Dead Wrong

by Richard Phillips

  While blood spurts from the kneeling man’s neck, his severed head rolls three feet toward me. Its motion shifts the blindfold up to reveal an open right eye. When the head finally comes to rest, that accusing brown eye stares directly at me.

  My mother’s and brother’s wails echo from the columned buildings that surround the paved square, but I barely notice. I am frozen in place, unable to pull my eyes away from my father’s dead gaze.

  Jack opened his eyes, fought his way out of the confining sleeping bag, and stumbled through darkness to the sink. It took three full pumps before water spurted from the faucet so that he could shove his head into the stream. Jack continued pumping the ice-cold water over his head, neck, and back, letting it wash the remnants of the dream from his mind.

  When he straightened, he mopped the water from his head and body with his hands, letting it drip onto the cabin floor. He didn’t know what was happening to him, but this shit was getting old real fast.

  He reached for the LED lantern and switched it on. Although it cast a circular glow, its illumination seemed concentrated on the stack of pages he’d removed from Altmann’s binder. Well, he wasn’t going to be going back to sleep tonight, so he might as well find out what the hell there was about this journal that had attracted his attention. But first he was going to heat up some coffee.

  When Jack sat down, steaming metal mug in hand, he moved the short stack of papers toward him. With a strange mixture of anticipation and dread, he started reading. Halfway through the journal, Jack knew he was wasting his time. A half hour later, Jack found himself leaning over the journal, fully engaged. The change had come about when he’d turned a page to reveal a detailed drawing of an Incan Emperor holding an artifact that the natives called the Incan Sun Staff. Jack had seen this picture before, tattooed on Tupac Inti’s massive chest. And he’d held the staff in his dreams.

  In his journal, Pizarro had recorded many details of his conquest of the Incan Empire. The key had been the dispute between Atahualpa and his older brother as to who should become emperor, as their father had failed to specify his heir prior to his death. By right, the Incan Sun Staff, the symbol of the emperor, should have passed to the oldest son. But at Pizarro’s urging and with the promise of Spanish backing, Atahualpa had stolen the staff and proclaimed himself the one, true emperor. Taking advantage of the resultant Incan civil war and helped by the spread of diseases brought in by the Spanish, Pizarro conquered the once-mighty empire in a matter of months.

  But something about the staff and its legend had so enthralled Pizarro that he had betrayed Atahualpa, capturing and executing the puppet emperor he had helped install. Having come to believe that the staff had bestowed upon its wielder the power to build an empire, Pizarro took the object for his own. Pizarro also ordered that all the keepers of Incan high lore be brought before him so that he could acquire full knowledge of the artifact.

  As Jack read Pizarro’s words, he remembered his dream of Pizarro manipulating the golden orb crown piece and of the terror that had risen up within him as he felt himself compelled to twist its golden rings.

  Staring down at the photocopies of the original script, Jack could remember penning those very words, the feel of the quill against his fingertips, the scratch of its tip on the paper. There was a connection between the Pizarro dream and the fear Jack felt as he continued reading.

  The LED lantern struggled to push back the darkness that crawled around him. Jack shivered, feeling the need to get dressed, rekindle the fire, and make another pot of hot coffee. He had just started to push back from the table when it hit him.

  He backed up a page, rereading the previous journal entry. In it Pizarro described what he’d learned from the last shaman to be brought before him, that the staff only granted its power to someone who correctly aligned the orb’s mystic rings. In the grips of the torture Pizarro personally inflicted on him, the shaman had revealed the secret combination.

  Paranoid that the secret might fall into the hands of others, Pizarro had committed it to memory, but not to his journal. That journal entry concluded with Pizarro’s plans to perform the Sun Staff ritual during the coming night’s witching hour, when he would be alone in the poorly constructed shelter that served as his sleeping quarters.

  Again Jack felt the written words stir his memory. The odd thing was that he had no such memory of the next journal entry, nor any entry that followed. Fascinated, Jack read all the subsequent entries, then reread the entire journal from beginning to end. The experience was unchanged. He remembered making the early entries, but after reaching that special one, it was as if someone had flipped his memory switch to the off position.

  Jack leaned back until the wood chair balanced on its two rear legs, rubbing his temples in hopes that the pressure would relieve the throbbing pain in his head. The answer he was looking for was here, so close he should be able to see it, but it remained frustratingly elusive.

  Why did his Pizarro memories suddenly stop with the entry just before Pizarro performed the Sun Staff ritual?

  Wait. That was the last journal entry he remembered, but it wasn’t his last Pizarro memory.

  Although Jack had tried to push the sleepwalking memory from his mind, he’d been dreaming when that incident had occurred. In that dream Pizarro had been manipulating the staff and had been terrified of what he was doing.

  That wasn’t quite right. Jack focused on the memory. Something inside Pizarro had been terrified, just as something inside Jack had been terrified in Altmann’s study. It was the feeling he had right now.

  Jack leaned forward, bringing the chair’s front legs back to the floor with an audible clatter. Not Pizarro’s memories. Those memories had come from Pizarro’s head, but they belonged to something else. On that winter night in 1533, Pizarro had done something that had expelled the Other from his mind.

  Jack rose to his feet and walked out of the circle of lamplight, out the door into the barn, and then out into the raging storm. The wind-whipped rain drenched Jack’s naked body as lightning crawled through the night sky overhead. With a sound like ripping cardboard, the leading edge of thunder crackled and then shook the ground with its fury. Legs shoulder width apart, his arms hanging at his sides, Jack raised his face to the light show in the sky. As brown shoe polish ran down his neck, onto his chest and back, a single thought filled his head.

  Déjà vu!

  CHAPTER 63

  The timelines that stretched out before the mind worm writhed like dying snakes as Jack Gregory strode among them, chopping off their heads one at a time. Alexander, Cleopatra, Caligula, and the hundreds of other hosts that had fed Anchanchu their extreme emotional highs and lows all had one thing in common. They willingly imbibed the drug Anchanchu fed them, reveling in glory as the mind worm guided them to ever greater and more terrible experiences.

  Anchanchu had seen infinity without man, and it had bored him. The human race offered him a thrilling escape from that boring hell. Above all else, the mind worm didn’t want to lose what it now had.

  But no matter how much Anchanchu opened the spigot, flooding Jack Gregory’s mind with enticing and punishing impulses, the man continued to fight those urges. Although Anchanchu was unable to directly influence Jack’s thoughts, their limbic connection gave the mind worm the ability to transplant memories from previous hosts into Jack’s dreams. Anchanchu had tried using raw fear to prevent Jack from taking certain actions.

  But it wasn’t working. None of it. Worse, the fear trick had actually caused Jack to do the opposite of what the mind worm wanted. A new thought occurred to Anchanchu. What if its interference was preventing this unique host from taking the steps that might protect mankind from those who had come before?

  Anchanchu considered this idea and rejected it. As badly as Jack Gregory needed to be in control, Anchanchu needed it more. There was still time to fix this situation. And Anchanchu intended to do the fixing.

  CHAPTER 64

  Dolf finished reading t
he report he’d just downloaded from General Montoya, grinning as he printed a copy for Conrad Altmann. The Mueller bitch was dead meat. That she’d lasted this long had surprised him. Maybe his boss had a hard-on for the woman. The thought that Altmann might be losing his edge wormed its way into Dolf’s mind. If that was true, strong new leadership might be called for.

  Shaking his head, Dolf pushed the traitorous thought aside. Those who started thinking thoughts like that wound up dying unpleasantly. Dolf had seen it happen too many times not to have learned a crucial fact. Conrad Altmann had eyes and ears everywhere. And he never lost his edge.

  Whatever his boss’s reasons for ignoring Dolf’s advice about Janet Mueller, Altmann couldn’t ignore this. Only five months ago, Janet had been with Jack Gregory in Kazakhstan. The fact that she hadn’t mentioned it said it all.

  Rising from his desk, Dolf walked out of the bedroom-office that he regarded as his wing of Altmann’s La Paz house. Occupying the far west side of the first floor, it was only slightly smaller than Conrad Altmann’s master bedroom on the east side of the house. Although Altmann’s bedroom had far more closet space and a much larger bath, those were two luxuries about which Dolf cared little.

  The room’s location gave Dolf rapid, twenty-four-hour access to the main floor, to the garage, and to the security center on the far side of the parking area. More important, it offered Conrad Altmann an extra layer of security inside his house.

  Dolf entered the huge den, its twenty-foot-high windows providing a nice view out over the pool to the snow-covered Mount Illimani. Passing the kitchen, he tuned left and climbed the spiral staircase to the second floor. Bypassing the theater room, Dolf paused outside Conrad Altmann’s office, removed his cell phone from his pocket, and placed it in one of the wall-mounted bins. He placed his right hand onto the security scanner and waited for the glowing green laser to image his palm. When he heard the click of the electronic lock, Dolf pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  Conrad Altmann’s office was spectacular. Tiled throughout, the Altmann house projected wealth. But the floor work in this office projected something else. Though it was subtle, the tile’s reflectivity gradually changed as you approached Conrad Altmann’s desk, making it feel as though you were approaching Olympus. Even though Dolf had no mystical inclinations, he still felt it . . . the Klaus Barbie effect.

  Sometimes Dolf almost understood it. Altmann’s father, the Butcher of Lyon, had passed to his son his sadism and his special ability to manipulate people. This room manifested Altmann’s inheritance. It projected his incredible mind. He was the one man on this earth to whom Dolf could bend a knee.

  Dolf had seen a picture of Klaus Barbie in his Nazi uniform, the iron cross boldly displayed at his throat. But if Klaus was the glorious image of Nazi Germany, Conrad Altmann, with his shoulder-length blond hair and graying beard, was the look of the new Nazi Party. Dolf had looked into his boss’s eyes and seen the truth that blazed deep within those sparkling blue orbs. Something incredible was knocking at mankind’s doorstep, and Conrad Altmann was about to usher it in.

  Dolf stepped forward and reached out to lay the Janet Mueller file on Altmann’s desk. When the powerful voice broke the silence, it startled him so badly he almost dropped the folder on the floor.

  “Looking for something?”

  Dolf swung around, surprised to see Conrad Altmann standing in the doorway, wondering why he hadn’t been alerted to his boss’s return.

  Recovering his equilibrium, Dolf straightened, feeling the muscles tighten throughout his body as he rose to his full six feet seven inches.

  “Just dropping off the latest intelligence report from General Montoya.”

  The older man’s blue eyes narrowed as he stepped forward. “Show me what you’ve got.”

  Dolf nodded, spreading the contents of the file folder on Altmann’s desk. “Sir, we now have conclusive proof that Janet Mueller is working with The Ripper.”

  Conrad Altmann studied the material spread out before him.

  “Talk me through your logic.”

  “A week and a half ago, Janet Mueller insisted on accompanying us on the raid to capture Tupac Inti, and The Ripper was there. Two nights ago, The Ripper attacked our Cochabamba compound, and Janet was there.”

  Dolf pointed to one of the pages from the FSB report. “Now we learn that The Ripper’s and Janet Mueller’s fingerprints were both picked up at the scene of last year’s terrorist assault on the Baikonur Cosmodrome. I don’t believe in that many coincidences.”

  Dolf felt his boss’s blue eyes lock with his.

  “There’s just one problem with your theory. The Ripper is trying to free Tupac Inti. If Janet was helping The Ripper, he would have escaped with Inti. Instead, The Ripper failed, and Janet continues torturing Inti on my behalf.”

  As usual, Altmann had seen straight into the heart of the problem, and Dolf found himself struggling to come up with a rebuttal.

  “Maybe she’s not torturing Inti as hard as she would like you to think.”

  Conrad Altmann laughed. “I’ve been present for her sessions, and the woman is a professional. Right now, Tupac Inti is so close to the breaking point that his body is starting to let him down. The big man shakes like he has the palsy, even when he’s alone in his cell. You should be very glad that Janet Mueller isn’t working on you.”

  “But how do you explain the FSB report that she and The Ripper were both present at the attack on the Cosmodrome?”

  Altmann walked around behind his desk, seated himself, and leaned back, placing his hands behind his head.

  “I don’t know. But when I fly back to Cochabamba in the morning, I’ll ask her.”

  “Sir, I’d like to accompany you.”

  Once again, Conrad Altmann grinned. “Granted. Maybe when you watch her work, you’ll learn something more useful than breaking necks.”

  The comment made Dolf struggle to keep his anger from working its way into his face and eyes. It was only the thought of breaking one pretty little neck that counteracted it. With a nod, he turned and walked out of Altmann’s office, closing the door behind him.

  Even though he would have to wait awhile longer to teach that whore a lesson in what true suffering meant, Janet Mueller’s time was slowly but surely running out.

  CHAPTER 65

  Stefan Rosenstein gazed out of his penthouse apartment that spread across the 38th and 39th floors of the Meier-on-Rothschild Tower in Tel Aviv, admiring the way the Mediterranean sunset cast long shadows from the shorter city buildings. But as beautiful as this winter evening view was and as happy as Stefan was to be reunited with his family, unfinished business called to him.

  Stefan left the living area and walked across the parquet floor, past the small indoor swimming pool, and up the stairs to his private office, shutting the door behind him. Having detected his presence, the room lights came up automatically.

  He had no doubt that The Ripper was still out there, working to free Tupac Inti, as he’d agreed. Having failed to finish the job so far, he hadn’t been paid. Not that The Ripper hadn’t earned his pay by once again saving Stefan’s life, but that wasn’t what drove the man. The Ripper couldn’t stand losing, so he would try to recover and finish the job. Unfortunately, this was far too important to place all his faith in one man, no matter how good that man was.

  Far across the Atlantic, forces were in play that might forever alter man’s destiny. Although Stefan’s source had only been able to forward him a portion of Klaus Barbie’s research, before getting himself killed by Conrad Altmann, the intervening weeks of study had convinced Stefan that this was terrifyingly real.

  Too bad it wasn’t enough to convince the Mossad. But the Israeli intelligence service was preoccupied with less mystical threats, such as Iran’s imminent acquisition of nuclear weapons. When your nation was only the size of New Jersey, the threat of nuclear attack from a sworn enemy took on a whole new meaning.

  It took thirty seconds for
his laptop to finish booting before Stefan could launch his browser and traverse to his e-mail account. E-mail was a completely insecure mechanism for transmitting information, but these days, even methods that promised security were vulnerable to the NSA and others. So Stefan had resorted to the old-style method of sending a message that anyone could see but which contained a phrase that had special meaning only to its intended recipient.

  The message Stefan composed consisted of six words.

  Home is where the heart is.

  As the sinking sun proclaimed the Sabbath’s eminent arrival, Stefan pushed “Send,” launching his message out through the ether toward its targets in Bolivia.

  CHAPTER 66

  Having donned her winter jacket, Bones McCoy was about to go home, take a shower, and catch a few hours of sleep, when it happened. As she reached for the light switch, Cubee’s holographic display changed, the virtual orb’s golden rings twisting and turning as if spun by ghostly hands.

  As the image came to rest, a digitized female voice broke the silence.

  “Solution sequence one complete.”

  Before Bones’s startled eyes, the holographic image rotated to reveal that from the base of the silver staff, a set of two-inch prongs had protruded, forming their own complex pin pattern.

  Forgetting to remove her jacket, Bones slid back into her seat and issued a new command.

  “Continue sequence.”

  The holograph rotated to focus her attention back on the golden orb, and once again the rings twisted and turned, this time in a more complex series of movements. So intensely was Bones’s focus on the hologram that Cubee’s voice startled her.