Labyrinth

by Jon Land

  “San Sebastian?”

  Dogan nodded. “That explains the presence of those guards down there who tried to kill me. Mandala burned the town but he always knew he’d be coming back.” He held Nikki’s eyes with his own. “But all this is speculation on my part. There’s no sense in both of us wasting our time on what might turn out to be a wild goose chase. You’re a professional. God knows you’ve proved that much. A professional’s place is with Chris. Leave Mandala to me.”

  “And his giant?”

  “He’s not indestructible.”

  “Where will you be while the rest of us are in Texas, Ross?” Locke wondered.

  “Washington. Trying to pry some people off their asses.”

  “My mother said that would be a mistake,” Nikki reminded.

  “For you maybe, but not me. Up until last week, Washington paid my salary. I’ll find people who’ll listen. I know the right buttons to push.”

  Nikki nodded. “Insurance, right?”

  Dogan said nothing.

  “Ross, what does she mean by insurance?” Locke asked anxiously.

  It was Nikki who answered the question. “I mean if we don’t get the job done in Keysar Flats, he’s going to try to have somebody standing by who can.”

  “They might supplement your efforts,” Dogan said. “And there’s San Sebastian to consider also. This whole thing’s much too big for us to handle alone.”

  “Why not let me take my people to San Sebastian?” Masvidal suggested. “It is my territory.”

  “But Keysar Flats is the key, the U.S. is the key. We’ve got to concentrate our forces there. Both of us will have to succeed anyway if Mandala is to be stopped altogether.” Dogan met the eyes of Nikki and then of Locke. “I should reach Washington tomorrow about the same time you reach Texas. I’ll start knocking on doors immediately.”

  “And hope somebody answers,” said Locke.

  “Someone who won’t put a bullet through your head,” added Nikki.

  Chapter 31

  BEFORE LOCKE AND NIKKI departed for America, Dogan gave them a number to call once they reached Paris. They would be speaking into a tape machine and need only state anything that had come up along the way. Dogan would need Vaslov’s help in establishing the line, so he cautioned them not to bother calling it until Paris. It would surely be in place by then.

  Next a site had to be found for the rendezvous with Masvidal and his people on Saturday. A guidebook provided them with a roadside motel just off Route 83 that would be perfect. Masvidal would arrive there with his men and equipment sometime after three but before five on Saturday. If he was going to be any later, he would get word to Locke through a messenger.

  At Vienna Airport, Chris let Nikki take care of purchasing the tickets and obtaining their boarding passes. While she was at the ticket counter, he busied himself with watching the people. Airports were fantastically uniform locales. All cities in all countries featured the same luggage and the same people carting it in a rush to make their flight, nervously checking their watches as if their eyes might make the hands move slower.

  Locke’s attention was caught at a small café. An older man with little hair was seated at the counter. Chris felt a tingling in his spine, a warning of recognition. He tried to place the man, couldn’t, and stared harder. The man swung round briefly and their eyes would have met if Chris hadn’t looked away.

  Nikki was by his side seconds later and when he turned back to the coffee counter the man was gone.

  “Something wrong?” she asked him.

  “No. I just thought I saw someone I recognized.”

  “Well, we’ve got forty-five minutes before the flight leaves,” she said, placing their boarding passes in her shoulder bag. “A drink should settle those nerves of yours.”

  Chris went with her to the bar but ordered soda. They sat on stools at the end of the small bar, a vantage point that gave him clear view of the airport lobby.

  “The flight has a stop-off at Geneva and then goes to Paris,” Nikki was saying. “We’ll be in by early Friday morning.”

  Chris didn’t hear her. Something had caught his eye, a head, no, a hat—a green porkpie hat. The man from the coffee counter was visible only from the rear at a newsstand but the hat reminded Locke where he had seen him before. It was the man who’d sat next to him on the flight from London, the man who had spent the trip doing crossword puzzles. Locke slid from his chair.

  “Chris?” Nikki called after him.

  But Locke was already in motion, pushing through a swarm of debarking passengers crowding into the terminal and hurrying toward the newsstand. What was the man doing back at the airport? Had he been following them all along?

  Chris reached the newsstand, but the man with the porkpie hat was gone.

  A hand grasped his shoulder. Locke swung quickly.

  “Take it easy,” Nikki said. “What’s going on?”

  “The man I sat next to on the plane from London, I thought I saw him standing over here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Same size? Height?”

  “Just a hat, a green porkpie hat. The overcoat too, I think, but I can’t be sure.”

  “You didn’t get a good look at his face?”

  “I was too far away. That’s why I came over here.”

  Nikki didn’t seem overly concerned. “I think all this is starting to get to you.”

  “It already has. I still think it was him.”

  “And what if it was? This airport is known for delayed and canceled flights. No one followed us to or from the castle; I’d bet anything on that. He’s probably just a stranded traveler.”

  Locke shrugged. Nikki led him away from the newsstand back toward the bar.

  “You could have stayed at Kreuzenstein,” he said when they were seated once again on their stools. “You could have stayed with … your mother.”

  “She’s your mother too.”

  “She was never my mother.”

  “But what Mandala did to her bothers you as much as it does me, doesn’t it?”

  “No, because I never knew her. And what I knew I didn’t like. She was a specter from my past, a specter I loathed all through my childhood. I didn’t just lose her, I lost my father at the same time.”

  “Chris—”

  “No, let me finish. I never knew my mother, Nikki, and I never knew my father either. It isn’t easy growing up that way.”

  “I know how you feel,” she said honestly. “But it still hurt when your father died, didn’t it?”

  “It hurt. And what about you?” He looked at her sharply. “That was your mother we left dying back at the castle. But after shedding a few tears, you took a couple deep breaths and left for the airport with me. You know you’ll never see her again, yet I can’t see any change in you because of that. Doesn’t it hurt for you?”

  “Plenty. Feel enough pain, though, and you learn to control it. I’ve learned to deal with grief in my own way.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t want to hear it.”

  Nikki started to move away. Chris grabbed her arm. “Yes, I do.”

  Her eyes went cold. “You make it work for you, Chris, that’s how you live with it. You turn the grief around and sprinkle your bullets with it. You dream about coming face to face with the person who caused it and that keeps you going, takes your mind off the pain. You dream about killing that person a hundred different ways and when you finally finish him the grief is lifted off your shoulders.”

  That left Locke speechless. Once again the coldness of the world he had entered hit him head-on. These people could live with death just fine. It was life that gave them problems.

  Ten minutes later they passed through Austrian Customs and headed through the terminal for their gate. Chris stopped for a drink and snuck a look behind him.

  “He’s following us,” he told Nikki as he fell in step with her again.

  “Who?”
She started to turn.

  Locke grasped her at the elbow. “Don’t look back. It’s the man in the damn porkpie hat. Convinced now?”

  “Enough to be glad I got my knives through security.”

  “You think he’ll be boarding the plane?”

  “More than likely he’s just here to make sure we do. He knows we’re headed for Geneva now. All he has to do is contact Mandala and there’ll be a welcoming committee to greet us at the airport.”

  “What if we changed our plans?”

  “Wouldn’t matter. The man would just change his.”

  “And if we … took him out?”

  If Nikki was surprised at Locke’s suggestion, she didn’t show it. “There could be others with him, probably are. Him we’ve marked; them we haven’t. We watch him while he watches us. Stalemate.”

  “Which gives the advantage to Mandala.”

  Nikki’s face was a mask of determination. “Only for now. We’ll have the whole flight to figure out some way of slipping by them in Geneva.”

  Locke managed to keep a watch on the man with the porkpie hat as he and Nikki joined the boarding line for the flight. Their seats were in the front of the second cabin so they had a clear view of the entrance to the jet. People filed through one after another and found their seats quickly. The stewardess gave the usual set of instructions in German and then English.

  The jet began to move. Chris looked out from his window seat. The man with the porkpie hat was standing against the glass over the runway, watching, hands in his pockets. Locke could see him clearly only for a few seconds. But something about the man’s stare was chilling.

  “He was in the window,” Chris told Nikki.

  “It makes sense,” Nikki whispered calmly. “He’s absolutely sure we’re on the plane now. Geneva can be alerted. He thinks we’re trapped.”

  A chill seized Locke. “Why did he let us see him?” he asked suddenly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He wanted us to see him, that’s what I mean. He wanted us to think just what we’re thinking, and he was standing there in the window to be certain we didn’t try a dodge at the last second. It was worth risking exposure for him.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They put a bomb on this plane!”

  Nikki’s head seemed to snap backward. She searched for a rationale to refute Locke but knew immediately that he was right. Mandala couldn’t chance letting them reach Geneva. The man was a red herring sent to distract them, perhaps even to activate the bomb now that they were on board.

  “What are we going to do?” Chris asked her, fighting against panic.

  “I don’t know. I’ve got to think. We’ve got time. The bomb won’t go off until we’re well in the air, past Zurich at least. No trace that way.”

  “We’ve got to tell them to go back and land the plane! We’ve got to tell them about the bomb!”

  “They’ll detain us, steal time away we don’t have. We’d be sitting ducks for Mandala. He wins either way.”

  Locke thought quickly. “Then only one of us will alert them.”

  Nikki shook her head. “No good. If we go back to Vienna, we run smack into your friend with the hat again. He’ll have others waiting with him, and it’ll take all our efforts to stay out of their grasp. We can’t afford that. Keysar Flats, remember?”

  Locke felt the panic surging now. “What the hell do we do then?”

  Nikki thought quickly. “There’s a way out but it’s risky. We’ll have to wait until we’re close to Switzerland. Another twenty minutes maybe.”

  “And what if the bomb goes off before then?”

  “We’ll have to take that chance. We can’t risk going back to Vienna if my plan backfires.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Hijack this flight.”

  The minutes passed slower than any Locke could ever remember. Finally Nikki leaned back and pretended to stretch, while she freed her Gurkha knives from their sheaths beneath her bulky jacket. A stewardess was approaching, wheeling a tray of beverages. Good fortune, because the cart would block the aisle and prevent any dime-store heroics once Nikki made her move.

  “There might be security agents on board,” she whispered to Locke. “If they get me, rush to them immediately and say I mentioned something about a bomb but you thought it was a joke. Understand?”

  Locke nodded.

  “And whatever happens, act as if you don’t know me. Act terrified, dismayed, inconvenienced. Just don’t look any different from everyone else.”

  The stewardess pushed her cart up even with their seats.

  “Would you care for a—”

  Nikki sprung over the hand rest, Kukhri knife gleaming in her hand as she grabbed the stewardess and spun her around, blade pressed against her throat.

  “Anyone makes a move and she dies!”

  Screams and cries rang out through the cabin. People ducked under seats or covered their ears and eyes in terror. No one dared intervene.

  “You!” Nikki shouted at another stewardess. “Go to the cockpit. Tell them this plane is being hijacked. I want it landed in Zurich straightaway.” Then, to the passengers who had grown silent. “I’m not alone in this. I’ve got partners. They won’t show themselves unless someone foolishly forces them to.” Back to the other stewardess: “Take my message to the cockpit. Now!”

  The stewardess ran down the aisle, whimpering.

  Locke watched Nikki back up to the break between cabins with her blade resting dangerously close to her hostage’s jugular. Her back came up against a steel divider, which would preclude attack from the rear. She seemed to settle down a little, waiting.

  Chris couldn’t settle down at all. His heart was thumping madly against his chest. He forced himself to think. If Nikki’s plan was successful and the jet landed safely in Zurich, Mandala would be caught off guard. He couldn’t have men with green porkpie hats waiting at every airport in the world. Chris would be free to make his escape from Zurich and get back to America by any route he could arrange. Nikki had slipped him plenty of cash to make the trip. The prospects of incarceration, prison even, didn’t faze her.

  “I’ve gotten out of these kind of scrapes before,” she had assured him. “I’ll be free again within a few days.”

  Minutes later the captain’s voice came over the intercom, announcing that the plane was being forced to land in Zurich by an armed hijacker but that the passengers were not in any danger whatsoever. Everyone was asked to stay calm and the delay would be kept to a minimum.

  When the jet had landed in Zurich, the captain coolly approached Nikki and her stewardess hostage, holding his hands in the air.

  “What next?” he asked her in German-laced English.

  She pulled the blade from the stewardess’s throat, freeing her as she handed the knife over to the captain.

  “I’m turning myself over to your custody. Get the passengers off this plane fast. There’s a bomb on board.”

  Locke let himself be swept away in the rush that followed.

  Chris broke free from the body of passengers and collected his thoughts in a men’s room stall. Mandala might have men waiting at the jet’s final destination in Paris, so that city was out of the question for him. He had to head for another, less traveled city, someplace less likely to be within the dark man’s reach.

  He made his way from the men’s room and stopped at the TWA counter where a clerk provided him with the answer: a flight leaving for Madrid in ninety minutes. The wait was nerve-racking but necessary. He went to the gate early and sat facing the runways with his back to airport pedestrian traffic. He could see no one and no one could see him.

  Hours later, from a phone booth in Madrid, he called the number Dogan had given him. It rang once, was answered, and a tone followed. Chris was brief in summing up what had happened. His first two lines, in fact, said it all:

  “Nikki’s out of it. I’m alone.”

  Part Nine:


  Washington and Keysar Flats, Sunday Afternoon

  Chapter 32

  SATURDAY AFTERNOON, CALVIN ROY was working on Van Dam’s files when CIA director Peter Kennally appeared unannounced in his office.

  “To what do I owe this pleasure, Major Pete?” Roy said, looking up. He pulled his glasses off and massaged his tired eyes, then ran his hands over his bald dome.

  “Depends on what kind of mood you’re in, Cal. I’d like to keep my job when you get confirmed as Secretary.”

  “Got a reason why I’d put an ad in the paper?”

  “One just turned up.” Kennally moved forward but didn’t sit down. “One of our agents was quarantined, a Division Six man named Dogan.”

  Roy mocked putting his hands over his ears. “I’m not supposed to hear stuff like that.”

  “This time you’d better. It turns out Dogan was in Liechtenstein at the same time Locke was, and apparently they were supposed to meet at a hotel room in Rome. And the quarantine order was restricted. That means somebody doesn’t want Dogan coming in at all.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  Kennally sighed. “Because one of our agents went to Rome and got himself killed in Dogan’s place. That’s what put me on to the connection in the first place. The hotel was the one our man in Locke’s house received a call from. I did some checking. It seems Dogan’s original assignment was to kill Locke.”

  “Where in hell did that order come from?”

  “Executive sanction.”

  “Van Dam?”

  “I might have started with him but the restricted status on Dogan originated at a lower level. Group commander, station leader—something like that.”

  “Christ,” Roy muttered. “So one of our agents is ordered to kill Locke, probably ends up joining him instead, and then becomes the object of a kill order himself.”

  Kennally nodded. “I’ve lifted the quarantine but it’ll take a while for word to filter into the field.”

  “Ever have a cow piss on ya while you were drawin’ milk, Major?”

  Kennally just shrugged.

  “Well, that’s what I think’s happening to this country right now, and I ain’t got the slightest idea where, when, or how.” Roy hesitated. “Your men got shooting clearance on this Dogan, Major?”