Larissa ran toward him yelling, “Papa!”
CHAPTER 30--TEMPERS
Edouard DeJonge’s thinning salt-and-pepper hair was brushed to a perfect left-side part. His thick mustache was expertly trimmed. The rest of his features belied his precisely groomed hair. His eyes, behind a pair of frameless glasses several years out of style, projected weariness. His cheeks were sallow, and his lips were chapped.
Brian could see only Professor DeJonge’s face. The rest of him was hidden by Larissa as she hugged him fiercely. For a moment, as the professor closed his eyes and returned his daughter’s embrace, his face was at peace. Then he opened his eyes and looked balefully over Larissa’s shoulder at Brian and Masson.
Larissa stepped aside, revealing her father’s blue business suit and the plastic identification badge hanging from his breast pocket. He spoke to his daughter in French, but Larissa answered in English.
“I had to leave the house, Papa. A man attacked our home.”
She put her arm through Brian’s and continued, “This is Brian Parker. From America. He helped me escape the attacker, and he has been helping me since.”
“We’ve been helping each other,” Brian said.
Larissa’s father regarded him diffidently. “If you say so,” he said as he offered Brian a quick, cold handshake.
Masson’s voice interrupted them. “We should take this conversation inside,” he said.
“Yes, of course,” Professor DeJonge replied, and started up the stairs.
“But, Papa, he is working with the man who attacked our home!”
“Come inside,” the professor said, “and I will try to explain in the little time I have.”
They followed him through the door. The trailer was furnished like an office, with bookshelves containing technical manuals and a desk facing the wall opposite the door. Above the desk, a long window provided a view of the field. Brian saw that the military dignitaries were taking their seats in the bleachers. After Masson shut the door, Larissa said, “Explain what, Papa? Are these men blackmailing you?”
Masson barked a sharp laugh.
“We have an arrangement,” Larissa’s father said.
“An arrangement? What sort of arrangement? Papa, these men are wicked.”
Professor DeJonge slammed his hand upon a stack of three-ring binders sitting on the desk, and his daughter fell silent.
“Lara, I have no time for this. I must be out there”—he waved toward the field beyond the window—“to demonstrate the Prometheus device I have been perfecting for many months. I am under stress already because they moved up the demonstration by a day. So I apologize for my brusqueness.”
He took a breath, squeezing his eyes closed and pinching his nose beneath the bridge of his glasses.
“All this bad business could have been avoided if you had called me,” he said.
“Brian believed that would have endangered you,” Larissa said, calmly now. “He suspects these men want to sabotage your project.”
The professor sighed. “I know the boy means well, Lara, but he has filled your head with wild conspiracies.”
Masson, leaning against the door with his arms folded, said, “The boy has seen too many Foster Blake movies.”
Brian wanted to groan. How many times had he heard those words, from jerks at school, from teachers he didn’t like, and, when he aggravated her enough, from his mother? Brian’s standard retort was, “There’s no such thing as too many Foster Blake movies,” but that wouldn’t work now. He ignored Masson and looked at Professor DeJonge with all the conviction he could muster.
“I don’t know what kind of arrangement you have with these men, sir, but the one they work for, Matthias Skyrm, is a killer. He has killed five people in the last three days. One of his own men and two hikers this morning in the Pyrenees; an American agent, Lenore Harte, yesterday in Toulouse; and a man named Heinrich Tetzel three days ago in Lucerne.”
Professor DeJonge’s eyes snapped to Masson. “Tetzel?” he said.
“The boy lies,” Masson said. “He craves the attention.”
“Sure,” Brian said. “I just love being kidnapped, being torn away from my school group, having my family threatened, getting beaten up, being chased across Europe, seeing people knifed and shot in front of me.” Brian felt himself losing it, but he couldn’t stop. His voice had been rising, and now he shouted, “Oh yeah, that’s just the kind of attention I’ve been craving all my life!”
Larissa put her hand on his shoulder, and Brian shut up. He took deep breaths to calm himself. DeJonge and Masson watched him for several seconds, then faced each other.
“What is this about Tetzel?” DeJonge asked.
“He was about to go to the CIA,” Masson said. “Skyrm had to deal with him.”
“By killing him?”
Before Masson could reply, Larissa said, “It is true about the other deaths, Papa. I saw them.”
Professor DeJonge’s cheeks flushed with anger. “You murdered people in front of my daughter?” he bellowed at Masson. “Get out!”
“I have orders to watch the boy,” Masson said.
“And I was promised the boy would be released to me. Now get out!” Professor DeJonge turned to the window. The bleachers were full. Several people were checking their watches. “I should be out there already,” he continued, “and I don’t want you in here with my daughter when I am gone. Or do you wish to explain to our superiors why you delayed the demonstration?”
A sneer flickered across Masson’s face. “No, I don’t want to interfere with a successful demonstration.” Masson stepped outside, looking at Brian before closing the door. “Don’t try to escape, boy, because I will be standing here.” He pointed at a patch of ground at the foot of the steps. “In this spot.”
CHAPTER 31--RIEN
When Masson was gone, Professor DeJonge said, “I am terribly sorry, Lara. I know you have many questions, but the timing of all this is diabolical.” He gestured at the window. “All those officials are waiting for me, and I have been working toward this moment for so long.”
“It is all right, Papa. Go.”
“We will discuss everything when I return, you and I and Mr. Par … Brian.” As he moved to leave, Professor DeJonge took something from a shelf by the door, a curved white plastic gadget that looked like a flattened ice cream scoop. He tossed it to Larissa. “You will be able to hear the interpreter with this earphone.”
Brian locked the door behind the professor. When he stepped back to the desk, Larissa turned on him. “You did not seem surprised to learn my father was working with them.”
“I suspected it,” Brian said.
“Why?”
“Who else would know you would follow Dédée De Jongh’s trail through the Pyrenees? Skyrm’s men were waiting for us at the exact spot the Comet Line crossed into Spain.”
Larissa considered this and nodded.
“Why didn’t you share your suspicions with me?”
“Would you have believed me?”
“No.”
“Would you have been angry with me?”
She hesitated. “Yes.”
“That’s why.” Brian shrugged. “Plus, I might have been wrong.”
Applause from outside drew their attention to the scene framed by the window. Larissa’s father walked into the center of the field carrying a wireless microphone. He spoke a greeting in Spanish. Larissa handed the earphone to Brian. “Here,” she said. “I should understand most of what he says.”
The earphone had a dial surrounded by tiny European flags. Brian turned the pointer to the Union Jack and held the device to his ear.
Professor DeJonge stood in the center of the field and began his address. A split second later, a British voice translated the professor’s words through the earphone.
“As some of you may know,” the interpreter said as Professor DeJonge inclined his head to the audience, “the project I have been spearheading on behalf of Eurocorps is a non-letha
l weapon system that will drive back individuals, crowds, and perhaps one day even armies with a beam of millimeter waves that tricks the nervous system into feeling intense heat. Anyone hit by the beam will receive the sensation that his skin is on fire, and he will run. Once he is out of range of the beam, the pain stops instantaneously. The beam causes no permanent—or even temporary—physical damage. It harmlessly forces your enemy to flee.”
Professor DeJonge paused to let this sink in. Brian took the opportunity to scan the crowd. About a third of the people in the bleachers also held earphones to their head. Brian wondered if a DIA operative was among them. If so, how could he establish contact?
The professor resumed: “The United States military have been working on a similar system, which they call Positive Enforcement, for years but have been unable to deploy it. We are on schedule to have the Prometheus device battle-ready by the end of the year, giving Europe an advantage in military technology over the United States.”
This drew a paroxysm of applause and cheers. Professor DeJonge grinned and quieted the crowd by waving his palms downward. He continued his speech. “For their mobile version, the Americans have mounted their Positive Enforcement device on a Humvee, but we thought a more common vehicle would be stealthier and more tactically advantageous. So please welcome the Prometheus delivery system.”
Professor DeJonge stretched his arm toward the barracks. The applause rose again as a maroon Mercedes-Benz Sprinter drove onto the field.
Brian dropped the earphone. Larissa clutched his arm. She said, “That is the van we were in!”
“No, it can’t be the same one. They couldn’t have got here in time,” Brian said, “but—Oh my God.”
“What?”
“They’re going to steal it.”
“What!”
“We thought Eck and Skyrm wanted to sabotage you father’s project, but they were planning to steal it all along.” Brian’s words outpaced his thoughts. “Skyrm said moving the demonstration up a day would help the plan. He said people would be less likely to notice the switch. Sometime after the demonstration they’re going to swap this van with a fake one. They can use those magnetic signs we saw this morning to disguise it as a delivery van. They could just drive away, and no one would notice.”
While Brian spoke, a team of three technicians had opened the van’s rear doors to reveal a small control center with video screens and panels filled with lights, gauges, and buttons. The technicians took their places in the control center and started to adjust dials.
Larissa stared at the scene in apprehensive silence.
Brian put an arm around her. “I don’t think your father knows about the switch,” he said. “This day is obviously too important to him. They’re going to double-cross him.”
“In his own way he can be quite naive,” Larissa said.
Brian retrieved the earphone and listened. “The time has come to introduce you to Prometheus,” the British voice said.
A section of the van’s roof flipped over to reveal a device that looked more like an overgrown digital camera than a science-fiction ray gun. The front of Prometheus was a black box with two silver lenses, one twice the size of the other. Fanning out behind the box was a curved black reflector. A buzz of approval flowed across the bleachers as the weapon rose from the van on a telescoping pole with a thick electrical cord curled around it, much like a microwave antenna on a television news van.
“The van has also delivered our brave volunteers,” the translator said as the driver and a passenger stepped down from the cab wearing bathrobes. The audience laughed and hooted catcalls as the two men took off their robes to reveal they wore only swimming trunks and combat boots. Professor DeJonge guided them to an orange square spray-painted on the ground.
The professor lifted his microphone, and Brian listened to the English echo of his words. “Now, witness the extraordinary power of Prometheus.”
The professor signaled the technicians. One of them pressed a button and a soft double beep sounded. The men in the orange square tensed their muscles in anticipation of the Prometheus beam’s impact, but relaxed seconds later. They looked at Professor DeJonge and shrugged. “Rien,” one said. Nothing. Some in the audience laughed nervously. Professor DeJonge impatiently signaled the technicians again. Once more the double beep, and once more the men in their bathing trunks stood unfazed.
Professor DeJonge trotted to the rear of the van as murmurs among the audience deepened. Larissa bit her lower lip as she watched her father adjust switches and speak urgently with the technicians. The double beep sounded, but again without any effect on the two targets.
For fifteen minutes Professor DeJonge and the technicians made adjustments. One technician climbed the ladder on the van’s rear door and slid across the roof to check the firing lenses. The two test subjects fidgeted, clearly conscious of their ridiculous appearance. People began to drift out the bleachers. Twice Professor DeJonge promised the remaining observers that the technical difficulties would be resolved soon, adding plaintively that Prometheus worked perfectly the day before. Yet five more attempts proved fruitless.
Brian moved closer to Larissa, who bore her father’s humiliation with quiet tears.
Finally, as figures with medals on their chests walked away with disgust on their faces, Professor DeJonge announced he would troubleshoot every last circuit and that he hoped to demonstrate the Prometheus device successfully the next day.
A tear fell from Larissa’s cheek and splashed onto the desktop. Brian gently touched her elbow. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Do you still think they want to steal my father’s project?” she asked.
“No,” Brian said. “Maybe we were right about sabotage in the first place.” He said that to comfort Larissa, but he questioned his own words. If Eck and Skyrm were working with Larissa’s father, they had no reason to sabotage Prometheus.
Larissa watched her father, his shoulders sagging, walk off the field. Brian focused his eyes on the Sprinter, doppelganger to the one they rode in that morning. If Skyrm wanted to switch the Prometheus van with a phony, then the demonstration’s failure had ruined his plot.
Brian touched Larissa’s elbow again and wondered if she shared his fear for her father’s life.
CHAPTER 32--TRUTH
When Professor DeJonge returned to the trailer, the part had disappeared from his hair and the edges of his moustache were ragged. He had unbuttoned his collar, and his loosened tie was snarled in his identity badge.
Larissa, still crying, threw herself into his arms. “Oh Papa, what happened?”
“I am unsure,” he answered hoarsely. Brian noticed the professor was displaying a new habit, alternately licking and pursing his lips. That explained why they were chapped.
“I am sorry, Lara,” her father continued. “You and Brian will have to wait here while I inspect the device. I do not know how long that will take. I will arrange to have your dinners sent to the trailer. It would be safest if you remain here, I think.”
Brian thought so, too, but remained quiet. He looked out the window at the van, now guarded by two soldiers. They held submachine guns loosely at their hips, barrels drooping toward the ground, as if there were no urgency to protect a secret weapon that didn’t work.
Professor DeJonge licked and pursed his lips. “I do not understand,” he said. “I swear to you, Lara, that Prometheus functioned perfectly yesterday in the workshop.”
“Where is this workshop?” Brian asked. “On the base or in a warehouse a few miles from here?”
The professor’s head jerked around when Brian mentioned the warehouse. He narrowed his eyes at Brian and cocked his head as if a question were forthcoming. Then he waved a hand and said, “Please don’t start this with me, young man. I am in no mood for wild conspiracies.”
Larissa stepped back from her father so he could see her face as she spoke. “But Papa, there is something unusual about that van.”
Professor DeJonge sc
rutinized the van. “What would that be?”
“We rode in one just like it this morning,” Brian said, “after Skyrm’s men found us in the Pyrenees, a maroon Mercedes-Benz Sprinter.”
“The Sprinter is a common vehicle throughout Europe,” the professor said. “That is why we chose that model, for its anonymity. I am not surprised you saw one this morning.”
“But we didn’t just see it, Professor,” Brian said. “We rode it in. With Skyrm driving. And we had to switch vehicles. Skyrm told Masson he couldn’t drive onto the base in that van.”
Professor DeJonge was about to reply, but stopped. Brian sensed the professor might be on the edge of believing them.
Larissa must have sensed it, too. She added, “Brian also thinks he saw a maroon van outside our house the other night.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Brian said. “But it could have been a Sprinter.”
The professor licked his lips twice and pursed them. Slowly, he said, “So what are you suggesting?”
Brian hesitated. He didn’t want his suggestion to sound like a wild conspiracy theory. “I’m not sure how to phrase it,” he began.
Larissa leaped into the breach. “Brian believes those men planned to switch vans after the demonstration. To steal the weapon you developed.”
Professor DeJonge let out a sarcastic laugh. “Steal that, that nonfunctioning disgrace?” he said. “Right now it isn’t fit to haul cargo. Besides, why would Eck and Skyrm steal what is already theirs? It would not serve their purpose.”
Brian and Larissa exchanged a look. It was the first time her father had acknowledged Roland Eck.
“What is their purpose?” Brian asked.
Before the professor could answer, the door swung open and Masson stepped inside the trailer. Brian wondered if he had been eavesdropping.
“I do not want you in here!” Professor DeJonge said.
The Boy Who Knew Too Much Page 16