Wild Fire (17 page)

She smiled and said, “Do
not
order the double bacon cheeseburger.”

In fact, that was the first risky thing I was going to do today before going to the Custer Hill Club.

CHAPTER TWENTY

O
ut in the termInal area, I said to Kate, “I’m going to hit the men’s room.”

“You should. You’re full of shit.”

“Right. I’ll meet you at the car-rental counter.”

We parted company, and I freshened up and was at the car-rental area within four minutes. Women take a bit longer.

There were two car-rental counters—Enterprise and Hertz—one behind the other in a small area off to the side of the terminal. The young guy behind the Enterprise counter was sitting down, reading a book. Standing behind the Hertz counter was a young lady playing with her computer. Her big breast tag read MAX, which I assumed was her name and not her cup size. I said, “Hi, Max. I have a reservation under the name of Corey.”

“Yes, sir.” She found my reservation, and we went through the paperwork, which took only a few minutes. She handed me the keys to a Ford Taurus, and told me how to find the rental lot, then asked me, “Do you need any directions?”

“Do you mean in life?”

She giggled. “No. Driving directions. You want a map?”

“Sure.” I took the map and said, “Actually, I need a place to stay.”

She replied, “There’s a rack of pamphlets over there. Lodging, restaurants, sights, and stuff.”

“Great. What’s the best place around?”

“The Point.”

“What’s The Point?”

She smiled, “I don’t know, John. What’s the point?” She laughed. “I get people with that every time.”

“I’ll bet. Got me. So, where would you recommend to stay?”

“The Point.”

“Okay . . .”

“It’s, like, really expensive though.”

“Like what? A hundred bucks?”

“No, like a thousand dollars.”

“A year?”

“A night.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, for real. It’s, like, really exclusive.”

“Really.” I didn’t think this was going to get past the accounting office, but I was in a reckless mood. “How do I get to The Point?”

“Stop beating around the bush.” She laughed hard and slapped the counter. “Got ya.”

“Hey, you’re good.”
What did I do to deserve this?

Max got herself under control. “Hey, you really going there?”

“Why not? I have a rich uncle.”

“You must. You rich?”

“I’m John.”

She giggled politely. “Good one.”

Max handed me a map, which I noticed had lots of thin, winding roads that ran through open spaces, with very few towns. I thought of Harry, who liked the Adirondacks, and I asked God to do the right thing this time.

Max put an X on the map. “The Point is on Upper Saranac Lake, about there. You should call for directions. Also, you have to call for reservations. They’re, like, always booked.”

“At a thousand bucks a night?”

“Yeah. Can you believe?” She pulled a phone book from under the counter, found the number of The Point, and wrote it on the map, saying to me, “You won’t find a brochure on this place in the wire rack.”

“Really.”

I put the map in my pocket, and Max said to me, “So, you’re from New York City?”

“I am.”

“I love New York. So, what brings you up here?”

“A helicopter.”

She started to smile, then a little light went off in her head, and she said, “Oh, you’re the guy who flew in on the FBI helicopter.”

“Right. Fuller Brush Incorporated.”

She laughed. “No . . . FBI. Like Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Kate appeared, carrying two containers of coffee, and asked me, “You having a good time here?”

“I’m renting a car.”

“I could hear you laughing from the restaurant. What’s the joke?”

“What’s the point?”

Max laughed. Kate did not. I said, “It’s a long story.”

“Shorten it.”

“Okay, there’s this place . . . a hotel or something—”

“A resort,” said Max helpfully.

“Right. A resort called The Point. So, Max—that’s this young lady—no, first I asked, ‘Is there a good place to stay?’ so she says, ‘What’s the point—?’”

“No,” interrupted Max, “I said, ‘The Point,’ and
you
said, ‘What’s The Point?’ and I said—”

“All right,” Kate interrupted, “I get it.” She put my coffee on the counter. “At what
point
are we now?”

I replied, professionally, “I was just about to identify myself as a Federal agent.”

Kate beat me to it and showed her credentials. She said to Max, “I need photocopies of all car-rental contracts from Thursday to now, including vehicles that have been returned. See if you can do that in ten minutes. We’ll be in the restaurant.” Kate went to the next counter, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and spoke to the young man there.

I said to Max, “That’s my wife.”

“Gee, I never would’ve guessed.”

I took the coffee and went into the restaurant, which was actually just a small café. The walls and ceilings were painted a horrid sky blue, complete with white clouds unlike any I’ve ever seen on this planet. Plastic models of biplanes hung from the ceiling, and photos of various aircraft added to the motif. There was a four-stool lunch counter, which was empty, and a dozen empty tables from which I could choose. I sat at a table near a picture window where I could see the runway.

An attractive waitress came over with a menu and asked, “And how are you this afternoon?”

“Great. I’m happily married. Can I have another menu? My wife will be here in a few minutes.”

“Sure . . .” She put the menu down and moved off to get another one.

My cell phone rang, and the caller ID said “Private,” which 90 percent of the time is the office, so I let it go into voice mail.

Kate came into the café and said, “My cell phone just rang.”

“Probably Bergdorf’s looking for you.”

She sat down and listened to her voice mail. “Tom Walsh—wants me to call.”

“Wait a few minutes.”

“All right.” She took the sheaf of CommutAir printouts from her briefcase and laid them on the table. I took half and started flipping through them while dialing my cell phone.

“Who are you calling?”

“The Point.”

A man named Charles answered, and I said, “I’d like to make a reservation for this evening.”

“Yes, sir. We have some availability.”

“Do you also have rooms?”

“Yes, sir. We have the Mohawk Room in the Main Lodge, the Lookout in the Eagle’s Nest, the Weatherwatch in the Guest House—”

“Slow down, Charles. What can I get for a thousand bucks?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Not even a cot in the kitchen?”

He quoted me some rates on the available rooms, and I got scalped by the Mohawk for twelve hundred bucks, which was the cheapest room available. I asked him, “Does this place have heat and electricity?”

“Yes, sir. How many nights will you be staying with us?”

“I’m not sure, Charles. Let’s start with two.”

“Yes, sir.” He added, “If you’re with us on Wednesday evening, black tie is requested for dinner.”

“Are you telling me I need a tuxedo to eat dinner in the woods?”

“Yes, sir.” He explained, “William Avery Rockefeller, who owned this property, would dine with his guests each evening in black tie. We try to re-create the experience on Wednesday and Saturday evenings.”

“I might need to miss that experience. Can I get room service in my underwear?”

“Yes, sir. How would you like to secure the reservation?”

I gave him my name and government credit card, we ironed out a few other details, and I asked him, “You have any bears there?”

“Yes, sir. We have a bar in the—”

“
Bears
, Charles,
bears
. You know. Ursus terribilis.”

“Uh . . . we . . . there are bears in the area, but—”

“Feed the bears tonight, Charles. See you later.” I hung up.

Kate said, “Did I hear you correctly?”

“Yeah, fucking bears.”

“The room rate.”

“Yeah, we’re in the Mohawk Room. The Weatherwatch at two thousand dollars a night seemed a little extravagant.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Why do you ask? Hey, after two nights in that B and B hovel you booked, we deserve a nice place.”

“I think we get an allowance of a hundred dollars per diem in the Albany area.” She reminded me, “We . . .
you
have to make up the difference.”

“We’ll see.”

Kate’s beeper went off, and she looked at it. “Tom.”

“Give it a few more minutes.”

“Maybe they’ve found Harry.”

“That would be nice.” I flipped through the printouts, trying to see if anything stuck out.

Kate, too, went through the printouts and said, “Here is the eleven A.M. CommutAir from Boston on Saturday . . . wow.”

“Wow, what?”

“Edward Wolffer. You know who he is?”

“Yeah, he played center field for the—”

“He’s the deputy secretary of defense. Very hawkish guy, pushing for the war in Iraq. Very close to the president. He’s on TV a lot.”

“That’s probably the guy who someone here recognized.”

“Yes, and here’s another one on the same flight—Paul Dunn. He’s a presidential adviser—”

“On matters of national security, and a member of the National Security Council.”

“Right. How did you know that?”

“It’s always a Jeopardy question.”

“Why do you like to play stupid?”

“It’s a good cover for when I really am stupid.” I said, “So, Wolffer and Dunn arrived Saturday, plus two other guys, according to Betty, and they all got into the van to the Custer Hill Club.”

Kate looked again at the passenger manifest for the 11:00 A.M. Saturday flight from Boston and said, “There were nine other men on that flight, but none of these other names ring a bell, so we don’t know who these other two guys were who got into the van.”

“Right.” I continued flipping through the passenger lists. “Wolffer and Dunn left on the first Boston flight yesterday, connecting to Washington.”

She nodded thoughtfully, then asked me, “Does this mean anything?”

“Well, on the surface, it doesn’t mean much. A lot of rich and powerful guys got together on a three-day weekend at a mountain lodge owned by an oil billionaire. It’s like one of those Renaissance weekends, or a gathering of the Carlyle Group, where some people, and the media, speculate that all kinds of devious things are going on—oil-price rigging, financial and political deals, conspiracies to take over the planet, and that kind of thing. But sometimes, it’s just a bunch of rich guys getting together to relax, play cards, talk about women, and tell dirty jokes.”

Kate thought about that. “Sometimes it is,” she said. “But someone in the Justice Department ordered a surveillance of this gathering.”

“
That’s
the point.”

She went on, “And it’s not every day that the Justice Department wants to keep an eye on the deputy secretary of defense, a presidential adviser, and who knows who else in this club.”

I commented, “This is getting good.” I scanned the passenger manifests. “We need to do a background check of everyone who arrived here by commercial aircraft in the last few days, and see what, if any, connection they have to one another—then try to find out what Harry was supposed to find out on his surveillance: who went from here to the Custer Hill Club.”

Kate replied, “I don’t think that’s our job. Tom didn’t mention that.”

“It’s good to show initiative. Tom appreciates that, and by the way, fuck Tom.”

The waitress came by, and one of us ordered a double bacon cheeseburger, and the other ordered a Cobb salad, whatever the hell that is.

My beeper went off, and I looked at the number. Not surprisingly, it was Tom Walsh. “I’ll call him.”

“No,
I’ll
call him,” Kate said.

“Let me handle this. He likes and respects me.” I dialed Tom’s cell phone, and he answered. I asked, “Did you page me?”

“Yes, I paged you, and Kate, and I called you both. You were supposed to call me when you landed.”

“We just got in. Headwinds.”

“According to the pilot, you’ve been there almost an hour.”

“There was a long line at the car rental. More important, what’s the word on Harry?”

“Nothing yet.” He briefed me on nothing, then said, “I want you to drive to the regional headquarters of the state police in Ray Brook. That’s a few miles from Saranac Lake. Make contact with a Major Hank Schaeffer, commander of B Troop, and coordinate the search operation with him. You can offer your services and expertise, such as they are, and offer to participate in the search.”

“Okay. That’s it?”

“For now. Meanwhile, we’re going through channels to see if we can get a few hundred troops from Fort Drum to participate in the search. That will speed it up considerably. Tell Schaeffer we’re still working on that.”

“Will do.”

“Call me when you’ve spoken to Schaeffer.”

“Will do.”

“Okay, is Kate there?”

“She’s in the ladies’ room.”

“Tell her to call me.”

“Will do.”

“What are you doing now?”

“Waiting for a double bacon cheeseburger.”

“Okay . . . don’t hang around the airport too long, and don’t ask anyone there any questions.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just get over to the state trooper headquarters ASAP. And don’t even
think
about going to the Custer—”

“I understand.”

“All right. Nothing further.”

I hung up, and Kate asked me, “What did he say?”

I sipped my coffee and went back to the printouts. “He wants us to go to the Custer Hill Club and see if Bain Madox is there, and talk to him, and see who else is there.”

“He said that?”

“Not in so many words.”

“Did he want me to call him?”

“At your convenience.”

She was getting a little impatient with me and said, “John, what the
fuck
did he—?”

“Here’s the deal. Nothing new on Harry, Walsh wants us to make contact with the state police, help in the search, and not snoop around the airport.” I noted, “Too late for that.”

“I didn’t hear anything about going to the Custer Hill Club.”

“Why don’t
you
go see the state police? I’ll go to the Custer Hill Club.”