“The source is secure at this time.”
Carl looked away and over at Sarah McIntire, who knew exactly what it was Carl was thinking. There was only one man dark enough to have received a legitimate invitation from a man of such dubious distinction as Zallas and his international antiquities ring—Colonel Henri Farbeaux. Both Everett and McIntire knew this for a fact as soon as Jack couldn’t meet their eyes that his miscreant contact was indeed the Frenchman.
“The equipment to be used has already been loaded onto our 747-C at Nellis. From there we will fly to Bucharest. Once we land we will break into the first group consisting of our discovery team. They will penetrate the social function to ascertain the connection that exists between the resort ownership and the artifacts that have magically appeared over the last eight years. Lieutenant McIntire, Lieutenant Commander Ryan, and you, Pete, will accompany Colonel Collins and his team to the resort. Pete, you will need a secure cell link with Europa as you may need her if something turns up. I want one for my team also. The aerial photographs show the cell towers being erected but thus far are nonfunctional. We may have communication problems with the outside world, so see what can be done.”
“My duties?” Sarah inquired.
“You and the colonel will assess the situation and report back to me at NATO command at the base of the mountain. Lieutenant, you will evaluate the strata surrounding the resort for anomalies that may explain why the developer,” he made a face at the euphemism for the Russian gangster, “was so intent on building there. It may just be the hot springs, but look into it.”
Sarah wrote down her notes, deciding to hit the computer center before they left for Nellis so she could study the geological makeup of the Carpathians one more time.
“My base element will be going in as a civilian survey team there to get a good look at the pass. That means we will be going up with members of the 82nd Airborne to the villages below, and then the main village higher into the pass. This small village of Patinas seems to be the hub of all social activity in the area.”
“Why is that, Niles?” asked Pete Golding.
“The hot springs flow from the mountain near Patinas and the springs feed the entire valley system below. Besides, the larger cattle and sheep herds are near the village.”
“What personnel will be making up your team?” asked Alice as she slowly looked up from her notes and fixed Compton with her determined eyes.
“My team will be consisting of Captain Everett, Lieutenant Mendenhall, and Professor Ellenshaw, who will be using the link with Europa in the field if we can get communications up and running. So get with Pete on its operation, Charlie, in case we can figure out the COM problems. Also, Dr. Gilliam will act as both teams’ only physician. You will notice I am cutting the security element and the support teams from the list. The rest of the departments will stand down. This man may be far too dangerous to have a large Event team in the field, since we may have to get the hell out of there in a hurry. Virginia, you will see to it that all departments stick to their class schedules and their historical research.” Niles waited for Virginia to let it soak in that she wasn’t going into the field. She accepted the decision and then nodded her head.
Alice waited in silence and then looked up at Niles.
“Alice, you will accompany my team to the Patinas Pass.”
She breathed a sigh of relief at her being added to the Event. She thanked Niles with a slight nod of her head.
Charlie Ellenshaw got up from the table with a curious look on his face. He walked up to the monitor, which still held the aerial view of Patinas Pass. He looked hard into the image and then turned to face Niles.
“Niles, do you have any information on what this out-of-place structure is?” he said tapping the big screen monitor. Compton picked up the report Europa received after backdooring the real estate managing firm operating the resort.
Niles read the name and smiled.
“Well, since we’re going to the country whose name used to be Transylvania, I think it apropos that we also visit the nightclub known as Dracula’s Castle.”
Ellenshaw looked up and over at the others while muttering to himself.
“Oh, this is getting better and better.”
8
DRACULA’S CASTLE, PATINAS PASS, ROMANIA
The view was spectacular in the late afternoon light. As Dmitri Zallas watched the preparations far below at the resort, workers behind him were putting the final touches on Dracula’s Castle, the nightclub to top all nightclubs. Zallas turned from the false parapet that was actually a ten-foot-by-eight-foot plate glass window and saw the stand-up cardboard cutout of the famous American crooner and onetime child recording star Drake Andrews, fresh from a ten-year run at the Las Vegas Hilton. He would be the first star to open at the resort and was booked for the next fourteen months. Zallas smiled at the lobby cutout of the famous star and lightly tapped the lifelike appearance.
“You have as much soul as that piece of cardboard, Zallas.”
The Russian looked up and his smile vanished as if it had never been there. He released his hold on the smiling Drake Andrews and looked around quickly to make sure his bodyguards were paying attention—they were. There were four large men in black jackets that stood at various locations throughout the interior of the falsified medieval castle. He also had over a hundred workers blowing fake cobwebs and setting up the last of the mood lighting that would illuminate the outside of the castle. The crazy Gypsy wouldn’t dare start trouble here.
Marko Korvesky stood defiant in the middle of the dance floor, forcing the workers to walk around him. The head scarf he wore was satin black and matched the all-black-leather clothes he wore with the exception of the bright purple shirt under his vest.
“You should not be here,” Zallas said as he stepped up to the edge of the dance floor waiting for the Gypsy to come to him. He didn’t.
“This mockery of our heritage should not be here, Slav.”
“I told you not to call me that,” Zallas hissed and then stepped onto the broad wooden dance floor in one wide and menacing step.
Marko smiled as he saw Zallas stop a few feet from him, well out of reach.
“You’re not a Slav?”
“I don’t like the word, that’s all I have to say on the subject.”
“I understand. Let us try another.” Marko placed his hands on his hips. “How about this for a name, Russian, just pick one—liar, cheat, gangster? I can go on.”
This time Zallas looked at his men and they stepped forward in a grouped warning toward the Gypsy.
“I had to build this. Just look at it, this is a moneymaker.” He gestured around him at the manufactured blocks of stone and plastic and Fiberglas that made up the castle. “It’s just one little change to our agreement.” He became serious as he looked back at the Gypsy and his enthusiasm was instantly absent from his features and voice. “A change that did not dictate your murdering my workers over.”
This time it was Marko who smiled. “Certain factions around these mountains didn’t take your intrusion above the castle all that well. It took some convincing to make them see things differently, which will cost you far more than you realize at the moment.” He paused while his eyes moved toward his bodyguards and then back at the Russian. “Now we hear and see soldiers in our valley. We hear the sounds of helicopters as they fly low over the pass. We see more soldiers coming from south of the Danube and beyond. Yes, Zallas, there will be more owed to us than our original agreement called for. The initial investment money we gave you with our artifacts has a very steep percentage rate. You see I am more of a businessman than you thought,” his smile returned, “or hoped for.”
“You’re worth millions upon millions right now, what more do you want?”
“Nothing. The money I received will ensure that my people are not without as they have been for so many years. No more sheep, no more cows and chickens. We deserve better and now we are going to live the way we wer
e always meant to live.” Marko took a menacing step toward the Russian mobster, making the bodyguards move toward him. But a hand held high by Zallas stopped them. “If you go north of this toy castle I will not be able to control … control some of my friends.”
Dmitri Zallas saw Marko turn and start to walk away and then stop and face the Russian once more.
“You also need to have these fools of yours,” he gestured to the armed men in black coats, “looking for a woman with black hair in the company of a small boy. She will be coming your way on her trek to the pass. It would be to your benefit to have this woman held and then brought to me. She is not to be harmed in any way.”
“Ahhhh, now I see, the little sister returns to the fold. I can see why you’re so hard to deal with lately, my friend. Not to worry, she cannot get through my men. They are the best there is. The resort is the most guarded property this side of the Kremlin, I assure you.”
Marko laughed and then turned away but the laughter remained.
Zallas watched the Gypsy leave and then he snorted and pulled up his pants. He looked at his guards until they all turned away. He walked back to the window looking down upon the cable car lines and the resort far below. He swallowed and then closed his eyes blocking out the visage of Marko Korvesky, the bearded man who was the only person in the world that frightened Dmitri Zallas.
He soon gestured toward the larger of the bodyguards. The man was a Spetsnaz commando from the former Soviet Union and was linked to Zallas by pure meanness.
“Yes, Mr. Zallas?”
“Are we ready for Saturday night?”
“That Gypsy will lead us to it and there will not be anything this side of hell that can stop us from getting the information you seek from him.”
Zallas nodded just once as he turned to the opposite window and watched Marko walking the trail that led to the mountain above. He was there with his ever-present guard of four of the burliest-looking Gypsies Zallas had ever seen. They walked slowly and then disappeared into the trees. He turned and faced his man once more.
“If what I think is true, our limited partner has a secret that may make this resort’s worth pale in comparison. Yes, our Gypsy friend will let us in on that secret very soon and then I suspect we will discover where all of this ancient finery is coming from.” He smiled. “Have your former friends from your formative days been alerted that we move on Patinas on Saturday night at the latest?”
“They have arrived on the property and are awaiting your orders.”
“And they will have no problem doing the tasks I have set for them?”
“They will wipe out every man, woman, and child in that village if the need arises.”
Zallas turned away and watched the spot where the Gypsy had vanished into the tree line.
“For what he has hidden up there, believe me, the need will more than likely arise.”
As he watched the tree line he saw the shadows of the afternoon play against the gentle sway of the thin pines that made up the woods in the area. He could swear the shadows shifted shape against the force of the wind. He shook his head and sent the thought of things that go bump in the night out of his head.
As Zallas turned away from the window he failed to see the giant wolf as it slowly slid onto the crag on the side of the mountain beside the castle only ten feet away from the window where he had just been standing.
* * *
It was three hours later that Marko saw Stanus sitting beneath his grandmother’s window. The beast did not see the man’s approach, which was strange as nothing escaped the notice of the alpha.
Marko stopped twenty feet from the small cottage and the spot where the giant Golia lay on its stomach with its muzzle pointing up near the open window of his grandmother’s bedroom. He looked around and saw that most of the men of the village had not yet returned from the high pastures of the pass and the womenfolk were busy with chores and preparations for the evening meal.
Marko watched Stanus as the muzzle lifted once more and the Golia sniffed the air. Then the head of the alpha turned to the human. Stanus stood up so fast that Marko flinched, which was never a good idea when startling a Golia. The beast growled. It was not loud and not even menacing. It was the alpha letting Marko be aware of the power that stood not twenty feet from him.
“Is Mikla home?” Marko asked. The dimmed yellow eyes took in Marko and that, in and of itself, was unsettling. “Stanus, is Mikla back home at the temple?”
The Golia stared at Marko and then its ears lay back and the giant beast yawned. Stanus shook its head as if it was just waking up from a long sleep, and then without another gesture of any kind the Golia stood on its hind legs. Marko heard the distinctive resetting of the hip and pelvic bones as they slid into their secondary sockets and joints. Marko was like anyone who ever witnessed the change. He never ceased to wonder over the Golia’s ability to physically alter its shape. He watched in amazement as the right paw lifted and the fingers came free of the folded fistlike appendage. The clawed digits and thumb grasped the windowsill of his grandmother’s room and then using the sill as leverage pushed itself up and over the back wall and then disappeared into the rocks lining the village.
Marko was confused as to the way Stanus was acting ever since Mikla vanished. Then Stanus went out of control with the workers at the castle and killed three of them because of what the Golia perceived as an invasion of their land. It had taken Marko over fifteen hours of hard mental contact to get the great wolf to understand that the change was necessary and that killing these men could only bring more men to the pass.
Marko walked to the front of the small cottage and then stopped at the wooden front door. He reached out after taking a deep breath and lifted the iron latch and stepped into a darkened house.
“Grandmamma?” he called out as he looked at the cold stove. Not even her ever-present teapot was warm. He quickly went to the only other room in the cottage, her bedroom. He saw her lying on her small bed. She was holding the blankets up close to her chin and she was shaking. “Grandmamma, what have you done now?” he asked as he rushed to her side.
He saw her ankle placed on the bed outside the blanket. His eyes widened when he saw the purple and black swelling. The ankle was cocked off to one side and she moaned with pain in her sleep.
Marko shook his head. He knew she had somehow broken the ankle and now she might get gangrene from the injury if not set by one of the women in the village very soon. As he started to sit on the bed to rewrap her ankle he heard his grandmother call out in her sleep.
“Mikla, hold still, you must hold still!”
Marko’s eyes widened and he stood from the bed, stirring the old Gypsy queen to wakefulness. She looked around, wincing at the pain in her leg. Her eyes settled on Marko.
“Talking in my sleep was I?” the Gypsy queen asked as she lay her head back on the thin pillow that was made up of old clothes and a flour sack.
“You really did it, didn’t you?” he asked. “Where is Mikla? Is he with my sister?”
“You leave them be, Marko.”
“You cannot do this. You are too old to be making the spell. Look at what it has cost you, old woman. We will have to take that leg off if you do not get better. Sever your link with Mikla now because you will not survive the amputation of your leg with only half your brain working to fight the infection. Let Mikla go so you can heal.”
“Would that not be a benefit for the man-child? Would not my death bring you the power you seek among the people, maybe even the Golia?”
“You talk with a feverish mind,” Marko said as he calmed and then sat on the edge of the bed once again, lifting her swollen leg to his lap. “You know that no one person has ever controlled the Golia. They walk their own path,” he said as he shook his head and examined the damage she had done through her link with Mikla, the large male wolf that was missing from the den and the temple.
“Yes, they do walk their own path. My grandson should take that to heart.”
She tried to sit up but couldn’t. She took several deep breaths and then lay back down. “They also do not take deceit the same way as a human may. They cannot understand what a lie is. What cost comes with betrayal? These things they cannot comprehend unless they have the Jeddah spell cast upon them and then they see.” She managed finally to raise her head enough to see Marko’s eyes. “They see a great many things, even that which is hidden deep within your mind. They see, they understand, and they react like an animal would—to protect itself and those it loves. Not that much different from ourselves, wouldn’t you say, grandson?”
“So you are helping sister find her way back home?” he said as he started wrapping the ankle.
“She will be here,” the old woman said as she finally lay back down and closed her eyes. “There are a great many tasks for her to do.”
Marko’s eyes grew dark as he finished off the wrapping. He gently lay down his grandmother’s ankle and then covered her with the blanket. He leaned over and kissed her forehead and then turned for the kitchen.
“I’ll make you some bitterroot tea and then we shall await sister’s arrival.” He turned and looked at the woman lying in the bed in severe pain and then he tossed a match into the woodstove. “I even think Stanus and a few of the other Golia will be interested as well.”
“And why is that, man-child?” she said as she started to drift off.
“Because Stanus just discovered you are responsible for Mikla being gone, and possibly even dead. You know Stanus may not like Mikla, but the animal is one of his Golia, and he takes their loss very personally.”
As Marko delivered the threat, or warning, he turned to fill the teapot with water from the pump when he thought he heard his grandmother say one last thing. Then he shook his head knowing he must have heard wrong.
He gave the handle a few angry pumps and then stopped and looked back into the bedroom. He tried to think of what she had just said but knew he didn’t hear it right.
Carpathian: Event Book 08 Page 24