Terrace toward the intersection of Appleton Drive, its driver obviously checking the sewer drains in the street. When he reached the corner, a man in a darkblue raincoat flagged him down. It was impossible to go around the man; he moved back and forth in the middle of the street, waving his arms frantically. The driver opened his door and shouted through the rain.
"What's the mattah?" It was the last thing he would say for several hours.
Within the Appleton Hall compound, a guard in a cedar lean-to picked up his wall telephone and told the operator on the switchboard to give him an outside line. He was calling the Sanitation Department in Brookline.
One of their vans was on Appleton Drive, stopping every hundred feet or so.
"There are reports of a blockage in the vicinity of Beachnut and Appleton, sir. We have a truck checking it out." "Thank you," said the guard, pushing a button that was the intercom for all stations. He relayed the information and returned to his chair.
What kind of idiot would check out sewers for a living?
Scofield wore the black rain slicker with the stenciled white letters across the back. Sanitation Dept. Brookline. It was 3:05. The sighting had started, Antonia and Taleniekov standing behind windows on the other side of the estate; the concentration in Appleton Hall would be on the road below. He drove the sanitation van slowly up Appleton Drive, staying close to the curb, stopping at every sewer drain in the street. As the road was long, there were
roughly twenty to thirty such drains. At each stop he got out carrying a six-foot extension snake and whatever other tools he could find in the van that seemed to fit a hastily imagined problem. This was at every stop; at ten however, he added one other item. A five-quart plastic container that had been sprayed black. With seven he was able to wedge them between the spikes of the wroughtiron fence beyond the sightlines of the lean-tos, pushing them into the foliage with the snake. With three he used what was left of the bell wire and suspended them beneath the grates of the sewers.
At 4: he was finished and drove back to Beachnut Terrace where he began the embarrassing process of reviving the sanitation employee in the rear of the van. There was no time to be solicitous; he removed the rain slicker and slapped the man into consciousness.
"What the hell happened?" The man was frightened, recoiling at the sight of Bray above him.
"I made a mistake," said Scofield simply. "You can accept that or not, but nothing's missing, no harm's been done, and there is no problem with the sewers." "You're crazyl" Bray took out his money clip. "I'm sure it appears that way, so I'd like to pay you for the use of your truck. No one has to know about it. Here's five hundred dollars." "Five?..." "For the past hour you've been checking the drains along Beachnut and Appleton, that's all anyone has to know. You were dispatched and did your job. That is, if you want the five hundred." "You're crazy!" "I haven't got time to argue with you. Do you want the money or not?" The man's eyes bulged. He took the money.
It did not matter whether they saw him now; only what he saw mattered.
His watch read 4:57, three minutes remained before the sighting was terminated. He stopped his car directly below the midpoint of Appleton Hall, rolled down his window, and raised the binoculars, focusing through the rain on the lighted windows three hundred yards above.
The first figure to come into view was Taleniekov, but it was not the Taleniekov he had last seen in London. The Russian stood motionless behind the window, the side of his head encased in a bandage, a bulge beneath the open collar of his shirt further evidence of wounds wrapped tightly with gauze. Standing beside the Soviet was a dark-haired muscular man, his hand hidden behind Taleniekov's back. Scofield had the distinct impression that without that man's support Taleniekov would collapse. But he was alive, his eyes staring straight ahead, blinking every other second or so; the Russian was telling him he was alive.
Bray moved the glasses to the right, his breathing stopped, the pounding in his chest like a rapidly accelerating drum in an echo chamber. It was almost more than he could bear; the rain blurred the lenses; he was going out of his mind.