The Boy Who Knew Too Much

by Jeffrey Westhoff

  When they reached the street, Brian looked to his left and saw in the distance the opulent Port de Barcelona building he had passed minutes earlier. Instead of following a straight line, Carter and Voss had detoured him through the harbor. Brian sighed. Roland Eck was playing more mind games. By prolonging their meeting, he wanted to unsettle Brian, leaving him confused, tired, and angry. Eck was succeeding, but Brian refused to show it. More in-line skaters buzzed past, swerving through a flock of bicyclists. The festive setting kept Brian’s fear in check. The promenade was filled with people, most of them young, smiling, and energetic. If Eck’s men kept parading him through tourist attractions, Brian should be safe.

  Voss turned right, taking Brian east along the waterfront. Brian saw a large sculpture of a fish in the distance, its golden scales shimmering in the late afternoon sun. He could make out a beach near the statue. He hoped that wasn’t their destination, because it would be a long, exhausting walk. He looked at his watch. 4:46. Larissa should have just stepped away from their first planned rendezvous. Brian had an hour to make the final one.

  A larger marina was immediately on their right, and a broad building of peach-colored bricks and wide archways loomed before them, the Museu d’Història de Catalunya. In front of the museum stood Kralik.

  Kralik looked at his watch and came forward. “Has he behaved?” he asked Voss.

  “Yes,” Voss replied. It was the first time he spoke since they left Carter. Voss turned and walked away in the direction they had come from.

  “You should continue to behave while you’re with me,” Kralik said. “I haven’t forgotten our encounter in Cannes.”

  “I’ll bet,” Brian muttered, noting that Kralik still trod with a slight limp. Kralik was leading him south again, back along the harbor. They were on another peninsula, a wider and longer one that tapered as it bent westward to form a natural protection for Barcelona’s harbor.

  A man pushing a drink cart approached from the opposite direction. A gust of wind blew the man’s cap off his head. Seized by an impulse to defy his escort, Brian chased after the cap. The vendor smiled and blurted, “Gracias,” many times as Brian returned it. He handed Brian a bulbous bottle of orangeade. Brian sipped his reward as he casually walked back to Kralik, who scowled and checked his watch. Brian read that as a sign this mystery tour may soon be ending.

  As Brian came alongside him, Kralik increased their pace by a beat or two. He glanced at the cable-car gondolas overhead. “Skyrm was right,” Kralik said. “We should have killed you in the mountains.”

  “How is Skyrm?” Brian asked with feigned nonchalance.

  Kralik grinned. “Pray you never meet him again.”

  Brian hesitated for a step, then continued to follow Kralik.

  In the marina, sailboats and small yachts rocked in the rough water. Brian looked out to the Mediterranean and saw larger waves crashing against the distant breakwater. Ahead of them, maybe six hundred yards, was the tower that was the eastern terminal for the cable cars. It was more a skeleton than a tower, as if someone had built a 300-foot lighthouse from a construction-grade Erector set and stuck a two-car garage on top. Brian couldn’t see any significant buildings beyond the tower, just warehouses, more docks, and larger boats. He figured he was being led either to the tower or a boat. Brian was not going to board a boat—no chance of that!—but the cable car? It was tourist attraction. Would Eck dare harm him on a tourist attraction?

  Ethereal music distracted him. Five men with dark reddish skin—Brian would have pegged them as South Americans even without their serapes—stood with their backs to the marina and played a reedy nocturne on pan flutes. The tones made Brian shiver. Kralik marched him past the group, but the ghostly melody caught the wind and trailed them toward the tower.

  Once in the tower’s shadow, Brian looked up over the harbor to see a gondola descending toward the station. It would arrive within a few minutes. Kralik increased his pace to a canter. He pulled out a cell phone, dialed, and said, “We’re at the base,” then hung up. About a dozen people were waiting at an elevator. The doors slid open, and Kralik pushed to the front of the line. When people protested, he snarled, “We are late for our shift at the restaurant.” Brian hesitated at the elevator’s threshold, but stepped inside once he saw three other passengers already were aboard. Six more people got on after him. Kralik punched the top button, which was marked Torre d’Altamar.

  The elevator stopped at the cable car platform and everyone stepped out except Brian and Kralik. Brian saw the red gondola swing into the station as the elevator doors closed. Now it seemed he would be meeting Eck in the restaurant instead of the cable car. Yet as soon as they stepped off the elevator, Kralik turned to open a stairwell door.

  “Down you go,” Kralik said.

  “After you,” Brian replied.

  Kralik grinned. “Of course,” he said, then led Brian down a flight of stairs. Kralik opened the door to the station platform and guided Brian past the people queued up to board the waiting red gondola. Inside it was a single man. The man’s face was hidden, but Brian knew it was Roland Eck.

  The people at the head of the line began to realize they would not be allowed aboard this gondola. A few yelled at the attendant, who raised his hands innocently yet kept the people back. Kralik pointed toward the gondola’s open door. Brian didn’t move. This was a trap, but it hadn’t yet sprung. He was about to throw himself into the queue when a hand clamped onto his shoulder from behind.

  He spun around. It was Silver, who stepped forward and used his body to press Brian toward the door.

  “Step inside, kid,” he said. “We’re taking a ride.”

  CHAPTER 42--HANGING

  Brian stood at the rear of the gondola as it lifted from the station and watched the people continue to shout at the attendant.

  “I bribed him, of course,” Eck said from behind.

  The gondola cleared the walls of the station, and suddenly the wind blew through the cable car with the same dull roar Brian heard whenever his father drove down the freeway with the sunroof cracked open.

  Eck said, “As you see, I’ve gone to some trouble to arrange for a private conversation.”

  Brian turned to face the man who, veiled behind the scenes, had turned his life into a nightmare. The image from Lenore Harte’s computer screen had been misleading. Though barely an inch taller than Brian, this man was not frail. Eck’s face may indeed have been too large for his head, but what appeared sallow on the screen was bright with energy in the flesh. Eck’s eyebrows were enormous. It was as if a doll maker had dipped his thumbs in ashes and scrawled two thick smudges across Eck’s forehead. The gray eyes beneath these brows pulsed with an intensity that fixed Brian in place.

  “You may not believe it, Brian, but I am happy to meet you at last.” Eck took a step forward and gave Brian’s hand a confident, if perfunctory, shake. “You know who I am, but I will introduce myself anyway. My name is Roland Eck. Of course, you know Jack Silver.”

  “Of course,” Brian said, shifting his gaze to his former captor. Silver nodded. “Kid,” he said in acknowledgement.

  Silver stood in front of the door, as if to guard it. Do they think I’m going to jump? Brian wondered. The gondola had an octagonal floor plan and windows that started at chest height and rose to the ceiling. It was designed to accommodate at least twenty people and probably was cramped when it carried its full load. Carrying only three people, the gondola felt fragile, particularly with the wind rattling the windows. Brian’s knees went weak with every quiver of the cable holding them aloft, literally hanging three hundred feet above the harbor.

  “I asked Mr. Silver to join us,” Eck continued, “because I thought he might help mediate an arrangement.”

  “You think I’m going to trust someone who kidnapped me and threatened my family?” Brian asked.

  “That was a stroke of luck for me, that second thing,” Eck said, wagging his finger. “With his surveillance in place my people
were able to make sure you didn’t contact your family. We wouldn’t have been able to do it otherwise.”

  Brian glared at Silver, who stood poker-faced.

  Eck went on, speaking rapidly. “Our time is limited, so I must come to the point. I know you came here hoping to arrange some sort of amnesty for Professor DeJonge, but I’m afraid I must inform you he has died from the injuries he suffered in his recent automobile accident.”

  Brian felt the blood drain from his face. Anguish and fear hit him like twin blasts of ice water. Anguish because he had come to negotiate Professor DeJonge’s release, but now realized that was never in his power. Fear because, like an idiot, he had stepped into the very trap he swore he would avoid. He had failed Larissa twice over.

  Eck kept talking. “Because his car was so smashed up, we deposited it at the bottom of a ravine in the foothills of the Pyrenees. It should be found in a day or two. The police will assume the professor went off the road.”

  As Eck spoke, Brian numbly stepped to the window and looked over the city sliding beneath him. In the middle distance were the distinctive spires of La Sagrada Família and the construction cranes rising behind them. To the left, the broad, tree-lined Ramblas were easy to spot, a twisting river of green flowing into the heart of the great city. Larissa waited somewhere along that lush path. She would be standing there not knowing Brian would miss their rendezvous, not knowing her father had died.

  Several moments of silence lapsed before Brian realized Eck had stopped talking. He turned from the window, and Eck resumed. “I know you may not believe me based on your last few days,” Eck said, “but my overall aims are humanitarian, and I have no interest in harming children. I think we can make an arrangement.”

  “What do you want from me?” Brian asked.

  “Two things. First, I want to know where I can find the van and the package you removed from the warehouse last night.”

  “You mean where did I put your ray gun?”

  Eck showed a pained smile. “If you want to be childish about it, yes.”

  “All right,” Brian said. “Then leave me and Larissa alone. Let me rejoin my school group and let Larissa settle with relatives, now that you’ve made her an orphan. Once I’m back in Milwaukee, and I’ve heard Larissa is safe, I’ll send you a letter telling you everything.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” Silver said.

  “No. No it doesn’t,” Eck said. “I’m on a tight schedule, I’m afraid, and I can’t wait that long. But since you mentioned Larissa, that leads to my second request. All parties involved should come to a mutual agreement, so I wish to talk with her as well.”

  “Not in this lifetime,” Brian said.

  Eck looked at Silver. “Such loyalty at a young age.”

  “In my experience,” Silver said, “that’s the last age anyone has loyalty.”

  “But I’m sure your profession has colored your experience,” Eck responded. He turned back to Brian. “It will be much easier for Larissa if she joins us willingly.”

  “She won’t be joining us willingly or otherwise,” Brian said.

  “Perhaps, perhaps not. But we are of course watching the French consulate.”

  Brian flinched. Immediately he tried to mask his reaction as a loss of balance in the swaying gondola, but he knew Eck had caught it.

  “We may not know where she is,” Eck said, “but we know where she’s likely to go.”

  CHAPTER 43--SHUTDOWN

  Brian stared at Roland Eck and seethed, but his anger was directed inward. How could he be so stupid? He had allowed Eck to stay one move ahead, and he had left Larissa in harm’s way. When this ride ended, Brian had to get away from these two men and find Larissa before 5:45. He could think of no other way to stop her from going to the French consulate.

  “You need to make a decision quickly, Brian.” Eck said. He looked out the front window. The gondola was halfway to the center tower. “You’ve got about six minutes.”

  “And then what happens?” Brian asked.

  “We arrive at the Montjuïc station, where Mathias Skyrm awaits us. He doesn’t share my qualms about harming children.”

  “Yeah, I found that out last night when he tortured me with your heat ray.”

  Silver stiffened his shoulders and moved on Eck. “You bastard,” he whispered. The reaction startled Brian. Apparently Silver wasn’t in on everything.

  Eck raised his hands defensively. “Skyrm disobeyed my orders! And my wishes. Prometheus is a non-lethal weapon. I did not design it for torture. I designed it to reduce loss of life during warfare.”

  “I thought you designed it to make yourself rich,” Silver said.

  “You stay out of this,” Eck hissed.

  Silver shrugged. “You brought me here, ‘to facilitate negotiations,’ to help Brian see your side of things.”

  “Oh, I’d love to see your side of things,” Brian said.

  Eck looked at him sharply. “Your time on this ride is more valuable than mine, Brian. You shouldn’t waste it.”

  As soon the last word had passed Eck’s lips, the gondola lurched to the side and the wind’s roar sharpened. “The hell?” Silver exclaimed as they all lost their balance. Brian and Silver, standing closer to the window, grabbed the rail and remained upright. Eck rebounded off the far-side window before regaining his footing. The gondola swung again, not as violently, and creaked to a halt about one hundred yards shy of the center tower.

  A tinny voice squawked from a speaker in the ceiling and spoke in urgent Spanish. Silver translated: “Due to sudden high winds they have stopped the ride until it is safe to proceed again. They apologize for the inconvenience.” He looked at Eck. “Did you plan this, too?”

  “No,” he replied, straightening himself. “But it does give us more time to talk.”

  “So help me see your side of things,” Brian said. “Tell me how your plan is humanitarian and not mercenary.”

  “I am not doing this for money,” Eck said. “My aims are humanitarian, I assure you, but the money was—is—necessary for the plan to work.”

  “I might believe it’s humanitarian to steal a weapons system,” Brian said, “but to turn around and sell it, no not exactly.”

  Eck hesitated. “It started with my wife. My late wife, Jessica. The Pentagon considered her a security risk, actually. There I was, designing weapons for them while she was protesting the Iraq war. We always argued about my work. She said if Positive Enforcement, as the Pentagon called it, was meant to save lives, then the U.S. should share it with other governments.”

  Eck looked out the window toward the Mediterranean as the car rocked again. “I didn’t listen to her while she was alive, but after she died—a brain aneurysm, she was gone in an instant—after she died, I saw Jessica’s wisdom. I looked for ways to leak information, at least to our European allies, but security was too tight.”

  “So you faked your death,” Brian said.

  “Eventually, yes. But as I thought about sharing technology with Europe, a plan crystallized.”

  “I’ve figured that much out,” Brian said. “Using someone like Professor DeJonge as a front, you could supply the Europeans with your research and technology. You could trick them into building a working prototype, and just as they’re about to test it, you switch it with an identical model that doesn’t work.”

  Silver had gone still as a statue, his eyes on Brian. Brian realized this information was new to the man from the CIA. He continued, “So while the Europeans throw their hands up and say, ‘Back to the drawing board,’ you sell the working Prometheus to someone else.”

  “To cover costs,” Eck said.

  “To pay Skyrm and his men,” Brian said. “I imagine they aren’t cheap.”

  “No, they are not.”

  Silver cut in, “You would have needed start-up money. Skyrm would have demanded a hefty payment up front.”

  “I told you to stay out of this,” Eck snapped.

  “But I’d like to know wher
e you got that money, too,” Brian said. “How did you pay for a fleet of delivery vans, for instance?” Silver’s eyes narrowed when Brian mentioned the vans.

  Eck waved his hand impatiently. “My wife came from a wealthy family, an old North Carolina textile empire. After her death I used my inheritance to set up a foundation here in Spain for technological innovation.”

  “And you found a way to will the money to yourself,” Silver said.

  Eck smiled. “I won’t bore you with the details, but you can take it with you.”

  “And Positive Enforcement became Prometheus,” Brian said. “Because you saw yourself as the titan who stole fire from the gods to share with mankind.”

  “Which is another reason I faked my death. I didn’t want this story to end with me chained to a mountain with vultures eating my liver.”

  “It was an eagle,” Brian said. “Not vultures, but a single eagle.”

  Silver shook his head. “For someone who justifies his intentions with Greek mythology, you sure came up with one Byzantine scheme.”

  “And deadly,” Brian said. He adjusted his feet as the car swayed again. “Heinrich Tetzel, Lenore Harte, the two hikers in the Pyrenees, Eduoard DeJonge, your man Merz—six dead. Any more I don’t know about?”

  “Those were all unplanned. Tetzel was about to reveal information to him”—Eck jerked a thumb at Silver—“so Skyrm convinced me Tetzel’s … removal was necessary.”

  “One death has a way of leading to another,” Silver said. “Something else I learned in my profession.”

  The cable above them groaned and the gondola moved forward again, slower than before. Brian looked at the oncoming station. It appeared to be an open-air platform atop another skeletal structure, this one resembling the upper third of the Eiffel Tower. He saw the second gondola approaching from the Montjuïc station. The cars would pass simultaneously along the outside of the tower, and passengers would exit onto the platform in the center.