PART THREE

I think the most pitiable was a female Ghost.... This one seemed quite unaware of her phantasmal appearance. More than one of the Solid People tried to talk to her, and at first I was quite at a loss to understand her behaviour to them. She appeared to be contorting her all but invisible face and writhing her smokelike body in a quite meaningless fashion. At last I came to the conclusion--incredible as it seemed--that she supposed herself still capable of attracting them and was attempting to do so.

--C.S. LEWIS, The Great Divorce






CHAPTER 19

Shopping parcels notwithstanding, Elliot and Lorimer strode the three-quarter mile to the Hilton in close to fifteen minutes. They stopped at the hotel telephones, calling up the room number Al had given them, Elliot having decided that his father had a better chance of surviving his sudden appearance if given even momentary preparation. Losing his father a third time--especially from mere lack of social grace--was not a prospect he cared to face.

A tired voice answered on the fifth ring. "Yes?"

"Dad?"

A long silence followed. "What room did you want?"

"Dad, this is Ell. I'm calling from the lobby. Al told me where you were."

There was no exclamation, only another long pause. "Your mother and Denise--?"

Elliot hesitated only briefly. "They're not with me, Dad. Uh--I do have a friend with me, though. Is it okay?"

"Bring your friend up with you."

"We'll be right up."

After hanging up, Elliot told Lorimer, "He doesn't sound well."

"Are you sure you want me with you?" she asked.

"Now more than ever. Come on."

In five minutes they were at the room. Elliot almost did not recognize his father. His eyes had bags under them, making him look years older than his actual forty-eight, and though Dr. Vreeland was wearing a jacket, it needed pressing, as did the rest of his clothes. Elliot thought his father looked like a physician who had been serving in a plague. The hotel room did not look much better, the bed unmade, half a dozen coffee cups strewn around. There had been visitors: ashtrays were filled with cigarette butts.

Elliot and Lorimer went in, Dr. Vreeland closing the door. Father and son looked at each other briefly, then, for the first time since Elliot had been a small boy, they hugged each other. Elliot's father said, "You look older."

"You look a little battle-scarred yourself."

Dr. Vreeland smiled slightly, the tension broken.

Elliot took Lorimer's hand and guided her forward. "Dad, this is Lor."

"I'm very honored to meet you, Dr. Vreeland," she said. "I've learned a great deal from your books, Especially Weimar, 1923."

Elliot looked at her with surprise but said nothing.

Dr. Vreeland's surprise was equally great. "Your study is economic history? I would have thought you too young to be in graduate school."

"I'm afraid I haven't even started college yet."

"Then it is I who am honored to meet you," said Dr. Vreeland. "Weimar, 1923 was my doctoral thesis, and I have been repeatedly assured by colleagues even more verbose than myself that it is just about the most thoroughly unreadable piece ever written."

Dr. Vreeland motioned them to sit around a coffee table in the comer, then apologized for the room's condition, explaining that he had not allowed a hotel maid in for two days. "When was the last time you slept?" Elliot asked him.

"Oh, I was catching a short nap when you called up. I was awake most of last night, and I'm expecting a visitor shortly--a business associate."

"Dad, what went wrong? When I got back to the apartment, everyone was gone--the suitcases were gone. I thought you were all waiting at the rendezvous point and was heading there when two cops--FBI, I think--showed up at our apartment looking for me. I gave them the slip, but not before I heard them say they had my family. I thought they'd gotten you all."

Dr. Vreeland shook his head. "I left the apartment with the luggage, as planned, wearing a disguise Denise had designed. Very naturalistic--even close up--but I looked like Mephistopheles, a silver-gray wig, false beard, and mustache."

Elliot smiled. "My sister has-always been somewhat melodramatic," he explained to Lorimer.

Dr. Vreeland nodded agreement, continuing, "I then drove to the airlines' office on Forty-second Street to pick up our tickets and clearances. By the way, as it turned out, your trip wasn't really necessary. I found time at six to check over with Dave Albaugh."

"Who?" Elliot asked.

"Ah, that's right. I never did tell you Al's name. Dr. Albaugh was one of my brightest graduate students at Columbia. A brilliant thesis on the differences between Austrian and Chicago School approaches to--oh, never mind. I was back at Park Avenue and Seventieth Street at six thirty, waiting there the next hour. How is it you didn't see me?"

"I got back to our apartment by ten of six and cut over to Lexington after escaping through the fire exit on my way out. Must've passed within a block of you."

Dr. Vreeland shook his head at the irony. "At seven thirty, after none of you had showed up, I returned up to our apartment and encountered two FBI agents. Probably the same two you saw."

Elliot whistled. "Lucky they didn't recognize you-- disguised or not."

"I took the offensive," Elliot's father said. "I told them I was a neighbor--a friend of the family's--and wanted to know what exactly they were doing in what was now Cathryn Vreeland's apartment."

"And?"

"They said that they had been assigned to obtain an affidavit from your mother assuring the public that I had died naturally. That it was vital for national security that there be no trouble about me at last Thursday's demonstrations. A good cover story, and essentially true."

"I saw the article in Sunday's paper," Elliot said. He had a sudden, horrid thought. "You don't think it took the FBI that long to--get--the statement from Mom?"

"I don't think so. Your mother is a practical woman. She would have given the agents the statement they wanted so we could escape unhindered. Once safely out of the country, we could say what we liked anyway. Nonetheless, I have since learned a few data that explain what happened. The two agents had a second assignment: to take your mother, sister, and you into custody overnight--just long enough to make certain that you did not appear at the rally in my stead, but released in time to attend my funeral that afternoon. What evidently occurred is that sometime early Wednesday evening the Bureau learned that I was, in fact, alive--and decided to keep your mother and Denise to blackmail me with. Either I continued playing dead--or I would never see them again, one way or another."

"But why wasn't the statement in Thursday morning's papers?"

Dr. Vreeland shrugged. "Confusion about how to counter my strategy, I suppose. I think I know why the statement was put in Sunday, though--to let me know that the very proof I had manufactured to convince the world that I was dead was to keep me that way. Again, one way or another."

"But there's no way they could do that. All you would have to do is come forward and accuse them of the kidnaping--"

"To be called an expertly coached impostor, created by the Administration's enemies."

"But with fingerprints--"

"Supplied by the FBI?" Dr. Vreeland asked. "The point is, by the time I had managed to prove my identity--assuming I had managed to keep out of a solitary-confinement cell or a state insane asylum--the best witnesses--my immediate family--would be dead."

"Not as long as they didn't have me."

"But, you see, until a few minutes ago, I was convinced that they did. Though I don't see how they could have known that on Saturday."

"Well, anyway. What did you do after you left the agents at our apartment?"

"At about eight I drove back to Dave Albaugh's bookstore, where I arranged for him to act as my inquiry agent, then at nine I came here and checked in."

"That's three times in one night that I managed to miss you by this much," said Elliot, holding thumb and forefinger half an inch apart.

"What's this?"

Elliot completed his account of that Wednesday evening--his eight-thirty call to the Rabelais Bookstore and inability to reach Phillip Gross--ending up with his checking into the Hilton no more than ninety minutes after his father. "Next morning," he continued, "I went back to the Rabelais and was told that Al had 'gone south for the winter.'"

"Dave left temporary orders to evade questions. By the time you phoned, he had already locked up to begin initial inquiries for me, and he worked at it all night. If I'd had even the slightest inkling that you weren't also in FBI custody, I could have left messages for you at the Rabelais and a dozen other places."

"Well, never mind that now," said Elliot. "What do we--"

Elliot was interrupted by a knock at the door. "My visitor," his father said, rising to get it. "If both of you keep silent, I'll allow you to stay. I'm very near having Cathryn and Denise freed."

Dr. Vreeland opened the door and, even before his visitor entered, said, "Good news, we can proceed at once. You won't have to produce my son. He is--"

"Freeze!"

It was Lorimer's command. She had pulled her .32 caliber silenced automatic from her shoulder bag and was now in a businesslike, two-handed stance, aiming at the newcomer. The visitor, an erect, roughly handsome middle-aged man in a dark suit, only now saw her, and an expression of surprise--much milder than would be expected--appeared on his face. Dr. Vreeland had also frozen upon seeing the gun; his expression was closer to total fluster.

Elliot remained seated. He had been taken off guard at first but he understood when he recognized the visitor as a man he had just recently seen in the news. It was the director of the FBI, Lorimer's father.

"Inside," Lorimer ordered both men. "Keep your hands in the open."

The FBI director entered the room naturally, preceded by Dr. Vreeland; the room door swung shut. Lawrence Powers looked at his daughter and said, "Left foot farther forward, relax your right arm a bit. Haven't I taught you anything, Deanne?"

"You know her, Powers?" Dr. Vreeland asked.

"I never have," he replied, "even though she's my only child." Powers turned to his daughter. "If you're intent on committing patricide, Deanne, then do it. Otherwise, let Dr. Vreeland and me get down to our business."

Lorimer kept the pistol pointed at her father. Elliot told her sharply, "Don't."

She glanced at Elliot sidewise, then answered him tightly, "You wouldn't tell me that if you knew how lethal he is."

"Just don't."

Lorimer glanced at Elliot briefly again. Then she handed over her gun to him.

The FBI director relaxed slightly. Elliot raised the pistol at him once more. "Not yet," he said, his voice shrill.

"Elliot," Dr. Vreeland said, "don't be a fool! He's come here to negotiate."

"I don't have any choice, Dad. Mr. Powers, please. With two fingers and slowly. Toss them onto the bed."

The FBI director shrugged and complied; presently, a service .45 and a .32 identical to Lorimer's lay on the double bed, ammunition for each safely in Elliot's pocket. As a final precaution, Lorimer held the gun on her father another few moments while Elliot frisked him. He found, in a jacket pocket, a shiny metal device the size and shape of a cigarette lighter, with a tiny red button.

Elliot held it up to Lorimer. "A microtransmitter?"

"A telephone key," the FBI director answered him, "for those who know how to use it. Which you don't."

Elliot considered it. Certainly the federal government would not jam telephone service to trusted employees. A device such as this perhaps could override blocks. "True," Elliot replied, pocketing the device.

He waved Powers, Lorimer, and his father over to the chairs around the coffee table, then sat himself on the bed with Lorimer's pistol on his lap. "Now you can talk," he said.

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