The Talbot Odyssey (5 page)

He could see basement windows, opening out to window wells, but there were bars over all of them. He knew he had to find a cellar door that led outside. He could faintly hear music, talking, and laughing in the room above. He continued prowling around the cluttered area.

His flashlight picked out something on the wall, and he steadied the beam on it, then walked toward it. He played the beam around the area and counted three large electrical panels. He opened one of them. Inside were two rows of modern circuit breakers. They were all marked in Russian, leading Stanley to believe that it had not been an American electrician who installed the new system. Stanley retrieved his Minolta and slid the close-up lens into place. He stood directly in front of the electrical panel and held the camera cord straight out to measure fifty centimeters. He framed the panel, stood perfectly still, closed his eyes, and hit the shutter button. The camera flashed. He moved to the next two panels and shot two more pictures. Now he had proof that he’d been in the mansion itself.

Stanley played his flashlight around and spotted something on the floor to the right of the electrical panels. He quickly moved closer to it and knelt. It was a big brute of a generator, Americanmade, bolted to the concrete above another floor drain. It wasn’t running and Stanley suspected that it kicked on automatically when there was an interruption in electrical service. He shined his light farther down the wall. There was a huge oil tank in the corner, probably diesel oil, he thought, to run the generator. “Christ, these guys don’t take any chances.”

He stood and played the light around, then moved across the room. Rising from the floor was an electric water-well pump, connected by a two-inch pipe to the water main overhead. The pump wasn’t running either, and Stanley guessed that it turned on if the generator did, or if the village water was shut off. Stanley scratched his head thoughtfully. “Food . . . fuel . . . electricity . . . water. . . . Real shitheads. . . . Ready for anything.” He began walking again.

He passed through an opening in a wooden wall and came to a room full of lawn furniture and gardening tools. He scanned the walls with his flashlight and finally spotted a set of stone steps leading up to an overhead door. “Okay, Stanley, time to go home.”

He unlatched the doors and pushed on the left-hand one. It opened with a squeak and he stepped up into the cool night air behind a stand of hemlock.

He found his last candy bar, an almond Cadbury, very expensive but his favorite. He chewed thoughtfully on the chocolate as he surveyed the hundred yards of brightly lit lawn. Beyond the lawn was a thick tree-line. He finished the chocolate, licked and wiped his mouth and fingers, and got into a four-point sprinter’s crouch. He waited, looked, listened, took a deep breath, and mumbled, “Okay, feet, do your thing.” He shot out of his stance, tearing at top speed across the open lawn toward the trees. He was less than five yards from the edge of the woods when he heard a dog bark, followed by a growl.

“Halt! Stop!”

“Sure—yeah—right.” He crashed through the undergrowth, into the woods. He came to a nearly vertical rise in the ground and took it in three long strides.

As he continued to run, the low-hanging branches of the maples whipped at his face and arms, and he felt a gash open above his right eye. A pine bough raked him across the mouth and he stifled a cry of pain. “Oh, screw this! Jesus Christ, never again . . . never. . . .”

One of Van Dorn’s Roman candles shot into the air and Stanley could see where it was fired from, so he changed course slightly and guided toward it.

There were easier ways out of the Russian estate, but Van Dorn’s place was his closest, and therefore best, chance. His only chance, really.

As he maneuvered through the woods, the maple and oak gave way to laurel and rhododendrons, and he knew he was approaching the borders of Russian territory. He ran into a coil of barbed wire and sliced his hand. “Jesus H. Christ!” He took his wire cutters and snipped out an opening, then passed carefully through. In the distance he thought he saw lights from the Van Dorn estate.

He could hear the Russians calling out behind him. And the dogs barking. A low stone wall suddenly rose up and he jumped it on the run, then slowed to catch his breath. He had technically crossed into neutral territory, an unused right-of-way that separated the two estates. No-man’s-land. He took a few steps toward Van Dorn’s place, but he found he was very shaky. A cold sweat covered his body and he was nauseous. He heaved and brought up some chocolate and acid. “Aaahh!” He took a few long breaths and began moving, half running, half walking.

Behind him he heard a sound like a shot and he ducked. Then the sky was lit with a parachute flare. The Russians had tripped one of their own flares, by accident or on purpose, but he was out of the circle of light and kept moving. He wondered if the flare would attract any friendly attention. But he didn’t want any attention, he just wanted to make it on his own and keep his rendezvous at Sal’s Pizza.

He came to a wooden stockade fence, with pointed pickets at the top, over ten feet high. The boundary of Van Dorn’s property. Stanley slapped at the fence. “Fucking Berlin Wall. . . .” About three inches of cedar separated him from freedom.

He began trotting east along the wall. He saw a rise in the land near the fence. From the top of the rise to the top of the fence was not the impossible ten feet but a more manageable seven or eight feet. He cut back toward the Russian estate to give himself a running start, then swung back toward the small mound of earth. A half-moon had risen above the distant trees and cast a pale light over the long and narrow right-of-way. Stanley looked to his left and saw six Russians and two dogs approach at an angle to his intended path. He knew he had only one shot, if that.

One of the Russians shouted, “Stop! Halt! Surrender!”

Stanley yelled back in a steady voice, “Up yours!”

The Russians released the dogs, and Stanley turned on his last burst of energy and speed. Both dogs lunged, but overshot him, reeled, and came back. Stanley hit the mound running, then jumped. His momentum took him up and forward, and he smashed into the fence but got his arms around the top of the pickets. The dogs leaped at him and one of them got hold of his sneaker. He kicked free. A Russian shouted, “Stop! Stop! We shoot!”

Stanley yelled back, “Sit on it, schmucko!” He pulled himself up and over the pointed pickets, hung for a moment, then dropped to the ground below, tumbling onto the rocky soil. American soil. End of game.

Stanley stood, turned, and began trotting away from the fence, laughing then crying, and finally howling in the moonlight and dancing. “I made it! I made it!” He jumped into the air and clapped his hands. “Stanley, you are
the best!
”

He tightened the flag around his waist and began trotting, then something impelled him to turn back toward the fence. The jagged pickets were silhouetted against the evening sky, and atop the ones he’d just scaled, he could see the moonlit shape of a large man coming over the top. “Oh, no! You can’t do that! Back! Stop! Halt!
Nyet! Nyet!
Private property! America!” Stanley turned and began moving as fast as his leaden legs would carry him.

The terrain was fairly open here except for a few white birches and boxwoods. Elongated moon shadows lay over the fields of wild flowers and Stanley tried to stay in those shadows. The ground rose, gently at first, then more steeply, then it became almost a cliff. “What the hell . . . ?” He started slipping in some sort of goo. Clay. White clay. The Long Island terrain was mostly flat and benign, but there were parts of the island on the North Shore that had been formed by the Ice Age glaciers’ terminal moraine, some fifteen thousand years ago, and this was one of those areas. And it was screwing him up. There were loose rocks, gravel, and this strange, slippery white clay, which, thought Stanley, was like dog turd. He realized very soon that he had picked the wrong spot to reach Van Dorn’s broad lawn.

He heard them again, but without the dogs. He guessed they had helped one another over the fence; at least five of them anyway. The biggest lard-ass stayed behind with the dogs. He wondered what was driving them on. He was running for his life. How much could they pay these guys?

They weren’t calling to him anymore, but he could hear them walking, not behind him but off to the west about forty yards. “Bastards.”

Stanley summoned up the last of his strength and began kicking toeholds in the resilient white clay, clawing at it with his fingertips. “I’ll sue them. I’ll tell Van Dorn . . . they’re trespassing on American property. Fucking
nerve . .
.”

He heard footsteps pattering on the side of the cliff to his left. They had found a path and were moving rapidly up on it. “Oh . . .” Directly below, about fifteen feet down the cliff, he heard something, and looked back. In the moonlight he saw a Russian who had been placed there to stop him from escaping by sliding back down. The man was holding what looked like a gun, and he was smiling up at Stanley; a very ugly smile, Stanley thought.

Stanley hung on the side of the nearly vertical rise and felt tears forming in his eyes as he realized that, after all this crap, he wasn’t going to make it.

A few cars behind Karl Roth’s deli van, a gray chauffeur-driven limousine also edged through the traffic on Dosoris Lane.

Katherine Kimberly, sitting in the rear, regarded the young Englishman at the opposite end of the long seat. Marc Pembroke was undeniably good-looking, though in a slightly sinister way. He possessed all the charm and breeding of his class, but also its cynicism and affected indifference. She remarked, “It ought to open up a bit once we get past the Russian place.”

Pembroke replied politely, “It’s just as well Mr. O’Brien didn’t come with us. At his age the flu
can
lead to complications.”

“He has a cold.” Katherine thought she detected a tone suggesting that Patrick O’Brien, senior partner in the law firm in which she was a partner, had simply begged off. She studied Pembroke for a moment. He was dressed in a white flannel pinstripe suit, a straw slouch hat, white silk shirt, and red silk tie with matching pocket handkerchief. He wore black-and-white saddle shoes. He might, thought Katherine, have been on his way to one of the surrounding mansions to play a role in a 1920s movie. She didn’t think George Van Dorn would appreciate such foppishness. Yet, in some indefinable way, Pembroke still radiated a hard masculinity. She said, “Mr. O’Brien is usually in excellent health. Last May Day he parachuted from a helicopter and landed on George’s tennis court.” She smiled.

Pembroke stared at the blond-haired woman. She
was
extremely pretty. She wore a finely cut simple mauve dress that complemented her pale complexion. Her sandals were on the floor, and he noticed her feet were callused, and he remembered that she was an amateur marathon runner.

Pembroke glanced at her profile. She had what they called in the army a command presence. He had heard she was rather good in the courtroom, and he could easily believe it.

She looked up and their eyes met. She did not turn demurely away, as women are taught to do, but stared at him in the same way he was staring at her. Finally he said, “May I give you a drink?”

“Please.”

Pembroke looked at the attractive young couple in the facing jump seats. Joan Grenville was dressed in white slacks with a navy blue boat-neck top. Her husband, Tom, wore a blue business suit of the type favored by his law firm, O’Brien, Kimberly and Rose, for its employees. Pembroke, who was not an employee, wondered if Tom Grenville intended to make points with Van Dorn, a senior partner in the firm, and wear the depressing thing the entire weekend. Pembroke said, “May I give either of you a drink?”

Joan Grenville replied, “If you’re giving, I’m taking.”

Tom Grenville forced a smile and said to Pembroke, “My wife only understands Manhattan idiom.”

“Really?”

Grenville said, “I’ll make the drinks. Scotch all around?” He busied himself at the small bar.

Joan Grenville addressed Katherine in a petulant voice. “We should have gone in the helicopter with Peter.”

Katherine replied, “Even by helicopter, Peter will undoubtedly manage to arrive late.”

Marc Pembroke smiled at her. “That’s no way to speak of your betrothed.”

Katherine realized she had been a bit too candid, and that Pembroke was baiting her. She replied, “Actually I usually arrive too early, then accuse him of being late.”

“The Theory of Time’s Relativity,” said Pembroke, “was first discovered by watching men and women waiting for each other.”

No,
thought Katherine,
not baited, but led,
and she wasn’t going to be led by this charmingly cunning man. She said, “Temperature, too, is relative. Men are usually too warm when a woman feels comfortable. Why don’t you take off your jacket?”

“I prefer to leave it on.”

And with good reason,
she thought. She had spotted the pistol.

The limousine moved up a few feet. Grenville handed the drinks around. “We may be the only people in the country celebrating—what is it called?—Loyalty Day. It’s also International Law Day, or something.” He sucked on an ice cube. “Well, most of us at Van Dorn’s will be lawyers, and most of us are loyal, so I suppose it’s fitting.” He bit into his ice cube.

Joan winced. “Don’t
do
that. God, what a horrid weekend this is going to be. Why does Van Dorn make such a spectacle of himself?” She looked at Marc Pembroke.

Pembroke smiled. “I understand that Mr. Van Dorn never misses an opportunity to make his next-door neighbors uncomfortable.”

Joan Grenville finished her Scotch in a long swallow, then said to no one in particular, “Is he going to blare those speakers toward their estate again? God, what a headache I get.”

Tom Grenville laughed. “You can imagine the headache
they
get.”

Katherine said, “It’s all rather petty. George lowers himself by doing this.”