The Antarctic Forgery

by Kevin Tumlinson

  He reached under it and managed to lift it upright. It was made of steel or some other hardened alloy, as far as he could tell. It had a strange coloring—almost a sheen of green. Now that he had it propped up in the crate, something that had been nagging him finally clicked. The light from the flashlight …

  It wasn't reflecting on this thing's surface.

  At least, not like it should. Kotler could see that there was some polish to the metal, and he could even see his reflection, though it was oddly distorted. Somehow, though, the metal was doing something strange with the light. Bending it.

  Kotler shined the flashlight on it directly and verified that the light wasn't behaving the way it should. As he swept the light over the tank's surface, a movement caught his eye, off in the far corner of the torpedo bay.

  It startled him at first, but it took only a moment to realize what it was.

  As he moved the light over the surface of the metal, it appeared on a far wall, across the room, and at an opposing angle.

  It wasn't a reflection. It didn't appear anywhere that Kotler would have expected.

  The metal was somehow redirecting the light.

  Kotler played with this for a bit, testing it. He attempted to discover what angles resulted in the light appearing on a different wall of the bay, but that effort was utterly frustrated. It seemed, somehow, that not only did the metal redirect the light, but it did so seemingly at random. No matter how Kotler tried, he could never get the same results twice. Each sweep of the flashlight resulted in another random appearance elsewhere in the room.

  Kotler gently lowered the tank back into its crate and placed the lid back on top. He stood, stepping away and breathing in a heavy rhythm.

  He knew what this was.

  Or, rather, he now knew what Gail was after, and why.

  He also knew that he had to prevent her from getting it, no matter the cost

  Chapter 15

  Gail McCarthy hadn’t really been Gail McCarthy in quite a while.

  She dipped into that identity when she needed it—mostly to give Dan Kotler a nudge in the right direction. But for a couple of years now she'd been a series of alternate identities, frequently moving around in the world, using her resources to stay one step ahead of the FBI and other agencies.

  Her wealth and her network gave her plenty of moving power. Lots of mobility. But not much liberty.

  The contents of this sub would change that.

  She’d pursued this for years now, since well before she’d even met Dr. Dan Kotler or his FBI bromance, Roland Denzel. She had learned about it more or less by accident, overhearing snippets of conversation between her grandfather and Richard Van Burren, piecing bits of it together over time. As “Uncle” Richard had embraced her as his “heir from another mare”—one of his favorite misogynistic jokes—he’d given her more little morsels to feed on. But he had never fully trusted her with all of it.

  Her grandfather had actually been the one to finally start opening up, telling her specifics, and letting her know about the forged map, the artifacts, and how everything tied together. The ancient ruins on an island in the Indian Ocean, the vast Edison cache, Newton's secret underground lab—all of it.

  All of it, except where to find the treasure.

  And it really was a treasure.

  She took a small, round, highly polished piece of metal out of her pocket. She thought of it as a talisman, and for lack of a better word that was what she and her grandfather had always called it.

  The talisman was just smaller than the palm of her hand, but it carried with it enormous implications for the world, and for her life in particular. She held it up to the sunlight and smiled as it disappeared.

  It was still there, of course, held between her fingers. She could feel its smooth, hard surface. It was just functionally invisible to her, as the light hitting it was shifted and diverted until it had bent around the talisman entirely.

  It needed no energy. No power or technology. It merely performed its natural function and demonstrated itself as the miracle that it was.

  This was the fine-tuned version, her grandfather had told her. This was the result of giving samples of the substance to a well-heeled, well-vetted, well-paid team of engineers and scientists and asking them to crack the code of how it worked, and how it could be used.

  “There’s more,” her grandfather had told her, sitting with her on a wooden swing by a lake. It was one of their summer cabins. A place where Gail had spent hundreds of vacations and weekends as a girl. As an adult, she’d been there a few times, when her grandfather wanted to spend time alone with her.

  "There's more," her grandfather repeated. "The Nazis had crates and crates of the stuff. But they hadn't figured it out. Not entirely. We found one of their tests. A fuel tank that was meant to go on a whole aircraft, coated in this stuff. Shine a light on that tank, and it ends up in some random place. The coating isn't stabilized. It shifts." He hefted the talisman in his hand, and it became visible again, shaded as it was by his palm. She could see it in finger-shaped stripes, where his hand blocked the light. "This, though, is stable. It cost a lot to get it this way, but it's repeatable."

  "Where is all this stuff?" Gail asked, marveling at the talisman.

  “Somewhere safe,” her grandfather said. “When the time is right, we plan to offer it up to the highest bidder.”

  He said this last with a touch of disgust in his voice.

  Gail had known for years that her grandfather was not really cut out for this life despite being a full partner in one of the world's most powerful smuggling empires. He had gotten in over his head decades ago. Richard had managed to convince him to keep playing the game and had used his family as motivation, once they'd come along. But Edward McCarthy was, at heart, a good and decent man. A man who had a Faustian bargain with someone vile and ruthless.

  Gail often wondered what their vast network could have accomplished if her grandfather wasn't there to temper Van Burren's lust for wealth and power. What could all those resources be used for, beyond simply supplying a vast underground market with the things it lusted after?

  “Grandfather,” Gail started, hesitating.

  "Go ahead," he said, leaning back and slipping the talisman into his pocket. "You've been waiting to ask, all week."

  She stared out at the water, watching light sparkle on its surface as the sun continued its course. It would be dark in a couple of hours.

  "When?" she asked, quietly. There was no need for more than that.

  “When you’re ready,” he said.

  “When?” she asked again.

  “I think, maybe, pretty soon,” he answered, and stared out at the water, watching as the sun continued its plunge into the horizon.

  She hadn't known then, but just a few months later Edward McCarthy would pass. Everyone had thought it was sudden, but when he died, Gail thought back to this conversation and wondered if he'd known something he wasn't sharing with anyone.

  She had inherited quite a bit from him—wealth from both his legitimate real estate business and much greater wealth from his more clandestine empire. The only thing she cared about, however, was the network itself. She wanted control of what he'd placed so many limits upon. She wanted to unleash it, to see what she could do with it.

  She wanted to change the world with it.

  Among the items she inherited was a metal case containing the three artifacts she had eventually given to Dan Kotler, as a way to enlist him in helping her find the treasure of a lifetime. It wasn’t just his intelligence and expertise that she relied on, of course. He also had access to the map, which was being held by the FBI. She had detailed images of the map, but as she had suspected, it took the real thing to crack this open.

  There had also been a note in the metal case, and it was the answer to almost everything. It had told her how to find what she was after, and how to seize control of the empire, wresting it from the hands of Van Burren. It led her to the keys to the
kingdom—but true to his nature, her grandfather had warned her that she might consider forgetting the whole thing.

  True to her own nature, she had no intention of heeding his warning.

  Every secret would be revealed. Every asset would be hers. But this one thing—the thing that she could use to change the world, while simultaneously rising to nation-level power—this one thing eluded her.

  Edward McCarthy had worried that this would be too much power, that it would take too great a toll. But he'd still given her some hints. Apparently, he couldn't bear to go to his grave with her despising him. He'd left a trail. It was just too difficult for her to follow alone.

  That was why she had reached out to Dr. Dan Kotler, and that was why she had seduced him.

  She had to be honest, of course. She genuinely liked Dan. She wouldn’t go so far as to say she was in love, but it was as close as anything she’d ever known. He was brilliant, after all. Brilliant, resourceful, and obsessed with his work. Running from his past, she realized, by going deeper into the past itself.

  She might love him after all, in her way. She considered it and decided that she did. It was best to admit the truth to yourself, when possible, and two truths were evident: She loved him. And she would kill him if she had to.

  Now, standing here staring at a repurposed Nazi sub that bore her name, under a mountain of stone in the frozen wasteland of Antarctica, she was further from being Gail McCarthy than ever before, and closer to her goal than she'd ever been. The substance was on the other side of a steel wall. She put her palm on the cold skin of the sub and could practically feel the future pulsing under her hand. The power. She felt all of it and marveled that what she wanted was only inches away, and yet might as well have been on another continent.

  She didn’t dare risk sinking this boat or damaging her prize. They would have to find another way in.

  “Ma’am,” a voice said from behind her, pulling her out of her reverie, away from the rising fury within her.

  She turned and found Reggie, her Lieutenant. Her right-hand man. He was older than her, maybe old enough to be her father, but he was as loyal to her as he'd been to her grandfather. More loyal than money could buy her, she knew.

  “We’re still after the FBI guy,” Reggie said. “They tracked him to some kind of panic room. They’re trying to break through to where he is now.”

  Gail watched Reggie’s face, waiting.

  "I have some of our engineer types working on a way into the sub," he said.

  “What have they come up with?” She asked.

  He shook his head. “Nothing you’d approve of,” he replied. “I have some people searching the compound, bit by bit, looking for anything we might be able to use. Acetylene torches, maybe. Something we can use to cut our way in.”

  Gail continued to stare and then sighed. "Ok," she said, and smiled at him. "I'm sure you'll find a way, Reggie." Her tone was icy, and Reggie nodded, acknowledging that this was more of a command than a commentary. "What are you finding in the base, so far?"

  “Odds and ends, mostly,” he said. “The search is going slow. We’re a little stretched on manpower, and there’s always the possibility of Nazi traps.”

  “I’m sure my grandfather and Uncle Richard would have had this place cleared of things like that,” Gail waved, dismissive.

  “Maybe,” Reggie said. “But it seemed prudent.”

  He said this last with a country twang in his voice. Reggie was from that class of Southerner who adopted "proper" phrases, saying them in a hick accent so that one might assume they were intelligent, but laid back. Reggie was undoubtedly intelligent, Gail knew. Laid back might be a stretch. The Southern drawl was more of a ploy than an actual accent, meant to lull people into a false sense of security and superiority. It was always best for your enemy to underestimate you.

  Gail started walking, and Reggie followed behind.

  "I want them to move faster. The cargo is in there, and I'm sure it isn't going anywhere anytime soon. But Dan is smart and resourceful. He'll eventually figure out what we're after, and why. And he may do something drastic to keep me from getting my hands on it."

  Reggie kept pace with her all the way to the corridor. He turned and faced her. "I'll have them step it up. I've called for reinforcements and equipment, but it will be at least two days before they can get here." He saw the flash in her eyes, but to his credit, he held his ground. "No way around that."

  She sighed. “Alright,” she said. “Just … get me in that sub.”

  Reggie nodded and started to walk away, to get things moving at a quicker pace. He hesitated, then asked, "And the doctor? Once we get in there … well, he's armed. We think the other guy may have been hit and may be off the board, but we have no way to know for sure. It could be a firefight all the way through that cigar tube. We'll do our best, but …"

  “Do your best,” she agreed. “Try to take Dan Kotler alive. But if you can’t,” she sighed, “you can’t. I need that cargo.”

  Again, Reggie nodded. “Understood.” He left her standing in the corridor.

  She entered the storage closet that they were using as a base of operations. Two of her people were busily searching and cataloging the contents of the room, looking for anything they could use to get into that sub. Gail herself took a seat on one of the crates in the back of the space, pulling her knees up and resting her arms on them as she watched.

  This was the end game.

  She'd known it would come, eventually. She'd known since the day she'd arranged to bump into Dan Kotler in that parking garage. She'd always known there would come a time when she would have to risk everything to get the bigger prize.

  In essence, she'd risked everything long ago. Many of her moves had left her and her network open and vulnerable, in a way that Richard Van Burren would never have sanctioned. He had been meticulous and calculating right to the end. He had built this empire to last, as long as whoever was in control stuck to the plan.

  Gail had thrown the plan out the window when she'd been forced to run, after the Atlantis affair. She had gambled on the Edison cache as the place where she'd find the substance, and her real empire could begin. But she had overreached. She'd managed to seize control of the empire and remove both of her rivals—Richard and Eric Van Burren alike—but in the process, she had exposed the entire operation. Things had unraveled since then, as she'd continued to use the resources of the network to stay ahead of the various government agencies worldwide.

  Now, here in this frozen wasteland, she had this one last shot. She knew, with absolute certainty, that her goal was at hand. And nothing—or no one— was going to keep her from it.

  Not even Dan Kotler.

  Chapter 16

  Denzel was winding his way through the darkened corridors, keeping the lantern trimmed and the Luger at the ready. The light was at least better than what he'd had with the LED, but the necessity of keeping it dimmed was presenting some challenges. He'd have killed for some night vision goggles right about then. Or a Special Forces contingent. Or any caliber larger than a .22.

  The corridor was long and had several branches diverging and leading deeper into the base. Denzel stopped and took out the floor plan, getting his bearings and deciding on a course of action.

  The current branch of hallway that he'd taken would eventually connect him to a path to the sub. That way was going to be very dangerous, considering Gail's people were likely scouting and pushing their way toward him. It was the only way to get back to Kotler and Vicente, however, and Denzel would have to risk it. He'd figure out what to do once he got there.

  Between his present position and the sub, however, was at least one large space that appeared to be a cargo storage area. There were several exits from that room, but it could be fortified if Denzel needed to dig in.

  It became his target primarily because it appeared to have a communications room.

  Denzel paused, thinking things through.

  He was in unfamil
iar territory, barely armed, and had an unknown number of enemies on either side. Kotler and Vicente were trapped in a sub, which had more or less been his lodestar since leaving the officer's quarters. The cargo storage bay offered another objective, however, and one that stood a higher probability of success. If he could reach that communications room, he could potentially call for help.

  The question was, could Kotler and Vicente hold their ground long enough for backup to arrive, assuming Denzel could make hundred-year-old radio equipment function?

  There was a philosophy that had been drilled into Denzel during his Special Forces days: When in doubt, assume success.

  It was better to assume that Kotler and Vicente could hold out and that he could figure out the radio gear and, ultimately, they'd all escape this alive than to assume things would fall apart. Assuming success gave him a definite course of action, even with limited options and resources, rather than waffling and trying to outguess the enemy, or trying to plan for every contingency. If the plan failed, he'd decide on a new course of action, and focus on that objective.

  He took a few deep breaths and got moving.

  His progress was slow, though he pressed to move as quickly as possible. So far, his pace seemed to be fine, and it was better to be at least a bit cautious moving forward in the dim corridors. After a short time, however, he heard something from behind him, and quickly shut off the lantern, pausing to listen. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, but soon, down the way, he caught the faint glow and bob of flashlights moving in the corridor. They were distant and hadn't yet made the turn into the passage he was using, but it wouldn't be long.

  He had some distance to cover before he would need to turn, taking a branching corridor to the storage bay. If he turned the lantern on, it would increase the likelihood of someone spotting him.

  He’d have to risk running blind.

  He put a hand on the wall and moved at the quickest pace he dared. He knew that somewhere up ahead the hall would open to his left, and if he could make that turn, he'd be on a straight path to the bay. He should be able to use the lantern again, at that point, and run at full tilt to widen the gap between him and his pursuers.