The Council of Ten

by Jon Land

  “I’ve told you everything I know. But my mother, she can tell you much more.”

  “She’s still alive?”

  The woman nodded. “She lives up on the Queralt Sierra. She was lucky. She only lost her eyes.”

  Chapter 21

  QUERALT SIERRA WAS a deceptive mountain. Not overly high, and flush with lavish greenery, it seemed an ideal place for a leisurely stroll. But the trails were treacherous and difficult to follow for anyone not familiar with the area. A few were set aside for tourists, and there was a single, narrow road that wound its way up to Our Lady of Queralt Chapel.

  None of these, however, would be helpful in reaching the old woman’s small cabin.

  “I’m not even sure she’ll speak with you,” her daughter warned Ellie. “We may be doing this for nothing.”

  The daughter’s name was Teresa Carvera, but she preferred the American version of Terry, more appropriate since her stylishly short dark hair and softly angled face made her look more like a visitor from the West than a native. She had spent a year in the States as an exchange student, she explained, and planned to return there someday to settle. Her mother’s name was Maria and she had spent her entire life in this region. Terry’s father had run off when she was an infant, and she had only vague memories of the grandfather who was taken to prison for speaking out against the government a few days short of her sixth birthday and was never seen again.

  Ellie’s car brought them to the foot of Queralt Sierra and from there it would be a three-hour hike to Maria Carvera’s cabin. It was inaccessible from the regular trails, Terry explained. By necessity.

  The going was tough right from the start and the night complicated matters even more. Darkness fell while they still had a thousand yards of hard upward ground to cover and neither had brought along a flashlight. The grade was steep and Ellie found herself grasping hold of tree branches to aid her climb. Terry was in the lead and Ellie followed her steps as close as she could. They reached a ridge lined with thick brush and punctuated by sudden gulleys, which made for excellent natural defenses. The uphill grade was less steep but the walking more dangerous with sudden drops into fathomless abysses to be negotiated.

  At last Ellie followed Terry’s finger to a clearing nestled on a plateau up one last steep grade of rocks. A series of surprisingly tall trees rimmed the plateau beyond which Ellie could make out a small shack all but camouflaged by the underbrush enclosing it. The clearing, moderate as it was, extended straight back forty yards or so, its back resting against the start of another steep incline and its sides bordered by ominous gulleys. They stopped at the edge of the trees before they gave way to the underbrush.

  “I will speak to my mother,” Terry said and approached the house.

  Elliana wrapped her arms about herself. The mountain air was chilly, laced with a brisk wind. She had only a thin jacket, which did little to shield her. To distract herself, she focused on the cabin. It was made of stone and wood, obviously old. But it was well constructed, one floor with a chimney protruding from the roof and gray smoke the color the night had been an hour before sliding from within it.

  Terry emerged from the front door slowly. The shotgun she had worn slung by a strap around her shoulders had been discarded.

  “My mother will see you,” she said. “But she is tired and old and she speaks a Spanish dialect you might not be familiar with. I can translate her words for you, if you wish, or repeat sections you are unable to grasp. Her mind wanders. We will have to put things together as best we can. Come.”

  Elliana followed Terry inside the cabin. The things she saw first were the dogs; bull mastiffs by the look of them, huge animals with a bite that could sever steel. There were two of them, one on either side of the door, and both eyed her warily as she entered behind Terry. Maria Carvera sat in a wooden chair in the corner close to the fire’s warmth. Her frame was withered and frail, thin arms grasping the chair as if to hold onto it for dear life. Her white hair was thin and tied neatly in a bun atop her head.

  Elliana moved closer and cringed. The old woman’s eyelids were layered with scar tissue and sunken. She didn’t try to guess what had been done to her and didn’t want to know. The old woman raised her head as if to look at her.

  “Bring her here,” Maria ordered her daughter in a guttural Spanish that Ellie could follow well enough. “I want to be close to a person not long for this earth.”

  Terry nodded and Elliana moved to within arm’s distance of the old woman.

  “You’ve come about the lab,” the old woman said suddenly. “I knew that even before Teresa told me.”

  “How?”

  “Because it was only a matter of time before someone had to come.” The old woman turned her head up as if to gaze into Ellie’s eyes with her empty sockets. “It’ll mean your death, you know.”

  Ellie turned away from the nonexistent stare. “The laboratory behind the factory, you worked there.”

  The old woman nodded. “For two of the six years it was in operation, the last two. The pay was very good, best in the area, and I was one of the few with credentials.”

  “Credentials?”

  “In nursing. I understood chemicals, sterile procedures.”

  “You worked with chemicals?”

  “We all did. There were several stations. I learned three different ones in the two years I was there. Why does this interest you?”

  “Because I’ve got to find out what was produced there.”

  Maria Carvera suddenly thrust her arm out and grabbed Ellie’s wrist in a bony grip. “You’re strong, I can feel that. But I can also feel your fear.”

  “And I yours.”

  “It’s old age you feel, girl. Brittle bones ready to give up. But they weren’t brittle until four months ago when they did this to me.”

  “When who did this to you?”

  “A force more powerful than it wished anyone to know. But I saw, I knew. So they had to take my eyes. I swore revenge on them. I came up here and prayed, knowing that the Lord would send someone to be my salvation.” The old woman grasped Ellie’s wrist tighter. “You are that salvation.”

  “Tell me about this force.”

  The old woman’s grizzled features squeezed together. “Ask too many questions and the same fate awaits you. Or a worse one. They meant to kill me, you see. It was two weeks after the factory closed, two weeks after I saw him again. I had gone back to work as a volunteer in a hospital near Barcelona. Two men jumped me inside one night. One held me while another pulled out a syringe. I struggled and almost got away. One of them grabbed a bottle of acid from the shelf. I closed my eyes but not in time… .” The old woman’s voice trailed off, then picked up again. “They did what they could for me, and as soon as I was fit I had someone I could trust take me here. I haven’t left the cabin since. How long has it been, four months—five?”

  “My God,” sighed Ellie.

  “He was never present in the lab, girl,” Maria Carvera followed. “It was the work of the devil we did, I see that now, the work of the devil himself that cost me my eyes.”

  “Tell me about the work,” Ellie requested.

  “We thought it was harmless, ordinary. They told us we were producing a new material that would make fabrics more resistant to stains. It made sense. We had no reason to question.”

  “And the material?”

  “It took a long time to produce, painfully long. Many steps had to be followed, a number of safety precautions observed. Sixty pounds a month produced when we were lucky.”

  “Sixty pounds of what?”

  “Powder. White powder.”

  “Describe it.”

  The old woman pulled her hand from Ellie’s wrist and ran her fingers together as if she was sifting something through them. “Fine. Granular.”

  “Like sugar?”

  “No, finer. More powdery. Smaller granules. That was one of our purposes, to make the powder fit very precise specifications.”

  “W
hose specifications?”

  “The supervisors.”

  Elliana turned to Terry who spoke before she had a chance to voice her question. “They’re nowhere to be found. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

  Ellie looked back down at the old woman. “So, you produced this powder and ground it into a specified, consistent form. What went into it?”

  “We were never drilled on the chemicals we were working with, only the procedures. The more technical work went on in the smaller rooms. We were never allowed in them.”

  “And after the powder was completed?”

  “It was packaged and shipped out, for testing we were told, though few of us bothered to ask. The process was constant every month. Finish one batch and go to work on another.”

  Ellie calculated in her head. Sixty pounds or so a month made in the area of seven hundred pounds per year, which made somewhere around three thousand pounds since the lab was in operation. A ton-and-a-half of white powder produced in Berga, then transferred to Getaria for shipment to the Bahamas. What was the Council up to? And where did those transport planes come in, not to mention an apparent invasion?

  “We were dismissed six months ago, seven maybe,” the old woman was saying. “We were told that the laboratory was being shut down and we were given bonuses. Everything was friendly.” She paused and took a deep breath to steady herself. “That’s when I saw him again.”

  “Saw who?”

  “A ghost from the past. A man I remember from World War II. A Nazi.”

  Elliana grew cold as she waited for Maria Carvera to continue.

  “So many years ago … I was young, barely out of my teens but still a war-trained field nurse. This man was about my same age but already a captain, the boy wonder they called him. He led an offensive against an allied stronghold. The troops fled, leaving their wounded behind for our medical corps.” Another deep breath. “The bastard had them all shot.”

  Ellie tried to put together the old woman’s words. She had just linked an ex-Nazi to the white powder produced in Berga and thus, perhaps, to the Council.

  “What was his name?” she asked.

  “Back then I never knew. Now …” The old woman motioned Terry to bring her something from an old chest of drawers. Seconds later, her daughter placed a tattered news clipping in Maria Carvera’s lap. “This is from a newspaper I used to read when I had eyes. His picture was on the front page five months ago, a few weeks after I saw him in the back of a car at the lab. He had changed just as I have, but I could not forget his face, not ever!”

  The old woman thrust her clipping out at Ellie. She inspected the photograph first and then the caption: Heinrich Goltz, defense minister on the present West German government. An ex-Nazi, somehow in league with the Council of Ten. Incredible!

  “You’re sure this is the same man?”

  “The same face,” said Maria Carvera, “but not the same man. He escaped the trials and became someone else. In his seventies by now. Who else might still recognize him? No one. It was left for me to bring him to justice. I went to people. Days later the men came to the hospital.”

  Ellie gazed at the picture again. The man was smiling, shaking hands in a posed shot. His dome was bald and his light eyes shone even in the black-and-white photo. Heinrich Goltz …

  “Mrs. Carvera, how many times did you—”

  Ellie stopped when the dogs rose to their feet growling, hair standing straight up on their backs. The old woman motioned her to be silent with a sweep of a finger across her parched lips.

  “Someone’s coming,” she whispered.

  “I’ll go,” offered Terry, already starting for the door with shotgun in hand.

  Elliana moved to block her path. “No. This is my kind of work, not yours. Stay with your mother. Let me handle it. Besides, I think it was me that drew them here.”

  “What? How can you know that?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Just stay here. If I’m right, there’ll be several of them. You know these woods well. Once you hear shots, get out. Take your mother and the dogs to the best hiding place you can find. It’s your best chance.”

  “But—”

  “I’m going. They won’t be expecting an assault right on them. The element of surprise will work against them. That’s my best chance.”

  Ellie continued toward the door and pulled her pistol from her belt. One clip loaded and other in her pocket—only sixteen shots in all, additional ammunition left in her car at the foot of the mountain. She would have to make the approaching men scatter, that’s all. Create confusion in which the troops might fire at each other, and escape using the shots as distraction.

  She stepped outside into the cold mountain air and closed the door tight behind her. The night was pitch-black and there was no moon. Good. Darkness would work well as her ally. Ellie lowered her legs into a crouch as she moved, keeping her head even with the level of brush while she approached the trees rimming the lip of the plateau.

  Twenty feet later she heard the first footsteps. Two men who were probably mere scouts were coming, bait for her to snap at and reveal her position in the process. The other killers would have as many shots at her as they wanted. No, she would have to take these first two out silently and then rush straight at the rest, maintaining surprise as her greatest ally.

  Ellie pulled a long hunting knife from a sheath fastened to her left calf. Hunching behind a thick nest of bushes, she settled to wait. The path up the final incline was narrow, which would force the approaching scouts to walk close to each other. She would need that if her plan was to work.

  The footsteps grew louder. Ellie thought of Terry and her mother back in the shack. They would probably be dead, too, if she failed. She wondered how many other deaths had already occurred to protect the secret of the Berga laboratory.

  A pair of men emerged on the plateau, pulling themselves up by exposed tree roots. They held automatic weapons and were, as expected, pressed close together. A strategic error. They should have known better. Ellie elected to wait until they passed before she sprang. She figured they would either have to duck or use a free hand to part the branches where she had positioned herself.

  The men passed by her, each raising a hand to keep the stubborn wood from their eyes.

  Elliana lunged, the men never hearing her. She went for the one closest to her first, looping an arm around his throat to shut off his wind as he crouched slightly. The other man swung and responded just as she had expected. Instead of using his gun right away, he came forward first, enough for Ellie to thrust her knife hard into his midsection with her free hand. As he crumbled, gasping, Ellie joined her second arm to the other man’s neck and twisted violently.

  The snap seemed as loud as a gunshot. The man stiffened in her grasp and she let him drop to the ground, already in motion to grab the knifed man’s machine gun, which was lying on the ground. Scooping it up, she headed off the path and into the brush, keeping low and cutting diagonally across the thick woods toward one of the gulleys. She could probably escape now if she chose such a perilous descent, but that would leave Terry and the old woman totally vulnerable, and this she could not accept.

  The rest of the troops appeared over the lip quicker than she had expected. Their precise number was impossible to gauge in the darkness, but there were at least ten and they were well spread out. She could never hope to get all of them with a single burst from her machine gun. Possibly from the rear, though, she would have a chance. Kill them all and then flee down the mountain, eventually to Germany and Heinrich Goltz.

  A sudden drop-off on the jagged ground stripped her of her balance. As she was falling, the noise that she created frightened her most of all. Suddenly gunshots split the night air. Orders were shouted, then more shots, closing on her now. Damn!

  Ellie rolled onto her stomach and fired a burst in the direction of the loudest concentration of rushing footsteps. Screams and thuds sounded as some of her bullets found their mark. But movement was the key now. She
had to keep her position a mystery to them, never staying in the same place long enough for them to find her.

  Ellie pulled herself back to her feet. One of her ankles, twisted and sore, started to give way and she bit her lip against the pain. The lack of mobility was the last thing she could afford. The fast motions certain to be required of her would now be impossible. In the darkness she had no way of telling how many her initial burst had felled. Probably two at most. That left at least eight, probably more.

  Bullets cascaded into a tree just above her head. Ellie ducked and felt her back showered with bark. She ducked behind the trunk and fired a blind series. Again came the sounds of groans and thuds. The night was her ally, always had been. Years ago, so much of her training had been concerned with firing at sounds, rather than sights. It was paying off.

  There was a burst of pain to her shoulder and Ellie gasped in agony as she hit the dirt and rolled. More bullets chewed up the ground around her, coming from the side of the tree behind which she had taken refuge. They had her surrounded, boxed in. Her shoulder burned with agony, already stiffening, her fingers soon to be useless. She fired a quick barrage in the direction she was facing. But the shots were errant, one arm not enough to control the gun’s powerful kick. She fired another burst behind her and heard the hammer click on an empty chamber.

  Then she was in motion, a combination of crawling, running, and dragging herself along through the darkness as the enemy bullets struggled for a bead on her. The pistol was grasped in her hand now, but she didn’t dare use it for fear of giving her position away.

  It didn’t matter. A pair of black boots flashed before her as a man lunged with rifle in hand. She tried to roll, trying for a shot she knew was hopeless, when an ear-wrenching blast stung the night. The black boots were thrust backward through the air. Another man rushed her and before Ellie could get her gun up, his midsection ruptured with another blast and he, too, was airborne.

  Ellie swung to her rear. Terry was standing between a pair of trees, shotgun snapped open. Their eyes met and Terry fumbled for another pair of shells to load in the chambers.