by By Jon Land
“You’re also assuming the courier does not know what Sidr looks like, Inspector. Not even a picture.”
“True enough, Colonel,” Ben conceded. “But Sidr stressed the importance of wearing his warm-up suit. Why would that be so vital, unless the courier was relying on it to identify him?”
Al-Asi had shrugged, unable to refute Ben’s point. “I have no friends in Athens, Inspector,” he said instead. “You’ll be totally on your own.”
“I don’t expect to be there very long.”
Al-Asi hesitated before resuming. “You know exactly who killed those children now, don’t you?”
“I think so, yes. I’ll learn for sure in Athens.”
“Think or hope? Your voice, Inspector, its tone disturbs me. It has the ring of a man who is after more than solving a mystery.”
“Only if I get the chance,” Ben said cryptically.
Al-Asi left things at that. He helped Ben with the travel arrangements and drove him to Gaza Airport in the Winnebago. Ben took a flight to Cairo and then boarded a jet bound straight for Athens. He carried no weapons, only a small tote bag with the overcoat and Abdel Sidr’s soccer warm-up suit inside. The team had arrived in Athens yesterday with the museum visit scheduled for this afternoon, the day before their game against the Greek national team.
Inside the museum, Ben hung slightly back amidst the reporters covering the soccer team’s visit before entering a restroom. He left the overcoat hanging in a stall and emerged wearing the warm-up suit with the number seven and name “Sidr” plainly visible. The rest of the team had proceeded well ahead of him and he veered off down a separate corridor.
“I was to separate myself from the team,” Abdel Sidr had said. “The courier would find me to pick up the disc.”
In spite of what he had told al-Asi, though, Ben still couldn’t be sure if the courier might recognize Sidr on sight as well as by name and number. If that were the case, his plan was going to fail in a hurry; it might have already failed if the courier was paying very close attention.
The great collection of Greek art and artifacts was spread throughout the sprawling white marble expanse of the National Archaeological Museum. Individual chambers and galleries highlighted different periods, eras, and themes. Unarmed, Ben walked about in search of a chamber that provided a measure of cover in case he needed it. He was likely being watched even now and reached out to grab a tri-folded map of the museum from a reception table.
His intention was to use the map to help hide his face. Then, almost as an afterthought, he began to study the museum’s layout. Just past the garden on the ground floor, a new exhibit called “Weapons and Armor of Ancient Greece” had been highlighted with a star.
Ben continued down the long corridor toward it, perturbed to find a sign posted on the closed door announcing the exhibit was not scheduled to open until next week. He tried the knob anyway and felt it twist in his hand. Not looking back, Ben entered the hall and closed the door behind him.
True to its name, the exhibit was composed of weapons and armaments both large and small. From full-scale catapults used in siege tactics during the Persian Wars, to mannequins outfitted in full heavy armor and helmets, to an assortment of swords, spears, javelins, bows and arrows, and sling-propelled pellets, the exhibit offered a complete overview of the Greek war machine.
Ben felt for the outline of the computer disc in his warm-up jacket and moved for the wall.
* * * *
H
e was standingbehind amechanical stone and bolt-thrower when the door to the hall eased open again. A man in a suit entered, holding a small pistol in his hand. The man closed the door behind him and turned.
Ben fired the arrow from a bow he had pulled from a wall exhibit. He aimed high and well to the right, but the torsion on the string fooled him and the arrow lodged in the wood of the door barely a foot over the courier’s head.
“You were supposed to bring a pen, not a pistol,” Ben said. “Drop it.”
The courier hesitated, swept his eyes about the exhibit hall.
“Do it now. I’m not very good with this thing. Next time, I might not be able to miss.”
The courier let his gun clatter to the floor and stuck up his hands even though Ben hadn’t told him to. He was shaking; a balding, middle-aged man wearing a dark suit.
Ben stepped out from the cover of the mechanical stone and bolt-thrower, having another arrow secured in place but with no tension on the string. The courier looked at him and narrowed his eyes.
“You’re not Abdel Sidr.”
“Would you have shot him too?”
“I was just protecting myself! After what happened ...”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“Who are you?”
Ben held the bow and arrow mostly for show. “You go first.”
“My name is Kiriakis.”
“Who do you work for?”
“The Athens offices of Hessler Industries.”
Ben hesitated, aware now which of the targets had been responsible for the murders of their young blackmailers. Not that he was surprised; after viewing the disc now held in his pocket back in al-Asi’s Winnebago, Hessler Industries seemed the most likely choice since that company had paid the most and had the most to lose.
By far.
But Ben had something to lose too. That was the bigger reason why he was here.
“You’re here to pick up the disc,” he prodded.
“Yes,” Kiriakis replied.
“Who accompanied you?”
“No one! I swear!”
“You weren’t followed?”
“I... don’t think so.”
“You weren’t ordered to kill whoever gave you the disc.”
Kiriakis’s eyes widened. “I’ve never killed anyone in my life. I just run the office here.”
“But you brought a gun with you.”
“Because of last week,” the Greek insisted.
“Last week?”
“The murder.”
“You know about the murders?”
“Only one: Ari Hessler. I hadn’t heard anything since then. I wasn’t even sure the meeting was still on until I saw your warm-up suit.”
“And approached even though you knew I wasn’t the real Abdel Sidr.”
“That could have been part of the plan. I didn’t know, couldn’t be sure.”
“You thought I might have come here to kill you.”
“Yes!”
“Because of Lot four-sixty-one,” Ben said, recalling its presence on the disc.
“Because of what!”
“Lot four-sixty-one. A new discovery by Hessler Industries’ Biotech Division in New York City. But certain correspondence came through the company’s headquarters in Tel Aviv.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Four high school students did. They found evidence of Lot four-sixty-one’s existence, and its potential, and blackmailed someone at Hessler to keep the discovery secret. A discovery worth billions and billions of dollars that they threatened to sell to the highest bidder unless their terms were met.”
“This is madness!”
“The madness was killing the students to keep them quiet. I’m a police officer, Kiriakis, investigating those murders. And your presence here today makes you an accomplice.”
“But I haven’t done anything wrong!”
“You brought a gun to a meeting. That suggests otherwise.”
“Because of Ari Hessler’s murder. How could I know I wasn’t being targeted too?”
Ben could see all the pieces of the plot falling into place. “Ari Hessler was the one who contacted you, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, eight days ago.”
Which would be the day before Mahmoud Fasil passed the disc to Abdel Sidr at the soccer game. Fasil had to be the man Hessler Industries retained to kill Shahir Falaya and then steal the hard drive off his computer. The information on this disc must have been salv
aged off that drive, including a confidential e-mail sent from a Tess Sanderson in New York to Ari Hessler in Tel Aviv. Ari Hessler was the man the students had blackmailed at Hessler Industries. He was the man who had ordered their deaths, but he still would have needed the disc to see exactly what the students had uncovered and how.
“You were supposed to give the disc to Ari Hessler once in New York, yes?” Ben surmised.
Kiriakis nodded. “He had already sent me tickets for a flight leaving Athens early tomorrow morning. Everything had been arranged. But after he was killed I received no further instructions.”
“You heard from no one else at the company?”
“No one! Nothing! I swear! I stuck to the original plan. That’s all!”
Ben finally lowered the bow and arrow and stretched his weary shoulders. “This conversation must remain between us.”
“I understand.”
“Talk to anyone else at the company about this and you could get both of us killed.”
“I have already forgotten I ever met you, believe me! I never heard of this Lot four-sixty-one. I was going to pick up the disc and put it in the company safe until I received further instructions.”
“I’ll spare you the trouble.”
Kiriakis looked confused. “You’re going to keep it?”
Now it was Ben who nodded. “There’s someone else who needs to see its contents.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 76
W
hat doyou expectto findwhen weget to New York?” Danielle asked Karl Mundt, while they sat virtually alone in the international departure lounge at France’s Charles de Gaulle Airport in the late hours of the night.
“Much the same thing you’re looking for,” he replied. “The truth about my father.”
The flight to New York’s Kennedy Airport had been delayed again, further stalling the long circuitous route they had opted to take from Poland on the chance that Anna Krieger, leader of the Gatekeepers, caught on to the ruse they had used on her.
Back in the forest, nearly a day earlier now, Danielle and Mundt had hugged the ground as the snipers’ bullets continued to split the air all around them.
“The Gatekeepers,” Mundt had muttered. “They must be in the trees somewhere.”
“I can’t find them,” Danielle said, trying desperately to pin down the origin of the shots from the sounds. But the echo in the open woods confused her bearings. In any case, Mundt had the only gun and it wasn’t capable of handling such a range effectively.
“Maybe we don’t have to,” Mundt said, starting to push himself backwards through the chunks and rubble, all that remained of the castle that had saved his father’s life.
The motion attracted the snipers who fired a fresh barrage, several shots of which just missed hitting both of them.
“What are you doing?” Danielle asked Mundt.
“I’ve studied this castle,” he said, “everything about it I could get my hands on.” He swept his thick, meaty hands across the ground as he continued to push backwards, brushing aside all debris in search of something beneath it. “The castle’s many toilets, called garderobes, drained down into holes leading to a tunnel that channeled the waste into a common cesspit, accessible since it had to be treated regularly.” He stopped and looked up, out into the trees. “Somewhere out there.”
“How many bullets do you have?”
“Two clips. Plenty if we can find our way out of here.”
Danielle joined him in the task of searching through the rubble for one of the drainage holes they hoped had survived the dismantling of the castle. She had just pushed aside a jagged slab of limestone when her hand sank through a narrow covering of brush.
“Mundt!” she called softly.
He crawled toward her through another onslaught of bullets. By the time he reached her side, Danielle had unearthed a hole that seemed to drop into the very bowels of the earth. Pitched on a steep downward angle and utterly black.
“Stay close to me,” Mundt said, dropping in head first.
“I’ll be right behind you.”
So long as they stayed flat on the ground, the grade of the hilltop would shield their descent from the snipers who would probably assume they were simply digging in to make a stand. Danielle started to shimmy down after Mundt as soon as his feet had disappeared into the hole. She tried to camouflage the hole a bit with a few handfuls of rubble before heading downward. The grade was not as steep as she thought and, actually, quite easy to traverse.
Until the smell assaulted her. It had to be her imagination; human waste from the castle would have decomposed long, long ago. Nonetheless, the ground had a rancid, sour stench to it. A mixture of excrement and spoiled mud.
Danielle forced herself to breathe through her mouth, fighting against nausea and the disorientation that came when all light vanished once they dropped into the tunnel that had been the drainage conduit for all castle waste. She tried to stay on Mundt’s heels, relying on her ears to keep track of his progress through the tunnel toward the cesspit in the woods. He must have had a cigarette lighter because a small flame flickered sporadically well before her, as he checked what lay ahead of them.
What if the tunnel collapsed further down the grade? What if the access hatch leading out of the cesspit had been lost to the ages?
Considering those questions was pointless; this was their only chance of survival.
The stench, imaginary or otherwise, seemed to worsen the deeper they drew, reaching its ultimate when the tunnel widened into a large, circular underground ditch.
The cesspit.
Danielle could only hope the few hundred yards they had traveled was enough to put them behind the position of the snipers. The cesspit ceiling was just high enough for them to stand. With his hands outstretched, the six-and-a-half foot tall Mundt was able to easily probe the ceiling, scratching at the dirt in search of the cleaning hatch. Occasionally Danielle saw his lighter flicker briefly to life, breaking the darkness.
He found the hatch after a few minutes of probing. Then it took all of his considerable strength to jar the heavy ancient stone covering loose, and then jostle it from its perch.
Danielle and Mundt emerged tentatively onto the forest floor, shielding themselves in the leaves and brush. Without the sound of gunfire, they had no way of marking the position of the snipers posted around the hillside. And, with only a single pistol between them, there was no margin for error.
“Give me the gun,” Danielle whispered.
“What?” Mundt shot back.
“There are four of them: two in the trees, two on the ground. I’ll take the ones on the ground out first.”
Mundt looked at her sententiously, as if to remind himself she was a woman. “You?”
“What I do best. We can get the snipers together when I’m done.”
Mundt shook his head, had to fight to keep his voice low. “You must be forgetting who you’re talking to.”
“No, Anna Krieger told me of your days with the East German secret police. But those gunmen out there aren’t basement-bred amateurs and you don’t have a government backing you up.”
Mundt began to seethe, had started to shake with rage when Danielle continued.
“Do you want to find your father or not?”
With that, Mundt had snickered and passed her his pistol. Its steel felt warm to the touch, the grip moist with his sweat. Danielle tested the gun’s weight, familiarizing herself with its heft and balance before moving off into the woods.
She thought she would feel hesitant, even stiff with fear. But her feet felt light, time turned back a decade to her years with the Israeli Special Forces when this kind of work had made up her world. She slipped back into it as smoothly as she melted soundlessly into the woods.
Time and space became a blur. Two gunmen were out here to be dealt with, the world reduced to that task and nothing more. Danielle tracked them with her ears, listening for the sounds that would give them away w
hile her motions remained no louder than the rustling of the brush.
Thoughts rampaged through her as she sank deeper into the forest. She held a gun in the same hand that in a few months would be cradling a baby, and she knew every bit of the steel as intimately as she would soon know her child’s flesh. Was she doing this because of the genetic defect afflicting that child? Was Ben right about her taking on so much to punish herself?