by Jon F. Merz
"Yes?"
"Put the old man on."
"Who is this?"
"If I don't speak with him inside of ten seconds, I will kill you within one week, now get him on this fucking phone!"
The line went silent. A few seconds later a new voice appeared. "Stahl?"
"Where is he?"
"Excuse me?"
"My son! Goddamn you all if you've harmed him. I told you I would not - "
"Stahl, calm yourself. What in the world are you talking about?"
"I just called the hospital and they told me my son has been checked out by an uncle of his. He doesn't have an uncle! Who else but you would be able to get him out of the hospital like that? Who else?"
"I don't know, but I can assure you it wasn't me."
"You're lying."
"Why would I lie?"
"To keep me from coming back there and killing you."
Another pause on the line. "Ernst, I take it everything is proceeding as planned over there?"
"Of course. Everything's set."
"Then finish the job and come home. We'll sort this all out once you're back her where you belong, okay?"
Stahl gripped the phone like it was a lifeline. "I am not for one moment joking about this old man. If he's harmed - you will die the slowest most agonizing death imaginable."
"Threats don't become you, Ernst."
"I'm not threatening you," said Stahl. "I'm telling you a definite fact about your future life if I'm proven correct."
He slammed the phone down and sat on the bed rocking himself back and forth, sucking oxygen into his lungs. My son! God noÉ
Karen.
He looked up. If the old man was involved in his son's disappearance, he'd need an extra hand on the job to get Alois back. Karen would be perfect. He nodded, feeling some measure of control come back over him.
Yes.
She'd be glad to help.
He checked his watch. As much as he hated it, the future seemed clear. Finish the job - that's what the old man obviously wanted to ensure after all - and then go home and take care of killing the bastards who'd possibly hurt his son.
He'd make them pay for that.
Stahl would see to it.
He slid off the bed and turned off the small light by the phone. Charcoal gray enveloped the room, punctured only just by the daylight kept at bay by the heavy curtains of his room.
Stahl stood there for another moment, calming himself down even more.
It will be okay, he thought.
Alois will be safe.
I swear it.
Or I'll die trying.
Chapter Forty-Two
Frank didn't have the first clue about how to find Stahl. All he knew was he had to move quickly if he had any hope of stopping the German and staying alive at the same time.
By now, the Feds would have discovered the bodies at the holding facility. There'd be all sorts of APBs out. He hoped they knew that Frank hadn't orchestrated the damned thing. The video surveillance should have captured the assault teams' entrance and subsequent killing of the agents.
Frank frowned. They could pin the attack on him if they tied the fact that he'd basically told Bobby and the others where to find him
He shook his head. What a mess.
Guess I still have a lot to learn, he thought. And then another thought struck him. Frank wasn't so sure he wanted to learn anymore. At least, not these types of lessons.
He was tired.
Hell, he was exhausted.
I could use a long vacation, he thought.
But that would have to wait. He'd have to get out of this mess somehow first.
And that meant finding Stahl.
Frank checked his watch. Time ticked by.
Where would the target be? What or who would Stahl be going after?
How could he find out?
The link.
He sighed. Did he really want to trust something so bizarre to lead him to where he needed to be? It went against everything Moe had taught him. The only thing he was supposed to rely on was hard intelligence that could be confirmed and verified with other outside sources.
Psychic connections brought about by the weirdest of circumstances didn't qualify.
But Frank wasn't much sure what else to do. Who could he go to? Who could he call?
No one.
He stretched out on the extra long couch he'd bought years ago simply because he enjoyed taking naps in front of the television and none of the couches were long enough to fully accommodate his tall frame.
He tried to remember how Gia had instructed him to relax.
Gia.
His mind reeled. What must she be thinking about all this right now? He sighed. Probably out with a shotgun looking for me. Probably doesn't care whether I live or die.
Helluva lady.
And I can't stop loving that chick.
He closed his eyes. Back to the matter at hand.
He eased his breathing down to a slower rate. Inhaling through his nostrils and exhaling through a small opening in his mouth, he could feel a weight come over his body as his muscles drooped toward the couch and beyond to the floor. Almost as if he was melting into the surroundings themselves.
Images swam behind his eyelids but they were unfocused, distorted, twisted drizzles of lines. Frank didn't try to focus them, just worked on making himself relax even more.
It worked.
The lines began taking on a semblance of something. As Frank drifted, his mind suddenly seemed to want to zoom in one direction. But where? Frank let the next breath go and his mind go as well.
And then his awareness shifted.
Outside.
He was outside.
He could tell the wind was blowing hard. He could see the gray clouds overhead, poked through by icicles of yellow light. There were a lot of people around.
Something about the place seemed familiar.
Backpacks.
He frowned. So many backpacks.
Tourists? No.
Students?
Yes!
He concentrated by trying not to and was rewarded by his mind's eye focusing on a red brick building a short distance away. He could make out the numbers above the doorway.
The address!
But whereabouts in the city was he?
He thought about drifting up into the sky and instantly he left the ground. The buildings around him shrank from view as his body seemed to fly away from the earth.
So much for gravity, he thought.
He saw the river.
The Charles River.
Over twenty-six miles long, the river cut through the center of Massachusetts snaking its way east toward the Boston Harbor. But this close to students and to the target buildingÉ
It could only be one of two colleges: MIT or Harvard.
Frank had been to MIT before and this wasn't it. The street scene he'd just left was too cosmopolitan for MIT. The scene seemed to blend with businesses and city life. MIT was a bit more secluded to general traffic.
Harvard.
That meant the target building had to be someplace outside of Harvard Square.
Was Stahl there already?
His mind's eye dropped back down to street level. He checked the surrounding area, searching for the presence he knew he'd feel. Somehow.
And found it.
Amid the surging foot traffic, one figure stood out.
Not moving.
Frank frowned. Doesn't he know he'll attract attention if he stays there too long?
The figure turned and looked right at Frank.
"I wondered if you'd show up."
Frank's head hurt. He could talk to him?
"I can hear you in my mind. Yes." Stahl smiled at him. "Is this your way of paying me back for my visit the other night?"
"I needed to find you," said Frank.
"Yes. I've come to suppose we're both driven by things neither one of us can control. Rather funny, isn't it?"
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"How do you mean?"
"Look at us, Frank. Two men - two elite killers. Normally, we're the instruments of death - we control other people's lives. We snip their threads when the orders come down. And yet, despite our obvious skills, both of us can't control the things that have brought us together."
Frank started to say something and then stopped. He was in control, wasn't he?
"You're not," said Stahl. "The woman. The ideal that she represents. Love. Isn't that what you're searching for?"
"Keep her out of this."
"Impossible. She's too wrapped up in it. If you'd simply forsaken her when you had the chance, she wouldn't have figured into your life today. You'd never have incurred the wrath of your former employers."
"What about you? Turn the microscope on yourself."
Stahl shrugged. "Easy enough. I'm a victim to my son's health problems. Ironic, isn't it? So much of what we encounter in life we feel we can control somehow or other. Hell, our entire society is based on forging our path in life by wresting control any way we can. People walk all over each other. They struggle and claw their way to get whatever they want with little regard for others. And you and I are no different, just on another level. And yet, after all of that, life steps in and slaps us with our respective dilemmas. You with this woman Gia. Me, with my son Alois." Stahl smiled. "There's some type of celestial humor in the situation, I suppose."
"I don't feel like laughing."
"I haven't laughed for a long time," said Stahl. "I'd like to remember what it was like." Stahl reached behind his right hip. The gun materialized in the next instant.
Frank felt his stomach drop.
"Sorry it has to come to this."
"You can't shoot me."
Stahl smiled. "You mean the link thing. You're an apparition of sorts to me right now."
"Aren't I?"
Stahl nodded. "Just wondered what you'd do when I drew on you."
"And what about you? Do you have a crowd of people staring at you right now for talking to thin air?"
Stahl shook his head. "I'm enjoying a nice cup of hot cocoa, to be honest. This whole thing is simply my mind doing its part. Nice, huh?"
"Stahl-"
He shook his head. "No. Don't start. It's time we ended this thing. I have my destiny to fulfill." He shot a glance at Frank. "And you have yours."
"Wait!"
The scene vanished. Frank jerked off the couch and almost fell to the floor.
"Dammit!"
He stopped.
A noise.
Close by.
"I thought I'd find you here."
The voice. Frank sighed.
Turned.
He saw the gun first.
Then the smile.
Gia.
Chapter Forty-Three
"Why'd you come back?"
Frank sat up on the couch. "No place else to go. I had to get some stuff anyway. Stuff I couldn't get any place else."
Gia nodded. "Just do yourself a favor and don't try to go for any of that Ôstuff' right now. I don't want to shoot you if I can avoid it."
"I find that hard to believe."
Gia ignored him. "You know what sort of net the Feds are trying to string across this city right now? Hundreds of agents are combing the streets for you."
"Why me?"
"On account of what happened."
"They think I was behind that?"
Gia shrugged. "They know you couldn't have done it yourself. But since the team that hit the holding facility wore masks, you're the only person they can readily identify."
"And they figure that if they get me, I can lead them to the others."
Gia smiled. "I don't think you'll be leading anyone to anything. They're still doing forensic work on the explosion that took place on the South Boston Access Road last night."
Frank said nothing.
Gia lowered her gun. "So, you were taking a nap?"
"Something like that."
"And talking to yourself?"
"Must have been a dream."
She eyed him. "Yeah, some dream. Sounded like you were in the midst of a full-fledged conversation when I came up here."
"Make your point, if you have one."
Gia sat down on the couch. Her gun slipped down even lower. Frank frowned. Was she tempting him to make a move? Her could easily take her out at this range. She'd deliberately positioned herself at a vulnerable position.
"You saw the German again, didn't you?"
Frank sighed. "What gives with you, anyway? First you get me involved in discovering this ability of mine, then you act like it's the silliest thing you've ever heard of. And now we're back to square one again with you asking all about it." He shook his head. "No wonder I could never figure you out."
"You figured out enough."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You knew you loved me."
"So what? Fat lot of good it did me."
"Most people go through their lives never even knowing what true love is. You found it. That's something to be proud of."
"Unrequited love is nothing to be proud of."
Gia smiled. "What did the German say?"
"What difference does it make anymore? Now that you're here you'll want to bring me in and collect all your little brownie points and awards and get promoted and all that shit. Meanwhile, some German assassin will carry out his plan and I won't have stopped him because I was too busy getting myself out of shit I could have avoided simply by killing you."
She shook her head. "I'm not bringing you in."
"You're not?" He looked up at her. Gia holstered her gun.
"You could kill me now. I sat here deliberately. To show you that I have trust in you. I placed my life in your hands. You didn't let me down. Now the decision is yours. You'll have to decide if you can trust me."
Frank sniffed. "Not for nothing, but you haven't exactly made yourself out to be the totem of trust you'd like me to believe you are."
She nodded. "It's true. I did lie. I lied a lot actually. I lied to do my job. If I hadn't, there's no way it could have ever come to this."
"What are you talking about?"
Gia crossed her arms. "Do you really think this was all just about me doing some silly routine undercover gig? That it was just about me risking my life for the sake of some greaseball wise guy?"
"I hope you're referring to Patrisi and not me."
"I was."
Frank glanced around. Somewhere there had to be a camera crew and Alan Funt waiting to step out of the shadows. But no one did. "You're more trouble than you're worth, Gia. Anyone ever told you that?"
"A few people have actually."
"They're right."
She smiled. "Yes. Yes, they probably are."
"What about your boyfriend on the assault team?"
"He was never my boyfriend. But surely Moe told you about the necessity of cultivating contacts. People who could plug you into the right situations, that sort of thing."
"Moe never used the word plug unless it was to describe killing someone."
"A lot of people confuse it with sex."
"Almost the same thing."
She shrugged. "In some ways."
"So, are you going to come clean and tell me what all this bullshit is about?"
"You knew me as Gia Patrisi, long-lost niece to my uncle."
"Which was a lie."
"Correct."
"And then you were a federal agent."
"Yes."
"But?"
"But I lied again."
"Okay."
She looked at her watch. "I'm not working for the FBI."
"You're not?"
"No."
"CIA?"
She smiled. "Close enough. Defense Intelligence, actually. CIA relies too much on satellites these days. DIA still like human agents."
"Excuse me for being out of the loop on the intelligence community."
Gia didn't rise to bait and ke
pt talking. "One of DIA's mandates that saw it through most of the Cold War was investigation into psychic research."
"You guys are behind the psychic hotlines?"
Again, Gia ignored him. "The Soviets did amazing work in the field. They made strides we never got near to. Countless presidents got pissed because we seemed so far behind." She leaned back into the cushions. "Then in the early 1980s, we got lucky. A KGB defector detailed some of the research the Soviets were conducting. When we pieced this information together with what we had, some holes got filled. Pieces of the puzzle came together."
"Go on."
"We set up several fronts for the experiments. Stanford Research Institute is the best known of them. Various other organizations fit the bill. They were all appropriately new age for our purposes. After what the CIA did with drug experimentation in the 60s and early 70s, we wanted to make sure there'd be no such similarity in the programs."
"So these experiments were successful?"
She nodded. "We called it remote viewing. Sounds a bit better than ESP or any other of that 1-900-bullshit phone line jargon. It panned better with the conservatives. We got to the point where we could track Soviet subs off the East Coast. We did other stuff as well."
"What kind of stuff?"
"How does slipstream time traveling sound?"
"Time travel? Cut the shit."
"I'm not shitting you Frank."
He leaned back, aware of how tired he was and simultaneously how time was ticking down. "How do I fit into all of this?"
"One of the studies we did was known as mind-linking. We tried unsuccessfully for years to mentally link up patients who had undergone some form of extreme stress. We figured that the extreme stress would produce the necessary environment for linking to occur."
"But for what purpose?"
"The possibilities are endless. Think about it: mind-linking would enable us to communicate covertly and without worry of compromise. We could link up with potential defectors, turncoats, whoever. All of the communication could be done without the need for costly communications equipment that could in turn compromise the agents themselves. It was the perfect system." She shrugged. "There was even talk that we could go beyond the normal realms of communication and reach out forÉother avenues."
"Other avenues?"
"At the risk of sounding hokey-"
