by Leon, Judith
“We have to contact the Company,” she said resolutely. “We have to tell Jean Paul.”
Joe’s frown deepened. “We can’t blow this entire mission for him.”
Nova clenched one fist. “Let me be very, very clear. I know what’s at stake.” She locked gazes with Joe. His dark eyes were glittering with anger. “I’ve done terrible things in my life. I’ve killed. I’ve done prison time. I’ve done things for the CIA you’ll never know about. But I will not let Jean Paul be destroyed by this monster. I’ll not let this ‘dedication’ happen.”
A rock-hard stare from her partner continued as he absorbed her challenge. For a brief moment she envisioned dropping to her knees and begging Joe to do this one thing for her. Agent Cardone, though, would never compromise Operation Jacaranda to save one man. But she knew Jean Paul could be trusted. He didn’t have to be turned into a walking zombie.
Joe looked at her a moment, as if searching for a reason to trust his life to her. He glanced at his watch. “It’s already two forty-five. Jean Paul and everyone else is sleeping. Let’s search this friggin’ place down to the cracks in the walls. Let’s find what we need. Then we go back to the bungalows, pick up König and take him with us, willingly or not, and go into Turm. The Company can take it from there, and you won’t have to decide whether we risk telling him or not.”
Her mind did battle with her heart. Jean Paul wouldn’t wake for hours. Joe was right that it would be foolish to abandon their search now. But he’d agreed to save Jean Paul. She’d won the battle, but she couldn’t help but feel she still had to win the war with Joe.
They picked up their search where they’d left off. Apparently all three men had cleared out. The corridor lights were still on but the halls had taken on a deathly quiet. The complex was surprisingly large. Searching went slow. In a research section, they found other animal rooms and labs. Drawers, cupboards, desks and filing cabinets had to be checked without leaving evidence of violation.
The smell of garlic hovered in a small kitchen. An adjacent room had bunks, as if people sometimes worked round-the-clock schedules. It was late, nearly five in the morning, when in the southeast section they found a communications room and, next to it, a computer room. She stared at the computer terminal. “When we met, your cover was IBM representative. So exactly how much do you actually know about computers, Mr. IBM Man?”
He grinned and flexed his fingers. “Some.”
“I think Gall will be in here.”
“There’s a possibility we’ll find only scientific stuff. This is a big mother, though. Japanese. This thing could handle anything scientific and keep track of Hass’s little terrorist actions without breaking into even a light sweat. The whole hump’s secure. There seems to be no reason for Hass not to use it.”
“We have to be away from here before first light.” She checked her watch. “Twenty, twenty-five minutes max. Hustle.”
Joe fiddled some, then said, “Hot damn. No log on, no passwords required. These creeps feel real secure.”
She thought about Singh’s Loyalty Inducer—soon to be used on Jean Paul. Perhaps only irreversibly “dedicated” personnel were allowed into the hump, personnel so loyal Singh hadn’t protected his computer files. If that was the explanation for this security lapse, and if what she and Joe wanted was in this computer, Singh’s reliance on his drug’s efficacy was going to prove to be his downfall. She would relish the irony.
Joe tapped several more keys and a menu, in German, appeared on the screen.
She began translating words and acronyms. Joe kept clicking the mouse. Finally he turned and smiled. “The system’s definitely not connected outside. I’ll bet you one cup of the many cups of cappuccino you owe me that the files won’t be coded. Just named. I bet their networking with the outside world is done from the mainframe in Building No. 3 and they bring copies of things in here.” He grinned widely. “The best security possible—unless of course someone brilliant breaches their mountain fortress.”
They found a menu for a long list of scientific software. Then a mammoth directory in which a few files had somewhat recognizable names—Blood Brain Barrier was one.
Her concentration drifted from the computer screen as something to their left caught her eye. She said, “There’s another door into here.”
The keyboard console occupied the center of the forty-by-forty-foot room; the computer sat in sections along the walls. And there was a break in the pattern. She strode to the door. Joe followed. The door was the color of the room’s ceiling and walls. It wasn’t hidden, but it wasn’t obvious, either. Easy to overlook.
She said, “Where do you think it goes?”
He shrugged. They stepped into the corridor. The adjacent room was for storage, but there had to be something—a narrow passage or elevator—between them. He said, “My guess is, the door leads outside somewhere.”
She tugged him back to the computer. “Let’s get what we came for and get out.”
So far it was all Singh’s stuff. She began to doubt, and time was racing by. Joe explored some more and they came up with a directory that included “German Homeland Party.”
Two clicks and the screen projected a German Homeland subdirectory.
Joe clicked as Nova read through the files. The first file was finances. Nothing suggested a terrorist operation. Two files later she got excited. She put her finger to the screen. “Try this one, Joe. It means Earth’s Warriors.”
The Earth’s Warrior subdirectory immediately delivered something they wanted. Under the title “Members” they found a list of names. Brief biographies were listed under three categories. Warriors, where they found Wyczek. Supporters—Manfred Wagner was included—and Tools—politicians, judges, even movie stars. She recognized more than half of the names, including Peter Grund’s, Jean Paul’s and Senator Legnett’s.
“We should have been out of here over forty minutes ago.” Joe checked his watch. “We’re running way behind schedule.”
“This one says ‘Dedications,’ Joe.”
The list of names under Dedications was arranged by date. She caught her breath. She pointed to Jean Paul’s name and beside it was today’s date. She pulled her hand back and tucked it under her arm. Clearly, unless she did something, and soon, Jean Paul would soon become a permanent Hass fan.
Other names followed Jean Paul’s, including hers, but not Joe’s. Next to Nova’s name the space for the dedication date remained blank.
Then they hit gold. “Operations,” she said. The actions had the usual clever nicknames, among them Calling Card, the Tahiti air crash; Roadrunner, the Glen Canyon dam attempt; Viper, the Alaskan pipeline; Wormwood, the Rolls factory; and Gall. Joe opened the Gall file and Nova began translating it out loud. The target was a hotel in Munich. Clearly, Hass intended to blow up the whole of one side of the building. But was it the building or someone in the building he was after?
Nova stopped reading. “Let’s copy it. All of it. Then figure it out. I want that copy in my hands. This is all we need to convince the Company and to nail these slime.”
They were now way past the time they had planned to be back at the bungalows. Most unfortunately, Jean Paul would likely have been up for quite a while, wondering where the heck she was.
While the computer copied, she started reading the screen to Joe again, then clarity hit her. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “It’s not just the hotel. God in heaven. It’s the German chancellor, Joe. They’re going to assassinate Chancellor Gottfried. I saw on the news that he’s been in Munich for a couple of days now.”
Joe handed her the copied disk and returned the screen to the prompt. They had a little less than forty-eight hours, but still plenty of time to deliver the goods to Cupid and to stop Gall.
Nova felt rather than heard a whoosh from the direction of the second door behind them and to the left. “How did you get in here?” Singh’s singsong voice demanded.
Joe stiffened. Nova whirled. He noted that she hi
d the disk behind her by slipping it under her shirt and into her waistband. Joe reached under his arm for the Sig but Wyczek’s familiar voice bellowed, “Hande hoch! Stand up and turn around.” He did as directed. There stood Singh and Wyczek. Behind them, in the doorway was König.
Had König been dedicated already? So soon? Joe supposed it was possible.
Only Wyczek was armed—with a 9 mm Beretta. The very model of Beretta, Joe knew, whose great flaw was that if you could just get your hand over the slide, the gun couldn’t be fired. His mind clicked off the distance between his right hand and the Beretta’s barrel.
“Both of you. Remove your guns slowly, with two fingers,” Wyczek demanded. “Place them on the floor.” He nodded. “Kick them over there. In the corner.”
Joe complied even though he thought he should take Wyczek now.
Singh backed out the door, looked down the hall, and yelled, “Stephan, Fritz.”
Wyczek’s weapon wavered slightly in Nova’s direction. Joe charged, his hand stretching out in hope for the slide. First shot—wild. Second shot—a hot branding iron slammed into his shoulder. He crashed into Wyczek. They toppled. They rolled right. Wyczek ended up on top.
Singh screamed. “Stop her, Jean Paul!”
Another gunshot, painfully loud and close to Joe’s head.
He tried to raise his right arm. Useless. Wyczek’s fist slammed into his chin and Joe bit his tongue. He clamped his left hand on Wyczek’s throat and, as the sound of running feet grew louder, squeezed hard.
Wyczek rammed both beefy arms upward, easily stripping Joe’s hand away. He grabbed Joe’s dangling right arm, pulled on it and twisted. A fiery agony ripped up his arm and across his shoulders. Black soup swam in front of Joe’s eyes.
Wyczek flipped him; Joe flopped like a beached porpoise onto his stomach. Another man rammed a knee in the center of his back and his breath whooshed out. Grimly, Joe wondered, Could this be the delightful Stephan or Fritz joining us?
Together, the new guy and Wyczek tied his hands. They rolled him onto his back and the white-hot branding iron again poked its scalding way through his shoulder.
A second man, stocky and blond with a nose that had been broken at least once, held a gun on Nova. He glared at her and was nursing a bleeding wrist. Apparently the third shot had been a hit by Nova.
Singh was so pale he could have passed for Hass’s brother. And Jean Paul stood with his back against the door frame. He was dazed and looking as though he hadn’t moved the width of a cat’s whisker. Not good.
Wyczek barked something in German to Singh. Wyczek had figured out the obvious: Singh’s mind seemed momentarily out of commission. After a second, Singh said, “Yes.” To the broken-nosed blond, Wyczek rattled off something else and nodded toward Nova. Then while Wyczek babbled into a wall intercom, the husky blond used a length of computer cable to tie Nova as Joe was tied, hands behind her back.
Wyczek finished at the intercom. He gestured to the blond who hauled on the cord around Joe’s wrist to lift Joe to his feet. The fire in his shoulder flared again, followed by the momentary darkness and a spinning sensation. Their entourage trouped down the hall, he and Nova leading, each with a gun at their back. Singh and Jean Paul brought up the rear. The parade marched north, turned left and ended up at the security door that Joe had earlier guessed led into Building No. 1. They descended a flight of stairs, exited the stairwell and stood in front of an identical door.
Singh pushed his lab coat sleeve up and placed the lower side of his forearm over the detector. Slick as a whistle, the doors opened, revealing another corridor, even wider. Probably runs under the research buildings.
Two electric carts hugged one wall. The seven of them clambered aboard, Joe being shoved onto the back seat of one and Nova the back seat of the other, a guard each glued to their sides. It occurred to him that no one other than himself seemed the least interested in how much blood he might be losing.
Singh and Wyczek took the steering wheels. Jean Paul was acting peculiar as hell. He’d said nothing. Now he sat ramrod stiff next to Singh.
The two carts hummed down the corridor passing four steel doors at distances corresponding to one door for each of the four research buildings. They angled right briefly, then went north again. They had to be heading for the mansion.
Heartsick, Nova studied Jean Paul. The look on his face, a lost-child look, made her long to hold him. He kept touching a white gauze patch on his forearm. This was a nightmare. It couldn’t be real.
She clenched her fists, tightening the bonds on her wrists, which dug painfully into her skin. She relaxed her hands and ran her fingers over the upholstered cart seat. They would search her. If she could get rid of the disk, she and Joe could try to deny knowing anything of substance. The crease between the seat and back pads felt almost deep enough. From the corner of her eye she gauged her captor’s attention: she didn’t think he’d notice—if she moved slowly. She slid her hand inside her waistband, fingered the disk up and out, slipped the disk into the crease, pushed it down, then ran the tips of her fingers over the spot. Maybe an eighth of an inch, no more, of disk stuck out. With luck, no one would see it.
Singh and Wyczek stopped the carts. The two guards, Stephan and Fritz, yanked her and Joe to their feet, marched them into what appeared to be a large, subterranean office, and shoved them onto metal, straight-backed chairs.
Happily, she’d gotten off one shot—Broken Nose was nursing a bleeding wrist—but the other man had piled onto her like a leech hopping a blood meal. Wyczek spoke to the taller, dark-haired thug, a big man with a slight limp. “Go to the studio and find something to tie them to the chairs.”
In a time all too brief, Limper was back and wrapping a quarter-inch nylon cord several times around her chest, binding her to the chair’s seat back. He gave Joe—whose bloodied arm looked useless—the same treatment. Joe’s jaw muscles worked furiously during the whole procedure. She didn’t want to imagine how his arm felt, and she prayed his wound was superficial. Blood drenched his sleeve. She saw droplets on the floor.
In a corner, still avoiding her gaze, Jean Paul hunched in a wing-backed chair. Singh paced in front of a large desk. He’d finally stopped jabbering to Wyczek and Jean Paul about how angry the man named Maurus was going to be.
A bronze statue behind the desk caught her eye. It was grotesque. The figure—a man—was cutting the skin from his own body. She spied another statue on a corner pedestal. The female form had her mouth open in a silent scream as she held her severed fingers. A violent shiver shook Nova and left her muscles quivering. What kind of sick mind would create such monstrosities?
Silent minutes dragged by. Then Maurus arrived. He glanced around the room, then spoke in German. “Sorry you’ve been subjected to this mess, Jean Paul. It seems this woman isn’t what she appears to be. She and her friend intend to sabotage your campaign. I have to find out who they represent.”
To her surprise Jean Paul finally spoke. “Yes,” he said simply.
She could scarcely credit her ears; he sounded like a zombie.
“I think you should leave. Would you like to leave?” Maurus said to Jean Paul.
“No.”
Maurus looked to Singh. “Should he leave?”
The scientist was toying with items on the desk. “It will make no difference one way or the other, except that he is going to be privy to more than we originally planned. He’s in shock now. Something I’ve not seen before. I believe because of a conflict between the conditioning to our cause and his exceptionally strong feelings for the woman. But the shock will pass. I am certain he will be functional soon. A day or two at most.”
Maurus looked at Joe. Switching to English, he said, “Who the fuck are you?”
Joe said nothing. Maurus signaled Wyczek. Using his gun butt, the bodyguard struck Joe on the side of the head. Blood spurted from Joe’s cheek. She felt the blow in the center of her chest.
“How did you gain entry to the mountain?�
�
Again silence. Again a blow to Joe’s face.
Her underarms were sweaty, her fisted hands moist and hot. The muscle in her left calf began to quiver. She promised herself that if he hit Joe again, she’d kill Wyczek.
Maurus turned to Singh and reverted to German. “Clearly we’re under suspicion. But that isn’t proof. If they still haven’t delivered proof to their bosses, we’re safe. We’ll just delay Gall—”
“Yes,” Singh interrupted, “but shouldn’t we assume they know everything? I have been thinking. Shouldn’t we leave here at once?”
Maurus gave the twitching scientist a brutal stare. “Don’t be a fool. If they had proof or had passed proof on, do you think they’d still be here? It’s much more likely we’ve caught them in time. But we do have to know for sure. My guess is they’re CIA.” He shook his head. “I have no time for this.”
He walked behind the desk, opened the top center drawer, took out a pair of shears, handed them across the desk to Wyczek and said in German, “Cut off their shirts. Fritz, you take some of the clothing to Bruno. Have him sniff every square inch of the Compound. I want to know every place these two have set a foot.”
Wyczek cut up the belly, under the ropes and through the neck of Joe’s lightweight cotton sweater, then out the arms. Like a hunter stripping the skin from a kill, he peeled the shirt off Joe’s body. When he came to her, Wyczek skewered her with his eyes, smiling an oily leer. He began to cut, rubbed his rough hands slowly across her belly and then over her breasts.
Maurus snapped, “Don’t waste time.”
When Wyczek finished, he gave the clothing to Fritz, the Limper, who raced out to take them to the Compound’s German shepherd sniffer.
After ordering Singh to return to the computer to find out whether she and Joe had damaged it or the files, their tormentor smiled at Jean Paul and, in German, told him, “Go with Herr Doktor Singh. I want you to stay with him until he knows if the computer and its programs are secure. Then I want you to come with him to report to me.”
