Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (29 page)

“We don’t think Ronnie’s
in Miami, anyhow. This Jules Rosine—who is trying hard to make us believe that
that’s his name by calling himself Junior from the initials J. R. —just doesn’t
strike me as the type, Captain, who would mail a letter or anything from a city
where he has that boy. As a matter of fact, he jumps around the country like a
twelve legged flea. The second record is from Kansas City and the third one is
from Cleveland.” The Captain sat pinching his upper lip and saying nothing.
Cameron put the second envelope on his desk. “Here’s the one where Ronnie
answers his mother’s questions. Mailed Wednesday, December the eighteenth.
Airmail from K.C.”

There was a tremor in the
Captain’s sensitive fingers as he removed the first record and put the second
on.

“Mommy the man says that you and
Daddy can hear me if I talk in here, but I don’t see how you can hear me if I
can’t see you. He said I was to tell you what picture Ted Schuyler and I were
going to see with Mrs. Murchison, and what I call my electric engine that pulls
the train, and if I didn’t tell you I wouldn’t get back home. I thought you
knew that Ted and I were going to see ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’—except
Daddy wanted me to come to the plant to meet him and I drank the Pepsi-Cola the
chauffeur got me and got so sleepy. And you know my engine is called the Camel
because it has a hump-back in its middle. I know you told me not to repeat
things, but the man said unless I told you that and unless Daddy did just what
he says, I won’t get home for Christmas. I don’t want to stay here. There’s
nobody to play with and I want to come home.”

The man’s voice took it
up from there:

“That answers the questions you had
in the
Times
and proves beyond doubt
that your son’s alive. Nobody is trying to torture you. You’ll see when we
write again that we’re not after money. It’s possible that we have even more of
that than you. The next will tell you what we want. We know what you want, but
don’t think we’re fooling. Stay away from the police and the F.B.I. and do
exactly what I tell you or your precious son is going to die. Cheerio! Junior.”

“Junior seems to have
split himself in two,” the Captain said as he took off the record. “The
man
has become
we.
Do
you think it’s merely a cover-up, Arnold, or is there really someone else
involved beside the man?”

“Anywhere from two to two
million. They’re after something more precious than money.” He put the third
record on the desk. “Listen to this one and you’ll see.”

Agent Hank Weeks said, “I’m
betting there’s a woman. Purely because they’ve kept Ronnie harping on
the man.”

The Captain nursed his
chin for a moment. “I’m inclined to agree.” He put the final record on.

“Do you mind if I have
another brandy?” Alan Connatser’s voice was tight and dry.

“Drink it all,” the
Captain said. “Ronnie isn’t my son, but nevertheless these records are really
getting me.”

Connatser poured his
drink and returned to his seat. “They’re somehow worse than ransom notes to
Evelyn and me. They’re sadistic. Mean. I find myself wanting to answer Ronnie.
Scream at him: ‘Tell me where you are!’ —as though he were hiding away in some
ghostly world of his own. It’s unbearable.”

“I’d merely sound inane
if I tried to express my sympathy.” A sharp cold fury was setting the Captain’s
skin to tingling, turning him into a ruthless inhuman machine. His mind was
being honed to a razor edge on a whetstone of revenge and implacability. “This
is the one from Cleveland?”

“Mailed air mail
yesterday. Thursday the nineteenth. It arrived in New York this morning at
seven. We have a tag out for them at the Post Office. They notified us right
away.”

The Captain flipped the
lever to LISTEN and started the disc to play.

“Mommy did you hear what I told you
about the picture show? The Seven Dwarfs? And my engine, the Camel, on the
electric train? I wish that you and Daddy would come for me, or answer me if
you heard me, like the man said. He says he’s telling Daddy exactly what to do
right now, and if Daddy does it I’ll come back home. Mommy tell him to hurry,
please. Hurry and do it because I miss you so much and I want to see the Macy’s
parade and get my presents.”

More unbearable silence
then until the man cut in:

“At six-o’clock.
P.M.
—
eighteen hours Service
Time—-you and your pilot, Steven Donegan, will take off from the air strip at
your plant on Long Island, flying your Cessna Twin. You will file no flight
plan with anyone. At your regular cruising speed of two-hundred-and-ten miles
per hour, flying at eight thousand feet, you will follow the regular plane
route from New York to Philadelphia. From Philadelphia to Baltimore. From
Baltimore to Washington. From Washington to Richmond. From Richmond to
Wilmington, North Carolina. From Wilmington to Charleston, South Carolina. From
Charleston to Savannah, Georgia. From Savannah to Jacksonville, Florida. From
Jacksonville to Daytona. From Daytona to Vero Beach, and from Vero Beach to
Miami.

Be on the alert. Somewhere between
two of the places named you will be contacted by radio. When contact is made,
if you broadcast an alarm your son will be killed. Remember we’ll be tuned in
on you, too. We want the complete plans of the SF-800T Missile. Those plans
consist of forty-four sheets of blueprints that were delivered to you by the
Navy a month ago. You are the only one living who has immediate access to them
all. Those forty-four blueprints are the price of your son. Particularly the
details of the cone.

Once they are received they will be
checked immediately by engineers just as competent as you. If they are not
approved, or any attempt at trickery is discovered, your boy will die. The
clearer those specifications are, the quicker you get your son. Remember, it’s
his life that’s at stake.

Put the plans in a large
portmanteau—not a dispatch-case—and weight the portmanteau with a couple of
sash-weights. Paint the portmanteau with phosphorescent paint and be ready to
drop it on a moment’s notice. You will be contacted by the words: ‘Cessna come
down!’ and will immediately start descending to a thousand feet still holding
your course. Watch the ground. One minute before the drop you will be contacted
again. Answer: ‘Roger, Junior!’ and look for a red flasher that will turn on on
top of a car. When you spot it say: ‘Condition red!’ and drop portmanteau as
close as possible to the flasher. You will be directed if you have to make a
second try. Follow the straightest compass course between points and there will
be no trouble. Another record will tell you where to pick up your boy. If
weather reports are generally bad don’t attempt to start. That’s your hard luck
and you’ll have to make another try. Happy landings! Junior.”

“Sounds like something
from out of the wild blue yonder,” Maclain said as he stopped the record. “A
modern Chekov nightmare manufactured in Moscow. What are the chances of pulling
off such a scheme ?”

“My pilot, Steve, says
there’s a damn good chance,” Connatser told him. “I’m a pilot, myself, with
some missions behind me, and I’m afraid I agree: Junior knows that we’ll break
our necks to drop that luminous suitcase on his head, if possible. He also
knows that the SF-800T is an ace we have in the hole. So I’m supposed to stake
the life of my son against the safety of my country.”

The Captain gnawed at his
clipped mustache. “At least the Soviets have one weakness that will never
change: We know that it’s impossible to fathom their way of thinking—but they
fully believe that they know the thinking of every other country in the world.
Now, it’s the life of a child against the lives of untold millions. Tomorrow
night! That’s not much time to make up forty-four sheets of phony blue-prints.
What does the F.B.I, think, Arnold? What are you going to do?”

“Mr. Connatser is going
to drop the plans as ordered,” Cameron said promptly. “You’re right about
Soviet thinking. We’ve learned a lot since the days of Klaus Fuchs and Harry
Gold. Naval Intelligence draws up two sets of plans, today—when the design is
for anything as vital as the SF-800T. The second set is slightly different. To
discover the bugs in it might take a corps of scientists a half a year. That’s
the set we’re feeding to Junior tomorrow night.”

“Leaving three people
only on the hot seat: Ronnie, my wife, and me!” Connatser’s voice was low and
deadly. “They’re not going to keep Ronnie alive for six months. So they may
find some bugs in a couple of days, and kill him then. Then there’s always the
chance when they get the plans that they’ll consider it safer to murder him
anyhow.”

“So we better get busy
with what we have, Mr. Connatser: Three records, the sound of a kidnapper’s
voice, and a snatch of song from a P.A. speaker.” Maclain shook his head. “It’s
not very much, but somehow among us we’ve got to put it together. Before those
plans are examined at all, we’ve got to find your boy. There is no other
alternative.”

“Knowing you as well as I
do,” Arnold Cameron said, “I have a vague uneasy feeling that you may be on to
something that we’ve managed to overlook. God only knows, I hope so.”

“I have some questions.” There
were lines creased on Maclain’s forehead and his mobile face was set in a look
of concentration as though his mind were far away. “Why did this man pick
Audograph records?”

“We have fifteen
Audographs in our office at the plant,” Connatser explained. “I also have one for
dictation at home.”

“Do you think he was an
ex-employee, Arnold?”

“That’s a possibility
that we’re checking. We’re getting a rundown on everyone who has worked at
Connatser Products since the war. It’s a big job, but it’s a top-security plant
so it shouldn’t be impossible. But it is going to take plenty of time.”

“Of which we have none,” Connatser
grunted. “Personally, I think it more likely that Junior called in as a
salesman and saw the machines. Employees in our place are too closely checked
for comfort.”

“How would he know you
had one home?”

“Maybe he didn’t, but he
knew I could always get one and take it home, since he’s addressing his records
to Evelyn there.”

“Okay,” Maclain said
shortly. “I’m going to start just as though I knew what I was talking about:
the same voices made all those records—Ronnie’s and Junior’s. Let’s take it for
granted that it’s the same man who picked up Ronnie, and drove you to work
under the name of Jules Rosine. Would you know him again, Mr. Connatser, if you
saw him?”

Connaster gave it a
little thought. “I doubt it. He wore a chauffeur’s livery. He was dark, I
believe, seemed personable enough, slightly built— that is, he didn’t impress
me as being particularly big and strong. I didn’t see him standing up. From the
few words he spoke, I’d say he had a French accent. On the drive to Long
Island, after dropping Ronnie at school in the morning, I was reading the paper
and busy with some figures in the back seat of the car. Since I was occupied, I
didn’t give him too much thought really.”

“He is French, according
to Leon Gerard,” Hank Weeks stated positively. “He spoke fluent French to Leon
when he held him up in his room and forced him to phone the housekeeper.”

“So his speech on the
records, while marking him an educated man, has words in it that are British as
a dish of bubble-and-squeak,” Maclain declared. “‘Phosphorescent paint’—‘portmanteau’—‘dispatch
case.’ We’d say briefcase, or luminous suitcase. But his accent isn’t really
British—just the words he uses. Let’s mark him as a French Canadian—Quebec, or
Montreal. Do you agree?”

“I think I’ll buy that
Canadian angle right now,” Weeks said. “Since Igor Gouzenko skipped the Russian
Embassy in Ottawa, in 1946, and turned up Klaus Fuchs, they’ve had troubles
aplenty with certain Reds in Canada.”

“What would you guess his
age to be?” the Captain asked.

“Between thirty and forty
at a guess.” Connatser sounded a little unsure.

“Well, later, if nothing
happens, it might pay you to run back through the Year Books of Graduates in
Engineering at McGill—University of Toronto, too. A picture just might jog your
memory enough to spot him. There’s another point I’d like to get clear: Ronnie
certainly wasn’t kidnapped in your own car—that is I don’t think they’d chance
driving him very far.”

“Just across the
Queensboro Bridge,” Cameron said. “The police found Mr. Connatser’s Imperial
parked under the approach to the bridge on the Long Island side at 6:20. Ronnie
was going to a picture show with another boy, Ted Schuyler, at four. You heard
that.”