Labyrinth

by Jon Land

  “Then these animals of ours arranged for you to be given a gun, knowing you would be forced to use it in self-defense.”

  “And Alvaradejo obviously thought I was part of something bigger because he addressed me in the plural. But what if I had failed?”

  “Then you’d be dead and the animals would have dealt with the Colombian themselves and devised another way to come up with the rest of Lubeck’s trail.”

  Locke thought briefly. “But Alvaradejo must have been part of something bigger too. The men who chased me spoke Spanish as well, shouted the same phrases and accusations he did.”

  Burgess fingered his scar. “Then they must be organized. The bit with the taxi driver was not an easy stunt to pull off.”

  “So we’re dealing with two forces here.”

  “At least, lad, but the animals are our prime concern. These others—Alvaradejo’s people—are dangerous yet not nearly as professional; professionals do not shout in the streets.”

  “And what about Brian?” Locke asked with a lump in his throat.

  The Englishman’s stare went rigid. “Between your desperate phone call and meeting in the park, he went searching for answers. Apparently the answers found him first.”

  They‘re everywhere, everything… .

  “He said they were everywhere, that the world would be theirs unless they were stopped,” Locke muttered. “Christ, they could have killed me at any time.”

  “But instead they chose to use you, lad. Your friend Lubeck uncovered a trail that died with him. But it can still do the animals great harm if someone else uncovers it. Alvaradejo was the first step, Liechtenstein the second. By following you, they cover their tracks.”

  “Then who was waiting for me in the hotel?”

  “More of the Colombian’s friends probably. It was the animals that killed Charney, though, because he got too close to them.”

  Locke drained a hefty gulp of his coffee. The caffeine was recharging him, but as Burgess dug deeper into his story, his fear deepened along with his sense of helplessness.

  “So by going to Liechtenstein,” he concluded, “I’ll be aiding the cause of those Brian said had to be destroyed.”

  Burgess shook his head. “Before, maybe.” He tapped his still-massive chest with an index finger. “But now you have me. I’ll show you what you need to know to stay one step ahead. They will keep you alive so long as you fill a need. We must use that to our advantage, lad. Also they have no idea now where you’re headed next. Time is on our side and we must take advantage of that too.” Burgess leaned back and crossed his arms. “You said something about Brian drawing a connection between the events.”

  “It wasn’t much.” Locke sighed. “He felt the key was food.”

  “Food?”

  “Lubeck was investigating the World Hunger Conference when Alvaradejo met with him. And Lube died in Colombia because he saw something in the fields. His last words dealt with it.”

  “Words he never had a chance to finish,” Burgess completed. “Now tell me what Brian said about Liechtenstein.”

  “Only that I was supposed to go there and find a man named Felderberg.”

  “Felderberg!” the Englishman bellowed in obvious surprise.

  “You know him?”

  “Everyone in our line of work does, knows of him anyway. Let me tell you something, lad, don’t believe everything you hear about Switzerland being the financial capital of the world. People might still keep their money in Swiss numbered accounts because they represent the ultimate in privacy. But when they want to move that money around, they go to Liechtenstein. Deals are arranged there, funds large enough to boggle the mind are transferred there. And all of it carried out with the utmost discretion, kept secret from governments … and tax services. Claus Felderberg is the leading middleman of them all, a power broker who controls the flow of money when certain parties don’t want anyone to know its true origin. He consolidates funds or spreads them out. Discretion is maintained above everything else.”

  “And Lubeck saw him,” Locke said, almost in a whisper. “The next link in the chain …”

  “Leading us where, I wonder, lad. What does an international power broker have to do with the massacre of a Colombian town?”

  “Only Lubeck could tell us that.”

  “Then we’ll have to find out for ourselves, won’t we? You came to the right place. I owe Brian Charney this much and more.”

  Burgess finally asked Chris if he was hungry and proceeded to put together a giant breakfast of steak and eggs, toast, sausages, and more coffee. As they ate, the burly Englishman told his own story and Locke found himself fascinated.

  He had enlisted at the very start of World War II at the age of eighteen, ending up at the German front where he was three times decorated for bravery. Twice he was wounded and twice he returned to battle, refusing to be sent home. He hated the Germans with everything he knew, wanted to kill as many of them as the army would give him bullets for. Though exact counts were never kept, it was more than possible that Colin Burgess killed more Nazis than any other single infantryman in all of England’s vast regiments.

  It was the third wound that got him sent home. Burgess couldn’t argue; he was in no position to. A German grenade had torn a measure of his stomach away and sunk so deeply into his leg that some of the fragments were impossible to reach.

  “Thought I’d be shitting into a bag for the rest of my life, lad,” Burgess recalled.

  His recovery was miraculous but his days at the front were finished. The shrapnel had left him with a slight limp and most sudden motions were impossible. So the British command found something else for him, a task far more important and even more satisfying than his work at the front. Burgess was assigned to the OSS detail responsible for ferreting out German spies in England. Burgess loved the role because it allowed him to deal with the men he hated most face to face, not from across a battlefield.

  After the war he took his sharply honed skills to MI-6, the British counterpart of the soon-to-be-formed CIA. He spent thirty years in the field, meeting up with Brian Charney on one of his final assignments, which took them to East Berlin. Things did not go well. They walked into a trap and Burgess took two bullets in the side. Charney killed his assailants and then half-dragged, half-carried Burgess three miles to a rendezvous point at the Wall with KGB agents in hot pursuit. Charney and Burgess never lost contact with each other after that night, the older man becoming a father figure to the boy-wonder of the American intelligence community, teaching him all the tricks the classroom had neglected. When Burgess retired from the field, Charney still consulted with him often and referred to the big Brit as his true mentor.

  “He was like family to me, lad,” Burgess said bitterly. “I’ll get the bastards who killed him all right.”

  Locke felt something sink in his stomach. “What about my family?” he said rapidly. “We’ve got to reach them and secure them from danger!”

  Burgess thought for a moment. “Leave that to me, lad.”

  “But Charney said there was no one I—we—could trust.”

  “In his government, not mine. I’ll call some people I know in the British intelligence community, free-lancers mostly. Everything will be unofficial, a few favors called in. Within eight hours I’ll have your family under watch and guard. You’ll have nothing to worry about from that end.”

  Locke shook his head slowly. He stared across the table as though in a daze. “I don’t know if I’m up to this, Colin, I just don’t know… .”

  Burgess’s expression became tight and sure. “I do, lad. You see, Brian Charney was not a man to leave things to chance. He contacted me this afternoon and said there was a possibility I’d be hearing from you and if so it would mean he was dead. He read me a portion of your file he knew would be of … interest to me. That portion convinced me that you had it in you to complete the mission for him, that you could uncover the implications of what’s already happened and prevent what might be
about to. You see, it’s in your blood.”

  And then Locke realized. “You know about my mother.”

  “More than that, lad,” Burgess said with no emotion in his voice. “It was I who captured her.”

  Chapter 11

  “WHAT WE GOT HERE, gentlemen,” Calvin Roy said, “is a mess that stinks worse than a corn pasture ’round planting time.”

  The Undersecretary of State leaned over his desk and faced the two men seated before it: Louis Auschmann, deputy National Security Adviser, and Major Peter Kennally, director of the CIA.

  “The autopsy on Charney just came in,” Roy continued. “Some bastard shot him four times and we can’t find hide nor hair of the man he put in the field.”

  “I should have been consulted about that,” Kennally said dryly. “You don’t send amateurs into the field without proper clearance and cover.”

  “Sprinkle your manure somewhere else, Major,” Roy snapped. “Charney had full clearance to do whatever he damn well pleased whenever he damn well pleased. He answered only to this department and I approved of the human option deployment, as did the Secretary himself.”

  “And now your human option is the subject of a manhunt in London. Killed a Colombian diplomat and damn near killed a cabdriver.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sure he had his reasons and I’m betting Charney’s death confirms them.”

  “Unless he killed Charney as well. He could have been a foreign all the time. We’ve got to consider the possibility that this whole scenario was set up by him.”

  “The bullets that killed the Colombian don’t match up with the ones that killed Charney,” Auschmann pointed out.

  “Standard procedure dictates he wouldn’t have used the same gun twice,” Kennally said.

  “Screw your standard procedure up your asshole, Major!” Roy’s face was furious. “I asked you here to help me figure out what in hell is going on, not to recite chapter and verse from the spy manual. You read the report I sent over summarizing what Charney thought he was on to?”

  Kennally nodded. “And all I could draw from it was that he wasn’t on to anything concrete.”

  “Not then anyway, but it looks plain to me that whatever it is seems to be hardening real fast and I’d like to find out what before someone else gets buried, maybe a whole mess of people. Charney was pro, Major. He worked for you long enough for you to know that.”

  “All the same, he placed a lot of credence in Lubeck’s report.”

  “You heard the tape. You blame him?”

  “You’re saying there’s a connection between Lubeck’s death and Charney’s… .”

  Roy feigned shock. “Man, oh, man, move that boy to the head of the class.”

  “So where does Locke fit in?”

  “Right now, Major Pete, nowhere we can find him.”

  “And San Sebastian?”

  “Fire stopped last night. Just got the first report from the team that went in. Nothin’ within twenty miles that’ll tell us a damn thing. Lots of human bones, though, roasted clean through. Whole town’s been burned to a crisp.”

  “Obviously someone went through great pains to cover their tracks,” Auschmann concluded.

  “When I want the obvious stated, Louie, I know I can always turn to you. Now how ’bout telling me something less obvious, like what in the hell happened to Charney?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He didn’t call nobody, that’s what I mean. Instead of using the regular channels and making an emergency report, he gets himself killed trying to deliver it to our Professor Locke.”

  “There’s no record of his having requested backup at any time yesterday,” reported Auschmann. “Also no contact was made with our people at the embassy.”

  “Charney was never the solo type,” noted Major Kennally.

  “So what made him change?” Roy wondered. “Maybe he didn’t cross the usual channels ’cause he was afraid they might collapse under him.”

  “A leak?” from Kennally.

  “Maybe.” Roy paused. “Or maybe something worse than a leak.”

  “Like,” Auschmann said, “discovering that certain forces in our government were part of what he had uncovered.”

  “Yup, Charney must have found that the shit on somebody’s shoes led right back to our doorstep.”

  “He wouldn’t have called in because the wrong person might have answered,” added Auschmann, a dapper man in his early thirties with a Harvard degree and high aspirations. “Time was probably a factor. He had to go it alone.”

  “But he went to Locke,” said Kennally.

  “The only one he knew he could trust when they started closing in.”

  “When who started closing in?” Roy asked loudly. “What I got, fellas, is one dead agent and one college professor running around England wanted for murder.”

  “Has Scotland Yard been of any help?” asked Kennally.

  “Dumb bastards couldn’t find a pile of shit if they were standing knee-deep in it. They threw a net over the Dorchester and Locke slipped through it. Didn’t even realize he had until they decided to plant a man in his room and found Charney’s body and evidence our professor had just left. The trail was still hot but before they could follow it, somebody set off the damn fire alarm.”

  “Locke maybe,” Auschmann said.

  “In which case he’s a lot more resourceful than we gave him credit for, unless you cover such things at the Academy, Major Pete.”

  “And now he’s alone,” said Kennally.

  “Maybe not,” said Roy. “Charney would have sent him to someone. Poor guy didn’t drag himself all the way up there with four bullets in him just to die on the plush carpeting. No, he told Locke something, a whole lot more than we know now.”

  “The solution’s obvious,” said Kennally. “We find Locke.” The major leaned back. “Only where do we start? Charney could have sent him anywhere.”

  “No,” countered Auschmann, “not anywhere. Since Locke hasn’t made contact with any government branch or foreign embassy yet, it’s safe to assume Charney steered him away from us.”

  Roy nodded, interlacing his fingers. “Pull Charney’s file, Louie, and go over it with a magnifying glass. Brian had lots of contacts in England. Find the one he would have sent Locke to.”

  “Why England?”

  “Because Charney was a pro and he knew Locke wasn’t. Distance would be a factor, travel something to be avoided at all costs.”

  “And since Locke didn’t come in,” said Kennally, “it’s possible, even probable, that Charney used him to replace himself.”

  “Which would win him the benefit of Charney’s killers … and Lubeck’s,” added Auschmann.

  “Unless we find him first,” said Roy, “and that, fellas, is just what we’re gonna do.”

  The one-eyed man walked into the bar quietly, doing his best not to be noticed. It was difficult. He was large and powerfully built, with dark features, black hair, and a pair of eyes that were sharp as steel. People moved out of his way, stealing a brief extra glance, as he walked toward a table in the rear occupied at present by a single dark-haired woman chain-smoking over a glass half full of melted ice cubes.

  “We lost him,” the woman reported.

  “So I gathered,” said the one-eyed man. He sat down. “Something confuses me about your report. You say the American came alone to the park?”

  “Yes.”

  “That isn’t right. They should have sent others.”

  “There was only Alvaradejo, they thought. Hardly the need for others.”

  The one-eyed man pulled his chair in closer. “You also say the American rushed from the park. Would you describe his motions as panicked?”

  “Desperate perhaps. That’s what our man in the cab said.” She added, “He’s going to be all right.”

  “Professionals aren’t desperate. The American should have discarded his gun in the bushes and walked calmly away. Instead he ran, as though surprised by the une
xpected.”

  “Alvaradejo had a gun.”

  “He should have allowed for that possibility.”

  “The American’s aim was perfect,” the woman persisted, lighting a fresh cigarette.

  “From an extremely close range. Doesn’t mean a thing.”

  The woman hesitated. “He could have known about our ploy with the cab or guessed it. The panic might have been a facade meant to take our man’s guard down. Apparently it succeeded.”

  The one-eyed man wasn’t satisfied. “Yet he still waited until our cabdriver had gone for his gun before he acted.”

  “He could be a showman. Americans have always gone in for the quick draw, cowboy stuff. Besides, he did quite a job on our man when it was called for.”

  “But he was left alive. A professional would have killed him. A professional wouldn’t run from the chaos creating more.”

  “Unless he was baiting us. And the trap worked. Arturo walked right into it. His fingers were still locked on his gun handle when they found him. Only a professional could have moved so fast.”

  The one-eyed man shrugged. He waved away the smoke. “That is another thing that doesn’t fit. So thorough a killing with no witnesses …”

  “As I said, the work of a professional,” the woman reiterated, pressing her cigarette out so not to annoy the man.

  “Undeniably,” he said. His face twisted uncomfortably. “The American called for the meeting with Alvaradejo?”

  “Just as we discovered he would. They sent him on Lubeck’s trail to kill all those Lubeck contacted, those who knew too much.”

  “A college professor …”

  “With six months of CIA training,” the woman said. “They say he dropped out. It was the perfect cover for his present employers.”

  “Then why mention such training in his dossier at all?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Obviously Locke leads a double life. His teaching allows him ample time for his second vocation. And no one raises questions if a teacher travels frequently. The cover is perfect. And Georgetown University, a coincidence he chose a college in Washington, you think?”

  The one-eyed man said nothing.