Everett stepped up to Alexander, barely seeing his silhouette in the darkness.
“No, not nuts, but Sarah’s just like Jack, and that pisses him off to no end.”
The three men turned with raised weapons as Sarah came bounding out of the hidden room just as the wall slammed home. She saw she was about to be shot and she skidded to a halt on the dirt floor. Farbeaux, who had already started for the wooden staircase, saw what was about to happen.
“No!”
The three men didn’t shoot, but kept their weapons trained on her as Sarah looked from the muzzles pointed at her to the Frenchman standing on the bottom step.
“Brave little Sarah, you could have been shot.” He stepped down and made the man closest to him lower his weapon. He gestured with his right hand for the others to do the same. “I see you are no better at following orders than you were before.”
“Please, Henri, I need to explain why we’re here.”
“I want no reasoning from you or Colonel Collins. You are in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I have too many valuable items in that room to lose to your Group, or the authorities. I’m sorry. I have other places I need to be at the moment.”
Sarah watched as Farbeaux turned his back and started back toward the stairs.
“You know we wouldn’t ask for your help if it was for any of us. We need that diary or anything else that may lead to Sagli and Deonovich, we don’t care about that damn room or what’s in it.”
Farbeaux turned and tilted his head in Sarah’s direction. He remained silent and she decided he would hear her out.
“It’s Jack’s sister, his little sister. She’s been kidnapped by those two maniacs, for what reason, we don’t know.”
“I would suspect that Colonel Collins’s personality may run in the family and that has led to this young lady’s downfall.”
Whatever the Frenchman had been going through since she last saw him, Sarah could see that his eyes were still distant, meaning to her that the death of his wife down in the Amazon basin was still not far from the surface.
“We are tracking them and this may be our only shot, Henri. You wouldn’t want a young woman to get brutalized by these bastards by withholding something that may help her.”
“I noticed you have the head of the Montreal division of CSIS with you. Why is he here?”
“He was with Jack’s sister when she was taken.” Sarah thought something through very quickly. “How did you know Mr. Alexander was Canadian, and the head of his intelligence division?”
Farbeaux didn’t comment, he just started to turn toward the steps again.
“They cut off her finger just to prove to her employers what they are capable of.”
“Who is her employer?” he asked without turning back.
“She’s agency.”
Farbeaux started to laugh, but there was a serious lack of real humor coming from the eerie sound. Even his three men looked at each other with smiles. Henri started up the stairs.
“Place young Sarah back with her friends until I decide how to dispense with this problem.” He started up the stairs. “You have been a most helpful friend, Sarah.”
“What if it was Danielle that was taken and you needed Jack to help find her?” she blurted out as one of the three men took her by the arm.
Farbeaux only hesitated briefly on the stairs leading up into the house, then he continued on. “Follow my orders and place her in the storage room.”
My God, Sarah thought, he’s really going to kill us all.
The wall was opened only partially and Sarah was thrown back into the storage room. She fell to the floor and Jack, Everett, and Alexander were there to help her up.
“You go ahead and try something like that again, Lieutenant, and I’ll have your ass!” Collins hissed.
“That was very stupid, young lady,” Punchy said as he swatted some of the dirt from Sarah.
Everett walked toward the back of the room when he heard Ryan and Mendenhall coming back toward the front.
“Well?” Carl asked, when he saw their darkened outlines.
“Nothing. A solid wall of concrete—it would take dynamite to get through it, and then about three days of digging,” Ryan answered.
“How’s Sarah?” Mendenhall asked.
“I guess Farbeaux wasn’t in the negotiating mood.”
Up toward the large sliding wall, Jack took Sarah by the arm and steered her away from the others.
“Well?”
“He’s not listening, Jack. He hasn’t changed his attitude toward us. He still blames us for Danielle’s death.”
“You mean me.”
“It really doesn’t matter; all of us are his problem at the moment.”
Collins squeezed her arm and then pulled her to him and looked at her in the darkness. “Thanks for trying anyway, Short Stuff.”
“So what are we going to use to defend ourselves when that door opens and those Froggies open fire on us with those automatic weapons?” Mendenhall asked from the rear of the storage room.
“Well, we have a whole bunch of books to throw at them,” Everett said.
“Great,” Ryan and Will offered at the same time.
Ten minutes later, the wall fronting the storage room separated. It only traveled four feet before it stopped.
“Colonel Collins, and only Colonel Collins, step through the opening please,” Henri said from outside in the basement.
Sarah pulled on Jack’s arm and he could see her now that a dim light filtered into the room as she shook her head.
“No, make him come in and get us all, you stay put, Jack,” she said, the pleading evident in her words and Collins could tell she was close to crying.
“Listen,” he said in a low voice, “Farbeaux’s a lot of things, Short Stuff, but I don’t think he’s capable of cold-blooded murder.” He smiled. “At least not here, and not now.”
Sarah still tried to pull Jack back as he stepped through the opening.
Jack saw the lighted room beyond and the only man standing there was Henri Farbeaux. Collins stood and watched the Frenchman. His men were nowhere to be seen. Henri just stood in the center of the room waiting with his right hand in his pants pocket.
“Young Sarah should be a defense lawyer, she has quite a talent for lost causes.” Farbeaux took a few steps toward Collins. “For whatever good it may do you, Colonel, I will assist in your endeavor to recover your sister. I make no promises, the task will be arduous and difficult, but between myself and a mutual friend of ours, I think I know where it is your Russian friends are going.
“You may tell the others they may come out now, if you accept my offer of help.”
In answer, Jack turned and stuck his head through the opening and told them all to come out of the storage room.
Farbeaux smiled and looked at each face in turn and then faced Collins once again.
“So, Colonel, our destinies have been placed on hold once more. You can be certain that it was only my friend Sarah and that horrible rebuke I saw in her wonderful eyes that made me change that destiny for you tonight. As for us, we must leave this place; I have transport waiting outside, the local police will be sending their relief very soon.”
“Colonel Farbeaux, I’ve studied you more than any adversary I’ve come up against, and I can’t figure out why are you doing this? It’s not for Sarah, and it surely isn’t to help me find my sister.”
“Ah, you do know me, Jack. I do have one demand—I want the Twins of Peter the Great, when this little expedition is over of course.”
“Oh, of course, even though earlier you said they didn’t exist.”
Henri walked forward and stepped into the storage room and went to one of the first bookshelves and retrieved a small leather-bound book. He blew some dust off of it and then went back to face Collins. Farbeaux only hunched his shoulders, but kept the smile.
“The Petrov Journal and the Lattimer Papers, Colonel,” he said as he held the items and then g
ave them to the American.
“They weren’t destroyed—Chavez actually gave his life to protect them?” Jack asked as he took the journal.
“He took a chance that the men who killed him would have more mercy on him than—”
“You?” Jack said, finishing Farbeaux’s sentence.
“Exactly,” Henri said, smiling.
“Okay, Henri, but after I get my sister back, and you have these diamonds that don’t exist, we do have unfinished business.”
“Agreed, Colonel,” Farbeaux said as he stared right back at Jack.
“Now, you mentioned someone else who knew the destination of the Russians?”
“Ah, yes. Turn to the back page of the journal, next to the map; there is a name there I think you and your friends might be familiar with. He was the man responsible for delivering the journal and notes to Lattimer’s family back in 1968. He was a student then, but he was there when Lattimer found what he was looking for. I had planned on asking him myself for his assistance in the near future, but maybe now would be a good time since he knows exactly where to look, and as you say, time is of the upmost importance.”
Jack opened the old journal. Seeing the written Russian script, he thumbed carefully through the dried and yellowed pages until he came across the last page. On it was a detailed drawing of the area that had been discovered by L. T. Lattimer, but with no coordinates it would take someone familiar with the landmarks, such as the drawing of the plateau and bends in the river. Under the small diagram was a name. Jack read it and he knew the others saw the wonder of that name cross his facial features.
“What’s the name, Jack?” Sarah asked.
Collins handed the journal over to Sarah and the others stepped up to see the name as she held it out in front of her. They had to read the sentence that Lattimer had written to his family. Jack, for his part, turned, unbelieving toward the staircase and sat down on the bottom step. Sarah read as the others looked on. The name was of one of the Group’s very own professors.
I, Lawrence Thurgood Lattimer, hereby declare this journal as my personal property and the description listed as my claim to the property described herein. It is thus forwarded to my next of kin, Archibald Lattimer of Boston, Massachusetts. I hereby sign this article as true and unyielding this date of July 23, 1968.
L. T. Lattimer, Esq.
Witnessed this day by: Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III
Stanford University
5
EVENT GROUP COMPLEX
NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, NEVADA
FOUR HOURS LATER
Will Mendenhall and Sarah McIntire were chosen to drive as quickly as possible to Nevada to enquire as to Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III’s current disposition. Jason Ryan and Captain Everett had been assigned the task of standing by and guarding the old Grumman seaplane under the small bridge on the L.A. River because Jack figured they may have to leave quickly if the agency or the FBI found them out. Ryan assured Jack that he could not only fly the seaplane, but evade anyone looking for them. When asked how, Jason just smiled and said, “That’s navy stuff, Colonel.”
Collins, Farbeaux, and Punchy Alexander were holed up inside an old and tired Motel 6 where they would pore over the Petrov Diary and the Lattimer note, hoping to get a good fix on where they would find Sagli and Deonovich—and Lynn. Hopefully, they wouldn’t have to drag Doc Ellenshaw with them if he could pinpoint on a map for Sarah and Mendenhall just where to start looking for the site, a problem because Collins had counted no less than six small plateaus along the Stikine River that resembled the Lattimer description.
Punchy Alexander had told Jack that he would return to Montreal and meet them at the Stikine. He said he had some ground to cover to keep the prime minister happy. However, it was Farbeaux who suggested it would be a very bad idea to split up at that point for security reasons. He figured if one person was caught, they all would eventually succumb to the authorities. And after Jack thought about it and saw the seriousness of the Frenchman, he agreed. Punchy would take the full ride with the Event Group.
“Tell me, Colonel, how it is that the two of you are so close?” Henri asked Jack while Alexander was in the bathroom adjusting the wrap he was wearing for his bruised ribs.
Jack looked at Farbeaux and saw the man was waiting with a stern look on his face. “I met Punchy in 1989, a joint recovery operation conducted by the British SAS and Delta units in Vancouver, British Columbia.”
“May I ask what it was that this joint operation was to recover?”
Jack smiled as he saw the seriousness of Henri’s demeanor.
“You may indeed ask, Henri.”
“You Americans are becoming very private with your secrets Colonel, almost as good as—”
“The French?” Jack said, anticipating the self-made pat on the back from Farbeaux.
The tall man from Bordeaux looked from Collins toward the bathroom as the door opened and Alexander came through and rejoined them. Henri just looked back at Jack and winked.
EVENT GROUP COMPLEX
NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, NEVADA
Sarah and Will, who was dozing in his chair next to her, waited inside Niles Compton’s office while the director was on the phone trying to seek out the whereabouts of Professor Ellenshaw, after they had explained why they needed to find him.
As she waited beside the dozing Mendenhall, Sarah looked over at two of Jack’s security men as they waited for Director Compton just inside of his door.
“Do you have to follow the director everywhere?” she asked the lance corporal who looked entirely uncomfortable doing his job.
“Yes, sir, the director’s own orders,” he said as he cleared his throat. “He’s acting on the president’s directive, ma’am.”
Sarah was amazed that Niles could just simply stay at the base; instead, he was doing as his friend, the president said: He was under house arrest for having let Jack leave the complex.
“Well, I hope you don’t shoot him if tries to escape,” she said half jokingly.
The black lance corporal looked hurt and he was taken back.
“I resent that, ma’am.”
“Just kidding, Corporal,” Sarah said, knowing Jack’s people, no matter what happened outside in the real world, every one of them, was loyal to the colonel, and to their main boss, the director of Department 5656. They would never allow anything to happen to Niles.
Sarah smiled, trying to apologize for her bad joke, when Niles stood from his desk and then pointed at Sarah, indicating that she should follow him. She nudged Will who came awake with a start and then realized they were on the move once again.
“Come on you two, keep up.” Niles said to his two guards, “Follow me.”
“Where are we going?” Sarah asked as she tried to keep up with Niles as he hurried to the elevator.
“Down into the dungeon.”
Seventeen levels beneath the main science labs of the facility, a small cordon of laboratories occupied the lowest level of the science department, just above the first level of artifact vaults. Director Compton had offered better facilities for the department currently occupying these spaces, but the department head refused to move his people. He said they felt far more comfortable away from the maddening crowd. And to be honest, Niles knew the department still wasn’t well received by the rest of the sciences, no matter how many Group accommodations it had received and how many times Compton stepped in to protect some of these strange, but very dedicated people.
The Cryptozoology Department was chaired by the now famous Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III, the eccentric but brilliant paleontologist/anthropologist, formerly of Stanford and then Yale universities, until his beliefs drove him away from mainstream science.
Before Niles, Sarah, Will, and the two security men stepped from the elevator, the loudness of the music blaring from the hallway caught their attention although the elevator doors were still closed.
“Is Doc Ellenshaw having a party,” Sarah looke
d at her watch, “at twelve thirty in the morning?”
“Not that I need to explain Professor Ellenshaw to you, but he does his best work alone, and late at night. He says it gives him the freedom to use Europa and other department’s equipment without interference from the other supervisors and department heads.” Niles looked over at Sarah. “And yes, he has my permission.”
The elevator doors had opened to a semidarkened and curving hallway. The heavy beat of the ’60s song “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now,” by the Byrds, slammed into the group. Niles smiled and shook his head.
“You two remain here. I promise not to escape through the bowels of the complex,” Niles said as he gestured for the two guards to remain.
“Disobeying orders?” Sarah asked.
“Well, sometimes there are certain things security should overlook; Charlie’s labs are one of them.”
As the song grew louder, the smell of the corridor changed. Sarah looked at Will and he smiled and made a fake frown. As Niles came to the steel door guarding the domain of the Crypto Department, he turned to face Sarah and Mendenhall.
“I know you work for Jack, but I am giving you a direct order: What you see, and whatever else you may come across, is confidential, Lieutenant, understand?”
“I see nothing, Doctor Compton,” Will answered.
Niles continued to stare at him.
“And smell nothing,” he finished.
Sarah smiled at Will’s dilemma.
“Very well,” Niles said as he opened the door.
Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III was sitting at a lab table examining a small skull of an animal that had existed no less than a thousand years before. The dodo bird, once thought to be extinct, was now believed to be alive and well and living in the deep forested areas of northern Germany. Charlie was intrigued and wanted to help out if he could in confirming it. However, the field team freeze Niles had instituted had made his trip to Europe impossible, and he was miffed about it.
Primeval: An Event Group Thriller Page 19