Nick enjoyed having dinner that evening with Ruth Moto, but he learned nothing of value, and at Hawk's suggestion, he did not press. They enjoyed some passionate moments parked at the shore and he took her home at two.
On Sunday he met Hawk and they spent three hours going over details with the precision of two architects about to let the contract.
On Tuesday Jerry Deming told his answering service and doorman and a few other significant people that he was going to Texas on business and departed in the Bird. A half-hour later he drove through the doors of a medium-size truck terminal, set well back from the road, and for the moment, he and his car vanished from the earth.
On Wednesday morning a two-year-old Buick left the truck garage and went out Route 7 to Leesburg. When it paused a man slipped out and walked the five blocks to the cab office.
No one noticed him closely as he sauntered along the busy street, because he was not the type of man you bothered to look at twice, even though he limped and carried a plain brown cane. He might have been a local merchant or someone's father out to get the paper and a container of orange juice. His hair and mustache were gray, his skin red and ruddy, and he had poor posture and carried a bit too much weight, although his frame was big. He wore a dark blue suit and a blue-gray soft hat.
He hired a cab and was driven back down Route 7 to the airport, where he got out at the charter-rental office. The mannish woman behind the counter liked him because he was so polite and clearly respectable.
His papers were in order. Alastair Beadle Williams. She checked them carefully. "Your secretary reserved an Aero Commander, Mr. Williams, and sent out a cash deposit." She became very polite herself. "Since you haven't flown with us before we would like to check you out… personally. If you don't mind…"
"Don't blame you. Wise thing to do."
"Good. I'll go around with you myself. That's if you don't object to a woman…"
"You look like the kind of woman who is a fine pilot. I can tell intelligence. I'll make a guess — you have your L.C. and your instrument rating."
"Why, yes. How did you know?"
"Always could judge character." And, Nick thought, no gal trying as hard as you are to wear pants would let the men stay ahead of her — and you have the age to have the hours in the air.
He made two approaches — both flare-outs perfect. She said, "You're very good, Mr. Williams. I'm satisfied. You're going to North Carolina?"
"Yes."
"Here are the charts. Stop by the office and we'll file a flight plan."
After he had completed the plan he said, "Depending on circumstances, I may change that plan for tomorrow. I'll telephone control personally concerning any deviation. Please don't concern yourself about it."
She beamed. "It's so good to see someone with methodical common sense. So many just want to hit the blue yonder. I've sweated some of them out for days."
He gave her a ten-dollar bill "For your time."
She was saying, "No, please," and "Thank you" all in one breath as he left.
At noon Nick landed at Manassas Municipal Airport and telephoned a cancellation on the flight plan. AXE knew hit movements to the minute and could control the controllers, but by following the routine there was less chance of drawing attention. Leaving Manassas he flew northwest, threading the powerful little ship through Allegheny mountain passes where Union and Confederate cavalry had chased and checkmated each other a century before.
It was a grand day for flying, bright sun and minimum wind. He sang "Dixie" and "Marching Through Georgia" as he crossed into Pennsylvania and landed to top off his fuel tanks. When he took off again he switched to a couple of choruses of "The British Grenadier," pronouncing the words with an English old-boy accent. Alastair Beadle Williams represented Vickers, Ltd., and Nick had the exact diction to fit.
He used the Altoona beacon, then one more Omni course, and an hour later landed at a small but busy field. He phoned for a rental car, and by 6:42 p.m. he was crawling up a narrow road on the northwest slope of the Appalachian chain. It was a one-lane track, but except for its width it was a good road, with two centuries of fill and uncounted hours of work by strong men to channel its water and build the stone walls that still bordered it. Once a busy stage road west because it followed the longer route but easier grades through the notches, it no longer was marked on maps as a through road across the mountains.
On Nick's Geological Survey map of 1892 it was marked as a through road, on the map of 1967 the center portion was just a dotted line indicating a trail. He and Hawk had gone over every detail on the maps — he felt he knew the road before he drove it. Four miles onward was the closest approach to the rear of the gigantic Lord properties, twenty-five hundred acres in three mountain glens.
Even AXE had been unable to obtain recent details on the Lord estate, although the old survey maps were undoubtedly reliable as far as most roads and buildings were concerned. Hawk had said, "We know there's an airport in there but that's about all. Of course we could have photographed and surveyed it, but there never was any reason to. Old man Antoine Lord assembled the place about 1924. He and Calgehenny made fortunes when iron and steel were king and you kept what you made. None of this nonsense about feeding people you couldn't exploit. Lord was apparently the most sophisticated of the bunch. After making forty more million in the First World War he sold most of his industrial shares and bought a lot of real estate."
The story had interested Nick. "The old boy is dead of course?"
"Died 1934. He even made headlines then by telling John Raskob he was a greedy fool and that Roosevelt was saving the country from socialism and they ought to back him instead of tripping him up. The reporters loved it. His son Ulysses inherited the estate and seventy or eighty million split with his sister Martha."
Nick had asked, "And they are…?"
"Martha was last reported in California. We're checking. Ulysses set up several charitable and educational foundations. Genuine ones — about 1936 through 1942. Before it was the clever thing to do as a tax dodge and to insure permanent jobs for your heirs. He was a captain in the Keystone Division in World Scramble Two. Got a Silver Star and a Bronze Star with an Oak Leaf Cluster. Wounded twice. He started as an enlisted man, by the way. Never traded on his connections."
"Sounds like quite a lad," Nick had observed. "Where is he now?"
"We don't know. His bankers and real estate agents and stockbrokers write to him at a post office box in Palm Springs."
As Nick drove slowly along the ancient road he recalled that conversation. The Lords hardly sounded like cooperators with a Baumann Ring or Chicoms.
He stopped in a wide space that might have been a wagon turnout and studied the map. Half a mile on there were two tiny black squares that indicated what were now probably abandoned foundations of former buildings. Beyond them a tiny mark indicated a cemetery and then, before the old road swung southwest to cross the hollow between two mountains, there should be a trail leading across a small notch to the Lord holdings.
Nick turned the car around, crushing a number of bushes, locked it and left it in the turnout. He walked along the road in the dying sunlight, enjoying the rich green verdure, the tall hemlocks and the way the white birches stood out. A chipmunk, surprised, ran ahead of him for a few yards, waving its small tail like an antenna before it leaped on a rock wall, froze for an instant in a brown and black tiny bundle of fur before blinking its shiny eyes and vanishing. Nick wished for a moment he was out for an evening stroll, that the world was all at peace and that was the important thing. But it wasn't, he reminded himself, and paused and lit a cigarette.