Her phone buzzed.
“A text from Amy,” she told Sammy. “They’re going up in an airship. They’re going to try to stop history from repeating itself.”
Sammy noticed her hand shaking and touched her gently. “If anyone can handle it, it’s those kids. They’ll be okay.”
Nellie nodded. She hoped so.
A thick-necked guard stepped into the waiting room and beckoned them into a small office where a jailor in a cheap suit sat behind his desk, peering at Sammy and Nellie through gold-rimmed glasses. His stubby pink fingers tapped their passports. In the quiet of the office they could hear shouts and groans from the cells in the distant recesses of the prison. On the wall, the man had hung a picture of himself on a fishing boat giving a thumbs-up beside the hanging body of a hammerhead shark he’d caught, or was, at least, pretending to have caught.
Nellie looked back at the man, who pursed his lips, clearly waiting to see if she was impressed.
She shrugged. In the distance a prisoner screamed. Sammy flinched, but Nellie keep her gaze squarely fixed on the jailor.
“You are to visit …” The man pretended to consult the sign-in form, but Nellie could tell he wasn’t really reading. He knew. “Vladimir Antonovich Spasky?”
“Da,” Nellie told him, meaning “yes.” It was one of the few Russian words she knew. The rest of the words she knew were different ways of saying caviar, words that she didn’t think would come in handy right now.
“Please, do not butcher beautiful Russian language,” the man said. “We will speak English.”
“Okay,” said Nellie, relieved. “We are here to see Mr. Spasky, yes. He’s a distant relative of ours.”
“Two Americans, family to man like Vladimir Spasky?” the bureaucrat asked. “He is mafia! You know what they call him? The … how do you say in English? What surgeon uses for cutting?”
“Scalpel?” suggested Sammy.
“Da! Yes!” said the jailor. “The Scalpel! A contract killer for mafia, you understand? And before that, for KGB. In this very building, he tore fingernails from American spies and smiled for their screaming.” The man looked Nellie up and down. “He kill more Americans than you have dyed hairs on your head.”
“Still,” said Nellie, holding her ground, holding his gaze. “We would like to speak to him.”
“Impossible,” said the man. “He is in secure hospital. I cannot allow visitors.”
“But we really must speak with him,” Nellie said.
“You not speak with one of my prisoners without my permission, young lady!” The man pounded his fist on his desk. “I do not believe you are relative, and I do not believe I have any reason to let you seeing!”
“Perhaps this will convince you,” said Sammy, rolling up his sleeve. He showed the jailor a tattoo on his arm: a wheel with Fe2+ repeated over and over again all around the outside of it. Nellie wrinkled her eyebrows. Why would Sammy show this man his weird tattoo? Why did Sammy even have this weird tattoo?
“What is that?” the jailor asked.
“You know what it is,” Sammy said ominously.
The jailor lowered his voice. “Mafia tattoo?”
Sammy didn’t say anything — just rolled his sleeve back down.
The jailor breathed deeply. “You are relative then.”
Sammy nodded.
The jailor leaned forward eagerly and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Do you know something about his money? Where is hidden?”
The old saying that in most prisons the guards are prisoners, too, struck Nellie. This one, though, wore a suit and controlled the keys, and was no more than a crook himself. But a crook with power had to be handled delicately, either flattered or frightened.
Nellie didn’t feel like flattering, not after he’d insulted her hair, so she decided to put some fear into him.
“Let us speak to Mr. Spasky before we take this matter to your superiors.” As she spoke, she reached into her pocket and pulled out one of the forged government ID cards from the stack she’d taken out of the Lucian base, glad that none of them had pictures on them. She slid it across the desk to the man, who scooped it up and glanced down.
“You are from the Russian Department of Fisheries?” The man looked confused.
Nellie tried not to curse. She’d meant to pull out the Interpol ID and pretend to be an international cop, but now it was too late.
Go with it, Gomez, she told herself. Sometimes the only way out of trouble was deeper in. No turning back now. The bigger the lie, the harder it is to disprove.
“Well,” she said. “My uncle is Russian … and … he …” She looked to the photo of the man with the shark on the wall. “I’m guessing you did not have a license to poach a hammerhead shark. Did you know that was illegal?”
The man clenched his jaw.
“I’d hate to tell my uncle about it,” Nellie continued, bluffing her best bluff. “Imagine if he had to send his investigators to your prison, what would he find other than a photo of illegal fishing?”
The man stared over his shoulder at his shark photo, then turned back to Nellie, deflating like a helium balloon three days after a birthday party.
Ten minutes later, Nellie and Sammy stood in the prison hospital by the bedside of Vladimir Spasky, Alek and Irina Spasky’s father. And the man Grace Cahill had ordered to kill her own husband.
“I will give you privacy.” The jailor excused himself and cleared all the guards out of the room, closing the door behind them. He cleared the hallway outside the door, too.
“So, uh, Sammy?” Nellie asked. “What’s with that tattoo? You were never in the Russian mafia. Unless there’s something you aren’t telling me about before we met?”
Sammy laughed and rolled up his sleeve again to show her his tattoo. “See that symbol around the wheel? Fe2+? That’s the chemical symbol for ferrous iron compound. So my tattoo is a ferrous wheel! Get it? Ferrous wheel? Ferris wheel?” He grinned widely.
“That is the nerdiest chemistry-joke tattoo I have ever seen,” Nellie said.
“You’ve seen other chemistry-joke tattoos?”
Nellie shook her head.
“Anyway, we’re lucky our jailor there didn’t have a PhD in chemistry,” said Sammy. “And lucky you have an uncle in the Department of Fisheries.”
Nellie cleared her throat. “Hey, it worked, didn’t it?”
Sammy nodded. “It worked. Here we are.”
They stood quietly again, staring at the man in the bed.
The old man lay perfectly still beneath crisp white sheets. He was attached to a heart rate monitor and there was a breathing tube in his nose. His eyes were closed and his skin was waxy. He looked frail and helpless, and she felt sad for him. It was hard to believe this was the man who had raised one of the most brutal killers Nellie ever had the misfortune to meet in her life.
“Mr. Spasky.” Nellie spoke quietly to him. “Mr. Spasky, my name is Nellie Gomez. I knew your daughter … in a way … and admired her, at times …” Irina had given her life saving Dan and Amy. It was the only time Nellie had admired her, but for her kiddos, Nellie would be forever grateful to Irina Spasky. “I need to ask you some questions.”
“Do you think he can hear us?” asked Sammy.
Nellie had no idea, but she had to try. She had to know. “I have some questions about Grace Cahill.”
With that, Vladimir Spasky’s eyes shot open and he cried out in Russian “Ya izvinyayus, Grace! Ya popredaval tebya!”
Sammy looked at Nellie questioningly. She shook her head. She’d no idea what Vladimir Spasky had just shouted.
The old man tilted his head toward Nellie, reached out, and took her hand in his. His skin was dry and rustled like paper. “Grace …” He sighed.
“Do you remember Grace Cahill?” Nellie asked.
The man nodded. “I always try to serve Grace Cahill,” he answered in English. He spoke quietly but clearly. His steel blue eyes held Nellie’s and filled with tears. He looked sad an
d she felt a swell of pity for him, until she reminded herself who he was, where he was, and why he was there. “I served Grace Cahill before KGB and after, when I serve the Brava. I still serve her.” He’d used the Russian word for brotherhood, which was what they called the mafia, which Nellie knew from movies. “I served her always. In this life, I have done terrible things. I lived by the code, the thieves’ code, and for my crimes, I will die here, alone in this prison. I know she has sent you to kill me.”
Nellie dropped the old man’s hand in shock. “Kill you?”
The man nodded. “I have failed her, and this is her way. I am ready. Please, do it quickly.”
Nellie’s mouth hung open. How could this man think she, Nellie Gomez, was an assassin sent by Grace Cahill? That was not Grace’s way.
“I’m not here to …” She couldn’t even say the words. She’d never been feared before, and to be feared by an assassin just because she’d mentioned Grace Cahill…. It felt powerful, but not in a good way, like running down a steep hill and realizing too late you had no way to stop, going faster and faster. All she could think to say was, “Grace wouldn’t want to kill you. She wasn’t like that.”
The man’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a gruesome laugh that turned to wheezing breaths. “You make me laugh,” he said.
“No,” said Nellie. “Grace Cahill was not a murderer.”
The old man’s eyes met Nellie’s again. His brow furrowed. “Grace Cahill lead my family …” He paused, then seemed to realize something. “Our family, yes?” Nellie nodded. “For many years, Grace led. You do not lead the Cahill family without the stain of blood on your hands.”
Nellie felt her own hands shaking. This man confirmed everything that was in that file, the terrible order Grace had given. How, Nellie wondered, would she break the news to Amy and Dan?
“I remember now that Grace is gone.” The old man sighed. “I had forgotten. The dead are too many to count now, and I have so few others to speak of. Both my children are dead.”
“Both your children are not dead,” Nellie told him. “Irina, yes, she passed away, but Alek, he is still alive…. We saw him just a few hours ago.” She decided to leave out the part where Alek wanted to murder them.
“He is dead to me,” the old man said. “When Irina died, I told him my regrets. A life of regrets. And still, he chose to be a killer.” The old man reached out to find Nellie’s hand again. “I see now that you are no killer. But I have shocked you?”
Nellie nodded.
“Why would you think Grace wanted to kill you?” Sammy asked, for which Nellie was grateful. She wanted to know, too, but she couldn’t find the words to speak. All she could picture were Amy’s and Dan’s faces when she told them that their grandmother was capable of striking fear into an assassin’s heart.
“I have killed many people,” Vladimir Spasky said. “Too many. And the only merciful thing I have ever done is perhaps the most terrible thing I have ever done. This is why you are here? This is why you have come at last, Nellie Gomez, guardian of Amy and Dan Cahill? Yes, I know who you are. You have come to me as punishment for my sins, which I must confess. I must tell the truth that I could not tell while Grace lived, my horrible crime against the Cahill family. For the one killing I was called to do and did not.”
As Sammy and Nellie listened slack-jawed, the old assassin made his last confession.
The Stratosphere
“I think we’re airborne,” said Amy. “We’ve been in here for ages. Let’s get out of this closet.”
“Didn’t Ham already do that?” Dan joked.
“Oh, grow up,” muttered Amy.
“Dan, open the door,” Ian told him.
“I’d love to,” said Dan. “But it’s locked.”
He jiggled the handle. Nothing happened.
He pushed on it with his shoulder.
Still nothing.
Amy heard Dan take a deep breath. He didn’t say anything else snarky, and that was a bad sign. Fear was setting in and she could feel her own rising once more. There was no way to know how high they’d gotten, how close they were to the edge of space.
How long do we have? she wondered. How long before there was nothing left of them but vapors in the sky?
Ian jostled his way to the door, squeezing between Amy and Dan. He tried the handle again, as if he had some kind of magic door-handle-turning powers that Dan didn’t.
“She’ll be back shortly,” Ian said, his voice warbling with doubt.
Amy could tell he was losing his confidence as a leader. She was tempted to comfort him, to tell him that it was okay; it was a hard job and he was doing fine, but he really wasn’t. They were stuck on an airship rising fast into the stratosphere, and if they didn’t figure out how to stop it, they were all going to die.
They waited in silence, in the dark, feeling the shudder of the airship beneath their feet as it rose higher and higher.
Time stretched on.
“We can’t wait anymore,” said Amy at last. “We have to get out of here.”
“I know that!” shouted Ian. “I am open to ideas.”
Amy felt around for the doorknob. It was a high-tech latch without a keyhole on their side of the door. There wouldn’t be a way to pick the lock even if she had the tools or knew how to pick a lock to begin with. It was a steel door, so no amount of kicking, pushing, or hitting was going to open it.
“We only have one option,” said Amy.
“Do it,” Ian said.
Amy pounded on the door. “Help!” she shouted. “Let us out! Help!”
A minute passed. She pounded again. She imagined the explosion ripping through the airship and wondered if it would hurt when they all went up in flames. “Help! We’re stuck!”
A streak of light filled the room as the door opened slowly. Katlyn, the crew chief, stood in front of Amy with an expression on her face like she had just sucked the juice out of a hundred lemons.
“You,” Katlyn said. “Again.”
“Sorry,” said Amy. “We had no choice. Listen, we’re in danger. All of us. Someone has sabotaged this ship and it’s going to explode if it reaches the Karman Line. We have to land. Now!”
Katlyn glanced at the display screen in the hallway. Amy followed her gaze and saw their altitude: 115,000 feet above sea level. “We’re got less than an hour,” said Katlyn. “And I can assure you, there is no bomb on board. The Greek authorities and our own private security went over every inch of this ship with bomb-sniffing dogs before liftoff.”
“Uh, hello?” said Dan. “We snuck on. Who’s to say someone else didn’t sneak on, too?”
“Why would someone sneak on board this ship to try to blow it up?” Katlyn wondered. “That’s suicide.”
“I don’t know,” said Amy. “But we can prevent it by landing. Right now.”
“And give up our only shot at the prize?” Katlyn shook her head. “No. We have worked years for this moment. If we can prove that orbital altitude is possible with an airship, we’ll revolutionize energy-efficient travel. We’ll change the world.”
“If you explode at the edge of space, it won’t matter,” said Dan. “We’ll all be blown into stardust.”
“When the Hindenburg exploded it ended the era of the zeppelin,” said Amy. “Do you want to be responsible for the same thing happening again?”
Katlyn considered it. She tapped her finger on her lips. “You realize the only suspicious people on board my ship right now are you three. How do I know you aren’t trying to sabotage us on behalf of Omnia Industries?”
“That’s preposterous!” said Ian. “Would three teenagers locked inside a broom closet really be the sorts of saboteurs my father would send?”
Katlyn’s eyes widened at Ian. “Your father?”
“He’s … well …” Ian stammered. He was not helping their case and he knew it.
“Please,” said Amy, trying to change the subject back to their imminent fiery deaths at the edge of space. “Just
check out the control room. That’s all we ask. You can arrest us afterward.”
“I suppose I’ll have to,” said Katlyn. “Come on.”
She led them down the hallway toward the bladder control room.
The display on the wall gave their altitude as 121,000 feet.
It was amazing that you could barely feel the acceleration upward even though they were going so fast. Amy wondered if they’d feel it coming down much faster.
The Stratosphere
“Eriele,” Cara said. “Why did you tase me? Why am I tied up?”
“Because I need to keep you from interfering,” said Eriele.
“You’re the saboteur?” Cara shook her head. “I should’ve known.”
Eriele nodded. “And I have to thank you for coming aboard. A bitter Ekat with plenty of technological know-how is the perfect scapegoat.”
“You’re going to pin this on me?” Cara asked. “But why would I sabotage an airship that I’m on?”
Eriele shrugged. “The press will come up with their own reasons.”
121,000 feet.
121,500 feet.
122,000 feet.
The higher they got, the faster they rose. The airship hissed constantly now, struggling to adjust the gas mixture as the atmosphere got thinner and thinner. Their speed would also be increasing to help with the lift. Cara squirmed, helpless on board a hurtling blimp of death.
Dirigible, she heard Ian’s voice correcting in her head. She gritted her teeth. She had to warn him about this girl before she tased him, too.
Her eyes darted around the room. She needed to stall. She needed to find a way to get that Taser gun away from Eriele. She pulled against the plastic ties on her wrists. They were loosening. As she struggled against her bonds, she also watched Eriele on the computers, trying to memorize everything the girl did so she could undo it the moment she got free.
Eriele noticed Cara’s gaze. “Nice try,” she said, turning Cara around. “You think I’d let a hacker like you see what I’m doing?”
She returned to the keyboard, but now Cara could only hear the click and clack of typing.
Mission Hindenburg Page 11