The Council of Ten

by Jon Land

  “What is your name?” Elliana asked the minister.

  “Heinrich Goltz.”

  “And before that?”

  “Johann Krieg.”

  “You were a Nazi?”

  “I am a Nazi.”

  Ellie passed her hand in front of Goltz’s eyes. They didn’t respond. The serum had achieved its full effect.

  “Does the Council of Ten exist?” she asked, holding her breath.

  Goltz resisted briefly. “Yes.”

  “And are you a member?” Ellie raised next, trembling slightly, confirmation of something she had always known finally obtained.

  “Yes.”

  “A strike against America is about to be initiated, correct?”

  Goltz’s lips trembled. “Yes. It’s called Powderkeg.”

  Ellie felt a shudder of realization. “That has something to do with a white powder compound produced in Spain, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the powder was transferred to Getaria for shipment to the Bahamas and then to America. Why such an elaborate chain?”

  “Exposure had to be avoided at all costs. Too much risk.”

  “After the powder reaches America, what happens?”

  “Distribution. Everywhere across country.”

  “Toward what end?”

  “Destruction. Total.”

  “Of America?” Ellie posed disbelievingly.

  Goltz bit his lip, trying with all his will to hold back against the serum. Again he failed. “Ninety percent of America’s population is going to be killed.”

  The statement smacked Ellie like a blow to the stomach. “How?” she managed, fighting for breath.

  “When mixed with water, the powder creates a gas that drains oxygen from the air.”

  Ellie shivered. “The procedure, tell me the procedure!”

  Goltz resisted harder. Veins sprang out from his temples. His face reddened. “Thirty drop points scattered strategically across the nation, each close to a major body of water. Each has accumulated a storehouse of powder over the years to be dumped into the water to create a cloud, which will gain size and strength as it spreads, growing geometrically and eventually linking up with—ahhhhhhhhhhhh!”

  Goltz’s head collapsed to his desk. Ellie grabbed the little hair remaining on his dome and yanked it back up.

  “The timetable, what is it?”

  Goltz was shuddering now. “It begins Thursday with the East Coast to eliminate those centers crucial to emergency response. The rest will follow simultaneously on Friday. The deaths will begin immediately. In three days the entire country will be covered.”

  “Ninety percent of America’s population will be dead in three days?” Ellie fought to stay calm. “What about the hundred transports you requisitioned?”

  “Our people will be flown in on them after the death clouds have dissipated thanks to exposure to ultraviolet rays within seven days after release. They have been well chosen, the select of our various movements. Only America’s people will be dead. Her country will belong to us.”

  Ellie could not help but shudder. The army she had first gained an inkling of in Prague was an occupation force, not an invasion one!

  Goltz, meanwhile, seemed to be on the verge of a seizure. His teeth ground together. The struggle with the serum was beginning to tell on him. Stroke, heart attack, seizure—any were possible. Ellie knew she didn’t have much longer with him, none to use to dig into the who and why behind David’s death. There was something far more important she had to learn.

  “Where is the Council headquarters?” she demanded.

  “I … don’t know.”

  “You must!”

  “Location secret from … even me until …”

  “Until what?”

  “Wednesday,” Goltz said with teeth clenched as if to hold back his own words. “All of us … meeting there … for first time … Wednesday. Address in Lisbon. I’ll be picked up, taken to … headquarters.”

  Yes, Ellie reasoned, that fit the Council’s methodology perfectly. The ultimate security since none of its members could betray that which they did not know. They could reach Council headquarters only under escort with activation of this plan Powderkeg a mere hours away.

  “The Lisbon address,” Ellie demanded. “Give it to me!”

  White foam puckered from between Goltz’s lips, turning pinkish as blood flowing from his torn tongue and mouth joined it. He was struggling for air.

  Ellie shook him. “Give me the address!”

  Goltz gurgled it out as his head lopped forward. Ellie memorized it.

  The intercom buzzed.

  Goltz gazed dimly at her, face pulsating madly. His mouth dropped, but no words emerged.

  The intercom buzzed again.

  Suddlenly Goltz’s entire frame spasmed and locked. His eyes bulged and his face turned purple. Ellie tried to steady him, but his mad hands clawed out at her and she recoiled in pain. Goltz’s body slid to the floor, writhing there as his heart pumped a final stream of blood through his body before giving up the struggle. Ellie approached and turned him over.

  The office door opened and the secretary started to enter.

  “I’m sorry to inter—”

  The woman screamed at the sight of her employer, West Germany’s Minister of Defense, shaking on the floor.

  “He’s had a heart attack!” Ellie screamed. “Get a doctor!”

  The loyal secretary had no choice but to obey. An alarm sounded. In seconds men were rushing into the room to find Ellie feigning CPR.

  “Somebody’s got to massage his heart!” she barked, knowing the muscle had burst beyond repair.

  The building paramedics arrived a minute later and took over the process. The others just looked on, dumbstruck and terrified. Ellie slipped to the back of them, then rushed to the door with a purpose apparently in mind.

  “Miss, wait a moment, please,” a security guard called after her in German. “Miss!”

  But Ellie was already sprinting down the corridor. Chaos surrounded her and she became a part of it. She heard the pounding of the guard’s feet after her. He had abandoned shouting at her and was concentrating solely on the chase. Ellie ducked into a door marked Exit and took a flight of stairs quickly, huddling against the wall when she heard the door burst open again.

  The guard took the stairs even faster than she had. He was actually past her when she lashed out with a hammer fist to the back of his head. There was a grunt and then the guard was tumbling down the steps, landing unconscious. Ellie stopped to retrieve his pistol and then continued down as fast as she dared.

  Another flight and she emerged on the ground floor and headed calmly for the lobby. The activity there was chaos, bedlam, just as she expected it would be. What she didn’t expect were armed guards posted at the inside of the doors, denying exit to anyone who sought it and permitting entry only to those with official papers.

  The Ministry of Defense building had been sealed off.

  She was trapped.

  Chapter 28

  THE OFFICIAL VEHICLES, sirens wailing slowly down, were still arriving when Wayman reached the Ministry of Defense. Gaining access was a simple matter of rushing forward and joining a surge of official bodies through the door. In the confusion no one noticed, the guards being more concerned with those trying to leave than enter.

  Staying reasonably detached from a group of security police and medical personnel, he made it to the fourth floor and the office of Heinrich Goltz. The Timber Wolf really had no idea of how he was going to approach the Defense Minister, but now that problem was academic. Goltz was dead. Information was sketchy, but it seemed that a heart attack had originally been blamed until an alert paramedic noticed a small trickle of blood drying on the minister’s left forearm. A bit more investigation yielded a needle hole. Goltz had apparently been injected with something. Assassination was now suspected, the perpetrator being a woman who had come in the guise of a reporter and was inside the
office for at least ten minutes. Furthermore, a security guard had been found unconscious in a stairwell after giving chase to this same fake reporter. The building had been immediately sealed off, guards posted at each exit.

  The Timber Wolf backed away from the crowd and headed down the corridor. He knew it would not be long before he was identified as an intruder, which would lead to a series of uncomfortable questions. So, he stayed on the move as he put together both what he knew and what he could safely assume.

  An assassin would never have used a needle as a weapon. Needles were too difficult and clumsy to handle. They required the unnecessary risk of getting very close to the victim. It was more likely that the woman had injected some sort of truth serum into Goltz to force him to reveal whatever was requested, and eventually the strain had killed him. The maneuver was bold, rife with risk; the actions of a professional, probably acting in desperation, who had exhausted all other options. A professional who knew, like Wayman, that Heinrich Goltz was not what he seemed.

  A professional who was a woman. And his ally.

  Goltz must have talked. Ten minutes inside the office was plenty of time to produce lots of information, And if the woman’s questions mirrored the ones he would have posed, then she was now the only one in possession of the answers. The Timber Wolf had to find her.

  He felt fairly certain that she had not escaped the rapid dragnet thrown over the building, which meant she was trapped somewhere without benefit of mobility.

  Wayman placed himself in her position. After fending off the guard, she would have headed straight for the lobby to escape. With this route closed off and forces converging from above, only that which lay below was left open to her. And in this building below would be a cellar layered with pipes and lined with box after box of documents from the premicrofilm days.

  The Timber Wolf turned into a stairwell and headed down.

  Elliana huddled in a warm corner of the cellar contemplating her next move. It had been just an hour since she had fled Goltz’s office, and already two sweeps had been made by the guards with a third promised soon. She had the gun containing a clip of nine bullets but little else to aid her among the discarded files.

  They had massed an army upstairs by now.

  Death was something she had long learned to accept. In the event all else failed, in fact, Mossad agents had been outfitted with a false filling in a rear molar. An agile working of the tongue to free and ready it and then a heavy chomp down on what was actually a capsule would release a stream of fast-acting cyanide into the mouth. But there could be no suicide for her now, no death by any means. The Council of Ten had surfaced at last, its plan to destroy the United States and then occupy it. The preparations had undoubtedly been in the works for years. People had been chosen, a new order of control over the entire world ultimately. No wonder they had killed David. He must have latched onto the plot six years before.

  But they could still be stopped. Goltz had said Lisbon. Ellie had to find a way to make that work for her.

  Escape first, however. She had run to the cellar because there had been no other choice. Yet, now she regretted that decision. She had trapped herself. The concentration of troops above her was staggering. Since no one reported seeing her leave, the assumption would be she was still in the building. Their numbers would not be broken off until she was found.

  Ellie held her breath suddenly. The sound of heavy boots making a soft, careful stride caught her ears. How many of them she didn’t know. But they were close. And they were coming.

  She yanked her revolver free.

  It was not easy for Wayman to reach the cellar since all doors had been locked to keep the suspect pinned down. He managed to slip stealthily behind a group of eight or ten armed guards into the stairwell and then to keep the door from slamming closed after they passed in. He gave it a few seconds and then entered the basement after them, hanging back as they began their sweep down the aisles between the shelved boxes of buried material. Somewhere among them, he felt certain the woman was hiding.

  Wayman lagged behind the guards, keeping his frame hidden and studying the layout of the basement for possible later use. Not much to make note of besides the many boxes and serpentine structure of pipes just beneath the ceiling.

  Twenty yards away, Ellie found the police search to be careful but not precise. They were looking for her without any expectation of being successful and were thus not as sharp as they should have been. She began to edge away from her corner hiding place, using the shelved boxes as cover. Her steps were cloaked in silence, but her pistol was held ready on the chance that one of the men was alerted to them.

  The Timber Wolf heard the shuffling and held his ground. He drew a rapid fix on the figure’s angle of approach and determined immediately that it could not be one of the police officers. The soft slide indicated the steps of a woman and he tried to calculate the best route of safe approach to her. Hands held in the air was always a possibility, although the cellar was dark and there was no guarantee that she would notice the gesture. A man was a man and all of them were after her. Approach from the rear, then, seemed his best shot. He would have to incapacitate her before she could respond. The impetus of persuasion lay with him.

  Wayman crept from aisle to aisle as the officers up ahead continued their wide search of the basement. His plan was to pass the woman going the other way and then double back in order to take her from behind after cutting down one of the aisles.

  Their paths converged seconds later, although at different ends of the aisle. Wayman stayed pressed against the shelves, but the woman turned briefly and he caught a glimpse of her face in the near blackness.

  The shock of recognition widened Wayman’s eyes. Elliana Hirsch! Here now, a part of this. One of the Mossad’s top field agents. God…

  To think that she was the one responsible for Goltz’s interrogation and eventual death. Thoughts raced through the Timber Wolf’s mind. Clearly the two of them were pursuing … something that made them allies. But what was Elliana’s stake in this? What exactly had she risked her life to ask Goltz?

  His plan of approach and incapacitation would have to be reworked. Ellie was too good to take by such crude means. But they had worked together twice before, and if he could silently grab her attention, somehow alert her to his presence, perhaps that would be enough.

  Wayman stepped up his pace down the aisle, the woman three aisles ahead of him by the time he reached the other end.

  Elliana swung when barely ten yards separated them, swung because of a soft scraping not far to her rear. Her gun came up as all the tensions within her unspooled. She recognized the figure instantly, saw that it was the famed Timber Wolf, and was not surprised at all that the Council of Ten would have employed such a hunter to finish her once and for all!

  Wayman saw the fury in Ellie’s eyes in time to dive to the side before her pistol began to spit death. The bullets chewed through a rusted-out pipe above him. Steam sprayed outward. Wayman rolled and a second bullet ricocheted off the floor.

  “Ellie, no!” he tried to shout, but he couldn’t be sure if the words had emerged.

  Then feet trampled forward in their direction, police officers alerted by the shots and probably certain that one of their number had been cut down. Elliana rushed off, boot heels clicking against the cement floor. Wayman rose to follow her, but first the police had to be neutralized. Not by shooting, though. They were innocent men here only to do their job.

  The echo of gunshots stung his ears as the officers fired wildly at the fleeing Ellie. The Timber Wolf stayed low and waited until they passed him before making his move. He had twelve bullets in his nine-millimeter Beretta and he used eight of them to rip chasms in the heating pipes strung across the ceiling. Water sprayed in all directions, gushing out in fast jets. Steam followed almost immediately and enveloped the front section of the basement in a hot gray cloud that seared everything it touched while temporarily blinding those within it.

 
Wayman heard the screams as he bolted forward with a handkerchief ready to cover his eyes. Orders were being shouted by some, pleas of help by others who writhed painfully on the floor. A few lucky officers missed the assault of steam and rushed through the stairwell on Ellie’s trail. Wayman thought he saw two, but in the darkness he couldn’t be sure. He crashed through the door and turned the locking bolt as he slammed it shut and followed the pounding steps up the stairs.

  He took them quickly, the loudest concentration of activity almost two flights above him. A single shot rang out, ricocheting, and he pictured Ellie waiting ahead in the alcove where one staircase gave way to another, lunging out when the guards rushed near. One of them had gotten a shot off, harmless probably, before Ellie had dealt with both.

  The Timber Wolf kept climbing. He saw her just up ahead now, between the fourth and fifth floors. As he rushed toward her, she fired a single shot, which went wild. When she turned to better her aim, he lunged on her, forcing her wrist down and stripping her of her balance. The gun’s bore flashed orange. They tumbled together down to the fourth floor landing.

  At impact, the Timber Wolf raised his free arm to strike her but Ellie deflected the blow and rammed a half fist into the soft flesh between his lower ribs. Wayman grasped and tried to power her backward, but she was too seasoned to be taken by simple bull strength and used his own momentum to slam him face first into the wall.

  He felt her gun wrist stripped from his grasp and felt the hard steel pound him in the back of his neck. A numbness grasped his head. He slumped to the floor, never feeling impact, and gazed up at the hatefully determined look on Elliana Hirsch’s face, her pistol aimed straight for his face.

  “You should have killed me in the cellar when you had the chance,” she snapped, finger ready on the trigger.