Ark (20 page)

Henry’s eyes smiled. “Is there a sunny side of the street?” he asked.

“The uproar might conceivably turn out to be a good cover story. It might even solve the cover story problem we’ve been trying to deal with. It would divert attention from the fact that what you’re really planning is the rescue of humanity and the reason for the rescue. That would probably require your telling a white lie or two.”

“For example?”

“Like, you’re mounting an expedition to survey the moons of Jupiter or the asteroid belt for mining opportunities,” I said. “That would be believed—’Greedy trillionaire looks for more treasure at the end of the rainbow.’”

“I’m not that crazy.”

“You wouldn’t have to actually tell the lie. Just plant the suspicion. The paranoia industry will do the rest. Result: In trying to do you harm, Bear will have done you a favor.”

Henry smiled quite brightly and for a moment, locking eyes with me. He was the first to look away. That had never happened before. Was it the advice or the hug that broke the pattern?

~ * ~

4

CLEMENTINE’S CHAPS HAD BEAR SURROUNDED.
They thought he had spotted them because he appeared to be wandering aimlessly around the city. Sooner or later, he would make a break for it. In Clementine’s view, the sooner the better.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because he’s a bother,” Clementine said. “A waste of money and manpower. An intruder, not part of the pattern. A distraction from the better things we have to do. Best to get him out of the picture this very weekend and go on with the more important matters.”

“How do you accomplish that?”

“We’re chewing on that problem.”

Next day, as if on a sudden impulse, Clementine turned up at the apartment and asked me to go for a walk with her in Central Park. Not later, not tomorrow, but right now. I was surprised, because while Bear was on the loose in Manhattan, I was under strict orders to stay inside with all doors locked and alarms set.

“Why?” I asked.

“Curiosity,” Clementine said. “The crowd grows as the afternoon goes on. Very odd, this mass walkabout. I’d like to study it at close hand.”

“Clementine, that’s moonshine.”

Clementine said, “I have no idea what that means. But oh, do come along. We’ll be back in no time.”

She walked across the room and picked up my bag with my pistol inside. She was limping. I asked what the matter was.

“It’s nothing, really, just a twinge, and anyway I have my rolling chair,” she replied.

Clementine’s wheelchair was motorized, so I didn’t have to push it, just trot alongside as she weaved her way through the crowd. I didn’t ask for a fuller explanation. No doubt Clementine had a sound operational reason for riding around in an invalid’s chair she didn’t need. Her costume had changed slightly. She now wore a floppy blue pancake beret, cocked jauntily just above her left eyebrow. The effect was quite becoming, softening her craggy face and adding a witty touch to the self-portrait.

Near the band shell, a mirror flashed. The pre-Clementine me would have assumed that a woman was fixing her lipstick or a kid was fooling around. The new me was instantly on the alert. I fell back a step or two. This moved me outside the range of Clementine’s peripheral vision.

In a controlled but penetrating voice, she said, “Please remain where I can see you.” Her head moved from side to side as her eyes searched the crowd for threats. I knew exactly what she was looking for: Bear.

She had baited the trap and I was the bait.
The breath hissed from my body.

Clementine was looking to the left when, on the right, about thirty feet away, Bear rose up out of the crowd. This bit of stage business created the illusion that he was being lifted out of the earth like a monster rising from the grave. The mundane truth was that Bear had been sitting on a bench and decided to stand up. He loomed head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd. He wore aviator sunglasses and a baseball cap instead of the usual Stetson. He was dressed in coveralls, a garment he could easily strip off, getting rid of it and the bloodstains that with any luck would soon bespatter it. He was looking straight at me.

Clementine said, “Don’t look at him, my dear. Keep on walking, dear. All will be well.”

I did as ordered. My Heckler and Koch model P2000 SK swung from my shoulder inside its purse-holster. I knew I could not possibly fire it in this crowd without killing or wounding half a dozen people while missing Bear entirely. Bear knew this, too. He walked toward us, expressionless, the sun behind him. He was in no hurry. He knew as well as I did that escape was impossible. If I tried to hide in the crowd he would simply throw aside the people who stood between the two of us.

Conditions for murder were perfect. He could decapitate me in seconds, throw my bloody head into the crowd like a football, and walk away. No witness was going to volunteer a description of the killer. Not in New York.

Looking straight ahead, talking through her teeth, Clementine said to me, “Steady on! When I stand up, dive to the left.
Dive.
To the
left.”

Bear was now about ten feet away. He gathered himself to make a move. The wheelchair stopped. Clementine stood up. She pointed her pistol at Bear. The crowd saw the gun and parted as if someone within it had stepped on a poisonous snake. I dove to the left as instructed and landed on a prostrate man who recoiled as if I were the viper. I rolled off him onto my knees and drew my weapon. I pointed it at Bear’s huge bulk. Even though I was hyperventilating, my hands were quite steady.

“Police!” Clementine shouted in a booming voice. “Freeze!”

Bear put his head down and charged, uttering a primal howl so loud that it must have peeled the skin off his throat. He took one giant step and lifted the opposite leg to take another. At that precise instant, a circular whirling thing like a fisherman’s net appeared above his head. It fell onto him. It enveloped him. Two men dashed out of the mob and pulled the net tight. Bear was trapped inside it, as closely wrapped as a mummy. He shouted in rage and struggled mightily, but his arms were bound to his sides and his ankles were tied together. He was still on his feet. The net men gave him a violent push. He fell over backward. Two other men, who were standing behind him, caught him before he hit the ground. Another pair of watchers, each wielding a syringe, injected him in either arm with something that knocked him out almost immediately. The final two chaps in my protection detail pushed Clementine’s wheelchair against the back of Bear’s knees. His huge body slumped into the chair. They propped up his legs and wheeled him away at a run, with two other men running interference, parting the crowd.

Clementine was now displaying a large gold badge.

“It’s all over, ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “Move along now.”

Someone said, “What’d the guy do?”

Clementine, holstering her weapon, ignored him.

To me, she shouted, “Let’s go, sergeant!”

On the way back to my apartment, Clementine talked nonstop on her cell phone, so I was unable to ask questions. As soon as we arrived—or to be more accurate, as soon as she had checked out every nook and cranny of the place to make sure no villains were present—I offered her a nice cup of tea.

“How very kind,” Clementine said. “Would you mind awfully if I made the tea?”

“I’d be delighted. I have some cookies. Shall I put them out?”

Clementine said that that would be lovely. She put the teakettle on the burner, and the instant the water boiled she warmed the pot, measured the tea, and let it steep for the precise amount of time required. Then she poured.

“Lovely cookies,” she said.

“Wonderful tea,” said I.

Clementine beamed. She was truly happy. I was happy for her. Her operation had gone like clockwork. I didn’t doubt her competence—how could I after what I had just seen?—but knew that the capture of Bear might have gone less well. I didn’t doubt for a moment that if things had gone wrong—say, the net had gone awry—she would have pumped ten rounds into Bear’s torso, ejected the magazine, loaded another into the gun, and fired two rounds into his skull—unless he killed her with his bare hands while she was reloading.

And now that she had captured the monster, what was she going to do with him?

“That thing your men used to immobilize Bear,” I said. “What was it?”

“As you saw, it’s a net,” Clementine replied. “It doesn’t merely entangle, it entraps. It was designed as a humane way to subdue a violent subject who might also be insane. Bleeding hearts don’t much care for it because they don’t understand its underlying ethical principle, but as you saw, it’s quite effective.”

I said, “Obviously. I never imagined that Bear could be subdued.”

Clementine sipped her tea and made no comment. Plainly, she had never doubted that anyone, no matter how fearsome, was unsubduable.

I asked her what would happen to Bear now.

“There are a number of options,” Clementine said.

“Such as?”

“We might do the French thing and drop him off a bridge in dark of night, still wrapped up in his net,” Clementine said. “Or give him a stern talking-to and send him back to Texas.”

“Not the latter, if you don’t mind.”

“I was joking. But his situation will be explained to him.”

I said, “You’re not concerned about legal difficulties?”

“Of what kind?”

“A case could be made that he was kidnapped.”

“Quite so,” Clementine said. “But Mulligan is not the most credible of accusers. He intended to commit murder. He came all the way from Texas to New York on at least two occasions, with murder as his purpose.”

“He had every right to be in New York.”

Clementine’s eyebrows rose. She placed her empty cup in its saucer and put the cup and saucer down on the table. The look she gave me was alight with false good humor.

She said, “My dear child, you are the most determined devil’s advocate I have ever encountered. What do
you
recommend doing with this psychopath?”

“Let me put it this way,” I replied. “I wish your men had missed with the net.”

“Really? May I ask why?”

“So that I could have had the pleasure of watching you shoot Bear ten times in the heart, then twice in the head.”

Clementine’s eyes brightened, as if, to her surprise, she was beginning to like me. She looked at her watch.

She said, “I really must go. Thank you for the delicious tea.”

I said, “You will let me know what you decide about Bear?”

“That rather depends on what’s decided, doesn’t it?”

“It depends on no such thing, Clementine. I do not wish to live in uncertainty.”

She said, “Of course you don’t. I recommend you to remain inside this apartment for the time being. You won’t encounter Mulligan if you do go out, but he’s not the only madman in New York.”

She nodded briskly. I did the same in return.

I cleared my throat and said, “I know it’s bad form, Clementine, but I do want to thank you and your chaps for what you all did today. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

With a thin smile that told me she didn’t doubt my amazement for a moment, Clementine murmured, “Not at all. Truly our pleasure.”