Iceland: An International Thriller (The Flense Book 2)

by Saul Tanpepper

  "Listen," she said, tugging impatiently at the front seat. "I need to tell you something."

  He quietly asked her to be patient. "Soon," he promised. "I'll explain everything soon. We've still got a ways to go. There will be time."

  "Where are we going?"

  He shushed her. "Wait."

  She didn't want to wait, but she didn't have a choice. Anyway, she was safe, off the streets, in the hands of someone in control and with a plan, even if he wasn't willing to share that plan with her just yet. As unsettling as it was being kept in the dark, at least she sensed that he was looking out for her well-being. And the refugees were being moved for their own safety, too. The situation — whatever it was — was more contained than she had previously thought, and that was an immense relief.

  She laid her head back and willed herself to calm down and be patient.

  As they traveled farther away from the city and into a more rural region, the old, squat buildings yielded to more modern ones, taller and shinier, more colorful and sleek in their dressings of plastic and glass. A welcome change from the dreary gray hewn stone and old wood and ironwork. The land became more open, dominated increasingly by the deep green of the grass and the candy reds and yellows of the delayed fall foliage.

  They initially headed north, then turned eastward. As the scenery changed, she felt the weight of the past few days shift off of her shoulders. The tension was still there, though now less urgent. She waited anxiously for Padraig to finish up.

  Finally, with a long exhale, he removed the earpiece and set it into the console beside him. "Sorry. There was some confusion getting the assets out— the migrants, I mean. Not surprising, given how quickly this came together and was executed. Trying to coordinate on the fly, with so many moving parts." He shook his head.

  "Are they being taken to Roubaix?"

  "Roubaix? No. That was a misdirect."

  "Then where?"

  "Three separate destinations. At least for the time being, until we can be sure the situation has been fully contained. Standard extraction protocol. They've been separated into three groupings, a total of nine buses, plus decoys. It seems three of the buses received bad directions, but they're on track now. And of the trio of buses headed to our destination, one broke down. We've sent a security detail to make sure they're okay."

  Her head was buzzing. "Why didn't Norstrom tell me about any of this last night?"

  "Because when he left you last night, he didn't know about it, luv. He made the decision to extract early this morning. The situation, as you can see, is still developing, still very fluid. Unfortunately, now they know, which means they'll be looking for us."

  "Who is they?"

  "The people we're trying to hide them from."

  "That means nothing to me. Do you mean terrorists?"

  He sucked in a long, deep breath. "Norstrom will tell you himself when he joins up with us later tonight."

  "He expects me to wait that long?" Angel exclaimed. "He promised to call me this morning and he never did!"

  "He's a little tied up right now." Padraig glanced back at her in the mirror and shrugged apologetically. "Like I said, the situation is fluid. He had a new lead he needed to follow up on. He'll rejoin us—"

  "That man dragged me into this mess!"

  "He was trying to protect you."

  "By telling me my husband is a terrorist?"

  "He was warning you," he quietly answered.

  "Of what?" she exclaimed.

  "If it turns out your husband is involved in transferring money to the terrorists or supporters of terrorism, it won't take long before the French and American governments freeze your bank accounts until they can audit the records."

  She clamped her mouth shut. She hadn't thought of that. Norstrom had told her so she could get her financial affairs in order. She had a feeling he wasn't supposed to do that.

  "If it were up to me, I wouldn't have said anything. I'm sorry, but I wouldn't have. But this is Norstrom's gig and— Well, it was his gig, anyway, until about a half hour ago. I'm just following orders."

  "Which are?" she asked, quickly recovering from her shock. She just couldn't think about herself right now. There were too many other things to worry about. "And whose?"

  "The last thing he told me before he left was to keep you away from this operation."

  "But now that the plan has changed, he is no longer in charge. So, instead of taking me away, you are taking me to where?"

  He didn't answer.

  "Please, Padraig. Tell me where we are going."

  "I told you, one of the three sites where they are taking the refugees. Someone will brief you when we arrive."

  "And you could brief me now."

  The muscles in his cheek throbbed.

  "Is he trying to find the leader of the terrorists?" she asked. "Because if he is, I might know something."

  "What?"

  "One of the refugees I met the other day. I am pretty sure he might be working with them. Mahdi Haddad. He flew to Turkey this morning."

  The car jerked as Padraig tapped inadvertently on the brake, but he recovered quickly. It was all the reaction he made, but it was enough to tell her what she'd said was meaningful.

  They continued on without stopping.

  She watched him as he discretely reached for his earpiece again and saw that his hand was shaking.

  "That is where Norstrom went, isn't it? He went to Turkey?"

  Padraig looked up at her, studying her face. She knew he was trying to gauge what to tell her.

  "Yes."

  Chapter Fifteen

  "I can tell you more," she said, immediately recognizing the leverage she now wielded. "But first you need to answer my questions. Why are the refugees being moved? Are they dangerous? Or are they targets? And for the tenth time, where exactly are we going?"

  "If you know something, then you need to tell me."

  "Like you know something, yet will not tell me?"

  "It doesn't work that way, luv."

  "No, it works like this: You tell me what you know, and I reciprocate."

  Once more he glanced at her in the mirror, concern furrowing his brow. They locked eyes, then he looked away, back to the road.

  They drove on in silence for another few minutes before he spoke again. "I read about what happened," he said, "back there in China. I read the report Norstrom filed. I know what happened to him."

  "So?"

  His exhale whistled through pursed lips. "So, it was . . . ." He shrugged. "Remarkable."

  "Did you read the article I wrote that he would not let me publish?"

  "Not officially."

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning he never included it or any mention of you anywhere in the report. He kept you out of it."

  "Why?"

  "To protect you."

  "And yet here I am."

  He sighed and shook his head. "Norstrom felt you were no longer safe on your own and asked me to take you to a safehouse on the coast at Dieppe. Of course, when I tried to get you at the hotel, you'd already left."

  "I am not going to wait around all day for him. Tell me where we are going."

  "It's a private estate just this side of the German border near Saarbrücken. The owner is a retired businessman, very rich, very influential. I'm unclear how he came to be included in this operation, or who asked for your presence there. I can only assume it's because they think you'll have something to contribute to the investigation."

  Once more, he glanced at her in the rearview mirror. She could see the tension in the creases at the corners of his eyes. There was something he wasn't telling her.

  "So, it does have something to do with China?"

  He was careful not to look up. He kept his eyes glued to the road.

  "Why will you not tell me? What is so secret? I have a right to know!"

  He still didn't respond, but she sensed in the slope of his shoulders and the tilt of his head that his resolve was weakening
.

  Several more kilometers passed beneath their tires before he spoke, abruptly breaking the silence to ask if she was hungry.

  She said she wasn't. Nor did she have to pee. But she was thirsty, and she asked if he had any water. He passed a bottle back to her.

  "You don't say very much, do you?" she said.

  He gave her a thin smile. "My wife says I never shut up."

  Angel took a long drink of water and wiped her mouth on her shoulder. "You're married? What's her name?"

  Another long pause. "Pam. It's Pamela."

  "That's pretty."

  He smiled gratefully back at her in the mirror.

  She didn't know whether to believe he was married, or if this was some kind of psychological technique to get her to warm up and feel safe around him. On the other hand, there was no reason for him to lie about it. She was a captive audience.

  "If she were sitting here instead of me," she said, "would you tell her if she asked?"

  He chuckled. "Well, first off, there's no way she would get in the back seat and allow me to drive."

  "And second?"

  "Second, no, she wouldn't settle for not knowing."

  "I think I deserve the same consideration."

  "That's not really fair. She knows where I sleep."

  "On the couch, I bet," Angel muttered.

  He chuckled.

  "And also it is not fair that I should sit back here while you drive."

  She could see the skin around his eyes crinkle in his reflection in the mirror.

  He sighed, then cleared his throat. "I suppose you'll figure it out anyway, once we arrive. Or our host will tell you. Norstrom's going to take the piss anyway that his plans have been overruled, so I might as well be the one he takes it out on."

  "Norstrom doesn't yell."

  Padraig tilted his head, as if he knew better.

  "Well, he can't control everything," she mused, "especially if he's not here. I know he likes to think he can. And he doesn't need to protect me. I can take care of myself."

  "Aye, luv, I believe you can."

  Chapter Sixteen

  Angel waited without saying anything. She had so many questions she needed to ask Padraig, but now that he had committed to telling her what he knew, she didn't want to discourage him or give him any reason to change his mind. It was better to just let him build his own momentum than to trip him up with her impatience.

  Finally, he sighed and said, "You need to understand something about Norstrom, Angel. You don't mind if I call you that, do you?"

  "No, I prefer Angel."

  "Good. I want you to know I consider Norstrom a dear friend. He's a good man, and I'd do anything for him. But when he returned from China, we all thought he had been . . . damaged. I had never seen him like that before— tormented, uncertain. Many of us on the team, myself included, hoped it was temporary. He had just been to hell and back. But we believed he'd be his old self again eventually. After all, China wasn't his first dance, not by a long shot."

  "I noticed the change, too. He's still not the same."

  "After he recovered, he filed his final report. But it was— Well, to put it bluntly, the story he told strained credulity. How could some company invent microscopic robots and make them do what cells are supposed to do? Nobody believed him."

  "I have seen it with my own eyes."

  "Yes, well, none of the rest of us had. And it was just his word. He provided no proof that any of it was true."

  Angel remembered the bottle of undifferentiated nanites she had slipped out of China. They were now sitting in a safety deposit box. If it was proof they needed, she had it.

  "The point is," Padraig continued, "this business has no tolerance for failure. The China project had stalled. We were having no luck extracting information from anyone we captured and detained, so these outrageous claims of his didn't help his case."

  "Extract information?" Angel's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "You mean torture."

  "We have specialists skilled in coercive techniques. I won't insult you by claiming they are strictly legal. Not that it matters, because none of those methods was ever employed on the China detainees. They all committed suicide within seconds of being captured."

  "Cyanide?" she asked. She knew it made her sound cliché, but the sad truth of the matter was, death by self-inflicted cyanide poisoning was not unheard of. It was quick, efficient, and nearly unstoppable.

  While working on a story in the Ukraine she had once met another reporter, a former KGB agent who claimed to have a cyanide capsule implanted in his tooth. He had to be careful not to eat anything hard or risk cracking it. The man apparently believed the story made him sexually attractive to every woman in the place, but Angel had not been impressed.

  She would later come to discover it was true. In the process of proving his machismo he'd gotten himself punched in the face by another journalist. The Ukrainian demanded to be taken to the hospital for an x-ray, which clearly showed the implant.

  "We suspected cyanide, of course," Padraig said. "Or at least something very much like it. But the effects are much worse than anything we had ever seen before."

  "How so?"

  His face visibly blanched. "Have you ever seen a human body decay?"

  Angel nodded. As part of her training to become a doctor, she'd taken a course in criminal medical forensics, which took her to a body farm in Texas. The grounds of the seventeen-acre parcel were littered with dozens of corpses in varying stages of decomposition, some protected from scavenging animals by wire cages, others fully accessible by them. It was this experience that would eventually kindle her interest in the Buddhist sky burials in Tibet.

  "Yes, but have you ever seen one completely disintegrate in minutes, right before your eyes?" Padraig asked. "And not just the skin and flesh, but the bones, too? Their bodies turn to jelly, like they're soaked in acid. Except there is no acid. They dissolve from the inside out."

  Angel's eyes widened in disbelief.

  "We had no idea what we were dealing with. We'd detain a person, but within seconds, they'd start screaming in agony. They'd be dead before we could interrogate them, their bodies turned to soup. After returning from his recovery, Norstrom insisted it was the nanites that caused the accelerated biological decay."

  "But nanites are programmed to heal. He knows that."

  "He said they could just as easily be programmed to destroy. After all, catabolism and metabolism are two sides of the same coin, with the chemical reactions working in opposite directions. Needless to say, he got a lot of pushback. And when our employer threatened to release him, he had no choice but to recant. That was four months ago, and he hasn't publicly spoken a word about China ever since. Not until this morning."

  "So, that is why he so vehemently denied China when I mentioned it last night."

  "Maybe it was reflexive, but I have to think he only wants to protect you, Angel."

  She frowned. While it was nice to think someone out there was looking after her, it was also somewhat of an insult. She wasn't a little girl. She hadn't asked for his help.

  "Did you check the captured men's blood?" she asked. "The tissue? Surely you would be able to see the nanites in the samples. There is his proof."

  "We did check, at Norstrom's insistence. But the cells and tissues break down within minutes, far too quickly for us to collect and analyze. Nothing remained for us to find but molecular precursors— simple sugars and fats, strings of protein, fragments of genetic material that all look as if they'd been digested with industrial grade enzymes. The bones, too. Oddly enough, even blood spilled prior to capture, blood kept completely separate from the body, somehow degrades before it can be analyzed. We've found no sign of nanites in any of the samples. Norstrom's theory is that they self-destruct after finishing the job."

  After hearing this, Angel could understand the team's skepticism. Norstrom's explanations all seemed too convenient. Objectively, it would seem like he was obsessed with the na
nites. No wonder they thought he was crazy. But they did not have the benefit of her own experience. She knew what the tiny machines were capable of doing.

  "We found elevated levels of certain chemicals consistent with high tech circuitry," Padraig said. "But otherwise, nothing to prove the existence of tiny synthetic machines."

  He raised his water bottle to his lips before realizing it was empty, then tossed it to the seat beside him.

  "Norstrom kept arguing it made sense. A company such as this would go to extreme lengths to protect its assets, especially one operating well outside of legal and moral boundaries. They were using their own invention to guarantee their employees would never divulge the company's secrets. But in the absence of any proof, our bosses had no choice but to reject his conclusions."

  "What did they do?"

  "They removed Norstrom from field duty, took him completely off the China project. He fell into a terrible depression. Many of us feared he might hurt himself."

  Angel felt her chest tighten. She knew exactly how he felt. She had experienced the very same feelings during her own recovery.

  "He took a break to gather himself, and when he returned, it seemed he had come to accept his new role. He re-immersed himself in the Panama Papers, this time focusing on transfers of large sums of money, looking for possible laundering activities. It's mind-numbing work, to be perfectly honest, but we believed he was genuinely trying to put as much distance between himself and China as possible. Turns out he had us all fooled."

  "How?"

  "Norstrom has this knack for seeing things at a very high level, better than any of the rest of us. It's an instinct. He can find patterns and connections no one else sees. Half the time I don't think he's even aware of it or how he does it."

  "He thought these payments were connected to China?"

  "Not so much the payments, but the circumstances behind them. In this case, he was digging into a bunch of money transfers made to families of missing German border patrol agents. Before long, he had uncovered secret documents proving the government knew exactly where they were."

  "Where?"

  "In an American military quarantine facility outside of Frankfurt. Turns out the guards weren't missing after all, they were dead. And their deaths were some of the most gruesome I have ever read about. Norstrom never showed the reports to anyone but me. He believed it was proof the nanite experiments have not only been expanded, but that they have been sold to the terrorists."