“You understand,” he continued, “how lethal these canisters are? You need to choose your poison.”
“What are the two gases?” asked Hauck.
“Arsenic pentafluoride and hydrogen cyanide. They are quite deadly, Hauck. Whatever or whoever is exposed to either of them will not last long.”
“So which one would you pick?” asked the Instructor.
“Hydrogen cyanide gas is both lethal and an extreme fire hazard.”
“So, like, if it ain’t killing it, we could blow it up?”
“Something like that,” nodded Traxler.
“That could work,” said the Instructor.
“But it is sub ambient, isn’t it?” asked Hauck.
“Sub what?” asked the Instructor. “I hate it when you use those big shit-eaten words. Why can’t you just talk normal English?”
The Instructor had his black sweater off, and because he wore only a short sleeved black t-shirt beneath it, Hauck could see the man’s massively rippled forearms. They were so out of proportion to the rest of his body that it was as though his arms belonged to someone else.
“What I’m saying is that hydrogen cyanide is a liquefied gas stored under its own vapor pressure, and its vapor pressure is less than the normal pressure in a room. So when you open the valve, air is sucked in instead of the other way around.”
“Is he shitting me?”
“No,” said Traxler, “but these tube canisters are slightly different from cylinders of hydrogen cyanide that you might find in a laboratory. First, they are combined with a moderate pressure component that releases upon impact like an air bag and spreads the poison. It will fill a room quickly. You need to stay around one hundred and fifty feet away to be safe. Even then, a spark can ignite the dissipating gas and shoot a flashback fireball straight back at you.”
The Instructor strode toward a case holding a display of swords. He was so short that some of them looked to be almost as tall as he did. One in particular seemed to catch his eye.
“What’s this?” he asked Traxler.
“That is a Persian sword,” said the weapons supplier. “Made from the finest Damascus steel. I have it on good authority that it was the personal weapon of a member of the Assassini.”
“Is that right?”
“They were the original assassins,” said Hauck. “Feared more than any other by the Crusading armies of Europe.”
“I know that, you fuck. What I want to know is if it’s any good.”
“Against who?” asked Traxler.
“You ever answer a question with an answer instead of another question? All I’m asking is if you’d use it to cut somebody’s head off. Does it cut better than a machete, if you know what I mean? And just give me a yes or no, will you?”
“Yes, I would use it myself if I were in a jam, as you would say.”
“Good,” said the Instructor. “And throw in this thing so I can strap it to my back. Hauck here will buy it for me.”
But Hauck held his hand to one ear, blocking it off while he cupped his other hand behind a Bluetooth earpiece. He nodded once, then said, “Say again?”
“Trouble,” whispered Traxler.
“Get Evgeny and the team mobile. They’re already on their way? Good work, Yuri. I’ll contact you after we’re mobile as well.”
Hauck clicked off the Bluetooth connection and then looked down at the tube-canisters.
“We’ll take them all, Rudolph. And the protective suits and breathing apparatus to keep us alive when we use them so we can work in closer if we have to. Anna’s men have located the car that Drogol got away in. Seems it had GPS installed and nobody thought to look for that signal until half an hour ago. So we have to move quickly or we’ll just be cleaning up the mess her people leave behind. Have your men load everything including the automatic weaponry in my SUV and I’ll wire you the money now. What is your price?”
Traxler told him.
“Shit,” said the Instructor. “This is why I always make you buy the weapons.”
“Keys?” asked Traxler.
Hauck held up a key ring and then handed it to Traxler. When he tried to pull them out of Hauck’s hand, Hauck smiled a thin smile and held up his other hand.
“You get the car yourself.”
He told him where it was parked and how to use the electronics attached to the key ring to unlock the doors.
“I want you to personally drive it into your loading area and to personally oversee every aspect of loading the equipment into it. And these keys never, ever leave your hands.”
“You were so much more fun in your thirties,” said Traxler.
“Wasn’t he though?” added the Instructor. “Now he’s as exciting as watching shit burn.”
“What a lovely example,” said Traxler.
“Thanks. Hey, can you throw in that rocket launcher over there?”
*****
“I have lived many years,” said Drogol, “and I am no longer an ignorant peasant. I have studied much science with many great minds. I have learned to read and write many languages over the years. It is true that for some time I lived a life of debauchery, but I was frustrated and alone. Who could I tell? Who could I trust? I walked out of the Tunguska devastation, transported back from one hell to another. All around me was death and destruction. Eighty million trees destroyed. Eighty million, it is beyond the ability of a mind to comprehend such numbers.”
They were seated on the platform before the eight foot tall brass-rimmed quartz tube. Their legs dangled over the edge as if they were father and daughter enjoying time alone. The constant hum of electrons singing back and forth to each other lit the golden globes scattered through the labyrinth construction.
“This place,” said Sveta. “It’s like being in an amusement park by ourselves when all of the people have gone home for the night.”
Drogol stared at her.
“I am an ugly man, am I not?”
“Why would you care?”
“I know the standards of beauty in this world.”
“We don’t have time for this,” she said. “And I don’t want to hear anything more about you being Rasputin. Why did you come here? Do you seriously believe there is something here that can cure you?”
“Behind you,” he said, and slid off the platform to stand upright on the floor and raise his arms into the air dramatically. “Behold, the Resonance Tube of Nikola Tesla.”
Sveta cocked her head over her shoulder.
“You didn’t answer my question.” she said.
“But I did,” said Drogol. “Tesla’s Resonance Tube can change the resonance of anything or anyone inside it. From my research I believe that it can return me to the man I once was. Look at it. Look at it. I dare you.”
She stood up on the platform and looked down at Drogol.
“You’re serious about this?”
With an easy leap, with a cat’s grace, he was on his feet beside her. Sveta looked down to ground level and tried to imagine if she could do make the same jump.
“I am indeed. Magnetic and mechanical resonances were the capstone of Tesla’s work. He believed that understanding these twin attributes of matter were the key to all transformation. It is a body of knowledge ignored today in its fullness by scientists because it is in truth magic.”
It was cool to the touch, and she marveled it actually looked like a test tube except for the wires emerging from its cap and the brass discs bolted into place above it.
“What are those things?” she asked.
“Wireless electromagnets. In his journals, Tesla writes that mechanical resonations were actually more important than magnetic resonance, but my experiments reveal that the magnetic resonation is still critical.”
“What exactly do they do? How do they work?”
Drogol smiled at her interest.
“A portion of the tube slides open so I can put things in it. A person can fit inside quite comfortably, don’t you think? Or, an animal. Or an object
. You next close the door.”
“And then?”
“And then, my dear, the tube is pulsed and vibrated and those waves are transmitted to the subject. I have personally tested over one hundred rabbits in this tube.”
“Did this help them in some way?”
“Actually,” he confessed, “it killed each of them except one.”
“But it killed a hundred others?”
“I prayed for them both before and after they died.”
“Never mind that. What killed them?”
“The sound. This tube can generate resonating frequencies. Resonating frequencies are much more deadly even than high-intensity focused acoustics.”
Sveta rapped her knuckles on the tube. It clunked as though defective. She held her palm against it, like she was feeling for a pulse.
“Sound dampened,” explained Drogol. “Each time before I use it, I have to release the dampeners.”
“And you think because one healthy rabbit came through healthy that proves it can help you?”
“I have no more time to experiment. I must act. In Tesla’s journals, which I have here underground, he writes that it must work. And work it must, because I am losing more and more control over the beast with each passing day.”
“I hope Tesla knew what he was talking about,” she said.
Drogol grasped her hand and gently pulled it away from the tube’s surface. He turned it over and looked at her palm.
“Let go of my hand,” she said.
His hands were rough as planked board. Her hand felt small inside of his.
“I said let go.”
“I am only looking for your future in your palm.”
“I don’t want to know my future. I just want my hand back. Now.”
He ran a fingertip along a line that ran from the base of her palm up to another line that ran horizontally, cutting her palm sideways like a knife scar. Finally, he let go.
“So,” he said. “Now you know much more than you did and so do I. Will you stay or will you go?”
He moved to a complex panel of switches and dials and began adjusting them. Lights appeared and electrical gauges sprang to life. A deep humming like that from a transformer filled the air.
“Before this night is through,” Drogol said, “I will enter this chamber and attempt to cure myself. Will you stay for me?”
“Any other ways in and out of this place?” she asked.
“There are more hidden entrances and tunnels in and out of here than ever were in Ryazan prison. Why do you ask?”
“Do you have weapons down here?”
“I need no weapons, Tsarista.”
“I’m not your Tsarista,” snapped Sveta. “We already went through this, remember? I’m who I am and it’s not her. Got that?”
Drogol’s mouth set in a thin straight line, but he nodded.
“One more time,” she said. “Have you got that?”
“Do not test me, woman. Why do you wish to know about exits and weapons?”
“Because they’ll find us here eventually. You have to know that. Hauck always finds everybody eventually.”
Drogol waved his hand dismissively.
“He is so not so good that one. I have myself eluded him for thirty three years. So if you will stay, stay without fear. Stay to learn. Stay to help me cure myself so that this curse is gone from my life.”
For the first time since everything went wrong, Sveta smiled. He had a point. Thirty three years was a long time on the run. So maybe Drogol was right, maybe they had time. They hadn’t caught him in all that while. With luck, maybe even Hauck and Anna Kazakova would give up. After all, anyone that knew of this underground laboratory complex was dead except for Drogol, she and Zoe.
“You see? You smile. Come, we will go check on young Zoe and eat. And then, you will assist me as I step into Tesla’s machine.”
“I have to know one more thing,” said Sveta. “Make that two.”
“Always one more thing, then another and still another. But ask, ask me if you must.”
“First, what exactly is this place?”
“Look around. What do you see? All men would be Prometheus and steal the fire from heaven. Up above was a city of great wealth, the engine of the world, and its great men lost their way. They plundered what they could not create, stealing from minds they could not understand. This place is their storehouse. In great secret, the pirate industrialists of that time began robbing what they could from Tesla and other men of genius. Down here, beneath their quickly corrupting city, they began building a model of the technologies they would unveil to the world for their great price. And down here, they hid the one device I needed to try and restore myself.”
“So how did you find this all?”
“Much research over more years than you have been alive.”
“But what happened to these men?”
“It is of no concern to you.”
Seeing the look in his eyes, she did not push the matter.
“Okay, then the last question—what were you doing at that house at the edge of Detroit? This is where you live, so why were you there?”
Drogol smiled as though she had finally asked an intelligent question.
“The girl. Zoe. She saw in a dream that if I went to my old house, where I used to study the old texts in my search for a cure that you would come with others to kill me. You would try, but not succeed. Then, she would come to you and offer her help and I would then come to you.”
“So you put yourself in that situation waiting for me to come and kill you?”
“I believe in the ability to see the future. I spent many hours with this woman making her acquaintance, learning to appreciate her abilities.”
“How did you meet her?”
“What does this matter? I am a man of the Mysteries, and I know another true seer when I meet one. Come, enough of this, we must go to her so she may help me. I will enter this chamber, she will turn the dial to where I show her, and then we shall see if God has forgiven me. But you, Tsarista, you who do not believe in reincarnation, spirit healing, or prophecy, tonight you shall see that all are true.”
But Sveta knew that it did matter very much how Drogol met Zoe, because she suspected now that Zoe worked for Hauck and that the whole thing had really been a trap.
Chapter Twenty-two
“Listen to me, everyone on the net,” Hauck said as he steered down back alley shortcuts, swerving to avoid rusted out mufflers and broken whiskey bottles. He jerked the wheel hard to avoid a man who stepped out suddenly from behind a dumpster pointing a pistol at the car and yelling like a lunatic. The man fired off a wild round then jumped back behind the dumpster.
“I like this town,” grinned the Instructor.
The old man had a Benelli pump lying across his lap, jacked and ready to go.
“It’s like a half empty asylum at war,” said Hauck.
He turned a corner and up ahead they saw a bright, burning fire in a fifty-five gallon drum. Four men huddled around it holding out their hands to keep warm. Hauck honked the horn once, twice and three times, but the men only turned to stare at him.
“Ram ‘em,” said the Instructor.
At the last possible moment, Hauck spun the wheel hard again, and turned into a small field. They did a full circle and then he had them back in the alley.
“The fuck you learn to drive like that?” yelled the Instructor. “That was beautiful.”
“Should have run them over.”
Remembering what he had to tell the men in transit, he clicked his earpiece /mic again.
“Listen up, everyone,” he said. “We can’t all show up en masse. The Kazakovas have their soldiers in route, too. They’re further out than we are, but I want you to remember this. This is a Port Town. Homeland Security is big here. Detroit may be half empty but the other half is filled with criminals, police and Homeland Security. We can handle the first two, but the third is a nightmare. We don’t want to attract att
ention by a massive firefight that shows up on television. Are you all clear on that?”
Everyone acknowledged his instruction.
“Boss?” asked Evgeny.
The Instructor sat beside Hauck in the front seat, running his hands idly over the shotgun’s barrel as though he weren’t listening to Hauck’s side of the conversation.
“Yes?”
“Why are we all on our way to the location if we have to stay low? It’s almost totally empty so we’ll stick out like tourists with guns.”
“He’s right,” Yuri checked in. “We’re going to look like a convoy.”
“One moment,” said Hauck, and he clicked off.
He turned to the Instructor, who was looking out the window.
“This neighborhood blows, you know,” said the Instructor. “There’s no hookers anywhere.”
“We have a problem. Anna’s men will be showing up in force. They’re too stupid to think about Homeland Security, television crews and kids with cameras. We have to get out of this town cleanly after this is done. Mistakes will get us killed.”
“Yeah?”
“I am out of plans.”
“That means you don’t know what to do and you want me to figure it out for you, is that it?”
“Yes.”
The Instructor rubbed his chin.
“You know what I like about this Benelli?”
“Please.”
“I point it, pull the trigger, and anything in front of it is dead. So here’s what you do. You send the sniper and the others to go blow up something. They got to make it look natural and it’s got to be noisy. Nothing pussy. But nothing that’s going to pull in the Feds. You and me, we park near a sewer entrance close as we can to the neighborhood, and we go underground.”
Hauck almost slammed on the brakes.
“Why in the world would we do that?”
“That’s where you found him last time, wasn’t it?”
Hauck swore for the second time in two days.
“Yuri,” he said as he clicked his mic back on. “I need some cover. And I want it to be very, very noisy. And bring up a map of the sewer and drainage system in the area of the house. We’re going in from the bottom up.”
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