“I’m told what I want is ‘sealed in a pipe all eyes can see.’ That’s a line in your grandfather’s poem, isn’t it, detective?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Frank said. “What poem?”
“Really, detective?”
“You keep saying I’m holding something back from you, but, from where I sit, it looks like you’re the one holding all the cards.”
“‘A pipe all eyes can see,’” Cezar said. “The fuselage of a B-29 could be construed as a pipe, albeit a rather large pipe.”
“What else does your poem say?” Frank asked.
“This letter says I have to go to Washington. To a big air and space museum near Dulles. What I seek is hidden in a very famous ‘pipe’ there: The Enola Gay.”
“The Enola Gay?” Vlad said.
“The airplane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan,” Cezar said. “The one about as easy to get into and search as Fort Knox.”
“My grandfather wouldn’t lie about that.” Frank said. “And he wouldn’t’ve put it in a place with easy access.”
“But I’m not entirely sure about you,” Cezar said to Frank, then turned to Vlad. “I think we need time to consider what’s before us, Vlad. Study our options. In the meantime, let’s make our guest more comfortable.”
“I’m plenty comfortable, and I’ve given you the document, as we agreed. You’re not going to go back on our deal, are you?”
Vlad removed a maroon case from his pocket and opened it to reveal a hypodermic syringe with several milliliters of a clear liquid. Vlad carefully positioned the needle in his right hand. Frank leapt to his feet, but Vlad grabbed him by the neck with one massive hand, forced him down, and jammed the needle into Frank’s shoulder. He put the empty syringe in his teeth, adjusted Frank into his chair, and firmed his huge hands on his shoulders to keep him there. Frank struggled, but the 350-pound man couldn’t be budged.
Frank’s stared helplessly at the recessed light over the captain’s table. It got fuzzy, glowed.
Then went out.
Chapter 52
Cezar Nicolai and Vlad Torok stood at the entrance of the Dulles Air and Space Museum, officially named the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, and paused at the gang of chrome metal doors. Cezar hoped his ploy to gain entrée inside the famous B-29 bomber would work, and burned to know the secret the Enola Gay held and protected in her “pipe”.
He knew, even if he prevailed on the officials to allow him a private tour, his time would be limited on the plane. And, unless he took a commanding stance once inside, he’d never be able to delve into places on the aircraft where he hoped the solution to Omega puzzle was cached.
Vlad patted his brow with a handkerchief and opened one of the doors for Cezar as he stepped inside. They smiled at the greeters at the information desk and were checked for any items prohibited in the museum. One of the officials acknowledged their paid parking ticket, which doubled as their admission to the facility.
Continuing on, they passed through enormous rooms that were like great sound stages on major motion picture lots. The enormous hangars could be viewed from two levels which encircled the museum. Airplanes of every historical vintage hung above and posed below them as if in flight, their wings and fuselages polished like the day they rolled off their assembly lines.
Soon they were in a great arched cavern made of metal girders and glass windows, and at its center was the most renowned warplane in history, sitting with her lowered landing gear resting atop massive scissor lifts painted a bright school bus yellow. A ten-foot letter R in a circle adorned her vertical stabilizer, and her wide wing flaps were in the down, take-off position. The quartet of giant engines, with their 16-foot, four-blade propellers were all aligned like perfect, upright crucifixes. Had her props been spinning, one could imagine the aluminum and magnesium giant lifting from the earth and roaring upward to meet her destiny on the Island of Honshu.
A security official walked toward the Enola Gay on the wide crosswalk that nearly passed over the nose of the plane and noticed Cezar and Vlad rapt in study of the famous bomber’s cockpit mere feet below.
“First time to see the Enola Gay?” the official asked.
“Yes,” Cezar said. “Quite a moving sight.”
“She’s been here since 2003, and since then, our attendance has tripled.” The official said.
“I can understand why,” Cezar said. “Is it possible to speak to a person in charge of this facility?”
“That would be Mr. Fleming, the museum’s director,” the official said. “I take it you don’t have an appointment.”
“That’s true,” Cezar said. “I hadn’t planned on getting the opportunity to visit the museum, but we have a two-day layover here, and I desperately wanted to see the Enola Gay before I left. I’m writing a history on the world’s most famous planes and want to feature your museum in the book.”
“I think we may be able to arrange something for you,” the official said. “Right this way.”
* * * * *
Cezar found Director Herschel Fleming to be a pleasant man with a ready smile; a man, on outward assessment, he guessed was used to making his visitors’ experiences at his museum unforgettable. Fleming graciously accepted the impromptu audience with Cezar and Vlad with a kind enthusiasm, unexpectedly considerate and genuine. Cezar foresaw his request for a tour as being much more of a possibility since he encountered the affable gentleman.
“A book, you say, Mr. Evans,” Fleming said. “Featuring our facility.”
“Indeed, and it comes with a request and a sizable contribution to the museum’s foundation.”
“Go on,” Fleming said, smiling.
“I don’t mean to sound stuffy, but I’d have no problem writing you a generous check if I can access certain places in the museum the public never sees.”
“Oh, my,” Fleming said and rocked back in his desk chair. “What places do you mean?”
“I’d like to headline my book with the Enola Gay,” Cezar said, “the most famous warplane in the history of the world. Make it my cover and centerpiece. I want to go inside her and show her secret places. The selling point of the book would depend on this original and unique spin. Publishers will be bidding aggressively to get the rights to print a book with this new, fascinating angle. And, of course, the more money the book makes, the more I’ll gladly add to my original donation, not to mention, a personal section devoted the museum’s farsighted director.”
“Oh, my,” Fleming said, beaming. “Uh, by ‘inside her,’ do you actually mean going into the plane’s cockpit, fuselage, and such?”
“Precisely.”
“When would you wish to do that?”
“How about tonight, after hours?”
“Oh, goodness, I don’t know…Security will have to be notified…and the maintenance crews will have to stay late to lower the Enola’s scissor jacks.”
“Then how about tomorrow night? I can return then with my checkbook, if that will give you time to arrange things,” Cezar said. “I’m only here for two days, and won’t likely have another opportunity to visit for months, which will seriously delay the book’s completion and breakout on the market.”
“Take my card. I’ll see what can be done. Call me around ten tomorrow morning,” Fleming said and picked up his phone.
Outside the museum Cezar and Vlad climbed into their rented Mercedes-Benz CLA Class sedan and drove out of the complex.
“Mr. Evans?” Vlad said and looked over at Cezar who was checking his cell’s screen.
“Having people in your pocket who can forge passports is a blessing beyond measure.”
“Your checkbook says ‘CNN Acquisitions.’”
“My financial company. They’ll think I have interests in the news media. What’s your concern?” Cezar said and scrolled through pages on his cell.
“You actually have several million attached to that account. What if they deposit your generous donation?”
“I’ll stop it
before it gets credited to their account. You worry too much,” Cezar said.
“I always have your best interests at heart. What about the detective?”
“I think Frank Dugan may still be useful to us. If he actually knows anything he’s stubbornly keeping it to himself, but he’ll make a mistake, leave a trail, and I’ll be there to profit by it when he does.”
“We’ve gone to a lot of expense to keep him under our control,” Vlad said.
“Money’s only worth the power and pleasure it can buy.”
“And the FBI agent?”
“I asked Celine to call me today, but no call. I thought she could be an asset to us, but I’m not so sure now. Women. Can’t be trusted.”
“Concerned about her?”
“I have reason to be,” Cezar said. “That’s why I take precautions. Like putting the transponder in Dugan’s shoe. So I know where the enemy is at all times.”
“But you know exactly where he is.”
Cezar consulted his cell phone’s GPS app.
“Yes, I most certainly do.”
Chapter 53
Frank woke and immediately felt like his head was in a medieval torture device. His sinuses were killing him from the thick humidity he labored to breathe. It was dark; so dark, he imagined, the darkness had mass that one could actually weigh.
It’s thick, dark, warm and humid. Where the hell am I?
He tried to sit up and from where he lay and abruptly struck his throbbing head on something hard only inches above him. He reached up and grasped the tubular object. it felt like a metal bar. I’m in a jail cell? He inched and felt his way by using his hands and his feet. Seeing in the blackness was hopeless. He draped a leg downward to one side and sensed he was on a shelf of some kind. He slid out and downward more and his foot touched something solid a few feet below, something that seemed firm enough to hold his weight. Reaching up, he grasped the round metal object he’d hit his head on and used it to steady his descent to the floor below. Now, ever so slowly, he could stand up to his full height.
The thick humid air was sickening warm and laced with the smell of musty gasoline, or something like gasoline. It was the odor like that in an auto service garage. He could even taste it. Thoughts of the past 24 hours began to seep back into his memory. Maybe he was in a gas station, probably an abandoned old gas station out in the middle of no-damn-where. That would certainly fit Cezar Nicolai’s M. O.
Perspiration dribbled down from his hairline and ran into his eyes. Not that it would matter for visual acuity, but it stung, and added to his agitation. Frank wiped his sweaty face on the short sleeve of his tee shirt and realized he was only wearing an undershirt, briefs, and his shoes and socks, now soaked through from the ankle-deep water on the floor. Next, he noted that the floor had small openings or spaces between slats of solid pieces he could feel through his athletic shoes. Probably, he surmised, what the mechanics worked on to allow for drainage when they sprayed down the bays of the garage.
With his arms sweeping slowly in a face-high arc from side to side, he eventually came to a pipe running horizontally along the wall to his left. He decided to follow it. In the next ten steps he came upon nothing, but on the eleventh, he was stopped by something directly in his path. Frank felt a large, round knob on a handle like he’d seen on bank vault doors. Am I locked in a bank vault? His heart raced and he could feel his blood pressure spike. He held onto the knob and tried to compose himself. Deal with one thing at a time. Complete the procedure at hand, then move on to the next. It was how he was trained in the Marine Corps. Adjust, adapt, invent, improvise…prevail. One thing was now certain and it calmed his nerves: He was not in a bank vault. Couldn’t be. Bank vaults aren’t wet and they don’t smell of petroleum products. He felt his pulse. His heart rate dropped to less than 100 beats.
Frank ran his hand down the handle and felt a center recess, a possible pivot point, and beyond that, more handle and another large knob like the first one. Even in the blackness his mind assembled a picture of the mechanism and knew how it had to work. He tried to push the top knob to turn the handle, but it didn’t budge. He felt around for somewhere to sit and rest a moment and regroup. A large, drum-like object rubbed against his knees a few feet to his right. It was smooth and solid when he pushed down on it to check if it would hold his weight. He carefully lowered himself onto it, leaned forward and buried his sweaty face in his hands.
After a minute, he re-wiped the flood of new perspiration from his brow and eyes. He sat up and leaned back and placed his hands on the drum on either side to steady himself. His right hand felt the edge of a vertical piece of flat, sharp metal. Frank’s fingers examined the metal farther right and he slid his hand several inches to its end, then downward. It felt like a metal flange, maybe part of a car fender. Yeah, that’s what I’m sitting on, a car fender; an old racecar fender like in the movies in the 1940s. I’m in an old garage with old racecars.
His hand investigated farther down. Frank’s heart rate went off the charts as his fingertips came to the twin propellers.
He was sitting on a torpedo.
Chapter 54
Braewyn Joyce’s duct tape restraints pulled at the hair on her forearms and chafed her ankles. She was forced to hop from one place to another in her bare feet. The jaunt from the forward stateroom to the galley this morning was exhausting. The A/C on the roomy Viking yacht was working well and she could draw a cool, coffee-scented breath as she sat on the end of the curved booth that complemented an oval mahogany table.
Celine MacGowan prepared two cups of coffee and brought them over to Braewyn and sat opposite her captive in a deck-mounted swivel stool. She looked at the display on her cell phone for a second and placed it on the table.
“I’ll remove the tape from your hands, but remember, I’m the one with the gun,” Celine said and patted the automatic on her hip.
“Thanks.”
Celine pulled a snap-blade knife from the Gucci purse sitting on the counter next to the sink.
“Gucci,” Braewyn said. “Nice. Cezar buy that for you?”
“Bought it in Washington. Years ago, with my own money.”
Celine cut the tape on Braewyn’s wrists so she could separate her hands. She closed the knife, placed it on the table, and picked up her coffee mug. The two women sipped their coffee in an uncomfortable silence. Braewyn focused on various parts of the galley without making eye contact with Celine who busily checked messages on her cell. The ship’s clock on the wall behind Braewyn dinged off six bells.
“I know you hate me,” Celine said, “but don’t even think about that knife.”
“I can’t believe what you’re doing with your life. You had it made.”
Celine tossed her cell on the table.
“With Alasdair? Give me a break. He’s the most boring man in boredomville.”
“And Cezar Nicolai is exciting?”
“He’s incredible. Cultured, rich and, yes, he is exciting.”
“You just met the man.”
“I’ve known Cezar for years. He’s come back into my life. He’s everything I ever wanted in a man.”
“He’s a thief, a kidnapper, and a murderer.”
“He does what he has to. Who has he murdered?”
“You’re priceless. What did he and his beeftrust sidekick do with Frank Dugan?”
“He didn’t murder that cop. He’s just detaining him on his new submarine.”
Braewyn’s jaw slackened.
“Submarine? He has a submarine.”
“Yeah. Old Russian Whiskey Class from the ‘50s. Paid a couple hundred grand for it…in cash.”
“Detective Dugan is on a sub?”
“Just off Stuart, as a matter of fact. So he can feel like he’s at home…almost,” Celine said and giggled.
“Who’s manning the sub?” Braewyn asked.
“That’s the cool part ... No one.”
“He’s floating around in a submarine with no crew?”
“Jesus God,” Braewyn said, raking her fingernails hard through her gnarled hair and pulling it back tight enough to have to re-set her silver barrette.
“Come on, let’s forget about men. Hop with me up to the deck outside,” Celine said, pocketed up the snap-blade knife, rose, and shambled off in her flip-flops toward the passageway. “Let’s get some fresh air and a little warm morning sun.”
Braewyn stayed in her seat for a few moments and rubbed her hands around her ankles where the duct tape chafed her. She eventually summoned what strength she had and followed Celine through the narrow passageway and hopped up the steps to the open stern deck. Celine pulled a couple of deck chairs together and dragged them out from under the stern canopy and into the pre-noon sunlight.
“Come, look over here,” Celine said and moved to the transom and extended her arms out toward the panorama of the marina. Braewyn moved in behind her. “This is why I love Cezar. Yachts, expensive cars, penthouses. Alasdair has an old SUV, a mortgage, and he gets shitty when he has to pay for a room at a fleabag motel.”
The period had just dotted her statement when Braewyn yanked out Celine’s Glock and hit her from behind with a slamming elbow to the back of her head. Celine’s head jolted forward and her body doubled over the transom. She sprang back upright with acrobatic agility and turned to face her attacke. Celine yanked out her snap-blade knife and whipped it open, menacing Braewyn with razor-sharp blade. Braewyn jumped backward and aimed the Glock at Celine’s chest.
The Omega Formula: Power to Die For (Detective Frank Dugan) Page 24