“Why, yes.”
“What time, sir?”
Baron looked at Tak, who did not respond. “Let’s make it eight,” he said. “Check with the concierge on where the best place is just now and how to get there. We’ll go relax and freshen up.”
“Very good, sir.”
Baron led Tak into the lobby. The concierge, recognizing the wealthy guest from previous stays, came out at once to greet him with old world manners. He bowed to Baron. “Good afternoon, Baron. It’s so delightful to have you back and to have nobility in residence once again. It distinguishes our hotel. Have you any immediate requests?”
“I’d like to arrange an additional room for my guest, adjoining. Then we would like you to make reservations for two at eight at the absolutely best place for the mushroom soup. Please tell my driver how to get there.”
“It would be my honor, Baron.”
Baron and Tak followed the concierge to the greeting counter. The concierge summoned a female clerk with a wave of his hand, but he stayed on the outside of the counter to better serve his royal guest.
After a few words with the clerk, he turned back to Baron. “Baron, the rooms on either side of your suite are taken, but one of the guests has not yet arrived. We are putting that guest elsewhere so you can have the adjoining suite. Could we have the name of the guest?”
“Just put the room in my name,” Baron said.
“Yes, of course.” The concierge filled out the card as just “Baron von Limbach,” and then filled out a second card for his guest as “Baron Von Limbach, Second Room.” But he was obligated to put down the responsible person for the second room, just in case Baron was not going to pay for it. The concierge turned to the woman. “Madam, how would you be paying for the room?”
Tak looked at Baron. “If you would be kind enough to lend me some money, I have something in exchange that you might take.”
His eyebrows rose. He turned to the concierge and said magnanimously, “Put her room, and whatever she wants, on my bill.”
“Very good, sir.” The clerk made magnetic entry cards for them, which the concierge handed to Baron and the woman.
Tak looked at it curiously.
Baron’s bags had been collected outside from the back of the car, brought inside, and on put on a brass trolley.
The concierge then looked at Tak. “Is your luggage here, madam?”
She raised the shoulder strap on the satchel she had slung over her shoulder. “I only have this one.”
Discrete as the best concierges must be, he simply wrote on the registration card, gave the bellman the number of Baron’s room, and said, “Second room, no bags.” He turned back to Baron. “Very good, sir, I’ll see to it that your chauffeur has the usual accommodations and whatever he needs. He can place your car in the special, secured, and monitored spot in our garage as usual. Will there be anything else at this moment?”
“Only the reservations for us at eight at the place that has the absolute best mushroom soup.”
“Of course, sir. It’s in season. I know just where to send you. I’ll make reservations for two and tell your driver how to get there.”
“Excellent.”
The concierge snapped his fingers at the bellman and off they went to the rooms. The bellman took the cargo elevator, and Baron and Tak the regular one, intended for guests.
In the room, Tak went right to the balcony overlooking the fabulous view of Vistula River with a castle just across in a beautiful sunset.
Baron followed her in. “Will this do?”
“Oh, yes, thank you, Baron. This is wonderful!”
‘‘I’m glad you like it. It’s the best in Krakow.” He tipped the bellman, who then left in the tradition of old world Poland, by backing out of the room.
“I’ll be just next door if you want anything,” Baron then said to Tak. “If I don’t hear from you sooner, let’s meet at eight in the lobby. Is there anything you need?”
“Yes. I do not have any of the local currency.”
“That’s all right. Just charge anything you want to the room.”
“Thank you, but I can pay for myself. I understand the need for money and brought something to trade.”
“Now, what on earth might that be?”
Tak opened her bag, reached inside a pocket, and took out ten bars of pure gold, each five inches long and an inch wide. “I understand that these are valuable here? Can you trade me your currency for these?”
Baron frowned. “Tak, you continue to surprise me. Those are worth a fortune! You hardly appear to be the damsel in distress.” He took one of the pieces in his hand to judge its weight. No stranger to wealth, he knew what to do. “I think I know what’s best for you. I’ll take them to an exchange for you tomorrow and make sure you get a good rate. There will probably be a commission loss of a few percent. Will that do?”
“That would be good.”
“Keep them until then, but you’d better carry them with you all the time and do not leave them in the room--although, there is a safe if you wish to use it. In the meantime, let me treat you. Let’s freshen up and dress for dinner which is at eight. Oh, sorry, I forgot you have no luggage. Well, just wear your outfit, as it will have to do.”
He went into the adjoining room through the passage door and closed it. In spite of his vast experience, he was bewildered. He had learned that truth was often stranger than fiction, but this was definitely a first.
In the privacy of her room, Tak realized that it was time to send a message to the starship. It had placed a geosynchronous satellite, high above Earth’s satellites, which would relay any messages. It was designed to follow her wrist computer wherever she went on the planet, so it should be directly overhead.
Tak spoke to her wrist computer in her own language. “Computer, send the following message to the starship: ‘Entry into planet’s atmosphere over initial landing site detected. Alternate spot chosen in a country called Poland on the other side of the planet, but in the same northern hemisphere. Landing safe and mission underway.’”
“Message sent,” the computer told her.
Tak then decided to try out the bathing facilities to prepare for something called “mushroom.”
***
The waiter pushed the serving cart over to the table with two huge, freshly baked, hollowed out bread loaves, that looked like large round buns, each on a serving plate.
“The mushroom soup is served in this fresh bread,” Baron explained. “The top, you will find, has been sliced and can be lifted off.”
He demonstrated by lifting the top off his, and she followed suit, allowing an enormous, steamy cloud of highly aromatic fresh mushroom soup and freshly baked bread to intensely satiate the senses.
The aroma consumed her. “This smells wonderful!”
As she inhaled its magnificence again and again, the waiter poured two glasses of wine that Baron had chosen.
She inhaled again, consumed in olfactory extravagance, and let out a “Hmmmmmm!”
Tak waited to see how Baron handled this strange object. He broke off a piece of the bun top with his fingers and took a spoon in his other hand. Sipping the steaming soup with the spoon, he ate the piece of hot bread. She copied him, sampling the sumptuous concoction.
“Delicious!” she found herself saying, involuntarily. She sipped the wine, savoring it, and looked at Baron, smiling. “I had no idea there were such wonders here.”
“Do you have mushroom soup where you come from?” he asked.
“Nothing like this, to be sure.”
“Tak, I speak quite a few languages and pride myself that I can tell where many, if not most, people come from. But I confess, I cannot place your origin from your accent. Perhaps, you have not obtained a particular accent because you travel so much. Have you traveled a great deal?”
“That much is certain.” She wondered if he would continue to press. She could tell him she was from Kansas as that was where she had planned to land. But sh
e did not know what a Kansas accent sounded like or much about Kansas itself. And most likely, a linguist like Baron would know right away that she was lying. Better not mention it, she decided, as he might turn her in to the authorities.
Baron took the cue that she did not wish to reveal her origins and left the subject alone to concentrate on the fabulous soup. His evening was, after all, adorned with a very beautiful young woman and so, he concluded, why not enjoy it to the fullest?
“What have you in store for the rest of your visit to Poland?”
“I want to learn as much as I can.”
“Have you had a chance to visit Auschwitz and Birkenau?”
“No. Are those people interesting?”
Baron blinked and sat back in his seat, as he could hardly believe her naiveté. He wondered if it was possible that someone had not heard of Auschwitz? She did not seem stupid. She seemed foreign, very foreign--and as charming as she was beautiful. He wanted her.
“Those are not people, but places. I’ll tell you what. I have business tomorrow, and now that includes exchanging gold for you. And, of course, I’ve already seen Auschwitz and Birkenau. Why don’t I have the concierge hire an English-speaking, private driver and a tour guide for you with a car and send you off to see them tomorrow? We could then meet for cocktails and dinner later. I’ll have your currency for you then. What say you to that?”
“That would be excellent.”
CHAPTER 5
Hot breath exhaled from the man and woman like low flying clouds as they plodded up the steep, snow-packed road, leading up to a plateau in the mountains nine miles from remote Stepnogorsk, Kazakhstan. Spring, that had come elsewhere, was still absent there.
The man carried a plastic bag with something in it that was fairly heavy.
The bus had dropped them off at the spot where there used to be a half dozen armed Soviet soldiers at a guard station, an electrified fence, a radio to call to verify any questionable identities, and a weapons carrier, all now vanished.
Dr. Borislav Dorogomilov was tall, gaunt, and pale-skinned. His hair receded on either side of his head and gray filled his sideburns. His mouth and lips had an unfriendly thinness, and his nose was long and slender. His expression gave no hint of welcome.
Dr. Anastasiya Volkova, his assistant of many years, was almost as old. She was tall, slender, with long, thin legs; thin, broad shoulders; and a tall, thin head with blondish hair. She was attractive, but she took no time to apply makeup nor fuss with her looks. Her manner was very domineering.
“It’s so good to have you back,” she said to him. “The funeral for Karina was very touching, and I cried for her loss. But yet, she was suffering, so it was a Godsend that she finally passed.”
“Thank you for everything and for the food you sent over to the house, Anastasiya.”
“I’ll do my best to take care of you now and please you, as I always have. But there’s something happening soon that you probably don’t know about since you’ve been gone. Some American diplomat, a woman from the US State Department, is coming to inspect the lab in a few days, as most of our financing for the fungi is now coming from the United States. As usual, there will be a few people from our government accompanying her, trying to talk the United States into providing more money. They, of course, will want the money to come to them to administer it. The woman will be here on a tour of several countries to give talks on why they need to stop allowing the production of drugs. She will report back to the United States on the need for additional money to continue the funding of our fungi research, and also for money for the dismantling of this building. She is on a tour of the Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and her last stop will be here.”
“What kind of nonsense is this?” he spat out angrily and thought of the stupidity and the hard times he was suffering. “This childish nonsense to make friendly fungi that kills opium, and is harmless to animals and humans, is set up to make it appear that the government is not allowing drug production. Ridiculous! Government officials themselves are in the drug trade. They get payoffs for allowing drug production, although no drugs come from this lab. What’ll I tell her? That I’m close to eradicating all drug production with my fabulous new fungi? The American government lives a lie to itself and its people. And I’m supposed to babysit some fucking cunt-for-brains idiot! Those assholes in the US send women to Muslim countries, and you know what they think of that and what they say about them when they leave.”
“Well, it is the funding of fungi growth to kill opium that keeps the lab open,” Anastasiya replied, trying to calm him. “Without that, we would have nothing, and you would not be able to keep your special room.” She referred to the special room where he kept live viruses that the Soviets had brought from Africa years before. “And it is not as though the Soviet government was ever truthful with anyone.”
“Better nothing than this,” Dr. Dorogomilov decreed in angry protest, but he really did not mean it.
They entered the doors of the huge Building 221. Moss blanketed the outside of the building, with its broken windows covered with plywood in place of more expensive glass.
Building 221 was dark, run down, the length of two football fields, and six stories tall, with four stories above ground and two underground. The underground stories were put there to assist containment of volatile bio-warfare agents should there be an accident--and there had been. He opened the door. Its unoiled hinges squeaked. The inside was dark, drafty, damp, and eerie. Airtight locks, put there to contain the horrific products made there, now hung open. No lights were on, and the inside was not heated, save for one section where his lab remained. It was still the most sophisticated lab of its kind on Earth, used for the experimentation of killing people with chemical and biological means. It was now used only for the façade of fungi experiments, modestly funded to create an environmentally safe formula to kill opium poppies. Although now dated, most all of the exotic equipment remained, however, for the making of bio-warfare agents, which was why there was partial funding for the fungi--to lower any interest in it being fired up again to make anthrax, staphylococcus, and experimentation in bio-warfare agents. Run down as it was, it was still a level four bio-warfare lab, like no other in the world, where biological warfare agents could not just be made, but mass produced.
To keep one from falling, illumination was provided by a few lights. The lack of heat and the drafts made the inside seem colder than outside. No one spoke as they passed through the cold, echoing, abandoned, anthrax-fermenting room. Instead, they waited until they got to their less hostile lab downstairs. The elevator no longer worked, and there was no money to fix it. Their lab was kept in the best part of the building. Building 221, like 241-244, and 231, were equipped with bio-containment systems with high efficiency air filters and fans for maintaining negative air pressure, individual air supplies, sterilization autoclaves, and submarine doors. The system in 221 still worked, due to continued maintenance. The modest amount money coming in was enough for utilities to heat and power his private lab in a small portion of the huge building.
They walked through the unheated, huge, fermenting rooms, now inoperative, where the Soviets had built ten, five thousand gallon fermentation vats for brewing anthrax microbes.
He put down the plastic bag which contained animal remains for his special Ebola. He would later suit up in one of the special pressure suits, clean the special area of Ebola, and add the new food.
Dr. Volkova made Russian tea for them in glass cups with metal bases.
He continued complaining. “I’ll probably have to destroy my beautiful samples one day! Using part of my paltry salary and favors, I have continually brought in animal tissue to keep alive samples of Marburg virus from Uganda, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Kenya. I kept alive the magnificent Ebola from Zaire--now called the Democratic Republic of the Congo by those savages--and from Sudan, Central African Republic, Gabon, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Cameroon, Kenya, and also Uganda. And, of course--”
He smiled. “--my special variant with altered RNA. I can make it work on a given race and keep it reproducing that way. But who will pay me for what I can do? Probably no one, except those lunatics in the Middle-East and who would lead to our being caught for sure.
“If I do have to destroy my samples, the variants that I have created will be lost. My genius will go down the drain! I’ll probably end up continuing to work on producing the ridiculous fungi that the government claims will be used to eradicate the growing of poppies, as though the dope trade of this region is going to be eradicated. Ridiculous! My life’s work has become an unwanted commodity. I’m an unwanted commodity.”
She came up behind him and gave him a strong hug. “Darling, you’re a wanted commodity to me.”
He calmed down, accepting her embrace. He then directed his attention to the moment. “What about this American female who’s coming? Do you think that her arrival will speed up the money from America to tear down the interior of this building so that I’ll have nowhere to keep my specimens?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Why don’t we ask her?”
CHAPTER 6
By coincidence, and because of the difference in time zones, just hours before Doctors Dorogomilov and Volkova had their conference, an expert from the CIA, Dan Horn, was briefing Christine Rhyes-Walters of the State Department for her mission to that very facility. He had numerous pictures of the inside of the buildings, all of which had an address of only Postal Mailbox 2076. Additionally, he had a stack of documents and satellite photos, all of which were labeled top secret.
Rhyes-Walters had been with the State Department for two years, her appointment arranged by her father with his political contributions to the president. She kept her family name when she married and used it with the hyphen. Although never slender, she had gained weight since she’d taken the job, and her blue business suit, one of which she bought when appointed, was now too tight. She was headstrong, opinionated, and not too bright.
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