The Innocents Club

When he’d finally cut back the last of the stragglers, he dumped them in the green waste recycling bin he’d rolled out to the courtyard, then gathered up the rest of the garden tools. His body was a mass of aching joints and muscles. He could do with a nap, he decided, dragging the bin and tools back to the side of the house. Then he had another thought—a wee drink, a nice soak in the Jacuzzi to ease his weary bones and then a nap.

He parked the bin in the narrow, shady passage between his house and Porter’s, then entered the garage through the side door. Brilliant light assaulted his eyes, bouncing off the concrete lane and gleaming white stucco of his neighbors’ high walls across the way.

Idiot. You left the garage door open.

He berated his absentmindedness. The neighborhood was virtually crime-free most of the year, but summer always brought a spate of burglaries—opportunistic crimes, petty thieves slipping through unlocked back doors, stealing wallets and purses while residents sat in their waterfront courtyards.

Chap walked out, glancing up and down the lane. Not a soul in sight. With its astronomical real estate prices and postage-stamp yards, the area attracted mostly professional singles and empty nesters, so there were no kids out riding bikes. Nor, with its narrow sidewalk and blinding, foliage-free glare, did the lane encourage strolling.

Satisfied the coast was clear, he went back in, rounding his old, silver-gray Jaguar to Emma’s worktable. He wiped down the tools with an old rag, then gave them a coat of oil, just as she’d always been careful to do, and replaced them in her red wicker gardening basket. He unstrapped the Velcro kneepads and hung them on their pegboard hook, then traded his old, mud-spattered Topsiders for the soft kid slippers he’d left by the inside door. His hand hit the button to close the garage door as he walked into the house.

Next item on the agenda: two or three fingers of scotch.

He carried the glass and bottle upstairs, setting the bottle on the nightstand. After a couple of sips from the glass, he set it on the rim of the spa and hit the controls to turn on the jets. He stripped out of his clothes on his way back across the bedroom to the bathroom, then showered off the garden dirt.

He was wrapping a towel around his waist when he heard a click. A door latch?

Chap stepped cautiously into the bedroom. Nothing. He padded out to the hall. His office next door was cluttered, as always, with manuscripts waiting to be read. He slid open the closet door. The space inside had been fitted with shelves to hold some of the overflow. There, on the bottom shelf, sat the cardboard box containing the trove of Ben Bolt papers Mariah had sent him.

Not for the first time, it occurred to him that he really needed an office safe. There wasn’t much of irreplaceable value in the room, but those papers were one of a kind. There were people who’d give a pretty penny to get their hands on an unpublished Bolt manuscript or his private journals.

No more procrastinating, Korman. Right after the Fourth, you call a contractor and get a safe installed.

Another noise interrupted his resolution-making. He stepped back into the hall, peering over the banister to the open area below. Mr. Rochester, the old black tomcat Em had adopted from the local animal shelter, was sprawled in a sunbeam on Emma’s favorite blue chintz chair, one rear leg raised high as he washed himself.

“Keep the noise down, will ya?” Chap grumbled.

Rochester peered up, blinked disdainfully, then went back to licking his rear end. The cat had stopped coming upstairs altogether. Too bloody fat to make the climb, Chap decided. During the months Em was sick, though, the animal never left her bedside except to eat or use the litter box. After she died, the cat had walked around the house yowling plaintively for days. Now, man and feline cohabited like some interspecies Odd Couple. Rochester lived on Em’s chair, ignoring Chap entirely except at mealtimes. Even then, the Fancy Feast got a suspicious sniff before he deigned to bolt it down.

“Stupid cat,” Chap muttered, returning through his room to the deck. He’d overdone it in the garden. His joints felt as if they were swelling. He should take a pill, but he was too damn tired to walk back to the bathroom cabinet.

Instead, he dropped his towel and climbed naked into the churning spa, as he habitually did now that Em was no longer there to fret about peeping Toms with binoculars. The nearest building high enough to see down onto his second-story deck had to be half a mile away. Odds were, nobody out there was looking, but if they were, his round, sagging, hairy-ape body made for pretty poor voyeuristic pickings. Anybody that hard up was welcome to the thrill.

Reaching for his drink, he took another long sip, then set it back on the edge of the tub and leaned into the molded seat and cushioned neck rest. Soothing amber comfort slid down to his center core. Chap closed his eyes, one hand lazily raking his matted chest. The warmth of the scotch, the sun and the Jacuzzi melted his aches and lulled him. This was as close to perfect as it got, he thought, lacking only Em to share it.

Suddenly, he felt a distinct vibration under his butt, like the tread of a nearby foot. His eyes opened to the brilliant blue sky, and he looked around. Em’s red geraniums swayed in the breeze, potted in the old whiskey cask she’d transformed into a dual-purpose planter and base for the green market umbrella that shaded their his-and-hers rattan lounge chairs. Except for chirping birds and the dull rumble of distant beach traffic, the afternoon was sunny, hot and blessedly silent.

Had he locked all the downstairs doors before coming up? The garage he’d closed—that much he knew. But the side door? And the front, leading to the courtyard and the walkway beyond? Must have. He hadn’t lived in New York for nearly sixty years without acquiring a few security tics, after all.

He strained to mentally retrace his steps. Hadn’t even used the front door today, he realized. Mariah had called just as he was getting ready to put the impatiens in the front bed. He’d taken the call in the kitchen, then gone out through the garage to collect the tools, the flat of plants and the recycling bin.

The side door of the garage was on a spring. Had he reset the lock?

He took another sip of his drink and settled back into the gently pulsing water. Check it later. He was a New Yorker. A onetime amateur boxer with a 17–0 record. Never lived timidly before. Wasn’t about to start now. Too tired to sweat it, anyway.

The churning of the Jacuzzi lulled him like rolling waves. Like being on a boat, he thought, drifting. Porter’s boat. Mariah. And Lindsay…fifteen, already! Last time he’d seen her? Her dad’s funeral. A heartbreaker even then. Like her mother. Grandmother, too. Incredible Ben would abandon his pretty wife, Andrea, for a man-eater like Renata Hunter. Human nature, Chap thought…no accounting for it.

He reached for his drink. Misjudged the distance. His perspective was all wonky, he realized idly. Fingers only brushed the glass. It tumbled in slow motion to the deck, each amber drop distinct as it splashed on the wooden planks.

Chap felt his butt slide a little on the smooth plastic bottom. So tired. His head lolled on the cushioned rest. He looked back toward the bedroom. Squinted, then frowned. Was that someone in the doorway?

“Hey, you,” he called. Thought he did.

Did he?

Figure in the doorway never moved. Half hidden in shadow. Just a grim smile. Teeth gleaming like a goddam Pepsodent commercial.

Well, let him stand there, Chap thought grumpily. Guy wasn’t going to make the effort to be sociable, neither would he.

He lay back and closed his eyes. So comfortable.

He felt himself slipping a little more. Opened his eyes. Guy in the doorway still watching him. Why? he wanted to ask, but he felt a little dizzy. Short of air. Inhaled deeply and slipped again on the slick plastic, his body pivoting. Almost on his side now, shoulders underwater.

Be up in a minute, Em. Just gonna grab forty winks here, okay?

So sleepy. A deep sigh. Another long slip on the smooth bottom, his head bumping on the hard plastic edge as Chap Korman sank beneath the churning bubbles.

Chapter Six

The quiet was beginning to get on Tucker’s nerves. When he started hearing the building breathe, he knew he was losing it.

Logically, he knew the deep thrum permeating his office walls was the reverberation of massive air conditioners. Their primary function was to cool—not people but a vast array of supercomputers, satellite receivers and transmission devices—sensitive equipment that bristled day and night, processing the agency’s sensory input and outgoing commands.

Once aware of the pulsing rhythm, though, Tucker couldn’t shake the sense he’d been swallowed alive by some huge beast of prey.

He glanced at his watch, wondering if he had time to run out and pick up Mariah’s letter from the Courier Express distribution center in Falls Church. The place was open till 10:00 p.m. He had plenty of time. What he didn’t have was patience. Geist’s secretary had phoned down over four hours ago to tell him to stand by to be summoned upstairs for a debriefing on his Moscow trip. Now he was itching to walk out.

It would have been premature to tell Mariah this Urquhart character might not be as far off base as she thought. Better to find out what the professor knew, then decide what to do about it. This should have been ancient history by now, Tucker thought grimly. She had enough on her plate. Damn them all to hell, anyway.

One file sat on his desk a little apart from the others he’d pulled from the Navigator’s crate. He’d stumbled across it not long after talking to Mariah. Finally, the pieces were falling together. His late-night message from the courier. His cryptic conversation with the Navigator in Moscow. And the reason why he, in particular, had been chosen to receive this loaded gift.

Tucker had met with Georgi Deriabin late at night in a modest dacha on the outskirts of Moscow—although recognizing the infamous Navigator had required a leap of imagination on his part.

Deriabin was tall and skeletally thin, with weathered skin the color of mustard. His wispy white hair was shorn to a stubble, leaving his head almost as smooth as Tucker’s own. On closer examination, Tucker saw the ravages of chemotherapy. When the old man reached out to shake hands, Tucker was afraid he’d crush those birdlike bones.

“I’m glad you could come, Mr. Tucker.”

“Hard to turn down such an intriguing invitation.”

The wizened figure just smiled and shuffled ahead of him into the cottage. Most of the ground floor seemed to consist of a small sitting and dining room. A cloth-covered table had been set for two, a bottle of vodka nestled in an ice bucket alongside.

Since Tucker’s arrival that morning, he’d spent the entire day at the Intourist Hotel, waiting, as directed, for further instructions. The smell of onions, sausage and other good things now was a painful reminder he’d eaten nothing all day except a protein bar he’d taken from the emergency-rations stock of the Company plane that had flown him in.

“You will join me for dinner, yes?” Deriabin said.

Tucker considered refusing for about a millisecond, then nodded.

As soon as they sat down, a portly woman he took to be the housekeeper started carrying in food, generous platters of herring, black bread, sausages and sauerkraut, blinis and piroshki. Hearty but simple fare.