by Alex Archer
“Nothing’s fair,” Roux snapped. “Don’t be a child, for God’s sake. This idea that you’ll find your answers when you die—it’s silly. And it’s naive to think that death presents some great opportunity. What if we’re only destined to break down and become fertilizer for those who come after us?”
Annja smirked. “You don’t believe that nonsense. You know there’s something more to all of this than just one time around.”
“Do I?”
Annja nodded. “Your own life has been stretched—not due to something amazing you did—but because of the will of God. In much the same way I now have the burden of this sword. It’s all part of a bigger plan.”
“So we don’t get a choice?”
“We get to choose,” Annja said. “But I think the choices are predetermined. The outcome is uncertain, but the paths are already laid out.”
“How does that even make sense?” Roux said.
Annja leaned back. “You’re just upset you didn’t get the sword. You’ll get over it someday.”
Roux shook his head. “I hate it when you get insufferable like this.”
“So, let’s take our minds off this discussion and try to figure out what Hans and the boys are up to.”
“Spier must be heading it up. No offense to your afternoon delight, but I don’t think he’s got the brains to spearhead something like this.”
“I agree,” Annja said. “His talents were obviously designed for more primal activities.”
“Oh, please, that’s the last thing I need to hear about now.” Roux sighed. “Honestly.”
Annja laughed.
Roux rolled his eyes. “You’re starting to sound like that beast Garin. How that boy ever apprenticed under me is beyond me. You would have thought a libido like that would be sent from the devil himself.”
Annja changed the topic. “So if Spier is behind all of this, what’s the point?”
“I think we’ve got to accept the fact that they knew a lot more about things than they let on. They may have even let us believe that we were doing the work for them. That way, we’d make the wrong assumptions.”
“So, let’s go back to the pearl. What do we know about it?”
“It’s radioactive,” Roux said. “So obviously it’s a potent thing to have.”
“Is it possible Spier knew about it being radioactive? I don’t recall him saying anything specifically about that, but it did seem that anyone who came into contact with it in the legend he told me about suffered from misfortune.”
Roux nodded. “So, again, he’s leading us in what we might come up with relating to the pearl. He told you that story and put the suggestion in your mind that something bad would happen. And then when Hsusia told you as much, it simply strengthened the suggestion. Almost like hypnosis.”
“But the danger was real,” Annja said. “I did get sick.”
Roux nodded. “And we thought Heinkel did, too.”
“He must have faked it,” Annja said. “And when he went missing those two times, was it to plant explosives? To simulate the earthquake?”
“So they could grab the pearl,” Roux said. “That’s really what they wanted all along. Spier does his heroic role that we both fell for. Here we were thinking he’d sacrificed himself for the team, but in reality, he and Heinkel secured the pearl and got it ready for transport.”
“But how could they transport it? It’s radioactive.”
“We don’t know the nature of the radiation coming off it,” Roux said. “But they could have simply brought along a storage container that we didn’t even see.”
Annja shook her head. “How would they have carried that? We were with them the whole time.”
Roux smiled. “Do you remember seeing magicians perform? All those wonderful tricks they like to do?”
“Sure.”
“They rely on misdirection. Watch this hand while the other is doing all the work. Spier took the lead right after me going into the tunnel, right?”
“Yes.”
“So we tended to be focused on him while Heinkel, Gottlieb and Mueller were relegated to the background. You focused on Hans and I focused on Spier. The real threat was always out of our awareness.”
Annja shook her head. “So Heinkel and the others could have brought everything they needed with them.”
“Sure. And when Heinkel disappeared the first time, he could have gone back into the tunnel, for example, and brought up both the explosives and the protective container and we wouldn’t have been any wiser. It appeared that he’d been grabbed. But he hadn’t. He’d simply gone back, grabbed the gear and come back along a different route.”
“Spier would have had to guess that the pearl was radioactive in some way.”
Roux shrugged. “Maybe he did. Maybe he simply thought it would be some sort of energy device. And being intelligent—because he certainly is—he simply took steps to cover any contingency. The radiation may have been as much a surprise to him as any of us. But he would have planned ahead for that possibility.”
“We’re playing a bad game of catch-up here,” Annja said. “And I don’t much care for it.”
“The real question now,” Roux said, “is what do they hope to achieve in America? And Massachusetts, no less.”
“George said he’d try to work on that and have something for us by the time we land in Boston.”
“Let’s hope he doesn’t take too long,” Roux said. “Time doesn’t seem to be a luxury we have a great deal of at the moment.”
“I know he’ll work his ass off,” Annja said. “Especially if he happens to think that dinner is riding on it.”
“Stop using sex as a weapon, Annja.”
Annja looked at him and broke out into a grin. “What did you say?”
Roux waved his hand in the air. “Oh, nothing. I heard a song the other day and I’ve been dying to say it ever since.”
“Well, glad I could oblige.”
The flight attendant stopped by to ask if there was anything they needed. Roux asked for a glass of whiskey. Annja asked for a pillow. When the attendant left, Annja looked at Roux and frowned.
“You’ve been drinking a lot lately. You okay?”
He frowned. “Why? Do you want to be my sponsor?”
“Do I need to be?”
“I enjoy my drinks, Annja,” Roux said. “Leave me to them, if you please.”
“Fair enough.” Annja looked out of the window and watched the clouds pass by for a few moments.
The attendant returned with Roux’s whiskey. He took a sniff and nodded as if he approved. Then, just before he took a sip, he made a very subtle gesture. Annja caught the movement.
“What was that?” she asked.
“What was what?”
“That movement you made, like you were toasting someone.”
Roux frowned. “You’ve just spent the past several days being completely unaware and now, what—you’re making up for lost time?”
“You were as unaware as I was. Now spill it.”
The attendant brought Annja her pillow.
Roux nodded at it. “Today happens to be an anniversary of sorts. For a special someone I lost a long time ago. Now put your head on that pillow and go to sleep. Allow me to enjoy some memories in peace.”
28
Annja slept through the refueling in Honolulu and only woke when Roux tapped her on the arm. She was alert immediately. “Where are we?”
“Boston, according to the pilot. We’re starting our preliminary approach. But we’re not landing at Logan.”
“Why not?”
“Apparently this plane is more welcome at military fields. So we’re landing in Bedford, Massachusetts, at Hanscom Field. Part of an Air Force base but it also handles civilian planes like this one.”
“Civilian. Right.” Annja stretched. “I’ve been out for a while, I guess?”
“Hours and hours,” Roux said. “It was pleasant being alone with my thoughts. Did you get some good sleep
?”
“Actually, yes. I feel like I slept better on this plane than I have in months.”
Roux nodded. “Strange how that happens sometimes.”
Before Annja could respond, the flight attendant came toward her with a phone. “Excuse me, Miss Creed? I’ve got a phone call for you.”
Annja took the phone. “Hello?”
“How’s the flight?”
Annja smiled. “It’s amazing, George. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Oh, sure you can,” George said. “But we’ll talk about that later. For right now, we’ve got other things to discuss.”
“Did you find a connection?”
“And how. Turns out the German chancellor is vacationing in Massachusetts. On Martha’s Vineyard. The president is supposed to join her in a few days.”
“Well, that’s good news, right? I mean, if the chancellor is there now and our president is coming in soon, then that means the Secret Service will have that place buttoned up so much a mouse couldn’t sneak through.”
“Presumably,” George said. “But it depends on what your team of lunatics might be trying to do. If they’re going for a kidnap, then, yeah, it’s probably almost certainly not going to work. But if they’re looking to blow them all to hell, for instance, then depending on the explosive, they wouldn’t need to breach the perimeters that the Secret Service will have set up.”
“That would mean a lot of explosives, wouldn’t it?” Annja asked.
“Usually. Unless they had access to, say, something nuclear. Then they could be back on Cape Cod and set the thing off and it would vaporize everything within twenty miles, depending on the yield.”
Annja’s stomach sank. That had to be it. A nuclear explosion.
But George interrupted her thoughts again. “Or they could use a dirty bomb. Set it off and make everyone ill with radiation sickness. That’s pretty nasty stuff, too.” He paused. “So, what do you think they’re up to?”
“I don’t know,” Annja said. “There’s a chance they might have access to nuclear material, though.”
George paused. “Are you serious?”
“I think so.”
“Annja, I’m going to have to escalate this accordingly. You know that, right?”
“Yes,” Annja said. “But the thing is, we need to get these guys now. If they get wind that we know about it, then they’ll go to ground and we’ll never find out where that nuke is.”
“Are you sure they’ve got a nuke?”
Annja paused. “I don’t know.”
George sounded impatient. “Well, what the hell does that mean?”
“It means I don’t know, George. I wish I did. We were in the Philippines to find some long-lost giant pearl, but it turns out that it wasn’t a pearl, after all. It was some sort of naturally radioactive object that could power lights, supply oxygen and all that stuff.”
“Are you messing with me, Annja?”
“Definitely not.”
George groaned. “I don’t know how I’m going to take this to my bosses. What am I supposed to say, that I think there might be a band of crazy ex-special-ops guys looking to take out the German chancellor using some sort of naturally radioactive globe of something?”
“I know it’s not the best scenario.”
“It’s not even close.”
“So what do we do?”
“Fortunately for you, you happen to be friends with a pretty incredible guy. Leave it to me and I’ll get something cooking on this. You guys are slated to land at Hanscom. Stay there until I contact you.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, gotta run.”
The phone disconnected and Annja slumped back in her seat. She looked at Roux. “This whole thing sounds ridiculous.”
“Not necessarily,” Roux said. “There are such things as naturally occurring radioactive materials—they’re called NORMs—and they’re a by-product of the oil and gas industry. You don’t normally find them in such a form as the pearl, but the concept at least is not unbelievable.”
“What a relief.”
“Even more,” Roux said, “the U.S. government doesn’t actively regulate NORMs at all. Someone with enough creativity and ingenuity could theoretically put enough together to at least create some type of dirty bomb. It’s not as though this whole thing is completely crazy. There are precedents for it.”
“Really? Another band of ex-KSK commandos got their hands on a radioactive relic and planned to kill someone with it? When did that happen?”
Roux sighed. “You should really restrain that sarcasm of yours, Annja. It does get tedious after a while.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. In the meantime, George wants us to stay put once we land at Hanscom.”
“Why?”
“He’s putting something together.”
Roux yawned. “Wonderful. No doubt it will be a platoon of government bureaucrats all jockeying to further their own careers while a potential disaster looms. I’ve always found it so fascinating that these people are supposed to be keeping others safe and yet, at the end of the day, they’re exactly like the very people they claim to keep us safe from. Everyone’s out for their own good. That bottom line is all-powerful.”
“Well, I don’t hear you coming up with any excellent plans of your own. I’m all ears if you’ve got one formulating.”
“What’s the target?”
“As far as George can tell, it’s on Martha’s Vineyard.”
Roux smiled. “Really? How nice. Charming little island. I used to visit it frequently back in the 1980s. I had quite a nice sail in Nantucket Sound with a very prestigious television news anchor who used to summer there. Oh, the stories he would tell me over a few bottles of wine. Fascinating stuff. Truly.”
“Roux!”
“Oh, all right. Let me think about it. We should be on the ground fairly soon, right?”
The plane banked at that moment and started to descend at a steep angle. The flight attendant came around. “Seat belts, please. We’ve been directed to come in fast.”
“Why fast? What’s wrong with slow?” Annja asked.
But the attendant had already walked past her so she could strap herself in. Annja heard the flaps come down and then the landing gear descended from the bottom of the aircraft.
Outside her window, trees and buildings and highways and cars came into view all at once. She saw other planes nearby, including several fighter jets. They must use those to scramble in case of a terrorist incident on board a civilian plane.
And then the plane was coming in and Annja felt the first touchdown as the wheels made contact with the tarmac. The nose of the plane came down and they were back on the ground after nearly twelve hours in the air.
Roux breathed a sigh of relief. “I happen to hate airplane landings. Truly awful things.”
“I didn’t think you were afraid of flying,” Annja said.
“You would be, too, if you were around during the initial days when no one knew what the hell they were doing.”
Annja smiled. “Good point.”
Roux stood and stretched as much as he could. “Let’s get out of here. I need to feel solid earth under my feet again.”
They thanked the pilot and crew and stepped off the plane.
Hanscom Field had been converted to a mostly civilian airfield, although it was adjacent to the part used by the U.S. Air Force. Annja looked at the line of corporate jets parked near hangars. She thought she spotted a movie star walking toward one of them.
“It’s a lot less busy here than at a regular airport,” she said to herself.
From the nearby terminal building, a young man ran up to the aircraft. “Welcome to Hanscom, Annja.”
She couldn’t believe it. “George?”
He grinned. “Figured it would be better if we did it this way.”
“How’d you get here so fast?”
“It’s a skip from Washington. A little less time than coming across the Pacific Ocean.”<
br />
“I guess.” She looked him over. George had trimmed down and cleaned himself up considerably since the last time she’d seen him. He still had thick glasses perched atop his nose, but she could see evidence of an exercise routine. And his clothes looked clean and fit him properly.
“You’ve been made over, huh?”
He smiled. “You like? Pretty different from the last time you saw me.”
“Definitely,” Annja said.
“If we could skip the fashion pleasantries,” Roux said. “I think we have more pressing matters to discuss.”
George held out his hand. “You must be Roux.”
“I am.”
“Nice to meet you,” George said. “Why don’t you guys come into the building. I’ve commandeered a corner office so we can talk this out. We’ve only got a little time before this turns into a three-ring circus so I want to be sure I have all the facts straight before the clowns get here and ruin everything.”
“Sounds good,” Annja said. They walked into the main building, but aside from a lone state trooper, Annja saw little in the way of security.
George led them up to the second floor and into an office that he promptly locked behind them. On the table was a state-of-the-art computer. George sat down behind it and typed in his password.
“All right, so let’s go over this again.”
Annja took him through everything that had happened over the past several days. Roux interrupted at key points, including taking five minutes to describe how Annja had apparently single-handedly killed a massive tiger shark intent on devouring her.
“A tiger shark?”
Annja sighed. “Roux, you’re not helping matters.”
When they were finally finished, George leaned back and put his hands behind his head. “That’s pretty crazy shit.”
“I know,” Annja said. “But it’s the truth.”
“Oh, I know it’s true. I mean, we’ve got the trail to prove these guys aren’t good eggs. But the facts surrounding the situation are just bizarre. I mean, how the hell would they transport something radioactive on a civilian bird? They’d set off all sorts of alarms. I don’t know if it could even be done.”