“Security detectors?”
“Laser beams along the top of the wall with infrared body-heat sensors installed at different intervals about the grounds. Anything larger than a cat will cause an alarm to sound in the security office. Television cameras automatically come on and aim their lenses at the intruder.”
“How many guards?”
“Two at night, four during the day.”
“No dogs?”
She shook her head in the darkness. “Father hates animals. I never forgave him for stomping on a small bird with a broken wing I was trying to nurse back to health.”
“Old Art certainly creates an image of barbarity and viciousness,” said Giordino. “Does he do cannibalism, too?”
“He’s capable of anything, as you very well found out,” said Maeve.
Pitt stared at the gate thoughtfully, carefully gauging visible activity by the guards. They seemed content to stay inside and monitor the security systems. Finally, he rose to his feet, rumpled his uniform and turned to Giordino.
“I’m going to bluff my way inside. Hang loose until I open the gate.”
He slung the assault rifle over his shoulder and pulled his Swiss army knife from a pocket. Extending a small blade he made a small cut in one thumb, squeezed out the blood and smeared it over his face. When he reached the gate, Pitt dropped to his knees and gripped the bars in both hands. Then he began to shout in a low moaning tone, as if in pain.
“Help me. I need help!”
A face appeared around the door, then disappeared. Seconds later, both guards ran out of the security office and opened the gate. Pitt fell forward into their waiting arms.
“What happened?” demanded a guard. “Who did this to you?”
“A gang of Chinese tunneled out of the camp. I was coming up the road from the dock when they jumped me from behind. I think I killed two of them before I got away.”
“We’d better alert the main security compound,” blurted one of the guards.
“Help me inside first,” Pitt groaned. “I think they fractured my skull.”
The guards lifted Pitt to his feet and slung his arms over their shoulders. They half carried, half dragged him into the security office. Slowly, Pitt moved his arms inward until the guards’ necks were in the crooks of his elbows. As they pressed together to pass through the doorway, he took a convulsive step backwards, hooked the guards’ necks in a tight grip and exerted every bit of strength in his biceps and shoulder muscles. The sound of their bared heads colliding was an audible thud. They both crashed to the floor, unconscious for at least the next two hours.
Safe from detection, Giordino and Maeve hurried through the opened gate and joined Pitt inside the office. Giordino picked up the guards as if they were straw scarecrows and sat them in chairs around a table facing a row of video monitors. “To anyone walking by,” he said, “it’ll look like they fell asleep during the movie.”
A quick scan of the security system, and Pitt closed down the alarms, while Giordino bound the guards with their own ties and belts. Then Pitt looked at Maeve. “Where’s Ferguson’s quarters?”
“There are two guest houses in a grove of trees behind the manor. He lives in one of them.”
“I don’t suppose you know which one?”
She shrugged. “This is the first time I’ve returned to the island since I ran away to Melbourne and the university. If I remember correctly, he lives in the one nearest the manor.”
“Time to repeat our break-in act,” said Pitt. “Let’s hope we haven’t lost our touch.”
They moved up the driveway at a steady, unhurried pace. They were too weakened from an inadequate diet and the hardships of the past weeks to run. They reached what Maeve believed was the living quarters of Jack Ferguson, superintendent of Dorsett’s mines on Gladiator Island.
The sky was beginning to lighten in the east as they approached the front door. The search was taking too long. With the coming of dawn, their presence would most certainly be discovered. They had to move fast if they wanted to find the boys, reach the yacht and escape in Arthur Dorsett’s private helicopter before the remaining darkness was lost.
There was no stealth this time, no slinking quietly into the house. Pitt walked up to the front door, kicked it in with a splintering crunch and walked inside. A quick look around with the flashlight taken from the guards at the cliff told him all he needed to know. Ferguson lived there all right. There was a stack of mail on a desk that was addressed to him and a calendar with notations. Inside a closet, Pitt found neatly pressed men’s pants and coats.
“Nobody home,” he said. “Jack Ferguson has gone. No sign of suitcases, and half the hangers in the closet are empty.”
“He’s got to be here,” said Maeve in confusion.
“According to dates he’s marked on his calendar, Ferguson is on a tour of your father’s other mining properties”
She stared at the vacant room in futility and growing despair. “My boys are gone. We’re too late. Oh God, we’re too late. They’re dead.”
Pitt put his arm around her. “They’re as alive as you and I”
“But John Merchant—”
Giordino stood in the doorway. “Never trust a man with beady eyes.”
“No sense in wasting time here,” said Pitt, pushing past Giordino. “The boys are in the manor house, always have been, as a matter of fact.”
“You couldn’t have known Merchant was lying,” Maeve challenged Pitt.
He smiled. “Ah, but Merchant didn’t lie. You were the one who said the boys lived with Jack Ferguson in a guesthouse. Merchant merely went along with you. He guessed we were suckers enough to buy it. Well, maybe we did, but only for a second.”
“You knew?”
“It goes without saying that your father wouldn’t harm your sons. He may threaten, but a dime will get you a quarter they’re sequestered in your old room, where they’ve been all along, playing with a room full of toys, courtesy of their old granddad.”
Maeve looked at him in confusion. “He didn’t force them to work in the mines?”
“Probably not. He turned the screws on your maternal instincts to make you think your babies were suffering so he could make you suffer. The dirty bastard wanted you to go to your death believing he would enslave the twins, place them in the care of a sadistic foreman and work them until they died. Face facts. With Boudicca and Deirdre childless, your boys are the only heirs he’s got. With you out of the way, he figured he could raise and mold them into his own image. In your eyes a fate worse than death.”
Maeve looked at Pitt for a long moment, her expression turning from disbelief to understanding, then she shivered. “What kind of fool am I?”
“A great song title,” said Giordino. “I hate to dampen good news, but this time the people of the house are stirring about.” He gestured at lights shining in the windows of the manor house.
“My father always rises before dawn,” said Maeve. “He never allowed my sisters and me to sleep after sunrise.”
“What I wouldn’t give to join them for breakfast,” moaned Giordino.
“Not to sound like an echo chamber,” said Pitt, “but we need a way in without provoking the inhabitants.”
“All rooms of the manor open onto interior verandas except one. Daddy’s study has a side door that leads onto a squash court.”
“What’s a squash court?” inquired Giordino.
“A court where they play squash,” answered Pitt. Then to Maeve “In what direction is your old bedroom?”
“Across the garden and past the swimming pool to the east wing, second door on the right.”
“That’s it then. You two go after the boys.”
“What will you do?”
“Me, I’m going to borrow Daddy’s phone and stick him with a long-distance call.”