“And you?”
“I’ll go back to the church.”
“God be with you.”
“Good luck.”
They both hung up.
10
Saturday, August 27, 1977
12:10 A.M.
THE WIND RAISED a steady, haunting whooooo! in the highest reaches of the trees. Thunder rumbled frequently, each peal louder and more unsettling than the one that had come before it. Above the forest, the sky periodically blazed with lightning; the electric glow pulsed down through the canopy of interlaced branches and left in its wake a series of stroboscopic images that dazzled the eye.
In the dense underbrush, small animals scampered this way and that, busily searching for food or water or companionship or safety. Or perhaps, Paul thought as one of them dashed across the path and startled him, they were frightened of the oncoming storm.
Paul and Sam had expected to find armed guards rather than animals at the edge of the woods that surrounded the mill, but there were none. Although all of the lights were on in the main building, the structure seemed-as did the land around it- deserted.
They circled through the woods. Eventually they came to the employee parking lot and studied the scene from behind a thick clump of laurel.
The helicopter was there, on the macadam, thirty feet away. A man stood beside it in the darkness, smoking a cigarette, watching the lightning and the fast-moving clouds.
Paul whispered: “Dawson or Klinger?”
“I don’t think so,” Sam said.
“Neither do I.”
“Then he’s the pilot.”
“You see a gun?” “No. Nothing.”
“Move in now?” “Wait.”
“For what?”
“The right moment.”
They watched.
A few seconds later the pilot dropped his cigarette and crushed it under the sole of his shoe. He put his hands in his pockets and began to walk aimlessly about, just killing time. At first he came toward the trees, wandered within ten or twelve feet of them, then turned and went back the way he’d come.
“Quickly,” Sam said.
Paul stood up. He eased through the laurel and ran after the pilot.
The man heard him and turned. His face was a black mask, but his eyes seemed phosphorescent. “Who-”
“I am the key,” Paul said.
“I am the lock.” “Speak softly.”
“Yes, sir.”
Paul looked beyond the helicopter. He could see the windows most of them with light behind them-on the second and third floors of the main building at the end of the storage yard. If he could see the windows, anyone who happened to glance Out might be able to see him, in turn, despite the darkness. He hustled the pilot closer to the helicopter, where they were pretty much hidden from the main building.
Sam joined them and said, “What’s your name?”
“Malcolm Spencer.”
“You are the pilot?”
“Yes. I am.”
“Where’s Leonard Dawson?”
“In the mill,” Spencer said.
“Which building?”
“The biggest one.”
“Which floor? First, second, or third?”
“First floor. There’s a sort of public sales area with-.”
“And Ernst Klinger,” Sam said. “Where’s he?”
“He’s in Black River,” Spencer said.
“That can’t be right.”
“Sir?”
“You mean he’s in town?” Paul asked.
“That’s right.”
Paul and Sam glanced at each other.
“Something wrong?” the pilot asked. He seemed to be concerned about them.
“You’re lying,” Paul said.
Surprised, Spencer said, “No, sir.”
“I am the lock,” Paul said.
“I am the key,” Spencer said.
“Where’s Klinger?”
“He’s in Black River.”
Paul stared at Sam. “Christ!”
To the pilot, Sam said, “You took Klinger and Dawson to the logging camp, didn’t you? And then brought them to the mill?”
“No. Just Mr. Dawson. General Klinger went to town from the camp.”
“When?”
“A couple of minutes after we got there,” Spencer said. He smiled uncertainly. His teeth seemed even more radiant than his eyes.
“How did he go? Not in the chopper?”
“No, sir. He took a car.”
“Why-”
Before he could get out more than one word of the question, Sam screamed and stumbled forward against the helicopter.
In the same instant, the night silence was split open by a single rifle shot.
Instinctively, Paul dropped to the ground and rolled.
A bullet cracked into the pavement where he’d just been, ricocheted into the darkness.
A second bullet smashed the macadam on the other side of him, bracketing him.