Seven Silent Men (7 page)

… Now, listening as construction engineers for the River Rise project tried to assure skeptical police welders that the concrete floor in the vault room was absolutely safe, that there was sheer rock underneath the crack, Martin Brewmeister was reminded of boyhood legends of certain palisades in this area being beehived by passageways and caves. Caves used by the underground railroaders of Civil War repute and favored by the bootleggers of Prohibition days.

When a compromise was reached whereby an acetylene torch and its police operator would be suspended over the vault in a harness attached to the walls and ceilings, Brewmeister got Jessup's permission to scout about a bit. He went to the clifftop cul-de-sac in front of the bank, looked over the edge, saw that the rock below slanted outward, that certain ledges existed far below … that segments of an age-old, rusted metal ladder hung to the cliff. Despite the sharp angle below, Brewmeister was tempted to rig a climbing line and descend to the ladder segment and ledges. He thought better of the idea and gazed off along the sharp wall of cliffs running upstream. He spotted what he thought to be a crease in the rock front. The crease seemed to have a gentler slope and be filled with slag and overgrowth. Staring at it, he noticed something else. Segments of another decaying metal ladder trailed down the rock front some thirty yards beyond the crease. The lowest segment of ladder ended beside a dark spot in the cliff. A spot whose general shape could be that of a small, roughly hewn opening. A door or tunnel mouth cut into the rock face five feet above water level.

Brewmeister had to drive through the construction site of Prairie Farmer Industrial Park to reach the stretch of clifftop above the dark spot. Peering over the edge, he could not find the metal ladder. But he did see rusted iron rungs, climbing rungs, like those used by the utility company, protruding from the rock face right on down to what appeared to be river level. Brewmeister tested the uppermost rung with his hand, then his foot. It held. He pressed on the rung below with a length of plaster-splattered two-by-four. It too seemed firm. He backed down over the edge of the cliff, with one foot felt for the first rung. Found it. Applied weight. Brought the other foot down and located the second rung. Stood on it. Rung after rung he descended the rock face. Halfway down he saw a segment of corroded metal ladder several inches to his right. More ladder could be seen below that. The next rung he stepped on gave, pried itself out of the rock and fell into the water below. Brewmeister clung to the rungs above, hoped they would hold as he dropped his body, eased a foot down past the missing rung to the one beneath that. It was firm.

Fifteen more minutes of cautious descent brought him beside the dark spot. It was indeed an opening in the rock. A dark tunnel mouth five feet above river level. An entrance apparently intended to be reached by the line of rungs, since the last rung ended here beside it. The step from the rung into the opening was easily negotiated.

Bending somewhat, Brewmeister started up the dark tunnel, almost immediately ran into a barricade of wooden boards and screening. He pushed against it. The barricade was loose. He kicked at it. It gave somewhat. Reaching out and pressing his hand firm against the tunnel walls for leverage, he kicked harder. The barricade crashed over backward. Brewmeister studied the darkness beyond, thought he saw a glimmer of light in the far distance, heard a murmur. He proceeded forward. Feeling the rock walls as he moved, he knew this was a man-made passageway cut in the cliff. Why it had been excavated, what its purpose was, eluded Brewmeister. The passage grew lower, forcing him to bend more. It grew even smaller.

Brewmeister got on all fours and crawled toward the fragile light source. The tunnel began to slope downward. His hands touched on something smooth and powdery. Dried mud. He felt the walls, the ceiling. All was coated by dry mud. The tunnel turned. The mud carpet grew thicker, firmer. He crawled around the turn into a cavern. A cavern illuminated by cross shafts of overhead, filtering light. A cavern totally and completely encrusted by dried mud. Stalactites of dried rich brown mud hung down from the ceiling like chocolate icicles. Stalagmites of mud rose up from the floor as round and dark as scoops of ice cream. Further back in the cavern, the stalactites met with the rising stalagmites to form twisting columns.

Brewmeister damned himself for not bringing a flashlight along from Jez's car. He had heard of underground mud eruptions, but never of a cavern being crusted in the stuff. He went to the wall on which a sliver of light played, felt it … dug into it with his fingernails. The mud had an almost moist texture to it.

A sound was heard nearby. A sound louder and clinkier than the continual murmur. Brewmeister followed the lowest light shaft back around through the cave to a half wall of rolling, smooth brown balcony stalactites. Beyond the wall he could see an opening in the cave. One sure kick crumbled a section of balcony stalactites. He walked through and into the opening and along a natural tunnel beyond. A turning tunnel which ended at a mud-crusted spiral staircase encased in a circular mud-coated shaft. Gazing up, Brewmeister saw that the shaft ascended thirty feet into a bright light source which was definitely electric in origin. He also noticed the mud covering went up only ten feet. Beyond that the red brick of the shaft wall and the dark iron of the circular steps were in plain view.

Brewmeister climbed to the top and came out on a cement platform in a large underground construction he assumed erroneously was part of the Prairie Port sewer system. Far below the platform murmured a fast-moving stream of water which disappeared into a nearby tunnel mouth. The glowing light bulbs on the cement-beamed ceiling were unglazed. Brewmeister tried the metal door at the far end of the platform. It was locked. He looked for another way off the platform, noticed a metal catwalk leading into the huge tunnel. He took it.

Brewmeister followed above the gurgling stream for fifty yards before entering a small natural cave where the catwalk ran onto a platform. The catwalk continued beyond the platform and into a larger tunnel. For whatever his instinct Brewmeister chose to climb the short metal ladder leading up from the platform. He ascended into another small cave. Here there were no stalactites or stalagmites. Only walls and ceilings and floors covered in smooth dry mud. Illumination was ample but not electrical. It emanated from a far opening. As he had done earlier, Brewmeister followed the light source, entered a second cave which had a natural stream trickling through and which was also coated by dried mud. Beyond the stream was another natural tunnel. It too was mud-coated. Then he came out into someplace he couldn't believe.

The underground chamber he stood in was as wide as any cavern he had ever seen in the area, ever heard of. Went up twenty-five feet. Was electrified by string after string of glaring light bulbs suspended from on high. In the middle of the floor an enormous metal scaffold rose to the ceiling. To a spot from which the rock had been chipped away. To where something black and square was exposed.

Brewmeister walked around for a better view. One couldn't be had from this distance. He climbed the scaffold. Red and white microflashes sparked above. He stopped below the huge metal square block protruding down through the rocks. A hole had been torn out of its bottom. Up inside the hole he could see a white-hot flame cutting through the darkness. The flame withdrew. A loud metal bang echoed. Something fell and clanged, leaving behind a circle of light above. A circle into which the plastic-masked face of a police welder appeared.

The mask popped up. The police technician stared down in disbelief at the face of Brewmeister looking up at him from the hole in the bottom of the vault.

A terrible rumbling occurred. Brewmeister's face undulated back and forth, in and out of view. Disappeared. The police technician stared harder down through the hole in the bottom of the vault … saw surging, foaming water … torrents and eruptions of water as if a dam had burst. Before the lights below went off he caught a glimpse of Brewmeister's face gasping for air, of his hand clutching for help. Both face and hand disappeared in a swirl of froth.

“Have you reached Grafton?” It was 1
P
.
M
. and the long-distance voice of A. R. Roland spoke from SOG. SOG was the acronym for Seat of Government. Seat of Government was J. Edgar Hoover's own personal and preferred title for the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the FBI, where Roland served as assistant to the Director, the fifth-highest-ranking man in the Bureau.

“No, sir, not yet.” This voice was from Prairie Port and belonged to forty-six-year-old, silver-haired John Lars Sunstrom III. “We did get through to Silver Lake and they're sending someone after him.”

“Silver Lake?”

“The fishing camp in Montana he's vacationing at.”

“Damnable time for a vacation.”

Sunstrom thought of saying it was a damnable time for a robbery as well. “Yes, sir.”

“But they have found our man Brewmeister?”

“Twenty minutes ago,” Sunstrom said. “They're bringing him to the University Hospital now.”

“How badly hurt is he?”

“It's hard to say. He's unconscious and pretty well banged up, from what I'm told.”

“He's not about to die, is he?”

“… I don't know.”

“He was found in the river? The Mississippi River?”

“Yes, sir. The River Patrol spotted him lying on a delta island three miles below Prairie Port.”

“So he was spit out into the river somewhere along the way, is that right?” Roland asked. “He was swept out from under the bank and spit into the river?”

“Yes, sir, that's right,” Strom, as Sunstrom was known, said.

“Amazing.”

“What might prove more amazing, sir, is how far he was swept in those tunnels. We've been told there's no outlet to the river between the Mormon State National Bank and on down into Prairie Port proper. This could mean Brewmeister traveled a minimum of seventeen miles underground, assuming he came out through the Sewerage Department's tunnel in the middle of town. If he came out of the tunnel on the far end of town, which empties out into the river close to where he was found, you can add five miles to the seventeen.”

“Twenty-two miles underground? Underground in water?”

“If he came out the far tunnel, yes, sir.”

“… You said in your earlier report that the robbery was receiving an inordinate amount of publicity. Is that still the case?”

“I was referring to local media coverage, and that is still true. Now national television news people have arrived in Prairie Port. People from ABC and NBC—”

“And only the local police are conducting an investigation?”

“We're investigating, sir, but not for the record.”

“You personally, Mr. Sunstrom, are uncertain if the FBI should enter the investigation officially, am I correct?”

“At this time, sir, yes.”

“Would Mr. Grafton share this opinion?”

“I doubt so, sir. I'm the conservative in the family.”

“What is the status of the police investigation?”

“Pretty much what the media is saying, sir. It's large scale, but not much headway is being made. There is no evidence as to when exactly, over the weekend, the perpetration occurred. The amount of money stolen hasn't been established as yet. There is no indication at all as to who the perpetrators are or how many of them there were. The police are certain they came in under the vault through a series of caves and tunnels north of the bank and then made their getaway along the route Brewmeister was taken … through the tunnels south of the bank … but they don't have details. Some of the tunnels are still flooded. Others drain out and then suddenly reflood. The police suspect the robbers may have booby-trapped the tunnels … somehow arranged for this spot-flooding so as to keep from being followed.”

“… That smart, are they?” Roland's voice was barely audible.

“Sir?”

“I was telling myself, Mr. Sunstrom,” he said in normal tones, “this appears to be an imaginative perpetration. Well thought out.”

“Seems so.”

“Is there a rough estimate on how much may have been stolen?”

“Only rumors, sir.”

“Rumors where?”

“Both in the media and around police headquarters.”

“Of what amounts?”

“The police think between four to six hundred thousand may have gone. The media's been claiming a million and up.”

“… Did I hear you say,” Roland asked, “all three networks were at the bank? National news teams from ABC, CBS and NBC?”

… There is a structure to FBI field offices and resident agencies which the operations at Prairie Port managed to defy. And an obsequiousness. A common denominator for FOs and residencies, Prairie Port included, is population. High-density urban areas usually host a field office. Legalistically and geographically, the field offices, fifty-nine in all, correspond to the boundaries set for federal court districts. Certain field offices cover more than one court district and therefore develop cases for more than one United States attorney. However, each of the nation's ninety-four U.S. attorneys, who are the court system's federal prosecutors, is served by only one FBI field office. Whether housed in a government building or leased commercial space, each field office appears to be a replica of the next in general layout and operations. FOs are run by the special agent in charge and an assistant special agent in charge, the SAC and ASAC respectively, who have private offices on the premises. Supervisors and chief clerks function from their own cubicles. The workaday “bricks,” or special agents, operate from large squad rooms, are usually assigned to “squads” which specialize in specific categories of crime.

Strewn between the galaxy of field offices, and subservient to them, are five hundred and sixteen satellite operations known as resident agencies. RAs, or residencies, are predicated totally on population and range in size from one agent covering a territory to as many as thirty. Each resident agent, according to protocol, reports officially to the squad in the parent field office … from this squad receives his formal assignments. Most residencies have some sort of office space. Many do not, with the resident agents of the area mailing or phoning in their reports to the field office. Few RAs boast the luxury of secretaries or stenographers. Certain of the larger RAs designate a senior resident agent, SRA, and an assistant senior resident agent, ASRA, who have no formal authority over the other resident agents at the office and who are responsible only for matters of administration and coordination. Not so at Prairie Port.