I felt it was time to change the subject.
“They must empty the place every night,” I said. “They fill it up during the day with whoever they intend to kidnap, and then after the fair closes down, they take them all away somewhere.”
“Where?”
“I do not know. Minna was here, Arlette. Right in this crazy room. If I could have found this place sooner-”
“How, Evan?”
“I know. There was no way. They must have moved her out of here the first night. Last night.” I turned to look at her. “I don’t understand it,” I said. “Nobody can kidnap a dozen people a day and still manage to keep the whole operation secret. People don’t vanish that way, not without making waves. I just don’t get it.”
“What shall we do now?”
“I don’t know.”
“If we stay here-”
“No.” I went over to her and took a sandwich from the paper bag. I sat down and gnawed at it but couldn’t develop enough of an appetite to finish it. I wrapped it again in waxed paper and returned it to the bag. Arlette took a last drag from her cigarette, stubbed it out on the heel of her shoe, and put it in the paper bag along with our sandwiches and burglar tools.
“Perhaps I could conceal myself here,” Arlette suggested.
“How?”
“I do not know. It is so bare, so desolate. Perhaps you could shackle me to the wall and leave me, and when they return in a few hours, they will think I was left behind by error.”
“I don’t think that would work.”
“Nor do I. Nevertheless…”
I tried to think it through on my own. Minna, along with any number of other persons, had been confined in the basement dungeon. She was not here now. Thus, I reasoned, either she and her fellow prisoners had been removed to other quarters, or else their captors had-
I didn’t want to think about it. It was inconceivable, I told myself, that the Cubans would have murdered them all. But it was equally inconceivable that Minna could have been kidnaped in the first place. I got up and paced the floor, back and forth and back and forth, pushing things around in my mind in an attempt to force them into some sort of order.
“Evan, it is late.”
“I know.”
“If we do not leave soon-”
“I know.”
“For soon the dawn will break, and without the cover of darkness-”
“Dammit, I know.”
We could try keeping them under surveillance, I thought. Seth and Randy would cooperate. We could post a guard around the pavilion and see what happened tomorrow night when the crowds left.
Better yet, I thought, we could bug the place. The MNQ might be composed of a bunch of half-mad fanatics, but there was considerable technological ability to draw upon. It shouldn’t be too difficult to return to the dungeon and plant a microphone or two in the walls. If nothing else, that would clear up some of the mystery surrounding the whole affair. If we could overhear what went on inside the dungeon during the day, when it was packed to capacity with prisoners and guards, we would at least have some sort of idea what we were up against.
In the meantime, though, there was next to nothing to do.
“Evan-”
“You’re right,” I said. “We have to get out of here.”
“If anything were to be gained by staying-”
“No, you’re right,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We tried to clean up all traces of our visit. We added the broken flashlight to the collection of useless articles in the paper bag and tossed it carefully through the aperture to the floor above. I blew out the candle as soon as I had collected all of the burnt matches from the floor. Then we moved to directly below the opening, and I crouched down so that Arlette could climb onto my shoulders. I straightened up, and she got her arms over the edge and pulled herself through.
There were a few bad moments during which it seemed as though I would have to stay in the dungeon forever. I couldn’t quite jump high enough to get a purchase on the rim of the aperture, and I knew that Arlette was not strong enough to haul me up. I kept jumping and not quite making it, and Arlette was becoming quietly hysterical.
Ultimately I dragged over the single chair and stood on it. I jumped again, and caught the rim but couldn’t hold onto it, and came down heavily to the left of the chair. I tried again, and this time I caught hold of the rim and didn’t let go. Arlette gave me what help she could. I started slipping at the last minute, but then I managed to get one leg up and sort of spilled myself out onto the tiled floor. I didn’t move at first, and Arlette asked me if I was all right, and I said I was.
“How do the Cubans get out, Evan?”
I said I didn’t know. Perhaps they lowered a rope ladder, or perhaps they used a step stool and dragged it up after them. “It doesn’t matter,” I told her. “We’ll come back tomorrow night and plant a couple of microphones. I’m sure someone from the movement will be able to help us-”
“Claude, if he will help. Or others.”
“Good.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “At least we know the physical plant here. We won’t be working blind anymore.” I looked at my watch. “We were down there too long. We’d better get the hell out of here.”
“The chair, Evan. Will they not notice it?”
“Perhaps.”
“Is there no way to return it to its place?”
“None I can think of. Maybe they’ll ignore it. The hell with it.”
“I could go down and return it, and then you could try to pull me out, and-”
“And then we’d be back where we started from.”
“Yes.”
We got ready to go, and I threw the switch to close the aperture in the floor. It slid shut as silently as it had opened. Once it was closed, I dropped to my hands and knees to try to locate the seams in the floor. Even now, knowing where it was, I couldn’t distinguish any seams. The trapdoor was superbly engineered.
But why go to the trouble?
“Come on,” I said, taking Arlette’s hand. “I realize it’s hard for you to tear yourself away from such an enchanting place-”
“It is evil here. Satanic.”
We didn’t have to jimmy the door this time. The lock served only to keep people out. The door swung open easily, and I stuck my head out and looked and listened. I heard a car approaching and drew back inside. The car passed perhaps a hundred feet from us and kept on going. We waited until the sound of the engine died in the distance. Then I stuck my head out again, and looked and listened again, and the coast was as clear as it seemed likely to get. We slipped out into the night and headed for our boat. I held the paper bag in one hand and Arlette’s hand in the other. We walked quickly, less frightened of shadows now, less worried about the possibility of discovery.
Where would they take the prisoners? I thought it over and decided that the answer depended upon the motive. If they wanted ransom, for example, there would be no particular point in spiriting them out of the country; they would do better to keep them on some hidden estate in the Canadian countryside. If, on the other hand, they had some other use planned for them, they might want to get them out of Canada and into Cuba as quickly as possible.
The second line of reasoning seemed more logical. You couldn’t attempt to ransom a wholesale lot of prisoners without attracting attention. For that matter, you couldn’t invest that kind of money in a kidnaping for financial gain. The costs of building the pavilion, the costs of the entire arrangement-
Of course they might intend a wholesale exchange, I thought. They had traded prisoners for drugs once before, hadn’t they? And maybe the ransom demands would be directed against the United States Government. “If you want the victims back, vacate Guantanamo Bay ” – something like that.
I got fairly involved with thoughts like this. I held Arlette’s hand and hurried her along. And, because we had already been to the Cuban Pavilion and had left it undiscovered, I didn’t really worry much about someone’s spotting us.