The Cotten Stone Omnibus: It started with The Grail Conspiracy... (The Cotten Stone Mysteries)

by Lynn Sholes

  As quirky as he was, she began to see him as her only hope to get anything accomplished. And somewhere deep inside, she knew he probably was not joking about shooting people.

  “What do you have in mind, Colonel?”

  “My comrades go to castle and rescue your friends. Simple plan.”

  “I thought it was heavily guarded. How will you get in?”

  “There are many ways in and out of Wolf Castle. Some only known to Vladimir.”

  “What do you want in return?”

  “I want to be big hero on American television news. Then maybe I run for office here and become mayor of great former Soviet city of Chisinau.”

  “That’s it?”

  He shrugged. “Better than part-time guide at museum.”

  “You have to take me along.”

  “Impossible,” he said.

  “No, Colonel, that’s the deal. Take me or forget becoming the new mayor.”

  He stared at her for a long time. Then with a big smile, he said, “You have bulletproof vest?”

  the river

  The late 1960s Volkswagen panel minibus rumbled along the back country road past endless miles of farmland. Cotten sat on the floor in the back, feeling every bump and rut. Colonel Ivanov had given her an old boat cushion to use, but it was of little help. She felt her spine vibrating with every pothole and crack in the pavement.

  Ivanov and three of his former KGB friends had picked her up a few blocks from her hotel just before sunset. Earlier that afternoon, she had taken a taxi to a store that sold hunting gear and Soviet-era army surplus clothing. There she bought a pair of rugged hunting pants, a heavy woolen sweater, ski mask, and a thick mountain jacket with a sheep’s wool collar. The salesman couldn’t find boots small enough to fit her, so she bought additional pairs of extra thick socks to fill up the space. A few hours later, dressed in the heavy clothing with her gloved hands jammed deep into her coat pockets, she tried to keep warm in the back of the VW.

  Sitting across from her was Krystof, a skinny little man with sad eyes and a week-old growth of stubble. He had fallen asleep soon after leaving the city and didn’t seem bothered by the bumpy ride.

  To his left was Victor, a white-haired grandfatherly man with thick glasses and crooked teeth. She had learned that he and Krystof were both former officers in the Russian navy before being recruited by the KGB many years ago. His eyebrows were the bushiest Cotten had ever seen, and he spent the time listening to a small radio in his coat pocket, using a single earplug.

  In the front passenger’s seat was Alexei. He had a dark, full beard and small black eyes. Cotten estimated he weighed at least 250 pounds, and despite the chilly weather, his forehead had a permanent sheen of sweat. He constantly hummed a nameless tune.

  Colonel Ivanov drove the minibus.

  All the men wore side arms under their long coats, and Cotten assumed they probably had additional weapons hidden elsewhere on their bodies. When she had asked Ivanov if she needed a weapon, he laughed out loud. Then he patted her arm. “You might accidentally shoot someone.” With a wide grin, he pointed to the other three. “Perhaps one of us.”

  As the minibus rolled through the dark farmland of eastern Moldova, she wondered if this was really the route she needed to take to help get John back? Instead, should she be camped out on the steps of the Moldovian Parliament building demanding that the government conduct a search and rescue mission?

  She had left the SNN Moscow reporter and crew trying to do just that. So far, they had little success. But with other international press starting to hear the news and converge on the capital, perhaps the world would take notice and react with outrage to the reports of the missing Vatican diplomats. Was Cotten’s place back in Chisinau instead of somewhere in the backcountry with a bunch of old, burned-out KGB losers from a country that no longer existed? As every mile passed by, she became less convinced that she was doing the right thing.

  Colonel Ivanov turned the minibus off the pavement onto a dirt farm road. Although there were no windows in the panel van, Cotten could raise up enough to get a glimpse of the terrain in the headlights. The farmland had transformed into forest, and the road snaked its way through an ever-thickening wooded countryside. Soon, the forest became so dense that branches scraped against the sides of the van.

  Finally, they descended a gentle slope and ground to a halt. Ivanov switched off the engine and headlights. A heavy silence surrounded the minivan. Krystof awoke. Cotten noticed that he was looking at her. With a toothy grin, he whispered, “River.”

  After a full five minutes, the colonel slowly and quietly opened his door. Alexei did the same on the passenger’s side. Cotten started to rise, but Krystof motioned her to remain seated. She could hear the low conversation of the two men outside. Then another lengthy wait.

  She wondered if Krystof had dozed off again. Then Ivanov quietly slid the side door open.

  “Everyone out,” he whispered.

  “Where are we?” Cotten asked as she stepped down onto the crunchy dirt.

  “Dniester River,” Ivanov said. “We go for boat ride.”

  Krystof reached inside the van and pulled back a thick sheet of canvas, revealing a stash of weapons. “Kalashnikov,” he said to Cotten as he lifted an AK-47 from the pile. “Best in world.”

  Ivanov chose a similar rifle from the pile. Alexei lifted a slim Dragunov sniper rifle from the stash along with a bag the size of an attaché case. Victor finished his selection by taking a compact machine pistol with an extra long magazine clip. When all were satisfied with their choices, Ivanov carefully slid the door to the minibus closed. He led the group down a hillside past an old cabin and onto a wooden pier running about twenty feet out over the water.

  Cotten saw the starlight reflecting off the slow-moving water. It was hard to tell, but in the dim light, she estimated the river to be about a quarter of a mile across.

  Tied to the end of the dock was a rowboat about twelve feet long. In the bow rested what looked like a pile of fish netting. Two large oars lay across a pair of wooden benches. Ivanov placed his index finger over his lips and then motioned for everyone to get into the boat. Cotten sat in the stern beside Victor. Ivanov removed the ropes that moored the boat to the dock and pitched them in the boat before positioning himself in the bow on top of the netting. Appearing to move in slow motion, Alexei and Krystof took the fat-shafted oars and eased them into the gunwale guides. Ivanov and Victor gently shoved the boat away from the dock. With an almost unperceivable effort, the other two men lowered their oars into the water and started rowing.

  Silently, the boat rocked away from the dock and headed across the black water. Cotten glanced over her shoulder. The minibus, dock, and cabin faded into the darkness of the riverbank. She wrapped her arms around herself, not from the bitter cold and first flakes of snow that fell, but from the fear that John might already be dead. This was the only way, she told herself. No one else would come to his aid. This was his only chance for survival.

  Her fragile confidence was suddenly shattered as a powerful spotlight swept across the surface of the river and lit up the rowboat like daylight.

  the island

  Moon sat alone in her living room, her housekeeper gone for the day. Tired, exhausted, the work was taking its toll on her frail frame. But she was so close. Close enough to count the days, perhaps even the hours until the first wave of attacks.

  Soon.

  She had turned out all the lights. Only the soft glow of the television lit the room. She was about to watch the videocassettes—again.

  Moon had memorized every word. She could close her eyes and recall every scene in amazing detail. To her, it was a living being—a direct connection to the past, to her father, to his work. In the tapes were images of the place where he unknowingly gave birth to the virus that would become Black Needles.

  Aiming the
remote, she pressed play.

  The video from the handheld camera was shaky at first as the landmass emerged from the Gaussian blur of the fog bank. It was early morning, but the sun had not yet burned off the blanket of mist over the ocean. Slowly, the pieces of a dark, rocky beach came together to form a wide expanse of headland stretching across the bow of the boat.

  There were three young ethno-botanists aboard the launch—Gina, a brunette with dark-eyes and olive-skin; Stefen, a lanky fellow with hair the color of oatmeal and fair skin who was shooting the video; and Lesley, a tall pecan-skinned girl who drove the boat.

  Moon fast-forwarded the tape until the boat’s bow knifed into the sandy bottom as they put ashore on the island.

  After disembarking, Stefen aimed the camera at himself, holding it at arm’s length. Feigning a British accent he said, “Welcome to Pleasure Island. I will be your host for the day.” Stefen gave a theatrical grin, then twisted around and aimed the camera toward the sea, zooming in on the hulky silhouette of the Pitcairn anchored in the distance. The Oceanautics research vessel had served as home for the three botanists along with other graduate student-scientists.

  Moon paused the tape and stared at the Pitcairn. The ship was only a part of her prize. For three months they had kept the ship in quarantine while it was decontaminated. Today it was moored along the banks of the Taedong River in the middle of the North Korean capital alongside the USS Pueblo—two shining jewels in the General Secretary’s political treasury.

  When Moon and her bio-hazmat medical team had first boarded the Pitcairn, among the dead they found Stefen’s videotape collection, eleven in all, but two of them were what captured her attention. Those two tapes and the ship’s log revealed that the research vessel had found the island by accident when a violent electrical storm caused an onboard fire and knocked out the navigation and communication systems. The ship strayed off course for a day until it came across one of the thousands of islands in the vast Korea Bay. With the possible chance of discovering new plant life, the three botanists had set off to explore the desolate volcanic island while the ship’s crew worked on repairing the damaged electronics. The repair took longer than expected, giving the botanists a number of opportunities to visit the island over the next few days. Each time, they explored a different section of the twenty-square-mile landmass.

  Moon fast-forwarded through the videotape until she saw Lesley holding a digital SLR camera. She let the recording resume normal play. Stefen was again the videographer.

  “Look,” Lesley whispered and pointed. “There’s an amur falcon in that tree.” Then she refocused her telephoto lens. “How strange.” Lowering the camera, she stepped a few paces forward, sweeping back the tall grass with her hand. “Check it out. About forty yards straight out.”

  “What the hell?” Stefen said, pointing the video camera and zooming.

  Gina said, “What do you think it is … or was?”

  “Looks like an old building,” Lesley said. “At least what’s left of it.”

  “But out here in the middle of nowhere?” Lesley used her hand like a sun visor. “You guys want to have a look?”

  “Definitely,” Stefen said. Before following the two girls, he panned the camera in a circle, capturing their surroundings. “For posterity, on Pleasure Island we have your basic craggy-faced cliffs, a lot of dark, spooky forest, and thick undergrowth, probably filled with venomous snakes and deadly scorpions.”

  The video jiggled as Stefen continued to tape while walking to the building.

  Moon watched the three students stare at a lone concrete wall. It was hard to judge from the image, but the wall appeared to be about two hundred feet long and thirty feet high. The rest of the building was nothing more than heaps of rubble with chunks of concrete and iron rods occasionally poking through the underbrush. Openings in the wall that had once been windows were now only gaping wounds.

  Moon’s parents had worked there for many years during the Japanese occupation. In the video, the ultra-secret lab of the Japanese Army’s Unit 731 was now nothing but rubble and weeds. Her father had no idea what he had left behind—something so innocent at the time—but that had all changed now. Her discovery was more than serendipity. It was as if it were meant to be there, just waiting for her.

  Her eyes focused on the video. It showed two tall cylindrical stacks, reaching a good ten feet higher than the rest of the structure, rising behind the wall, standing like sentries over the ruins.

  “Incinerators of some kind, maybe?” Lesley motioned toward the stacks. “And look at that.” She pointed at a faint image painted above an entrance doorway—a weather-worn red circle with sixteen rays on a nearly vanished white field.

  “Hinomaru,” Gina said. “The Japanese war flag. Maybe this was a World War II military facility.”

  “Let’s see what else we can find.” Lesley led the way around to the other side of the wall. The rubble and tangle of brush and vines made it difficult to walk.

  Gina said, “My guess is there was an explosion or the place was bombed. Either way, it was a long time ago.”

  “And something more recent,” Lesley said. “Maybe an earthquake? Some of the damage appears recent.”

  “Wait!” Stefen pointed as he aimed the camera at a piece of rusted machinery.

  Lesley froze and glanced down. Sticking out of the ground was a protruding metal spike. “Damn, I didn’t even see it.” She blew out her breath. “Thanks. That would have been nasty.”

  “Hey, take a look.” Stefen handed the camera to Gina. With a grunt, he bent and pulled back a piece of rusted sheet metal the size of a car hood.

  The video showed a narrow set of concrete steps leading into the ground.

  “This is wild,” Stefen said. “Who wants to go first?”

  He took the camera back and focused on Gina as she declined and sat on a nearby chunk of wall. “Jesus, Stefen, do you have to tape every little thing? You’re obsessive about that damn video camera.”

  He laughed, but kept the camera pointed at Gina. “Coming?”

  “You guys have at it,” Gina said. “Think I’m catching the flu.” She rubbed her arms as if chilled, then shivered.

  “Too much cheap wine last night,” Stefen said.

  “Get the freakin’ camera off me, would you! Christ, you’re a pain in the ass,” Gina said.

  “Testy today, aren’t we?” Stefen panned toward Lesley.

  “We’ll just take a quick look,” Lesley said to Gina. “Be right back.”

  Stefen dug into his backpack and pulled out his flashlight. Lesley located hers. With Stefen in the lead, still videotaping everything, they started down the steps.

  At the bottom was a tunnel littered with debris, but passable. Lesley shined her light into the darkness. Ten paces ahead was a much larger tunnel running perpendicular to the smaller one.

  With great care, they maneuvered over pieces of fallen lumber and chunks of concrete until they stood in the wider passage. It was smooth-surfaced and large enough to drive a car through. Pitch-blackness lay ahead. They shined their beams in both directions before Stefen motioned to the right.

  “Let’s see where this leads.”

  “You first,” Lesley said.

  The tunnel cut into the volcanic rock for about fifty feet before widening into a large room housing what appeared to be two power generators.

  “They remind me of locomotive engines,” Lesley said as they moved past the hulks of rusted metal.

  Moon pressed the fast-forward button again, speeding through the parts where Lesley and Stefen found a chamber with bunk beds, all in various states of collapse and dry rot. They backtracked and followed another tunnel, passing toilets and a kitchen and then into a storage room. That’s when Moon returned the video to normal play.

  This was the part she cherished.

  Stefen flashed his
light on the back wall of the storage room. “Check it out.”

  The video revealed a sizeable hole in the wall—chunks of concrete crumbled on the floor below it.

  Stefen approached the hole and examined its rough edges. “Looks like it collapsed recently, probably from the earthquake.” He aimed his beam into the hole and the space beyond. “What do you make of that?”

  Lesley came closer. “A store room? Or maybe a safe room in case of attack?”

  What the video showed was a concrete-walled room about the size of a modest walk-in closet. In the center was a wooden pallet. Neatly stacked on top were cylinders that looked to be about three inches in diameter and ten inches long. Lesley counted. “Twenty-five.”

  Squeezing through the opening, Stefen stood beside the pallet. He lifted one of the cylinders. “Not metal. Feels more like ceramic.” Replacing it, he shined his light around the small room. At the corner of the pallet, a single canister had dropped off and rolled over against the wall. “Oh shit, that one sprang a leak.” He aimed the light at the floor illuminating a dark smudged stain beside the canister. “No telling what that crap was. Want to take one back? We might get a pretty penny for war memorabilia.”

  “Forget it. Could be toxic.” The alarm on Lesley’s watch beeped. “We need to report back to the ship.” She silenced the alarm and maneuvered through the hole in the wall. “Remember the captain said to use the walkie-talkie to radio in every hour in case they get the equipment repaired.”

  “He’s worse than a mother hen.” Stefen said.

  Lesley pulled the small, handheld radio from her backpack and pressed the transmit button. “Hello, Pitcairn?”

  Static.

  “It’s never going to work down here,” she said. “We need to get above ground.”