by AD Starrling
Blood drained from Schulze’s face. ‘Shit,’ he whispered hoarsely, reverting to German.
Conrad stared. A jagged pole of timber had pierced the windscreen of the vehicle and impaled Bauer’s left shoulder, pinning him to his seat. He lay suspended at an awkward angle, his long legs jammed underneath the wheel. A scarlet stain had soaked through his shirt and jacket, and a dark rivulet was slowly trickling along the length of wood. There was a wound on his temple where his head had struck something.
Schulze fumbled for his phone and punched in a number. A beeping tone sounded from the receiver. He gaped at the screen. ‘Damn it! There’s no signal!’
Laura lobbed her cell at him. ‘It’s a satellite phone! You should be able to get through!’
The agent nodded shakily and dialed again.
Trepidation filled Conrad as he knelt by the vehicle. He reached through the broken window and probed Bauer’s neck gently. A small sigh of relief left his lips when he felt a strong, thrumming pulse. The police officer moaned. His eyes fluttered open.
‘Bauer? Bauer, listen to me! Keep still! You’re bleeding heavily,’ Conrad ordered. The beat beneath his fingers was turning thready.
The man blinked at him, his gaze unfocused. He saw the wooden pole in the windscreen and followed its path to his shoulder. Alarm distorted his features. He started to flail. A crimson pool bloomed from his wound.
Conrad cursed and pinned him down. ‘Help me keep him still!’ he shouted at Laura. She ran round to the other side of the car. He glanced over his shoulder at Anatole and Stevens. ‘You two, get that thing out of his shoulder!’
‘We shouldn’t move him!’ said Stevens.
‘If we don’t do something now, he’ll die!’ Conrad shouted. ‘That’s arterial blood!’
Stevens bit his lip. Laura scrambled wordlessly through the passenger window and murmured reassuring words to the thrashing man as she immobilized him against the seat.
Shadows played across the cracked windscreen. Anatole and Stevens positioned themselves in front of the vehicle and gripped the end of the jagged shaft piercing Bauer’s shoulder.
‘This is going to hurt,’ Laura warned Bauer. ‘Just hold on to me!’
Her voice finally broke through the German officer’s panic. His eyes cleared and he focused on her. Bauer gritted his teeth and grunted, his face ashen. Schulze ended the call to the local emergency services; the agent joined Anatole and Stevens.
Conrad placed his left hand next to the wound on Bauer’s shoulder. His brow creased when he detected the underlying fractured clavicle and ruptured major vessels beneath the man’s skin.
‘What?’ said Laura.
Conrad closed his eyes briefly. ‘There’s a lot of damage,’ he murmured. He took a deep breath, concentrated, and released his healing power. ‘On the count of three!’ he shouted to the men outside. ‘One, two, three!’
They pulled on the pole. Bauer screamed as the jagged shaft slowly came out of the seat and his flesh. Conrad ground his teeth together and controlled the flow of blood escaping the man’s torn artery and vein. The policeman went limp and collapsed in the immortals’ arms a moment later.
‘Let’s get him out!’ barked Conrad.
They maneuvered Bauer out of the vehicle and lowered him to the ground, Conrad keeping his hand on the unconscious man’s shoulder the entire time. Once the officer lay supine, the immortal swiftly extracted the fragments of wood embedded inside the flesh beneath his fingers. He fixed Bauer’s broken clavicle and lacerated blood vessels, and moved to the damaged muscles.
‘What are you doing?’ said Schulze.
Conrad ignored the agent and inspected the wound on the policeman’s temple. He healed the linear skull fracture in the left temporal bone and the underlying small, subdural hematoma, before stemming the bleeding from the vessels in the man’s scalp. Once again, he did not completely repair the skin and subcutaneous tissues.
Seconds later, he sat back on the ground and released the breath he had been holding. His hands shook from the rush of adrenaline surging through his veins.
‘Is he okay?’ said Schulze.
Conrad looked up into the security agent’s anxious face.
‘He’ll be fine,’ said the immortal. He caught sight of Stevens’s troubled expression.
‘Are you all right?’ Laura asked quietly, her gaze shifting from Conrad’s trembling fingers to his face.
Conrad nodded and gave her a weak smile. Her eyes flashed. His heart stuttered in his chest when he glimpsed an emotion he never thought he would see again in her gaze. Before he could wonder whether he had been imagining it, Bauer stirred on the ground between them.
The policeman opened his eyes and blinked slowly. ‘What just happened?’ He tried to sit up.
‘Hey, don’t move! You’re injured!’ Schulze exclaimed. He pushed the man to the ground.
Bauer looked at his left shoulder. He fingered his bloodied clothes and wound with a wince. ‘It’s just a bit sore,’ he muttered, his tone reflecting mild puzzlement. ‘I feel fine.’
Schulze gaped as the police officer started to climb shakily to his feet.
Conrad rose and gave him a hand. ‘Be careful. You lost a lot of blood.’
Bauer watched him for a beat and inclined his head. His eyes moved to the conflagrations consuming the buildings in the clearing.
‘Well, I think we can officially tell the suspicious assholes in the Ministry of Interior that the US is not being behind this,’ the policeman said bitterly.
Conrad’s heart sank as he stared at the fires. He thought of his words to Maximilian Obenhaus. He was not going to be able to keep his promise to the company president.
It was four thirty in the afternoon when the flames were finally doused by firefighters from the forest authorities and the local brigades. By the time the scene investigator completed a preliminary inspection of the buildings and declared them safe for entry, the sun was sinking in a reddening sky.
Bauer allowed paramedics to dress his wounds but refused to go to the hospital. He followed Conrad and the others when they slipped on protective crime scene gear and entered the lodge.
The explosion had originated from a study at the rear of the building. The force of the blast had removed parts of the external walls and a section of the roof. A deer head mounted above a stone fireplace dominated the space, miraculously unscathed but for a layer of soot. The animal’s dead eyes seemed to follow Conrad as he walked to the mangled, charred body partially visible under a pile of rubble next to the hearth. Blackened floorboards creaked beneath the immortal’s feet as he squatted to inspect the corpse.
‘We’ll have to wait for analysis of the dental records to confirm whether this is our man,’ said Schulze.
‘It’s Luther Obenhaus,’ Conrad stated flatly.
A grunt escaped Bauer. ‘How can you tell?’
‘Because of the ring on his finger,’ said Laura before Conrad could reply.
Schulze and Bauer stared at the smoke-stained band on the body’s left hand.
‘He was wearing it in the intelligence photograph we had of him and in the pictures in Maximilian Obenhaus’s office.’ Laura met Conrad’s gaze. ‘You’re not the only one who notices things,’ she muttered.
Conrad rose and observed the damaged display cabinets and bookcases around the room. The glass had cracked and shattered in the doors of most of the units. A grimy clock above the mantelpiece had stopped with its hands on ten past two.
It was Anatole who found the remains of a computer and a cell phone under some debris on the far side of the room. Conrad joined him and stared at the distorted plastic frames, his hands fisting at his sides. He tried the power button on the phone. The fractured screen remained black.
‘We might be able to recover d
ata from the card and the hard drive,’ said Schulze. Conrad remained silent. It would be a miracle if they retrieved anything useful from the devices.
They left the cabin and headed for the barn. Though night had fallen, they were bathed in the artificial brightness of dozens of spotlights dotting the perimeter of the clearing. The hum of generators echoed against the trees.
The old farm building had once been used to store hay and house livestock. Although it had been damaged by the fire, it was structurally sounder than the lodge, with its walls and roof still intact.
‘That’s because most of the explosive force took place downstairs,’ explained the investigator.
‘Downstairs?’ Conrad repeated with a puzzled frown.
‘Yes,’ said the investigator, jerking his head toward a stall at the end of the building. ‘In the bunker.’
‘A bunker?’ said Laura, skeptical.
The investigator shrugged and led them to the enclosure. A heat-distorted, metal trapdoor lay on the ground some ten feet from a rectangular opening in the floor. An acrid stench rose from the dimly lit depths beneath it.
‘I recommend you wear face masks,’ the investigator told them. He slipped on a respirator and indicated the box of gear on the floor. ‘It’s nasty down there.’
‘I sure as hell hope that’s not dead rats we’re smelling,’ Anatole muttered as they followed the man down a stepladder.
The metal stairs originally connecting the barn to the basement lay in a buckled heap on the floor of a narrow passage. A containment door stood ajar at one end. The security display under the handle was flashing an alert.
The investigator pulled the damaged panel open. Illumination from a pair of spotlights on stands washed across a metal landing.
‘Watch the floor,’ the man warned. ‘It’s a bit unsteady.’
Conrad could not quell the feeling of dread knotting his stomach as he stepped onto the narrow mezzanine. The bright beams cut through smoky blackness and revealed the interior of a large, subterranean chamber some ten feet below. The ceiling and walls were bare concrete that had originally been painted a brilliant white. Soot and other chemical stains now streaked across the pale surfaces. Two rows of worktops had occupied the extensive floor space; the shapes of blackened, warped machinery and melted instrument coverings lay scattered around the damaged counters.
The bunker had served as a lab.
‘The sprinklers that weren’t damaged in the explosion managed to dampen the blaze somewhat,’ said the investigator in a matter-of-fact voice. He indicated the round, metal heads screwed into the concrete ceiling. ‘I’m afraid the stairs are too unstable,’ he added, pointing to the twisted structure to their right. ‘We’ll have to wait for a more secure—’ He broke off suddenly. ‘Hey! What are you doing?’
Conrad had slipped under the railing of the platform. He lowered himself over the edge and dropped down to the floor below. His boots squelched when he landed in a film of water.
‘You’re going to contaminate the scene!’ the investigator shouted from above. The man gaped when the others ducked under the railing. ‘What the—? Hey, where the hell are you guys going? Come back here!’
‘They’ll be careful,’ Bauer murmured reassuringly next to the man. With his arm in a sling, the policeman couldn’t follow them.
Glass and debris crunched under their feet as they started to explore the room. It was Laura who discovered the laser workstation at the other end of the bunker. Conrad stopped at her side and stared at the device. It bore a faint resemblance to the machines he had seen in the Obenhaus Group labs earlier that day. Attached to it was a computer with a shattered monitor and a buckled hard drive damaged by the blast.
Anatole stepped across the aisle and carefully lifted an object from a grimy work surface. ‘Hey, does this remind you guys of something?’ he asked, his cold voice slightly muffled by his mask.
Conrad turned and examined the frame in the immortal’s hands. His pulse accelerated when he recognized the shape.
Laura frowned. ‘Yes. It looks exactly like the casting template for the sniper rifles we recovered from the FedEx Field.’
They found the mangled molds for the other weapon parts and the ceramic bullets under the rubble of the next workstation. By the time they finished exploring the lab, Bauer and the investigator had maneuvered another ladder to the bunker floor. Conrad’s head filled with a single, disturbing thought as he climbed the rungs.
Had the enemy known they were coming here? If so, did that mean the mole was a member of his immediate team? His eyes darted to Harry Stevens. Laura had never once doubted the US Secret Service agent. Although Conrad liked the young man, they had both once been wrong about someone they had put their trust in.
Conrad breathed in the fresh night air outside the barn and related their findings to the German policeman and the scene investigator. Bauer’s expression was grim by the time the immortal finished talking.
‘We’ll get this place processed as fast as we can,’ he promised. ‘This is now a matter of national security.’
‘Thank you.’ Conrad gazed steadily at the German officer. ‘Will you let me tell Obenhaus?’
Bauer hesitated. ‘We should really wait for confirmation.’ A loud exhale escaped his lips. ‘But hell, the way things are looking, that body has to be that of Luther Obenhaus.’
Conrad used Laura’s phone and dialed the number Maximilian Obenhaus had given them when they left the company headquarters that afternoon.
There was a click after the third ring. ‘Hello?’ said a tense voice.
Conrad stared at the dark sky beyond the trees. ‘Mr. Obenhaus, this is Conrad Greene,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news.’
‘That’s him!’ exclaimed Nadica Rajkovic. ‘That’s the man who was at the facility in Crystal City!’
Zoran Rajkovic froze the image and slowly leaned back in his seat.
They stared at the picture of a grim-faced figure on the ninety-inch monitor on the wall. It was a clip from the dozens of videos that had been uploaded to the Internet by the Redskins fans who had been at the FedEx Field the previous day. The man was stepping out of a vehicle surrounded by armed police and state troopers on a road outside the stadium, his hands behind his head.
‘According to our source, his name is Conrad Greene,’ said Zoran, his tone cool despite the anger thrumming through him. ‘President Westwood has put him in charge of the multi-agency investigation into his assassination attempt. No one knows anything about the man. He just appeared out of the blue in Maryland yesterday morning and helped the Secret Service locate the positions of the other two assassins. Rumor is he got involved when our missing contractor’s plane crashed near his house in Brazil.’ He scowled. ‘He’s currently in Germany with a team of agents.’
‘Germany?’ Nadica asked sharply.
‘Yes.’ Zoran glanced at Ariana. ‘One of the FBI scientists in Quantico identified the polymer we used for the guns. They wanted to check out the Obenhaus factory outside Arnstadt.’
‘They won’t find anything there,’ said Nadica. Satisfaction tinged her voice. ‘Even if they make the link with Luther Obenhaus, that trail will soon be cold.’
Ariana Rajkovic studied the shot of Conrad Greene with a forbidding expression.
‘Still, for them to have made the connection to Germany is something that should concern us,’ she stated in a steely tone. ‘We need to slow them down. No, not you, Nadica,’ she added tersely at the young woman’s hungry expression. ‘I know the man has angered you, but you have more important tasks at hand.’ She looked at Zoran. ‘Send one of our other contractors in Europe.’
‘Yes, Ama,’ he replied with a dutiful nod. He watched her disappear through the doors of the main salon and turned to scrutinize the still image on the screen.<
br />
He would not let Conrad Greene get in their way. Not after all the hardship Ariana Rajkovic had suffered to see this scheme come to fruition. The events currently being played out around the world were part of a plan that had been set in motion a long time ago. Too much blood had been spilled along the way for it to fail now.
Zoran looked at his sister and saw the same defiant light in her eyes. They would see this through to the end. They owed it to the woman who meant the whole world to them.
Ariana strolled along the teak-lined passage to the master cabin on the upper deck and closed the door of the luxurious room behind her. Sunlight glowed on the waters of the Atlantic outside the windows overlooking the balcony.
She ignored the mesmerizing sight and crossed the floor to the bulkhead opposite her bed. Soft glowing spotlights illuminated the oil portraits of two men inside gold-lacquered frames.
Ariana stopped and gazed lovingly at the first painting. ‘Soon, my love,’ she whispered, raising her fingers to touch the man’s face. ‘Soon, I will fulfill your long-held dream. Your bloodline will rule this wretched world, as it was always meant to do.’
She turned to the other painting and similarly brushed the lips of the second man, her heart aching all over again. ‘Thank you for giving me the strength to carry on, husband.’
Chapter Seventeen
‘He’s dead?’ Connelly said sharply.
‘Unfortunately,’ muttered Conrad. Anger and sadness still coursed through the immortal following his difficult conversation with Maximilian Obenhaus. ‘They got to him before we did. The Germans just sent us some preliminary reports. Luther Obenhaus was shot in the head and chest and died instantly.’ He clenched his teeth. ‘This will be small comfort for his brother, but at least the Obenhaus family will know he didn’t suffer the agony of being burned alive.’
