Black Order

by James Rollins

  As they crossed hallways and descended stairs, Painter worked the back cover off the portable phone. He pocketed it, loosened the battery, and jury-rigged his amplifier to the antenna wire behind the battery. The broadcast would only be a single burst, seconds long, but it should do the job.

  “What is that?” Gunther asked.

  “A GPS sniffer. The amplifier recorded the chip-specs from the saboteur’s phone during the call. I may be able to use it to hunt him down if he’s close.”

  Gunther grunted, buying the lie.

  So far so good.

  The stairs emptied into a wide passageway, large enough to trundle a tank through. Old steel tracks ran along the floor and headed straight through the heart of the mountain. The helipad was located at the other end, remote from the main castle. They mounted a flatbed car. Gunther released the hand brake and engaged the electric motor with the press of a floor pedal. There were no seats, only rails. Painter held on as they zipped down the passage, lit intermittently by overhead lamps.

  “So you have your own subway system,” Painter said.

  “For moving goods,” Anna replied, wincing, her brows furrowed tight in pain. She had taken two pills on the way here. Pain relievers?

  They passed a series of storage rooms piled high with barrels, boxes, and crates, apparently flown in and warehoused. In another minute, they reached the terminal end of the passageway. The air had grown more heated, steamy, smelling vaguely sulfurous. A deep sonorous thrum vibrated through the stone and up Painter’s legs as he climbed off the train cart. He knew from his peek at the castle schematics that the geothermal plant was located in the nether regions of this area.

  But they were headed up, not down.

  A ramp continued from here, wide enough to accommodate a Humvee. They climbed up into a cavernous space. Light streamed through an open set of steel doors in the roof. It looked like the warehouse of a commercial airfield: cranes, forklifts, heavy equipment. And in the center rested a pair of A-Star Ecuriel helicopters, one black, one white, both shaped like angry hornets, made for high-altitude flying.

  Klaus, the hulking Sonnekönige guard, noted their entrance and marched up to them, favoring his weak side. He ignored everyone except Anna. “All is secure,” he said in crisp German.

  He nodded to a line of men and women off to the side. A good dozen stood under the watchful eyes of a phalanx of armed guards.

  “No one slipped past you?” Anna asked.

  “Nein. We were ready.”

  Anna had positioned four Sonnekönige in each main quadrant of the castle, ready to lock down whichever region Painter pinpointed with his device. But what if he had made a mistake? The commotion here would surely alert the saboteur. He or she would go even deeper into hiding. This was their one chance.

  Anna knew it, too. She moved stiffly as she crossed the space. “Have you found—?”

  She stumbled a step, weaving a bit. Gunther caught her arm, steadying her, his face worried.

  “I’m fine,” she whispered to him and continued on her own.

  “We’ve searched everyone,” Klaus said, doing his best to ignore her misstep. “We’ve found no phone or device. We were about to start searching the helipad.”

  Anna’s frown deepened. It was what they had feared. Rather than carrying the phone, the saboteur might easily have stashed it somewhere after the call.

  Or then again, Painter might have miscalculated.

  In which case, he would have to redeem himself.

  Painter stepped to Anna’s side. He lifted his makeshift device. “I might be able to accelerate the search for the phone.”

  She eyed him suspiciously, but their choices were few. She nodded.

  Gunther kept to his shoulder.

  Painter lifted the satellite phone, turned it on, and punched in the number he had memorized. Nine digits. Nothing happened. Eyes were fixed on him.

  He scrunched in concentration and punched them in again.

  Still nothing.

  Had he got the number wrong?

  “Was ist los?” Anna asked.

  Painter stared at the line of digits on the phone’s small screen. He read through them again and saw his error. “I mixed up the last two numbers. Transposed them.”

  He shook his head and typed them in again, concentrating hard, going slow. He finally entered the right sequence. Anna met his eyes when he glanced up. His error was more than stress. She knew it, too. Keypad punching was often used as a test of mental acuity.

  And this had only been a simple telephone number.

  But an important one.

  Painter’s signal net had acquired the saboteur’s sat-phone number. He pressed the transmit button and glanced up.

  After a millisecond, a phone rang in the chamber, trilling loudly.

  All eyes turned.

  To Klaus.

  The Sonnekönig backed up a step.

  “Your saboteur…,” Painter said.

  Klaus opened his mouth, ready to deny—but instead he yanked out his handgun, his face going hard.

  Gunther reacted a second faster, his MK23 pistol already in hand.

  A blast of muzzle fire.

  Klaus’s weapon flew from his fingertips with a ricocheted spark.

  Gunther lunged forward, pressing his pistol’s smoking barrel against Klaus’s cheek. Cold flesh sizzled, branded by the hot muzzle. Klaus didn’t even wince. They needed the saboteur alive, to answer questions. Gunther asked the foremost one.

  “Warum?” he growled. Why?

  Klaus glared out of his one good eye. The other’s lid drooped along with his half-paralyzed face, turning his sneer into something more dreadful. He spat on the ground. “To put an end to the humiliating reign of the Leprakönige.”

  A long-suppressed hatred shone from his twisted face. Painter could only imagine the years of anger smoldering in the man’s bones, years of ridicule while his body deteriorated. Once a prince, now a leper. But Painter sensed it was more than mere revenge. Someone had turned the man into a mole.

  But who?

  “Brother,” Klaus said to Gunther, “it doesn’t have to be this way. A life of the living dead. There is a cure.” A keening edge of hope and pleading entered the man’s voice. “We can be kings among men again.”

  So there was the man’s forty pieces of silver.

  Promise of a cure.

  Gunther was not swayed. “I am not your brother,” he answered from deep in his chest. “And I was never a king.”

  Painter sensed the true difference between these two Sonnekönige. Klaus was a decade older. As such, he had grown up as a prince here, only to have it all taken away. Gunther, on the other hand, had been born at the end of the test run, when the reality of the debilitation and madness had become known. He had always been a leper, knowing no other life.

  And there was another critical difference between them.

  “You sentenced Anna to death with your betrayal,” Gunther said. “I will make you and anyone who supported you suffer for it.”

  Klaus did not retreat but became more earnest. “She can be cured, too. It can be arranged.”

  Gunther’s eyes narrowed.

  Klaus sensed the hesitation, the hope in his adversary. Not for himself, but his sister. “She doesn’t have to die.”

  Painter remembered Gunther’s words earlier. I will not let this happen to Anna. I will do anything to stop it. Did that include betraying everyone else? Even defying his sister’s wishes?

  “Who promised you this cure?” Anna asked in a hard voice.

  Klaus laughed gutturally. “Men far greater than the sniveling things you have become here. It is only right that you should be cast aside. You have served your purpose. But no longer.”

  A loud pop exploded in Painter’s hands. The satellite phone he’d used to expose the saboteur shattered as the battery detonated, short-circuited by his amplifier. Fingers stinging, he dropped the smoking remains of the sat-phone and glanced skyward, toward the he
lipad bay doors. He prayed the amplifier had lasted long enough.

  He was not the only one distracted. All eyes had swung toward him when the phone blew up. Including Gunther’s.

  Using the momentary inattention, Klaus freed a hunting knife and leaped at the other Sonnekönig. Gunther fired, catching his attacker in the gut with the large slug. Still, Klaus’s blade grazed through the meat of Gunther’s shoulder as he fell.

  Gasping, Gunther twisted and threw Klaus to the floor.

  The man crashed hard, sprawled out. Still, he managed to roll up on his side, his good arm clutching his belly. Blood poured heavily out of the stomach wound. Klaus coughed. More blood. Bright red. Arterial. Gunther’s wild shot had struck something vital.

  Anna hurried to Gunther’s side to check his wound. He brushed her back, keeping his pistol trained on Klaus. Blood soaked through Gunther’s sleeve and dripped to the stone.

  Klaus merely laughed, a grating of rocks. “You will all die! Strangled when the knot tightens!”

  He coughed again, convulsive. Blood spread in a pool. With a final trembling sneer, he slumped to the floor facedown. Gunther lowered his gun. Klaus needed no further guarding. One last breath and the large man lay still.

  Dead.

  Gunther allowed Anna to use an oily scrap of rag from a pile nearby to tie off his wound until it could be better tended.

  Painter circled Klaus’s body, nagged by something. Others in the room had gathered around, talking among themselves in voices both fearful and hopeful. They had all heard the mention of a cure.

  Anna joined him. “I’ll have one of our technicians examine his satellite phone. Maybe it can lead us to whoever orchestrated the sabotage.”

  “Not enough time,” Painter mumbled, tuning everything else out. He concentrated on what bothered him. It was like grasping at threads just out of reach.

  As he paced, he ran through what clues Klaus had offered.

  …we can be kings among men again.

  …you have served your purpose. But no longer.

  A headache flared as Painter attempted to piece things together.

  Klaus must have been recruited as a double agent…in a game of industrial espionage. For someone carrying on parallel research. And now the work at the castle here had become superfluous, and steps had been put into motion to eliminate the competition.

  “Could he have spoken truthfully?” Gunther asked.

  Painter remembered the large man’s hesitation a moment before, baited by an offer of a cure, for himself and his sister. It had all died with Klaus.

  But they weren’t giving up.

  Anna had dropped to a knee. She removed a small phone from Klaus’s pocket. “We’ll have to work quickly.”

  “Can you help?” Gunther asked Painter, nodding to the phone.

  Their only hope lay in finding out who had picked up the other line.

  “If you could trace the call…,” Anna said, standing up.

  Painter shook his head, not in denial. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. His head pounded, rounding up to a full migraine. But even that wasn’t what had him shaking his head.

  Close…whatever nagged him was so close…

  Anna stepped near to him, touched his elbow. “It is to all our best interest to—”

  “I know,” he snapped. “Now shut up! Let me think.”

  Anna’s hand dropped from his arm.

  His outburst silenced the room. He fought to drag up what his mind kept hidden. It was like transposing the numbers on the sat-phone. The sharp edge to his mental acuity was dulling.

  “The sat-phone…something about the sat-phone…,” he whispered, pressing back the migraine by sheer will. “But what?”

  Anna spoke softly. “What do you mean?”

  Then it struck him. How could he have been so blind?

  Painter lowered his arms and opened his eyes. “Klaus knew the castle was under electronic surveillance. So why did he make the call at all? Expose himself? Why take that risk?”

  Cold terror washed over him. He swung to Anna. “The rumor. The one about having a cache of Xerum 525 still left. Were we the only ones who knew the rumor was false? That there really isn’t any more of the liquid metal?”

  The others in the room gasped at his revelation. A few voices rose in anger. Much hope had been seeded by the rumor, inflaming some optimism that a second Bell could be built. Now it was dashed.

  But certainly someone else had believed the rumor, too.

  “Only Gunther knew the truth,” Anna said, confirming his worst fear.

  Painter stared out across the helipad. He pictured the castle schematic in his head. He now knew why Klaus had made the call…and why he made it from here. The bastard thought he could hide in plain sight afterward, so confident he hadn’t even disposed of the phone. He had chosen this spot specifically.

  “Anna, when you spread the rumor, where did you say you had the Xerum 525 locked up? How had it avoided being destroyed in the explosion?”

  “I claimed it was locked up in a vault.”

  “What vault?”

  “Away from the explosion site. The one in my study. Why?”

  All the way on the other side of the castle.

  “We’ve been played,” Painter said. “Klaus called from here, knowing the castle was being monitored. He meant to lure us here. To pull our attention away from your study, from the secret vault, from the supposed last cache of Xerum 525.”

  Anna shook her head, not understanding.

  “Klaus’s call was a decoy. The real goal all along was the fabled last batch of Xerum 525.”

  Anna’s eyes grew wide.

  Gunther understood now, too. “There must be a second saboteur.”

  “While we’re distracted here, he’s going after the Xerum 525.”

  “My study,” Anna said, turning to Painter.

  It finally struck him, what had been nagging him the most, making him heartsick and nauseated. It burst forth with a white-hot stab of blinding pain. Someone stood in the direct path of the saboteur.

  Lisa searched the upper story of the library. She had climbed the wrought-iron ladder to the rickety iron balcony and now circled the room. She kept one hand on the balcony railing.

  She had spent the past hour gathering books and papers on quantum mechanics. She even found the original treatise of Max Planck, the father of quantum theory, a theory that defined a bewildering world of elemental particles, a world where energy could be broken down into small packets, called quanta, and where elemental matter behaved like both particles and waves.

  It all made her head ache.

  What did any of this have to do with evolution?

  She sensed any cure lay in discovering that answer.

  Reaching out, she tilted a book from the shelf, studying the binding. She squinted at the faded lettering.

  Was this the right volume?

  A commotion at the door drew her attention around. She knew the exit was guarded. What now? Was Anna returning already? Had they found the saboteur? Lisa turned back toward the ladder. She hoped Painter was with Anna. She didn’t like being apart from him. And maybe he could make heads or tails of these strange theories of matter and energy.

  She reached the ladder and turned to step down on the first rung.

  A sharp scream, quickly silenced, froze her in place.

  It came from right outside the door.

  Reacting on instinct, Lisa lunged back up and spread herself flat on the wrought-iron balcony. The open floor grating offered little cover. She slid close to the stacks, into the shadows, away from the wall sconces on this level.

  As she lay still, the door across the room opened and closed. A figure slipped into the room. A woman. In a snow-white parka. But it wasn’t Anna. The woman tossed back her hood and pulled down a scarf. She had long white hair and was as pale as a ghost.

  Friend or foe?

  Lisa kept hidden until she knew more.

  There w
as something too confident about the woman. The way her eyes searched the room. She half turned. A spray of blood marred the side of her jacket. In her other hand, she held a curved katana, a short Japanese saber. Blood dripped from the blade.

  The woman danced into the room, turning in a slow circle.

  Hunting.

  Lisa dared not breathe. She prayed the shadows kept her hidden up here. The library’s few lamps lit the lower level, as did the hearth fire. It crackled and shone with a few flames. But the upper balcony remained gloomy.

  Would it be enough to hide her?

  Lisa watched the intruder make another circle, standing in the middle of the room, bloodied katana held at the ready.

  Seemingly satisfied, the ice-blond woman strode quickly toward Anna’s desk. She ignored the clutter on top and stepped behind the wide table. Reaching to a tapestry on the wall, she pulled it back and exposed a large black cast-iron wall safe.

  Hooking the tapestry aside, she knelt and inspected the combination lock, the handle, the edges of the door.

  With the woman’s concentration so focused, Lisa allowed herself to breathe. Whatever thievery was afoot, so be it. Let the woman abscond with whatever she came for and be gone. If the burglar had slain the guards, maybe Lisa could turn it to her advantage. If she could reach a phone…the intrusion might actually turn out for the best.

  A loud clatter startled her.

  A few yards away, a heavy book had fallen from its shelf and landed splayed open on the wrought-iron balcony. Pages still fluttered from the impact. Lisa recognized the book she had half pulled out a moment ago. Forgotten until now, gravity had done the rest, slowly tugging the book free.

  Below, the woman retreated to the center of the room.

  A pistol had appeared in her other hand, as if out of thin air, pointed up.

  Lisa had nowhere to hide.

  9:18 A.M.