The Red Pearl Effect (Sam Quick Adventure Book 1)

by Scott Corlett

  “How do we access the tunnel network?” Hunt asked.

  “The easiest entry point appears to be in the Atocha subway station, near the Prado.”

  “Can you send a map to Eric’s mobile?” Quick asked.

  “I just need the number, and it’s done.”

  “And can you track Eric’s phone?”

  “My wunderkind here is nodding in the affirmative,”—Matson’s voice weakened for a moment before returning to full strength—“but he says only when you’re above ground; the cellular signals won’t penetrate far enough underground to reach the coal tunnels.”

  “Understood,” Quick said, followed by Hunt relaying his phone number.

  “Got it,” Matson said. “Now, you two be careful.”

  “We’ll try our best, Molly.” Quick pressed the disconnect button and looked at Hunt. “I hope you have change—we’re taking the subway.”

  ∞

  Utley watched the stream of escaping residents thin into clumps. By now, flames and black smoke spewed from several windows located on the apartment tower’s ninth and tenth floors. Onlookers clogged the sidewalk alongside the Peugeot. Red lights and siren wails bounced off the buildings lining the narrow street.

  The flow of fleeing people petered, as firefighters, trailing streamers of canvas hose, ran inside. Utley’s attention remained locked on the garage entrance. A firefighter appeared. He was pulling the arms of two straggling young men, hauling them and their metal suitcase away from the building.

  The firefighter deposited the men at the curb with a shake of his head. Utley, not bothering to remove the ignition key, climbed from the Peugeot and then slipped into the crowd.

  The heavyset man wheeled the bag right past Utley, while the second man—the tall blond—walked alongside with his hand resting on the metal suitcase as if calming an anxious pet.

  Utley watched the men and the suitcase jag across the street, as they carefully lifted the bag over the turgid fire hoses and shards of window glass, and weaved among the firefighters and police officers.

  Utley started moving when the suitcase was three car-lengths away. He walked slowly, periodically turning his attention to the flaming building, as would any onlooker. With each step, his Walther P99 rubbed against his calf.

  The blond man grabbed the suitcase’s handle and boosted the suitcase onto the curb. Utley smiled as the brushed metal began sinking from view and following in the prostitute’s earlier steps—down into the Madrid Metro.

  – 45 –

  Sunday, 15 July

  Island of La Palma

  Rice again. But Kalia Slater did not care. Desperation is an emotion that does not share its soil, and Amanda’s arrival had withered her fears at the root. Plus, she thought—feeling the burn of chafed skin on her wrists—her plan was working.

  Slater looked into the big eyes hovering above the rice bowl opposite. She smiled, cupped her fingers, and scooped a load of rice from her own bowl to her mouth. Because of the enforced silence, Slater could not explain why to Amanda, but she needed the other woman to eat every one of the little pellets of energy. Her head nodded slightly but firmly in the direction of the other woman’s dish.

  Amanda’s gaze shifted from Slater, toward the guard, who was seated a few feet away with one hand on his Micro UZI, and the other wiping the sweat from his grimy neck. The last thing she felt like doing was eating. Somehow, I must let my brother know what is happening. She turned back to Slater, who was still subtly nodding at her. After another moment of hesitation, her hand dipped into her bowl.

  Good girl, Slater thought.

  Chewing the flavorless rice, Amanda watched Slater and realized this woman who barely knew her—with the comforting nudges on the cot and, here at the table, her encouragements to eat—had showed more care for her than had any of her so-called friends, the ones who had looked straight ahead as they had driven from that warehouse, leaving her behind as if she were a bag of trash. But what would Kalia think if she knew how or why I was brought to this hellish mine or whatever it was.

  Her thoughts broke, as another man entered the chamber. The red laser of this new arrival’s gun sight pointed to the cot. Amanda looked at Slater, who nodded; the women rose and moved toward the bed.

  After they were seated, the guard set his gun on the table and stepped to the cot. Grinning, he bent forward, wrapping his arms around Amanda, who averted her face and shrunk herself as much as possible. The overpowering smell of garlic and onions confirmed that his diet included more than plain rice. Behind her, a series of short clicks sounded as her handcuffs locked.

  The man shifted his attention to Slater, giving her an especially long leer as he crouched to hug her. But Slater did not pull away as Amanda had; instead, she maintained as much bodily contact as possible, smiling at him and inflating her chest. All the better to keep him distracted. As she balled her hands against the closing cuffs.

  The guard pulled back from Slater, grinning wider than ever. The two men said something, fixing their yellowed eyes on the women and laughing. Droplets of saliva felt like splattered hot grease on Slater and Amanda’s faces.

  The guard took his seat, still staring at the woman. The other man gathered the dishes and left the chamber. Slater rubbed elbows with Amanda, who looked first at her cot-mate’s face. And then, following the Hawaiian’s eye signals, behind Slater. At the hands quietly working against the metal cuffs.

  – 46 –

  Sunday, 15 July

  Moscow

  The red bits sprayed from Sergei Sokolóv’s mouth like sparks from a fireplace fueled by green wood. The mother-of-pearl scoop dove anew into the fish eggs. Then the little paddle returned to his face and dumped another load of caviar into his mouth.

  The eggs dissolved on his tongue, as Sokolóv stared at the wall-mounted screen hanging opposite his desk. The pixilated image of two young men—one tall and blond, the other dark haired and heavyset—wheeling a metallic suitcase filled the enormous display.

  The men stopped at a nondescript door; Sokolóv leaned forward.

  The heavyset one started pressing buttons on a keypad affixed to the wall beside the door. The pause between keys grew longer with each new depression of a button, and the typist looked ever more frequently at a slip of paper.

  Sokolóv jumped up and crossed to the monitor.

  The blond man snatched the paper from the other man and then continued with the keying. Finally, he jerked open the door. The men and the suitcase slipped past. The door closed behind them.

  Then the screen filled with people hurriedly walking in front of the door, to and from the turnstiles and shops at the edges of the camera shot, just as it had been before the men’s arrival.

  Sokolóv snorted. For another minute, he watched the scenes of everyday life in a subway station continue to unfold. Too bad this couldn’t be shown live.

  He pictured the monitors in the command center of the Spanish antiterrorism taskforce. The displays normally fed by a datastream from this subway-station camera. But that, at this very moment, thanks to his technicians, instead showed a loop of video filmed months ago, footage of nothing but the mundane passage of transiting Madrileños and tourists. Only on his display and in his own command center did the intercepted, real-time video play.

  Of course, Sokolóv mused, reruns of the actual footage, of the metal suitcase disappearing through the subway-station doorway, carried by the two American activists would be the most replayed video of all time.

  Undoubtedly, at this very instant, his technicians in Moscow were burning the real video onto the hard drives at the Spanish antiterrorism center, which was a safe thirty miles from central Madrid.

  “A video that will be seen by more people than,” he said aloud, as he scooped more caviar, “even those of the assassination of President Kennedy or the moonwalk or 9/11.”

  Sokolóv scooped up a fresh load of roe. The fish eggs poured into his mouth, as he walked over to the wall map. The X drawn by Nin
Zanin in caviar juice remained covering Washington D.C. Sokolóv dipped his finger into the liquid left on the roe scoop. Then it slashed down the U.S. eastern seaboard. The black line sliced off a twenty-mile-wide strip of shoreline running from Florida to Maine.

  – 47 –

  Sunday, 15 July

  Madrid

  The doors parted. Eric Hunt was first off the train, followed closely by Sam Quick. The grad student glanced at his smartphone, then cut into the thick crowd, and jumped on an up-bound escalator, weaving between the standing riders, climbing the grooved steps two at a time.

  The scientists came off the escalator. Hunt stopped in the middle of Atocha Station’s main level. A buzzing hive of newsstands, map-wielding tourists, and fast-walking locals surrounded him and Quick.

  Quick pointed at Hunt’s smartphone. “Which way now?”

  The grad student scrolled his screen and looked around the space. His gaze landed on a nearby concession fronted by racks of tabloids and shelves filled with candies and bottles of water

  “There.” Hunt pointed at a metal door set in the wall adjacent to the store.

  They moved for it; Quick nodded at the keypad affixed to the wall. “This one is all yours.”

  Hunt tapped at his phone. “Just need to send this … ” He pressed a few more times. “OK. Ready.”

  Quick turned and faced into the station. Behind her, Hunt held his phone alongside the keypad; churning numbers filled the screen.

  Quick watched the escalator deposit two uniformed police officers less than twenty feet away. She prepared to grab Hunt. Then she saw a pair of tight-topped American college students unfurl a map near the officers.

  The young women heard a jaunty “Buenos días, señoritas, are you lost?” as Quick and Hunt slipped inside.

  The door clicked shut; the station’s noise and frenetic energy died, leaving behind only a low drone. The scientists found themselves in a narrow hallway that appeared to double as a stockroom for the concession stand: stacked cardboard boxes of magazines, books, and toiletries lined one wall, while humming meter boxes and thick electric arteries girded the other.

  Using the phone, Hunt led them forward. The boxes gave way to dented trashcans. After another thirty feet, the overhead lights grew less frequent. Everything vibrated as a train passed through a tunnel beneath them. In the darkest patches, their shoes squished jellyfish of used rubbers and anthills of discarded cigarette butts.

  After traveling another hundred feet, Hunt stopped. A pitch-dark staircase descended directly ahead. Beside it, a metal gate lay retracted against the wall.

  Quick pointed at a cut-open padlock lying on the ground. “Apparently, we aren’t the only ones with a penchant for breaking and entering.”

  Hunt checked his phone again. “We’re dead on Molly’s route. These steps lead down into the utility tunnels.”

  His arm swept outward, and his phone display lit the upper steps, while the lower stairs remained a black pool beyond the screen’s illumination.

  “Ladies first,” Hunt said to the back of the figure already diving into the dark water.

  ∞

  4400 miles away, tanned fingers dug into the shoulder. “Hell’s bells, where did they go?”

  “Dr. Quick and her companion’s cellphone are too far below street level to get a GPS read, ma’am—they’re in the tunnels now.” The officer nodded at a computer screen, which showed a close-scale 3D rendering of Madrid’s museum district. “They need to resurface before we can retriangulate their position.”

  “And Sam can’t get a signal to call out?”

  “Yes, that’s correct, ma’am.”

  “I don’t like this one bit.”

  The geologist bent forward, reached around the officer, and grabbed a handset anchored to the control panel. She knew that by all rights, she should call NRLI’s director and apprise him of developments. But her ex-husband was like an aircraft carrier in a kiddie pool.

  No, this situation required a bit more finesse.

  She pulled the receiver to her ear and, with her free hand, ruffled the man’s crew cut. “Be a sweetie and dial the base operator for Molly—I need to make a transatlantic call. And while you’re at it, stop calling me ‘ma’am’ or I’ll put you right over my knee.”

  Her eyes twinkled at the red-faced officer. “Unless of course, that’s the way you want to play it.”

  – 48 –

  Sunday, 15 July

  Madrid

  “Go away. You’ll get us fired,” he whispered in Spanish to the other waiter.

  Then Jorge Delgado turned forty-five degrees, flashed his bright teeth, and leaned forward. The woman standing before him, in a dress that made her look like a toffee wrapped in cellophane, collected the precious token between her thumb and finger.

  Delgado winked at her and said in a stage whisper, in decent English, “Take another: they’re small.”

  The woman’s heavily plumped lips spread into a smile. She plucked another piece from Delgado’s tray, shoved it in her mouth, and then dashed away in a life-or-death pursuit of the crab puffs that were drifting by on another server’s silver platter.

  The Prado’s main gallery was a blur of mid-level diplomats, their spouses, and the catering staff. The first groups were filling with food and wine before the arrival of the heads of state and cabinet secretaries and section ministers, at which time their sole mission would become preening for their and their partners’ bosses.

  Captive witnesses to this frenzy were the immortalized members of the Spanish court whose portraits lined the walls, with each aristocrat or royal mutely staring down on the melee. Along the gallery’s midline, a parade of large bronze statuary depicted scenes of horsemanship and battle victories long past. And at the hall’s far end lay the exclusion zone protected by velvet ropes and suited men in sunglasses stationed at each bollard, where the presidents, prime ministers, and chancellors would soon gather safe from the hoi polloi.

  Delgado turned back and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his colleague, who had ignored his command to move away. He shook his head. “These people are so ravenous, you’d think they’d just escaped from a refugee camp.”

  The other waiter snorted. “Yes, but just wait. Because the only people more famished than bureaucrats are journalists. Once the reporters are admitted, they would trample Velázquez himself”—he nodded at a large oil hanging on a nearby wall—“if he stood between them and a spear of limp asparagus wrapped in dry jamón serrano.”

  He lifted his tray of crostini slathered with fava-bean puree. “Speaking of hunger, I wonder if perhaps Monsieur l’Ambassadeur would care for a bite?”

  Delgado followed his colleague’s gaze to a man wearing a crisp, slim-cut suit. “Possibly, but unfortunately for you, probably not yours.”

  “Perhaps, but I’ll take my chances.” The other waiter nudged Delgado. “We can’t all be so lucky as you, Jorge, to have a muscle-boy American scientist chasing us with text messages after we rescue them in the nightclub restroom from crazy psycho killers in red skirts. Tell me, Jorge, how long since the last text from your American?”

  Delgado shot his colleague a look. “He’s not my American—Eric and I have just exchanged a few messages, that’s all.”

  “Oh, calling him Eric now are we—”

  The men jumped as phlegm, an inch behind their adjacent ears, rattled. They turned to find the brushy brows of their stout Castilian supervisor reared in standoff.

  “Señores—and I use the term most loosely—you are here to serve food to the guests, not to cruise the guests.” Her chipped incisor glinted. “Besides, the American secret service agents”—her head tilted at a blue-suited duo with thin wires spiraling down from their ears, standing near an exit—“those are the real targets.”

  She grabbed the tray of crostini from the other waiter. “More men than either of you boys can handle. Get another platter from the kitchen and then go ply your Frenchman with shrimps.”

  D
elgado and his empty-handed workmate watched the Castilian approach the agents. As she spoke, the American faces turned a shade that perfectly matched the red strips of the flag pins affixed to their lapels.

  ∞

  One story directly below the blushing agents, in a locker located in a basement-level staff room, Jorge Delgado’s cellphone blinked. Bright-red letters burned on its display: “CRAZY TERRORIST STUFF GOING DOWN. GET OUT OF MADRID NOW. NO JOKE. ERIC.”

  ∞

  Another story directly below Delgado’s glowing cellphone, two snaps sounded. The noises reverberated throughout the subbasement, echoing off the three massive coal-fired boilers that had once heated the museum, the stacks of abandoned parts, and a frozen landslide of concrete and bricks occluding a rising staircase.

  The top shell of a metallic suitcase rose. The lid stopped at the point of a yellow arrow, which, along with a string of geographic coordinates, was spray-painted on the center boiler’s rusted iron.

  The men glanced at each other. Then they looked down at the black cylinder that filled half of the case, at the silvery Russian inscription, the trefoil symbol, and the circuitry glowing in the flashlight beam.

  Fingertips caressed the cylinder, as Gabriel whispered, “Time to light the fuse on this Red.”

  Jacob handed him a sheet of paper. For the hundredth time, Gabriel stared at the slip. Then he laid it on the dusty floor and lifted the plastic cover of a small box inside the suitcase, revealing a three-by-three matrix of unmarked keys.

  Gabriel read the instruction’s first line again.

  Then again.

  And finally, after several more seconds, his finger depressed the array’s central button.

  The finger retreated; the button rose up; neither man breathed.

  Gabriel read the second demand three times before his finger went back to the keypad.

  On the fourteenth directive, Gabriel forced himself to stop the repetitious reading after a tenth scan of the line. He looked at his friend, who slowly nodded.