The Lucifer Code (2010)

by Charles Brokaw

  Humboldt staggered twice more, then turned boneless and dropped to the ground. His head rebounded from the floor and Eckart knew the man was dead.

  ‘Are you sure there’s no other way out of the office?’ Eckart demanded.

  ‘No, sir,’ Mayfield replied over the com. ‘Two elevators. The stairs at each end of the building. That covers everything.’

  Eckart tried to put himself inside the office and work out what he would do if he was trapped in there. You wouldn’t have been trapped in there, he told himself.

  ‘What about the windows?’

  ‘The grenade blew the glass out of the one in the office, sir, but the people inside haven’t left.’

  ‘Can you see inside?’

  ‘No, sir. The smoke’s too thick.’

  ‘Keep watch.’ Eckart kept his eyes on the door. ‘How much time has elapsed since the first shots?’

  ‘Two minutes thirty-seven seconds, sir. We’re coming up on the threshold for this mission.’

  Eckart knew they couldn’t stay much longer. The local police would arrive shortly, and the college security armed-response teams had to be en route as well. If they didn’t leave soon, things were going to get messier. He willed himself to be patient. Whatever threat Lourds presented against the United States was about to end. Eckart fully intended to take the professor into custody.

  Or kill him.

  ‘… other wall – elevator shaft – emergency.’ Sevki sounded as though he was breaking up as he shouted, and she could still barely hear him. But she understood what he was talking about. They’d managed something like this before.

  Approaching the wall on the other side of the office, Cleena bent down and took her knife out of her boot. When she reached the wall, she fisted the hilt and drove the broad blade into the Sheetrock. The material gave way easily. Two strokes made an X. She stepped back and drove her boot through it. Big pieces of the material dropped to the floor but others vanished in the space beyond. In seconds, she’d stripped the Sheetrock away to reveal the 2 x 4 studs beneath. She used the knife again to score the wall on the other side. When she kicked this time, her foot went through it.

  ‘… you see – it there?’ Sevki asked. ‘Cleena – you – now?’

  Cleena shoved Sheetrock out of the way and peered into the empty space. Darkness filled the area on the other side of the broken wall, but the light that filtered in around her exposed a greasy network of cables.

  ‘I’ve found the elevator shaft,’ she said.

  She checked the wall studs again and hoped Lourds could squeeze through. If anything, it would be the professor’s big head that got him stuck. She almost

  She pulled her head back out and addressed Lourds and Olympia. ‘Elevator shaft. We can use it to get downstairs.’ This time she could hear herself a little.

  Lourds nodded, then picked up a leg from the broken table that had held the miniature war pieces. He swung it experimentally, then went to work on the Sheetrock still barring the door.

  Cleena had to admit that once the professor decided on a course of action, not much deterred him. When he was satisfied, he reached into his backpack and took out a mini-flashlight. The fact that he seemed to be prepared for everything except being kidnapped irked Cleena. But it was probably more because she hadn’t thought to bring a flashlight herself.

  ‘The elevator cage is downstairs,’ he said. ‘We can’t get through.’

  ‘We go to the second floor,’ Cleena said. ‘Then to the stairs.’

  ‘They’ve got to have men outside,’ Lourds told her.

  Cleena nodded. ‘They do. We’ll have to get round them.’

  ‘No,’ Olympia said. ‘We go downstairs. To the basement. There are tunnels that connect this building to other buildings on the campus.’

  ‘Sevki?’ Cleena asked.

  ‘All right.’ Cleena gestured to Olympia. ‘You know the way.’

  Olympia peered through the hole, then back at Cleena. ‘You expect me to jump?’

  ‘I’ll go first,’ Lourds volunteered. He took off his backpack and handed it to Olympia. ‘That way I can help you down.’ He shone the flashlight round, then put it in his mouth and eased down into the shaft. Tension wound Cleena almost to the breaking point. Images of the scar-faced man and others like him kept bouncing through her mind. The effects of the pepper gas had made her eyes and nose run and she knew she couldn’t rely on her damaged hearing to hear anyone approaching.

  When he was below, thankfully without breaking his neck, Lourds talked Olympia into descending, guiding her feet with his hands. Cleena followed at her heels in case they decided to bolt and attempt to get away from her.

  ‘Sir, we’re about to enter the red zone on our time line,’ Mayfield stated calmly.

  ‘I know. Everyone outside be prepared to exfiltrate instantly. There should be confusion enough on the campus to cover some of our retreat.’ Eckart didn’t like giving those orders. It was too near admitting

  ‘Affirmative.’

  Too much time had elapsed for Lourds and the women to emerge from the office. If they hadn’t come out by now, they’d either been overcome by the gas – or they’d found another way out.

  He took a fresh grip on his pistol and stepped forward in a combat crouch. He wore Kevlar under his shirt, but his head was unprotected. He reached the door, took a breath to steady himself, then ripped away his gas mask to clear his vision. The gas stung his eyes, but he’d been exposed to it on close-quarter battlefields numerous times. Whipping around the doorframe, he dropped to his knees with the pistol gripped in both hands before him.

  No one was inside the room. It took him a moment to spot the hole in the wall through all the lingering gas. He slipped his gas mask up from his neck and back over his face.

  ‘They’re not inside,’ Eckart growled. He coughed as vestiges of the gas raked through his lungs.

  ‘There’s no other way out.’

  ‘They found one. It looks like a door.’

  ‘It was a door. Evidently it had been sealed off some time in the past.’

  ‘Where does it lead?’

  ‘To the adjoining office. If you’ve got that office door covered, then you’re covering the office next door as well.’

  ‘They can’t get out of there,’ Mayfield said.

  ‘They couldn’t get out of the last room they were in.’ Eckart swung back to the doorway and fired a half-dozen rounds into the hole in the wall.

  There was no response.

  A bad feeling ripped through Eckart’s stomach as he gazed back at the elevator next to the other office. The woman was a street rat. She was clever and dangerous.

  ‘Open the elevator doors,’ Eckart ordered. ‘Check the shaft.’ As his men ran to do that, he ducked into the office and crossed over to the hole in the wall. The door lay inside the room, torn from its hinges. He cursed as he scanned the room over his pistol sights and saw no one.

  Then he spotted the hole in the opposite wall.

  ‘They’re in the elevator shaft. Check the cameras on the second floor.’

  Mayfield took a moment to reply. ‘Negative. They haven’t exited either set of elevator doors.’

  ‘All right.’ Eckart stepped across ships and soldiers and paused at the second hole. ‘They’re still inside the shaft. Kill the two women but I want our target alive.’

  He took a mini-Maglite from his trouser pocket, flicked it on, then crossed his wrists so the flashlight beam and the pistol pointed in the same direction. He leaned into the hole and spotted movement below.

  ‘Let’s go.’ Olympia spoke in Turkish and yanked at Lourds’ arm.

  ‘Come on, Thomas. Let’s go before she gets down here.’ Olympia pulled at the elevator doors in front of her. Standing on the elevator cage, the second floor exit was almost at her chin. ‘Help me.’

  ‘We’re not leaving her,’ Lourds said as he joined Olympia.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’re not leaving her.’


  ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’

  Lourds hooked his fingers into the seam between the door and yanked. The doors gapped open a few inches, then slid back into place.

  ‘We’re not leaving her,’ Lourds repeated. ‘She’s part of this. We need to know what she knows.’

  ‘As if she’s going to tell you.’

  ‘You don’t know where the Joy Scroll is, do you?’

  Olympia hesitated. ‘No.’

  ‘I thought so. Otherwise you wouldn’t have needed the book.’

  ‘We have a copy of the book. We couldn’t translate it. That was why – that is why we need you.’

  That stopped Lourds in his tracks. ‘Qayin didn’t have the only copy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We don’t know. There can’t have been many.’

  Lourds tried the door again. ‘I would hope not. And we’re not going to leave her. She has a gun.’

  ‘Do you think she’s going to shoot us?’

  ‘No, but she’s been doing fantastically well shooting the people chasing us.’

  Cleena dropped into the elevator shaft and looked at them.

  ‘Too late,’ Olympia grumbled in Turkish.

  ‘Did I miss the lovers’ quarrel?’ Cleena asked.

  Lourds ignored her and bent his attention and strength to prising the doors open. This time when the doors opened he kept pushing till he reached the breakover point. The doors slid back into the wall on either side. He turned and hooked his hands together in front of him.

  ‘Okay, Olympia, up you go.’

  Olympia placed his backpack on the elevator cage beside him, then stepped into Lourds’ hands and he boosted her up over the second-floor edge. He handed his backpack to her and turned to face Cleena, who was shorter than Olympia.

  ‘I don’t think your girlfriend much cares for me,’ Cleena said.

  ‘She’s not my girlfriend.’ Lourds didn’t know why he felt the need to clarify that, especially in the heat of a pitched gunbattle. He thought it was more a reflex than anything. ‘We’re just good friends.’

  ‘Very good friends.’ Cleena ignored his clasped

  Lourds leaped up after her. As he managed the final frantic scramble, darkness filled the elevator shaft and he knew someone had stepped into the hole in the wall on the third floor. He renewed his efforts to get clear. Olympia grabbed his arms and yanked. Cleena dropped to one knee and fired up into the shaft.

  A brief flurry of bullets ricocheted off the elevator cage then stopped.

  ‘Let’s go.’ Cleena swapped magazines in her pistol and stood. ‘They know where we are now. We’re going to have company.’ She looked at Olympia. ‘Maybe you could lead the way.’

  Shooting her a scathing glance, Olympia quickly took the lead and headed toward the stairs just ahead of them. Lourds grabbed his backpack and slid it over one shoulder.

  ‘You’d be faster if you left that,’ Cleena advised him.

  ‘That’s not going to happen,’ Lourds assured her.

  He fell into a jog on Olympia’s heels. Gunfire blasted in the elevator shaft again.

  Eckart touched the burning area on his neck. His fingertips came away wet with crimson. He cursed the woman and hoped he got the chance to kill her up close and personal. Home-grown terrorists were always the worst, and she was beginning to seriously tick him off.

  ‘Do you have the elevator shaft?’ he asked.

  ‘Affirmative, sir, but they’re gone.’

  ‘Gone?’ During the brief encounter, Eckart’s eyes hadn’t adjusted well enough to pierce the fog of white gas in the elevator chamber. He peered again, and this time he spotted the open doors on the second-floor landing. He cursed as his mind raced.

  ‘Do you have them on the cameras?’ he demanded.

  Mayfield answered at once. ‘Yes, sir. Second floor. Headed for the stairs.’

  ‘Do we have anyone there?’ Eckhart jumped down into the elevator shaft. His boots thudded against the cage but he kept his feet.

  Two of his men dropped in after him. Together, they headed into the hallway.

  ‘Negative,’ Mayfield said. ‘They’d closed on the office with you.’

  The second floor was empty. The door at the end of the hall was shut. Eckart increased his pace.

  Lourds followed Olympia and was in turn followed by Cleena. The sound of the shots fired above echoed around them. He wanted to talk, a thousand questions zipped through his mind, but his breath was ragged from the pepper gas and from exertion. His feet pounded against the concrete steps. They passed the first-floor landing and headed down to the basement. Footsteps struck the steps behind them.

  Olympia never broke stride as she reached the basement and shoved through the door and turned right immediately. Security lights burned weakly in the darkness. Olympia fumbled in her pocket, then produced a key ring. She halted at a large steel security door and tried keys.

  ‘Don’t you know which key it is?’ Cleena stood nearby with the pistol clenched in her hands as she faced the door they’d just run through.

  Olympia ignored her and concentrated on the keys. Lourds knew the history department would have needed to move exhibits or research materials through the tunnels beneath the university because it would have been much simpler than doing it in the open and possible even on inclement days.

  The locking mechanism clicked and Olympia pulled the door open. She reached for a light switch and turned it on. A row of low-wattage bulbs flared to yellow incandescence down the length of the tunnel.

  ‘Let’s go.’ Cleena ushered them inside as the basement door flew open. She held her fire and Lourds knew she didn’t want to mark their positions. His confidence in her abilities grew. She was a remarkable young woman.

  Lourds entered the tunnel after Olympia.

  ‘Which way does the tunnel go?’ Cleena asked as she closed the door behind them. She took a moment to lock it.

  ‘That’s a strong door,’ Cleena said. ‘It should slow them.’

  Olympia nodded. ‘We’ll reach the intersection before they can open it.’

  ‘Unless they brought a rocket launcher,’ Cleena said.

  That, Lourds thought sourly, was entirely possible given past history.

  Eckart glared at the security door in front of them. Two of his men worked on the locking mechanism, but it was going slowly.

  ‘Where did they go?’ he asked.

  ‘Service tunnel infrastructure beneath the university,’ Mayfield answered. ‘I found a map. The tunnel they’re in branches off into three hallways a short distance from that point.’

  ‘Are there cameras in the tunnels?’

  ‘No. I’m blind there.’

  A one-in-three chance didn’t sound appealing to Eckart. Not with the local police and the university security people closing in.

  ‘All right,’ Eckart growled. ‘Pack it up and let’s hit the wind.’ Without a word, his men pulled their gear together and fell in behind him. ‘We need a route out of here.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And we’ve left dead behind.’ That was something

  ‘I’ll take care of it, sir.’

  Eckart called off the names of the three men Cleena had killed. Within minutes, Mayfield would have plugged fake IDs into Interpol’s intelligence centre. He’d also activate the false identification they had at the Pentagon. Eckart and his team operated off the books, but Vice-President Webster made certain they had access to all the resources they needed.

  Professor Lourds may have been lucky in this first encounter, but Eckart intended to write a much different ending the next time.

  Galata Tower

  North of the Golden Horn

  Istanbul, Turkey

  19 March 2010

  ‘You’d better be worth all this trouble.’

  Lourds looked up from his notebook at Cleena. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you started all this.’

  They were sitting in the café near the top of the Galata Tower. Several Euro
pean and Asian tourists occupied the tables near the windows overlooking the Golden Horn and other historic parts of the city. Lourds couldn’t help but think about the microcosm of East and West meeting inside the café being a reflection of what went on in the city on the other side of the three-foot thick walls. And those meetings had been going on for generations. Some things never changed. Well, didn’t change much, actually. The Galata Tower had also been known as the Christea Turris by the Genoese, which translated into the Tower of Christ. The Byzantines had named it Megalos Pyrgos, the Great Tower, because the cone-shaped stone capping had been – and remained – one of the most recognizable landmarks in the city.

  Hezarfen Ahmet Celebi, an early aviator, had glided from the tower over the Bosphorus to the Uskudar foothills in the Anatolian half of the city. That had happened some time around 1632.

  Lourds couldn’t imagine launching himself with a pair of wings from the tower. Of course, he couldn’t imagine himself running from gun thugs, either. But throwing oneself from the tower was a conscious decision. Running in the face of death was more of an instinct. As always, he thought about the ancient aviator and respected the man’s drive to discover flight.

  The view was wonderful, overlooking the harbour as well as most of the historic old city and several of the most worshipped – literally – sites. Lourds had enjoyed it on several occasions. At the moment, he was more concerned about police intervention. Given a second running gunbattle, he felt certain the Turkish authorities would kick him out of the country as an undesirable. Politely, of course.

  Until everything got sorted.

  Books, he amended, feeling the time crunch of others working on the transcription as well – in hand before the authorities caught up with him. Olympia was on the phone to someone she thought could hide them for a few days but hadn’t seen fit to mention who it was. Matters weren’t helped by the fact that Professor Olympia Adnan was also being sought by the police at present. Several enterprising students at the university had caught the raid on the university on their phones and PDAs. Many of those clips had shown up on YouTube and the local television networks were broadcasting the story.