Standing slightly behind him, close to the rail, Asya swept her hand up and smacked King in the back of his head. He whipped around and looked at her, more in irritation than pain.
“Use your eyes,” she said. Then she pointed her thumb over her shoulder. “That way.”
King looked across the space to the railing on the other side of the library’s second floor. An identical reading nook mirrored the one in which he stood, with one major difference. On the far wall, behind the chair, and at head level for anyone standing in King’s position, was yet another small stylized H symbol, this time carved into the wooden surface of the wall molding.
King mentally kicked himself. He had stood here first and looked down at the symbol on the floor, and looked sideways down both lengths of the balcony, but he hadn’t bothered to look across the beautiful library and seen what was right in front of him.
“I’m starting to be glad we didn’t grow up together,” he grumbled, then started to walk the perimeter of the balcony.
Asya chuckled softly and walked after him. Once on the other side, the first thing King did was look back at the first nook—just in case. Then he zeroed in on the wooden molding on the wall. There was a nearly imperceptible groove around the circular part of the symbol. King grasped the uprights of the stylized H with his fingers and twisted. The entire symbol slid clockwise with a smooth wood against wood scuffing noise. King glanced down the balcony and saw only one other patron on the second floor with them.
“Go,” Asya said.
King twisted the H the remainder of the distance until he had spun the symbol a full 180 degrees. A soft thunk sounded, and the wooden wall swung back on invisible hinges, revealing a tiny door in the wall behind the chair. Asya slid the chair aside, and King stepped up to the door. It was just slightly more than a foot in width, and only about four feet tall. He had to put his head in first, and then slip in sideways.
Once inside, he was in complete darkness. He reached back on the inner wall behind him as Asya slipped into the doorway, pulling the chair back to its original position as she came. King’s fingers brushed across a plastic panel, and he flicked the light switch. A long row of ceiling-mounted fluorescent bulbs illuminated the room. It was a narrow brick passageway, the walls having long ago been painted a shade of white, but the paint was peeling and crumbling now. Asya pulled the door nearly to the closed position and examined the rear of it for a similar handle. She found an identical one in wooden trim that had been painted the same shade of off-white as the corridor, but the handle was smudged from years of dirty fingers. They wouldn’t be locked in. Asya pushed the door gently until it clicked in place.
King pulled his Yarygin and walked cautiously to the end of the tunnel. He noticed the floor declined a bit, but certainly not enough to take them to ground level. Along the way, he checked every inch of the ceiling, wary of traps. Although Alexander and his Herculean Society specialized in protecting—and in some cases obscuring—antiquity, he knew the man was not above using cutting edge technology to do so. King was expecting security traps or, at the very least, CCTV cameras. Instead, he found only the painted brick tunnel.
After about seventy feet, the tunnel ended at a T-intersection. King checked for cameras. Still surprised to find none, he looked in both directions. Fluorescents ran the length of the cross tunnel. At one end was what appeared to be a small room with dark gray metal file cabinets. The other end of the tunnel was in darkness. King looked into the gloom for a long moment.
Then he turned and walked toward the room with the file cabinets. Asya followed, checking behind her as she walked, her own Yarygin in hand.
The room was ten foot square, and as with the tunnel, King found no sign of cameras. The floor was rough, unfinished concrete. The room had no furniture, only seven large black file cabinets. At a quick glance, King could tell they were all unlocked.
“Why is there no security?” Asya asked.
“Uh-huh,” King said, moving toward the cabinet in the middle of the room.
“Why that one?”
“Gotta start somewhere. M. Roughly in the middle of the alphabet.” King smiled at her. “Figured I’d see what he had on Manifold. Be ready for shit to go haywire.”
King grasped the handle of the top drawer and gently pulled, just a half an inch. He checked for tripwires inside the drawer, but he found only hanging green folders. He pulled the drawer out further and saw that the files were all for names starting with the letter L. He didn’t recognize most of the names. The few he did recognize seemed innocuous: Labor Smart, Inc., Labwire, Lepenica, Lico. He slid the drawer closed and repeated the safety check on the next drawer. It was the M drawer. Close to the front, he found what he was looking for. Manifold Genetics.
He pulled the thick folder out and laid it gently on top of the cabinet. He soon saw the documents weren’t going to be much use to him. Most of the text was in Greek. What little was in English, was mostly what he knew already. Manifold Genetics was a biotech and genetic engineering firm, owned by the madman Richard Ridley. King and Chess Team had gone against the company and stopped them when they had discovered the head of the Lernaean Hydra buried in the sands of Nazca, Peru. Ridley had been cooking up designer soldiers, and Chess Team had put an end to it, appropriating one of Ridley’s labs in New Hampshire, and destroying two more in South America and on an island in the Atlantic. The file had US news clippings from the attack on Fort Bragg, when Ridley had reared his head again. But with Alexander’s help that time, Ridley had been shut down.
There were what appeared to be telephone transcripts—but in Greek—and photocopies of ownership documents, scientific formulas and all manner of material that King suspected would have been incredibly useful for the team when they had needed to stop Ridley. The intelligence would be invaluable, once they got it all translated. He was about to close the file and slip it into his shirt when the corner of a map slid out from under the stack of documents. King pinched the tip of it with his fingers and slid it out. The map showed the world, with five locations marked in black Greek letters. Although King wasn’t fluent in Greek, he and the rest of Chess Team had all spent the last few years studying up on ancient mythology, archeology, history and ancient languages. He was familiar with the Greek alphabet, even though he couldn’t read full words. And in this case, the meaning of these letters was obvious. In New Hampshire, the Greek letter Alpha denoted the former Manifold installation that Endgame now called their headquarters. In South America, King saw the letter Beta was crossed out with a circle and a slash mark in red permanent pen. Gamma, on Tristan da Cunha in the Atlantic Ocean was likewise marked as finished. In the Ukraine, King saw the letter for Delta was also crossed out.
King tapped it with his finger and said, “Queen dealt with this facility when she was looking for Rook.”
“And this one?” Asya asked, pointing to the fifth black Greek letter.
It was the symbol for Omega, and over the top of it, the person with the red pen had drawn the Herculean Society symbol. Under that, the word Carthage had been written in a smooth cursive script.
King heard a low guttural growl coming from the corridor behind them, in the dark.
“That’s where we’re going if we get out of here alive.”
A second growl came out of the dark at the end of the tunnel, and then the fluorescent bulbs at the far end went out. Then the next set went dark. King and Asya moved to either side of the open doorway, their weapons trained on the end of the tunnel as the darkness advanced toward them.
NINE
Endgame Headquarters, New Hampshire
“Clones,” Queen said with disgust.
She stood in the room, with three perfectly identical copies of Richard Ridley seated before her. The original Ridley was a robustly tall man, with a gleaming bald head and a menacing smile. She recalled the man’s likeness. As she looked at the three seated men, she could detect nothing to indicate she wasn’t looking at three of him. They were perf
ect replicas of Ridley in every way.
The three men sat in metal chairs that had been hastily bolted to the floor. Their hands were cuffed to the backs of the chairs with industrial-strength plastic zip ties and metal handcuffs. Bishop, Knight and Rook stood behind Queen, each armed and suited up for battle, their weapons trained on the triplets. To the side of the room, another five armed Endgame soldiers, wearing battle armor, held M-16s trained on the seated duplicates.
“We prefer ‘divinely created persons,’ actually,” said the Ridley seated in the middle. “My name is Seth.”
“I’d prefer to put my boot up your—” Rook spoke up.
“Rook,” an electronically modulated voice came over the black speakers tucked up into the corners of the interrogation room. “That’s no way to treat our guests.”
Seth smiled. “Ah, the mysterious Deep Blue, at last. Or maybe I should be calling you the Man of the—well, no, you’re not the Man of the Hour anymore. What do they call former presidents, Mr. Duncan?”
“Not sure what you’re talking about. You can call me Deep Blue for now,” came the electronic response.
Queen was stunned. Blue’s identity as former President of the United States, Tom Duncan, was a closely guarded secret, and on the few times the man had appeared in public as Deep Blue, he had worn a tactical battle suit with a helmet and a tinted faceplate. He had been out of sight in the hallway when they had discovered the Ridleys in Ops, and Blue’s own checks of the computer system had revealed that although they had entered the room, they had not accessed any of the cameras in the base. There was no way they could have seen Deep Blue’s face. The fact that Ridley—Seth—had Deep Blue’s operational callsign, and that he even knew of Deep Blue’s existence, was bad enough. That they knew his true identity meant that somewhere, someone else knew it too, and the original Richard Ridley had gotten his hands on the information somehow. Queen imagined Blue’s mind was reeling right now, but the electronically altered voice remained flat.
“You haven’t introduced your companions, Seth.”
“Quite right. My brothers Enos and Jared were not created quite as well as I was. Jared cannot speak, and Enos is mostly deaf.”
Queen tried to discern some distinguishing mark so she could keep the three clones straight, but they were all even wearing the same white linen suit.
Deep Blue’s voice came over the speakers again. “So we are to understand that the three of you were created by Richard Ridley—the original—when he briefly had access to the mother tongue? When he was trying to enslave the world? Why would he do that?”
Seth smiled again. “Which? Why would our Creator make us or why would He try to enslave humanity?”
“Can I shoot him now? Dumb and Dumber can answer the questions. This one is raising my hackles.” Rook stepped forward, leveling a .50 caliber Magnum Desert Eagle at Seth’s face.
“Stand down, Rook,” Deep Blue said. “We might need all three of them alive.”
“These guys aren’t even really alive,” Rook said. “They’re just animated heaps of clay. Shooting them in the head would be like shooting a rock, only more fun.”
“Agreed,” Deep Blue replied. “But let’s see what they have to say for themselves.”
Rook stepped back.
Seth smiled at the reprieve.
“But if I don’t like what I hear in response to my next question, you can start cutting off his fingers.”
Rook smiled. “Then I’m going to make a Kmart run. Pick up a Play-Doh Sweet Shoppe. Make me some Ridley-clone ice cream cones.”
The smile vanished from Seth’s face. Queen smiled softly, looking at Rook. Then she turned back to Seth. She knew the question Deep Blue would ask, and she wanted the answer just as badly as everyone else.
“Is Richard Ridley alive?” Deep Blue asked.
“We wouldn’t be here otherwise,” Seth said.
“Where is he?”
When the voice came through the speakers, even though Queen knew the modulator both disguised Deep Blue’s voice and removed any traces of emotion, she still thought the question sounded stern.
Seth’s face darkened as he looked at the floor. “He is being held prisoner.”
“Where?” The volume of Deep Blue’s voice increased with his urgency. It was clear that he thought he’d have to fight for the answer to this question. The truth was less dramatic and deprived Rook of the pleasure of knocking out a few teeth.
“A former Manifold facility in North Africa.”
“Bullshit,” Queen spoke up. “He’s dead and buried.”
Seth looked up at her and sneered. “He is immortal. He could live forever with the mother tongue, even without His genetic enhancements.” Seth looked hard at her. “I know our Creator lives because we three are still alive.”
“Explain,” came Deep Blue’s voice over the speakers.
“If He were to die, the command He gave in the mother tongue, the command that granted my brothers and me life, would end. We would return to the inert elemental materials from which we were formed. As all things do in time. But we yet live. So you see, Richard Ridley lives, too.”
“Assuming we believe you, that Ridley is alive and being held prisoner, why are you here?” Deep Blue’s voice buzzed.
“That should be obvious,” Seth said. “We want you to liberate Him.”
Enos nodded vigorously on Seth’s right. Jared sat stone still, unsmiling.
“You have gotta be kidding me,” Rook said.
“I’d sooner put Willie Nelson’s greasy hair between my legs and light it on fire,” Queen joined in.
Seth grinned, finding humor in the visual. “Nevertheless, I suspect you will all aid us in this endeavor.”
Queen leaned forward, hands on her knees, all trace of humor gone. “Richard Ridley is a megalomaniac who raised and loosed an ancient horror on the world. He extinguished countless endangered languages by murdering their last remaining speakers. He brought chaos and hellfire to the world in the form of giant golems, and he personally attempted on more than one occasion to kill members of this team and our loved ones. Sometimes in very painful ways. If there is such a thing as the Devil, your creator is the closest I’ve ever seen to him. Why would we possibly want him free?”
Seth turned to face his two brothers, then turned back to face the members of Chess Team. All three brothers smiled. This time, the smile was wicked.
“I haven’t told you who holds Him prisoner, or why. As dangerous as you might believe our Creator to be, there is a man who is even more troubling. That man holds Ridley Prime prisoner. That man... He is a threat to every man, woman and child on this planet. That man’s megalomaniacal schemes for world domination make Ridley Prime’s ambitions appear miniscule by comparison.
“Why would we come here and ask Chess Team to help us liberate our Master? Because our Creator, Richard Ridley, is the only man alive who can save the world.”
TEN
Valletta, Malta
King held his fire until the darkness moved. He fired two shots, then waited. Asya held her fire beside him. The booming of the gun inside the tight confines was excruciating, and they needed to conserve their limited ammunition. Plus, he didn’t know if bullets would even affect the things.
And they were things. He’d had enough experience with the unexplainable to recognize it when he saw it, or in this case, didn’t see it.
Only two fluorescent bulbs were still lit at King’s end of the connecting cross-tunnel. He briefly considered making a rush into the dark for the side tunnel, but dismissed the idea. He knew what waited for them in the dark.
“The Forgotten,” he said.
“What?” Asya shouted. They were both suffering from the hearing loss associated with him firing his weapon in these tight confines.
“The Forgotten,” he said louder.
“The wraith-like things that serve Hercules?” Asya asked. She’d been briefed on the team’s previous missions, their enemies, allies and a
ll the strangeness they’d encountered over the years.
From the shadows in the hall in front of them, they heard a guttural growl, as if in affirmation.
“They don’t like light,” King said, his Yarygin still aimed down the hallway at the blackness. Of the two bulbs still lit along the ceiling, the second one was flickering. He hadn’t noticed it with all the others on before, but now with just the two, its erratic behavior was obvious. It flickered and strobed, tossing its light around the confined space of the white-washed hall. Then it extinguished. Only the lights in their room and the one tubular bulb just outside the doorway remained. The light extended to about ten feet past King’s outstretched arm and pistol, then met an unnatural wall of blackness, where it was absorbed.
As King watched, the dark wall shuffled forward, like a lumbering elephant. When it stopped moving, the wall of dark was only five feet past his extended arm. King pulled his arm back, but kept the pistol trained on the inky barrier, ready for what might emerge.
“Here,” Asya had reached into her purse and procured a small but powerful LED flashlight. King took it and shined the light into the blackness ahead of them. The darkness grunted back at them, in reply.
“Get the file,” King said.
Asya stepped back from the doorway, where King remained, and turned toward the still open file cabinet.
The darkness shrieked at them. Asya clapped her hands against her ears. As bad as the gunfire had been, this sound was immensely worse. When the noise abated, dying down to a clicking sound, King called to her.
“Leave it. We’re getting out of here.”
“How?” Asya asked as she joined him again at the door, her Yarygin pointed at the dark.
“Quickly,” then he raced into the darkness, gun in one hand, flashlight in the other. As he moved, the last bulb in the hall extinguished, and the light behind them in the room blinked out. King’s flashlight was now the only source of light in the tunnel.
But the wall of darkness retreated from the powerful flashlight. Asya was at his heels. Just before the wall of black reached the point that would allow them to slip into the side tunnel, it stopped. And then snarled.
Omega: A Jack Sigler Thriller Page 5