In the meantime, what was to be done? About a third of The Coming of Winter was in complete manuscript form, another sixth was in Brad’s rough first draft, and a full half existed only in notes, outlines, isolated pages and folders full of researched facts. It might be possible for Howard to finish the construction of this volume, though the second half would be much skimpier than the first, would lack the first-hand details that lifted these books above the level of simple history texts, but what about the remaining two volumes? The Servant of the Nation and Toward Tomorrow were barely in seed, each book now no more than a thick folder of outlines, correspondence and lists of questions to be checked. Those books could be created, no doubt, by a team of researchers and ghost writers with Howard at their head, but they would be valueless. No, that was an overstatement; they would be run of the mill, there would have been no real purpose in having done the work. Without Brad, they would not have the breath of life.
The other title Brad had introduced, The Final Glory, existed in Howard’s mind only as an irritation, a source of anger. The title did not refer to any book; so far as Howard was concerned, The Final Glory was the title of the tragic and humiliating last chapter of Brad’s life, and a nastily ironic title it was, at that.
His feeling of helplessness and frustrated rage had driven Howard into this room this morning after breakfast, but the same feelings now kept him from actually doing any work on the manuscript. He had looked at it, he had shuffled the parts of it back and forth, but aside from observing its abandonment he had done nothing, and he’d been here now for over an hour.
Brad had poked his head in a while ago, and had seemed to find amusement in the sight of Howard sitting there at the desk. “Hard at work?” he’d said. “Fine. Keep at it.”
Before Howard could think of a response, Brad had gone away again, and since then Howard had been alone with his thoughts and the dead embryo of manuscript. He knew he shouldn’t really stay in here, he should be out and around, he had more important things to do. Primarily, he was supposed to seek out the lines of communication between Brad and the Red Chinese, that was his first purpose in being here. And, since Evelyn had told him last night about the phony passports, there was a certain urgency about the task.
But still he sat here, brooding over the manuscript. In a way, this was a wake, he was paying his last respects to a dead idea, the idea that had animated the last eight years of his life.
When the door opened, he thought it was Brad again, and he steeled himself not to be angry, but when he looked over at the door it was Evelyn coming in, the first he’d seen her today. “Hello,” he said, and guiltily stood up from the desk, as though he’d already intended not to waste any more time.
She shut the door behind her and said, “Bradford just left for another walk.”
“He could be meeting them again.”
“I saw one last night,” she said.
“Saw one? One of the Chinese?”
“Yes. I — stayed late at Robert’s.” She showed a sudden touching embarrassment, and hurried on. “When I drove back, a little after three, there was a man standing beside the road. He was Chinese, and he was dressed all in black.”
“On the private road?”
“Yes. On the other side of the gate.”
“What did he do?”
“I think he was waiting for somebody, and he thought I was them. Then, when he saw I wasn’t, he ran off into the woods.”
“Did you tell anybody?”
“No. There wasn’t anybody to tell. I asked the man on the gate if there’d been anything happening, and he said no.”
Howard walked around the desk, frowning. “Three o’clock in the morning. What the hell are they doing out there at three o’clock in the morning?”
“Maybe they’re going to kidnap him.”
“No, they wouldn’t. They don’t have to, he’s cooperating. It’s easier for them to let him do it himself.”
She said, “Then why was he there?”
“I don’t know. Which direction did Brad take?”
“Off through the orchards. North.”
“I’ll take a walk myself,” Howard said.
“Shall I come with you?”
“No, you stay here. I’ll be back in a little while.”
“All right,” she said, and her reluctance affected his own attitude, and he left the office and went downstairs thinking, What am I doing here? I’m thirty-seven years old, I’m overweight, I’m a book editor, I wear glasses, I am not a counterspy. What am I doing here?
It was the kind of crisp fall day when the sun keeps ducking behind fluffy clouds and then reappearing, chilling by its absences but never quite warming with its presence. There was a slight breeze, and Howard was glad he’d stopped off for a mackinaw on the way.
There’d been two or three night frosts so far, none of them deep, and the ground was still soft as Howard set off away from the house through the orchards in the general direction that Brad had taken. He walked with his shoulders hunched inside the mackinaw, his hands in the pockets, and he kept looking around in all directions as he walked. From time to time he glanced at the ground, thinking that Indians and other trackers would undoubtedly be able to follow Brad’s trail with no difficulty at all, but he himself saw nothing there to be read. I’m a ground illiterate, he thought, and found himself possessed by a passing regret that he hadn’t taken more interest in the Boy Scouts as a youth. One never knew what expertise would turn out to be helpful.
Past the orchards was meadowland, virtually clear of trees, and tending upward on a slight slope toward a ridge half a mile or so away, where the woods began. The meadow grass was slightly damp underfoot, and far off he could hear the faint sounds of birds. The feeling was bucolic, the atmosphere seemed to say, “There are no problems. Rural simplicity is the only truth. The true purpose of a walk in the woods is enjoyment, not the chasing of Chinese spies.”
It also made him think of Thanksgiving, now less than a month away. Pumpkins, mince pie, hayrides. His last hayride had been twenty-two, twenty-three years ago, when the family had lived in Indianapolis. Long before Sterling became president of Lancashire University. Long before anything.
The ridge. Ahead of him, the land sloped down again, this face covered by trees and underbrush. To the left the ridge slanted downward, to the right it slanted upward. He turned right, following the high ground. A montage of childhood memories was filling his mind, and as the echoes of his boyhood relationship with woods and fields came back to him he gradually felt less foolishly out of place here. His stride became more assured, he took his hands out of the mackinaw pockets, and he looked around with both more confidence and more pleasure.
The ridge came to a sort of peak at last, with woods on only one side, and sloping meadowland on the other three, so that he had a clear view in three directions. He could see the house, quite far away now beyond the stunted tree shapes of the orchards. He could see over the wooded lowlands to the next ridge. But no matter where he looked, he saw no one, nothing. No movement.
He wasn’t quite sure what to do at this point. Brad’s estate covered several square miles; it would be pointless to just keep tramping back and forth, hoping to stumble across something. He knew Brad had come out in this general direction, but that was all.