Labyrinth

by Jon Land

  Use a public place, somewhere crowded, as a stash. A train or bus station, perhaps an airport, would be best. Use a locker.

  There was a good-sized rail station on the outskirts of Vaduz. Certainly there would be lockers inside.

  It took him ten minutes to change into a new suit and another five to pack a tote bag with two changes of clothes, a razor, and other toilet articles, along with his passport. In addition there were several implements Burgess had obtained in the event a disguise might be needed. Locke had the doorman get him a cab forty minutes before his appointment with Felderberg and headed for Vaduz Station. Then he told the driver to wait outside for him.

  As it turned out, there were indeed lockers inside the station, a whole bank of them. But keys had to be obtained and deposits left at a central desk, which meant exposing himself to more attention. Locke weighed the situation only briefly before determining that obtaining the locker was worth the risk. The clerk was courteous, had thick glasses, and spoke very poor English. The cost of a locker was fifteen francs per day. Locke received one key. A master that was also required to open the lockers was always present at the desk, available once the customer had paid up his account as noted on the card Locke was issued. It all seemed far more complicated than a simple coin system, but he went along with it because he had to.

  The driver dropped him at the tram at the base of Vaduz Mountain fifteen minutes before his meeting was scheduled to begin. The ski season had ended, so there was little activity about. A lift operator sold tickets to the few tourists who wished to take in Vaduz from an aerial angle. Another helped seat them in the small enclosed cars that looked like miniature diving bells. Chris straightened his tie, purchased a ticket, and was ushered into one of the green compartments. The door closed tight. The lift began to pull him up the mountain, taking him farther and farther from the ground. The cable squeaked and trembled every time a connecting tower station was passed. Halfway up the tram, Locke could clearly make out the Hauser restaurant, a small but stately building that seemed to be a small imitation of the castle standing above. It might once have been a carriage house by the look of it, or a guest lodging for visitors of Liechtenstein’s royalty in days of old. It was simply a restaurant, though, constructed in the sixties to capitalize on the tourist trade.

  The restaurant was located up a path from the tram’s unloading platform, and Locke had started to walk toward it when a man appeared in front of him flanked by two others.

  “Mr. Babbit?”

  “Er, yes.”

  The man’s eyes were ice blue. He had wavy blond hair and a neck as wide as his head. “We have been sent to escort you up to your visit with Mr. Felderberg. You have come alone?” the man asked, eyes darting back toward the tram.

  “That was the arrangement.”

  “We are merely confirming. Precautions, you understand.”

  “I understand.”

  There was a suppressed tension about the man, Locke noted, something coiled in him ready to spring at an instant’s notice. He didn’t smile; there was no expression whatsoever on his face. He seemed somehow familiar to Locke and it wasn’t until they reached the entrance to the restaurant that he realized why. He had known a hundred others like him twenty years ago at the Academy. The man had the capacity to kill without hesitation. Felderberg was taking no chances.

  The blond man led Locke into the Hauser, which was dimly lit and almost deserted but impressive in its furnishings all the same. The designers had done their best to create the feel of a seventeenth-century inn with thick wood tables and several functional fireplaces. A large bar dominated the central floor, huge beer mugs with Liechtenstein’s coat of arms displayed proudly on shelves suspended over old-fashioned wine bottles. Few of the tables were occupied and only three seats at the bar were taken, one by a thick-haired American-looking man whose eyes held Locke’s briefly as he passed. When Locke glanced back, the man’s attention had returned to his stein of beer.

  “This way,” the blond man said, and Locke followed him with the other two men bringing up the rear.

  They moved down a corridor where two additional bodyguards waited in front of a wooden door with a brass knocker.

  “We will search you here,” the blond man told him.

  Chris felt himself being eased gently against the wall. Then a pair of powerful hands slid over him checking for concealed weapons. Satisfied, the hands slipped off and Locke turned around to find the blond man lifting the knocker. He opened the door without waiting for a reply and signaled Locke to enter.

  “Thank you, Peale,” came a voice from the room’s rear, and Chris found himself looking at Claus Felderberg. “Leave us.”

  Peale headed back out the door. Felderberg stood up and started out from behind a table. Locke met him halfway across the floor.

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Babbit.”

  Locke took Felderberg’s extended hand. The grip was cold and clammy. Felderberg was overweight, with bulging jowls and a triple chin. His blue suit was perfectly tailored and what remained of his thinning brown hair was pulled from one side to the other to make it seem he had more. His mustache was his most outstanding facial feature, mostly because it was embroidered with strands of red. Felderberg breathed hard and noisily through his nose.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” Locke said.

  “My pleasure. Come, please sit down.”

  “I mean, I know how busy you are. I appreciate your time.”

  Almost on cue, Felderberg pulled a gold watch from a chain in his vest pocket and checked it as he returned to his seat.

  “And little time I have, Mr. Babbit. Economies are booming everywhere. Many people have money they wish resettled.”

  Interesting choice of words, Locke thought as he waited for Felderberg to take his seat before he followed. The financier eased his bulk down and then pulled his chair under the table, which had been set for two. Locke sat down opposite him.

  Felderberg settled his legs under the table. “As I said, Mr. Babbit, my time is short, so please excuse me for dispensing with formalities. My right foot is presently resting on a button which the slightest pressure would activate, sending a signal to my men in the corridor telling them I need them immediately. They will respond fast and rashly, Mr. Babbit. That is what they are paid for.”

  “I understand.”

  “No, I don’t think you do. In my business precautions are everything, Mr. Babbit. Personal safety is maintained above all else. I am going to ask you a question and if the response doesn’t satisfy me, I will press my foot down and have my bodyguards deal with you.” Locke made out the fear in Felderberg’s voice. The financier’s eyes bore into him. “Who are you?”

  “Sam—”

  “Not satisfactory. You are not Sam Babbit and your presence here has nothing to do with desiring excessive financial resettlements as I was asked to believe.”

  Locke felt numb. The ruse was up. No sense trying to continue it. “I congratulate you on your intuition,” he managed.

  “Investigation was more like it,” Felderberg told him. “I had you watched at the hotel. Your tipping was impressive but no man in your alleged position would pay for a hotel room in cash. You also have no credit cards in your wallet—Peale signaled me to that fact when he entered the room. The men I deal with invariably carry a flock of them. I also understand that you made a stop at the train station on the way here.”

  Locke leaned back. “I’m impressed with your thoroughness.”

  “I have many enemies. Hired killers have shown up here before.”

  “But you don’t consider me one,” Locke said.

  Felderberg hedged. “My foot is on the button,” he said as a reminder. “But you’re right, I don’t believe you came here with violent intentions. Your cover was too thin, too shabby. Killers always come with impeccable credentials and qualifications. Peale always picks them out in an instant, and he’s quite good at dealing with them.”

  “I’m not surprised.�
��

  “Every move you made was contrary to what a man who had come in quest of my life would make, starting with a rather bizarre arrangement for this meeting.”

  “Then why did you agree to see me?”

  “Curiosity, I suppose. Since I knew you couldn’t be one of my enemies’ hired hands, I had to ask myself who you were and what bit of desperation led you to my door.”

  “Desperation’s as good a way to describe it as any… .”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Christopher Locke and you’re absolutely right: I’m no professional killer. I’m no professional anything. I used to be a college professor. Now, to tell you the truth, I’m not sure what I am.”

  “But you haven’t come here to quiz me on ways to finance your retirement.”

  “Right now my major concern is just making it to retirement. A friend of mine didn’t. His name was Alvin Lubeck and he met with you last week, I believe.”

  Felderberg’s heavy breathing stopped all at once. He wet his lips. Locke noticed they were trembling.

  “I’m here to find out what you told him,” he continued.

  “On whose authority?”

  “Or who’s ‘running me’? That’s the popular spy phrasing, isn’t it? Doesn’t matter. The answer’s no one. I’m here on my own authority. There was someone else until two days ago but he was killed too, and there are quite a few people out there who’d like nothing better than to make me number three on their list.”

  Felderberg’s breathing became even heavier. His brow was sweating. “Who was this someone else?”

  “A State Department intelligence man who was once my best friend. He put me in the field to follow Lubeck’s trail because he figured I’d have the best chance of digging up what he discovered. Well, I dug part of it up all right and it buried him. He sent me to you and an English colleague of his made the arrangements to get me here.”

  “You must tell me everything. From the beginning.”

  Chris obliged as best he could, taking almost twenty minutes from beginning to end, almost laughing a few times at the incredibility of his story.

  “Does any of this make sense to you?” he asked at the end.

  “Some,” Felderberg replied. “Enough. I have no knowledge of these Spanish-speaking killers of yours but the others pulling the strings behind the scenes, the ones your friend calls ‘animals,’ they are what Lubeck came to see me about.”

  “How did he get to you?”

  “Through Peale, interestingly. He and Lubeck had worked together a few times before Peale came to work for me. He had met with that Colombian diplomat who tried to kill you and the meeting had raised certain questions he felt I could answer.”

  “And could you?”

  “Somewhat.” Felderberg leaned forward, interlaced his fingers tightly over the table. “The diplomat was his country’s delegate to the World Hunger Conference. When he learned that Lubeck was running a routine security check, he contacted him with the claim that someone powerful was plotting to sabotage the conference … and that same someone had by some shrewd manipulation become the virtual owner of Colombia.”

  “An entire country?”

  “Why are you so surprised, Mr. Locke? What else is a country besides land? And land can be bought in virtually any quantities for the right price. You think it’s any different in your country? See where Arab money is going these days. Land is by far the greatest investment, the only one guaranteed never to depreciate or be affected adversely by inflation or recession.”

  “But Alvaradejo must have put Lubeck on to something far greater than clever investments.”

  “Most certainly. What I said about some powerful force becoming the virtual owner of Colombia is a bit misleading, Mr. Locke. The force is only interested in great chunks of arable land, suitable for farming if not ideal. This may amount to only twenty to twenty-five percent, but much of the rest is arid. Control that twenty-five percent and you control the country.”

  “Why?”

  “Because all development, all industry, and all wealth will be centered there.”

  Locke nodded. “And Alvaradejo sent Lubeck to you because you were the broker who sealed all the Colombian land deals for this … unknown group.”

  “Yes,” Felderberg admitted. “But it wasn’t just Colombia. Every arable nation in South America has been affected. The pattern is always the same. Exact instructions are provided as to how to resettle massive funds stretching into the billions, subdivide and spread them out to make it impossible for anyone to realize that one party was behind it all. It is the kind of work I have done for twenty years, Mr. Locke, but I’ve never seen anything that even approaches the scale of this before.”

  A soft knock came on the door.

  “The waiter,” Felderberg told Locke. Then, in the direction of the door: “Yes?”

  It opened and Peale escorted a man in white shirt and black bow tie inside.

  “Some wine before our meal, Mr. Locke?”

  “Thank you.”

  Felderberg ordered a certain year and vintage, which the waiter jotted down on a pad before leaving. The door sealed shut again.

  Locke felt a tremor in his stomach. The scope of what he was facing was finally taking shape.

  “And the common denominator of all the countries and all the deals you completed was arable land,” he concluded.

  “Much of it was still undeveloped, you understand. South American nations are seldom very good at utilizing their resources. But the potential for farming the lands was there. Hundreds of soil analyses from hundreds of regions in perhaps a dozen countries crossed my desk—another common denominator.”

  “So your client is buying up farmland.”

  “Yes.” Felderberg regarded him closely. “Obviously that interests you.”

  “Charney thought food was the key to this somehow. Lubeck too.”

  Felderberg nodded, leaning back. “And it all started with Alvaradejo. The Colombian contacted Lubeck and sent him to me.”

  “Because he feared someone was buying up his country?”

  “Not exactly,” Felderberg said. “Because he feared someone was going to destroy it.”

  Chapter 13

  “DESTROY?” FELDERBERG’S RESPONSE had hit Locke like a swift kick to the gut.

  “Not physically, you understand. Alvaradejo’s fears were rooted in the belief my client was turning his country’s people into slaves, forcing them off land they believed they owned and leaving them destitute.”

  “I told you about San Sebastian,” Locke said. “It fits.”

  “What fits?” Felderberg demanded. “I apologize for my impertinence, but in my position control of the situation is everything and in this case I’ve lost mine. You described a massacre to me, hundreds of people murdered for no reason.”

  “Unless they saw something, knew something.”

  “Which your friend Lubeck also stumbled upon… .”

  “The fields,” Chris said. “It all comes back to his rantings about something in the fields. The townspeople were witnesses to it and then Lubeck became one too.”

  “But what did he see? What did the townspeople know?”

  “Your client was doing something on that land. Testing a new weapon, something like that.”

  “Which was then burned in a fire?”

  “The fire covered the effects, that’s all.”

  Felderberg shook his head. “No, the key is land and by connection food.”

  “An entire town wasn’t massacred over food.”

  “Unless, Mr. Locke, something about that town made it a microcosm of a much greater picture.”

  “The rest of South America …”

  “At least those portions my client had purchased.”

  Locke hesitated. “Did Lubeck come to any of these conclusions?”

  “No. He had only shadows when I saw him. San Sebastian had not yet occurred and that, I’m certain, is somehow the key.”

&nb
sp; “Along with food.” Locke ran his hands over his face. “But where does food tie in? Where does its importance lie for your client?”

  Felderberg looked at him with mild shock. “Fifty percent of the world’s population goes to bed hungry every night and many, many of these suffer from true famine. A country as powerful as the Soviet Union can bargain with the United States to keep a sufficient grain supply flowing. When oil was the crisis, engineers simply built cars that used up less. When food reaches such a crisis, similar steps cannot be taken with the stomachs of man.”

  “You said ‘when,’ not if.”

  “Because the crisis is inevitable. A few bad Soviet harvests back to back, wars in other agricultural-producing nations, a change in the political climate of your own country—all or any of these could lead to a crisis like none the world has ever seen, ultimately bringing on a global revolution of catastrophic consequences.”

  “I fail to see how—”

  “Of course you fail to see!” Felderberg roared, jowls flushed with red. “Everyone fails to see, that is the problem. You think plutonium is the world’s most valued resource, or gold, or diamonds, or even oil? Hardly. Food is by far the most crucial commodity, and yet it is subject more than any other to gross mismanagement and unconscionably bad planning. Your own country is ruining its own topsoil by rushing crops in and harvesting them too fast. It takes nature anywhere from a hundred to a thousand years to create one inch of top soil. But in America’s frenzy to squeeze more food from the land, she is destroying on average an inch of topsoil every forty-five years. It is no wonder my client may well be planning for the crisis to come.”

  “By buying up unused farmland in order to become an agricultural power… .”

  Felderberg frowned. “Except that would not explain the covert nature of their activities, nor the need for such haste. Growing crops in the abundance required for export take months, even years of effort and hard work. The motives of my client remain bathed in shadows. What are they after? What is worth the investment of literally billions of dollars?”