by Leon, Judith
Nova led Joe straight down the center aisle and stopped where the counters did in the middle of the room. Built against one wall smack in the center of the lab was a small cubicle about the size of her kitchen. Beyond the cubicle, the lab’s other half was a duplicate of this end. The cubicle was peculiar not only because of its odd position—against one wall and square in the center of the lab—but because it had a double entry. You entered through one door, passed through a space of about three feet, then through another door.
“What do you make of that?” she asked, her voice low.
Following her gaze, he saw six gas masks dangled on a series of pegs beside the outer door.
“Well, well, well,” he said.
“Not exactly a smoking gun, but sure interesting, aren’t they?” She gave him a tight grin.
Before he could agree, she heard footsteps in the hall. Joe raised his gun, and she did likewise.
The lab had two doors, both open: the one he and Nova had entered from the brown corridor and a similar one at the room’s other end that exited into the north-south blue corridor. For some odd reason, maybe because they were underground, he couldn’t tell where the sounds were coming from.
Joe looked at her, the question, “Which way?” clear in his eyes.
She shook her head as if thinking hard and fast.
Joe visually combed the lab, looking for a place to hide, praying the footsteps would pass by. Unfortunately, anyone who walked the length of the lab would easily see them. They could gamble: pick one end or the other and hide behind a bench and pray, or pick one door or the other and hope to get away clean. But they might pick wrong.
The steps came closer and at a rapid clip. Hell, he thought.
They had to choose, and right now. He grabbed Nova’s arm and shoved her toward the opposite end of the room but she dug in her feet and pointed up.
His eyes followed the line of her finger. She was pointing to the lights. He shook his head hard. She wanted them to crawl up onto the light housings. The idea was nuts.
“Do it!” she snapped so softly he barely heard her.
She wrenched her arm free and shifted her gun to her left hand, then climbed onto the bench to their right and scooted aside a few bottles on the reagent shelf.
Hell.
He started climbing onto the other bench. When she straightened and stood upright on the top of the reagent shelving, he was already halfway up his own ad hoc stairway. The damn metal hood over the light was warm even through his gloves. Without the gloves, gripping the metal for any period of time would be impossible.
So, just ignore the heat.
And damn if it wasn’t easy, from the top shelf, to ease his body onto the fixture. He stretched himself flat along the metal housing being careful not to let the metal of the gun clink against the lamp; mentally he tried to make his body a small, small thing.
He looked at Nova. She stared back and gave him a weak smile. She was probably realizing how rash this idea was. Had she considered, for example, how long the fixtures could bear a man’s weight?
He recognized Singh’s voice coming from the direction of the door he and Nova had used. If he’d just grabbed her and shoved her out the other door, like he’d wanted to, they’d have been out of here. The old doubt about her competence raised its head.
“I assure you, as I have before, if it takes, the treatment is irreversible. We shape the mind, we bend it permanently.” Singh continued to jabber in English as he walked into the lab. Joe had already noted that Singh spoke better English than German.
Joe’s biceps and thighs had the quivers. He wanted to move his head to see who Singh was talking to, but couldn’t afford the risk.
“I have studied Jean Paul carefully. He is not only grateful for our support, he admires Helmut deeply. Make no mistake, the Loyalty Inducer will work on him. I have no more doubts. We can proceed with the dedication early tomorrow.”
Joe looked again at Nova. She, too, lay tightly bunched, arms tucked, shoulders scrunched, head cocked.
“You know how critical König is,” said a new voice. Deep. Confident. “If we use the Inducer and he isn’t primed for the imprinting, he’ll know something irregular is going on. He’ll be alarmed, maybe lost to the cause. We can’t lose König. He’s unique.”
“I am very sure of him.” Singh’s voice oozed assurance. “He is ours. And consider this. The man is an idealist. Should he gain any hint of what we are about, his current strong positive feelings for Helmut will shift. Then we absolutely will have lost him. It’s risky to wait any longer.”
Singh and friend now stood practically underneath the spot where he and Nova hung like captive flies in a spider’s web. Joe couldn’t imagine that one of the men wouldn’t look up. His palms were slimy inside his gloves. His belly and thighs were heating up.
“It’s settled then. He’ll be dedicated. Tomorrow,” said Singh’s companion.
“You won’t be disappointed. Jean Paul will never know that from that moment forward, our slightest wish, as they say, will be his command.” The slight Indian laughed. It was a nasty giggle.
“Gall is on schedule for the fifteenth,” said the deep voice.
“Good, good,” Singh chuckled. “All the things we have planned for so long are advancing now with increasing speed. I have asked you here tonight, Maurus, because I have arranged a little after-hours demonstration. I have perfected the Rage Inducer.”
Joe looked at Nova. She was alarmingly pale and her eyes were riveted on the two men standing directly below him. He wondered what she was thinking. Obviously, König was a dupe. Did that make her feel good since she’d always said her gut feeling was that she sensed no evil in him? Or did she feel bad? Because somehow Nova had definitely gotten her wires crossed on who had been in Manfred Wagner’s library. Jean Paul couldn’t possibly have been there.
Again footsteps in the hall. Just wonderful. That’s all they needed, a goddam party.
“Here they are now,” Singh said cheerily. “The demonstration can begin.”
11:45 p.m.
Terrible danger. The words flooded Nova’s mind and set her stomach to rolling. Jean Paul is in terrible danger.
Her finger squeezed hard against the gun’s trigger guard. She thought of killing. Right now. Just blast Singh and the man with the grotesque, half-dead face. Clean up some ugly pus. A sure means to save Jean Paul from this filth.
But what about Gall? Her hand remained clenched. What was Gall? Whatever it was, Gall was going down in three—no, it was nearly the thirteenth now. Only two days.
God only knew how many other notables had been guests at this Compound. The solution here couldn’t be as simple as letting her instincts flow out through the barrel of a gun. The Company had to know who else might have been ensnared.
Her stomach rolled with cramps. She forced her eyes open. Singh and colleague gazed expectantly toward the door. She heard what sounded like the wobbling wheel of a rolling cart. It came into view and she saw that it held two large-animal cages. Only their tops were visible to her, but she heard toenails clicking against the metal bottoms of the cages. And Wyczek was pushing the cart.
Her astonishment was huge but quickly absorbed. Of course. It made perfect sense. Somehow Hass had arranged for Wyczek to guard Jean Paul, the better to spy on him.
Her mind leaped off track. How had she gone so wrong at Manfred Wagner’s? Wyczek had passed her in the hall and gone into the bird room and said, “There will be a meeting in the library in fifteen minutes.” But Jean Paul was clearly not one of the conspirators. Then she remembered. Hass, too, had been in the bird room. Wyczek must have been speaking to Hass.
“Put them both in the room,” the white-coated scientist said to Wyczek. “And put on a mask.”
Nova’s mind snapped back to the present. Wyczek opened the door of one cage and yanked a golden retriever out by its collar. He led the dog toward the small room.
Singh scurried toward a counter. “Let me
show you what I’ve done with the ampoules.” He motioned for the scary-looking man to follow. Two gas masks lay on the countertop. Singh handed one to Dead Face. “Maurus,” Singh had called him. “There is very little likelihood of an ampoule breaking accidentally, but just to be sure.”
The two men donned the masks. A prickle of alarm rushed over her scalp. She and Joe had no masks. Leaning over the counter, Singh grasped a handle, pushed down slightly. With a soft click, a section of the countertop slid back to reveal a two-foot square, white storage area. Lined up in rows, resting in miniature cradles, were small glass vials. She made a quick estimate—about fifty.
“I’ve color coded them,” Singh continued.
Even behind his mask she could hear boyish pride in his voice, a grown man flaunting his fondest possession. From her perch, Nova could just barely make out that the necks of the vials had colored bands around them.
The singsong voice continued cheerily. “The Sleep Inducer is green. Loyalty Inducer, yellow. Fight Inducer, brown. Tranquillity Inducer, orange. And this new Rage Inducer is marked in red.” Singh pointed to one of the rows. “These purple ampoules are the Pacification Inducer. I’m sure you recall the demonstration. The subject immediately and permanently loses all will.” Singh’s voice came to her muffled through the mask, as if he were talking under water. “They are not merely calmed,” he continued. “Under the influence of the Pacification Inducer, they do not voluntarily want or do anything. There is no drive. No ambition. Not even emotions like love and hate. And like most of these drugs, the effect is irreversible.”
“Right,” said Maurus. “The lobotomy vegetable thing.”
Nova’s loathing for Singh went ballistic. She envisioned a living human vegetable. She envisioned herself a living vegetable. Next to the horror of a painful, lingering death, her greatest fear was of losing control, of becoming a thing, of losing the grasp of one’s destiny and dignity. She had suffered that feeling over and over as a child and had killed to escape it. And the sick scientist had consciously designed a drug to produce that result.
Singh’s colleague made his own comment. “I can see many situations where we might wish to pacify. But the value of reducing subjects to vegetables escapes me.”
“But, Maurus, just think! As long as the authorities do not know what to look for, they will find no trace. Within ten minutes of contacting air, the transmembrane carrier changes form and loses its characteristic coffee odor. The drug can be used surreptitiously to eliminate enemies. They will be physically alive but mentally dead, without any explanation. Or we might eventually openly describe the drug and threaten its use. A mindless existence is a terrifying prospect to any person. The drug becomes a tool for blackmail. And a very easy-to-use one.”
Nova was looking at the back of Singh’s head. A renewed urge to use the automatic tightened her finger on the trigger guard.
Wyczek had removed the two golden retrievers from their transport cages and, though she couldn’t see the chamber, she presumed he’d moved them, as directed, into the small cubicle. Now, wearing a mask, he leaned against the bench directly beneath her. The top of his shiny head wasn’t more than eight or nine feet away. Her imagination screamed that the bodyguard was so close he might be able to hear her breathe. Certainly he must hear the heartbeat that was a pounding throb in her ears.
She looked at Joe. The angle from Wyczek’s head to Joe’s stretched-out body was such that Wyczek’s peripheral vision couldn’t help but catch Joe’s slightest body movement.
“Ah. We’re ready,” Singh said. He took one of the vials, a red-banded one. A “Rage Inducer,” he’d called it. He crossed under her fluorescent hiding place, out of her line of vision. Her neck felt as stiff as the barrel of her gun. She probably couldn’t move even if she dared.
“Golden retrievers are especially appropriate subjects for this testing. The breed is normally quite docile. In addition, these two are littermates. They have been caged together and never fight.” Singh’s minilecture settled it. She simply had to see what happened. She had to risk moving at least a little.
Watching Wyczek, still slouched against the bench, Nova slowly rotated her head. She honestly thought she could hear her neck creaking.
The lamp housing blocked her view of the cubicle’s two doors, but she could clearly see its interior. The retrievers sat watching Singh through the glass, one with his tongue lolled out and both with happy, slobbery grins and trusting brown eyes.
Singh placed the red-banded ampoule into a tube built into the cubicle’s glass wall. He twisted a knob. The ampoule slid down the tube into a small cup inside the room. Earlier she’d noticed thick rubber gloves also built into the glass wall. Singh thrust his hands into the gloves, picked up the vial and snapped its stem. “It will take approximately five seconds,” he said.
She couldn’t think of anything but the dogs—and John Wiley’s burning coffee. Fury, wordless and incoherent, welled deep in her chest. Her throat tightened. Her vision wavered. Stay cool, stay cool.
The drug kicked in. Both dogs stood, went momentarily rigid, then their lips curled. And then biting, thrashing, lunging and ripping began. Blood was drawn at once when the retriever with a slight reddish cast to his coat gashed the muzzle of his companion.
Through the glass, she could even hear, faintly, the guttural sounds of their rage. A strip of bloody fur flapped back and forth on the shoulder of one. Other wounds soon appeared on both dogs. White teeth in a foaming mouth ripped off an ear of the other. Whatever had been their dominance relationship before, neither signaled surrender now, neither gave way, neither gave quarter.
The dog with the reddish coat sliced a gash down its companion’s hind leg. Nova expected the wounded animal to howl, cower, surrender. Dragging its leg, it continued to attack. She pinched her eyes closed and squeezed the lamp housing tightly.
Stop it! her mind screamed. She flushed hot all over with her own “induced” rage.
“My God.” Maurus’s deep voice.
“Impressive, no?” The scientist said.
“I think they’re getting tired. Will they stop?” Maurus again.
“Watch.”
Nova forced her eyes open. The dogs formed one lump of thrashing fur on the floor. Tiring, they had dug their teeth into each other and were pummeling with their feet. Great steaks of blood fanned out around them on the floor and more was being added every second. Again she squeezed her eyes shut. You loveless piece of shit, Singh!
“Ah,” Singh sighed. “We’ve hit a jugular. Now watch this. Because the drug’s effect is irreversible, the winner will continue to tear at the dead animal until total exhaustion downs it. See.” Singh’s voice fairly burbled with the pleasure of creation. “When the subject recovers from exhaustion, it begins the attack again.”
The man with the droopy face stepped into Nova’s line of view and leaned close to the glass partition. If he looked up and she and Joe were discovered, she’d have no alternative but to kill them.
Maurus put a hand on the scientist’s arm. “I’ve seen enough.” The men turned from the window and removed their masks. “But this is good work. Exciting. A valuable weapon for our arsenal. You deserve every reward I’ve ever supplied you.”
“Thank you,” Singh said, giving one of his froglike smiles. “As ever, I serve the cause.”
Dead Face headed for the door, disappeared.
Singh looked at Wyczek. “Kill the one that’s still alive and clean up.” He removed his lab coat and hung it on a peg beside the cubicle door. “I will want their brains for tests, so put their bodies in the freezer.”
“Yes, Herr Doktor Singh.”
“And don’t forget to either wait ten minutes or purge the chamber before you enter.”
“Yes, Herr Doktor.”
Singh left. Wyczek disappeared, presumably waiting beside the small cubicle’s outer door. After maybe a minute he entered and walked to where she could see him. He must have somehow activated a purging system
rather than wait ten minutes. He held a knife. He grasped the head of the exhausted but still snapping retriever and slit its throat. A vivid red arc sprayed across the glass and Wyczek dropped the dog’s head to the floor like so much garbage.
Bile burned its way to her mouth. She swallowed hard. Inside her gloves her hands swam in sweat. She looked at Joe. His lips were set in a thin hard line, his eyebrows drawn together tightly.
Wyczek seemed to take forever to clean up, having to hose down the walls and floor. When he left, he turned out the lab light and the room fell into twilight from the hall illumination. She and Joe waited on their slowly cooling perches. After perhaps ten minutes, when she climbed down, it was with difficulty: her muscles still shook, a letdown from tension, fatigue and anger.
“You okay?” Joe asked.
“Are you?”
He smiled—a warm, tender smile she’d not seen before. “Not really.”
“Looks like I’m the one who’s going to be buying the cappuccino in the future. You were dead right about Hass. And who do you think the guy with the scary face is?”
“One of the Alyeska pipeline terrorists. No idea. I got only a quick glimpse, but I knew I’d seen his face before. He was in the Anchorage airport. What’s obvious, though, is that König doesn’t have a clue about what’s going on here.”
“I have to tell him, Joe. As soon as we return to the bungalows.” In fact, her feet wanted to take her to Jean Paul this instant. “We have to stop this ‘dedication’ thing.”
Joe frowned. “You’ve always liked the guy, but we can’t risk telling him. He definitely admires Hass. He might take what you say to Hass. We can’t risk it. We’re not through till we find out what Gall is and, most importantly, we have to have hard proof that Helmut Hass is The Founder.”
Chapter 26
Nova was relieved to the depth of her soul that Jean Paul was innocent in this deadly game. Joe had no way to know the true quality of her feelings for Jean Paul, and now wasn’t the time for long explanations. But she couldn’t let Jean Paul be sacrificed.
