The Windchime Legacy

by A. W. Mykel

  “You’d better start playing straight with us. And I mean right now, or we’ll put your ass on a plane back to Paris faster than you can blink an eye. We want answers to our questions, and we want information—useful information—not this bullshit you’ve been giving us so far. You haven’t told us one thing that we didn’t already know.

  “It cost us four lives to get your ass out of France,” Wyatt said, going for the throat. “That’s four Americans that won’t be coming home just so that you could be brought here safely. Now you’re gonna start paying us back. You got that?”

  Chakhovsky was stunned. He nodded weakly.

  The monitors had gone absolutely wild. They were still jumping, but beginning to calm down slightly. The truth was out. Chakhovsky had nothing more to hide or fear, except for what Wyatt could do to him if he didn’t talk.

  He’d be dead now if it hadn’t been for them. He owed them something. Everything. He owed nothing to the people who had tried to kill him, and would again if given the chance. “I will tell you everything that you want to know,” he said in a low whisper.

  “You had better,” Wyatt said, still breathing flame.

  Dials sat back once again, as the monitors began a steady return toward normal. There would be enough anxiety in Chakhovsky from this point on from the room’s design and Wyatt’s threat hanging over him to keep them jumping, but the worst was over.

  “Tell us what you know about the names Spartan, Pilgrim, and Badger,” Wyatt said.

  Chakhovsky didn’t hesitate. Cooperation was his new middle name. “They are code names of American agents working in Western Europe. We had been given the names by our top agent in British Intelligence.”

  “The ‘fifth man’?” Wyatt asked. It was a widely known theory. There was no doubt that Chakhovsky would know the reference.

  “Yes, that is correct. His code name is Capricorn. His real name is Lloyd Cushman,” Chakhovsky said.

  That was, in fact, the same name that SENTINEL had projected as the “fifth man” to Honeycut. The “special action” could now be ordered on him.

  “They were reported to be with your Special Operations Division of the CIA. This fact, however, could not be verified by our CIA contacts,” Chakhovsky said.

  “There were some theories put forth,” he continued, “that a secret organization or branch of the CIA had been created, especially in light of the recent CIA and FBI disclosures. We felt that these disclosures were a deliberate attempt to give the impression of weakening in their operations.

  “It was not realistic to believe that such information leaks could go on unstopped. It had to be deliberate. The new force would be doubly effective if we believed otherwise,” he said.

  He had come very close to the truth. The CIA and FBI disclosures were, in part, aided by SENTINEL.

  “Much strength was given to our theory by Capricorn’s information. There was also evidence of highly competent action taken against us on many more occasions than we would like to admit. Most of them going badly for us.

  “Dates supplied by Capricorn corresponded to some of those missions. But we could never learn more. There are no records on these agents anywhere. They seem to appear, then vanish when their work is done.”

  “Is there anything else?” Wyatt asked.

  Chakhovsky thought for a few moments, then shook his head. “No, nothing.”

  “Would you be able to identify these agents if you saw them?” Wyatt asked.

  “No,” Chakhovsky said, “there were no photographs. We would not have even known of their existence had not Capricorn given us his information.”

  “What about this secret intelligence agency? How advanced are your theories and what facts were gathered to back them up?” Wyatt questioned.

  “There were no facts,” Chakhovsky started. “The two theories were that they belonged to a private agency, backed and funded by your government, with its files maintained outside of government control for security reasons; or that false code names were being created and assigned to different agents at different times to cause confusion.

  “In the second case, the information supplied to Capricorn could have been planted in order to get the KGB to expend great effort in hunting for ‘ghost agents’ which did not exist,” the Russian explained.

  “Does the name SENTINEL mean anything to you?” Wyatt asked.

  Chakhovsky thought for a while. “No, that is a code name I have never heard before.”

  The monitors showed that everything he had said was the truth.

  “Tell us about Phoenix,” Wyatt said.

  The monitors spiked sharply.

  “How did you become aware of that code name?” the Russian asked.

  “That’s not important,” Wyatt said. “We want to know everything that you know about him.”

  Dials was concentrating on the cardiac monitors. A change was beginning to take place that he didn’t like. He scribbled a quick note to Bell, telling him to cut it short. No more than two minutes.

  Bell read it and passed it to Wyatt, as Chakhovsky began talking.

  The Russian explained the way in which Phoenix had been used. He described the secret pool of agents known to only a select few, of which Chakhovsky was one. He went on to give a physical description that very closely matched that of the first David Fromme that Pilgrim and Badger had talked to in South Beloit.

  He explained that Phoenix had been placed on the inactive list since his last mission just over a year ago. This was because he had received a serious hand injury which made him too easily identifiable. He was not scheduled for assignment again.

  When asked about the exact nature of the injury, he could only recall that it had been a severe disfiguring wound. He wasn’t sure which hand was involved. He thought the right.

  “Then you could identify him if you saw him?” Wyatt asked.

  “Yes, certainly,” Chakhovsky answered.

  “Had Phoenix ever been assigned in the United States?” Wyatt questioned.

  “Yes, often. His English is perfect, and he knows the country very well. But I only assigned him in Western Europe. I would have no knowledge of his activities in this country, other than that he had been assigned here.”

  Chakhovsky didn’t look well. His complexion had undergone a rapid change over the last few minutes. Dials was becoming concerned. Variant angina doesn’t always approach with the usual warning of the more common or stable kinds. It was caused by a spasm which could happen gradually or with startling speed.

  “We have reason to believe that he is in the United States now,” Wyatt said. “We’ll need your help in identifying him when he’s apprehended.”

  Chakhovsky nodded. A slight grimace crossed his face.

  “I think that’s enough for today, gentlemen,” Dials said, rising from his chair.

  “Just one more thing needs clarification,” Wyatt said.

  Dials frowned and shook his head, but Wyatt ignored him.

  Wyatt began his question. “Where was Phoenix assigned when he received his wound? Was it the United States?”

  Their information was pretty conclusive to this point. The fingerprints lifted in South Beloit and in Roger Caneway’s room at the hospital, as well as those in the morgue, matched the ones taken from the car in England after Pilgrim had wounded the fleeing contact. The blood samples taken at the hospital also matched those recovered by Division Two from the car. But it was important to confirm this fact, as this operation was obviously well planned, and anything was possible.

  “No…no, it…it…” Chakhovsky gasped, clutching his chest.

  Dials jumped to his feet. He sprang to the call button that summoned the cardiac team. “That’s all for today,” he said as he moved quickly to his patient.

  Wyatt rose and moved toward Chakhovsky, as the cardiac team poured into the room. Chakhovsky was quickly lifted onto a high stretcher and an oxygen mask was placed over his nose and mouth. The team began to wheel him out quickly, with Wyatt runni
ng alongside.

  “Where? Where was he when he was injured?” he asked urgently.

  Chakhovsky’s eyes were bulging and watering. He tried answering through the mask. “Eur…Europe,” he gasped out.

  It was muffled, but Wyatt was able to make it out.

  Dials threw Wyatt a murderous stare.

  Wyatt continued running alongside the rolling stretcher. “Where in Europe?”

  Chakhovsky couldn’t answer. He was trying, but no words came out.

  “Was it England?” Wyatt asked. He only needed a yes.

  “Was it England?” he repeated.

  Chakhovsky’s head was rolling and tossing in pain. He looked into Wyatt’s eyes, trying to speak through the pain and the fear.

  “Germany,” he said, “West Germany,” but his words were muffled by the mask. “An…another…another, in…in England. Cen…Centaur. Hand…hand, in Eng…England,” he gasped loudly.

  But it was garbled. Wyatt could only pick up parts of it. He had heard “…hand, in Eng…England.” The rest was unclear.

  Dials moved between Wyatt and Chakhovsky and shoved Wyatt aside. “I said that’s all, goddamn it. You’re killing him,” he growled.

  Wyatt fell off the pace, as the team rushed Chakhovsky into the trauma room. They went to work on him. It was infarction.

  They worked desperately as he lost consciousness. A resuscitation unit was hooked up to him and external heart massage was performed by Dials. They pumped needle after needle into him. Dials inserted a cardiac needle directly into the heart and continued the massage.

  They fought off death for nearly thirty minutes. Dials opened Chakhovsky up and performed direct cardiac massage. They worked and worked out of desperation.

  After another endless fifteen-minute period, the heart began a smooth, rhythmic cadence again. But Chakhovsky remained unconscious.

  An hour later he was in intensive care, hooked up to the electronic monitoring devices. The heart pumped away, rhythmically, its cadence again satisfactory.

  He was alive, but he could tell them no more. He was in a deep coma.

  The team went over what information they had gathered. Wyatt’s interpretation of what he had heard in those last moments before Chakhovsky was wheeled away from him was that Chakhovsky had confirmed that the hand wound had been received in England.

  It was a logical assumption to make, all the evidence pointed to it. But the assumption was wrong. He had not clearly heard Chakhovsky’s words about Germany and Centaur.

  The facts matched what Eagle, the SENTINEL agent in Moscow, had sent in only an hour before the last debriefing session. Everything pointed to Phoenix as being the agent that Pilgrim had encountered in England a year ago.

  But what had really happened was that the tempo had suddenly swung back to Centaur once again. Because now, even if they caught him, they would think that he was Phoenix. And Centaur had one outstanding talent that Phoenix did not have, one that they would never suspect. Alexi Kuradin had a photographic memory.

  TWENTY-NINE

  South Africa held promise. There are a lot of Aryans in South Africa, and they had done an outstanding job of developing what they had. Like South America, the African continent has enormous resource potential. No doubt, we could have eventually taken over the majority of that continent.

  A serious drawback was the lack of Aryans on the rest of the continent, with the exception of Rhodesia. The racial issue could have had its solution, but it would have taken too long and drawn too much attention before we were ready.

  But this still bore serious long-range consideration, and Constantine was in an excellent position of influence.

  Colorosa’s influence had also grown greatly in the United States. We were very impressed.

  Entry No. 54 from the partially

  recovered Wolf Journal

  It was nearly four in the afternoon when the coded taps sounded at Ten Braak’s door. He was irritated that the man had taken so long.

  “Did you get all that was on the list?” Ten Braak asked.

  “Yeah, yeah, I got it. But it ain’t here. You gotta come with me, if you wanna see it.”

  It was a risk leaving the room. Ten Braak knew this, but, again, he had no choice. “I will come,” he said, grabbing his coat.

  The two men left the room and walked down the six flights of stairs. Ten Braak was led to the basement and out through a service exit. They walked up a gently inclined ramp to a small alleyway leading out to the side street, turned left, and walked away from Third Avenue. About twenty yards up the block, the tall, skinny man stopped next to a beat-up Volkswagen.

  “This is the car,” he said.

  Ten Braak looked at the pile of dented, rusted metal. He had expected more for his four hundred dollars.

  “Get in,” the man said. “It’s about eight blocks from here. It’ll be less risky for you in the car.”

  Moments later the VW was coughing and sputtering up the block. The man had been right; it wasn’t pretty, but it did run.

  They came back around to Third Avenue and headed uptown. At Fourteenth Street they went right and then right again, onto Second Avenue. The VW limped and farted its way to Thirteenth Street and then turned right onto the one-way street. About three-quarters of the way up the block, he pulled over and double-parked, then shut off the clackety engine.

  “It’s in there,” he said, pointing to a vacant six-story building. “It’s safe where it is. No one’s livin’ in there, just some rummies now and then. Kids play there once in a while, too, but the stuff’s okay.”

  Ten Braak looked doubtingly at the old building as they got out of the car. He looked up and down the block. It was an amazing sight. Europeans wouldn’t believe this was America if they could see it, he thought. This was as bad as any urban slum anywhere.

  They walked up the stairs and through the broken front door. Ten Braak followed the man up the stairs. It was an incredible sight. The doors and moldings were gone. Plumbing had been ripped out, the walls were smashed where the electrical wires were pulled out for the copper. Everything that could be taken and sold was gone. Almost every inch of the floor was covered with debris. The railings were gone, floor boards torn up from the apartments they passed, and the walls were covered with enough graffiti to give an education in American slang and a who’s who of the neighborhood, as well as numbers to call for the action.

  They walked into one of the fourth-floor apartments.

  “They don’t come in this one too much, anymore,” the man said. “Three rummies were found dead here last year. Throats were cut, cocks cut off and stuffed in their mouths. At first, all the kids came to see where it happened. Then one of them got thrown off the roof, so they don’t come in here no more,” he said, as they walked through the rooms to a bathroom, careful to step only where the floor was solid.

  This bathroom still had a door and, unbelievably, a bathtub. Everything that Ten Braak had asked for was in the bathroom in three big boxes. He began going through them, taking a quick inventory.

  “It’s all there,” the man said.

  Ten Braak continued checking. There were two one-gallon tins. He pulled one out and opened it. Then he sniffed the contents. This was what he had asked for, all right.

  “We must put this in the car,” he said.

  “You ain’t takin’ that stuff back with you, I said,” the skinny man insisted. “Ain’t nothin’ gonna happen to my place. There wasn’t nothin’ said about—”

  Ten Braak held up his hand to silence him. “I wish only to put it in the car,” he said.

  “In this city?” The man laughed. “You leave those boxes in a parked car, and they ain’t gonna be there too long.”

  “It will not be safe in this place,” Ten Braak said.

  “Oh yes it will,” the man insisted. “I told you, nobody comes here no more.”

  Ten Braak walked out of the bathroom, motioning the man to follow him. He went to a corner of the room that they had wa
lked past to get to the bathroom. He pointed to the floor. The man looked down. There were three used condoms lying on the floor, knotted, and not discolored from age, or even dust-covered. The floor of the surrounding area had much of the dust moved away as if someone had been lying there.

  “This place is used frequently,” Ten Braak said.

  “I didn’t see that,” the man said.

  “You will help me find another place nearer to the Paradise,” Ten Braak told him.

  The man nodded. “Yeah, okay. I think I know a place, but we gotta pick a lock first.”

  Ten Braak nodded his approval, but he had his own idea as to where he’d be keeping it.

  Each man took one box and carefully made his way to the car. The boxes were stowed, and the car was locked.

  They went back in for the rest.

  Ten Braak stood in the bathroom and took out the three lamps from the last box. “These can be put in the storage compartment,” he said. “This box can be cut down to make it fit in with the other boxes,” he added, handing the thin man a pocket knife.

  The thin man moved to the box, ready to trim it down, as the wooden-handled weapon came out of Ten Braak’s pocket.

  The man began making his first cut. He was on his knees in front of Ten Braak, hunched well forward over the box.

  The target behind the ear was a difficult reach. If it wasn’t done just right, he might not die quickly and turn with the sharp knife. But that wasn’t the only acceptable target.

  The shaft bit suddenly into the center of the man’s neck, just at the base of the skull. He started to straighten up, but Ten Braak pushed his head forward and down and drove the weapon home again and again and again, until all movement stopped.

  Ten Braak put the lamps back in the box, picked up his pocket knife, and went down to the car, after taking back the rest of his money from the man’s wallet.

  About twenty minutes later, he was carrying the last box into his room at the Paradise.

  He emptied the boxes, setting the contents carefully on the floor, bed, and table. He walked around the room once more, examining the door, switches, and outlets again.