Eden's Gate

by David Hagberg

  “Some of it wasn’t acting, you know,” she replied. He grinned and looked back toward the Maria, missing the angry expression on her face.

  They were a long ways off when Speyer checked his watch. He looked up as the dark outline of the ship seemed to shiver and a low-throated thump like very distant thunder came to them.

  “Did something go wrong?” Gloria demanded.

  “Look,” Speyer said. Already the Maria was sharply down on her lines, down at the bow where some of the explosives had blown a huge hole just beneath the water line. The engines were still driving the ship forward, and they would help propel her underwater very quickly now.

  Speyer clapped his hands in delight, missing another odd look from his wife and one from Baumann. But even if he had seen them he wouldn’t have cared. He was going to be the king.

  Lane had discharged the second fire extinguisher against the port wing window when the explosions seemed to lift the big ship five feet straight up into the air, knocking him sideways. He regained his balance, turned the fire extinguisher around, and slammed it against the window. A spiderweb of cracks appeared. The tough polycarbonate plastic had been weakened by the extreme cold of the carbon dioxide. He smashed the base of the fire extinguisher into the window again, completely shattering it like an automobile window in an accident.

  The ship was already well down by the bow, water already up to the level of the first containers lashed on deck, when Lane grabbed the half-dozen life jackets he’d strung together and tossed them out the window.

  There was no chance that the crew could be saved now. There’d been explosions all through the ship. No doubt they’d been herded somewhere central, maybe the crew’s mess, where they’d been locked in. They were all dead, or soon would be, and there wasn’t a thing that he could do about it. For that, if for nothing else, Lane swore that he would personally deal with Helmut Speyer and company at the first possible opportunity.

  He stuffed the Very signal pistol into his belt and loaded a half-dozen of the big starburst shells into his pocket, then climbed out the window.

  Water covered the entire deck forward of the superstructure and all but the top row of containers. There were no other ships in sight, nor could he see the captain’s gig, which had to be out there somewhere. But they were probably running without lights, and despite the bright starlight the horizon was impossible to define; there was nothing but an indistinct blackness where it should be.

  The stern of the ship had lifted about twenty degrees when there was a tremendous crash below. Some heavy machinery was breaking loose and the ship started listing to the left.

  Lane snatched the bundle of life jackets, scrambled down the stairs to where the water had risen to within two levels of the bridge, kicked off his soft leather Gucci half-boots and jumped in.

  The ocean was surprisingly warm, but he was swimming through a thick oil slick, the smell of diesel fuel so strong he could taste it and feel it in his mouth. It made him sick to his stomach, and burned his lungs.

  By the time he got fifty yards out of the slick only the antennae and radar masts at the very top of the superstructure stuck up above the water. Seconds later they were gone.

  Through the night Lane watched a steady stream of ships passing on the horizon to the west. Some of them headed north, while others were southbound, but all of them moved shockingly fast. Their lights came into sight in the very far distance and within minutes disappeared in the opposite direction.

  He’d used five of the six starburst shells within the first couple of hours, then laid back to rest until morning. He would save his last shell until a ship came close enough that he could shoot the damned thing directly at the bridge.

  Just before dawn a thick cloud raced toward him, blotting out the stars to the east and engulfing him in a downpour so heavy he had trouble breathing. It only lasted a couple of minutes. Afterwards he was struck first with severe leg cramps, and then chills that made him so weak he could do nothing to help himself.

  For a time he thought about sharks—these waters were notorious for them—but then he concentrated on Tommy Hughes and Frannie back in Washington. When the Maria was reported overdue in Miami sometime today they would start the wheels in motion to find him.

  With that comforting thought he laid his head back, his weight well supported by the half-dozen life jackets, and managed to nod off.

  It was seven o’clock in the early evening after a very long, hot day, when the Coast Guard helicopter came out of the sun from the west. Lane heard the heavy drumbeats of the big rotors before he could pick out the machine, but by the time he could fumble the Very pistol out of his belt the chopper was directly overhead. The heavy downdraft flattened the seas in a big circle.

  He looked up in time to see a Coast Guard crewman in a crash helmet and another man, bareheaded, looking down at him. He let the Very pistol slip out of his grasp and waved.

  “You silly boy,” Tommy Hughes’s amplified voice boomed. “Don’t you know that you shouldn’t go for a swim without a proper bathing costume?”

  PART TWO

  THREE DAYS LATER

  7

  MONTANA

  Konrad Aden parked his metallic green Mercedes 500SEL in a gravel lot above the Flathead River west of Hungry Horse and walked down to the water, where Kalispell Chief of Police Carl Mattoon was having a smoke. He was puzzled by the urgency of Mattoon’s phone call last night, all the more so because of the confusing events of the past couple of weeks. Nothing added up, and Aden intensely hated disorder.

  At forty-seven Aden was a highly respected attorney and real estate developer in Helena. His rugged good looks combined with his outdoorsman’s physique and perfect English to make everyone believe that he was a native Montanan, a belief he never disputed. Actually he’d been born in Leipzig in what was then East Germany. He’d distinguished himself in Gymnasium there and then college in Berlin, getting his law degree when he was only twenty-three. He came to the attention of the Russians because his father had been chief of Leipzig Stasi operations, and because he was bright. They brought him to Moscow, where he studied international law and relations at Patrice Lamumba University. Upon graduation he spent one year at the KGB’s School One outside of Moscow where he was taught tradecraft: everything from secret writing and codes to hand-to-hand combat and the skills with which to kill a man in several dozen different ways. Later he worked undercover out of the United Nations in New York and Geneva and finally as a special political officer for the Stasi in Berlin until the Wall came down and he was able to escape to the U.S.

  He’d been one of the founding fathers of the Friends, and had stationed himself in Montana because no one else wanted the assignment, and because he wanted the uncomplicated wide-open spaces for a change of pace. His wife loved it here, as did their three children who’d all been born over in Billings.

  Carl Mattoon was from Knoxville, Tennessee. He had come to Montana six years ago to escape a dead-end career with the Knoxville PD and two ex-wives, both of them cops. He’d been hired as a Yellowstone County deputy sheriff in Billings, which brought him to Aden’s attention; Aden made it his business to know something about all the cops. Almost immediately Aden spotted the man’s three major weaknesses: women, gambling, and money. From that point it took less than three months to buy the man, lock, stock, and barrel. Two years later Mattoon, under Aden’s guidance, was assistant chief of police in Kalispell. A year and a half after that, he became chief when the old chief of police was killed in a tragic car accident on a mountain road.

  Aden had gone through all this trouble because Helmut Speyer had taken up residence outside Kalispell, and Friends protected friends.

  “Good morning, Carl. You called and here I am. I hope it’s important enough to have dragged me all the way up here this morning.”

  Mattoon turned around, obviously troubled. “I think we got ourselves a problem, son,” Mattoon said. “Fact of the matter is I don’t know what the hell is go
in’ on.”

  “Is the FBI bothering you again?” Aden asked. “If they are, just tell them what we agreed on.”

  “It’s not them yet, but it’s sure gonna be, because now I have to call them back up here. They know Helmut’s real name and they want to talk to him about that cocked-up shooting.”

  “They have to find him first. But if they had any proof there’d be a federal warrant on him. And there’s been no such thing.”

  “Like I said, I’m going to have to call that FBI bitch down in Helena because I think Helmut came back last night. A friend of my cousin’s works in Flight Service at the airport. He called me and said that the Gulfstream landed out at the compound about one this morning.”

  “Okay, Carl, assuming they’re back, just do your duty and call the Helena FBI office. Where’s the problem?”

  “That’s the trouble. I’m supposed to be investigating the thing at the Grand Hotel. But wherever I turn I’m being squeezed from both ends. You want me to drag my heels and lose evidence so that nothing connects to Helmut. The Bureau wants to take the case away from me, and I can’t give either of you an answer because there just plain aren’t any.”

  “We’re working on the Goldstein thing.”

  “There was a murder in that barroom, that’s for sure. The forensics folks in Helena finally got back to me with the DNA results from the blood samples we picked up off the floor. It’s human blood, all right. Type A negative. And according to Interpol it’s a match with the live Goldstein in Vienna.” Mattoon shook his head. “Now ain’t that just a bitch. We got a murder without a body, and proof positive that the victim was never in that bar and is still very much alive. Now what the hell am I supposed to tell the FBI?”

  “Exactly what you just told me,” Aden said, his mood darkening. The incident in the barroom had been some sort of a set-up, a sting operation. But there was nothing in the FBI’s or CIA’s computers that his contacts had been able to find. If there was such an operation it would have shown up. Or at least there would have been hints of something in the wind.

  “That’s another thing. The Bureau is on my ass about Willy Hardt. Nobody’s buying accidental death. Too many coincidences. How the hell Charlie Parker came up with that one goes way over the top.”

  Parker, the coroner, was one of Aden’s people and so far he’d done exactly as he had been told to do. But even he didn’t know anything about Goldstein, and the situation was starting to unravel.

  “What’s your point, Carl?”

  “I don’t know what the hell is going on with Helmut, and I don’t think you do either. But the Bureau is interested because they’ve been asked by the German police to find him.”

  “Tell him that.”

  “His wife is back, but according to her Helmut’s in Washington.”

  “For some reason you didn’t believe her?”

  “As a matter of fact I don’t. So what am I supposed to do here? If I don’t start doing my job, the FBI will have my ass. But if I do go out there and try to pick Helmut up for questioning he’ll have me killed, or you will.”

  “I think that you have to decide who your friends are, who you can trust.”

  “Maybe I’ll just go down to Helena and tell them everything. About Helmut, about you, about Willy.”

  Aden shook his head sadly. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea for the simple reason you don’t know all the facts. Talk to them and you’ll end up in a federal prison somewhere.” Aden smiled. “Trust me, Carl, inside the penitentiary or out of it, you would most definitely end up dead.”

  Mattoon turned away in disgust. “Now ain’t that just a plain load of horseshit.”

  “If it’s any consolation I don’t know what the hell is going on either,” Aden admitted. “But I will find out and fix it.”

  “What about me?” Mattoon asked, turning back.

  “Has the FBI given you proof that Helmut is who they say he is? I mean enough proof for you to arrest him?”

  “That’s what I’m supposed to come up with.”

  “Well then, your job is easy. Find the proof or try to. In the meantime cooperate with the Bureau. Tell them what you know, and what you don’t know. They can’t jail you for being confused, now can they?”

  “No, but they can take a long, hard look at me.”

  “They won’t find anything. And that you can take to the bank.”

  She had wanted to sleep late, but Gloria Speyer woke up with a start and looked at the bedside clock. It was a few minutes after ten in the morning. She lay back and closed her eyes. It was good to be on solid land again, even if it was Montana. But she was unsettled.

  Coming back here was a part of the deal, and according to Helmut everything was going exactly as he had planned it. Germany had been dreadful, though. The weather had been horrible, the food fattening, and the tension so bad that she’d wanted to scream or slit her wrists; something, anything to make it better. But once they’d boarded the ship and headed across the open Atlantic she’d suddenly found her stride. She stopped drinking, she ate better, and she got back into the swing with her exercise program. She felt good. And she knew that she looked good.

  But the problem was what would come next. She knew none of the details of Helmut’s plan except that it was very dangerous, it would end their lives here in the States at least for several years, but it would make them fabulously rich. Almost anyplace would be open to them, according to Helmut. She could imagine a lot of nice places and nice things. Clothes, cars, mansions. Maybe on the Côte d’Azur. Maybe the Costa del Sol, or the Caribbean or even Australia’s Gold Coast.

  The sun blasted through the open windows, the mid-morning mountain air fresh and sweet. She was alone in the big bed. Helmut had come to her a couple of hours after they’d gotten back, but she pretended to be asleep until he left. He was more disappointed than angry this time. She’d watched him leave through half-closed eyes and for just a moment she’d almost felt sorry for him. She was horny, no doubt about that, and Helmut was a reasonably capable lover, but she’d kept her silence.

  She reached under the silk sheet and touched her breasts. The nipples were hard and extremely tender. She noticed Ernst and some of the other men around the compound giving her the look. But none of them were in the least bit interesting to her, not like Browne. She closed her eyes and she could see him naked in the shower.

  Her vagina was wet. She spread her legs and began to masturbate as she imagined John coming through the door, yanking back the sheet and raping her, as her father had. She hadn’t locked the bedroom door, in fact she’d left it slightly ajar so that anyone could look in on her. She’d had the same fantasy about other men including poor, hapless Willy the bartender for whom she’d felt some motherly affection. But never had her feelings for a man been so strong as they were for Browne.

  Now he was dead, his body at the bottom of the Atlantic.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, threw her head back and arched her body as she climaxed. When she was finished she was able to relax, but she was left with a terribly empty feeling, dissatisfied, an achy, hollow sensation in her belly. She needed a man inside of her. But not just any man. She opened her eyes.

  Helmut stood at the open door looking at her, a dreamy expression on his face. “Are you finished?”

  “Yes,” she said coolly, which was an act. She was embarrassed. “I would like my privacy. Next time knock.”

  “Next time lock the door.” He came in, shut the door, and went to the windows. It was a beautiful morning. “What did that idiot Mattoon want last night? You never did tell me the whole story.”

  “He wanted to talk to you, so I told him that you were still in Washington like you asked me to say.”

  “What were his exact words?” He was angry and he turned around stiffly. “Can you remember that much? You weren’t drunk for a change.”

  “He said, ‘Welcome back, Mrs. Sloan. Sorry to bother you at such a horrible hour, but is your husband handy? I’d sur
ely like to have a chat with him.’ Or something to that effect.”

  “And you told him?”

  “Well, I’m sorry, Chief, but he’s still in Washington. Business. Should be back in a couple of days, maybe sooner. Anything I can help you with?”

  Speyer waited.

  “‘Tell you what, why don’t you ask him to give me a call when you hear from him. Sorry to bother you ma’am. You have a great day, hear?’”

  “He didn’t ask where we’d been?”

  “No,” Gloria replied. She was getting bored with his questions. She threw the sheet back and padded into the bathroom where she perched on the toilet without closing the door. “I’m hungry this morning. Tell cook I want a big breakfast. And mimosas, I think, or Bloody Marys. Afterward I’m going riding, and then into town to gawk at the natives.” She laughed at her own joke.

  “I want you to start packing your things,” Speyer told her.

  “We just got back.”

  “All your things. We’re leaving here in a few days and we’re not coming back for a long time, if ever.”

  Gloria was interested now. “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see,” Speyer said. He gave her a backward glance and left.

  Maybe she wouldn’t go into town today. Maybe she would just stay here and do as Helmut said, pack her things. Of course little she owned was worth the effort of taking, so the job wouldn’t be taxing. The only problem was their ultimate destination. Beach wear, big city wear, she didn’t know. But it would be interesting, she had to give him that much.

  Aden walked back up to the parking area with Mattoon, but remained behind as the cop drove away. He made a call on his cell phone to a friend in Denver Air Traffic Control and gave him the Gulfstream’s tail number. Two minutes later he got the answer he was looking for. The Gulfstream had flown direct from Miami International Airport last night. No stops.