was a ranch-style house. There were lights on, and I saw someone move in front of a window, pause, and look out into the night in my general direction but not right at me. It was Miss Jones, the young redhead. She had a drink in one hand, a gun in the other, and a look on her face I couldn’t read from this distance.

“Well?” asked Grant.

“No dogs,” I said. “No wire. No glass.”

“Can you climb up there?”

“Someone’s …” I started, but Miss Jones turned and walked back away from the window. “Yeah.”

“Then do it,” Grant said. “My left foot is beginning to slip.”

I leaned over the wall and threw my right leg up. The good thing was that it took all of my weight off of Grant. The bad thing was that I almost toppled over the wall. I reached back and grabbed for rough stone and kept from dropping.

“You all right?” Grant whispered.

“Yeah.”

“Can you reach down and get me up?”

I straddled the top of the wall as if I were riding a horse, grabbed the edge of the wall with my left hand, and reached down with my right.

“Can you see my hand?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll have to jump a little to reach you. Have you got a good grip?”

“Let’s do it,” I said.

His hand grabbed my wrist and I held tight to keep from falling. He swung himself up with a quick move and sat next to me on the wall.

“Nice little house,” he said. “Let’s take a look.”

He jumped down and I carefully dangled as far as I could and made the drop. My shoulder felt the impact but it wasn’t bad. If I could stop doing things like this for a week or two, I’d probably recover.

We didn’t talk. Grant led the way, crouching, trying to stay out of the light from the windows. We made it to the house, and I peeked in the window where I had seen Miss Jones. The light was on. I saw a bed, two night tables, a dresser, and a large painting of a horse on the wall. Otherwise, the room was empty. We worked our way back past the front door and found a dimly lit game room complete with pool table and a dart board. No one was in that room, either.

Grant motioned for me to follow him around the right side of the house. We moved slowly, trying not to make noise and almost succeeding. From the side of the house we could, if we wanted to, look out toward the lights of the valley. Before the war, the valley would have glowed like a Christmas tree, but the blackout had reduced the scene below to a few isolated spots of light.

We worked our way around and got lucky.

Grant was ahead of me. He looked into a lighted room, ducked his head back, and motioned for me to move ahead of him. He pointed to the window and I peeked inside.

Violet was seated on a twin bed. Shelly was on the one next to it. At the door in front of them, on a chair facing them sat the young man who had been dressed as a soldier, the one whose Walther I had taken. Soldier had a magazine on his lap and a fresh gun in his hand. He also had a large white bandage taped over his left eye where I’d slammed it into the toilet.

We ducked under the window frame and kept going. Through the window of the next room we saw Lawrence Toddhunter and the two women. It was a large living room, beyond which we could see a dining room. Toddhunter was checking three suitcases to be sure they were securely tight. Miss Smith stood drinking nervously, and Miss Jones kept checking her watch.

One of the women said something. I couldn’t make it out, but we did hear Toddhunter’s answer.

“Stop checking. We’ll get the call precisely on time and then we can leave.”

“And those two?” asked Miss Jones, motioning toward the closed bedroom door where Shelly and Violet were.

“We can see if they fly,” said Toddhunter.

“Why can’t we just tie them up and lock them in a closet?” she said.

Toddhunter stopped securing the luggage and looked at her.

“Because, my dear, we have not been particularly discreet in discussing our plans in front of them.”

Miss Smith nodded in agreement.

Grant and I moved back from the window and out of sight.

“What now?” he asked.

I was the professional. I was the one who was supposed to come up with a plan. At first, all I could think of was breaking the bedroom window, shooting the soldier, and taking a few shots at the door to keep Toddhunter and the two women from rushing in.

The problem with that plan was that I’m a terrible shot, even with my own .38. It was also possible that by the time I got the window broken, the soldier would shoot me and Grant and probably use Violet and Shelly for target practice, just to keep up his skills.

Before I could decide what to do, Grant said, “I think I’ve got it. I’ll get him out of the room. You try to get through the window. I’ll stall them. You go out there through the bedroom door.”

“And do what?”

“Save my life,” said Grant, scurrying past me.

I moved back to the bedroom window and waited. After about twenty seconds, I heard the distant sound of a door chime. The soldier put down his magazine. A few seconds later, I heard voices from the living room. One of the voices was Cary Grant’s. Soldier hesitated, looked at Violet and Shelly, and then got up, still holding his gun, and went through the bedroom door, leaving it open behind him so he could keep an eye on his prisoners.

I stepped directly in front of the window and tried to open it. It was locked from the inside. I tapped at the window. Violet, on the bed nearest the window, looked at me and then back at the open door. I motioned to the window lock. She got up slowly and hurried to the window. The voices from the living room were louder now.

Violet pushed the latch and together we opened the window. Shelly, who had been oblivious to all of this, squinted in our direction through his thick glasses. A look of hope, but not certainty, touched his round face.

I climbed in carefully with Violet’s help. Shelly started to get up but I motioned him back. He was in a direct line to the open door. If someone looked in, they would see him move and we’d have company and chaos.

I motioned for Violet to follow me along the wall behind the chair where Soldier had been sitting. Through the open door, we could hear Toddhunter saying, “It’s too late, Mr. Grant. Or perhaps it’s still too early. I don’t have to bargain with you over what I have while I still have the opportunity to get away.”

“The police and the FBI are right outside,” Grant said calmly. “There’s no way out but that driveway, and you’d have to get through a wave of bullets that might prove inconveniencing.”

“You are bluffing,” Toddhunter said.

“Am I?”

“Even if you are not, I have three very useful hostages. The repulsive fat dentist, the young woman, and now a very famous actor. Miss Jones, get our two guests.”

Violet was closest to the door. Miss Jones came in, gun in hand, looking at Shelly, whose eyes were wide with fear. Miss Jones looked over at Violet’s empty bed, sensed the movement to her left, and started to turn.

Violet, who was not the wife of Rocky Gonsenelli for nothing, hit her with a stiff left to the midsection and a right to the jaw. Miss Jones crumpled forward, and Violet picked up the gun she had dropped.

“Shelly,” I called and waved.

He looked at the open door and clambered out of the bed just as a shot came into the room and slammed into the wall about where he’d been sitting. Shelly panted his way to my side. Miss Jones tried to get up. Violet put her down with a long-count right cross.

“We’ve got her gun,” I called out. “And mine.”

“And I’ve got Cary Grant,” Toddhunter answered. “I suggest we work something out.”

“Watch out, Toby,” Grant said. “The other man just went out the back.”

“We leave here with Grant,” Toddhunter said. “You stay where you are with your friends. We let Grant go when we’re safely away.”

“Don’t believe them,” Grant said. “And look out for …”

Violet swung around with the gun and fired at the bedroom window. Shelly let out a yelp. Soldier stood outside the window, a bewildered look on his face and a splotch of blood on his chest. He swayed back and then toppled forward into the bedroom with a loud thud.

“Wait till I tell Rocky I got one,” she said.

“Your man is dead!” I called out. “Jones is out cold.”

“My offer still stands,” Toddhunter said. “Nothing has changed. You can have a stupid gun battle in which Grant will definitely be the first to die, or you can deal. I really don’t have much time.”

“Give me a second,” I said and motioned to Violet that I was heading for the window.

I climbed over the soldier’s body and went through the window as quietly as I could. I moved back to the living room window and looked in carefully. Toddhunter and Miss Smith were side by side. Toddhunter was aiming a gun at Grant, who stood with his hands in his pockets.

I kept moving around the house. The soldier had come out that way. I could go in. I found an open door that led into a kitchen.

“I’m waiting, Peters,” Toddhunter said. “Impatiently.”

I eased my way through the kitchen and found myself in the doorway looking at the backs of Smith and Toddhunter. Grant saw me but gave nothing away. What I should have done at that point was shoot Toddhunter in the back, and possibly Smith, too, though she didn’t have a gun.

“Drop the gun,” I said. “Don’t turn around.”

That seemed a reasonable thing to say, but reason was not operating in this house. Panic took over. Toddhunter wheeled and fired in my direction. He hit the refrigerator, which started to scream. I fired too, but I hit the ceiling. Plaster fell. Toddhunter aimed at me again. This time I fell forward to the floor and lost my gun.

Grant jumped on Toddhunter, but Smith grabbed his arm and Toddhunter turned to push Grant back so he could get a good shot at him. As Smith grabbed for my .38, Violet got a shot off from the bedroom that stopped Toddhunter long enough for Grant to make a dash for the front door. Toddhunter turned and fired toward the bedroom. I got up fast and went out the back door, with the woman who now had my gun about a dozen steps behind me.

I turned left, heading toward nothing but the edge of the grounds which dropped off to the end of the world. Behind me I heard noise, lots of noise, and gunfire. I was running now. A wrong turn and I’d vanish down into the canyon.

Something suddenly changed. I wasn’t sure what. I looked back and saw that Smith wasn’t following me. She was running back toward the house.

I nearly stepped into a small swimming pool, danced around it, and almost collided with Cary Grant.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But Toddhunter’s right behind me.”

A shot zinged into the night above our heads. From the light of the house, I could see Toddhunter heading our way. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry. We had no place to run but the ledge to nowhere, which is exactly what we did.

It was then we started our climb down into darkness. It was then that Grant reached down to help me up and I grabbed his wrist. It was then that the beam of a flashlight in Toddhunter’s hand lit our faces as Toddhunter began prying lose Grant’s grip on the rock above him. It was then that I began to loose my sweaty grip on his wrist and start imagining the headlines in which I would be a small footnote to a front-page story about the dramatic death of Cary Grant.

It was also then that the flashlight beam wavered and the flashlight came tumbling into the darkness past my head, spinning as it fell. About a second later, the flashlight was followed by the hurtling Lawrence Toddhunter, who came close to hitting me and taking me with him into the blackness of the reservoir below.

“Can’t hold on,” I said.

“Just a few seconds longer,” Grant said and pulled me up abruptly.

Someone had taken Grant’s arm and grabbed him back with me dangling below him. That “someone” stood at the rim of the reservoir now, looking at both of us.

“You all right?” asked Phil.

“Alive,” I said.

“Cary Grant,” I added. “This is my brother, Phil. He’s a cop.”