Labyrinth

by Jon Land

  Glancing back only briefly, Locke left the building and swung to the right and then quickly to the left. The smaller agricultural wing ran parallel to the mother building, and he moved toward it as quickly as he could, hoping not to attract any attention.

  The entrance contained a sign warning AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, and two guards were poised inside to enforce it. That ruled the entrance out. Locke kept walking.

  Around the other side of the building, two huge garage bays had been opened and men were unloading hundred-pound bags of something into a large warehouse. Locke remembered the clothes the clerk had provided him with were those of a workman, not a tourist, and he wasted no time. He joined the line of workers lifting bags from the truck and piling them inside the warehouse.

  No one seemed to notice him. The Sanii workers probably thought he was part of the trucking crew and the trucking crew must have thought the reverse. Just in case this changed, Locke kept the bags he hoisted up in front of his face and avoided the eyes of those around him. Once the pile of bags inside was high enough, Locke slipped behind it and moved through the rear of the warehouse without hesitation, opening the first door he saw and stepping inside the building.

  He was in a long, white, brightly lit corridor.

  A moving person may attract attention but a person standing still attracts even more.

  Locke heeded another memory from his training and started walking before he had any idea of his bearings. The corridor was deserted, fortunate but probably only temporary. He reached a junction in the corridors and studied what was up ahead in both directions. A locker room was to the right and he steered toward it, hoping to find something inside that might help his charade.

  The locker room was typical in design, banks of lockers fronted by benches with the sound of showers and the smell of steam not far off. Two men passed him as he entered without giving him a second look, and Chris found himself thankful for the multitudes of people Sanii employed. There had probably been close to 750 cars in the parking lot. He had gotten another break in that midday was fast approaching, which meant time off for lunch. The locker room was crowded. Locke moved quickly into the bathroom, bolting a stall behind him.

  He sat down on the toilet and fought to steady his breathing. Nerves would give him away faster than anything. A calm exterior was the best disguise of all.

  Disguise! That was it!

  The two men Locke passed in the doorway had been wearing simple white lab coats. If he were walking the corridors in one of those, no one would accost him. Locke’s memory sharpened. The coats had badges pinned to their lapels, picture badges. He would have to take his chances that no one would look closely. He flushed the toilet and moved out of the stall, stopping between two men shaving before the row of sinks, and washed his hands. Moving routinely back among the lockers, he grabbed the first white lab coat from the first open locker he saw. Tossing his arms through the sleeves, he started back toward the corridor.

  The coat was a poor fit—much too short in the arms—and the picture on the ID looked nothing like him. Same color hair, though, and that might prove enough to get him through. Locke kept walking and a minute later found himself about to enter a giant greenhouse. Men in similar white coats were everywhere, checking gauges and readouts and making notes concerning plants of virtually all varieties. He was in a section apparently devoted to insuring that no plant species became extinct. He walked through it and on until he came to a pair of double doors, just wide enough to accommodate their warning label: CLOSED SECURITY SECTION, NO ADMITTANCE EXCEPT BY RED BADGE.

  Locke glanced down. Miraculously, his badge was red. He started moving through the heavy doors but they wouldn’t budge. Then he noticed the steel slot on the wall to his right. A special ID card was required for entry. He started to search his pockets on the wild chance the coat contained one.

  “Problems?”

  The voice came from behind him. Locke swung to see a mustachioed man about his own age.

  “I’ll say. Damn slot won’t accept my card. It must have bent in my wallet.”

  “I was going in anyway,” the man said in excellent English, apparently the official language of the corporation. The machine swallowed his card, then spit it back out. There was a buzz and Chris heard the door snap mechanically open. “See.” The mustachioed man smiled, holding the door open for him. “Nothing to it.”

  “Thank you,” Chris responded, moving to the right as the man veered to the left.

  He had surprised himself with the way he’d handled the situation. Nothing had been planned. It just came to him like an actor’s lines and he didn’t question his actions further.

  Locke passed a plate-glass window looking into a room twenty feet square lit up with fluorescents strung over strange-looking green shrubs. An iron clipboard was hanging on the wall, attached to the plaster on a light chain. Chris pretended to be studying it briefly to make sure no one was approaching, then ripped it free, holding it in his right hand as he started walking again. Where, though, was he going? He had made it into the high-security section but there were still dozens of hallways, hundreds of rooms.

  Other technicians were moving past him regularly now, none giving him a second look. The labs came one after another, all with different announcements printed on their doors.

  Then he saw the door up ahead with no markings at all, just a security guard watching intently. Something fluttered in Chris’s stomach. He had to get inside that room. He bent over a water fountain and took in as much water as he could hold. When he stepped back he saw a group of scientists advancing steadily down the corridor. They drew closer and Locke noticed all wore red badges with black crosses drawn through them. His own lacked a cross, but he joined the group.

  “Good morning, Professor,” the security guard said to the bearded man at their lead.

  “Good morning.”

  The guard held the door, allowing the entire team to pass through, and nodding at each one. Locke turned his shoulders around to hide his badge and held his breath as he passed, but the guard made no move to stop him.

  The door closed with an echo. Chris drifted away from the group. He was in a giant terrarium lined with four rows of different crops. He made a quick inventory and found they were labeled corn, oats, wheat and barley. But their sizes! Some looked ready for field harvest. Others were barely sprouting from their soil boxes.

  Locke started up one of the rows, studying the white cards placed at floor level. He skimmed their contents, afraid to stay in one place too long with so many people in the room. He knew there was something in the white cards he was gazing at, some pattern, but he couldn’t think clearly enough to pin it down. He had reached the end of the row and was standing before the highest stalks of wheat when it struck him. He reread the notation on the white card six times to make sure he wasn’t seeing things.

  Planting date: March 26.

  It couldn’t be! These wheat stalks had attained a year’s worth of growth twenty-one days from planting. Mesmerized, Chris walked back up the row.

  Each boxed section, approximately ten feet square, represented a different stage of growth divided into seven three-day periods. If the information on the white cards was accurate, the crops’ growth rate had been accelerated at a phenomenal clip. The implications of this would be enormous. He tried to think about the relationship between what he had just seen and what Felderberg had told him at Vaduz. But it was no use. He couldn’t concentrate until he was safely out of this place.

  Chris reached the end of the row and turned quickly. The bearded scientist blocked his path.

  “Who are you? I don’t know you.” His eyes fell on Locke’s badge. “Wait, you don’t belong …”

  Chris was already moving in the other direction, breaking into a trot.

  “Stop him! Stop that man!”

  Another scientist lunged in his path. Without hesitating, Chris raised the steel clipboard over his head and smashed it down hard into the man’s face. The
scientist crumpled to the floor.

  Locke dropped the clipboard and darted into part of the miniature wheatfield. In seconds his feet found tile again only long enough to project him forward into the oats, then the corn. The door was just up ahead, but so was the security guard fumbling to yank his gun from its holster.

  The pistol had just come free when Locke crashed into him with a shoulder block. The guard dropped the gun as he fell backward.

  Chris sped into the corridor. He could hear the feet pounding after him only until the security alarm started wailing. He ran down the hall fighting for his bearings, trying to recall the placement of the nearest exit door. He charted how much ground he had covered by counting glass windows of the lab rooms. At the next larger corridor, he turned.

  A parade of guards charged from the opposite direction. Locke squealed to a halt and swung to the right. It must have been nearing lunchtime because a number of white-coated figures were moving leisurely about in this smaller hall. They formed his cover. All he needed was an exit to take him into the parking lot. There he could mingle among the workers long enough to seal his escape.

  He spotted a red emergency exit sign over a door at the end of the corridor. His heart lurched against his chest as he continued slithering through bodies, gaining precious ground on the men behind him. He reached the heavy steel door and crashed through it into the bright sunlight. He had to squint and half cover his eyes with his hand but he kept moving. The guards would not be far behind.

  Luckily, the timing of his exit had been perfect. The end of one shift and lunch for another had brought a flood of bodies pouring from inside the plant, too many people for the guards effectively to sift through. Chris kept his pace steady, not too fast and not too slow, doing nothing to make himself stand out. He headed toward the main parking lot hoping for a taxi, a bus, even a ride from a fellow worker. He was hurrying now, giving in to impatience, afraid to look back in case the Sanii guards were closing on him.

  Suddenly a figure appeared before him, big and thick-haired, with gun drawn.

  The man brought his pistol up from his hip in a blur of motion.

  “No!” Chris screamed, knowing it was too late.

  The man fired.

  Locke had started backward, tensing for an impact he knew must come. There was a grunt followed by a thud behind him. Chris turned and saw the prone figure of a security guard grasping his bloodied shoulder, a pistol lying on the cement just out of reach. Then people were yelling, scattering, calling for help.

  And the figure with the still-smoking gun was beckoning to Locke.

  “Let’s get out of here!” the man screamed. “Now!”

  Chapter 17

  SATURDAY NIGHT DOGAN had arrived at Vaduz Station in search of his quarry but found someone else. At first he didn’t recognize the man with a newspaper in his lap smiling at him from the wooden benches. As he drew closer, though, he found himself smiling too.

  “Ah, Grendel, I’ve been expecting you. What brings you to Liechtenstein, comrade?”

  Dogan sat down next to the Russian in the all but empty train station. “Business. I’m here to kill a man.”

  “Yes,” Vaslov said knowingly. “Christopher Locke.”

  Dogan didn’t bother to hide his surprise. “You never cease to amaze me.”

  “Our intelligence was quite accurate on the subject,” Vaslov continued. “I came to Liechtenstein to make sure you did not complete your assignment. You’re being used. It’s not your own government that wants Locke dead, it’s someone in the Committee.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Locke is the key, comrade. Remember I told you about San Sebastian? We intercepted a taped transmission sent by one of your side’s agents, a certain Lubeck. We believed he was on the Committee’s trail. When the agent was killed along with the rest of the town, Locke was recruited to take his place and retrace his steps.”

  “My God, you know all this from intelligence within my government?”

  “The bits and pieces, yes. The rest is conjecture but most accurate in this case, I believe. The exact agenda of Locke’s trip eluded me. I learned he was in London only when a report surfaced accusing him of the murder of a Colombian diplomat.”

  “I wasn’t told anything about that.”

  “Because it would have raised questions on your part. You were told only that Locke had killed a State Department attaché. In fact, that man was running him. It was the Committee who arranged the attaché’s elimination. They needed Locke isolated so they could control his movements. None of this made sense to me until I learned who Locke was to meet here.”

  “Felderberg?”

  Vaslov nodded. “Recent intelligence all but confirms that he is the financial middleman for the Committee.”

  “Was.”

  “That’s right, comrade, you were there. And yet you did not carry out your termination order even when the opportunity presented itself.”

  “Something smelled about this from the beginning,” Dogan told him. “I was being used and I didn’t like it. The scene at the Hauser just didn’t play right if Locke had really come there with something to sell. After Felderberg’s bodyguards escorted him out, I made a fast check around. Someone killed him with a poisoned cork and the logistics ruled out Locke… .”

  “Yes,” interjected Vaslov with a slight smile, “I’ve used that method several times successfully myself. The Americans tried it with Castro, only to find out he drank beer exclusively.”

  “Locke was set up,” Dogan continued, “which means I was set up too.”

  “And Felderberg’s killing was made to look as if Locke were responsible, once again orchestrated by the Committee. They are using him to reveal the pattern uncovered by your agent in San Sebastian, so they can eradicate it.”

  “But why would they want to eliminate their own middleman?”

  “One question at a time, comrade. Felderberg became expendable because he had outlived his usefulness to them, in which case their latest plot must be nearing completion.” Vaslov sighed. “I had hoped to turn Felderberg to our side myself.”

  “And now he won’t be able to tell us anything.”

  “Another man can, however.”

  “Locke.”

  Vaslov shifted his legs, slid the newspaper to the bench beside him. “So you can see why we must take him alive. We not only have confirmation of the Committee’s existence now, but also proof that they are about to activate an important operation. And Christopher Locke is the only man who may know what it entails.”

  “He may just as easily know nothing.”

  “How long was he inside with Felderberg, comrade?”

  “Thirty minutes, maybe thirty-five.”

  “Plenty of time for the financier to pass at least as much as he passed on to your agent in San Sebastian. Yes, Locke has data. What he lacks is any real knowledge of what’s involved.”

  “Which we possess.”

  Vaslov nodded again. “But I’m afraid there’s a complication, several, in fact. To begin with, the actions of the Committee are not consistent. They killed Locke’s control in London so Locke would be forced to do their bidding. Their next move is to retain you to eliminate Locke.”

  “Maybe someone got nervous.”

  “My thought exactly. Someone panicked over Locke being allowed to roam free. The Commander received an order from a higher level. It follows.”

  “What about the other complications?”

  “The second’s a bit more involved, I’m afraid. Earlier this evening, one of my men saw Locke being led away from the train platform by an old woman who’s a known free-lance assassin. He didn’t intercede because he was under strict orders just to observe. By the time he reported back to me, traces of the old woman’s body had been found on the front of a train.”

  “Locke killed her?”

  “She was obviously trying to do the same to him. And if Felderberg’s people had hired her, she would have led Lock
e back toward them, not away from the platform.”

  “So someone else wants our college professor dead… .”

  Vaslov’s eyebrows flickered. “A third party, Grendel. And to find out who, we must trace the woman’s contacts. They are well known to me. I used the old hag a few times myself. I’ll initiate the tracing procedures as soon as we part.”

  “And the third complication?”

  Vaslov hesitated. “Perhaps the most confusing of all. Someone seems to want Locke alive as much as others want him dead.” Vaslov noted Dogan’s questioning stare. “After ridding himself of the hag, Locke left for Schaan. Felderberg’s top security man was found outside the station there with his chest torn in two.”

  Dogan nodded. “Schaan’s quite lovely this time of year.”

  “Locke must feel the same way.”

  Dogan stood up. “I’d better start hunting.”

  Vaslov pulled a blue gym bag from under his legs. “When you find Locke, give him these belongings. His passport is among them, and he may have need of it.”

  “But how did you—”

  “He paid me a hundred francs to open a locker for him.” Vaslov shifted his aching shoulders. “Felderberg’s people made me feel my age, but I was happy to be of service to Mr. Locke.”

  The stranger led Locke to an Audi parked halfway up on the grass strip separating one row of cars from the next. They jumped inside and screeched away, Chris studying the stranger’s face trying to recall where he had seen him before.

  “The Hauser!” he exclaimed as the Audi tore off the Sanii grounds. “You were at the Hauser! Who are you? Why’d you save my life back there?”

  Dogan’s eyes darted between the road and the rearview mirror. “One question at a time. The name’s Dogan, Ross Dogan of the once-proud CIA.”

  “Wait a minute, if you were at the Hauser you must have been following me all along.”

  “If I was following you, Locke, how in the hell could I have been waiting inside the Hauser before you arrived? Six months at the Academy should have taught you enough to figure that out.”