The Sandler Inquiry Part 106

Vietnam. Czechoslovakia. He could see the Fifties and Sixties flas.h.i.+ng before him like a nova. He and Leslie McAdam, the offspring of spies, were brought together not by anything they'd done themselves, but rather by the flow of history by the isms of the Twentieth Century, by the galloping paranoia of the postwar years.

By the insanities and inanities which afflict governments The conference at the table broke. Nervously, sensing the advent of a major development, the five perused the interior of the Sandler mansion, wandering from bookcase to china case, inspecting filth-encrusted sinks and admiring 1890s clocks. Thomas was alone on the fourth floor, examining the walls and hallway panels, wondering what unexpected hollowness might be discovered.

When he heard footsteps on the floor above him, heavy footsteps at that, he climbed the stairs and encountered a familiar face and shape.

Hunter stood in the vast hallway and front corridor of the fifth floor.

He'd looked all around him, found nothing of overwhelming interest on the other floors, and was now looking upward, toward a long wooden set of stairs which ran to a closed door leading presumably to an attic.

"Top to bottom," he mumbled, to no one first, then to Thomas, who was standing nearby.

"That's how we're to search this place.

Top to bottom" His conclusion, unsaid, was clear. He'd start at the top and work his way to the bottom. Logic, always. He looked to Thomas.

"Coming with me?"

"Is that a return invitation for inviting you here in the first place?"

Thomas asked.

"Just being friendly," growled Hunter.

"We were just looking after you, you know."

The night at Suzanne's, the chemically induced unconsciousness, and the feel of strong arms on his body, came back to him.

"Of course," he said.

"So you got jostled a little. You're alive" "You can go on to the attic without me," he answered.

"I'm going downstairs " "Have it' your way."

Hunter put his foot on the first step as if to test it, then gradually s.h.i.+fted his entire weight onto the step. Then the next. Then the next. He eased his way up the long slatted stairs to the attic, a step at a time, but less cautious with each step.

Thomas watched him halfway, then turned. He'd return to Leslie and Hammond, whom he seemed to trust just that much more, to see where their own progress was leading them.

The first sound he could hear was a slow cracking noise, somewhat like the tearing of wood when a tree is about to fall. But the sound grew in intensity to a quickening clattering burst and Thomas spun around to see the stairs with Hunter collapsing.

They flew apart as a deck of cards might, the underpinnings flying loose and relinquis.h.i.+ng their support at the precise moment when Hunter had primed the trap on the tenth step.

The weight of the bulky man intensified his sudden plunge. He collapsed as fast as the staircase, thundering into a pile of falling dust, beams, and steps, as the remainder of the staircase-the st.u.r.dy wooden steps he'd never reached-collapsed and crashed down upon him.

Part of the attic floor followed.

To Thomas, standing in safety thirty feet away, the moment seemed frozen in time, taking many seconds more to occur than it actually had.

Seconds afterwards, having seen the burly, bear shaped Hunter collapsing with the real estate, Thomas had the sensation of having watched it in slow motion.

The collapse had taken only three seconds, yet Hunter too had a similar sensation of slow motion, of seconds which seemed like minutes, though at- the first sound of the cracking wood he'd known. The stairs had been a trap, set for any outsider who ventured toward the attic.

The pain was another matter. The pain was instant, recognizable immediately. Hunter lay beneath the cras.h.i.+ng steps and beams and felt the unspeakable torment in his two legs, parts of which were crushed beneath him, pinned into impossible positions as the legs of a discarded doll might be. But unlike a doll's legs, Hunter's consisted of breakable bones, flesh, blood, and nerves.

He howled in pain, bellowing like an animal caught in an iron claw trap. The bellowing didn't stop. It was a torrent of profanities, obscenities, and' help me even though Thomas sprang immediately to Hunter's aid and began digging him out from under the last steps to fall.

Leslie arrived next, followed quickly by Whiteside and Hammond. They'd heard the crash. They'd heard the yelling. The beams of their lamps illuminated the room with strangely cast shadows and streaks. Thomas shouted,

"The steps collapsed!" but it was apparent to anyone with two eyes.

"We'll have to get him out of here' said Hammond, giving word to the obvious. Hunter's face was white, excluding the beard, of course, and the streaks of blood from forehead cuts and gashes.

Thomas helped separate him from the wooden planks which had enshrouded him. Thomas could see the pain and pleading on the man's face, the anguish, and the very human blood that was pouring from his veins. And the two bloodied, horribly contorted legs which might never function properly again for the rugged Hunter.

Thomas winced. For the first time he looked upon Hunter not as a brute, not as an adversary, but as another human being,"a man with feelings, blood, and beliefs. Hunter had believed strongly enough in an ideology to work for it as a career; just as Hammond did, just as the real Arthur Sandler had and just as other men including his own father in a different manner-had. And this, crushed legs in a crumbling house for a cause that would probably never be considered important, is where it had brought Hunter.

Thomas looked at the fallen steps and wondered what he believed in, himself Could have been me on them, he thought. Could have been me.

His thoughts were interrupted.

Hunter had been extricated and was wallowing in pain a few feet from where he'd fallen. Hammond and Whiteside were fas.h.i.+oning a makes.h.i.+ft stretcher from sheets and a pair of strong boards.

Hammond would arrange to get him out to an unmarked ambulance.

But something was still falling. Leslie noticed, too.

"What's that?" she said.

There was paper drifting down like leaves in the wind. Peacefully and calmly, a draft in the attic was rustling a few papers from the great stacks which were upstairs.

Small papers. The size of dollar bills.

The same shape and texture of dollar bills. Some printed, some unprinted.

All attention, even Hunter's, drifted to the spectacle. Money was floating earthward; not from Heaven, but very definitely from above.

From the impromptu atelier in the attic.

Money, drifting through the ripped-away floorboards.

Dollar bills. Dollar bills with only one side printed, the other side magically bleached away. Blank sheets, having once been dollar bills but now with both faces bleached.

And others, finished products, so to speak. Fifties. Hundreds.

Crisp, clear, and perfect, the production of masters. Or at least one master. A small unspendable fortune drifting down on them, yet only the bottom tip of the large green iceberg.

Hammond stood there awe struck, seeing the same bills that had been presented to him in the Treasury Department. He was onto the source, or at least very near to it, and his heart pounded in his chest. He watched the money drifting down, like snowflakes now, a piece at a time.

"Yes," said Whiteside, kneeling by Hupter to comfort him, but angrily addressing the speechless Hammond.

"Not so amusing now, is it? Not when they're your b.l.o.o.d.y dollars instead of sterling" He paused and bitterly snapped,

"Help this man, confound it," he demanded.