“I think he was called Anton. That’s what your dad told me.”
“Anton Farkas, Anton Farkas . . .” Amanda muttered to herself pacing the room.
“That’s the same name Joe Farkas’s brother gave,” said her grandfather, “the one who identified the bodies. You don’t think—”
“The letters branded onto the buttocks of the Constantes!” Amanda interrupted. “They were his initials.”
“F on Michael, A on Doris.”
“That depends on how they were positioned on the bed. A, F: Anton Farkas.”
“The card found in the trailer had the same name on it. It was an invitation to a party at the Rob Hill campground on December 10. But in his police statement, Joe Farkas’s brother denied having sent it.”
“He was telling the truth, Grandpa—he didn’t send it. His nephew, Sharon and Joe’s son, did. Don’t you get it, Kabel? The Farkases didn’t come to San Francisco to see Joe’s brother. The person they met in that trailer was their long-lost son, also called Anton, like his uncle.”
“You need to call your dad,” said Blake.
“Hang on, give me a minute to think. . . . We also need to contact Ryan, and it would be better to do it by phone.”
Blake Jackson dialed the cell phone number Pedro had given him. The phone only rang twice, as though the Uruguayan was expecting the call.
“Pedro? Sorry for calling so late.” Blake handed the phone to his granddaughter.
“You have to get a message to Ryan right now. Tell him farkas means ‘wolf’ in Hungarian. The Farkases’ son was called Anton. Lee Galespi knew his real name, and who his parents were, when he drew up the list of people he intended to kill. I suspect the reason there’s no record of Lee Galespi or Carol Underwater is because he’s using his real name. Tell Ryan that Anton Farkas is the Wolf. You need to track him down in the next twenty hours.”
Then Amanda called her father, who had gone back to his apartment for the first time that week and dozed off on his bed, still wearing his clothes and his shoes.
“You need to arrest Anton Farkas, Dad. You have to get him to tell you where he’s taken Mom. Rip out his fingernails if you have to, you hear me?”
“I hear you, kid. Let me talk to Blake.”
“Hey, Bob,” said Blake.
“This is in my hands now, Blake. I’ll get the entire San Francisco force and every other force in the Bay Area out looking for every Anton Farkas they can find, and I’ll put a call in to the FBI. I’m worried Amanda is about to have a breakdown. Could you give her something to calm her?”
“No, Bob—we need her to be clearheaded for the next twenty hours.”
At 10:00 a.m., having been careful to turn off video streaming, Ryan contacted the Ripper players on Skype. He could not ask Denise to play the part, since, it being market day, she had set off early with her crates of free-range eggs, chickens, and jars of jam, and would not be back until the afternoon.
“What happened to your webcam, Jezebel?” asked Amanda, who was sitting with her grandfather in the kitchen with a single laptop.
“I don’t think there’s time to fix it right now. Can you hear me okay?”
“Loud and clear,” said Colonel Paddington, “but your voice sounds odd.”
“I’ve got laryngitis.”
“Let’s get to the most recent updates, players,” said the games master. “Kabel, you’re up.”
Blake summarized what had been discussed by the homicide detail. The players already knew that Carol Underwater was really Lee Galespi, and that the police had been unable to track him down. Blake also explained what Amanda had discovered about Anton Farkas.
“I called Jezebel last night and asked her to track down Anton Farkas,” said Amanda, not mentioning that they had spoken again a couple of times this morning. “She’s the best investigator we have.”
“I thought we agreed that no player should be given an advantage,” said Paddington grumpily.
“We’ve got no time for formalities, Colonel. The battle has already started. We’ve only got until midnight, and we don’t know where my mom is.” Amanda’s voiced was choked with emotion.
“She’s alive, but her aura is very weak,” said Abatha in a sleepwalker’s drone. “She is in a large building. It’s cold and dark—I can hear screams. I can also sense the spirits protecting the master’s mother.”
“What have you managed to find out, Jezebel?” Sherlock Holmes interrupted.
“Well, what info I have, I owe to Sherlock and Amanda,” said Jezebel. “Thanks to both of you, we’re a lot closer to solving this thing.”
Jezebel went on to explain that, fortunately, Anton Farkas was not a common name. There were only four people with that name in California: Joe Farkas’s brother in Eureka; an old man in a retirement home in Los Angeles; a man living in Sacramento; and someone else in Richmond. He had called the first number and got a recorded message: “You’ve reached Anton Farkas, licensed builder and property surveyor. Leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.” When he called the second number, he got the same recording: they were the same person.
“This is the most important lead we’ve had,” said Colonel Paddington.
“There is no street address listed for Anton Farkas in either city,” said Jezebel. “Only post-office boxes.”
Amanda and Blake already knew that, not only from Ryan but also because Bob Martín had phoned to tell them. The address of anyone renting a mailbox is confidential, he had explained, and he would need a warrant to get it. He then pointed out that he had no jurisdiction in those cities, but that when they had found out what was happening, the two FBI agents—who did not need a warrant—had immediately offered to help. Right now, Lorraine Barcott was in Richmond, and Napoleon Fournier III was in Sacramento.
What Blake and Amanda did not know was that Ryan Miller and Pedro Alarcón had found out something else.
“Did you say Anton Farkas was a property surveyor?” Esmeralda asked Jezebel.
“That’s right, and that’s why I decided to take a look at the list of recent surveys signed off by Anton Farkas in Sacramento and Richmond, where he had to be working. There is a state list of surveyed properties. One of them immediately corresponds to Abatha’s description: Winehaven. It’s a derelict property in Point Molate that was a famous winery until it closed in 1919. During World War II, it was used by the navy. These days it belongs to the Richmond city council.”
“Very interesting,” said Paddington.
“It’s a vast abandoned building. The navy used to house officers in the old workers’ cottages, and they converted the storage cellar into a military barracks and built an air-raid shelter,”
“You think it would be possible to hide a kidnap victim there?”
“It would be perfect. The navy hasn’t used it since 1995, so Winehaven’s been uninhabited since then. No one knows what to do with the place; there was some vague plan to turn it into a casino, but it never got off the ground. The workers’ cottages are still there. The main building, which looks like a medieval fortress built of red brick, isn’t open to the public, but you can see it from the Vallejo ferry, which passes close by, and from San Rafael Bridge. Last March, the San Rafael council hired Anton Farkas to survey the property.”
“Anton Farkas, or Lee Galespi, or Carol Underwater—whatever you want to call the Wolf—could be holding my mother in any of the abandoned houses, or in the fortress itself,” said Amanda. “How are we going to find her without a SWAT team?”
“If I were the Wolf and was looking for a lair, I’d choose the air-raid shelter,” said Colonel Paddington. “It’s basic strategy.”
“The houses are boarded up, and they’re all close to the road. They would be no use as a hideout. I agree with the colonel—the Wolf would choose the air-raid shelter. Since Anton Farkas was hired to survey the property, he would know how to get into it.”
“What’s the next step?” asked Esmeralda.
“We need to tell my dad!” shouted Amanda.
“No.” Jezebel stopped her. “If Anton Farkas has got your mom in Winehaven, we can’t alert the police. They’ll storm the fortress like a herd of buffalo, and they’d never get to your mother in time.”
“I agree with Jezebel,” said Colonel Paddington. “We have to do something ourselves. We have to take him by surprise.”
“No point counting on me,” said Esmeralda. “I’m in a wheelchair in New Zealand.”
“I suggest we ask Ryan Miller to help,” proposed Jezebel.
“Who?” said Esmeralda.
“The guy accused of killing Alan Keller.”
“Why him?”
“Because he’s a Navy SEAL.”
“Miller is probably halfway across the world by now,” said Sherlock Holmes. “He wouldn’t have been stupid enough to stay so close to the scene of the crime with a police manhunt going on.”
“He didn’t commit any crime,” Abatha interrupted. “We know that now.”
“He might have stayed in the Bay Area to try to track down the Wolf,” suggested Kabel, signaling to Amanda to be careful what she said. “I don’t think he trusts the police.”
“So, how do we find this Navy SEAL?” asked Esmeralda.
“I’ll take care of that,” Amanda reassured them. “I’m the games master.”
“I know this man will help us—I can see it in my third eye,” said Abatha.
“Assuming he’s free,” said Colonel Paddington, disappointed that he was in New Jersey, since the situation clearly required a military strategist of his caliber.
“Let’s assume the master manages to track down Ryan Miller,” said Esmeralda. “How is he going to get into Winehaven?”
“The Navy SEALs managed to get into Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan,” muttered the colonel. “I don’t think Miller will have much of a problem getting into a derelict warehouse in Richmond.”
“The Bin Laden operation took months of planning, the assault was led by a group of Navy SEALs in helicopters with further air support, and they went in intending to kill,” Sherlock Holmes said ominously. “This would be an unplanned operation by one man to rescue someone, not to kill. The most difficult thing to do is to recover a hostage alive: it’s been proven.”
“Have we got an alternative?” asked Esmeralda.
“No. But, for a Navy SEAL, this is child’s play,” said Jezebel, and immediately regretted the words because it was bad luck to boast about an operation in advance, as more than one soldier had learned.
“We’ll meet up again at six p.m., California time,” said Amanda. “In the meantime, I’ll track down Miller.”
Four of the Ripper players signed out of Skype, while the games master and her henchman stayed online with Jezebel—or rather, Miller—listening to his plan of action. The SEAL explained to them that Winehaven was made up of a number of buildings and that the biggest, which housed the old wine cellars, was three storeys high, and had a cellar where the navy had built the air-raid shelter. The windows were covered with metal grilles, the door that led to the shelter from the bay side was blocked with a pair of crossed steel bars, and the whole property was fenced off for fear it would be used for a terrorist attack on the neighboring Chevron oil refinery. A security guard did a few circuits at night, but he never went into the buildings. There was no electricity, and according to the last inspection report, by Anton Farkas, the place was unsafe: it often flooded during storms or when the tide was high in the bay. The floorboards were loose, there was rubble where parts of the ceiling had fallen in, and large holes in the floors.
“Do you know what the shelter’s like?” asked Blake.
“More or less, although the plans don’t make it very clear. The cellar is huge. There used to be an elevator, but it’s not there any more, so there must be a staircase. According to the plan drawn up by the navy, the shelter can accommodate a whole regiment of soldiers and officers, as well as a field hospital.”
“How are you planning to get in?” asked Amanda.
“There’s a door on the second floor that you can see from the path,” Ryan replied. “Pedro’s just called me, he’s at Point Molate, says he photographed the door with a telescopic lens from the fence. It’s made of iron and locked with industrial padlocks that he says are easy to break open. But then, any padlock is a piece of cake for him.”
“I’m assuming Pedro’ll go with you,” said Amanda.
“No, he’d only get in the way. Pedro doesn’t have my level of training. He should be careful, too, because your dad has a detective following him—I don’t know how Pedro slipped away and got to Point Molate, or how he’s going to get me what I need from where he is.”
“Can he teach you to open the padlocks?”
“Yeah, but it’s one of those sliding metal doors—if I try to open it or break a window, it’ll make a lot of noise. I’ll need to find another way in.”
I’m glad you’re finally awake, Indi. How do you feel? You’re weak, but at least you can walk—it’s just there’s no need to. There’s a beautiful day dawning outside. It’s mild, the water’s clear, not a cloud in the sky, and a breeze is picking up—ideal for sports. There are hundreds of sailboats out in the bay, and there’s always a few of those crazy people skimming over the water on their kitesurfs. There are a lot of gulls out, too—and man, what a racket! That means the fishing’s good, so all the ancient Chinese guys will come out on to the shores to fish. We’re near an old whaling station, the last one in the US, it’s been disused for forty years. They used to bring in whales from the Pacific, and you could still find a few in the bay a century ago. The bottom of the bay’s a carpet of bones. They say that back in the day, a team of forty men could reduce a humpback whale to oil and stewing meat in an hour, and that the smell reached all the way to the city.
Did you know we’re just a few meters from the water? What am I saying—how would you know if you haven’t been able to go outside? There’s no beach here, and the property can’t be reached from the bay. This was a navy fuel depot in World War II, and you can still find mildewed old instruction manuals lying around, and medical equipment, and the barrels of water I mentioned to you the other day.
Your daughter’s good fun, a real sharp girl. Playing with her is keeping me on my toes: I’ve left clues for her, and she’s found almost every one. I’m sure it’s occurred to her that the Wolf is Anton Farkas, which will be why the police are going after him now. They’re going to find nothing but some mailboxes and phone numbers, though—an illusionist’s trick. I’ve mastered the art. When I found out they were looking for Farkas, I knew that sooner or later Amanda would link the property surveyor with this fortress. She’ll never do it in time, though—and anyway, I’m ready.
Good Friday has come at last, Indi, so your captivity ends today. Don’t think I’ve dragged it out to punish you, though: you know that cruelty disgusts me, it only creates confusion, filth, and chaos. I would have preferred to spare you this trouble, but you didn’t want to see reason, you refused to cooperate. I didn’t just pick today at random, or because I felt like it—I chose it from the lunar calendar. Dates matter, and so do rituals: they give human actions meaning and beauty, and they help to fix them in our memories. I know I’ve got my rituals. I always carry out my executions at midnight, for instance—that mysterious moment when the veil separating life and death is lifted. It’s a shame that there are so few secular rituals left in modern life—they’re all religious now. Take Christians, who are celebrating Holy Week with solemn rites as I speak. They observe three days of mourning to commemorate Christ’s crucifixion—we all know that—but not very many people know what crucifixion really is. It’s a slow death: utter torture. The condemned man is tied or nailed to two planks of wood, one vertical, the other horizontal—at least that’s the well-known version, but there are other sorts of cross too. It can take hours or even days for him to die, depending on the method used and the victim’s state
of health. The cause of death can be exhaustion, septicemia, cardiac arrest, dehydration, or a combination of any of those. It can be loss of blood, too, if the convict has wounds, or if his legs have been broken, which was sometimes done to speed up the process. There’s a theory that the position of the outstretched arms, holding up the weight of the body, stifles the breath, and that death is caused by asphyxiation, but it’s never been proven.
It was a sunny day, spring was in the air, with bursts of color on all the market stalls. Among those stalls strolled a crowd of shoppers in light clothes and high spirits, buying fruit, vegetables, meat, bread, and various delicacies. At the entrance to the market a blind girl wearing the distinctive cap of Mennonite women was singing in a heavenly voice and selling CDs of her songs; a hundred yards farther on a Bolivian band, with their indigenous clothes and Andean instruments, entertained the crowd.
At midday Pedro Alarcón, wearing shorts, sandals, and a straw hat, walked up to the white canopy under which Denise West sold products from her farm and her kitchen. The detective from the homicide detail who had been trailing Pedro for some days had taken off his jacket and was fanning himself with a pamphlet about ecological living that someone had put in his hand. Hidden in the crowd a few yards off, he watched the Uruguayan flirt with the stall owner—a mature, attractive woman dressed like a lumberjack, with a gray plait of hair hanging down her back—but didn’t see him give her his car keys. The detective sweated as he followed Pedro, who strolled from stall to stall buying a carrot here, a spray of parsley there, with infuriating slowness. He had no idea that meanwhile, Denise was on her way to the parking lot to get a package out of Pedro’s car and put it in her truck. The detective saw nothing strange in his subject stopping by the stall again to say good-bye to the woman he’d been making eyes at as he left, and he suspected nothing as Pedro got his keys back.
Denise closed her stall early, took her canopy down, loaded her gear into the truck, and headed for the location Pedro had given her, by the mouth of the Petaluma River, a huge expanse of rivulets and swamps. She had trouble finding the place. She had been expecting something more like a shop selling water sports equipment, but it turned out to be a house so dilapidated it looked abandoned. She brought her heavy vehicle to a halt in a mud puddle. Not daring to drive on for fear of getting stuck, she honked her horn a few times, and as if by magic a bearded man holding a rifle appeared less than a meter from her car window. Still pointing the gun at her, he shouted something incomprehensible, but Denise hadn’t come that far to fall at the first hurdle. She opened the door, getting down with some difficulty because of the pain in her joints, and faced the man, hands on her hips.