3

It took most of the afternoon. Jack’s eyes burned after hours of being trained on the exit ramp from the diplomats’ parking lot. If he hadn’t happened to glance across the Plaza toward the General Assembly building at a quarter to four, he might have spent half the night waiting for Kusum. For there he was, looking like a mirage as he walked through the shimmering heat rising from the sun-baked concrete. For some reason, perhaps because he was leaving before the session was through, Kusum had bypassed an official car and was walking to the curb. He hailed a cab and got in.

Fearful he might lose him, Jack ran to the street and flagged down a cab of his own.

“I hate to say this,” he said to the driver as he jumped into the rear seat, “but follow that cab.”

The driver didn’t even look back. “Which one?”

“It’s just pulling away over there—the one with the Times ad on the back.”

“Got it.”

As they moved into the uptown flow of traffic on First Avenue, Jack leaned back and studied the driver’s ID photo taped to the other side of the plastic partition that separated him from the passenger area. It showed a beefy black face sitting on a bull neck. Arnold Green was the name under it. A hand-lettered sign saying “The Green Machine” was taped to the dashboard. The Green Machine was one of the extra-roomy Checker Cabs. A vanishing breed. They weren’t making them any more. Compact cabs were taking over. Jack would be sad to see the big ones go.

“You get many ’Follow that cab’ fares?” Jack asked.

“Almost never.”

“You didn’t act surprised.”

“As long as you’re paying, I’ll follow. Drive you around and around the block till the gas runs out if you want. As long as the meter’s running.”

Kusum’s cab turned west on Sixty-sixth, one of the few streets that broke the “evens-run-east” rule of Manhattan, and Green’s Machine followed. Together they crawled west to Fifth Avenue. Kusum’s apartment was in the upper Sixties on Fifth. He was going home. But the cab ahead turned downtown on Fifth. Kusum emerged at the corner of Sixty-fourth and began to walk east. Jack followed in his cab. He saw Kusum enter a doorway next to a brass plaque that read:

NEW

INDIA HOUSE

He checked the address of the Indian Consulate he had jotted down that morning. It matched. He had expected something looking like a Hindu temple. Instead, this was an ordinary building of white stone and iron-barred windows with a large Indian flag—orange, white, and green stripes with a wheel-like mandala in the center—hanging over double oak doors.

“Pull over,” he told the cabbie. “We’re going to wait a while.”

The Green Machine pulled into a loading zone across the street from the building. “How long?”

“As long as it takes.”

“That could run into money.”

“That’s okay. I’ll pay you every fifteen minutes so the meter doesn’t get too far ahead. How’s that sound?”

He stuck a huge brown hand through the slot in the plastic partition. “How about the first installment?”

Jack gave him a five dollar bill. Arnold turned off the engine and slouched down in the seat.

“You from around here?” he asked without turning around.

“Sort of.”

“You look like you’re from Cleveland.”

“I’m in disguise.”

“You a detective?”

That seemed like a reasonable explanation for following cabs around Manhattan, so Jack said, “Sort of.”

“You on an expense account?”

“Sort of.” Not true: He was on his own time and using his own money, but it sounded better to agree.

“Well, sort of let me know when you sort of want to get moving again.”

Jack laughed and got himself comfortable. His only worry was that there might be a back way out of the building.

People began drifting out of the building at 5:00. Kusum wasn’t among them. Jack waited another hour and still no sign of Kusum. By 6:30 Arnold was sound asleep in the front seat and Jack feared that Kusum had somehow slipped out of the building unseen. He decided to give it another half hour. If Kusum didn’t show by then, Jack would either go inside or find a phone and call the Consulate.

It was nearly seven o’clock when two Indians in business suits stepped through the door and onto the sidewalk. Jack nudged Arnold.

“Start your engine. We may be rolling soon.”

Arnold grunted and reached for the ignition. The Green Machine grumbled to life.

Another pair of Indians came out. Neither was Kusum. Jack was edgy. There was still plenty of light, no chance for Kusum to slip past him, yet he had a feeling that Kusum could be a pretty slippery character if he wanted to be.

He watched the two Indians walk up toward Fifth Avenue. They were walking west! With a flash of dismay, Jack realized that he was parked on a one-way street going east. If Kusum followed the same path as these last two, Jack would have to leave this cab and find another on Fifth Avenue. And the next cabbie might not be so easy-going as Arnold.

“We’ve got to get onto Fifth!” he told Arnold.

“Okay.”

Arnold put his cab in forward and started to pull out into the crosstown traffic.

“No, wait! It’ll take too long to go around the block. I’ll miss him.”

Arnold gave him a baleful stare through the partition. “You’re not telling me to go the wrong way on a one-way street, are you?”

“Of course not,” Jack said. Something in the cabbie’s voice told him to play along. “That would be against the law.”

Arnold smiled. “Just wanted to make sure you wasn’t telling.”

Without warning he threw the Green Machine into reverse and floored it. The tires screeched, terrified pedestrians leaped for the curb, cars coming out of the Central Park traverse swerved and honked angrily while Jack hung on to the passenger straps as the car lunged the hundred feet or so back to the corner, skewed to a halt across the mouth of the street, then nosed along the curb on Fifth Avenue.

“This okay?” Arnold said.

Jack peered through the rear window. He had a clear view of the doorway in question.

“It’ll do. Thanks.”

“Welcome.”

And suddenly Kusum was there, pushing through the door and walking up toward Fifth Avenue. He crossed Sixty-fourth and walked Jack’s way. Jack pressed himself into a corner of the seat so he could see without being seen. Kusum came closer. With a start Jack realized that Kusum was angling across the sidewalk directly toward the Green Machine.

Jack slapped his hand against the partition. “Take off! He thinks you’re looking for a fare!”

The Green Machine slipped away from the curb just as Kusum was reaching for the door handle. Jack peeked through the rear window. Kusum didn’t seem the least bit disturbed. He merely held his hand up for another cab. He seemed far more intent on getting where he was going than on what was going on around him.

Without being told to, Arnold slowed to a halt half a block down and waited until Kusum got in his cab. When the cab went by, he pulled into traffic behind it.

“On the road again, Momma,” he said to no one in particular.

Jack leaned forward intently and fixed his eyes on Kusum’s cab. He was almost afraid to blink for fear of losing sight of it. Kusum’s apartment was only a few blocks uptown from the Indian Consulate—walking distance. But he was taking a cab downtown. This could be what Jack had been waiting for. They chased it down to Fifty-seventh, where it turned right and headed west along what used to be known as Art Gallery Row.

They followed Kusum farther and farther west. They were nearing the Hudson River docks. With a start, Jack realized that this was the area where Kusum’s grandmother had been mugged. The cab went as far west as it could and stopped at Twelfth Avenue and Fifty-seventh. Kusum got out and began to walk.

Jack had Arnold pull into the curb. He stuck his head out the window and squinted against the glare of the sinking sun as Kusum crossed Twelfth Avenue and disappeared into the shadows under the partially repaired West Side Highway.

“Be back in a second,” he told Arnold.

He walked to the corner and saw Kusum hurry along the crumbling waterside pavement to a rotting pier where a rustbucket freighter was moored. As Jack watched, a gangplank lowered itself as if by magic. Kusum climbed aboard and disappeared from view. The gangplank hoisted itself back to the raised position after he was gone.

A ship. What the hell could Kusum be doing on a floating heap like that? It had been a long, boring day, but now things were getting interesting.

Jack went back to the Green Machine.

“Looks like this is it,” he said to Arnold. He glanced at the meter, calculated what he still owed of the total, added twenty dollars for good will, and handed it to Arnold. “Thanks. You’ve been a big help. “

“This ain’t such a good neighborhood during the day,” Arnold said, glancing around. “And after dark it really gets rough, especially for someone dressed like you.”

“I’ll be okay,” he said, grateful for the concern of a man he had known for only a few hours. He slapped the roof of the car. “Thanks again.”

Jack watched the Green Machine until it disappeared into the traffic, then he studied his surroundings. There was a vacant lot on the corner across the street, and an old, boarded-up brick warehouse next to him.

He felt exposed standing there in an outfit that shouted “Mug me” to anyone so inclined. And since he hadn’t dared to bring a weapon to the U.N., he was unarmed. Officially, unarmed. He could permanently disable a man with a ballpoint pen and knew half a dozen ways to kill with a key ring, but didn’t like to work that close unless he had to. He would have been much more comfortable knowing the Semmerling was strapped against his leg.

He had to hide. He decided his best bet would be under the West Side Highway. He jogged over and perched himself high up in the notch of one of the supports. It offered a clear view of the pier and the ship. Best of all, it would keep him out of sight of any troublemakers.

Dusk came and went. The streetlights came on as night slipped over the city. He was away from the streets, but he saw the traffic to the west and south of him thin out to a rare car cruising by. There was still plenty of rumbling on the West Side Highway overhead, however, as the cars slowed for the ramp down to street level just two blocks from where he crouched. The ship remained silent. Nothing moved on its decks, no lights showed from the superstructure. It had all the appearances of a deserted wreck. What was Kusum doing in there?

Finally, when full darkness settled in at nine o’clock, Jack could wait no longer. In the dark he was pretty sure he could reach the deck and do some hunting around without being seen.

He jumped down from his perch and crossed over to the shadows by the pier. The moon was rising in the east. It was big and low now, slightly rounder than last night, glowing ruddily. He wanted to get aboard and off again before it reached full brightness and started lighting up the waterfront.

At the water’s edge, Jack crouched against a huge piling under the looming shadow of the freighter and listened. All was quiet but for the lapping of the water under the pier. A sour smell—a mixture of sea salt, mildew, rotting wood, creosote, and garbage—permeated the air. Movement to the left caught his eye: a lone wharf rat scurried along the bulkhead in search of dinner. Nothing else moved.

He jumped as something splashed near the hull. An automatic bilge pump was spewing a stream of water out a small port near the waterline of the hull.

He was edgy and couldn’t say why. He had done clandestine searches under more precarious conditions than these. And with less apprehension. Yet the nearer he got to the boat, the less he felt like boarding her. Something within him was warning him away. Through the years he had come to recognize a certain instinct for danger; listening to it had kept him alive in a dangerous profession. That instinct was ringing frantically with alarm right now.

Jack shrugged off the feeling of impending disaster as he took the binoculars and camera from around his neck and laid them at the base of the piling. The rope that ran from the piling up to the bow of the ship was a good two inches thick. It would be rough on his hands but easy to climb.

He leaned forward, got a firm two-handed grip on the rope, then swung out over the water. As he hung from the rope, he raised his legs until his ankles locked around it. Now began the climb: Hanging like an orangutan from a branch with his face to the sky and his back to the water below, he pulled himself up hand-over-hand while his heels caught the finger-thick strands of the rope and pushed from behind.

The angle of ascent steepened and the climb got progressively tougher as he neared the gunwale of the ship. The tiny fibers of the rope were coarse and stiff. His palms were burning; each handful of rope felt like a handful of thistles, especially painful where he had started a few blisters playing tennis yesterday. It was a pleasure to grab the smooth, cool steel of the gunwale and pull himself up to eye-level with its upper edge. He hung there and scanned the deck. Still no sign of life.

He pulled himself over the gunwale and onto the deck, then ran in a crouch to the anchor windlass.

His skin prickled in warning—danger here. But where? He peered over the windlass. There was no sign that he had been seen, no sign that there was anyone else aboard. Still the feeling persisted, a nagging sensation, almost as if he were being watched.

Again, he shrugged it off and set his mind to the problem of reaching the deckhouse. Well over a hundred feet of open deck lay between him and the aft superstructure. And aft was where he wanted to go. He couldn’t imagine much going on in the cargo holds.

Jack set himself, then sprinted around the forward cargo hatch to the kingpost and crane assembly that stood between the two holds. He waited. Still no sign that he had been seen… or that there was anyone here to see him. Another sprint took him to the forward wall of the deckhouse.

He slid along the wall to the port side where he found some steps and took these up to the bridge. The wheelhouse was locked, but through the side window he could see a wide array of sophisticated controls.

Maybe this tub was more seaworthy than it looked.

He crossed in front of the bridge and began checking all the doors. On the second deck on the starboard side he found one open. The hallway within was dark but for a single, dim emergency bulb glowing at the far end. One by one he checked the three cabins on this deck. They looked fairly comfortable— probably for the ship’s officers. Only one looked like it had been recently occupied. The bed was rumpled and a book written in an exotic-looking language lay open on a table. That at least confirmed Kusum’s recent presence.

Next he checked the crew’s quarters below. They were deserted. The galley showed no signs of recent use.

What next? The emptiness, the silence, the stale, musty air were getting on Jack’s nerves. He wanted to get back to dry land and fresh air. But Kusum was aboard and Jack wasn’t leaving until he found him.

He descended to the deck below and found a door marked ENGINE ROOM. He was reaching for the handle when he heard it.

A sound… barely audible… like a baritone chorus chanting in a distant valley. And it came not from the engine room but from somewhere behind him.

Jack turned and moved silently to the outer end of the short corridor. There was a watertight hatch there. A central wheel retracted the lugs at its edges. Hoping it still had some oil in its works, Jack grasped the wheel and turned it counterclockwise, half-expecting a loud screech to echo throughout the ship and give him away. But there came only a soft scrape and a faint squeak. When the wheel had turned as far as it would go, he gently swung the door open.

The odor struck him an almost physical blow, rocking him back on his heels. It was the same stink of putrescence that had invaded his apartment two nights in a row, only now a hundred, a thousand times stronger, gripping him, jamming itself against his face like a graverobber’s glove.

Jack gagged and fought the urge to turn and run. This was it! This was the source, the very heart of the stench. It was here he would learn whether the eyes he had seen outside his window Saturday night were real or imagined. He couldn’t let an odor, no matter how nauseating, turn him back now.

He forced himself to step through the hatch and into a dark, narrow corridor. The dank air clung to him. The corridor walls stretched into the blackness above him. And with each step the odor grew stronger. He could taste it in the air, almost touch it. Faint, flickering light was visible maybe twenty feet ahead. Jack fought his way toward it, passing small, room-sized storage areas on either side. They seemed empty—he hoped they were.

The chant he had dimly heard before had ceased, but there were rustling noises ahead, and as he neared the light, the sound of a voice speaking in a foreign language.

He slowed his advance as he neared the end of the corridor. The light was brighter in a larger, open area ahead. He had been traveling forward from the stern. By rough calculation he figured he should be almost to the main cargo hold.

The corridor opened along the port wall of the hold; across the floor in the forward wall was another opening, no doubt a similar passage leading to the forward hold. Jack reached the end and cautiously peeked around the corner. What he saw stopped his breath. Shock swept through him front to back, like a storm front.

The high, black iron walls of the hold rose and disappeared into the darkness above. Wild shadows cavorted on them. Glistening beads of moisture clung to their oily surfaces, catching and holding the light from the two roaring gas torches set upon an elevated platform at the other end of the hold. The wall over there was a different color, a bloody red, with the huge form of a many-armed goddess painted in black upon it. And between the two torches stood Kusum, naked but for some sort of long cloth twisted and wrapped around his torso. Even his necklace was off. His left shoulder was horribly scarred where he had lost his arm, his right arm was raised, as he shouted in his native tongue to the crowd assembled before him.

But it wasn’t Kusum who seized and held Jack’s attention in a stranglehold, who made the muscles of his jaw bunch with the effort to hold back a cry of horror, who made his hands grip the slimy walls so fiercely.

It was the audience. There were four or five dozen of them, cobalt-skinned, six or seven feet tall, all huddled in a semicircular crowd before Kusum. Each had a head, a body, two arms and two legs—but they weren’t human. They weren’t even close to human. Their proportions, the way they moved, everything about them was all wrong. There was a bestial savagery about them combined with a reptilian sort of grace. They were reptiles but something more, humanoid but something less… an unholy mongrelization of the two with a third strain that could not, even in the wildest nightmare delirium, be associated with anything of this earth. Jack caught flashes of fangs in the wide, lipless mouths beneath their blunt, sharklike snouts, the glint of talons at the end of their three-digit hands, and the yellow glow of their eyes as they stared at Kusum’s ranting, gesticulating figure.

Beneath the shock and revulsion that numbed his mind and froze his body, Jack felt a fierce, instinctive hatred of these things. It was a sub-rational reaction, like the loathing a mongoose must feel toward a snake. Instantaneous enmity. Something in the most remote and primitive corner of his humanity recognized these creatures and knew there could be no truce, no co-existence with them.

Yet this inexplicable reaction was overwhelmed by the horrid fascination of what he saw. And then Kusum raised his arms and shouted something. Perhaps it was the light, but he looked older to Jack. The creatures responded by starting the same chant he had faintly heard moments ago. Only now he could make out the sounds. Gruff, grumbling voices, chaotic at first, then with growing unity, began repeating the same word over and over:

Then they were raising their taloned hands in the air, and clutched in each was a bloody piece of flesh that glistened redly in the wavering light.

Jack didn’t know how he knew, but he was certain he was looking at all that remained of Nellie Paton.

It was all he could take. His mind refused to accept any more. Terror was a foreign sensation to Jack, unfamiliar, almost unrecognizable. All he knew was that he had to get away before his sanity completely deserted him. He turned and ran back down the corridor, careless of the noise he made; not that much could be heard over the din in the hold. He closed the hatch behind him, spun the wheel to lock it, then ran up the steps to the deck, dashed along its moonlit length to the prow, where he straddled the gunwale, grabbed the mooring rope, and slid down to the dock, burning the skin from his palms.

He grabbed his binoculars and camera and fled toward the street. He knew where he was going: To the only other person besides Kusum who could explain what he had just seen.