White Mountain (15 page)

“Why, old man?
 
What did you know that was worth dying for?”

But Frank Walton didn’t answer.

He stared at the room, and the longer he looked, the more he realized that something seemed out of sync.
 
The furnishings were old—of the same period as the living room furniture had been.
 
A high four-poster bed, dark cherry-wood dresser, drapes on the verge of shabbiness.
 
His gaze slid to the braided rug at the foot of the bed, remembering the squeaky floor beneath.

Then he looked at both sides of the bed and back to the rug at the foot, and it hit him.
 
One did not get out of bed by crawling out at the foot, so why would a throw rug be there, rather than on the side of the bed?

Rostov had stayed alive in his business for as long as he had by never ignoring instinct or curiosity, and he wasn’t about to start now.
 
He walked back into the room and pulled the rug aside.

At first glance, he thought he’d been mistaken as to a sinister reason for the misplaced furnishings, but the longer he looked, the more he realized the pattern of the wood was not true.
 
He moved closer, then ran his fingers along the seams in the planks.
 
Within seconds, it became obvious that two of these boards had been cut away from the rest and were only lying in place.

He started to smile.

His heartbeat accelerated as he pulled out his knife, using the blade as a pry bar to displace the floor.
 
Within seconds, he had achieved success.

At first glance he saw nothing but a dark empty space below the floor boards, and his hopes fell.
 
But when he thrust his hand inside and began to feel around, something changed.
 
Almost instantly he felt fabric, and then something hard wrapped within it.
 
He grasped it firmly, and pulled it up and out into the light of day.

It was a pouch of some sort, and inside, a book.
 
It didn’t take him long to decide that he’d found what appeared to be a diary, but before he could look through the book, he heard voices outside in the hall.

Muttering a brief curse because he’d waited too long, he replace the boards and slid the throw rug back in place.
 
Then, shoving the book and pouch into his pocket, he hurried to the door, plotting the movements of the two old men who had obviously finished their meals.
 
When he heard one of them announce he was taking a nap and the other one say he would finish a book, he smiled.
 
All he had to do was wait.

Soon he heard their doors open and close, then listened to their footsteps as they moved around within their rooms.
 
A short while later it got quiet.
 
It was then that he decided to exit.

Quietly, he checked the hallway, satisfied to see it was deserted.
 
He slipped out of Walton’s room, taking care to lock the door behind him, then headed for the fire escape.
 
Only after he was outside, with the sun on his face and the door locked behind him did he breathe easy again.
 
Without looking back, he grabbed the clippers and hurried down the stairs.
 
Once on the ground he dared to look up.
 
There was no one there, and the curtains at the windows were closed and unmoving.
 
Patting the parcel in his pocket, he sauntered across the grounds toward the gardener’s shed.

One of the cooks stepped outside to toss some vegetable peelings into the compost heap.
 
She saw him and waved.
 
He nodded cordially and waved back, brandishing the clippers, making sure she would think he had just finished some job.

Inside the shed, he tossed the clippers aside and hurried to his room in the back.
 
There was no lock on his door, so he shoved a chair under the knob.
 
Using his bed as a chair, he removed the pouch and then opened the book

A slow smile of satisfaction spread across the angles of his face as he began to read.
 
He’d been right.
 
It was a diary, and it belonged to Vaclav Waller.

July 12, 1970

Today I died and Frank Walton was born.
 
I am very sad about my demise and second-guessing the wisdom of what we are doing, but it’s too late now.
 
What’s done is done.

Rostov frowned, then reread the first entry.
 
We?
 
Who was “we”?
 
Gut instinct told him he needed to know more about what Waller/Walton had been working on and why he’d been allowed to leave the Soviet Union at the time of his death.
 
Even more disconcerting was the fact that Waller had not acted alone.

He looked up at his surroundings, at the dust on the floor and the sunlight coming through a dirty, curtained window.
 
He was a very long way from home and seriously out of his depth.
 
Not for the first time, he wondered if he’d been sent because he was expendable.
 
Then he sighed.
 
That was nothing new.
 
A spy was by definition expendable.
 
That much was always understood.

He turned back to the book and began to read.

Rostov got up to get himself a drink, still reading as the walked.
 
He knew from the entries that Vaclav Waller had made that something big was going on, but the entries were too vague to know exactly what it was.
 
He filled a glass and drank it dry, then returned to his bed.
 
This time he crawled all the way onto the mattress and leaned against the wall, using it for a backrest as he shifted to book a bit more toward the light.
 
The day was passing, but he was so engrossed in what he was reading that he hardly noticed.

September 11, 1971

Well, we’ve done it.
 
Right or wrong, the first test case is in place, and this time with no rejections.
 
Only time will tell what the outcome will be, but if we’re successful, the human race as we know it will never be the same.

Is this right?
 
Are we doing mankind a favor, or are we playing at being gods.

Suddenly Rostov heard the squeaking of a hinge as the door to the tool shed was opened.
 
Then he heard footsteps coming across the concrete floor toward his door.
 
With no wasted motion, he stuffed the book beneath his mattress and moved the chair from beneath the door, then crept onto the bed and closed his eyes.

“Hello in there!
 
Mr. Ross!
 
Are you there?”

Rostov faked a weal voice as he answered.

“Yes, I’m here.
 
Come in.”

He looked toward the door, pretending illness as Thomas Mowry peeked inside.

“I say,” Thomas said.
 
“Are you all right?”

Rostov rolled to the side of the bed and sat up, then swayed, as if struck by a sudden spell of dizziness.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Rostov said.
 
“I’ll get right back to work.”

Thomas hastened to the bedside.
 
“No, no that’s not why I’ve come.
 
Isabella was concerned when she didn’t see you outside.
 
She asked me to check on you.
 
Are you ill?”

Rostov placed a hand on his stomach and shrugged.
 
“I have nausea.”

Thomas shifted his glasses a little higher up his nose as he laid a hand on Rostov’s forehead.

“You don’t have a fever,” he said, more to himself than to Rostov, then picked up Rostov’s wrist and began taking his pulse.

“Please, sir,” Rostov mumble.
 
“I can work.
 
Tell Mess Abbott that I am fine.
 
I do not want to lose my job.”

Thomas shook his head and patted Rostov on the back.

“Lie back down, my friend.
 
You won’t lose your job just because you’re ill.”
 
He pushed gently against Rostov’s shoulder until the man did as he asked.
 
“There now,” Thomas said.
 
“David is back from town.
 
He’s a doctor.
 
I’ll have him come check you out.”

Rostov’ pulse accelerated.
 
“Oh, no sir, there is no need.
 
I’m sure it was something I ate….
 
Or maybe I just got too hot.
 
I will be fine.”

“Nonsense,” Thomas said.
 
“What’s the good of having a house full of doctors if you can’t get free care when you need it?”

Chuckling at his own with, Mowry left, leaving Rostov in bed.

Rostov sighed.
 
Further reading of the diary would have to wait while he endured a physical examination from a man who treat infertile women.
 
He snorted beneath hs breath and closed his eyes.
 
If he was going to play sick, he might as well get some extra sleep while he was at it.

As he lay there, something about what Mowry had said suddenly clicked.
 
A house full of doctors?
 
Was that an exaggeration, or had it been a slip of the tongue?
 
He’d been told that Frank Walton had been a retired botanist, and yet he knew that in Russia, Vaclav Waller had been a doctor involved in medical research.
 
And there were the constant references in his diary to other people being involved in some big project.
 
The head cook was a talker, and he’d listened more than once to her rattling on about how important the uncles had been in their younger days.
 
How Mowry had been a chemist and John Michaels a geologist.
 
That Rufus Toombs had been an archaeologist and worked in some great museum back East.
 
He knew that Japer Arnold and David Schultz were doctors, because they, along with the recently deceased Samuel Abbott, had founded that fertility clinic in Braden.
 
But he’d assumed that the entries in Waller’s diary had been entered in another place and time, before Waller had grown old.
 
He had assumed that this was a place where the old men had come to retire.
 
What if he was wrong?
 
What if the “house full of doctors” were the others that Walton/Waller kept referring to in his entries?
 
Rostov discarded the thought almost instantly.
 
It seemed too far-fetched to be believed.
 
However, he knew that to get his answers, he needed to do some research of his own.
 
If he only knew the details on how Waller was supposed to have died.
 
What could he possibly have done to fake his death and get away with it for all these years?
 
But Rostov was in over his head, completely disconnected from the powers that be back home.
 
If he called asking too many questions, they would assume that he had failed.
 
He wasn’t ready to give up just yet.

And so as he waited for David Schultz to appear, another idea began to form.
 
One more radical than anything he’d ever considered.
 
With the discovery of the diary, his expectations of finding something that might interest his government were over, but maybe his findings would be of interest to somebody else.
 
The first chance he got, he was going to call his contact and tell him the old man was dead.

The thoughts raced through his head as he began to smile.
 
Vaclav Waller wasn’t the only one who knew how to fake a death.
 
Rostov loved his country, but he was getting old, and he wasn’t a fool.
 
After all the years he’d given to her, she’d given little in return.
 
His pension was paltry, his room hardly better than this gardener’s shed.
 
He’d seen plenty of opportunity for a man with his background while he’d been in Brighton Beach.
 
It would be easy to assume a new identity.
 
All he needed was something to get him started on the right track.
 
The diary had possibilities.
 
Maybe there was something in there with which he could work a little blackmail.
 
He wouldn’t be greedy.
 
Just enough to set him up in an apartment in Brighton Beach.
 
All he had to do was make a call.

He was still smiling when he heard someone approaching his room.
 
Reassuming a weakened demeanor, he closed his eyes as David Schultz knocked and then entered.

Isabella slept through lunch and then busied herself in the office with some overdue bookkeeping, thereby removing herself from curious stares.
 
The swelling in her lip was almost gone, but the cut was still evident, as was a darkening bruise.
 
Bobby Joe Cage had certainly done a number on her.
 
It would be a long time before she forgot the panic she’d felt in knowing things were out of her control.
 
She paused at the computer, her fingers on the keyboard, and almost immediately Jack Dolan’s face, dark with anger, popped into her mind.
 
He had appeared without warning, like an avenging angel.
 
If it hadn’t been for him, this evening might have taken on a whole different character.