Randy White - Dead Silence

I had almost finished the thought, “Next trip, I pack a pint of rum instead of extra socks…,” but Tomlinson’s voice drowned me out.

“I knew you were hooked the moment you said the kid fired back at you, the way your eyes lit up. Then, on the phone, Otto Guttersen saying the boy was as fearless as an alley cat. Self-reliant, independent. Doesn’t take shit off anybody. What it sounds like to me is, the boy’s a certifiable thug if someone gets in his way or crosses him, because you two share the same simple rules of life: The weak survive only if the strong prevail. And all damn quitters should be eaten like breadsticks along life’s highway.

“You don’t think I know why you’re pulling for young Will Chaser, Doc? What you see as ‘different,’ others might define as ‘deviant.’ If the kid’s anything like he’s been described, you two are like peas in a fucking pod!”

Tomlinson calmed a little when I said, “He’ll need to be shrewder than I was at fourteen to survive. And a lot tougher to stay sane if they do what they’re threatening to do.”

It was unfair to play a rational, serious card while Tomlinson was on one of his irrational tirades venting because of the stress.

But he laughed when I added, “What might help you is attending a meeting. You stand up and say, ‘Hi, my name’s Sighurdhr.’ ”

I pronounced it correctly-Sea- guard -er-which was risky because few people know his first name. He thought the name was pretentious, he had once confided. Associated it with his aristocratic roots and the privileged, yacht-club society he had spent his adult life denouncing.

I knew Tomlinson was okay when he responded with a cheerful, “Screw you!,” then resumed his nervous finger drumming, twisting and gnawing at a strand of his hair.

He was right about a couple of things, though. The kid had his hooks in me. Whether he was different or deviant, I was interested. Science is fueled by anomalies. I am driven accordingly.

I had learned something else while on the phone: William J. Chaser scared people. Ruth Guttersen had told me the boy sometimes made her nervous but sounded more than nervous when she explained, “He’s a completely different child when he gets mad. He’s so… silent!”

His teacher tried to hide it, too, but twice during our conversation paused to remind me, “This conversation is confidential, right? You’re not going to tell Will… Right? ”

The information provided me with a secret, speculative hope… until just before we landed when my phone rang.

It was Harrington. A security camera outside the Explorers Club had produced grainy images of the kidnappers. One was Choirboy. But the FBI couldn’t identify the other two.

Harrington’s sources could. No surprise. They had access to cross-reference files that included people the FBI had no reason to log.

“The Cuban Program,” Harrington said. “How much do you know?”

I knew enough to feel an adrenal charge.

“Castro trained three interrogators. All graduated from medical school, University of Havana. The staff that worked for them varied, but one of the three took on an apprentice late in the game. Vietnam, Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan-the team got around. Twenty years spent learning their craft.”

“Medical research,” I said. I meant “experiments”-an attempt at maintaining code protocol.

“The campers gave them nicknames. That’s never been made public.”

Campers were POWs.

Harrington asked, “Remember the Nestle’s commercial, the ventriloquist-nice guy, seemed like-and Farfel?”

A floppy-eared puppet came into my mind, Farfel the dog. Snap a wooden ruler on a table, that was the sound Farfel made when his mouth slapped shut. “Choc-laaaate”- snap.

“One of the interrogators had the same mannerism,” Harrington told me. “He clicked his teeth to make a point. Farfel: His real name is Rene Navarro.”

Another interrogator was nicknamed Hump because of a subcutaneous horn growing from his forehead-a pathology less rare in the Caribbean than in other parts of the world.

“In the security photo, Hump should be a lot older,” Harrington said. “Either Hump hasn’t aged or Farfel is using Hump’s son. A relative maybe.

Or a Soviet special edition: part human, part something else. They tried that, you know.”

Yes, I knew.

Harrington had given physical descriptions to the FBI, minus details about the Cuban Program. There’d been rumors, but the information was still classified. “Not many POWs survived, but the few left don’t want it made public what Farfel and the other two did to them. The Americans called them Malvados, a Spanish word.”

Fiends. I didn’t have to ask why.

I said, “You’re sure about this.” I was thinking, They’ll torture the boy before he dies. Just for fun.

“I’m convinced. It’s their way of showing they’re serious about getting the library. It’s political.” Harrington’s warning tone again.

I said, “Screw protocol. A fourteen-year-old boy from Oklahoma is alone with Soviet-trained sociopaths.” Damn. “The gloves come off, right?”

Harrington said, “Rules are rules,” then switched subjects, his way of closing the door. He was asking, “Did you see the news story about the football player they thought drowned?,” as I hung up.

As we crossed the pasture, Frederick Gardiner, who managed the ranch and had trained horses for forty years, told us, “Reason Long Island’s warmer here on the South Fork is ’cause the ocean pushes the snow up island. Gulf Stream sweeps close to the Springs, from away down by Florida-like you three.” He chuckled, surprised by the accidental irony, a man unaccustomed to making jokes.

The FBI agent told him, “I thought I mentioned that I’m from Boston, Mr. Gardiner. These men work for Senator Hayes-Sorrento, not the agency.”

The horseman stopped. He tossed a blanket over the shoulder of his Barbour jacket, gray hair showing beneath his wool hat. “Boston, eh?”

“Near Concord, like I told you. It couldn’t have been more than an hour ago.”

“Well, maybe so, but Boston’s Boston. And maybe you heard me mention I’d appreciate not hearing no smart comments about the Yankees, if you happen to be a Red Sox man. Don’t think I didn’t notice that sticker on your vehicle. Now here you are back again.”

When I started to laugh, Tomlinson elbowed me. Gardiner had already exceeded his joke quota. The man was serious.

“Red Sox people, they always got some damn smart remark. A way of being clever, I suppose, to those b’low the bridge, but they’ll get no smile from me. Which I think you should be aware of, Mr… Mr… .” He’d lost the name. “Oh, here we are. Why you gotta take another look at the saddest thing that ever happened here, it don’t make no sense to me.”

It was a little after six but felt later because of a waxen light that blew off the North Atlantic. We had stopped at the broken fence. Death creates its own silence, a silence with boundaries that extend beyond the body mass of the corpse. We stood without speaking for a minute. I got the feeling Gardiner would have been offended if we’d scrambled over the fence to get closer.

Maybe Sudderram had tried earlier, because he was taking his time. “Would you mind telling these men what you told me? About horses jumping fences, Mr. Gardiner-this horse, I mean.”

Gardiner replied, “If I could pronounce your name, I’d use it.”

“Uhh… it’s Egyptian. Jah- bah -reel,” the agent began, then gave up as he watched the trainer shaking his head impatiently.

“I’m not talking about you, I’m talking about him.” Gardiner gestured toward the horse. “The registered name’s Alacazar-Alacazam, but he answered to Cazzio. A horse as fine as Cazzy, you ought to at least call him by name.”