The Resurrector (The Dominic Grey Series)

by Layton Green

  Viktor scanned the rest of the floor and saw a host of silver desks and lab equipment, monitors and futuristic computer equipment, all of it connected by cables.

  The floor and walls were made of stained concrete. An antiseptic smell permeated the room. Every so often, one of the cables would pulse, sizzling with an electric charge.

  While Viktor absorbed the scene, a naked human form shot through the glass piping and into one of the vats.

  Good God. What is van Draker doing here?

  Viktor had to know. He started forward and then jerked to a halt, noticing the cameras interspersed throughout the room. Of course the lab had surveillance. He was shocked it was unoccupied, then remembered it was three in the morning.

  Viktor knew he was pressing his luck. He needed to take his pictures and leave.

  For a moment, he wavered. His entire life had been spent in search of answers to the mysteries of life’s questions. Whatever secrets this room held, he sensed they were deep. He wanted to race along the catwalk and stare inside the vats and study the computer equipment below. Drink it all in and absorb the implications.

  With a deep, shuddering breath, he realized he didn’t have the scientific knowledge or the manpower. He had to take the photos and come back, with law enforcement in tow. Wait for a team of international scientists to crack van Draker’s secrets.

  Forcing his hand to steady, Viktor took photo after photo, still in shock at what he was seeing. He flinched when another body shot through the piping, then turned to leave just as the clammy hand of van Draker’s butler gripped him by the wrist.

  -35-

  Jax rented a silver Suzuki Grand Vitara with the same fake ID. He and Grey set out before lunch. According to Jax, the bulk of Iceland’s interior, ninety-eight percent or more, was an uninhabited and virtually impassable back country. Beautiful but barren. Iceland’s towns and settlements were all within a stone’s throw of the coast, connected via a single, eight hundred and thirty mile road called the Ring Road that encircled the island. For half the year, portions of even that road were treacherous or off limits.

  “What’s back there?” Grey asked. “In the interior?”

  “Volcanoes, rift valleys, lava fields, a glacier bigger than Delaware. Some of the best hiking in the world, if you can get to it. Back in the day, the Icelanders used to banish convicted murderers into the interior. No handcuffs, no jail. Just good luck in there, buddy.”

  Fifteen minutes outside of Rekyjavik, after the rain stopped and the fog lifted, the scenery on the Ring Road blew Grey’s mind. To his right, a field of colored lava rocks tumbled towards a phalanx of snowcapped peaks. On the other side, a valley of smoking geysers bubbled away beneath an even more towering mountain range. The scenery changed dramatically with every bend, shifting from pockets of golden farmland to sheets of volcanic gravel, rivulets forking like serpents’ tongues down jagged green cliffs, the silver spears of waterfalls arcing off plateaus.

  The landscape felt Jurassic to Grey. Raw, immense, untamed. As if any moment, a tyrannosaurus might come bounding down a hillside.

  “You ever consider getting some hobbies?” Jax asked.

  Grey started. “What?”

  “What do you do in your spare time? Besides solving crimes and killing people. Or teaching other people how to kill people.”

  “I have hobbies,” Grey muttered.

  Jax lifted his eyebrows. “When’s the last time you saw a movie?”

  “I love movies.”

  “That wasn’t the question.”

  Grey looked out the window.

  “So?” Jax said.

  “I’ve been a little married to my work, lately.”

  “Have you? I did some checking around before I accepted your offer. Seems like you haven’t done much of anything, since Peru.”

  Grey’s face hardened.

  “Listen. I don’t mean to be insensitive. But one of the danger signs in my profession—which you’re currently involved in, whether you like it or not—is personal involvement. I’m not gonna say a job has never been personal for me, because that would be a lie, but I never put myself in unwarranted danger because of a personal connection. Myself or my colleagues.”

  Grey looked over at him. “We have different jobs.”

  Jax chuckled. “There you go again. Listen, I don’t care what you think of me, but I don’t think you’re hearing me. You bought my loyalty, true, but I won’t risk my own skin unnecessarily for a personal vendetta that will get us both killed. And when I look in your eyes, I don’t see the same caution. To be honest, and I usually am, I see someone who’s gone over a cliff because of one girl, and who’ll do anything in his power to save another. And I do mean anything.”

  Damn right, Grey wanted to say. On both counts.

  But he needed Jax’s help, and held his tongue. Instead he said, “My mind’s in the right place for the job. Trust me.”

  “Usually when people ask me to trust them,” Jax said quietly, as a volcano with snow rimming its mighty cone like gravy came into view, “I don’t.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Your word that I’ll know what I’m getting into.”

  Grey met his eyes. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Fair enough.”

  They stopped for fish and chips at a polka-dotted food truck near Skogafoss, a mighty waterfall just off the road that dwarfed the handful of onlookers at the bottom. Grey’s arctic char tasted as if it had just been pulled out of the ocean.

  After Skogafoss, the road wound around a promontory and descended into Vik, a charming little fishing village nestled against the shore of a black sand beach. Opposite the ocean, a white church sat dramatically on a hill above town, backed by a line of stark cliffs streaked with ravines.

  Jax rented a pair of rooms while Grey stayed out of sight. The tiny size of Vik made Grey nervous. Later in the day, after the Ice Bar opened and Jax headed off to scope out the scene, Grey stayed in the room until he grew hungry and then walked to the most innocuous establishment he could find: a short-order café with a few tables in the back of a gas station.

  He huddled in his parka, ordered a hamburger, and stared out the window at the moss-draped cliffs of the promontory, jutting over the beach as the falling sun glowed red behind the clouds.

  Grey’s cell buzzed. He glanced down at the text from Jax.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Grey returned to the hotel and paced deep into the night, on edge for signs of danger, constantly checking his phone.

  Sometime after two a.m., he lay on his back in his bed, weighed down by depression, staring at the ceiling.

  A scratching sound near the window caused him to lurch out of bed, grab his gun, and ease the front door open. Half-awake, he crept through the bushes, then stood blinking at the branch scraping against the side of the house.

  Just before he returned inside, Grey looked up and saw something that took his breath away. A full canopy of stars had emerged and, even more spectacular, vivid whorls of green and pale blue light shimmied and streaked across the sky, spanning the horizon like spotlights from another dimension.

  God, it was beautiful. He was so moved that he stood in dumb silence, immune to the cold, staring at the heavens until his hands turned numb.

  He didn’t get it. He truly didn’t get it. How could such beauty coexist with a world so base, so dark and vile, that it had snuffed the life from Nya and produced a man like Dag and left little children to fend for themselves on the streets? It was beyond attributable to the cruelty of nature, beyond anything Grey could fathom. It was perverse.

/>   When a bank of clouds drowned the stars, he returned inside and did his best to get some sleep.

  He never heard back from Jax.

  The next morning, Grey checked his cell, made coffee, and stepped outside for some air. The backyard had a view of three basalt columns jutting out of the ocean like fingers. His breath frosty, Grey wondered if Jax had been compromised and whether they would come for him next.

  His fears proved unfounded. Jax strolled in an hour later, whistling, hair tousled. “I’ll say this,” he said. “I see why Emil keeps stopping by.”

  Grey jumped off the sofa. “Find anything?”

  “Emil’s name is in her phone. No wedding photos or anything, but there are signs of a man in the apartment. Clothes, toothbrush, protein shake.”

  “What about the Wodan Republic?”

  “She’s got some skinhead lit, but I don’t think she’s that into it. Didn’t mention it to me. Then again, we were pretty busy.”

  Grey ran a hand through his hair and left it cupping the back of his neck. He felt like they were on the right trail, but they were running out of time. He debated going back to Rekyjavik, tying Emil up, and forcing him to reveal what he knew about Dag. That was a last resort, and . . . no. That could doom Charlie.

  Grey had to do better.

  “You following the news about the virus?” Jax asked. “It’s gone, well, viral.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  Jax looked down and shook his head. “That’s not cool.”

  “What do you care?” Grey said. “You’d probably sell it to the highest bidder.”

  “No,” Jax said, suddenly serious. “Not that. Moving arms for soldiers is one thing, a bioweapon that targets innocent human beings another.”

  “As if half the warlords you sell to don’t target civilians.”

  Jax’s jaw tightened. “I don’t work for those types.”

  “Keep on telling yourself that.”

  “Are we going to argue all day, or do something about your girl?”

  Grey forced himself to calm down and think. Jax was right. Arguing mercenary ethics was a displacement for Grey’s frustration.

  Hoping for someone important to show up at the Ice Bar might be a red herring. Then again, while Iceland felt right, Rekyjavik felt wrong. Grey thought Dag had flown in, maybe did some business in the capital, then taken Charlie to a hideout in a remote location.

  He steepled his fingers against his mouth. “We’ll give Emil or his buddies one more night to show. Then we split up. You watch this place, and I’ll go have a chat with Emil.”

  “Works for me.”

  More waiting. Grey felt as if he were going to crawl out of his skin. Later that day, after Jax returned to the Ice Bar, Grey ventured out for a bite to eat again while the shops were still open.

  Not wanting anyone to remember his face, he chose the second most unlikely restaurant he could find: a frilly café with candles in black lace sconces and Bob Dylan playing softly through the speakers. The only patrons were a pair of elderly Dutch tourists who looked like sisters.

  As Grey sipped a green tea and waited on his panini, his cell buzzed. Eager to hear good news from Jax, he fumbled to take his phone out, then gripped it so hard the plastic cover crackled.

  It wasn’t Jax.

  Grey had set up his email on the phone, and someone anonymous had sent him an image of Charlie, bound and gagged on a concrete floor, her face bruised and bloody. On her chest, an open laptop displayed the front page of the New York Times. With an intake of breath, Grey pulled up the Internet and went to the newspaper’s home page again.

  Today’s headline, as he knew it would be.

  A warning to work faster.

  Grey’s hand started to tremble. He fought the urge to overturn his table and roar at the top of his lungs. A waiter brought his sandwich and hurried away when he saw Grey’s face. He stared down at the tray, uninterested in the food.

  The door to the café opened, and a blast of cool air snuck in. Out of habit, Grey’s eyes lifted to seek out the face of the newcomer, expecting another gray-haired tourist.

  Instead he saw Emil, looking right back at Grey.

  -36-

  Kristof pulled Viktor into the passage. The sudden appearance of the butler caused the professor’s heart to skip a beat. Jerking his arm away with a feeling of superstitious dread the professor thought he had left far in the past, he experienced another bout of fright when he noticed Robey in the underground passage as well, standing with crossed arms ten feet behind Kristof.

  “Come,” Robey said, in a voice devoid of emotion. He made a half-turn, waiting for Viktor to follow.

  Kristof moved past the professor and slammed the laboratory door shut. Though his heart was about to pound out of his chest, Viktor felt relieved no one was going to drag him inside the lab and stuff him in a vat.

  “Where’s van Draker?” Viktor boomed, with a show of confidence he did not feel.

  “I’m afraid I’m not as spry as I used to be,” Jans called back, just before he materialized out of the darkness behind Robey. Van Draker’s lips curled into a slow smile as he approached. “Perhaps I’ll have to replace this leg one day.”

  Why had Jans ventured down to the sublevel, instead of waiting for Robey to bring Viktor upstairs?

  The professor tore his gaze away from the insipid gray flesh of the former police officer’s face. “I thought you didn’t have a basement,” he said to Jans.

  “Didn’t I tell you? The proper term is dungeon.”

  Viktor didn’t respond, and Jans tucked a hand behind his back. “So you’ve seen the lab. I confess I don’t understand your shock. You do realize the inspiration for Mary Shelley’s novel was taken from experiments surrounding the galvanism of corpses in the late seventeen hundreds? That Giovanni Aldini actually caused the eye of a hanged criminal to open days after his death?”

  “I’m aware.”

  “My dear professor, those experiments happened two hundred and fifty years ago. We are way past jolting corpses.”

  “Didn’t you read the novel?” Viktor asked. “Why would you want to create an undead thing?”

  “Oh, but the Frankenstein monster was very much alive. Undead is a semantic affectation. A being either possesses life, or it does not.”

  Viktor flicked his eyes at Robey. “You call this life?”

  Van Draker stiffened. “I challenge you to prove otherwise. By any definition.” He reached back to squeeze Robey’s shoulder. “We have had many long and enlightening conversations, he and I.”

  Viktor didn’t bother hiding his revulsion. “What happened to Akhona in there? Who are the others?”

  Van Draker moved closer, until Viktor could see the manic intelligence burning behind his eyes. The professor heard Kristof move away from the door, and Viktor resisted the urge to whip around.

  “We understand so little about the energy that animates us all,” van Draker said. “Is electricity the soul? Is the soul electricity? Did you know, professor, that sharks sense fish underwater by their electrical emissions? They seem to know more than we do. Yet I am learning, I am learning.” He bobbed his head. “And I know, like many before me, that it works.”

  “That what works?”

  Van Draker’s grin was slow and sure. “Surely you’ve guessed by now. Unlike my predecessors over the centuries, who could ignite life but had no way to sustain it, science has caught up with imagination. Think of it as another step in evolution. Our species is finding new ways to survive, to create the very life we have so mysteriously been given.”

  “How did this lead to the virus? What have you done?”

  Van Draker curled a finger. “Come. I asked you to return for tea one day, and I’ve been a negligent host.”

  The professor was confused. Jans knew he had seen the laboratory, and the former surgeon had so much as admitted that he was playing with the secrets of life and death.

  Yet he was inviting him upstairs for tea?

/>   Viktor knew it wouldn’t be that simple. “I’m free to leave, then?”

  Van Draker spread his hands. “What power have I to stop you? Captain Waalkamp has been informed of your trespass, and is waiting outside. Robey will have to take your cell phone—I’m afraid I’ve never allowed photography on the premises—but what happens after that is between you and the captain. Though I do believe if we hurry, we can sneak in that cup.”

  Perhaps, Viktor thought, van Draker planned to have Robey waylay him as soon as he turned his back. If so, then it was out of Viktor’s control. He was no Dominic Grey.

  “Rooibos or black tonight?” Jans asked, as they started walking.

  “Black,” Viktor said.

  An hour later, in the wee hours of the morning, Viktor slumped in his bunk at the city jail. After his cup of tea, with Robey standing guard while van Draker made maddening small talk about the weather and international politics, Captain Waalkamp took Viktor into custody. When the professor requested a phone call, the captain mumbled something about the internet connection and the lateness of the hour, then promised phone access in the morning.

  Viktor had no idea what due process amounted to in South Africa, but he didn’t like the lack of transparency. Nor did he trust that van Draker would let him see the laboratory and walk away.

  Robey had taken Viktor’s cell phone away in the dungeon, so the professor hadn’t had an opportunity to send Naomi or Grey a text. In the morning, Viktor would force the captain to at least contact Jacques on his behalf. It would be a violation of the Interpol treaty not to. A serious breach of international etiquette.

  What were van Draker and Captain Waalkamp planning? An attack on his credibility? Since his phone had been taken and almost certainly deleted of data, Viktor had no other evidence. It would be his word against van Draker’s.