The Tangled Webb

by D. P. Schroeder

  “Paper, you want to write?”

  He nodded.

  She went to the nurses’ station and came back with a notepad and pen which she put in his hand. He struggled to focus, slowly moving the pen across the paper. Moments later he dropped his hand to his side.

  “All done?”

  He nodded.

  Taking the notepad she saw letters written in a row, scrawled in squiggly lines, but legible. He pointed at the paper and began drawing letters in the air with his finger, the first a ‘J’, the second an ‘A’ and so on.

  As he finished Rebecca asked, “James?”

  He nodded and pointed to the paper.

  “You want me to get this to James.”

  Pointing his finger toward the door, he moved his head in a sideways motion.

  “I should get this to James, but don’t tell anyone?”

  Nodding again, he let out a sigh as his strength waned.

  Then he gestured toward the door.

  “You want me to do it now?”

  He moved his finger in a circular motion to indicate urgency and she put the paper in her purse, leaned in and kissed him.

  I’ll be right back,” she whispered in his ear. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  A grin crossed his face as he watched her leave the room.

  Rebecca drove to a nearby copy shop and scanned the paper.

  Then she attached it to an e-mail and sent the message to James’ phone.

  A thorough person by nature, she copied the message to Kate.

  CHAPTER 50

  On the opposite side of the Atlantic at Falcon Lair, James began wondering what had happened to Thomas Lynch who had excused himself to take an “urgent” phone call.

  He left the billiard room and went down a hallway to the entrance hall, an area of the chateau where wireless communications were possible.

  Not able to find Lynch he took out his phone and retrieved his messages, seeing first those from Kate.

  I’ve found Max Baer. Where are you?

  Taking note of the timestamps beside the text messages, he was puzzled because his phone was set to vibrate mode.

  Why didn’t the messages get through?

  Then he saw the e-mail from Rebecca.

  FROM DANIEL. EMERGED FROM COMA. PROGNOSIS GOOD.

  When he opened the attachment he was staggered by the letters Daniel had scrawled.

  L Y N C H

  Composing himself, he sent a text reply.

  THANKS BECKA. GREAT NEWS ABOUT DANIEL.

  Then he entered a speed dial number to call Kate, but he felt a presence from behind.

  Slowly he turned.

  Thomas Lynch was pointing a gun at him.

  “I’ll take that,” Lynch said, referring to the cell phone. “Toss it over.”

  As he did so, Alfred came out from the shadows.

  “Get his gun,” Lynch told him.

  “No tricks,” he said to James. “This gun is pointed directly at your heart.”

  Alfred removed a 9mm handgun from a holster beneath his arm and gave it to Lynch, who kept a safe distance away.

  He knew that to fail to do so could get him killed.

  Lynch had a healthy respect for James’ skills in disarming people at close range.

  “Search him.”

  Alfred did as he was told and found nothing. Then Lynch pointed to a stairway leading to the basement.

  “Let’s go,” Lynch said and turned to Alfred, “Put his gun away.”

  “Yes sir.”

  James went down the stairway with Lynch behind him. At the bottom they came into a corridor that connected to rooms used for storage and mechanical equipment.

  “Turn here and keep walking.”

  Along the corridor they came to a locked steel door.

  “Stop right here.”

  He took out a key and turned the lock. Then he waved the gun toward the doorway and motioned to James.

  “After you,” Lynch said.

  A circular stairway led down into a dimly-lit space.

  In the half-light James felt transported back to the seventeenth century.

  The dungeon hadn’t been altered since its construction more than 350 years ago.

  The space was supported by columns hewn from limestone, as were the walls, floor and ceiling. An open area was surrounded by individual cells, each with iron bars and a locked door.

  Mounted to the walls chains and leg irons had been used to shackle prisoners during a darker era. A dreary feeling stirred hellish thoughts of dread, a tomb haunted by miserable souls who had been tortured and left to rot.

  James saw two people sitting in their cells with an armed guard nearby.

  “I’d like you to meet my guests,” Lynch said to James. “Say hello to Senators Natalie Lopez and Charlie Watson.”

  Guests? James thought.

  “They’ll be staying for a while.”

  Natalie Lopez cried out. “Get us out of this hellhole!”

  The guard slammed a wooden stick against the bars of her cell, and getting the message she retook her seat.

  Lynch gestured with his gun to a cell and the guard stepped over and opened it.

  “Inside,” Lynch said.

  James stepped in and the guard closed the door, securing the lock with a key on his belt chain.

  Lynch took out the cell phone he’d taken from James and opened the most recent message, the one from Rebecca.

  Then Lynch saw his own name, scrawled by Daniel.

  A wicked grin crossed his face.

  So, now you know.”

  CHAPTER 51

  Alfred entered a pantry near the kitchen and opened an enormous safe. In the kitchen his wife, Olga, was preparing a grocery list. She got up and walked over as he put James’ gun in the safe.

  She watched from behind as he latched the door and turned the combination dial.

  “Mr. Webb will be staying indefinitely,” he said.

  She understood “indefinitely” as code for a permanent stay at Falcon Lair.

  In other words, the guest would not be leaving. Ever.

  Alfred then went up the stairway and to their living quarters above the kitchen, and Olga slipped down a back staircase and into the basement.

  Moving along the corridor she stopped at the door to a mechanical room, and going in she recalled a time several years ago when she’d brought a repairman in here to work on a boiler.

  He had noticed an open pipe extending down through the floor. “This pipe seems to be providing ventilation for a space below” Olga recalled the repairman saying, but too busy with her duties, she dismissed the mystery.

  Then strange things began happening at Falcon Lair.

  About a year ago Olga noticed that select guests arrived at the chateau, but they didn’t leave and were never heard from again.

  No explanation was given by Thomas Lynch, and Alfred was closed-mouthed on the matter.

  Then early this morning before sunrise, Olga saw from their apartment a man and a woman as they were getting out of a van in the motor court along with Lynch’s guards. She recalled the strange pipe in the basement which aroused her curiosity. She went into the mechanical room and stood by the open pipe.

  I hear voices. Good Lord, there are people down there, she told herself.

  And then there was James Webb.

  She had eavesdropped from an alcove in the entrance hall and heard Lynch as he forced his “guest” into the basement at gunpoint.

  Once again she went to the mechanical room and listened at the pipe. A conversation between James and Lynch was underway.

  “What’s this all about, Thomas?”

  “How’s your wife?”

  “Kate’s fine.”

  “I saw her at the Musée d'Orsay this afternoon.”

  “Did you?”

  “You’re so naïve, James. Kate has always cared for me. More than she does for you.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “She di
dn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “About our romance, before the two of you got together,” Lynch lied.

  “You must be joking.” James was incredulous.

  “Am I?”

  Lynch went on describe to James something about Kate that could only be known by a person who’d seen her naked.

  James suddenly felt sick.

  “You were a rebound for her.”

  “You’re out of your mind.”

  “We’ll see,” Lynch replied, sitting in a chair outside the cell. “You, my friend, are a fool.”

  “Really?” James said.

  Olga then staggered away from the open pipe above.

  She returned to the kitchen and sank into a chair, trying to process what she’d heard.

  Olga shuddered as she thought back to a long time ago when she had locked horns with the Lynch clan. She and Alfred had come to Falcon Lair more than fifty years ago.

  Eventually, their loyalty and dedication were rewarded when Alfred was promoted to administrator and put in charge of managing the household and its staff for Thomas Lynch’s parents.

  But that isn’t the whole story.

  Olga Krause was born in Frankfurt, Germany, and as a young girl her parents shaped her opinions about morality. Having formed ties with members of the Jewish community, Olga and her family were hit hard by the carnage of the Third Reich.

  Evenings at the dinner table included stories of devastation and horror as Olga’s parents recalled the Gestapo dragging Jewish residents from their homes and hauling them to concentration camps.

  Her state of mind was deeply altered by these experiences. Olga learned early on the consequences of unchecked power.

  The idea of putting her freedom under the control of the Lynch family was unthinkable.

  So she sought a bargaining chip.

  Eavesdropping on the elder Lynch over a period of years, her patience paid off. Olga overheard him talking about a business deal involving a public official who refused a bribe in exchange for his cooperation. The man was “eliminated” to clear the way for a replacement. Olga had gotten enough hard evidence to bury her employer.

  She then told her mother to hire a law firm in Germany to monitor Olga’s situation and place the damning evidence in a safe deposit box. If Olga met an untimely death at the hands of Thomas Lynch, the law firm would open the box and release its contents to the media.

  For all intents and purposes, Thomas Lynch was stuck with Olga Krause.

  In the kitchen, Olga turned to a computer on the desk, going online and entering the keywords JAMES WEBB.

  Several links came up.

  Looking at the information she decided the man in the dungeon was not among those shown. She didn’t realize that the Internet was routinely scrubbed of references to James’ actual identity.

  Undeterred, she entered the keywords KATE WEBB.

  Again no results.

  She paused for a moment.

  Then an idea struck. Erasing her search words, she tried KATHERINE WEBB WASHINGTON D.C.

  A link came up.

  It was an article about a fundraiser in Washington, D.C.

  Included was a photo of a woman.

  The caption said: Katherine Webb, Co-chairwoman.

  Olga studied the gritty image on her screen, and she downloaded it and began the process of enlarging it.

  From the corner of her eye she saw Alfred approaching from behind. She was used to his poking into her private affairs and quickly clicked the Minimize button, closing the window.

  She then pulled up a page she had previously opened. Instantly a recipe for grilled lamb chops popped up.

  “What do you have there, woman?” he asked, affecting an air of self-importance.

  “I didn’t see you coming in. I was thinking of making these lamb chops tonight. Don’t they look delicious?”

  He grumbled and walked away, and as he disappeared Olga reopened the page she was looking at before his interruption. She completed the enlarging process and the entire screen filled with the image of Kate Webb.

  A flood of emotions carried her away. She could not stand idly by and do nothing but an effort to intervene could get her killed. She felt conflicted and terrified. Her parents must have felt the same way as the Nazis carried out their brutality against her Jewish neighbors.

  After her resolve stiffened, Olga made a vow to herself.

  She would learn more about the substructure of Falcon Lair.

  CHAPTER 52

  Kate and Nicolas had barely made their way into the apartment when the phone vibrated inside her pocket. It was a text message from Rebecca to James and Kate had been copied. She opened the message and read the text portion first.

  FROM DANIEL. EMERGED FROM COMA. PROGNOSIS GOOD.

  She opened the attachment with Daniel’s scrawled lettering, spelling Lynch’s name.

  “Oh my God,” she blurted.

  “What is it?”

  “Daniel’s going to be okay. He came out of his coma and he wrote this. Before the crash he must have overheard a conversation in the car between the Senators involving Lynch.”

  Nicolas handed the phone back to her and she saw that James had sent a reply to Rebecca.

  Kate held the phone between them and they read the text together.

  THANKS BECKA. GREAT NEWS ABOUT DANIEL.

  “He’s alive,” Kate exclaimed.

  “How do you know?”

  “Look!”

  She pointed to the text, saying, “He used Rebecca’s nickname. It had to be James. Lynch would have no way of knowing.”

  Nicolas thought for a moment.

  “Then why didn’t he respond to your messages?”

  Kate was stumped.

  “I don’t know. We just have to move ahead on the assumption he’s alive.”

  A silence.

  They sat on the sofa and looked out the window at the Eiffel Tower.

  Kate finally spoke.

  “Nicolas, would you consider using your contacts here to arrange a meeting with the Prefect of Police and me?”

  He turned and gave her a concerned look.

  “That could be risky, Kate.”

  She put her hand on his arm and looked into his eyes.

  “Given what we know about Lynch, they’re likely to at least hear me out.”

  He sighed. “I’ll try.”

  Nicolas wasn’t optimistic, but he did make a few phone calls. They waited anxiously for almost an hour.

  Finally the phone rang.

  An assistant for the Prefect called to confirm a meeting at six o’clock.

  They rode the elevator down, climbed into the SUV and Nicolas drove to their destination. He pulled to the curb alongside the Tuileries Gardens.

  “Thanks Nicolas,” Kate said, climbing out. “I’ll get a taxi for the ride home.”

  “Good luck.”

  She walked along a pedestrian plaza in the direction of the Grand Basin, an octagonal, shallow pool of water with a fountain at its center.

  As Kate absorbed her surroundings, she heard a man’s voice.

  “Mrs. Webb?”

  Caught off guard, she pivoted and faced him.

  Captain Benoit Roche’s posture was dignified, exuding a confidence reflecting the authority of his high rank and position. Nearing the age of sixty, he was dressed in an impeccably tailored suit accentuating his trim physique. His mind worked the same way, no nonsense, no energy wasted.

  “Yes?” replied Kate.

  He extended a hand to shake.

  “Captain Roche, Prefect of Police.”

  “Hello, Kate Webb. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”

  “You’re welcome. I was told you wanted to discuss a matter of the greatest urgency.”

  “I need the help of the French authorities. My husband is being held against his will by Thomas Lynch at Falcon Lair.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He’s been orchestrating the Senate
murders in the U.S.”

  Roche paused.

  “This is a most extraordinary accusation.”

  “It’s the truth, just ask Max Baer, Lynch’s accomplice and the man in charge of coordinating his killers.”

  “That would be difficult. He’s lying in the city morgue.”

  “You mean …”

  “Dead. Trampled by a mob at the Musée d'Orsay.”

  Kate was careful in her choice of words.

  “I was there, in the gallery on the fifth floor. I saw Thomas Lynch approach Max Baer.”

  “What may I ask occasioned your presence there?”

  A silence.

  Roche gave her a stern look. “You’re walking a tightrope, Mrs. Webb. We’ve reviewed the surveillance videos and as you point out, Mr. Lynch was among the visitors at the museum. However, the appreciation of fine art is hardly a crime.”

  Kate felt dejected. “I guess not.”

  “Since we’re on the subject, two men and a woman were killed the day before yesterday at a hotel in the Trocadéro district. We have a composite sketch of a man we believe is the suspect.”

  Roche searched her expression.

  “The drawing bears a striking resemblance to your husband.”

  Again Kate weighed her words.

  “In time, you’ll discover the two men were assassins.”

  “And the woman?”

  “Bait, for luring their target into a trap.”

  “As yet we’ve not been able to determine the identities of the two men. However, the woman has been identified. She was an influential lobbyist in your nation’s capital.”

  “That should tell you a lot.”

  “I must tell you that Agent Carter with the FBI arrived in Paris two hours ago. He has requested that my department take you into custody.”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  Roche shrugged.

  “Insufficient grounds. I have a department to run and our actions are conducted in strict compliance with French laws.”

  Kate removed a phone from her pocket, opening the e-mail attachment from Rebecca and revealing to Roche what Daniel had scrawled.

  “Interesting,” Roche said, studying the letters.

  “There must be something you can do,” she pleaded. “We can search the chateau!”

  Roche raised an eyebrow.

  “I wouldn’t have a prayer of getting a search warrant under these circumstances. There simply is no evidence to proceed, which is to say nothing of Mr. Lynch’s position as U.S. ambassador to France. He’s protected under the laws of diplomatic immunity. The man is untouchable.”