The door banging awakened them like a splash of ice-water.
“What the hell?” exclaimed Richard when the pounding continued and he
grabbed his thick ratty bathrobe, yelping as his bare feet hit the cold floorboards. Anne shut her eyes and allowed the man of the house to be the man of the house.
The door swung open—it wasn’t locked, it had no lock—to find Penny standing with Clark about to swing her fist again. Richard peered at the clock—not twelve!
“Get yourselves dressed double-quick and I mean now!” As Richard obeyed, moaning, she added, “Sorry to interrupt the wedding night but it’s kind of a life ‘n death thing! Isn’t it, love?”
Clark said nothing, angry with himself at having been struck dumb.
Shortly, Anne and Richard were wrapped in overcoats and cloth hats and bundled into the back of Penny’s Jeep where a cloud of welcome warmth greeted them. They had barely got the door shut when it took off down the hill to stop at the very back of the deserted parking lot.
Richard leaned forward to ask what all the rush was about when Penny’s hand shot up. “Don’t speak, haven’t time, and I’ve a virtual crapper-load to impart. You, too, darling, I’m so sorry,” and she grasped Clark’s hand in his lap. He was still non-plussed.
“First off, life and death isn’t a joke, there’re at least three sticks of dynamite under your little cottage set to detonate before sun-up.”
Swallowing that stunner, the young people could only frown questioningly.
Penny shook a finger—no questions—gulped a mouthful of air and off she went with an East London accent. “It doesn’t ‘alf begin with ‘im, but we can but hope it ends with ‘im. I’m talking, of course, about Lieutenant Colonel Donald H. Walker. Now, most of what I have to say, Pink—that is, Clark —knows tuppence more than the pair of ye, so to save time I’ll only have to tell it once. I know, darlin’—it’s struck him hard and, well, you can’t blame him. See, he’s had the family to the house too often to count. He was, well, I hate to say, a son, and have to find out—sorry, luv. I”ll get on with it.”
Now she was back to her upper-class voice. “You see, we’d no idea the cabin was wired up along with the dome—oh yes, the dome—but soon’s we did, we had to get you kiddies out. Like Clark, I’ve liked Don but unlike him, never entirely trusted our ordnance bloke. He does like his work too much. Still, Clark knew no one was better to blast out that hole fast and efficiently, which he did but of course didn’t know he was a mole. The s. o. b. was taking copies of my reports and going off and faxing ‘em to people in the Pentagon and mebbe some in that bunch who scarpered soon’s they had their fill.”
Throughout the narrative, Clark faced the window, numb with shame and disappointment but listening nevertheless as Richard saw him occasionally nod.
“Okay, luv, so I warned ya. Did I once do fuck all about it, even to put a watch on ‘im? S’cuse my French.”
It amazed Richard that this great old warrior could be cowed into silence by this spindly old British lady with the on-off Cockney, until he recalled that during their only stand-off, Clark had walked off and brooded silently. Penny told him whenever he got angry enough to scream or do himself harm, he clammed up tight.
“Anyway, here I was, the wet sponge between two rocks who got along like a house on fire and me not knowin’ how to say anything about the man without causing a Donnybrook. I was too afraid we’d—never mind, it’s nobody’s fault!”
A negating ‘huh’ from Clark to mean, where after all did the buck stop?
“Well, my dander didn’t start up until I asked him about those odd night inspections, which he wriggled out of and didn’t idiot I accept it? I actually didn’t smell something stinkin’ in Denmark until those snarky delegates couldn’t take their fat bums off ta waddle down to their oversized Chevies fast enough. What was the hurry?
“Pink, you don’t think it was Hothead Furness behind it all? It never occurred to me at the time, way back when we were thinking of nuking this crowd (meaning the newlyweds), while he was meantime plotting with Walker as his spy. Well, okay, plus me in the marchers’ camp. Note to Pen; find the bahstid.
“But when you (Richard) inquired earlier this afternoon as to the whereabouts of our aide-de-camp I took myself under cover of powdering me nose inside the dome where some of our chaps were helping set up tables and didn’t I just grab a delicious fat scampi. Chomping on it, I learned none of ‘m ‘d seen Walker, indeed not since yestiddy. Now that titbit really stunk in Den—sorry—but what got me cylinders firing was, who should be sitting pleased as punch on the front row but one of his squad, in fact, ‘is trusty second looey ‘oo’d been sent off to Greenland with the others. Well, didn’t I just grab ‘im and pull ‘im behind the stands.
“When did he get back? I demand to know and he kind of grins with sheep dip on his face. Where did Walker banish them to? Ha. He and the others were awarded a three day pass to inspect the danger spots of New York, meaning the nightclubs still in full-swing. It wasn’t only Denmark but all of Scandinavia that reeked foul.
“Now a bit of a leap, mental-wise, has me wondering if what I suspected at the very beginning wasn’t gospel?”
We all leaned forward when she paused, nodding and screwing up her face in devilish possibilities. Richard broke the silence.
“What—what? Oh, sorry, Penny, really, I am. No more—ow.”
Came a sharp elbow from Anne as Penny returning to her tale in slow-motion.
”What my East London brain had finally sussed was that what he was doin’ them two nights was not lookin’ for explosives but plantin ‘em.”’
“Oh my gahhh--!” Anne blabbed in shock before she could stop herself. Penny grinned, Richard scowling at the chumminess of the women.
“So I ask him—the member of his bomb squad, that is. No, he knew nothin’ about no Roman Candles planted about the dome—who would do sich a thing after all the trouble they went to puttin’ ‘er up? ‘e sez. I told him ‘oo, and grabbed another of Walker’s troops that was still hung-over from their weekend on the town to follow me quietly, and the four—no, five of us sneak behind the dome, and then up the hill to yon cosy hideaway.
“A wonder how one of Walker’s squad, Lieutenant Starkey, who should be given a field promotion, found the sticks fiddled guess where—into great cracks in the beams, a surprise the house is still up!“
The clearing of throats was to Richard just another of the gazillion offers by the crew to tear it down and build a proper (and coldly refused) little cabin.