Athena Force 9: Payback

by Harper Allen

  There was only once incident that Sir William could be describing. Dawn’s mind fixed in revulsion on the scenes she’d heard sketchily described in news bulletins and insufficiently reported upon in the few articles that had been written for the papers before censorship regulations dammed up even those meager trickles of information.

  Sir William had called it a bloodbath. From what little she knew, his description was an understatement. Hassad Al-Jihr’s long dictatorship over the tiny Middle Eastern area known as Bah’lein had been marked by years of torture, death and the disappearance of thousands of citizens, but those well-documented evils had been overshadowed by the events that had occurred during the defeat of his regime. While being held pending his trial on crimes against humanity, Al-Jihr was countercharging that the western liberation forces sent in to remove him from power had unleashed a savageness much worse than anything he’d been accused of. The handful of photos and reports that had briefly been made public seemed to bear out his incredible assertions.

  She’d seen her share of violence, Dawn thought with a shudder, but even she’d been sickened by the pictures of slaughtered palace servants and their families. The unknown SAS officer allegedly behind the butchery had been dubbed by the world’s press as “The Wolf of Bah’lein.” It was a shock to learn she knew that wolf under the name of Des Asher.

  Although, according to Sir William, she realized as he continued, she didn’t.

  “It’s criminally unfair. Since no official charges have been laid against him, Asher hasn’t been allowed to defend himself and the damn fool is so loyal to his bloody SAS that he didn’t even lodge a complaint when some idiot at Whitehall tried to have him suspended. I raised merry hell when I heard about it, I can tell you.” London gave the same sharklike grin Dawn had seen tightening his nephew’s features. “So I made them an offer they couldn’t refuse, as I believe the phrase goes. At the time I was ready to jump ship and work exclusively for the Americans. I hate hamburgers and no one over here seems to know how to make a decent cup of tea, but when it comes to coughing up the money needed to properly fund research like mine, you Americans have it all over my penny-pinching countrymen. I’m on the verge of something unimaginably big—the reversal of genetic aging itself. Even the discoveries I’ve made so far could change the way our bodies regenerate from accidents or illnesses. Your government immediately recognized the importance of my research—and how dangerous it could be if it fell into the wrong hands.”

  “You said there was a deal,” Dawn prompted after a heartbeat’s stunned silence. She needed to keep him talking, she told herself tensely. He’d just confirmed Aldrich Peters’s belief that this wild-haired, bad-tempered old man whom some had dismissed as past his scholarly prime had made a breakthrough that would undoubtedly win him his second Nobel Prize…and in the process, save countless lives. Including mine, Faith’s and Lynn’s, she thought exultantly. Sir William’s main aim seems to be aging-reversal, which for an elderly man isn’t surprising, but right now the regeneration process he’s already discovered is a whole lot more relevant to me. Dammit, his notes might even be somewhere in this very room!

  “Ah, yes, my deal,” London said with grim satisfaction. “I told the bastards at home that I’d insist this be a joint British-American venture…but only if Ash was put in charge of security here, instead of being left twisting in the wind while the Bah’lein affair was sorted out. They had no choice but to agree.”

  “You think when the facts come to light during Al-Jihr’s trial Asher will be cleared?” She couldn’t keep the faint note of skepticism from her voice. Sir William glared at her.

  “Damn straight, as you say over here. And even if he’s never officially cleared I won’t believe he gave the order to murder those people. He’s no more capable of acting dishonorably than you are of—of—” He sputtered to a stop. She supplied the rest of his sentence for him.

  “Of being a cold-blooded assassin?” she suggested quietly.

  He looked suddenly tired. “You think I’m a fool who refuses to face facts, don’t you?”

  She stifled the impulse to lean forward and clasp his hand. Dawn Swanson wouldn’t make such a gesture, she reminded herself. Normally she wouldn’t, either, but for some reason Sir William’s staunch defense of his nephew had moved her.

  That’s touching, O’Shaughnessy—real touching. Go ahead and get all misty-eyed if you have to, but don’t forget why you’re here. The old man’s got something you want…and no matter what you have to do to get it, you’re not going back to Lab 33 without it.

  Her inner voice was right, Dawn thought mutinously, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t offer some crumb of comfort to the troubled man sitting across from her.

  “Of course I don’t think you’re a fool. My uncle always took my side in a fight, too,” she said swiftly. “He used to tell me that even if it cost him everything he cared about in the world, he wouldn’t ever stop fighting for me.”

  She halted, her lips still parted from the rush of words that had poured from some part of her she’d thought she’d cut out months ago. And she had, she protested with inner vehemence. The day she’d learned Lee Craig’s real role in her upbringing, she’d unhesitatingly excised her lifelong adoration of the man who’d pretended to care for her.

  He’d vowed to protect her the best way he knew how, she thought, angrily quenching the pain that welled up in her. Had he thought he was keeping his vow by killing the mother she’d never known?

  “That’s how I feel about Asher.” London raked a bony hand through his white hair, disarranging it still further. “Not that he’d thank me if he ever found out about my little deal.” He laughed suddenly, and Dawn realized that the young Oxford genius in the famous photograph from so long ago still lurked below the surface of the respected and honored scientist he’d become. She pushed her own thoughts aside as he continued, an ironic gleam in his eyes. “He hates this assignment. Thinks of it as some kind of baby-sitting detail that he has to make the best of, which is probably why he’s driving me up the wall with all his intolerable security measures. It would be like rubbing salt into a wound to tell him I arranged the whole bloody thing. Here, take a look at this.”

  He jumped from his chair with an alacrity that belied his years and hastened over to one of the oak bookcases that lined the wall. Dawn surfaced from her somber mood of a moment ago. Whether he knew it or not, William London had already discovered the secret of not growing old. He had the mercurial enthusiasms of a child, and under that testy exterior was a boyish sense of humor. She liked him, she thought slowly. If she’d met him under different circumstances, this odd companionship that seemed to have sprung up between them might have developed into friendship.

  “Where in damnation is Jancwiez’s Drosophila melanogaster Magnus: A Revolutionary New Look at the Sex Life of the Fruit Fly?” muttered Sir William, running a finger impatiently along a row of volumes on one of the bookcase’s shelves. “I chose that particular piece of drivel specifically because I knew I’d never take it down to look through it, and yet now it’s not—ah, yes, here it is.”

  Roger’s advice had paid off, Dawn thought as she watched London reach for the book. Even if she hadn’t had the chance to bring up the subject of his notes, the rapport she’d established with Sir William made it possible to suggest they make these teatime meetings a regular occurrence. As his trust of her solidified over the next few days, he might actually let down his guard long enough to voluntarily reveal where he kept the research he wasn’t yet ready to release to the world.

  She hoped it worked out that way, she told herself uncomfortably. Because if it didn’t, her only option would be to break into his rooms during his absence and search for the information Aldrich Peters had ordered her to—

  Her worried thoughts came to a halt as she stared at Sir William. He’d placed the book she’d assumed he’d wanted to show her on a table beside him, but he was still standing with his back to her, his reaching hand
moving counterclockwise inside the bookcase where he’d found the volume. Her keen hearing caught the faint but unmistakable click of tumblers falling into place, and then the old man gave a grunt of satisfaction.

  “Here we are.” He withdrew a slim metal box from the depths of the bookcase and turned to her. “I suppose Asher would have a fit if he knew about this photograph, too, but when he’s been particularly officious it reminds me that he wasn’t always that way.”

  As he spoke he opened the folio-size box and extracted from it a small snapshot. She took it from him, but although she kept her focus on the picture of a very young Destin Asher seated on a pony and bending forward to pat the animal’s glossy neck, she was remembering another photograph, kept along with all else he valued, by a man who was now dead.

  Sir William London and Lee Craig, the hit man known as Cipher, were two very different types. But it seemed likely that they had at least one trait in common, Dawn told herself. Just as Lee had secreted bearer bonds and cash and untraceable passports along with the picture of herself in his hidden safe, she was willing to bet that the photo of Ash wasn’t the only treasured thing his uncle kept in the metal box now sitting on the table in front of him.

  She’d found out where Sir William kept his notes on the regeneration process. Now all she had to do was steal them.

  Chapter 9

  Status: nine days and counting

  Time: 0101 hours

  “Hey, O’Shaughnessy, what’re you wearing?” From the plastic bud nestled securely in Dawn’s ear came Carter Johnson’s voice. Dawn pressed her lips together in exasperation.

  “Chanel No. 5. Eat your heart out, skater boy. Now put Kruger on again.”

  “Sorry about that, Dawn.” The usually stolid-sounding tones of Hendrix Kruger were edged with irritation. “Five by five my end. How are you receiving me?”

  “Same here. Five on the volume scale, five for clarity,” Dawn answered, keeping her voice low. “Tell that jackass standing beside you that if he pulls any more stunts, I’m aborting this operation right here and now.”

  “One of my men is escorting the moegoe out as we speak.” Kruger had never lost his South African accent or the habit of lapsing into Afrikaans slang when annoyed, although circumstances had forced him to leave Johannesburg years before. Dawn knew from Lee Craig that those circumstances included being the alarm-by-pass member of a team that had pulled off a legendary heist of diamonds worth millions—a heist that should have eliminated the need for Kruger to practice his particular criminal specialty ever again, except for the fact that one member of his gang had hired a hit man to take out the others immediately following the caper.

  Hendrix had escaped with his life, but not his share of the diamonds. Lee Craig had warned Dawn about him.

  That big Aryan bastard’s got it in for anyone in our profession, Dawnie. He might say he doesn’t hold a grudge over the way things turned out, but take a look at his eyes sometime. They’re as cold as the grave—and I think that’s exactly where he’d like to put you and me if he ever has the chance. Keep it in mind when you work with him.

  Like I don’t have enough to worry about right now, Dawn thought as she pulled on a pair of black leather gloves. She flipped up the turtleneck of the zip-fronted black top she was wearing so that it covered more of her neck, bent to adjust her pants over her ankles, and slipped on the thin, rubber-soled shoes that were another recent and clandestine addition to her Dawn Swanson wardrobe. Finally she cast a quick glance over the tools attached to her hip belt and then tugged a face-and-hair-concealing balaclava over her head.

  “Locked and loaded, Hendrix. I’ll be in the air shaft for the next ten minutes, so when I get to the electrical room I’ll check in with you again.”

  “Understood.” There was a faint hiss of static in her ear, and then all sound from the tiny bud ceased as her contact with Hendrix Kruger and Lab 33 temporarily broke off.

  She’d been a busy girl in the four and a half days since her conversation with Sir William London in his study, Dawn reflected as she hoisted herself up into the now-familiar shaft. Her first order of business had been to dial the number of the antiquarian bookstore that connected her to Aldrich Peters and inform him she suspected she’d located London’s findings on the regeneration process. Peters’s reaction had been predictable.

  “Get solid confirmation that he keeps his notes in the box. Then kill him and come back here with them.”

  Her reply had been casual. “No problem, Doctor. It’s not the way I thought you’d want to play it, but you’re the boss. I’ll probably see you late tomorrow—”

  “Explain.” Peters’s one-word command had been icy. She’d injected a faint note of surprise into her voice.

  “The buyback, of course. I assumed that once our people had a chance to study William’s papers, you’d find a way to inform the government you’d sell them back to them. But you’ve got other plans, right? I mean, the feds might play ball with a thief, but not when a world-renowned Nobel Prize winner’s been killed while he was under their protection.”

  There had been a moment of silence on the line. When Peters had spoken again his voice had been thoughtful. “You have a point. Since you’re the agent-in-place, what alternative do you suggest?”

  “Well…” She’d feigned dubiousness. “I suppose I could screw something up in the lab one evening and then bring it to the old man’s attention. Knowing him, he’ll stay there all night trying to figure out what went wrong. But, hell, your way’s better, Doctor. The SAS prick who runs the security here does everything but land-mine the corridors after curfew each night. For one thing, there’s a video monitor in every hallway to record all comings and goings. The only reason the cameras aren’t live twenty-four/seven is because the old guy dug his heels in, said it was a gross violation of his staff’s privacy. Asher had to be content with them going on at midnight, but even if I didn’t have to worry about being seen on the monitors I’d still set off an alarm as soon as I tried to get into London’s rooms. The lock works on a facial-features scan, plus a number code as soon as you’re inside. I tell you, Des Asher’s precautions make Fort Knox seem like the petty-cash box at a church bazaar. I’ll pull off the job tomorrow afternoon when I have my next meeting with Sir—”

  “The simplest solution would be to knock out the electrics and emergency power backup to the whole facility for the relevant time period,” Peters said crisply. “I’ll have Hendrix Kruger talk you through the procedure. You’ll need equipment and communications, so I’m afraid it’ll be necessary for you to make a brief trip to Lab 33 to collect everything. Shall we say the night after tomorrow? That will give Kruger time to gather information on the facility’s system so that he can brief you beforehand and we’ll schedule the actual operation for the night following your visit here.”

  Which might explain why I’m so damned sleepy that even this freakin’ air shaft looks comfy to me right now, Dawn thought disgruntledly as she stifled a jaw-stretching yawn. Sneaking out last night and jogging cross-country to where Peters had one of his people stash that ultralight plane for me, flying the little sucker to Lab 33 and staying there long enough to be briefed by Kruger before flying back again and slipping into my room just before daybreak didn’t leave me with a whole lot of nap time.

  Just ahead of her the duct branched into two, and she was fleetingly tempted to take the branch that led to the roof and eventually to the delicious Private Reese’s bed. She smiled ruefully to herself as she took the other branch. All other considerations aside, she would be drummed out of the female population of the world if she crawled under the covers with a babe like Lover Boy, only to waste the opportunity by promptly falling asleep.

  Terry had surprised her. He’d been waiting for her at the east exit of the staff building sharply at seven o’clock on the day he’d spoken to her in Sir William’s study. She hadn’t shown herself, but instead had remained hidden behind one of the handy boulders dotting the grounds that she
’d utilized previously. He’d been holding a second motorcycle helmet by its strap in his hand, and just for a moment she’d toyed with the reckless notion of giving the Swanson chick a night she’d never forget, but common sense had reasserted itself. After half an hour of waiting, Reese had looked at his watch with a wry smile, tossed the helmet to a red-haired female private who was going off duty, and with his lucky companion seated behind him on his Harley had peeled out of the gates a few minutes later. Dawn had wandered back into the building and had consoled herself with a couple of Marmite sandwiches in the cafeteria before heading back to the lab.

  Since he hadn’t tried to contact her since, it looked like she’d blown it with Reese, she thought as she noiselessly slid aside the vent cover that gave access to the electrical room. Within an hour or so she would be leaving this place behind, so it was unlikely their paths would ever cross again, but she would never forget him.

  “And not just because of those dreamy indigo eyes of his, either,” she murmured to herself as she set the vent cover aside, being careful not to strike metal against metal as she did so. “The man probably saved my life, showing up when he did. Although I guess it’s really Asher I should thank,” she added grudgingly, “since it was his message Terry was delivering to Sir William.”

  Unconsciously her hand went to the back of her neck. Was it her imagination, or was there still a tiny raised area from the massive exit path of the bullet that had torn through her throat? Although her regenerative powers had come back just in time, maybe they were no longer capable of completely removing all traces of a wound. She felt a sudden chill at the thought but, with an effort, pushed her fears away. From what Aldrich Peters had said, Lab 33’s genetic team was only missing one critical part of the solution to her gene breakdown, so it wouldn’t take long for them to make the serum once they had William London’s notes in their possession. Instead of worrying about your symptoms, try figuring out who the shooter outside Sir William’s door might have been, she told herself sharply. He knew all about you, so he has to be someone you’ve gone up against in the past, someone who hates you enough to want you dead. The only other possible explanation is that he’s what you once were—an assassin who’s working for someone else. But whose hit list could you—