Monster: Tale Loch Ness (47 page)

He could also see the top of the fog bank rising over the Inverness horizon, highlighted by moonlight.

The ship's rotary was quiet. The Lyon TX-1 bit was back on the bottom. They had located another chert-silica formation. Everything was ready.

"I can tell you've been thinking," Whittenfeld, who had flown out before Scotty, said as Scotty moved back away from the railing.

They had already discussed the theft of gelatin dynamite and the implications.

"I've been thinking about a lot of things," Scotty said.

"I hope about a future for you and Loch Ness. About greatness. Immortality."

Scotty didn't reply.

They entered the bridge deck's supervisor's quarters.

The place looked like the command room on the command barge—television monitors, trap controls, sonar screens, and a plethora of other instruments. This was now the alternative operations room. Whittenfeld, Lefebre, and Dr. Fiammengo would be here. He and Dr. Rubinstein would be aboard the command barge. Both Dr. Fiammengo and Lefebre were in the room.

This was the first time he'd seen Lefebre since Houghton had given him the last bits of information. He wanted to lash out, break the Frenchman's neck. But he knew he couldn't, not yet.

"So what do you think?" Dr. Fiammengo asked.

"The engineers have done a good job," he replied.

She pointed to the communications equipment. "If anything goes wrong with the barge, we're ready here."

Scotty and Whittenfeld left the cabin.

Pierre Lefebre watched the launch, which held Whittenfeld and Bruce, pull away from the drill ship.

He could still see Bruce's face.

He despised the face. He hated mice. Cowards. Life's flotsam.

He moved to the other side of the ship and looked toward shore through a pair of binoculars. There it wast The sailboat shed. Inside it were the caps, the blasting machine, the timer, the primacord and gelatin. After the trap had been lowered and before the inception of operations—the two events would be separated by a shutdown of all sonar and tracking systems for calibration—his divers would ring the trap with the primacord and the gelatin dynamite and would tie the timing device into the clamp closure electrical system.

Then, ten minutes after the animal had been snared, it

would be blown into infinity.

He lit a Gitaries.

And smiled.

Mary MacKenzie knocked on the farmhouse door.

No one answered.

She looked inside the barn. There were no cars. The house didn't look abandoned, but obviously no one was home. She searched for a way to get in. The windows were barred; entrance was impossible.

She started to walk back to the road. She would have to wait for another motorist to drive by. There were no alternatives.

She crossed a grazing field, a sunken meadow below the level of the main road, then climbed back up toward the crippled car.

She stopped, surprised.

Another car was sitting right in front of hers.

She approached. No one was inside. There was also no one on the road. She turned toward the farmhouse. The missing driver had not gone in that direction. Intuitively, she sensed trouble. God, she was miles from nowhere on a sparsely traveled strip of highway, and suddenly a car had appeared, and the driver was nowhere in sight.

She felt a shiver of fear run up her spine. The shadows were suddenly very threatening. So were the sounds of the night.

She retreated to her auto and climbed inside, locking the doors.

A hand exploded up from behind her. A palm jammed shut her mouth. Nails dug into her cheeks. Heavy breathing rasped. She fought. She could not dislodge the hand.

Then she heard a man's voice; the voice was Girard's.

"There's a gun pointed at the back of your skull," Girard said. "One more move and I pull the trigger."

Scotty watched Dr. Rubinstein orchestrate. He listened to the cross of transmissions between the command barge, the sonar tugs, the trap tugs, and the duplicate control room on the
Magellan
while he tried to read Whittenfeld's very ambiguous expression, which was now colored by the light of the rapidly rising sun.

Dr. Rubinstein approached.

"It's as if God knows what we're about!" he declared, pointlng through the command cabin window at the white wall of air hanging above the horizon. "It's as if God has sent His messenger carpet. An angelic fog."

"Or a satanic one," Scotty countered.

"Could the fog be a problem?" Whittenfeld asked.

"It should stay out there according to the weather reports," Scotty replied.

"What if it doesn't?"

"It shouldn't significantly affect us," he declared, looking to Dr. Rubinstein for support.

"Correct," Dr. Rubinstein said. "We do not need visibility to see. We have sonar. Television. Everything will happen beneath the surface, and all our controls are at hand. No, unless we get a storm in here that would affect our operating efficiency, we'll be all right."

A structural engineer informed them that all systems were operational.

Dr. Rubinstein's voice rang through the command cabin. Captain Harrigan and Dr. Fiammengo reported in from their positions. The command barge's technicians hit a myriad of switches. The electrical heart of the trap fluctuated to life. Dr. Rubinstein opened the trap's main ballast tanks.

Scotty stared through the window. He could see the four anchor tugs moving, slow reverse. Suddenly, the water around the trap began to churn. The ballast tanks were filling. As orders flew around the command room, the churning increased; then, slowly, the trap began to sink, the tugs eased back into anchor positions, and the trap's anchor spools drew in the slack of the anchor lines.

Several minutes after the trap's descent had started, it was gone.

The time—eight P.M.

The fog bank remained off the coast.

The trap had been set at depth; the passive stage of the operation, a thorough recheck of the inactive instruments and connections, had begun.

Scotty and Foster had already started the return to base. Whittenfeld had moved to the Urquhart Bay installation.

Dog tired, Scotty reached Dores at 8:30, but he had things to do other than sleep.

Pursuant to plan, Girard was to be in charge of Geminii base security during the trap operation. But he was unable to locate Girard; according to key security people and those in charge of entry documentation, Girard had apparently not been seen since the day before.

Could Girard be with Houghton? Did Girard know anything about the gelatin dynamite?

It seemed impossible that someone without formal access —Whittenfeld, Lefebre, himself, a nominee could have removed the dynamite from the heavily guarded area.

His immediate suspicion was Whittenfeld and Lefebre. But why? To throw additional weight against the project's enemies? To keep the police off guard and away from the trap operation? Damn, he didn't know. But he was sure as hell Girard would. Besides, he needed Girard. Since Houghton had refused to come forward, he would have to forcibly make sure Girard, assuming Girard had been Houghton's source, made himself available.

He drove to Travis House and sequestered himself in the den. He phoned the Cam Dearg Inn. No one answered. Was it closed? He tried the standard places. No luck. He'd tried several key spots in Edinburgh, notably the Scottish Office, during the day. If Mary MacKenzie had gone to Edinburgh, she was keeping a low profile.

He'd never felt so helpless. He didn't know where the hell to look or what to do next, and he was fighting a terrible premonition that Mary MacKenzie would suddenly appear at the head of an assault team, beckoning for a bullet in the brain.

He rubbed his temples. His head hurt. He was tired. But he couldn't fall asleep. There were too many things to do!

The south side path along Loch Duntelchaig above Dores was narrow, overgrown. The area through which it ran was uninhabited and virtually unused.

Girard guided his sedan past the widest beam of the loch and stopped beneath an outcropping of rock.

A half hour later, a station wagon appeared with one man inside. Pierre Lefebre.

Lefebre stopped the wagon and slid out. Girard climbed out of the sedan and joined him. The path was covered with stones and gravel.

"Monsieur Girard," Lefebre declared, "you found the worst road in Scotland. Hell's road!"

"Very inaccessible. Nobody ever comes here. She'll never be found."

"Did you hear from Lennox?"

"Yes, it's done."

Lefebre looked above him. The mountaim rose high into the overbearing black sky.

"Where is she?" he asked.

Girard opened the trunk of the sedan. Mary MacKenzize was inside, bound and gagged.

"A leader of the nation," Lefebre announced, laughing.

He placed a wad of tobacco in his mouth, then pulled Mary MacKenzie out of the trunk. She fell to the gravel, face down. He dragged her some twenty feet by the hair, then turned her over. Her face was scraped and bleeding. He removed her gag and jerked her to her feet.

"Are you afraid, Councilwoman MacKenzie?" he asked.

"No," she said.

"I'm going to kill you."

"I know."

"How do you know that?" Lefebre asked, his lips quivering, a thin film of perspiration covering his face.

"I can see it in your face."

"Do you know why you're going to die, madame?"

"No. And it doesn't matter."

"It matters to me! You see, we bugged Monsieur Bruce's phone. We heard you call Monsieur Droon. We did not like what you said or what you both intended to do. No, you will die. Then I will deal with Mr. Bruce, the fool with a conscience."

Her expression blazed with defiance. "You're pathetic." She thought of Scotty; he'd tried to protect her from this. She forgave him under her breath.

"I frighten you, don't I?" Lefebre asked.

"It would take more than a slimy, foul-smelling animal like you to frighten me," she replied. "You, others like you, have descended on Scotland for years. But Scotland still breathes. Stronger than ever."

"You're not Scotland, madame. You're flesh and blood."

"And you're the droppings of a cow."

He grabbed her by the hair. "Shut up!"

"Never."

"Frightened! Tell me you're frightened."

"They died at Culloden for their country. I'II die here. They were proud to die, and I am proud to die! Their deaths inspired a nation. My death will somehow stop you, lead to your destruction!"

"What a brave and noble speech!"

He smacked her.

She spat in his face.

Enraged, he punched her.

Blood poured from her nose and mouth.

He trembled, gasped. He preferred to see fear. He preferred to hear his victims beg. It excited him. They had always feared and begged. In Algeria. The Congo. Biafra. Uganda.

"You're afraid!" he screamed, beside himself.

She spat on him.

He stood erect, eyes wild, face flooded with sweat, a knife in his hand, feeling the thrill, strong, pulsating, blinding.

William Whittenfeld sat in the corner of the Urquhart Bay installation operation's room, the lights on the desk turned down low. The office window was open; the blinds were up. He could see the
Magellan
's lights, feel a mild breeze whipping eastward across the loch, holding out the fog bank.

He felt his cheeks. He needed a shave. He smoothed the lapels on his black suit. He liked the suit. It had been made in London by one of the city's best tailors. Very expensive. It made him feel good, look good, distinguished. Everything English made his sensations soar.

He twisted his watch around and noted the time. Where in the hell was Lefebre? They did not have all night. If the explosives were to be set properly, the demolition team would have to begin their work at once. He would not tolerate any mistakes.

He hated fuckups. But here, especially. The trap was going to be mined, and the thing in the loch was going to be executed. Yes, he preferred the word "executed." The thing had killed. Sitting as judge, he had examined the evidence and had sentenced the thing to death. He laughed to himself, thinking about Dr. Rubinstein's sense of mission. All crap. Nonsense. The only duties that mattered were his duty to find oil and his duty to himself and his child. The thing had threatened his dreams. Threatened his child. The thing would die.

Of course, he'd told Scotty Bruce that if they caught the thing, removed it from the loch, and offered its existence to science, Geminii would receive the world's gratitude. But when the hell had mankind's gratitude ever really meant anything? When the hell had it ever run engines and cars or formed the base ingredients in plastics? The world's gratitude? Its accolade? Those were for megalomaniacs. The creature would die, and if the world wanted to squawk, it would have to do so after the fact.

To hell with the creature. He'd heard the world squawk in Biafra. And what had the outrage caused? More deaths! Life had taught him to disregard mankind's guilt and conscience when it came to making important decisions. And behind this decision was the most critical fact of all. If they caught the creature and it lived, Geminii would no doubt be closed down. The British government would certainly order the creature returned to the loch and would place the loch off limits. He could not allow that to happen.

A car pulled up to the building. Moments later, Lefebre entered the office.

"Where is Mr. Girard?" Whittenfeld asked.

"Back at the complex."

"How is MacKenzie?"

"She is indisposed."

Whittenfeld sat at the desk. "Did you deal with the Droon problem?"

"Yes. We convinced both Monsieur Droon and Madame MacKenzize that their silence would be in the best interest of Scotland."

"The trap?"

"The chariot is in the water. The divers are ready."

Whittenfeld stood again, turning off the light. "It's getting late," he said as he walked toward the door.

"Yes" was Lefebre's reply.

The station wagon stopped inside a grove of trees along the shore of the loch.