Terror Flower (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 5) (17 page)

Tench looked behind him at the Chesapeake Bay. Nothing moved on its placid water, slightly lit by starlight. Far out on the Bay he could see the freighters and tankers moving to and from Baltimore as they navigated the ship channels. To the south he saw only the yacht lights and the workmen. In the surrounding brush he listened and could ascertain no movement of guards. He entered the tunnel to follow Smote.

In the blackness he felt his way with his outstretched hands and fingers. He smelled the musty stench of old plaster walls while his feet touched what remained of a buckled brick floor. As he went further the tunnel dimensions were larger and he found he could stand without trouble. He stepped forward for ten minutes until by his estimate he had travelled half of the way up towards the mansion. The tunnel also angled to his right. He was getting close to the open area with the new runway. Then his hands came to a pile of tumbled sand and stones.

He turned on his flashlight, careful to shield the beam with his hand so that the light went forward in a small one foot circle. The pile of rubble was sloped from the top towards his feet. Also he could make out the patches of white plaster covering sections of the walls. In other sections that covering had worn off and brick siding was exposed. On the curved white plaster surface of the tunnel ceiling, one part had fallen making this pile of rubble. Beside it on the unbroken wall of what was still white or yellowed white plaster, he saw clumsy marks, made with black soot that had stayed on the white. The marks were words written by someone who did not have the letters correct as some figures were written backwards. He read the words.

“Follow the star in the north.

That the star of Jesus.

Abner Swan, March 1857,

North Carolina.”

He wondered what happened to that person, probably a runaway slave, who had hid in this tunnel while waiting for his next guide to the north and freedom. He wondered if the man had been alone, or if the man was with his family. He wondered if his children had been spread all over the state of North Carolina as they were traded by the slave owner, and wondered if the black man was sick and if he was warm. March had always been a cold month in the River Sunday area. He looked down at his own bare feet. He suspected the fleeing man was probably barefoot too. Ironic. The man had been leaving a crime site while Tench was entering one.

He felt the earth tremble as the tractor traveled on its path across the land. The pilot of the Aero Commander must have reported rough spots in the new runway that needed to be fixed before the plane could return. The noise grew as the machine approached and when it was at its nearest to Tench, he could hear its treads brake to begin to turn to the other side of the field. He felt dust falling from the ceiling of the tunnel. Then, lights flickered on the wall of the tunnel ahead. He moved forward slowly and felt the outside hot air touch his face. Behind him, shouts started up from the shoreline. He moved faster. It sounded like they had found Smote’s boat, the Emmy. Now they would know that someone was on the property, someone who was not welcome. Perhaps they already knew this or perhaps they had already captured Smote. He was glad he had put his own boat further away up the shore.

Then, his hands, outstretched in the dark in front of him, touched the texture of wooden planks. He had come up against a door, solidly built into a frame of heavy timbers. He risked his flashlight for a moment. A snake uncoiled and dropped from a small candle shelf built into the plaster beside the door. The animal slithered across his bare left foot, inching its way into the darkness behind Tench.

He scanned to the side of the door for a handle and found instead a large metal bolt. He could tell that the bolt was pulled back. He turned off the light and pushed on the door. It moved inward with a squeak of its ancient blacksmith hinges. He slowed his movement and waited then inched the door open more. He heard nothing from inside. He touched more brick on the sides of the inner wall. He was standing inside the great chimney foundation arches that he and Julie had explored long ago. The door was part of the wooden closet walls. It was so well fitted into the woodwork that they had never discovered it.

He pushed the door further and moved inside into the cellar room. He heard voices. They were close to where he stood. Then they were silent as if the speakers had suddenly discovered he was near.

Chapter Sixteen

Midnight, Friday August 20

Tench carefully pushed the slatted door further inward on its iron hinges, the old wood brushing the crumbling handmade bricks of the chimney arch. Ahead of him, the grated windows along the walls of the cellar let in a tiny glare of light from the back of the house, perhaps from the porch above. Inside what was a cellar room under the mansion, Tench could see irregular shapes in the dim space. The air of the cellar was different than that of the tunnel; the moist earth scents of the passage were replaced with dry musty dust and a sweet perfume.

The builders long ago had placed the mansion on a slope to allow them to put the cellar into the hill, making what might be called today a split level. As such, the cellar was cool in the summer and a good place to hide from adults, a use to which he and Julie had often put the place. The draped furniture and shelves of pots and trash cluttered the large open space as before. Above him he could feel the ceiling of the room, transverse timbers some with the bark still on them from when they were hewn by slave labor from local forests where Native Americans had once hunted, flakes of whitewash coatings applied long ago by plantation blacks, painted to the rough wood. These flakes came loose as he stirred the air currents and they tumbled on him with every motion of his body. Cobwebs hung distorted, brushing and sticking to his sweat covered skin as he moved forward, the traps of spiders already broken by Smote’s trip through here in advance of Tench. Tench’s bare skin absorbed what he thought were thousands of tiny legs of insects scurrying for safety. In the blackness ahead of him as he stepped forward, he heard the movement of mice and rats as they watched him from their hidden burrows, long ago dug through the walls.

The sweet perfume was from a wad of Smote’s chewing gum stuck on the door where he could see it. Smote’d give a broad grin when he opened his first stick of the day and then chew the same piece for hours. Smote claimed proudly that his taste for that gum came from his Ecuadorian culture. The odor certainly marked him as different, and whether the smell added to the local people’s disdain for his friend, Tench did not know for sure.

The fact that this door was loose, probably broken, the disrupted boxes that were carelessly moved aside in front of him, making a path through the careful stacked order of the storage, were also proof of Smote’s travel. The signs were his signs, describing the kind of impatient and careless man he was in the dark, a man who smashed his way into places moving cartons aggressively like this, the spider webs ripped and left distended, broken, and already under repair by the many spiders Tench could spot, the dust still whirling in the air. A farm employee or a guard, his path well lighted probably with his flashlight, would have, of necessity and duty, moved with more care around his workplace, out of respect for the owner.

During that summer he and Julie had learned the map of the whole cellar, had known the places of all the chairs and boxes, had explored all the hiding spots where they could not be seen by intruders, whether house servants, Marengo, or her parents. One rain filled day he was with her and the house was empty. They had come down here from the central hallway upstairs, down a torturous winding stairway that was surrounded with old plaster walls and alcoves that held the first electric lights, put in by someone about 1900 who was replacing the ancient candles that had lighted the way down for centuries. Even then the place reeked of mildew and wet as well as the dead carcasses of various rodents caught and dying in isolation, perhaps killed by traps before they could return to the outside free air.

He remembered touching the firmness of her breasts, as she lifted them from the top covering of her swimsuit, so perfect in his hands, breasts he had not seen or touched the like of since or before. As he reached the sofa, he knew she had not been here for all those intervening years. The imaginary scent moved from his mind as the reality of the dank mildew reached his nostrils.

He moved the garden door open slowly, careful to avoid squeaks from the ancient iron strap hinges that held its half rotten timbers. As the door opened Tench was reminded of the net over the hole in the tunnel and of the brutal death of Captain Bob as he felt the night air on his face. The fresh air tumbled into the interior of the cellar, the dust swirling up around him so much that he motioned his hand over his nose to avoid sneezing. Far out in front of him he smelled the boxwood and beyond that the chlorine water of the swimming pool.

That’s when he heard the voices. The mansion had a long porch, screened against evening insects, filled with chairs and rockers from the days when the aristocratic former owners, the Terments, had held their big parties. He and Julie had sat there many nights listening to her father’s stories of Africa. However, the voices tonight were not those of Strake and Julie. He brushed the cobwebs from his bare legs and chest and sat back against the brick wall of the porch underpinnings as he listened.

“Washington!” someone said forcefully, a voice that he recognized as that of Stagmatter. It was spoken as if he were toasting the city.

“Washington!” he heard Doctor Owerri say next.

Tench heard the stretching of a metal spring, the kind that mounted on a screen door to insure the door closed back to the door frame. Clacking footsteps moved across the porch floor above Tench, the noise of Doctor Owerri’s sandals pressing down on the porch floor and making the loose boards squeak.

Tench recognized Stagmatter’s gruffness. “The radar picked him up two weeks ago and warned him to change his flight plan. This time, he flew lower on a slightly different course coming in, and received no warning. He wasn’t seen. It’s a bit of luck, finding out about this air show for the old aircraft. Just at the right time.”

As Doctor Owerri sat down he could hear the rustle of a cloth seat cushion. “You’re sure he can be trusted?” she asked. “After all, he is one of their soldiers.”

Stagmatter replied, “His family were murdered like mine. His grandfather and great uncle were killed by the Communists. He can be trusted.”

She said, “This farm is getting unsafe. The men found signs of yet another infiltrator.”

“We took care of the first one. We’ll take care of this one too. We should have shot at some more children. That was the best warning we ever did. A lot more effective than posting signs,” said Stagmatter.

“That did keep them away,” she said. Her English was more clipped, more professional than that of the old African he was used to hearing, the soft voice of Marengo. This voice was that of a manager, of someone who was in charge.

“We only need a few more hours,” said Stagmatter. Tench could hear him shifting in his chair.

“Yes, my German friend,” she said.

“We are not friends. I told you that when we started,” said Stagmatter. “I have no friends.”

“I remember,” she said “We have come a long successful way from our first meetings at the camp in that jungle, surrounded by dead and dying fighters.

Stagmatter drank his beer. He could hear him savoring it and then tapping the bottle on the table or on a chair arm.

“We have,” he agreed.

She said, “We are strong so we will win, it is that simple. That night in the darkness, hiding our tiny lights from the enemy around us, I remember telling you the same thing even though we were surrounded with so many guns. Yet we escaped as I said we would.”

Stagmatter tapped his beer bottle again. “You spoke the truth. That is why I can work with you. We share the hatred.”

Tench heard Doctor Owerri’s voice as she added, “The weapon is surprise and fire, far more powerful than thousands of bullets. Our only need of guns may be to kill these hostages.”

He heard Owerri laugh, a high pitched sound. “The fools. The smoke bomb. That got us the publicity I wanted without bullets. ”

Stagmatter said, “Yes, you will be on the network talk shows next week. You’re your book is selling very well. Not killing anyone was a stroke of genius.”

“If we had killed, the investigators might have found this farm. Now all they do is read my book.”

The conspirators, sitting above him on the summer porch, continued laughing or what passed for laughing. Stagmatter was not able to do much more than chortle with grunts and Owerri sounded like she was a screaming hyena yelping at the leftovers of other animals.

Tench heard a canned drink being opened.

“You should drink some beer before you fly,” Owerri said.

“I don’t need that. The thought of bringing death keeps me going,” said Stagmatter.

“Washington!” said Owerri.

They clinked their glasses and beer cans.

“I understand. You have waited so long,” Stagmatter said.

“The yacht is prepared to leave,” a new voice said, a heavy voice that sounded like the way he had heard the African mechanics speak English. They spoke as if they were partly saying the words in their own dialect.

Laughter broke out. “The gasoline has been loaded?” she asked.

“It is almost completed. The men have thought of everything,” said Stagmatter.

“They are good workers.”

“I am glad the famous Snake approves and that we were able to serve your purpose,” Stagmatter said. “They have been with me for a long time.”

“Yes,” she said. “The whites are so afraid of snakes, aren’t they?”

More laughter. “The people here are as easy to kill as the ones at home,” said Stagmatter.

“Your home or mine?”

“Africa,” said Stagmatter.

“When do we depart?” the mechanic asked. He was apparently waiting for further orders.

“We will leave on schedule,” said Stagmatter, looking at his watch.