Black Rose

CHAPTER 59

"Can't you ever do something without making a public spectacle out of yourselves?"

Elizabeth looked cool and efficient in her tailored black pants suit and white blouse. Her cat-like green eyes flashed with annoyance.

"We didn't have much of a choice, Director," Nick said. He rubbed his chin, feeling a two-day stubble. There hadn't been time to shave.

They were back in Virginia. It had taken serious pressure and the invocation of the magic words National Security before the NYPD would let them go.

"I sent the canister down to CDC in Atlanta. Now that they have a sample it will be easier to find a way to defeat it. That's the good news. The bad news is that Gutenberg is still out there. He's not going to quit just because Schmidt didn't succeed."

"I can guess what you're going to say next," Nick said.

"He must have more of the plague stashed somewhere and we need to find it. You're going to Switzerland. Gutenberg is holed up in his château. "

"Here are the satellite shots," Stephanie said. The wall monitor lit.

"Fancy digs," Ronnie said.

The château was four stories high, set on a bump of land sticking out like a thumb into the Rhône. Tall, pointed towers and spires gave it a fairytale quality. It looked as if it belonged in a movie about arrogant nobles and men with plumed hats and long swords.

A tree-lined drive led to a high, stone wall and an iron gate that opened into a large, paved courtyard. There was a guardhouse outside the gate and a large fountain in the middle of the courtyard. The wall was topped with jagged pieces of glass and ran all the way around the building. In the back, the wall descended past ground level to the river's edge. A heavy retaining wall foundation kept the château from crumbling into the river.

"It was built early in the eighteenth century," Stephanie said. "There are over a hundred and fifty rooms."

"Perfect for that casual weekend get-together," Ronnie said.

"Here are the original plans," Stephanie said. She touched her keyboard and architectural drawings filled the screen. "I found them in the archives of the local city hall. The Swiss are obsessive about keeping records."

The drawings showed three separate chapels, a grand ballroom, a large room that was probably for dining, a drawing room and library and many smaller rooms on the ground floor. A sweeping staircase led to the upper stories. Servant's stairs were hidden away out of sight of the main rooms. A maze of concealed passages went behind the walls, allowing servants to move about the house unobtrusively, where they wouldn't annoy the nobility. Steps led down from a huge kitchen to arched vaults of stone built under the château.

"You can see how they built that wall to keep the river out." Stephanie used a laser pointer to indicate what she was talking about. "The vaults are perfect for storing wine and food. The temperature would be cool, constant in summer or winter."

Stephanie tapped a key. The monitor switched to a moving video in color.

"This is a video taken by a cruise ship line that goes up and down the river. Gutenberg's château is ideal from an advertising point of view because it's a beautiful example of old European architecture. I thought you might see something useful."

They watched as the video moved past the château. The remains of a crumbling dock stuck out into the river from a narrow shelf next to the wall. Set in the wall at the end of the dock was a rusted metal door. The door looked old and immovable. The château looked romantic and picturesque.

"That door doesn't look like it's been opened for a hundred years," Nick said.

"Where does it go?" Selena asked.

Stephanie brought up the drawing. "Into the vaults. They would have used it to unload fresh produce and goods from the river."

"That's our way in," Ronnie said. "We can't go in through the front. The fake delivery or repairman bit won't fly here."

"I wish we had more Intel," Nick said.

"There's never enough Intel. Besides, think of all the times when the Intel we had was wrong."

"Yeah, but that doesn't stop me from wishing we had more. Run the video again, will you Steph? I thought I saw something."

They watched as the château started to slip by.

"Hold it there," Nick said. The picture froze. "There. On top of the wall."

"I see it," Ronnie said.

"What are you looking at?" Selena asked.

"See that shiny line? The sun must've caught it just right when they were filming. You have to look close, it's really hard to see."

A shimmering, hair thin line ran along the top of the wall a few inches above the tips of the broken glass.

"Trip wire," Ronnie said. "If he's got that, he's got cameras and some kind of backup alarm system as well."

"I wonder how many guards he has," Selena said.

"More than we'd like," Nick said.

"There's always one guard at the gate," Stephanie said. "There's the chauffeur. Probably a dozen staff inside, but some of those would be noncombatants. Cooks, housekeepers, people like that."

"All that tells us is that we don't know how many are in there. With Krivi and Mitchell and the others gone, he has to be paranoid as hell. If I were him, I'd have armed men all around me."

"How do you want to play it?" Elizabeth asked. "We need to move before he sends someone else out with one of those canisters."

"Ronnie's right," Nick said. "We'll never get through that front gate."

"You want to try that door?" Ronnie asked.

"Right now it looks like the best shot," Nick said. "But if we have to blow it open it will alert everyone inside."

"We could go over the wall," Selena said. "That wire shouldn't be much of a problem."

"We could, but we'd be exposed on top. Gutenberg must have security cameras. We'd be sitting ducks up there and when we drop down, there's no cover until we reach the house. Time enough to send out the goons. It's a kill zone."

Ronnie said, "I can use the plasma cutter. It will go right through that old metal."

"How soon can you leave?" Elizabeth asked.

"Give us an hour to put our gear together," Nick said.