Tom Hyman

by Jupiter's Daughter

  Anne Stewart’s plane touched down at the Munich airport at ten A.M an hour behind schedule. Anne hurried through customs and out into the arrivals area. There was no sign of Dalton.

  She waited for a few minutes, then called his office number at Hauser Industries. The woman who answered told her that he had left word that he wasn’t coming in today, that was all. Did she care to leave a message? Yes, Anne said. If he called in, tell him she was waiting for him at the airport.

  For the next halfhour Anne paced the terminal, fighting down the anxiety in her stomach. Why wasn’t he here?

  Suddenly she heard herself being paged, in English, over the public address system. “Will Mrs. Anne Stewart please report to the information desk on the mezzanine level?”

  Anne hurried up a flight of steps to the mezzanine and looked around for the information desk. She spotted it off to the right and started toward it.

  It was a small, circular counter, occupied by a young blonde in a blue uniform. Two men were standing next to her. They appeared to be waiting for somebody. One had his elbow on the counter top. He was dark and muscular, with sunken eyes, a sharp, protruding Adam’s apple, and a muscle in one cheek that twitched constantly. Anne had seen him somewhere before. She ducked quickly out of sight.

  Where had she seen him? . . . The night of her dinner for the baroness on Long Island. She had gone out to the kitchen to talk to Amelia. She’d seen him there, sitting at the kitchen table with the baroness’s chauffeur. He was a bodyguard.

  Were they looking for her? She decided she had better find out.

  She retreated back down to the ground level, changed some American money for German marks, and found a public phone. She redialed the Hauser Industries number in Munich. The same woman answered.

  “This is Mrs. Stewart again. I’m still waiting for my husband.

  In the meantime, could you please put me through to Baroness von Hauser?”

  “I’m afraid she’s not here, either, Mrs. Stewart.”

  “Could you tell me where she is?”

  “Schloss Vogel. I’ll give you the number.”

  Anne dialed the new number and was eventually put through to the baroness.

  “Frau Stewart?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve received my message?” The baroness was trying hard to sound friendly.

  “No,” Anne said.

  “But you are at the airport, ja?”

  “If you have a message for me, please give it to me now.”

  Hesitation at the other end. A muffled scratching noise gave Anne the impression that the baroness had cupped her hand over the phone for a few seconds to talk to someone else. “I sent two men to pick you up,”

  the baroness said. “They are at the airport now, looking for you.

  They’ll bring you to Schloss Vogel.”

  “I’m not going to Schloss Vogel.”

  “Of course you are,” the baroness replied, her voice unnaturally cheerful. “There’s nowhere else for you to go.”

  “Why? What happened to Dalton?”

  “I’m afraid he’s had a little accident,” the baroness said, in a very matter-of-fact tone.

  Anne clutched the receiver against her neck, too stunned to speak. She took a deep breath to compose herself. “My daughter.

  Where is she? Do you know?”

  “Oh, we have your daughter here with us. And she’s fine.”

  “How did she—?”

  “She’s just fine,” the baroness repeated soothingly. “She’s anxious to see you, of course.”

  “Please bring her to the airport. As soon as you cc “That’s not possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know very well why not, Frau Stewart. I need something from you first.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  The baroness laughed. “You really must come to your senses, Frau Stewart.”

  “I have the copy of Jupiter with me. If that’s what you want, you can have it. That’s all I have to give you. Now you must return my daughter immediately.”

  “I want more than that. I want all the information in your possession—all of it. Including, of course, the correct access code.

  I’ve invested a great amount of effort and money developing Jupiter.

  I’m entitled to this information.”

  “You’ve kidnapped my daughter.”

  “Sooner or later we’ll discover our mistakes anyway, but you can save us a great amount of time.”

  “I’ll go to the police, then.”

  The baroness’s voice turned threatening. “Listen to me, Frau Stewart.

  You’re being very stupid. My men will bring you up here and we will negotiate and reach an agreement. You and your daughter can be on a flight back to America by this evening.”

  Going to the castle was out of the question. Anne didn’t even know for certain that the woman had Genny in her possession.

  “There’s nothing to negotiate,” Anne answered. “I’ll tell you everything I know. I’ll give you the damned access code. I’ll give you everything. Just please bring Genny to the airport.”

  “I don’t intend to come to the airport. You must come here.”

  “First I want to speak to my daughter, to know if she’s all right.”

  “You cannot.”

  “Please, if you really have her, just bring her to the airport. I’ll give you everything I have. Please! Why can’t you do that?”

  The baroness raised her voice to a shout. “There is no other way. Do you understand me? If you want to see your daughter alive again, I’d advise you to get up here as quickly as possible!”

  Paul Elder arrived at his office at seven-thirty A.M. to find Carmen, his nurse, in tears.

  The place had been burglarized. The waiting room and the examination room were only slightly out of order. But his small office, disorganized in the best of times, was an unrecognizable shambles.

  Every drawer had been pulled open, every shelf emptied. The floor was ankle-deep in paper, books, and medical samples.

  The place had been broken into before. Elder heaved a giant sigh.

  “Report it to the police, Carmen. I’ll start cleaning up.”

  By eightthirty a semblance of order had been restored, and Elder started seeing his patients.

  The police arrived an hour later. They asked Elder what had been taken. He thought about it, looked around his office, and then decided that nothing he could think of was missing. The police went away.

  At nine that evening, as Elder was preparing to lock up, he discovered what was missing: the RCD cartridge in the computer he had borrowed and not yet returned. Two spare cartridges were missing as well. The significance of the theft dawned on him immediately. Somebody was looking for Jupiter. He no longer had it, of course. He had returned it to Anne some time ago.

  If there was ever an excuse to call her, this was it. He grabbed the phone and dialed her number. No answer.

  He kept trying the number until eleven o’clock. He knew Anne employed a live-in nanny. Why didn’t she answer? Where was everybody?

  Elder took a cab to Anne’s Village address. Her name was still on a mailbox. He rang her bell. No answer.

  He rang the superintendent’s bell.

  After a delay, the super appeared at the door. Yes, she still lived here, but she was away. No, he didn’t know where she had gone, and it was none of anyone’s business, anyway.

  The super started to close the door.

  “Wait. Tell me—was her apartment burglarized recently?”

  The super gave him a strange look. “You police?”

  “I’m a friend. I was a friend….”

  “Last night. The bastards made a mess, too. There was another lady staying there—maid or nanny or something. She moved right out.

  Scared the poor woman half to death.”

  Stewart let the stranger help him up. He spoke only German, so Stewart couldn’t understand him, but the gist of his q
uestions were obvious.

  What had happened? Did he need help? Did he want an ambulance or a doctor? Stewart kept shaking his head.

  He picked up his wallet, lying a few feet from him on the garage floor, and checked its contents. The cash was missing, nothing else.

  The man helped him to the elevator. Stewart thanked him and insisted he was all right.

  Back in his apartment, Stewart examined himself. He had two swollen bruises on the back of his head. But aside from the pain, he felt normal—no memory or vision problems. He swallowed some painkillers, then took a cold shower.

  There was a Mauser automatic hidden under some socks in the bottom drawer of his bedroom dresser. He dug it out, filled the clip from a box of bullets next to it, and slid it into place in the grip. He had acquired the pistol two months ago, on the Romanian black market. He had never owned a pistol before, and he had never fired this one. He wasn’t even sure why he had bought it.

  Stewart suddenly missed his chauffeur and bodyguard, Gil Trabert, who was on an extended vacation in the States. He could have used him today.

  He put on a lined trench coat and stuffed the pistol in the inside breast pocket. It caused the coat to bulge noticeably. He stuck the 373 box of bullets into a side pocket and went back down to the garage.

  Several minutes later Stewart was out on the autobahn, heading north, toward Regensburg. He pushed the accelerator to the floor, and the BMW

  screamed down the sparsely traveled highway at 125 miles an hour.

  Genny grew tired of crying. She was still frightened and unhappy, but crying didn’t make her feel any better. It only made her eyes sore and her head throb.

  She felt the bump over her ear. It was hot, swollen, and tender.

  She looked at her knees. She had skinned them against the concrete floor of the garage when the men had dragged her to their car. She pressed her hands against them and concentrated on generating some healing power. The effort exhausted her after only a few minutes. And the knees still felt the same.

  She wondered what had happened to Daddy. Why hadn’t he come to get her? She hoped he wasn’t hurt.

  If there hadn’t been three of them in that garage, she thought, she could have gotten away. Anyway, she was proud of how well she had fought them off, even if they did finally catch her.

  But now that they knew how strong she was, they were treating her with extreme caution. As soon as she had come to, some woman had injected her with a powerful tranquilizer that made her feel very weak and sleepy. Two men had then carried her up into the room, removed her handcuffs, locked the door, and left her.

  The effects of the drug were finally wearing off, but Genny worried that the woman would come back and inject her again.

  She walked over to the room’s one small window and looked out. The ground seemed a long way down. Even if she could squeeze out the window, it was much too far to jump. Beyond the fields around the castle, she could see only forest. No other houses anywhere; just very steep hills and deep woods.

  How would Mommy or Daddy ever find her here?

  She heard the faint, intermittent hum of highway traffic far away. She picked up other sounds—the scurry and cries of animals and insects, the chirping of a bird, the distant barking of a dog, the subdued clank of a cowbell. Several times she caught the shrill voices of children playing.

  The weather was sunny, but a chill March wind was gusting.

  There were still patches of unmelted snow in the forest’s most shaded spots.

  If she could reach the forest, she thought, she could probably hide there until she could find somebody’s house. But it would be awfully cold at night, and they had taken her coat. And there was a high fence around the whole place.

  She could see big dogs roaming the grounds below. She didn’t like dogs much anyway, and these looked especially mean. How was she ever going to get out of this place?

  She thought of her mother again, and tears welled in her eyes and ran down her cheeks. Mommy had told her that if anything ever happened to her she should try to be brave. She must have meant a time just like this. Genny sniffled and brushed her tears away.

  If they were going to harm her, they would probably already have done it, she guessed. So they must be keeping her here until her mother comes to get her. But why was it taking her so long?

  She must have landed at the airport hours ago. Maybe she doesn’t know where this castle is, Genny worried. It was probably very hard to find.

  Genny went into the bathroom and filled a glass with water.

  She brought the glass out and sat down on the bed with it. She wished she had some books to read, or at least some pictures to look at. They hadn’t left anything in the room at all.

  She remembered several books of hers that had castles in them.

  Some of them looked a lot like this one. Cinderella was one.

  Rumpelstiltskin was another. And there was one about a girl that was locked up in a castle, just like her. What was her name? Rapunzel.

  That was it. She had long blond hair that she could roll all the way down the side of the castle tower until it reached the ground.

  Genny tugged at her own golden locks. They barely reached her shoulders.

  In another book she remembered—maybe it was Babar the Elephant—there was a door right in the floor. When Babar opened it he found a secret passage that led right out of the castle.

  Genny studied the bare wood floor around her. There were definitely no trap doors in it.

  She was hungry. She hoped they didn’t forget to bring her some food.

  It’d be much harder to be brave if she didn’t have anything to eat.

  Hours passed and no one came. Genny skipped around the room and jumped up and down on the bed for exercise. She loved to jump on beds, but her mother was always telling her to stop.

  This time there was no one to tell her anything, so she jumped to her heart’s content. Then she sat on the bed and sang all the songs that she knew and told herself some stories, pretending that it was her mother reading them to her.

  She frequently went over to look out the window. The driveway was on the other side of the castle, so when her mother came up the drive she wouldn’t be able to see her. But she thought she might be able to smell her scent as soon as she came inside.

  She could detect scent traces of the baroness and the men who had brought her here. There were many other odors, but they belonged to people she had never seen.

  As the hours passed, Genny found it getting harder and harder to be brave. If her mommy didn’t get here pretty soon, she decided, she was going to have to cry.

  The first consular assistant, P. Kenneth Thorpe III, steepled his eyebrows together in an expression of mild discomfort. He was young, plump, and fair-skinned, and he took himself very seriously. “That’s quite a story, Mrs. Stewart,” he said. “You’ll have to admit.”

  Anne was sitting in the small hard-backed chair facing Thorpe’s highly polished antique desk. “Is that all you can say?”

  Assistant Consul Thorpe leaned back in his chair and wiggled his gold pen nervously between his thumb and forefinger. His pale blue eyes glanced around the room, as if he wished there were someone else present he could talk to, instead of Anne. “What do you expect me to say?”

  Anne could barely conceal her fury. “That you’re going to do everything possible to find my daughter. And that you’re going to start doing it right now.”

  The assistant consul sighed, rode his chair back up to a level position, and glanced down at the notes he had taken.

  “Are you aware, Mrs. Stewart, that the Baroness von Hauser happens to be one of Munich’s—indeed, one of Germany’s-most prominent citizens?”

  “She has my daughter!” Anne shouted. “I don’t care how damned prominent she is. She’s kidnapped her!”

  Thorpe cleared his throat. “Yes. So you’ve told me. I might point out to you as well that the baroness is also extremely wealthy. She really has no conceiv
able reason to kidnap anyone.”

  “I’ve explained to you what she wants. She wants information from me in return for my daughter.”

  “Why don’t you just give her this information, then?”

  “I offered to. But she refused.”

  “But why would she do that?”

  Anne clenched her fists. “I’ve told you. She’s trying to develop and exploit a genetic formula that originally belonged to my husband. The formula was used on my daughter…. Look, this is hopeless. You won’t believe anything I tell you. I want to talk to someone else.”

  Thorpe arched an eyebrow in disapproval. He didn’t appreciate this attempt to go over his head. “There is no one else here in a position to help you, Mrs. Stewart.”

  “Then call the police!” Anne cried. “If they go up there they’ll find my daughter!”

  Thorpe glanced anxiously toward the door, apparently afraid that Anne’s yelling might be overheard. “The police have to have a very plausible reason for doing such a thing, Mrs. Stewart,” he replied. “Search warrants are required in Germany, too, you know. Just like the United States. And for good reason. As you can imagine, Baroness von Hauser would not be very pleased to have her premises searched unless there was a very wellestablished reason for doing so.”

  Anne stood up. “You won’t do anything?”

  Thorpe motioned to her to sit down. She remained standing.

  “I can see that you’re upset,” he said in a placating tone. “And that’s understandable, of course—if what you say is true. But Mrs.

  Stewart, you must be patient. Of course I’ll do all I can. As soon as we can get a confirmation of your alleged missing husband, we’ll take matters from there. We’ll investigate. We’ll contact the appropriate authorities. If your daughter is truly missing, then I’m sure she’ll show up soon. It seems to me highly likely that she’s still with her father. If she doesn’t show up soon, we’ll urge upon the appropriate authorities that they redouble their efforts. In the meantime, you really need not worry unduly. Munich is a very safe city. There’s not nywhere near the crime here that you’d find in New York or Chicago or Los Angeles. Far from it.