Susan smiled and banged my shoulder lightly with her head. In a small anteroom to the former library, Heidi and her daughter stood with Maggie Lane. With them was the famous conductor with the tan and the silver hair. Heidi was in her imperious mode. She introduced us quite formally. Actually, she introduced me, and I introduced Susan. Did Susan not notice? . . . Fat chance!
Adelaide was in full wedding dress, except there was no train. Probably couldn’t find train carriers. She had a small face, which looked even smaller because she had so much red hair insufficiently contained by her veil.
“Adelaide’s father chose not to attend,” Heidi said. “Leopold will be taking Adelaide down the aisle.”
“Okay,” I said.
“You’ll wait here with us, Mr. Spenser,” Heidi said. “Dr. Silverman, an usher will take you to the first row on the right. Mr. Spenser will join you. Please sit at the far end, near the wall.”
“Okay,” I said.
I was in my docile mode. Susan winked at me and followed the usher out of the anteroom. Through the window behind me, lightning flashed again. And not very long after, the thunder grumbled. No one paid any attention.
“You’ll be the last to enter the room, Mr. Spenser, after Leopold has delivered Adelaide to her husband. Please try to be unobtrusive.”
“On little cat’s feet,” I said.
I doubt that Heidi even heard me.
“Mo-th-er,” Adelaide said, making it into several syllables. “Everyone’s here. It’s time to start.”
Heidi was nodding absently. The anteroom door had a small peephole in it that allowed you to see into the chapel. Heidi appeared to be counting the house.
“Why does the library door have a peephole?” I said. “Keep people from stealing the books?”
“When it was built it was thought to add a secretive medieval quality,” Maggie Lane said.
I nodded. I could hear the string ensemble playing appropriate music as the guests were escorted in.
After a time, Heidi said, “All right, I’ll go.”
She looked at her daughter.
“Let me get seated before you and Leopold begin,” Heidi said. “Just like we rehearsed. Maggie, don’t let them start too soon.”
“Mo-th-er . . .” Adelaide said.
Heidi smiled and stepped away from the peephole. Heidi leaned forward and kissed her daughter, carefully, no messing up the look.
“It’ll be perfect,” she said to Adelaide.
She put her hand on Adelaide’s cheek for a moment. Then she turned and went out the other anteroom door into the hall. I took her place peeking through the door, and watched her appear a moment later at the double doors to the chapel. She came down the aisle alone, the mother of the bride, like a queen at her coronation. She was erect, beautiful, elegantly dressed, and perfectly done, with just the right amount of hip swing. I felt sort of bad for the anticlimactic Adelaide.
Maggie wanted to peek, too, and I sensed her resentment. But my docile mode took me only so far. After Heidi’s long promenade, she slipped into her seat in the first pew. I could almost feel the impulse to applaud run through the chapel, but everyone fought it off successfully.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay,” Maggie said, as if trying to void any usurpation of her position.
Leopold put his arm out. Adelaide, looking pallid and swallowing often, put her hand on his arm. He patted it and they went out of the anteroom. I followed them discreetly. They went through the big entrance to the chapel. The musicians, cued from the anteroom, I assumed, by the grim and ubiquitous Maggie, began to play “Here Comes the Bride.” Leopold and Adelaide started down the aisle toward the waiting groom. Adelaide seemed pulled in upon herself, smaller than her mother, somehow frail-looking, as if the support of Leopold’s arm was more than symbolic. After they got to the waiting groom and Leopold had retired to his pew, I skirted the back row more silently than the yellow fog, and went down along the side and sat where I’d been told.
8
It may have begun
the day as a library, and it might be a library tomorrow, but at this moment it was every inch a chapel. The ceiling had been draped in dark gauze so that it seemed to reach a peak. The seating was in real pews, not folding chairs. There were hymnals in each pew. A small program lay on the seat in each place. The bookcases were draped in the same dark gauze they’d hung from the ceiling, and stained-glass windows hung in place. The lighting was provided by candles. In front was an altar of ornately carved wood that looked as if it had been lifted from a medieval church in Nottingham. There were flowers everywhere, huge vases as tall as I was, standing in exactly the right places, hanging flowers, flowers smothering the altar.
In the back-left corner of the room a string trio supplied the music. Around the room were people I recognized. A famous movie couple, an actor from New York, a tennis player, two senators. A lot of the women were good-looking; money always seems to help in that area. Everyone was dressed to the teeth. Like me. A hint of expensive perfume, nearly extinguished by the smell of the flowers, drifted through the room. I did not see the Gray Man. Susan was looking through the program.
“Bride’s name is Van Meer,” Susan whispered. “Her father must be the second husband, Peter Van Meer.”
I nodded.
“Do I look better in my tux than the groom?” I whispered to Susan.
“No,” she whispered back.
“Do too,” I whispered.
Susan put her finger to her lips and nodded toward the altar. The minister was there in full high-church regalia, holding a prayer book open in his hands. He began the familiar recitation.
“Dearly beloved . . .”
The room was windowless for the wedding. But through the muffling gauze, and over the minister’s orotund voice, I heard the crack of thunder. Some people in the chapel jumped slightly at the sound. The storm was very close. In fact, it might have arrived. But it was remote from the ceremony, shielded as we were by walls and curtains, gauze, and wealth. The ceremony proceeded just as if there were no storm.
“. . . you may kiss the bride,” the minister said.
They kissed. Neither husband nor wife seemed terribly enthusiastic about it. There was a slight rustle of movement at the back. Someone had arrived, quite probably by helicopter. Six men came in, wearing wet raincoats. Three went left and three went right.
And as they spread out, Rugar appeared with no coat, his gray suit perfectly dry except for the cuffs of his pants. His shoes were wet. They squished faintly as he began to walk down the center aisle toward the bride and groom. The six men took automatic weapons from under their raincoats. I had an impulse toward my ankle holster and realized it was a bad idea in a room crowded with wedding guests, and six guys with MP9s. The minister hadn’t noticed the submachine guns yet. He was looking at Rugar with contained annoyance.
“Excuse me, sir,” the minister said to Rugar, “but I would prefer . . .”
Rugar took out a handgun, it looked like a Glock, and shot the minister in the center of the forehead. The minister fell backward onto the floor in front of the altar. He convulsed a little and then lay still. Rugar turned toward the congregation, holding the Glock comfortably at his side. He was wearing a beautifully cut gray suit, a gray shirt, and a silver silk tie.
“Everyone is to stay calm and sit perfectly still,” he said.
He looked at me, as if he knew right where I’d be.
“Particularly,” he said, “you.”
I nodded slightly. How flattering to be singled out.
“Anyone who interferes with me will be killed,” Rugar said. “Anyone attempting to leave this room in the next hour will be killed. If I find you annoying, you will be killed.”
The silence in the room was nearly impenetrable. Rugar took the bride’s arm.
“Come along,” he said.
She looked at her mother. Her mother was rigid. The groom was very pale. I could see him trying to get his breath.
Don’t do it, kid. It won’t help her. It’ll get you killed.
He was too young. He’d seen too many movies, where heroism is required and the hero doesn’t get killed.
“You can’t do this,” he said.
Rugar smiled almost sadly and shook his head almost sadly, and put his gun against the bridge of the kid’s nose and pulled the trigger. It blew the back of his head out, and there was a lot of blood and brains. A soft sigh ran through the room as he went down. Adelaide stared for a moment, then fainted. Rugar broke her fall easily and let her slide to the floor. He looked without expression around the chapel.
“Anyone else?” he said.
No one spoke. I could feel the tension in Susan as her shoulder pressed against mine. Rugar looked down at Adelaide.
“Spenser,” he said. “You’re big and strong. You carry her.”
Susan put her hand on my thigh.
“I’ve got a roomful of hostages,” Rugar said. “I could kill some.”
Susan patted my thigh and took her hand away.
“I’ll carry her,” I said.
9
Whatever Rugar had worn
as a raincoat coming to the chapel, he didn’t bother with on the way out. He stopped before we went out of the building and looked at me.
“You understand about the hostages,” he said.
“I do.”
“That would include Dr. Silverman.”
“I understand that,” I said.
We went bareheaded and without rainwear out into the tempest. One of the gunmen came with us, walking two steps behind me with his MP9 pointing at my back, his shoulders hunched, squinting through the assault of the rain. The tempest was startling. The rain was almost horizontal, driven by what must have been hurricane-level winds. I had Adelaide over my shoulder like a sack of wheat. She seemed to have re-achieved a small level of consciousness but no strength. She was as limp as an overcooked bean sprout. The rain soaked all three of us almost instantly. With Adelaide adding to my wind resistance, it was hard to be agile. Rugar walked through it, bent forward slightly, without looking back at me. It was very dark. I realized suddenly that there were no lights on in the big house. I looked back at the chapel wing. I could see no lights there. The electrical power must have succumbed to the storm.
Lightning flashed. Ahead of us there was something in the darkness. We had to get right next to it before I could be sure it was the helicopter. It was a big one. I knew little of recent helicopters, but this one was clearly capable of lifting at least a platoon of evildoers. Rugar opened a side door of the helicopter.
“Strap her in the seat,” he said. “Here.”
The pilot appeared with a big flashlight and held it while I maneuvered Adelaide into a seat along the side of the chopper and buckled her in. Her eyes were open, but she still looked as if without the seat belt she’d collapse.
Rugar turned to the pilot.
“Can you fly in this weather?” he said.
“Oh my good God, no,” the pilot said. “We can’t get up until the storm passes.”
“And if I order you?”
“Order away,” the pilot said. “Even if we wanted to die, we can’t get off the ground.” He spoke like a native-born American, though not from the Northeast, but in the ambient light from the helicopter instrument panel I could see he was Asian. Japanese, probably. He wore a leather jacket unzipped, and a baseball hat. I could see the butt of a gun in a shoulder holster.
“Will the vehicle survive on the ground?” Rugar said.
“You mean will the hurricane blow it over?” the pilot said. “No, it’s big and heavy and low and aerodynamic. It should stay put.”
“How long?”
“Morning,” the pilot said. “In the morning it’ll be beautiful.”
“How about a boat?” Rugar said.
“I don’t do boats,” the pilot said. “But I’ll guarantee you that any boat on the island will swamp ten feet out from the dock, if they haven’t torn lose and blown away already.”
Rugar nodded. He looked at me.
“I’ll accept your surrender,” I said.
He almost smiled, but didn’t answer me.
“We can’t get out,” he said. “But no one can get in.”
“What are we gonna do?” the guy with the MP9 said.
“I’ll let you know,” Rugar said. “Take him back to the wedding and wait.”
“Hold them there?”
“Yes.”
The gunny and I turned back toward the house. Five feet from the helicopter I couldn’t see it. The wind was blowing at my back now, making it hard not to fall forward.
“We’re going the wrong way,” I said to the gunny.
“Keep going,” he said.
I turned a little so that the drenching wind slanted more at me from the side.
“You want to wander around in this all night?” I said. “We’re going away from the house.”
“Keep moving,” he said, but he turned the way I had.
I did the small maneuver a couple more times, until the rain was driving like buckshot straight into our faces.
“It was like this walking out here,” the gunny said, trying to see me through the pelting tempest.
“The wind has shifted, you idiot,” I said. “It always does in a hurricane.”
If I was right, we were near the water’s edge, on the back side of a big stone barn. We moved on. The wind was heavier. The rain more dense. I could feel, more than I could see, the barn on my left, and we hunched against it as we moved along. It didn’t do much to shelter us. The wind and rain were howling along its side directly at us. I knew the far end of the barn was maybe thirty feet from the cliffs. Lightning blared for a moment. I was right. It was there, and forty or fifty feet below was the ocean. When we reached the far end, barely able to see, I stepped suddenly to the left, around the corner of the barn, and sprinted.
“You sonova bitch,” I heard the gunny say, and heard his footsteps. I was far enough from him in the howling murk that I knew he couldn’t see me. I turned the next corner and flattened against the wall. When he came around after me, I lunged into him with my right shoulder. It staggered him, and his gun went flying. I brought my right forearm around and caught him on the side of his face. He got his arms around me and buried his cheek into my shoulder so it was hard to hit him, and both of us went down in the slick mud. It was like wrestling in deep oil sludge. He tried to get his knee into my groin and I twisted my hip so he couldn’t. I got hold of his hair and pulled his head out away from my shoulder. We rolled over in the muck. I banged his nose with my forehead. He let go of me and got his hands on my throat. I head-butted him again. He tried to choke me. I bit his forearm. He grunted but kept choking. I gave him another head-butt. He didn’t let go. I freed my left hand from under him and put my forearm against his throat and pushed his head up, pulling it back farther with my right hand in his hair. Suddenly he let go of my throat and tried to pull my forearm away. I kept the pressure. He rolled over beneath me. It was too slippery to stop him. I tried to get my forearm back under his neck but he wriggled away, and then we were on our feet again, wading through the saturated soil in mud past our ankles. I went after him as best I could. I think he wanted to run. But he wasn’t sure what direction. He tried to feint left, like a punt returner, and go right. But in the swamp we were in, footwork was primitive. He slid a little and I was on him, trying to keep my feet under me. Neither of us had enough footing to land a decent punch. Then he made a mistake. He tried to kick me and lost his footing and staggered to his left. I turned my hip in a little and hit him with a big uppercut. Bingo! He staggered. I hit him again and he disappeared. I stared. I hadn’t knocked him down. He was gone. I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled forward, feeling ahead of me. Where was the lightning when I needed it? I felt the cliff edge. I had, in fact, knocked him down. A lot farther down than I had imagined.