“Who?” he demanded.
“Herman, you’re hurting Mommy,” said Poo. “You’ll make her cry. You’ll make Mommy cry. Herman, don’t hurt my mommy.”
Poo began to cry.
“If it’s a neighbor, they’ll know I’m in here,” said Beth.
Herman thought in a frenzy.
“All right,” he said finally, “you go answer. Say nothing. Remember, I’ll be behind the door. I’ll hear it all. Don’t do anything stupid. Please, these other men will be here with the children, don’t do anything stupid, don’t force us to do anything we don’t want to do.”
He released her.
“Don’t do anything stupid. Please.” He pressed the muzzle of the silenced Uzi against her ribs, just once, lightly, so she could feel it.
Beth climbed the steps. She could see the shape in the window of the door and went to it.
“Yes?”
God, it was Kathy Reed, from next door.
“Beth, what is going on, have you heard? Three planes have crashed. Someone says there’s terrible shooting going on at South Mountain and that the state police have closed all the roads. There was an explosion on the road up to the mountain in the morning. They say there are helicopters in the valley and soldiers and—”
“I don’t know. There’s nothing on the news.”
“God, do you suppose they have gas or something up there, and there’s some kind of leak. What kind of telephone station could it be?”
“I–I don’t know,” said Beth. “If there were any danger, I’m sure the government would tell us.”
“I’m so scared, Beth. Bruce is away. Beth, he’s got the car. If there’s an evacuation, will you take us? God, Beth, I’ve got the twins and—”
“Oh, Kathy, don’t worry. I’ll take you if it comes to that. I swear it. You go inside now and relax. If I hear anything, I’ll tell you. I promise.”
“You won’t forget?”
“No, I swear. I swear it.”
“Thank you, Beth. It means so much.”
She went back to her own house. Beth closed the door.
“Mommy, why was Mrs. Reed crying? Was she scared of Herman?”
“No, honey. No, she was just upset. Was that all right?”
“That was fine,” said Herman. “That was okay, lady, you did real good.”
“Who are you?” said Poo. “You’re not from around here at all, are you? You’re from far away.”
“Very far away,” he answered.
“Yes, what is it, Dr. Thiokol?” Dick Puller asked, pulling himself away from Skazy.
“Something’s just occurred to me. I–I should have thought of it earlier.” He was momentarily put off by the sense of distance between the two officers; he had the sudden, awkward sense of being an outsider at some kind of intense family dispute. But he plunged on.
“It may be of some help. You ought to hear this, too, Major Skazy.”
“Go on.”
Peter said, “Well, we think we know who compromised South Mountain. I’ve told the FBI. All right?”
“Yes?”
“Now, we think this person was photographing documents and plans in my own home. I was very sloppy, it was—”
“Just go on,” said Puller.
“Well, this person left my house before the planning was quite complete. Do you understand?”
Neither of them did, apparently. They stared at Peter as if he were stupid. Military men, he told himself, be patient. Explain it slowly. Connect all the dots for them.
“She left before the key vault was designed. So whoever planned whatever’s going on up there never knew about the key vault. Until—”
“Until when?”
“She came back two weeks ago. She came back to tell me she’d thought it over and she just wanted to see me — well, I’ll spare you the pitiful details. But she was in the house. I slept with her a last time. The vault had been improved, it was designed, they were implementing it, and they sent me the dope. She could have seen it.”
“Dr. Thiokol, in all due respect, I don’t know what the hell you’re driving at here,” said Puller, glowering furiously at him, almost rigid with impatience. “We already know there’s been an intelligence leak of—”
Asshole! Peter thought. Stupid asshole!
“If they know about the key vault, they found out very late. Two weeks ago! Probably, maybe, possibly too late to figure it into their original operational plans. If that’s the case, they probably didn’t bring a welder along. So they would have had to pick one up here. Don’t you see? They would have had to hire one or kidnap one or something like that. Now, if they did that, they wouldn’t try and hold him for two weeks. They’d do it right before they jumped and they’d do it close by. I’m saying, maybe we can trace it.”
“All right.”
Their eyes remained abstracted, unfocused, lacking that primal spark of inspiration. They still didn’t quite see it.
“Look, if you were going to force a man to perform a job for you, how would you get him to do it? Think of a bank president robbers take in order to get him to open the safe. How do they do it? Well, they find hostages. They leave somebody at his house with his wife and kids, right? Now, maybe that’s what they’ve done here, maybe there’s a wife and some kids and some very bad baby-sitters not too far from where we stand. And suppose—”
“Prisoners!” said Skazy, getting to it first. “Yes, prisoners. We get prisoners, we find out what and who we’re up against.”
But Dick Puller was already on the move. He hurried into the command post and quickly located his young assistant from the FBI, James Uckley, who for the past several hours had been ripping teletype info and filing reports himself to the Bureau on the operation and feeling sorry for himself for incurring Puller’s wrath.
It didn’t take Puller long to explain what he wanted, and from then it didn’t take Uckley long to find what they were looking for. He began with the Yellow Pages and started calling welding services. At the fifth entry — Jackson Hummel, 19 Main Street, Burkittsville, 555–2219—there was no answer. He then called the Burkittsville police station, talked to a sergeant and had a request; the sergeant returned the call almost immediately. No, it did not appear that Jack Hummel had opened his service for business that day. The cop had asked on both sides and found that Jack was expected in Boonsboro that day at the Chalmers plant. Uckley called Chalmers, to discover that no, goddammit, the welder had not showed up, nobody knew where he’d gone, maybe he was sick. He called the cop back and asked if Jack could be sick. The cop didn’t know but said he could stop by Jack’s house which was just up the road. It would be real easy, the cop said.
No, said Uckley. They’d handle it themselves, but please stand by in case further help was needed. His next phone call was to the elementary school, where it only took him a few minutes to learn from the principal that Jack Hummel did have two daughters, Elizabeth called Bean and Phyllis called Poo, and that indeed both of them were unexpectedly absent today.
Uckley thanked her and got off the phone.
“I think we’ve got a Condition Red,” he told Dick Puller. “It looks like they’ve got this guy Hummel in the mountain—he’s their cutter — and his wife and kids in his house.”
Puller nodded.
“All right,” he said. “Major Skazy, I want four of your best operators.”
“Yes, sir, I can—”
“Just go get them, Major. Get them now.”
“Yes, sir,” said Skazy, clearly irked at how summarily he was being dismissed.
Puller pulled Uckley aside, out of the hearing range of the others.
“I think you’ll have to handle this one. He’ll get you those Delta specialists and you ought to have police backup, but don’t let the police get too close. They might mess things up. You never know how well these little country-town cops are going to handle heavy business. Besides, you’ll do better with fewer rather than more people. But we need to take that house down and we need to talk to those people.”