Eden's Gate

by David Hagberg

  “That’s acceptable.”

  Speyer picked up a nylon gym bag sitting on the floor beside the chair, and tossed it to Golanov. The Russian opened it.

  “Two hundred thousand marks,” Speyer said. “Count it if you want. You’ll get the rest when we’re done.”

  Golanov and Cherny exchanged a look of relief, but they were hiding something. “Okay, we have a deal. So let’s get down to business.”

  Cherny opened the briefcase and spread out two dozen faded and crumbling engineering diagrams, along with eight twenty-by-twenty-five centimeter grainy black-and-white photographs that looked equally old. While their attention was diverted Lane happened to look up and spotted Baumann in the doorway from the kitchen.

  “I’m the one who’ll be doing the dive in the morning,” Lane said, turning back.

  “In that case you’d better pay attention, because there’s going to be a lot of shit down there that’s not on these drawings,” Cherny said. He talked and acted like an engineer.

  “There was an explosion which probably collapsed a lot of the ceilings and walls, right?”

  Cherny nodded. “They set their charges against a granite wall separating the bunker from the lake. When the wall went, the water came rushing through the hole and vented up the elevator shaft with a considerable amount of hydrostatic force.” Cherny wore glasses. He pushed them back up on the bridge of his nose. “I’ve read the report of a tank commander who happened to be there when it happened. He said that fish rained out of the sky.”

  “It probably scoured out the inside of the entire complex.”

  “Well, it certainly rearranged the furniture,” Cherny agreed. “But not everything came out of the hole. A lot of what was down there either got jammed up in the rooms and the labs, or was so firmly attached to the floor or walls that it survived. The point is there’s no telling what you’ll find down there now—there’s been sixty years of rot, too—so you damned well better memorize the layout according to the plans. It’s the only way that you’ll have any chance of finding what you’re looking for.” Cherny looked up from the drawings. “And getting back out of there alive.”

  “That’s the object of this exercise,” Lane replied dryly. Speyer had a strange, petulent look on his face, but Lane ignored him. “We’re looking for the primary laboratory.”

  “That’s here,” Cherny said, stabbing a blunt finger on a spot down a broad corridor from the elevator shaft. “It’s marked ‘Laboritorium A.’ The present day shaft is in the same location as the old elevator shaft, so you’ll bottom out on the correct level and less than twenty meters from the lab.”

  “Providing the shaft hasn’t collapsed, and there’s nothing blocking the corridor.”

  Cherny shrugged. “You couldn’t fill this house with enough money to tempt me to dive down there.” He pursed his thin lips. “I think the chances of finding what you want in all that confusion and wreckage, in absolute darkness, and in water that’s just a half a degree above freezing is almost zero, and your chances of getting back out alive are even less.”

  Golanov laughed nervously. “Don’t exaggerate, Danil. The gentlemen are willing to pay us money for our information. Let’s not talk them out of the project.”

  “No chance of that,” Speyer said. “Leave the drawings and photographs with us tonight. Pick us up at 0800.”

  “Sounds good,” Golanov said. He zippered the gym bag and he and Cherny left. When they were gone, Baumann came in from the kitchen, and Schaub came down from the balcony.

  “It sounds very dangerous,” Schaub said.

  “Tomorrow will certainly be interesting,” Lane replied. He looked up in time to see Gloria standing at the head of the stairs, a frightened expression on her face, before she turned and left.

  Baumann and Schaub went to bed and Lane went out to the garage to make a final check on his dive equipment. The plan was to load everything into the back of the DF 1 truck and ride out of sight to the memorial. While the caretaker was being distracted by the Russians they would break into the maintenance shed and Lane would make the dive.

  Any of a hundred things could go wrong. Equipment failure, hypothermia, hypoxemia, even nitrogen narcosis—the bends—if the oxygen-helium mixture wasn’t just right. He could run into blocked passageways, unexploded ordnance, jagged pieces of metal or concrete that could rip his suit apart or shatter his mask. He could get disoriented; or simply moving through the tunnels he could cause the entire complex to collapse around his ears.

  He had enough on all of them now to call in the BKA and have them arrested. But he couldn’t do that. Not yet. Not until he found out what he was diving for. Certainly not diamonds. Speyer’s story was ingenious, but Lane thought it was too ingenious to be true.

  Back in the house Speyer was still up, studying the engineering diagrams. Lane poured a cognac against the chill and joined him.

  “Is everything okay with the equipment?” Speyer asked.

  “As far as I can tell,” Lane said. “It’s state of the art gear. Whoever picked it out knew what he was doing.”

  “It was Sergeant Schaub. He’s a good man. I offered to take him to Cuba with us, but he turned me down. He wants to stay here. It’s home.”

  “We’re not going to kill the memorial caretaker tomorrow,” Lane said.

  Speyer shook his head. “There should be no reason for it, if everything goes well. But I can almost guarantee that we’ll have trouble with the Russians. They’re going to want whatever we bring out of the bunker, or they’re going to want more money.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “If it comes to that we’ll kill them.”

  “What about the bodies?”

  “Sergeant Schaub will take care of that end of it for us,” Speyer said. “He’s very good at cleanup work.”

  It was the old German practicality. Everything in its place; everything neat and tidy; alles in ordnung. But it was cold and emotionless. Lane hated it.

  Speyer turned back to the engineering diagram. “The diamonds will be locked in a large safe in the main laboratory. It should be just inside the door, a few meters to your left.”

  “Drilling out the lock is going to take too long, and blowing the hinges could be risky.”

  “You won’t have to do either,” Speyer said. He wrote a series of four two-digit numbers, each below sixty, on a slip of paper and handed it to Lane. “This is the combination to the safe.”

  “That’ll come in helpful,” Lane said. He glanced at the numbers, then handed the slip back.

  A flash of irritation crossed Speyer’s face. “I suggest that you keep it so that you can write it down on your plastic dive card.”

  “Fifty-eight, seventeen, forty-one, twenty-three,” Lane said. “Now it’s time for me to get some sleep.” He started toward the stairs, but then thought of something and turned back. “Leave a note for Sergeant Schaub, would you? Since I’m diving I’m going to need a big breakfast. Steak, eggs, potatoes, toast, and a lot of black coffee.”

  Speyer just stared at him, and Lane grinned, a single word coming immediately to mind: Prick.

  The DF 1 truck pulled in and parked behind the country house of Adolph Lauerbach a few kilometers northeast of Neubrandenburg. The family was not in residence, but then it very often was not because in reality this was one of the old KGB safehouses that had fallen through the cracks when the Wall came down. And if the local residents had learned nothing else over the last sixty years, it was to ask no questions.

  Golanov shut off the headlights, then the engine, and turned around to face the rear. “I think that the South African suspected something.”

  “It doesn’t matter, because the advantage will be ours,” Nikolai Mironov said.

  “If he’s as handy as you say he is, once he gets out of the water he’ll become a problem again.”

  Mironov nodded. “You’re right. That’s why we’re going to kill him and the others as soon as he surfaces.”

 
“If he suspects something, he might expect that we’ll try to do just that,” Cherny, the engineer, said.

  “Look, both of you are expendable. Once they’ve got what they came for you’ll be killed. That was the deal Speyer made with Lukashin. Nobody wants you back home, and you’re costing too much money to keep here.”

  Cherny looked uncomfortable, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Do you understand what I’m telling you?” Mironov demanded. “Nobody gives a shit about you or any of the other KGB bastards here. Not Berlin and definitely not Moscow. If someone could push a button to get rid of you there’d be a line around the block waiting to do it. So if you want a chance to save your lives and get the hell out of here, you’ll do what I tell you to do. Clear?”

  Cherny and Golanov exchanged doleful glances, but they nodded.

  “We don’t have much of a choice,” Golanov said.

  “No, you don’t. It’s either them or you.”

  “Then we’ll do whatever we have to do,” Cherny said. “I for one don’t feel very expendable.”

  5

  NEUBRANDENBURG

  Lane awoke at 3:00 A.M., got up and went to the window that looked out toward the lake. It was still blustery and it looked cold outside, whitecaps on the lake and no stars in the still overcast sky. But there was no one down there lurking about that he could see.

  He used the bathroom and then went back to bed. He lay in the darkness thinking. The Russians were not going to try anything until he surfaced with the diamonds. They would not take the risk of coming that far and then losing the ultimate prize. The only wild card was Mironov, who was here in Germany by now, and probably with the two ex-KGB men.

  He might be wanting revenge for the roughing up Lane had given him, and because he’d had to return to his boss with his tail between his legs. Russians were long on vengeance and very short on forgiveness these days. Especially when it involved money. The problem was that Lane had no way of telling what the man was going to do in the morning.

  He had willed his mind to go blank so that he could get a couple more hours of sleep when he heard someone at his door. He silently snatched his pistol from the nightstand, slipped out of bed, and went to the even deeper darkness in the corner beyond the window. The door opened and he saw Gloria silhouetted; the light from the fire on the grate downstairs made her thin nightgown transparent.

  Lane put the gun down on the chair beside him. “Go back to your husband,” he said softly.

  Startled, she turned toward his voice, but it was apparent that she could not see him. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said in a small voice. “I’ve been thinking about you all night.”

  “I’m sorry, but get out of here.” He listened for someone else awake and up. But the house was silent except for the crackle of the fire.

  “Your wife is dead, John.”

  “Not to me.”

  She came the rest of the way into the room and closed the door. Now Lane couldn’t see her, but he heard her come across to him, and then she was naked and in his arms. She was shivering.

  “You can’t know how long it’s been,” she said, theatrically, her body tight against his. He was dressed only in his shorts, and she felt soft, almost slack, not in the least appealing.

  He turned on the floor lamp. She reared back in the sudden glare, her hand going to her eyes. He gently pushed her back, picked up her nightgown from the floor and handed it to her.

  “Go back to your own room before we both get into trouble,” he told her. “I’m going to have a busy day of it starting in a damned few hours, and I’d like to get some sleep.”

  She didn’t bother trying to cover herself, and an ugly look came into her face. “Fuck you,” she said harshly, her lip curling into a sneer. “All the money in the world couldn’t buy what I was offering you for nothing.” She brushed past him and left his room.

  “Well, that was nicely done,” Lane muttered.

  Mironov couldn’t sleep either. He got up, put on a pair of slacks and a light jacket, and went out to the back porch, out of the wind, to smoke a cigarette. When he was finished he called Lukashin on his cell phone.

  “Don’t tell me that you’re already finished with your little project,” Lukashin said. It was about ten in the evening in Washington. There was music in the background.

  “No, we’re going first thing in the morning,” Mironov said. “The good part is that I don’t think he suspects anything. From what I could hear on Golanov’s wire, the dive will be straightforward.”

  “A hundred meters down in total darkness into a destroyed bunker?” Lukashin asked. “I’d say that will be anything but straightforward.” He laughed. “Whatever you do, don’t show your hand until after whatever he’s bringing up with him is safely out of the water. Unless you want to jump in after it.”

  Lane got up again a little before six, took a long, hot shower, got dressed in Pierre Cardin jeans and his favorite cashmere sweater, soft half boots on his feet, and went down to the kitchen. Sergeant Schaub was already up and had breakfast started. He handed Lane a steaming mug of coffee and poured a healthy measure of Asbach-Urhalt cognac into it.

  “Something to brace you up, Junge. It’s going to be damned cold down there even in a dry suit.”

  “I don’t plan on staying long.”

  “See that you don’t. With that helium-oxygen mixture the cold is going to hit you harder than normal. Is the equipment what you need?”

  “It’ll do fine,” Lane said. He took a sip of the coffee. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

  Schaub went back to the stove where he was cooking fat sausages in a large skillet. There were fried potatoes, chopped spinach, cheese, and Brötchen, the small, hard German bread rolls. “How many eggs?”

  “Three,” Lane said.

  “What about a weapon?” Schaub asked, attending to the cooking.

  “I don’t think there’ll be any ghosts down there.”

  Schaub turned back, an impatient scowl on his square face. “I never trusted the bastard Russians, and I don’t trust them now. I suggest that you carry a gun with you in case something goes wrong on top.”

  “I see what you mean,” Lane said. “I can strap a pistol to my chest under my dry suit.”

  “Good idea,” Schaub said, satisfied. “Now sit down and I’ll fix your eggs.”

  Speyer was in the bathroom shaving. Gloria got out of bed and went to the door. She could smell breakfast from the kitchen downstairs, and her stomach turned over. She’d had too much to drink last night, as usual, and she felt like hell.

  “Well, it worked,” she said. “The bastard took the bait.”

  Speyer looked at her in the mirror. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your pal, John Browne.” She came into the bathroom, raised her nightgown, and sat on the toilet. He hated it when she relieved herself in his presence.

  He waited until she was done. “What about him? Did you find out anything?”

  “Nothing much, except that he’s no different from any other man.” She took off her nightgown, made sure that he got a good look at the self-inflicted bruises on her breasts and flanks, then stepped into the shower, closed the curtain and turned on the water.

  Speyer pulled the curtain back. “Stop playing games, Liebchen, and tell me what happened.”

  Her eyes went wide and suddenly she began to cry. “You wanted me to tease him. Try to get him to tell me things. I tried last night, and he raped me.”

  “Why didn’t you cry out?”

  “I couldn’t. He said that he would kill me. He’s crazy.”

  Speyer turned away, angry, and Gloria closed the curtain again. She turned the water warmer and smiled. All men were easy.

  Lane finished his breakfast and took his coffee outside to the front veranda where he could see the lake and have a smoke. It was still very cold and blustery with no signs that the weather would break soon. He was going to be very vulnerable while he was in the bunker. It was possib
le that because of the windy weather, which roiled up the surface of the lake, currents could be running through the bunker. There was no telling what he was going to run into when he got down there.

  He tossed the cigarette aside and went across to the garage. In the back, behind a stack of cardboard boxes and some folded burlap bags, he found an opening in the wall boards. He wrapped his cell phone in a burlap sack and stuffed the bundle as far down inside the wall as he could reach. He didn’t want someone finding it when he was inside the bunker.

  “Browne,” Speyer called from outside.

  Lane shoved the rest of the burlap bags in front of the opening, and went back outside just as Speyer came across from the house.

  “I was just making a last-minute check on the equipment.”

  “It’s off, you son of a bitch,” Speyer shouted. He sprinted for Lane, who stepped aside at the last possible moment and stuck out his foot, sending Speyer sprawling on his face.

  Baumann and Schaub came out of the house. “What’s happening?” Baumann demanded.

  “I don’t know.”

  Speyer got up and Lane tried to give him a helping hand but he batted it away. “You’re fired. I want you to get the fuck out of here right now before I kill you.”

  “Was ist, Herr Kapitän?” Schaub asked as he and Baumann hurried across the driveway.

  “The bastard wanted everything for himself,” Speyer shouted.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lane said, keeping his tone of voice casual, though he had a pretty good idea that it had something to do with Gloria.

  “My wife came to talk to you last night.” Speyer turned to Baumann and Schaub. “I wanted Gloria to find out as much as she could about him. I didn’t trust him and I was right. He raped her.”

  “That’s not true,” Lane said. He held himself loose. He had the pistol in his belt at the small of his back but he didn’t want to have to use it. He wanted to bring up the diamonds, or whatever it was, from the bunker and then find out what Speyer’s ultimate plan was. Killing him now, or calling in the German Federal Police and arresting him, wouldn’t provide the answers.