Mystery: The Sam Prichard Series - Books 5-8

by David Archer

  “All right, I'll get ahold of him and see if he has any ideas on that line. Other than that, how are you doing, Sam?”

  Sam looked at Natasha and Ken, and shrugged his shoulders. Natasha had her own phone out, and was whispering furiously into it. “Baby, I wish I'd never heard of any of this,” he said. “I wish I was back home in our house, with you and Kenzie, and didn't even have any clue these things were going on. Trouble is, I do know, and I can't sit back and hope that someone else can deal with it. That's just not my way.”

  He heard Indie hold back a sniffle. “I know that, Sam,” she said, “and it's part of why I love you so much. Okay, so let me get this straight. You need any information you can get on where and when Chandler might be going from where he's at now, as well as any info on who he might have as his second-in-command, or backup person. Am I missing anything?”

  “Not that I can think of. I guess the big issue, right now, is whether taking him down is going to be enough to stop his plans. If we knew that for sure, it could make a world of difference. As long as we're not certain of that point, then we could just be making things worse.”

  Indie gave a sarcastic laugh. “Well, then maybe it's a good thing that you haven't had greater success before now, right?”

  Sam smiled. “Yeah, I guess that's right. Thanks for rubbing my nose in it.” He closed his eyes and thought for a moment, then opened them again. “Something else,” he said. “Ask your buddy if he can get us anything on the people Chandler might have working with him from other countries. That could be critical, and the first one he could be looking at is the woman who lives in that house where he's hiding right now. She's some sort of helper in the Libyan mission; ask him to find out anything he can on how she might be involved, or her government.”

  Indie said she'd get hold of Gary right away, told Sam she loved him and hung up. He looked at Ken and Natasha, who were sitting there watching him as if hoping he was about to pull a miracle out of his ass. He shrugged and smiled.

  “Well, she's trying to get us some serious intel, so that we know what we're up against. She's got somebody in Chandler's office who's willing to feed her information, and beggars can't be choosers. We need whatever we can get, as far as intelligence. Keep your fingers crossed that she does us some good.”

  Natasha shook her head in irony. “Ken,” she said. “If someone had told me a week ago that today I would be sitting here with a rogue agent and an ex-cop turned private eye whose wife does better cyber work than the entire cyber warfare division of the company, and that the fate of most of the free world probably depends on what our little band can do, I would have refused to believe it. And if whoever it was managed to convince me that it was true, I would probably have gone into my bedroom and blown out my own brains.”

  Kenneth Long burst out laughing, and it took him a moment to get himself back under control. “Natasha, you would've done no such thing. Just the absolute incongruity of the whole concept would have been enough to make sure you would stick around just to see what might happen.”

  She looked at him for a moment, then shrugged and rolled her eyes. “You're probably right,” she said, “but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't have been smarter to blow my own brains out. Let's face it, we don't exactly have a lot of hope, here. I mean, come on, there's a pretty good chance we're about to see the entire world turned on its ear. Boys, if we don't stop him, this insane plan of his to turn so much of the world against itself is probably gonna work! You take all of these countries and pit them against each other, you're going to have chaos. Now, if somebody steps up who can get enough of their attention long enough to make them listen to a plan that could bring clarity to it all, then you got yourself a new world leader. I don't know about you guys, but that scares the hell out of me!”

  Sam grinned. “Not long ago, I would have agreed with you completely. The thing is, I just had an incredible crash course in prophecy, and as far as I can tell, there's still a very, very slim chance that Chandler really is a part of what's supposed to be happening, even if we disagree, he and I, on which prophecies to believe. Now, I think he's a fake, and that he's simply trying to take power for himself that is not intended to be his. If he's not real, then he's nothing but a terrorist, a monster, and a monster needs to be put down. Holy crap, haven't you guys ever watched Supernatural? Monsters have to die, just ask Sam and Dean!”

  “Well, there's not much doubt he's a monster,” Ken said. “I guess the only real question remaining is what we have to use against him. Silver bullets? Wooden stakes? What's it going to take?”

  “Sam and Dean – and incidentally, that's one of my favorite American television programs – those two never had to deal with anything as evil and real as Grayson Chandler. Somehow I doubt that even with all the information they had on monsters and such,that they could have found a reference to the special, magical weapon that is necessary to deal with one like this guy. I don't think we need silver, I think plain old lead will do it; however, I'll confess that I'm beginning to think we need to sanctify it with prayers and maybe some holy water!”

  Sam leaned forward and buried his face in his hands again. “Look, if we can't touch him where he's at, then we've got a mess on our hands, already. Natasha, can you put someone out there to watch, see when he leaves and which way he's going?”

  “Already done,” she said. “I took care of that while you were on the phone with your wife again. I'll have three people watching him from three different angles within twenty minutes. If and when he moves, we'll know it.”

  Sam nodded. “Kinda figured that's what you were doing, good job. So, I guess the only thing for us to do right now is to try to get some rest. Natasha, just be sure to wake us if you get any word. Now, get off my couch, I want to try to snooze as much as I can between now and whenever all hell breaks loose. Next time we get Chandler in our sights, I don't want his luck holding out any longer. I don't care how many false gods he's got on his side, I want the son of a bitch's throat in my grasp, and I want his balls where I can crush them if that's what it takes to break him.”

  Natasha grinned, then took Ken's hand and led him back to the bedroom. He didn't put up any resistance, Sam noticed, although it was doubtful he was capable of much more than resting. Something about bullet wounds had a tendency to eliminate thoughts of any other activities, unless those activities were necessary to survival.

  Sam moved back to the couch and adjusted the pillow, then lay down and tried to relax.

  3

  Herman: Stony, are you around?

  Gary Stone saw the message appear in a box on the right of his screen.

  Stony: I'm working. What's up?

  Herman: talked to my guy. We know where your boss is, but he's untouchable as long as he's there.

  Stony: yeah, DI. If they do anything there, could trigger WW3.

  Herman: bingo. Can you get anything on when he might move and where to?

  Gary didn't type anything for a couple of moments, and Indie knew he was probably thinking it over. A moment later, she saw the little icon that indicated he was typing.

  Stony: don't know anything yet. If I were to call him and say I had some way to know your guys were going to move on him, he'd probably head out fast, but I wouldn't know where to. We might use that as a last resort, make him jump out in front of them, right? Meanwhile, I'll try to figure his next move while Maggie is working on identifying his Number Two.

  Herman: Maggie?

  Stony: lol. My version of your Herman. Maybe someday we can introduce them, let them play chess.

  Herman: introduce a pair of AI programs to each other? Scary. Suppose they hit it off and give birth to something that decides people are no longer necessary?

  Stony: Good point, I'd hate to be grandpa to the Terminator or something worse.

  Herman: yeah. Bad enough we got your boss. The things he's out to do would be just as bad for humanity as Skynet.

  Stony: all too true. Okay, let me get back to it.
If I get anything, I'll let you know.

  Gary sat there and stared at his laptop's screen. He wasn't sure exactly who Indie was, but she had guts, he was sure of that. She had to know that her computer could be traced when she was talking to him, and for all she knew, he could be playing her, stringing her along to keep her and her husband guessing about what Chandler knew or didn't know.

  He reached for the keyboard again, and began entering information into Maggie. One of her built-in functions was to scan all the computers in the offices that Gary worked in, and he told the program that he wanted rapid notification of any internal messaging through the system, from or to Chandler. When he had finished giving the program these instructions, he started looking over the results he had been getting from his previous search.

  Like Indie's Herman, Mad Maggie displayed results in a list of links to other files, whether on Gary's own computer, somewhere in the network from the office or even on the web. The first page of results showed literally dozens of links, and he began scanning through them.

  The first twenty all seemed to be of people connected to Chandler through his personal life. Gary had told Maggie to look for anything that might connect particular individuals to the “M” that kept turning up in Chandler's notes, and she had done her job. Maggie had searched through all of Chandler's notes about people he knew, looking for any “M” notation, and had found several. Unfortunately, he had forgotten to tell her to ignore a capital M that was part of a name or word, and to look only for instances where it appeared alone. He rolled his eyes and began re-writing his instructions, then turned the program loose once again.

  That took only a few minutes, and then he was surprised to see that Maggie had already flagged some of Chandler's internal messages for his review. He popped open the page and looked them over.

  The first message on the page seemed to be from Chandler to some unidentified woman in the international transactions office, asking her to forward to him a copy of a report she had done on Yusrah Almagia, a senior attaché in the business bureau of the Libyan Embassy to Israel in Jerusalem. The report had to do with transactions made between Libyan businesses and some companies in Europe, companies that kept turning up over and over in Chandler's notes. Klockenbrink Electronics, Fuhrler Engineering, Burkschwitz and Meierminsk, a law firm, and many others all had sent substantial sums of money to various companies in Spain, Austria, Italy and Great Britain, each of which was apparently approved by Ms. Almagia. Gary made a list of the transactions and added the companies behind them to Maggie's search parameters. The program would look up each company's officers and major stockholders to see if any of them might fit the profile he was building on “M.”

  The next message appeared to be from someone, possibly an analyst, over at the Russia desk. It said that Stas Nicklovitch, who was one of Russia's most brilliant biologists, had perfected a strain of wheat that was almost gluten free, would grow to harvest in eleven days and actually added nutrients to the soil. This feature allowed it to be replanted within a day of harvest, and it would grow well even in temperatures as low as the mid forties. This would allow it to produce as many as twenty five full crops per year in most climates, and sometimes more.

  This announcement had been suppressed, the message said, in accordance with Chandler's instructions, and no news of the development had been allowed out of Nicklovitch's laboratory farms. Unfortunately, this had required the elimination of two of his assistants, Sabina Petrov and Yevgeni Utkin, who had tried to leak the information to WikiLeaks. Professor Nicklovitch was very upset about their deaths, but said that he understood the necessity, since the announcement of such a potent food source would mean the chance for many third world and less-developed nations to begin to feed their starving populations in ways that they had not been able to do previously.

  Gary sat back in utter shock and stared at the monitor. A discovery of this nature could conceivably mean an end to world starvation; for Chandler to withhold it until he could have it announced to support his plans for world domination was to allow thousands, maybe millions, to starve to death when it wasn't necessary. He forced himself to accept the reality of what he was seeing, and went on.

  The next few messages were simple and innocuous, having to do with staff members asking for time off, others wishing Chandler a happy birthday – Gary hadn’t even known it was coming up – and other such things, so he skimmed through them quickly and went on.

  The one after those, however, brought him up short. It was a terse message from an unidentifiable agent of Chandler's in Rome.

  Thought you'd like to know that another Cardinal has come on board with us. That makes eight of the most prominent Cardinals, and gives us a solid majority in the College of Cardinals since so many of the others will follow their leads. The only holdout among the ones you wanted locked in is George Cardinal Simmons from Boston. He's here, right at the moment. Should I take any action on him?

  Chandler was trying to manipulate the College of Cardinals? But why? The current Pope was in good health, so there wouldn't be a Conclave anytime soon – unless, of course, something unexpected should happen to the pope!

  “Great God in Heaven,” Gary whispered to himself, “he's going to have the pope assassinated!”

  * * * * *

  “He's moving!” Natasha said loudly, and Sam was up in an instant. “I just got the message, he's left Almagia's house and is heading this direction. Let's get out of this room, we're sitting ducks here!”

  Ken was on his feet and slamming another pistol under his jacket, so Sam grabbed one and did the same. He took one of the Glocks that Natasha had brought them the day before, then snatched up a couple of the extra magazines. Natasha took the remaining nine mil, and they headed out the door toward the elevator.

  “How could he know where we are?” Sam asked. “Did anyone in our office know?”

  “No one,” Natasha said. “At this moment, I'm wondering about the man your wife has been talking to. Perhaps she let our location slip, and he passed it along?”

  Sam shook his head angrily. “She wouldn't make that mistake,” he said. “Believe me, she's smarter than all of us put together, and her instincts are excellent. She'd never give him any information he could use against us.”

  “Well, if he's coming for us, then somebody did,” she snapped back at him. “My watchers say that he's just turning onto King David Street, coming from the south. If he's coming to the hotel, he'll be here in two minutes.”

  “Then he'll find us waiting for him, in the lobby,” Ken said. “There's no point in worrying, we've simply got to be ready for whatever may happen.”

  “Who's worried?” Natasha asked. “I never worry, I simply like to be prepared. I've found that it tends to keep me alive. Anything wrong with that?”

  The elevator opened, and they stepped into the lobby. A quick look around told all three of them that there was nothing unusual in sight, so they spread out and walked in different directions, instinctively posting themselves where they could all watch the front door, but keep an eye on other entrances, as well. A couple of minutes passed, with no surprises, so Sam looked over at Natasha.

  She was looking back in his direction, and hooked her head to tell him to come her way. He quickly stepped across the intervening space, and joined her just as Ken did.

  “Surveillance says he turned on to Paul Emile Botta Street,” she said. “He's apparently meeting someone for breakfast at Shlomo's. It's a popular place—indoors, quiet, secure; I doubt we could get in close enough to see him without being spotted.”

  “Great,” Sam growled. Another chance we can't do anything with. Let's get down there and try to catch him as he's leaving, maybe we can at least follow him to somewhere we can try to take him.”

  Natasha rolled her eyes as if frustrated. “Okay, then let's go. We can follow, maybe, but remember that we're still looking at risk, here. If we take him down and he has someone waiting in the wings, we're back to square one, except w
e don’t know who we're looking for. We can't risk that, Sam.”

  Sam smiled. “Who said anything about taking him down? I want to take him in, as in capture the sonofabitch! You let me have him for an hour, we'll know who his backup is.”

  Ken put a hand on his shoulder. “You can't count on that, Sam. Chandler is a religious fanatic, even if his religion is something so out there that none of us can understand it. I've seen religious fanatics withstand tortures that would crack anyone else.”

  “Well, we'll never know if we just stand around here talking about it, for God's sake, let’s go!” Sam stormed away from them and headed for the door.

  Ken looked at Natasha and shrugged. “He gets this way, sometimes. I think we better follow him, don't you?”

  She laughed. “If we don't, God only knows what kind of mess we’ll have to clean up. Let's go.” The two of them followed Sam out the door and towards the parking lot.

  Sam hadn't gotten that far ahead of them, and even with Ken limping a bit, they caught up with him before he got to her car. He glanced at each of them.

  “Glad to see you decided to join the party,” he said.

  “Wouldn't miss it,” said Ken. “I hear tell it could turn out to be quite a blast.”

  “That's what I'm hoping for,” Sam said with a grin. “In fact, I'm counting on it.”

  They climbed into the car and Natasha got behind the wheel. She started up and backed out of the parking space without a word, then turned on to King David Street and headed for the intersection, already signaling her turn. The light was green when she got there, so she made the turn with no problem. Just a couple of blocks later, she pulled over to the side of the road and parked.

  She pointed across the street at what appeared to be a small but fairly nice office building. “That's Shlomo's,” she said. “The big building a couple doors down is the French Embassy, and there are those who think Shlomo's is simply a part of their mission. I think more Embassy business gets done in Shlomo's than it ever does in their offices. Odds on, Chandler is meeting with French Embassy staff right now.”