Talons of the Falcon

by Rebecca York

  There were a few other women in the crowd, most of them dressed to the teeth. All except Eden seemed to be accompanied by men. In fact, the majority of the patrons were male. But then, that was to be expected with all the war memorabilia being offered.

  Her gaze scanned the room as though she were looking for someone she had come to meet. A few men tried to make eye contact, but she dismissed them with a cool lack of interest. Yet she couldn’t help wondering the reason for the attention she was receiving. She knew it wasn’t unnatural, since she was a good-looking, unaccompanied woman. But each man—or woman—in the room was also a potential enemy. She might even have something to fear from the armed guards who stood at the doors and at intervals around the walls. It suddenly occurred to her that if Gustav could get a man inside, the East Germans and the Russians might be able to do the same thing.

  She’d never thought that she’d actually hope to see Ross Downing again. But strange as it was, as her glance moved around the room, she was hoping for just that. At least, if the Falcon was right, the man was on their side. Her spirits dropped when she didn’t see anyone who looked like the Pine Island security chief. Perhaps he was there but in disguise.

  She was also looking for someone else, someone she prayed she wouldn’t see. So far she’d encountered no one who fit Mark’s description of Herr Doktor Hans Erlich. Maybe he hadn’t been able to slip across the heavily guarded border. Or perhaps he had decided that the game he was playing was too dangerous, after all, and he wasn’t going to show up. It was hard to believe he’d give up now. But his absence, at least for the time being, helped bolster her confidence.

  Her first real task was to register, using the false passport she’d originally acquired from the Falcon. Unlike the one she’d used in France, it matched her present appearance. While the young clerk studied her picture, she felt her heart pounding as though it might break through the wall of her chest. But when he returned the passport, he simply smiled and handed her a card with her assigned number.

  Next she drifted into the room where most of the items to be auctioned were on display. After twenty minutes of pretended interest in Nazi papers, Bismarck letters and nineteenth-century steel engravings of battleships, she went to find a seat in the small auditorium. It was already filling up, but she was able to get a place where she could see the door and much of the crowd. And she was still close enough to the front to attract the auctioneer’s eye when the diary came on the block.

  Glancing at her watch, she wondered if Mark had arrived. Her stomach was churning, and the effort to appear cool was taking all her concentration. There were still twenty minutes to go before the auction started. If everything was proceeding according to schedule, Mark was probably having a look at the infamous diaries now.

  * * *

  MARK HAD TIMED his entry to avoid the bulk of the crowd. He didn’t bother to register but asked where he might see the Ludendorf material. A guard directed him through a door that led to the back of the building. Most of the other doors were bolted to keep the traffic out. But discreet signs directed him toward a room at the end of the corridor.

  Before reaching it he passed an open set of double doors leading to a large room that must be the gallery’s staging area. Jumbled about the cement floor was an amazing assortment of objects—everything from antique carousel horses to the towering Germanic wardrobes known as Schranks and gilt-framed mirrors. Over everything, suspended from long metal poles, were several elaborate crystal chandeliers. At the door to the loading dock across the room a uniformed guard stood with his hands behind his back. When he saw Mark, he called out a warning that the area was restricted.

  “Just looking for the inspection room.”

  “Follow the signs.”

  Mark nodded and went on. The viewing room was behind the next door. When Mark stepped inside, another man was bent over a glass case that must be protecting the campaign diaries.

  Mark froze, his heart leaping to his throat. In his imagination he pictured Hans Erlich straightening and turning toward him. His first instinct was to reach for the snub-nosed revolver in the holster under his left arm. But in the next moment, as the man turned, Mark realized that he was taller and darker than Erlich. Though he wore a gray, conservative suit, there was something about his bearing that suggested military training.

  The two of them exchanged glances, each taking the measure of the other. The tall man seemed particularly interested in Mark’s face and hair.

  “Do I have the honor of meeting Col. Mark Bradley?” he finally questioned. The English was grammatically perfect. But the words were tinged with an unmistakable Russian accent.

  So much for his disguise, Mark thought grimly. It had taken Maj. Aleksei Rozonov less than a minute to see through it. But why had the Russian deliberately chosen to give himself away when he could have walked out and left his identity in doubt? What kind of game was he playing?

  There was no point in denying who he was now. “Yes,” he admitted, his voice unfaltering.

  “Your reputation precedes you, Colonel.”

  “So does yours, Major Rozonov.”

  The Russian permitted himself a tight smile. “In our profession, we take compliments where we can get them.” He stood regarding Mark for another moment. “You’ll find the case with the diary is electrified,” he said.

  Was that a warning or a threat? “Thanks for the tip.”

  “Just saving you some time, so you can find a seat with the rest of us in the auction gallery.”

  “I’ll bet,” Mark muttered under his breath.

  The Russian left, and Mark made his own inspection of the security precautions, while pretending his real interest was in the Ludendorf material. Rozonov was right. Anybody who tried to break into that case without a key would get a bad shock—as well as set off an alarm.

  He glanced at the uniformed guard with his prominently holstered revolver. The man didn’t fit the description that Gustav had given him of Wolf Felder, who should be taking over the next shift. If Felder didn’t show, that would mean trouble. He’d have to overpower the guard, use the special tools in his pocket to short-circuit the sophisticated electronic system and get the microdot—and all within ten minutes.

  Mark sighed. There was nothing to do now but bide his time. For a moment he considered slipping into the loading area and waiting behind one of the Schranks. But when he walked past the double doors, the same guard was looking in his direction. Besides, if he were hiding, he wouldn’t know when the bidding on the diary started. Better to wait inconspicuously at the back of the main hall.

  Up front, the auction had already started. After seeing how the bidding was done with a discreet nod or hand signal, Eden made a couple of offers on some lithographs to let the auctioneer know she was participating. However, a group of Nazi papers was on the block now, and she simply couldn’t bring herself to raise her hand for something so distasteful—even if she planned to drop out quickly.

  Many in the crowd, however, did not have her reservations. The bidding was intense, and she saw how quickly the price of an item could rise if two or three collectors had their hearts set on it.

  Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Mark slip into the room, and her heart gave a little lurch. Thank God he was all right so far. It took an effort not to let her relief show, but she didn’t dare even acknowledge that they knew each other.

  Others, too, had noted Col. Mark Bradley’s arrival. One was a nervous-looking East German agent in a boxy off-the-rack brown suit who wished he fit into this crowd better. Another was Maj. Ross Downing, who was not far from the exit, although he had been careful to sit out of Eden’s line of vision. He had spotted her shortly after her arrival and had been watching her carefully ever since, noting the tapered haircut, sophisticated makeup and expensive suit. She was one cool customer, he thought. She had strolled into this gallery just the way she’d come to Pine Island, as though she had every right in the world to be there. Only now she was dressed
like an heiress rather than in the casual skirts and tops she’d worn in Georgia. Her arrival had confirmed at least part of the information he’d received yesterday from the German “tour guide.” And now Bradley—looking a good ten years older than he had last month—slipping into the room was another piece of confirmation. Still, the presence of the two of them here didn’t explain what was really going on. There were more holes in his information than in a piece of Swiss cheese. The agent at the restaurant yesterday could have been setting him up, and he was going to make damn sure that wasn’t the case before he took even a tiny nibble of the bait.

  Several historical letters came up and were quickly sold for about fifteen hundred marks each.

  When the auctioneer announced the next item, a buzz of conversation filled the auditorium. Eden caught the word Ludendorf and felt her stomach knot even more tightly. This was it. She closed her eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. She supposed the auctioneer was explaining the historical background of the campaign diaries, and why they would not be brought to the front as was customary during the bidding.

  Eden glanced at her watch. It was eleven thirty. She wanted to look toward the door to make sure Mark had left, but she couldn’t call any attention to him, or to herself. Instead she listened as the auctioneer began to speak again, mentioning the figure twenty-thousand marks. She had heard him announce his expectations for each auctioned item. Usually he had turned out to be quite close to the final price. This time, she judged, he might be a bit low.

  Someone to her far right started the bidding off at a thousand marks. A solid-looking man with a Russian accent offered two thousand. With a little nod of her head, she made it three. Her heart was hammering. She risked a look at her watch. There were eight minutes to go. The East German suddenly came into the competition and jumped the price to five thousand.

  There was an undercurrent of excitement in the room now as the crowd sensed the competition.

  Almost all eyes had been riveted on the auctioneer when Mark slipped quietly out of the room and into the hall. As the door closed, he stopped dead in his tracks. A guard who hadn’t been there before was stationed at the entrance to the back of the building.

  Mark walked in his direction and asked the most natural question that might be expected from someone leaving the hall at this particular time. “Wo ist die Toilette?”

  The man pointed.

  Mark stepped closer, pretending to look uncertain.

  When the guard turned to point more directly, Mark gave him a quick chop at the back of the neck and watched him sink to the floor. Evidently he still had his touch. The man would have a hell of a headache when he came to in a half hour. But his neck wasn’t broken.

  However, a minute of precious time had just been lost. Mark glanced over his shoulder, then pulled the guy after him through the entry to the back of the building. When he’d been here earlier, he’d noticed one door that wasn’t locked. As he’d suspected, it led to a janitorial closet, where he stowed the unconscious guard.

  He hurried down the hall, glancing into the loading dock as he passed. It was now unoccupied. Maybe the guard was outside. But there wasn’t time to worry about that now.

  When he pulled open the door to the room where the diary was being held, another uniformed guard looked up expectantly.

  “Herr Felder?”

  “Ja, Oberstleutnant Bradley.”

  “Do you have the key?”

  “Not on me. It’s taped underneath the bottom of the top desk drawer on the right.”

  Even as Gustav’s man spoke, Mark was across the room and retrieving the key. “Stand by the door and let me know if somebody comes,” Mark directed as he turned his complete attention to the case. It took only a moment to turn off the electricity. But getting the dot was a more delicate matter. That had to be removed with a special piece of tape and put in a dust-proof container. The one he’d brought looked like an aspirin tin. In fact, he had two identical cases, one with a speck of flea dirt he’d removed from Gustav’s dog. It was taped inside, just as though it was the super-reduced Orion specs. Using it as a decoy had given him a grim laugh.

  The tiny piece of film was exactly where he’d put it, dotting the i in the word eins at the bottom of page 78 of Volume Three.

  He had just slipped the case back into the upper-inside pocket of his suit coat when he heard what sounded like a rheumy cough. It was followed almost instantly by a thunk. He whirled, suspecting what he was going to see. Wolf Felder was slipping quietly to the floor, a red stain spreading across the back of his uniform. Above him stood a tough-looking man with the physique of a prizefighter. He was holding a Luger fitted with a silencer. The specially equipped, high-caliber weapon was capable of slicing through steel with the quiet efficiency of a laser.

  Under ordinary circumstances the gun and its owner would have riveted Mark’s attention. But in this case his gaze was drawn like a magnet to the figure standing a little to one side of the slayer.

  “You look surprised, Colonel Bradley,” observed the doctor whose sadistic visage had haunted his nightmares for months. Once again Mark was confronting the reality of the deep-set eyes, the heavy brows, the hair that curled across the high forehead, the prominent mole on the right cheek. Suddenly he realized in horror that he knew the face better than his own.

  “Erlich.” The word rattled in his throat like a curse.

  His nemesis smiled, sending a chill down Mark’s spine. “What have you taken from the diary?”

  The old familiar feeling of helplessness hovered around the edges of his mind like an octopus closing in on its prey. The atmosphere in the room had suddenly become stifling. He felt like a deep-sea diver whose air hose has been severed—just as the tentacles closed in around him.

  “Please relieve Colonel Bradley of any weapons he may be carrying, Günther,” Erlich instructed his companion.

  The muscular man stepped forward and reached inside Mark’s coat, pulling the small revolver from its hidden holster. Quickly he checked for others. The feeling of being trapped increased as Mark watched Günther slip the gun into his own waistband.

  “And now tell me, what have you taken from the diary?” Erlich repeated.

  Mark bit down on his lip, struggling to remain silent. But against his will, the words came out syllable by grating syllable. “A mi-cro-dot.”

  “Very good. Then give it to me.”

  Mark’s fingers clenched. There was something he had to remember. It floated somewhere at the edge of his consciousness. Desperately, he tried to hook his mind around it and pull it into focus. It was like trying to hold on to a greased life preserver. He’d think he had it in his grip, only to find it had scooted five feet beyond his reach. He thrashed toward it again. Then, all at once, it came shooting back in his direction. Orion, think Orion. Eden’s voice screamed in his brain. You won’t give away the Orion project.

  His eyes locked with Erlich’s. He pictured himself lashing out at the man who was determined to compel his actions. Instead, his hand moved to the inside pocket of his coat.

  Orion, Orion, Orion, Orion, he chanted silently, trying to block everything else from his consciousness. Erlich didn’t know there were two cases. He could give him the one with the flea dirt inside. In his mind, he tried to force himself to retrieve the right one. But as his fingers closed around the cold metal, he honestly couldn’t be sure which pocket he had reached into.

  “Let me have a look,” Erlich demanded. For emphasis, Günther flicked the wrist that was holding the Luger. Could he take him out? Mark wondered, estimating his chances against a trained killer. Without his gun, they were almost zero. Maybe they’d improve later—if there was a later.

  Mark handed Erlich the case. As his hand brushed the blunt, well-manicured fingers, he shuddered. It was impossible not to remember the pain he’d suffered at those hands.

  Erlich felt the reaction and smiled. “Ah, so you haven’t forgotten the lessons I taught you.”<
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  Suddenly the room seemed to press in against Mark more heavily. He wanted desperately to escape. But more than the gun held him here. If he was going to get himself out of this, he had to concentrate.

  Orion, Orion, Orion, his mind began to chant again. It was like a silent mantra. Orion, Orion, Orion.

  “All right, let’s go, Colonel,” Erlich instructed as he handed the case to Günther for safekeeping.

  There was another menacing gesture with the gun. Yet even as he followed Erlich down the hall, Mark’s own sense of being in control was strengthening.

  “This way,” the doctor directed, stepping into the staging area. He began to wind his way among the odd assortment of goods stowed about the room. In one of the gilt mirrors, Mark caught a glimpse of the three of them. They made a grim procession, with Günther and his revolver bringing up the rear.

  As he followed Erlich, Mark’s eyes darted from cabinet to statue to rolltop desk, wondering if there was anything he could use as a weapon. Several yards ahead he saw a pair of black-booted feet just sticking out from behind a large Schrank. Now he knew why the guard hadn’t been at his post at the door.

  His mind raced. Erlich’s companion had two guns—not three. Probably the guard’s was still in his holster—if Günther hadn’t tossed it away.

  If it was there, could he get it? Mark wondered. It might be his only chance. He was just passing one of the carousel horses, which was propped precariously against a marble Grecian column.

  Now, his mind screamed and his body obeyed. He turned slightly, his leg catching an upturned hoof. It was enough to throw the heavy wooden horse off-balance and into Günther’s path. At the same time, Mark dived in the direction of the boots. He wasn’t quite fast enough. He heard another coughing noise and then felt a sharp, stinging pain in his calf.

  “No, you fool!” Erlich’s voice shrieked. Mark didn’t know whether the words were for him or Günther, and he didn’t give a damn. Then the East German doctor’s voice took on a different—yet horribly familiar—quality. “Colonel Bradley, stand up and come to me now!” The command was imperative; his puppet had been programmed to obey.