The Vanishers Read Free Page A

he’s lost me, however, he’ll pull up his socks and do his best to find me. Maybe he’ll succeed. But in case he doesn’t, you’ll be working at it quietly from the Watrous angle. Let us hope that at least one of you picks up a reasonable trail leading to a place being used as a detention center for all these kidnapped people, soon to include me.”
    I said dubiously, “You’re making some rather optimistic assumptions, aren’t you, sir? What makes you think all the kidnappees wind up in the same place and, if so, that it isn’t just a large grave with room for one more? You.”
    He had an answer to that, of course. Once he’s got a plan made, he’s got answers to everything. He’d never admit that he was betting his life on a hunch. Well, he often plays his hunches, and often they’re very good; but I was glad it was his life he was gambling with, for a change, instead of mine.
    A little later, picking up gas just off the freeway farther north, I called him openly from a pay phone, using the normal office number. I let him give me my Hagerstown directive officially, for the benefit of whoever had made arrangements to listen in on that phone, maybe the same snoopy character who’d bugged the other, maybe not. Life was getting very complicated. It happens any time you get near Washington, D.C.

2
    Living at seven thousand feet, as I did for many years out in Santa Fe, New Mexico, you tend to get snobbish about your mountains. I mean, snowcapped two-mile-high peaks are a dime a dozen out there; and they kind of spoil you for appreciating the puny geological formations people like to call mountains east of the Big Miss. Still, I’ve always considered the Shenandoah Valley to be a pretty fair scenic experience, even if it’s on a somewhat smaller scale than what you get out West.
    The weather was sunny and springlike. The Interstate was in pretty good shape, which was more than could be said for some I’d driven on during the past week. The traffic was moderate except for a bit of congestion near the Washington turnoff, which didn’t delay me greatly. I had plenty of time to let the little car drive itself on cruise control while I considered what I’d been told over the phone; and particularly what I hadn’t been told.
    First there was the case of the two tapped telephones. Clearly Mac was playing one of his clever games, letting somebody know he’d discovered the bug on the office phone and set up an alternative contact number; but carefully giving them the impression that he thought the second number was still secure so the snoopers would believe what they overheard on that line. Just what information he wanted to feed them convincingly, and for what purpose, remained to be seen.
    Then there was the interesting case of the lady named Janet Beilstein, which Mac had thrown at me, ostensibly, as just one instance of what we were up against—but why had he selected that particular disappearance as an example? After a good many years of interpreting his instructions, I knew that he didn’t often talk at random. What had he been trying to tell me here without tipping off whoever was listening in? Well, there was a clue of sorts: when a healthy gent of any age makes a point of informing you that he’s too elderly and decrepit to be a plausible candidate for amorous entanglements, that, as far as I’m concerned, is when you check to make certain the local maidens are all locked into well-fitting chastity belts…
    I’d already, at a morning coffee stop, made the emergency call to Doug Barnett in St. Petersburg, Florida, to set the disaster routine into motion. Doug was supposedly retired and building a new boat in his palmy back yard to replace one he’d recently lost in the line of duty. The agency was paying for the replacement. In return Doug was supposed to hold himself available in times of real crisis. The fact is that nobody really retires from our outfit. There are quite a few old, scarred agency