by David Khara
“I’m missing something,” he said, hunkering down to stroke an adventurous fern poking from the undergrowth. “The old-timer wasn’t lying. I’d bet my life on it.”
“Me too,” said the American agent. “I don’t see why he would lie about this. By the way, can I ask you something?”
More questions about his motives, career or weapons. Get it over with. “Shoot.”
“Do you think he likes me?”
Eytan straightened up and looked at her in bemusement. One was taking a leak, the other was regressing to high school level. With partners like them on a mission like this, maybe it was for the best that Kourilyenko had blindsided them.
I can’t hold out any longer. Exhaustion, I can handle. Guys trying to kill me, sure. But traveling always screws up my insides. That’s why I leave New York only if absolutely necessary. Eight hours on a plane, seven in a car and liters of water downed since my fit in Zurich have thrown my bladder out of kilter. Vague notions of gallantry and, above all, the desire not to blow my chances with Jackie encourage me to urinate out of sight.
The morning’s young, the road’s empty. I savor the peace and quiet. The two superheroes will end up finding a way to send us to a certain death. I’m no soldier, and Eytan’s right about our lack of firepower. I’m just glad I’ve played my part. Without me, their investigation wouldn’t have gotten this far.
I walk past trees whose branches hang over the road and seem ready to devour anybody who ventures any closer to them. The four-lane highway cuts the woods in half. It looks like both sides are trying to merge and cover up the scar. Wow, either I’m turning into a poet, or I really am very tired.
I reach the perfect spot to find relief—a semi-circular paved area separated from the road by a barrier of tires painted red, yellow and black, Belgium’s colors. The barrier isn’t to keep humans out, so I go in. It’s a curious spot—too big to be a rest area—more like a parking lot with room for maybe twenty cars. Anyway, what the forestry engineers do with their country’s natural areas is no concern of mine. But…
Taking a closer look to the left, I see a narrow overgrown trail. I bet it’s an old lovers’ lane. With my back to the road, I pee on a bush, whistling the Sesame Street theme so loudly and off-key that only an expert ear would recognize it. Strange how these moments of solitude lend themselves to creative thought. Scholarly studies show executives have their best ideas on the toilet or in the shower or bath. Not me. I zone out, gazing blissfully around me. Suddenly, my neurons switch on, my brain cranks into gear, and red lights start flashing.
Poking out of the branches of the tree above me is the muzzle of a rifle that’s looking straight at me.
The question had just slipped out. Jackie bit her lip, and Eytan even thought he heard her mumble a “you idiot” to herself. It was too late. Getting Eytan’s opinion on her chances with Jeremy might have been her priority at that particular moment, but it was the last thing on Eytan’s mind. Even so, his capacity to focus exclusively on his mission had reached its limits. Switching off until Jeremy got back wouldn’t do any harm. And blowing her off wouldn’t help matters. Maybe one good thing would come out of this whole damn mess. “Without a shadow of doubt, he likes you. Behind the cynicism, which makes even me laugh at times, a wounded but generous soul is hiding. Don’t forget he carries heavy burdens. Even if he seems to be rediscovering his taste for life, he has a way to go before he resurfaces completely. Do you feel capable of helping him make that journey?”
“Capable, I don’t know, but willing to try, I think. That’s not a bad start, don’t you think?”
Eytan smiled. “It’s essential, I’d say. Say, the chump’s been gone awhile. I’m not waiting for him to finish his pack to head back to Zaventem.”
“You’re right. It’s been at least five minutes. Let’s get him. A little walk will do us good.” They headed off in the same direction as Jeremy.
“Say, are you single? A tall, handsome jock like you must have the ladies at his feet. No?” Eytan thrust his hands into his jacket pockets and hunched over slightly as he walked.
“Yes, I’m single. My missions leave no room for a private life. And yes, it appears that some ladies are not indifferent to my charm.”
“You never found anyone you wanted to start a family with or just settle down?”
“I have no time to settle down, Jackie. And for a stack of reasons, I can’t start a family.” With a somber expression, Eytan began to stride out, forcing Jackie to trot every few paces to keep up with him. She fell silent. The awkward questions would have to wait. Eytan Morg was more comfortable talking about his profession than his private life.
In the woods and on the road, there was no sign of life. Jeremy had vanished.
The two agents reached a kind of semi-circular parking lot carved out of the forest and separated from the road by stacks of used tires. In the middle, about fifty yards away, a body lay sprawled on the asphalt, arms outstretched.
Jackie started toward the body, but a powerful hand grabbed her arm and stopped her in her tracks. “Wait! Something’s…”
Glancing at Eytan, Jackie saw a series of red dots dancing on his giant chest. “Kourilyenko didn’t lie. We weren’t looking in the right spot,” she spat out.
Eytan stood motionless, like a wax doll. His powerlessness to react plunged him into profound despair.
“Listen, Jackie, and never forget: Never surprised, always alive!”
Blood splattered the young woman’s face. She jerked her head away as the Israeli agent went down.
CHAPTER 36
Lightweights! We walked into the trap like a bunch of beginners. Great job, guys. Out for a stroll with our hands in our pockets, not even realizing we were in the right place. I have an excuse, but Buffy and the Jolly Green Giant? Amazing!
The Consortium boxed cleverly, I suppose. Building an underground facility on the site of an abandoned racecourse in the forest, now that’s industrial genius. Protected by nature, they can work undisturbed. The crumbling buildings above ground house advanced surveillance systems. The staff entrances are hidden under the old racecourse stands, and deliveries are made via a ramp that opens in the grass in the middle of the track. It’s not a racecourse anymore; it’s a Swiss cheese. The basement is a tangle of pistons and giant pumps. God knows how much it cost to build all this. A fortune. It’s crazy. They built a factory under the forest. Wacko! And like the moron I am, I’ve chosen one of the many parking lots nearby to take a leak. If we’d just gone an extra thirty yards, we’d have found it.
I recall my father’s words: The Consortium is an underground organization. You’ll have to dig. Now we know where I get my warped sense of humor.
Four muscular guards shove us toward a steel door. This hallway is never-ending. With the constant turns, the place is a real labyrinth. It’s the epitome of a Hollywood secret army base—gray concrete walls, rows of fluorescent lights, painted markings on the floor (comprehensible only to qualified personnel) and the building names: B23, C5 and so on. The nerve center of a celluloid conspiracy. But Eytan’s wound confirms that their guns don’t fire blanks. I’m amazed he’s still standing with a slug in his shoulder. He shows no pain, not even a tiny grimace. At the very most, he’s a fraction paler than usual.
Flanked by two gorillas, Jackie looks tiny. Even I feel small surrounded by these hulking brutes. Jackie glances anxiously at me. I give her a wink. She smiles slyly back at me. Buffy has a plan. I’d bet my life on it.
The bitch walks alongside me. She’s impressive. Beautiful. One of those cold, distant beauties whose eyes burn into your soul but stop you from getting the tiniest glimpse of her heart. Compared to Jackie’s soft, curvy features, Elena’s face is harsh and angular. She stares haughtily at me with her brown eyes. I stare right back, enjoying her disdainful gaze, wondering what she’ll look like when I break her neck.
Our forced march ends abruptly outside a reinforced door. Elena swipes a card across a scanner in the wa
ll. Noiselessly, the doors slide into the walls. It’s pitch dark. Impossible to see a yard in front of your face. As if the room into which the guards push us could absorb any light. Judging by Eytan’s expression, it could also suck up all hope. But I remain convinced that with Jackie’s help he will turn the situation around. Or maybe I’m just fooling myself.
The door closes behind us. The lights don’t just come on, they explode in a blinding flash. We shield our eyes until we get used to them. The guy who designed this place was a psycho. Clinically insane. We’re in a huge space. A truck would get an inferiority complex in here. On the side walls, green liquid bubbles in tanks that are ten feet high and six feet wide. They’re flanked on each side by three cylinders connected to supply tubes that lead to a utility duct in the ceiling. Even scarier are the adjacent hospital beds with white sheets, patient charts and monitoring units, like those Mom was hooked up to more than once. EKG machines, a pump and a brain-function gadget. The sight of that here gives me a nasty sense of foreboding. Just like the yellow radiation signs everywhere.
Some math a day keeps the panic away. Three tubes multiplied by two sides. That makes six tubes, so six beds. The only question is, why is that goon booting up three monitoring units?
Jackie, Eytan and yours truly. OK, I can panic now.
Eytan’s shoulder was causing him agony. The small-caliber bullet had lodged in the flesh without fracturing the bone, but the bleeding wouldn’t stop. Their opponents numbered four, plus the tall redhead. Not a huge problem in normal circumstances. But with only one arm and his hands cuffed, the situation didn’t look good. Jeremy was showing all the clinical signs of fear. Sweat dripped from his forehead. His breathing was shallow, and his eyes were bulging. Eytan couldn’t blame him. It was impossible to swap a trader’s lifestyle for that of a hit man, for whom danger, if not a daily companion, was a regular acquaintance. Unfortunately, Jeremy seemed destined to become a collateral victim of these secret wars, just as the young Polish Jew had become the victim of a hate-fueled dictator he never actually saw. Eytan couldn’t bring himself to give up. Not now. Not after so many years of struggle and sacrifice. And definitely not without a fight.
He quickly scanned the room and made a mental note of the order in which his enemies would die. His concentration was broken when the main door opened, and a man in a white coat entered, hands clasped over his chest, fingers intertwined. Anywhere else, it might look as if he were praying. He wore the kind smile of a grandfather welcoming his grandchildren for Christmas. Short gray hair framed a broad forehead over small, alert eyes.
“My friends, what a pleasure to see you all here! Your father was a real thorn in our side, Mr. Corbin. If only you knew. As for you, Ms. Walls, I learned of your existence only yesterday, but according to Elena, you have acquitted yourself well. I’m not forgetting that legend of the Israeli secret services, the one and only Eytan Morg. I’m honored!”
First, the Hollywood set. Now, the mad scientist. Jeremy swiftly interrupted. “And who are you?”
“How forgetful of me. Of course, how could you know? You could figure it out, I suppose, if nature had given you a more highly developed intellect. Despite your ignorance, you would make an acceptable laboratory rat.” Jeremy stared narrowly at the man.
His head down and his eyes shut, Eytan answered the question. “Bleiberg.”
The professor smiled. “You don’t know the whole story, do you? At the most, you have a few scraps of information on which you have founded hypotheses that your limited minds refuse to accept. Granted, you are missing some fundamental facts. I can’t resist the temptation to give you a more ample explanation. It’s a common weakness among unrecognized geniuses. Let’s take a brief journey into the past, shall we?
“The Nazis were desperate to prove the superiority of the Aryan race. Their dogma drove them to investigate every possibility, even the most hare-brained. Whole expeditions were wiped out looking for nonexistent mystical artifacts and submerged continents. But the truth lay in science. The Nazis’ extremism led the Consortium to facilitate Hitler’s rise to power and encourage his thirst for conquest. I see a question in your eyes. Why? The answer is perfectly simple. We believe in human evolution through science, thought and logic. Our aim is the creation of an intellectual and physical elite. But it’s a complicated quest, requiring enlightened minds and brains, visionaries, colossal resources and, above all, moral adaptability. By creating the Third Reich, plunging the world into war and ordering the extermination of the Jews, Hitler and his clique created the conditions for technological advances unprecedented in human history. The arms race led to the invention of radar, new propulsion techniques and new industrial norms. Must I remind you how much the conquest of space owes to German scientists who joined NASA?
“I was a young researcher when the Consortium recruited me in 1941. It was a godsend. I had no doubt as to the fate the SS reserved for me because of my Jewish origins. The deal was simple. The Nazis already had adequate facilities, test subjects, raw materials and a competent research team. In return, they would never have access to my discoveries. Most amusingly, the organization was informed of my research through Rudolf Hess. In fact, it was thanks to his disastrous expedition to Scotland that I came to their attention. But what research are we talking about? Genetic mutation, of course. The acceleration of human evolution. That was my project. The Übermensch is not a myth. The body possesses untapped potential. It merely requires awakening. That’s where I come in. The injection of a radioactive solution provokes a modification of the genome with striking results: a drastic slowdown of the aging process, an increase in lung capacity, an improvement of neurotransmission and other beneficial changes that you are not capable of understanding.
“Naturally, the first trials were failures. The injections killed the subjects instantly. Gradually, I obtained longer survival periods, but the subjects developed cancerous tumors. Success arrived after three hundred and one failures. Subject 302, a Jewish child from Warsaw, survived the treatment. I had perfected a serum that blocked the cell necrosis that caused cancer. The child would be dependent on it all his life, but at least my theories had been shown to work. In time, further development of the formula would completely eliminate cell necrosis. In 1942, two weeks after the end of the protocol, Heinrich Himmler visited my facility at the hospital in the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland. I couldn’t allow Subject 302 to fall into the hands of the Nazis. The Consortium would have made me pay dearly. Furthermore, my research team was no longer of any use to me. I therefore organized the complete destruction of my laboratory. Only my notes, my guinea pig and I were to survive. A tunnel would take us to a truck driven by my contact in the Consortium.
“Unfortunately, the situation got out of hand. Perhaps as an unexpected side effect, the child’s intelligence developed exponentially. He activated the explosives early. Himmler survived, as did I, miraculously, but my masterpiece escaped in the confusion with the only existing doses of the serum and, annoyingly, the formula.”
“You’re totally insane,” shouted Jeremy. “You seriously expect us to buy your superman story?”
The corners of Bleiberg’s mouth creased as his lips twisted into a stiff smile. Eytan felt as if his heart had stopped. “My poor boy, you doubt that I am telling the truth?”
“Got it, egghead!”
“You seem very forthright, Mr. Corbin. What would you say if I told you that Subject 302 is in this very room?”
CHAPTER 37
A village north of Warsaw, October, 1940.
The children ran through the long grass in the field alongside the region’s solitary road. Roman was so small, his head appeared only when a gust of wind buffeted the grass. As usual, an eager smile was etched on his face despite his missing teeth. The smile got wider as he came closer to catching his brother, who was not only bigger and faster, but also smart enough not to dishearten Roman. They could keep playing this game indefinitely, but Old Bartocz would tan their
hides if he caught them gamboling around on his small property.
The chase continued until Roman’s asthma sapped his energy. The attacks were increasingly frequent. The boys were allowed to play outside only if they promised to be especially careful. The chase always ended by the old tree. With the agility of monkeys, they climbed to the biggest branches, from which they would while away the afternoon contemplating the scenery.
Today was no exception. At the foot of the thick gnarled trunk, Roman gasped for breath, but his hands knew every hold. He swiftly reached the branch from which his brother would haul him up next to him.
Sitting side by side, they sparred and punched each other on the shoulder. “Three times three?” demanded the older brother.
“Three times three equals three threes,” said the younger brother. They laughed.
“No, three times three is six.”
The answer was accompanied by another playful punch. Roman answered a dozen more simple questions without fooling around. In their family, education was no laughing matter. Their father, the local doctor, emphasized the need to learn and, above all, understand. “It’s the only way to control of your destiny,” he never tired of telling them. “Knowledge unlocks every door for you if you use it right.”
With the encouragement of their mother, the children integrated learning into their play. With their lessons finished, they settled down to watch the day decline. The sound of an engine drew their attention. Trucks were a rare sight in the region, and cars even rarer. They peered down the road usually traveled by horse-drawn carts. A long column of vehicles bristling with men in uniform stretched as far as the eye could see. In the lush landscape, the gray cohort seemed to tear the world apart.
