The interior of the building was a mess. Like a hotel in a ghost town, the lobby looked as if it had been abandoned from one day to the next. Behind the reception desk the keys all hung in neat rows beneath their respective room numbers, old newspapers lay on tables, and the bar on the way to the overgrown terrace was still stocked with glasses and bottles. But all of it was covered with a thick layer of dust. “I’ve seen photos of ‘lost places’ like this on the internet,” Hellen whispered, “but I didn’t know it would be so creepy.” Huge cobwebs stretched across everything, and the moldering wood, musty air, buckled floorboards, and an unnerving silence all added to the atmosphere.
“Why are you whispering?” Cloutard asked. “We can talk perfectly normally here. We are not disturbing anyone.”
But a loud crash suddenly sounded from a floor above. The stairs were still intact and there were footprints on the steps.
“This would be the moment when Tom would head upstairs with his gun drawn,” Hellen said, her voice trembling.
Cloutard rummaged in his backpack and came up with an old Walther PPK pistol. “As much as I detest weapons, I thought we might be able to use this, considering our John Wayne is not here,” he said with a smile, raising his eyebrows twice. Another noise from upstairs made both of them jump, and now they could hear voices.
“Hello?” Hellen called. “Is anyone there?”
Cloutard rolled his eyes. “Hellen, you are acting like the blonde victim in a horror movie. If someone is up there, then they are here just as illegally as we are and they are not simply going to announce their presence.”
“Hey, cool, more guests for our party!” they heard a voice say from the floor above. Then they heard steps and two young women were suddenly standing in front of them.
“You don’t look like cops,” said one of them. She was wearing a tank top and jeans, had shoulder-length black hair, and wore practically no makeup. Both arms were covered in delicately interwoven tattoos. “Hey! Maybe we can use them in our photo shoot?”
The other girl was holding a camera with an impressive lens. “Maybe just the guy. Yeah, with that ‘’stache, hat and walking stick . . . a fossil like him fits perfectly in here.”
“Excusez-moi?” Cloutard said, a little aggrieved, looking at the woman with the camera.
Hellen, more on the ball, said, “You’re urban explorers, aren’t you? You’re on a shoot for one of those ‘lost places’ websites.”
The girl with the tattoos smiled at Hellen. “It’s actually for Insta, but you’re basically right. So are you, like, fetish types who like to get it on in creepy old buildings?” She looked from Hellen to Cloutard. “Isn’t he a bit old for you, lady?”
Hellen was glad Tom wasn’t with them. He would have loved this. She could see him talking trash with these girls, in a race to the bottom of the barrel.
“We’re scientists.”
“Oh, right,” said the photographer. “And I’m Annie Leibowitz.”
“I dunno, Mel. I could believe it. I mean, they look kinda stuffy.”
“Look, we don’t want to interrupt your shoot,” Hellen said, not wanting to lose any more time. “We’re looking for the connecting passage to the castle.”
“I mean, we’re not tour guides . . . but we can help you out with that,” said Betty. Mel was still eyeing Cloutard. She seemed to really think he’d look good in their pictures. “Go up to the second floor, then turn right and go down the corridor ‘til you—”
She stopped when they heard a noise from the courtyard out front. Judging by the crunch of gravel, several cars were pulling up outside. Cloutard suddenly realized what had happened.
“How did you get in here?” he asked.
“We climbed the mountain from the other side, then came over a busted balcony into a hotel room,” Mel said.
“What about the alarm?” asked Cloutard.
“Alarm?” Betty asked, shocked.
Hellen understood. The girls had tripped a silent alarm. She could already hear steps approaching.
“Shit. The cops’ve never caught us this fast before,” Mel said, packing her camera away.
Hellen and Cloutard ran upstairs to the second floor. The higher they went, the more rickety the stairs seemed to get. Before Hellen could warn Cloutard, he’d already broken through. One leg had disappeared to the knee and he was stuck fast in the staircase.
25
Genesis Program, Cornwall, England
Where had Sienna vanished to? She could not have gone very far. Was there a service tunnel nearby connecting the dome with the research center, as Tom suspected? He went back down the path a short way, searching the slope for an entrance. Nothing. He tried the other direction and found what he was looking after just a few yards. On a curve behind a large information panel explaining the cooling effect of rainforests on global climate, an unobtrusive, narrow path branched off. A sign dangling on a rope across the path read “Authorized Personnel Only.” Tom climbed over the barrier, but stopped halfway when he heard a voice.
“Hey! What are you doing? Can’t you read?” A man dressed like a hippie hurried over to Tom. “We’re closing. You need to head to an exit, right away.”
Tom, thinking fast, said, “It’s my son, Eric. He ran back there. I was just going to get him. He’s been monkeying around the whole day.” Tom turned down the path and called, “Eric! You better get back here right now!”
“You can’t just go back there.”
“Do you have kids?” Tom asked.
“No. Not yet.” The man smiled a little and seemed sympathetic to Tom’s plight.
“Then take my advice: don’t. It’s nothing but headaches.” Tom pointed along the path as if to underscore his point.
“Follow me,” the man said, climbing over the rope. “He can’t be very far.” Tom followed.
“You don’t look like a security guy,” Tom said.
“I’m not. I’m a biologist here in the Genesis Program. I was just checking on a couple of my seedlings.”
“Where does this path actually lead?”
“It’s just to an entrance to our research labs. Eric!” the scientist shouted, calling to Tom’s imaginary son. “You’ve got a very stubborn boy there.”
“I’ve got a confession to make,” Tom said. “I don’t actually have kids at all.”
The man had no time to react. Tom grabbed him from behind in a chokehold, cutting off the blood supply to his brain. After a few moments the biologist slumped, unconscious. Tom dragged him into the bushes and searched him, taking his key and key card. “Sorry,” he said as he laid a large leaf over the man’s face. Then he hurried ahead to the entrance.
The gray steel door had a small window in it and was surrounded by climbing plants. He pushed them aside to reach the terminal hidden behind them, then let out a groan: the door was secured with two-factor security, the key card plus a retinal scan. You need to check these things out before you knock out the only man who can open the door for you, he growled at himself.
Tom dragged the biologist’s limp body out of the bushes and up to the door. He heaved him up and placed his head on the chin rest of the retinal scanner. Holding him in place with one arm, he slid the key card through the card reader. Then he tried to open the man’s eye.
It didn’t work the first time. Of course not, Tom thought. That would have been way too easy. He tried again. Still nothing. The man’s body was getting heavier by the second and Tom’s arms were starting to ache. At least Larry had help when he dragged Bernie all over the place for a whole freakin’ weekend, Tom thought. But on the third attempt, the door buzzed and opened.
Wedging the door open with his knife, he dragged the biologist’s unconscious body back into the bushes and out of sight.
Tom didn’t have much time left. The man’s little snooze wouldn’t last much longer, then he’d wake up with a hammering headache and call the cops. Tom grabbed the knife from under the door and ran down the long service passage. Pipes a
nd cable ducts lined the ceiling. At the end of the passage was an open elevator. “Laboratories” read a label beside one of the elevator buttons. Tom pressed it and the elevator shot upward. A chill brought goosebumps as he stepped out of the elevator. Overdoing it with the air-con, aren’t you? he thought. Thank God the research center was not particularly big. There was just a handful of laboratories; the other floors were dedicated to management and administration.
Tom soon found something he wasn’t expecting: a door which appeared to have been opened with a crowbar. He stepped inside the lab, and the startled Sienna screamed and threw a handful of papers that she’d just collected from the laser printer into the air.
“You again?” she said, annoyed. “I told you, I don’t need your help. Now get lost before I call security.” Sienna crouched and started collecting the papers, and Tom went over and helped her.
“Sorry, but it’s like I said: I’ve got a job to do.”
“I thought you were kidding.”
“Is that what I think it is?” Tom asked rhetorically, straightening up. Beside Sienna’s monitor stood a small, silver transport case with a handcuff and a digital lock. The case was open, and inside it, bedded in foam, lay a cylindrical, stainless-steel container with a little window built into the side. It contained a green liquid. Pages were still emerging from the printer. “What are you going to do with it? Who are you planning to give your research results to? Or are you just trying to get them as far as possible from here? Do you even have a plan?”
“Look, my boss wants to sell this stuff on the black market. You were right, okay? How you knew about it is another question. He fired me to get rid of me, and he threatened to end my career to shut me up. Good men have already died for this substance and I’m not going to sit by idly and watch a money-hungry asshole get rich off my research.”
“Let’s not forget that someone could turn it into a biological weapon,” Tom added.
Sienna took the last of the pages from the printer and added them to the ones she’d just picked up. She clipped them all into a folder, then put the folder in the case with the container.
“I can’t let you do that. My orders are to secure the research results and destroy everything here. And that’s what I’m going to do.”
The copying finished, Sienna pulled the USB stick out of her computer. She tapped a few keys on the keyboard.
“You can save yourself the trouble. I’ve just erased everything on here and on the server, including the backups.” She held up the USB stick. “This is the last copy.” She tossed it into the case, which she immediately closed.
“Give me the case. It’ll be in good hands, I promise.”
“Then you’ll run off and give my research to the Americans. No thank you.”
“I don’t have time for games.” Tom didn’t want to do it, but he was running out of options. He whipped out his pistol. “Please, Sienna, give me the case.”
“What if I don’t? You’ll shoot me? I hardly know you, but you don’t seem like the type.”
Sienna snatched up the case and snapped the handcuff around her wrist.
“Where this case goes, I go.” She picked up the handcuff key, made a show of placing it on her tongue, and swallowed it.
“Aaahhh, lady, are you crazy?” Tom jammed the pistol back under his belt. “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. There are some very unpleasant people after your research, the kind who’ll stop at nothing.”
“Then you’d better do a damn good job of looking after me.”
Tom grabbed Sienna by her hand and led her out of the laboratory. “How did your boss know so much about your research? He seemed to find a buyer pretty fast,” Tom asked off-handedly as they stepped into the elevator.
“Shit!” Sienna jabbed at the third-floor button several times and ran out as soon as the elevator door opened.
“Wait! Where are you going?” Tom shouted after her, holding the elevator door.
“My boss still has copies of my work.”
She jerked open an office door and disappeared inside. An anguished scream echoed through the floor. Tom ran.
26
Kranichberg Castle, south of Vienna, Austria
Hellen picked her way back down the few steps to Cloutard and helped him pull his leg free. He groaned in pain—it was the same leg he’d injured in Russia. He gritted his teeth and hobbled on.
Hellen, in front, looked back down the stairwell. “They haven’t spotted us,” she said. “They’ve gone after the girls.” She pointed ahead, “Come on, François, there’s the hallway that leads to the castle.”
Between them, they heaved open a medieval portal and suddenly found themselves in another world. Everything here had been abandoned for years as well, but it all made more sense. Where the hotel had seemed spooky and neglected, everything inside the walls of the centuries-old castle seemed infused with history. Hellen was in her element. Cloutard closed the heavy door behind them and they both caught their breath.
“They’re not following us,” Cloutard said.
Hellen, a few steps ahead, had found an arrow slit through which they could see the castle courtyard. “They’ve caught the girls,” said Hellen. She watched as the two urban explorers were bundled into separate police vehicles. “Give me your iPad. I’m pretty sure one of the documents describes the route to the strongroom.”
Cloutard handed her the tablet and together they searched the photos.
“Here,” said Cloutard, tapping the screen.
Hellen nodded and looked around. “Okay. We have to get down to the ground floor. A stairway goes from there down to an old armory. There’s a hidden passage from there to the strongroom.”
Cloutard had already retrieved two Maglite flashlights from his backpack. “They did know how to build things solidly back then,” he murmured as they made their way downstairs to the ground floor and continued on to the armory. Reaching its door, Cloutard pulled out a crowbar and pried it open.
“Judging by the smell, no one’s been down here for decades,” Hellen said. The narrow corridor led past several doorless and empty chambers before coming to a dead end. “According to the drawings, there’s a kind of bolt in the last chamber that we have to slide across.” Hellen pointed to the iPad. “That should open a passage.”
They went into the last chamber and quickly found what they were looking for: mounted low on the wall in one corner was a large bolt, like the one used to secure a heavy gate. It took their combined strength to slide it from left to right, but from outside, they heard a grating squeak, and a moment later discovered that a small recess had opened in the wall. Behind it was a tunnel no more than eighteen inches across.
“Now I am glad that the food in Russia was so terrible,” said Cloutard. “I would not have fit through here otherwise.”
Minutes later they found themselves standing in a spacious square room, at least thirty feet across. The walls were completely lined with shelves from floor to ceiling—all empty.
Cloutard frowned and took his hip flask out of his backpack. “It looks as if the Habsburgs used up their reserves after all,” he said, taking a belt of cognac.
Hellen sighed and held out her hand for the flask. “I need a little of that myself.”
The agreeable warmth of the cognac revived their flagging spirits. With the flashlights, they probed every inch of the shelves, but found nothing. Cloutard rattled every shelf, trying to pull them forward, but it was impossible. Hellen inspected the base of each section, knocking on the wood, pushing and prodding, trying to lift them out. Nothing. Finally, they both got down on their knees and examined the floor beneath each of the shelves—all in vain.
“A dead end? Already?” Hellen sighed.
“The shortest trail we have followed yet,” said Cloutard.
They stood in the empty room a few minutes longer, discouraged and unable to believe it. This couldn’t be the end of their search.
“Mother’s going to ki
ll me,” Hellen groaned. Cloutard looked at her but didn’t say a word. “I guess there was nothing to it all along.”
Hellen trudged back to the tunnel. Cloutard followed, shoulders sagging. Just before she left the room, she swung her flashlight around a final time, hoping to spot something she might have missed. But there was nothing.
Disappointed, they squeezed back through the tunnel to the armory. Suddenly, Hellen stopped in her tracks and raised her index finger.
27
White House, West Wing, Washington, D.C.
“Thank you for taking me into your confidence, Mr. Armstrong,” said James J. Pitcock, vice president of the United States. “You’ve done the right thing,” he reassured the president’s chief of staff. Pitcock could practically feel Armstrong’s discomfort through the phone; the chief of staff didn’t enjoy having to discuss such an indecorous subject. He leaned back in his chair. “So Samson has a girlfriend,” he repeated. Rita had told him about it just that morning, and he’d used the flight back from Texarkana to think about how he could use that bit of news. In Washington, rumors were certainly worth something, and now that Armstrong had confirmed the affair, it was pure gold.
The wheels in Pitcock’s head began to turn as he played through various scenarios. Armstrong, with astonishing naiveté, had just handed him a trump card that he could use to rid himself of Samson forever.
“But the affair is not our main problem right now,” Armstrong said.
“So we’re back to the issue with Tom Wagner?”
“Yes. Essentially, the president has assigned a foreign agent to secure a biological weapon and deliver it to our CIA safe house on Ambrose Street. Imagine the shitstorm if that gets out.”
“You’re right, of course. But isn’t Wagner the nephew of a highly decorated admiral, the late Scott Wagner?”
The Golden Path (A Tom Wagner Adventure Book 4) Page 8
