“He’ll live.” Ogilvy glanced over his shoulder at the two soldiers searching the roadside with flashlights. “Let’s try it again. You walk all the way up here, just to stretch your legs, and when we find you, you’re beat up and lying here in the road. You say it’s because some total stranger stepped out of the woods and asked you for some spare change, and when you told him you didn’t have any, he attacked you. Then he vanishes, just like that. Have I got everything?”
“I don’t have an explanation, either.” Murphy looked the colonel straight in the eye. “Maybe he was just… I dunno. Some crazy hitchhiker. Things happen like that.”
“Right.” The colonel slowly nodded. “Why do I get the feeling you’re not telling me the truth?”
“That’s all there is. Honest.”
Ogilvy sighed as he stood up. “Well, whatever happened up here, it made you miss all the excitement. The yew-foh vanished. We think it lifted off.”
“Oh, shit! Really?” It was all Murphy could do to feign astonishment. “You mean it’s gone?”
“Happened about ten, fifteen minutes ago. First, it went invisible again, right under the eyes of the guys we left on the island. We heard a loud hum, then all the lights and electronic equipment went dead. Water shot up into the air where the saucer had been resting, and then… well, it was gone.”
“And you didn’t see anything?”
“Just a black shape taking off. It was gone before we could track it.” Ogilvy tucked his hands in the pockets of his parka. “That’s when we discovered you were AWOL. It’ll be sweet bringing you back. When she found out you were missing, Ms. Luna claimed she received a psychic impression that you’d been taken by her aliens.”
Murphy laughed out loud, but not for the reasons the colonel probably thought he did. For once, Meredith Cynthia Luna had come close to making the right guess. “I’m sure she’s been wrong before.”
“Yeah, well…” Ogilvy looked around again. “Go on, get in the vehicle. It’s warmer there. I’m going to give my guys a few more minutes to find your mysterious friend, then we’ll go back and start breaking down camp. I don’t imagine we’ll find anything else, do you?”
“No, I doubt it.” Wincing from the bruises on his stomach, Murphy stood up from the bumper. “We might check the island again, just to be safe, but you’re probably right.”
He let Ogilvy open the Hummer’s passenger door, and waited in the shotgun seat until the colonel walked away to see whether the soldiers had discovered anything. When he was finally alone, he pulled a crumpled sheet of paper out of his pocket.
It had come from the stranger’s inside coat pocket, in that half-instant when Murphy had grabbed at him during their fight and torn it. Murphy had only the vaguest recollection of the other man whispering something as he kneeled over him; the two dimes and the nickel were missing when he regained consciousness, but this single sheet of paper was still clenched in his fist, along with a shred of dark fabric.
Murphy gently uncrumpled the paper and studied it under the dim glow of the dashboard. At the top of the page was a stylized dirigible flanked by olive branches; a scroll beneath the airship declared it to be the LZ-129 Hindenberg.
Below the picture of the airship was a list of names: a passenger manifest. Halfway down the list, two names caught his eye: Mr. and Mrs. John and Emma Pannes, of Manhasset, Long Island.
Murphy looked up, saw the colonel walking back to the vehicle, followed by the two soldiers. He had just tucked the paper into an inner pocket when Ogilvy opened the right rear passenger door.
“We’re not going to find anything,” Ogilvy muttered as he settled into the back seat. “No need to rush, though. We’ve got until morning before we have to be out of here.”
“Yeah. No need to hurry.” Murphy turned his head to gaze out the window. The clouds were beginning to dissipate; for the first time tonight, he could make out a few stars. “ ‘Fools rush in…’ ”
One of the Rangers opened the driver’s door to climb behind the wheel. “Pardon me, sir?” the soldier asked. “Did you say something?”
“Hmm? Oh, nothing.” Murphy smiled at his half-reflection in the window. “Just thinking.”