Keepers of the Gate - [Kamal & Barnea 04]

by By Jon Land

  “You were talking about someone named Mundt.”

  Weiss smacked his dry lips together. “Yes, Karl Mundt; the bastard. Never trusted him from the day he came to the camp. Knew he was up to something.”

  “Up to what?” Danielle asked, one eye following the television commercial’s progress.

  “I caught on finally,” the old man rattled, looking more through than at her. “He didn’t think I would, but I did. He knew the war was lost. He knew our time was almost up. I guess I knew too, not that I admitted it. But Mundt was ready for it. He was prepared.”

  Danielle saw the screen briefly go dark before a second commercial, thankfully, replaced the first. “How, Herr Weiss, how was he prepared?” she posed gently.

  “You are a stupid woman.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s so obvious. Can’t you see it?”

  “Why don’t you explain it to me?”

  Weiss’s eyes began to stray back to the television screen, perhaps sensing the imminent return of his cartoons. “Karl Mundt was a traitor. All along he was a traitor and I didn’t realize it until it was too late. Until I saw him...”

  The expression on Gunthar Weiss’s face became as blank as the screen with the end of the second commercial. Danielle grasped his shoulders and turned his wheelchair toward her.

  “Saw him what?”

  The cartoon filled the screen again, but Danielle stayed planted before Weiss’s line of vision, shaking him.

  “Talk!” Danielle crouched and grabbed Gunthar Weiss’s knobby arms. She shook him again to hold his attention and felt the bones rubbing against each other beneath her grasp. “Until you saw him what?”

  “Die.” The old man’s dry voice had turned grating, painful to listen to. “Until I saw Mundt die.”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 56

  J

  ane Wexler didn’t bother to deny Ben’s shocking allegation, just stood frozen between him and her desk.

  “How did you know?” she asked him finally.

  “Zeina Ashawi thought there was someone else involved in the scheme, but had it been another student he or she would have been killed with the others.”

  “I guess I was lucky,” Wexler frowned.

  “Not lucky enough to get your money. Nearly a hundred thousand dollars in cash was found under Michael Saltzman’s bed, withdrawn apparently by Beth Jacober. It didn’t make sense the students would have taken such a risk, unless another partner was expecting her share.”

  Jane Wexler trembled slightly. She swabbed her eyes with her sleeve, but came away dry. She should have looked regretful, mournful even, but her eyes flashed indignation, her gaze harsh.

  “I’ve got it wrong, don’t I?” Ben asked her. “The students didn’t need you at all. They would have done this, were doing it, all on their own until you found out. Then you blackmailed them.”

  Jane Wexler said nothing.

  “Why?” Ben demanded. “Why?”

  “You think I want to be here, Inspector? I ran away from some ... problems in America, left one hell for another. The money was my chance to get out of here before this country explodes, go home and set things right. I asked them for the money I needed, not a penny more.”

  Ben didn’t bother hiding his disgust. “How generous of you.”

  She looked at him defiantly. “So are you going to arrest me? Hand me over to your Israeli lover?”

  Ben remained calm. “It’s not me you’ve got to worry about. Whoever killed your students will figure out your involvement before much longer.”

  Wexler swallowed hard. “What do you want from me?”

  “The evidence indicates that all contact was conducted via computer, up to and including transfer of the extorted funds. But the students never would have used their own computers, since the risk of the messages being traced back to them would have been too great. A bank of computers with numerous outgoing lines, like this school’s, would have been much more secure from their vantage point. And you must have caught them in the act.”

  “Let me walk away from this and I’ll help you any way I can,” Wexler promised, trying not to sound pleading.

  Ben lowered his voice, trying to keep the loathing he felt for this woman from it. “I need to find out who it was they contacted from here. What information they exchanged. Help me, and I won’t report you. That will give you time to run from the killers who’ll certainly find you eventually otherwise.”

  Jane Wexler looked down and stared blankly at the desk top, not speaking for a few long moments. “A noble experiment this school—don’t you think?”

  “In better hands, yes.”

  “But, you see, we’re still in Israeli territory and to get our joint program approved we had to make certain... concessions.”

  “No more games, Ms. Wexler.”

  “Security concessions, Inspector. The government insists we maintain detailed logs of every website accessed by every student.”

  “Monitored by you, of course.”

  Wexler nodded.

  “Which means you must have erased them, destroyed the evidence.”

  She shook her head very slowly. “No, Inspector, I didn’t.”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 57

  T

  ess Sanderson had made sure only Will Nakatami was present for the review of Lot 461 Paul Hessler had requested. The three of them closeted themselves in the small conference room located between prefabricated, soundproof walls and a dropped ceiling.

  “Will,” Tess began, “I’ve told Mr. Hessler that as project director you’re the one best able to explain the particulars of Lot four-sixty-one.”

  Nakatami nodded nervously between rapid breaths. He turned to Paul Hessler, eyes wide and anxious. “I’m told, sir, that all you know of Lot four-sixty-one is from the project’s initial stages.”

  “You heard right, Will.”

  “Then you are aware that the biotech division of Hessler Industries has been at the forefront of what is now called gene therapy for years.”

  Paul shrugged. “I don’t profess to understand very much of it.”

  “All you need to know for background is that most of this research initially centered on tissue and organ regeneration. We were not alone in this pursuit, of course, and found ourselves lagging well behind some of the larger companies that deal exclusively with this sort of advanced biotechnical research.”

  Paul nodded. “And as a result the entire division was on the verge of being scrapped when my son and I met with an Israeli scientist who sold us—Ari, mostly—on the concept that would become Lot four-sixty-one.”

  “Yes,” Nakatami acknowledged. “This Israeli scientist has taken gene therapy to the next level, a level that until his discovery was thought to be far beyond our current technological capacity. Something he called the biological computer.”

  “That’s where I get lost,” Paul Hessler said humbly.

  Nakatami seemed instantly more relaxed, in his element. “You’re not alone, sir. Imagine a computer the size of cellular components that could interact with the cellular apparatus of the human body. Instead of microchips, these organic machines would be composed of living molecules that react the same way as microchips. That is, they would be programmed to perform certain tasks once injected into the body, providing doctors with the theoretical means to give direct in vivo aid.”

  Nakatami picked up the remote control device he had practiced using right up until the time Tess Sanderson and Paul Hessler arrived. He touched a button on the pad and all the lights in the room faded out, except for a dull glow emanating from the ceiling. The touch of a second button projected a three-dimensional picture in the center of the conference room. Created through virtual reality technology, the picture fluttered and waved like a floating pool of water. Swimming within it were thousands of elliptical shapes, the dark ones overtaking and consuming the lighter ones.

  “What you are looking at,” Nakatami explained,
“is a virtual depiction of how cancer invades the human body. The dark cancer cells consume the light healthy ones until the body becomes corrupted.”

  Nakatami touched a third button on the screen and red circular shapes flooded the scene through an invisible gap.

  “The red shapes represent Lot four-sixty-one’s biological machines, programmed to seek out and destroy the cancer cells.” As Nakatami said that, the red circles began attacking and devouring the dark cancer cells. “Notice that our organic machines concentrate their efforts on the cancer cells and leave the healthy cells alone. Selective destruction, Mr. Hessler, something cancer researchers have believed was theoretically possible for years.

  “Theoretical, because no one had actually created the means to accomplish it until Lot four-sixty-one. On paper everything checked out, but our Israeli scientist needed vast amounts of capital to bring the project to fruition. That’s where Hessler Industries came in. We built the scientist his lab in this institute and equipped it with everything he needed. I won’t bore you with the details or the expense. Suffice it to say that both were extreme. But the initial results, over the course of several years and several hundreds of millions of dollars, were not impressive.”

  Paul Hessler nodded as if this part was old hat to him. “Yes, yes. And then the scientist in question died and the project seemed doomed. Not wanting to risk the additional tens of millions it would take to continue, I ordered the project cancelled. But obviously my son Ari did not share my pessimism. He believed we were on the threshold of the greatest medical discovery of all time. He couldn’t let it go. Without my knowing, he ordered the project continued in this lab.”

  “With good reason,” interjected Tess Sanderson. “Ari saw the end of cancer. He saw the potential eradication of all inherited and acquired life-threatening illnesses. He saw the cure, not just the treatment, for heart disease and arthritis, just to name a couple. And he was right. It should be him standing here giving you the news.” Now it was Tess who was breathing hard, barely able to muster her next words. “Go on, Will.”

  “All of this sprang from the previously untested theories of nanotechnology, which I’m sure you are at least vaguely familiar with. In nanotechnology circuits and diodes are replaced with biomolecules, ribosomes, and polymer elongation and ligation. I’m sorry, sir,” he added, when he saw the perplexed look on Paul Hessler’s face.

  “Don’t be, please.”

  “But—”

  “Living machines. That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it? Living machines.”

  “That’s right, sir,” said Will Nakatami. “Exactly.

  “And now,” Tess Sanderson picked up, “we are prepared to enter the first formalized stage of human testing with Lot four-sixty-one. What Dr. Nakatami has just described is potentially the greatest discovery in the history of medical research. With proper assistance and cooperation from the Food and Drug Administration, Ari believed we could be at market readiness with Lot four-sixty-one in slightly less than two years and have it available under experimental protocols in half that. After which ...”

  “After which what, Tess?”

  Sanderson steadied herself with a deep breath. “After which we will see the end of the worst diseases known to man.”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 58

  H

  essler shot Mundt,” Gunthar Weiss explained, as soon as the next commercial came on.

  Danielle went numb. “Paul Hessler was in your camp? You’re telling me he shot this Karl Mundt?”

  “Mundt was the guard I once assigned to kill Hessler. I knew he wouldn’t do it. I knew from his eyes he didn’t have it in him. But he knew there was nothing I could do about it because he was SS and from a well-connected family. His family must have arranged the assignment for him to make sure he survived. But, you see, Mundt had other plans.”

  “What other plans?”

  Gunthar Weiss took a deep breath before responding.

  * * * *

  Y

  ou wanted to see me, Haupsturmfuehrer?” Karl Mundt asked from the doorway of the office in the factory Gunthar Weiss had commandeered for his own.

  “Come in, Mundt. Close the door behind you.”

  Weiss waited until Mundt was standing at attention before his desk before he continued.

  “I’ve been reviewing your file. You have a wife who is expecting your first child.”

  “I do, Haupsturmfuehrer.”

  “That was the reason someone arranged this duty for you, I imagine, believing it was safe and simple.”

  “I reported to this post as I would have reported to any other, Haupsturmfuehrer.”

  “I applaud your sense of duty,” Weiss said, with a slight hint of sarcasm lacing his voice. “Why do you think I am here, Mundt?”

  “I don’t know, Haupsturmfuehrer.”

  “Do you suppose it is for the same reasons you are, because it is a safe and simple duty?”

  The younger Mundt remained at attention. “It is not my place to say, Haupsturmfuehrer.”

  Weiss snapped out of his chair and circled round his desk. “What is it we make here, Mundt?”

  “Boots, Haupsturmfuehrer.”

  “And how do you suppose the war would go if the armies of the Reich did not have boots, or if those boots wore out too quickly?”

  “Very badly, Haupsturmfuehrer.”

  Weiss stopped close enough to Mundt to speak directly into his ear. “So they sent me here to make sure the job gets done right. They sent me here to supervise young men, boys really, like you to ensure our quotas are met so the armies of the Reich do not lack for what we are supposed to be producing for them. Do you think I have an easy job, Mundt? Well, do you?”

  “No, Haupsturmfuehrer.”

  “Then why do you make my job more difficult by not obeying orders, by giving special treatment to one certain prisoner?”

  “We cannot afford to lose a single worker, Haupsturmfuehrer, for the reasons you just described.”

  “And that explains why you disregarded my orders to kill that boy some weeks ago?”

  Mundt didn’t so much as flinch. “I knew you were testing me.”

  “So you purposely failed. I could have had you summarily executed. You know that.”

  “I do, Haupsturmfuehrer.”

  “And yet you still failed to shoot him as ordered. Why, Mundt?”

  “I believe you acted without fully evaluating the consquences of your action, Haupsturmfuehrer. The workers here who make the boots work themselves to the death because they cling to the hope that as long as they work they will survive. Kill indiscriminately and you take that hope away. You defeat your own purpose, Haupsturmfuehrer. “

  Weiss squeezed himself between the desk and the young member of the vaunted SS. “When I first met you, I expected big things. I saw you as a Strosstrupp, a unit commander—at least a Wachteurrer, commander of the guard. But how you have disappointed me, Mundt. I know what you ‘re up to here—don’t think I don’t. You believe the war is already lost. You listen to the rumors from the front, the propaganda spread by our mortal enemies. So you are worried about what they will do to you as a war criminal, how you will be judged. You want to go back to your wife and baby, and you put that desire above your service to the Reich. Is that correct, Mundt?”

  “It is incorrect, Haupsturmfuehrer/”

  “Then, please, set me straight. Explain to me the nature of your relationship with the Hessler boy.”

  “Each worker is responsible for producing four-point-two pairs of boots per day, Haupsturmfuehrer. If he is unable to work, how will his quota be made up?”

  “But you have not given such special attention to other similarly sick prisoners. I didn’t see you crying when we buried the bodies of the last lot to die.”

  “Even more reason why we cannot afford to lose any more good workers.”

  Weiss glared into Mundt’s eyes, nose to nose now. “Do you think me a fool, Mundt?”

&nb
sp; “I do not, Haupsturmfuehrer.”

  “Then don’t you think I realize something else is going on here, between you and Hessler?”

  “There is nothing, Haupsturmfuehrer.”

  Weiss nodded his head knowingly. “He’s a good looking boy, eh, Mundt?”

  Mundt’s granite-like face broke for the first time. “Sir?”