Labyrinth

Chapter 19

Locke couldn’t believe it when Dogan presented him with his passport Monday night.

“A Russian friend of mine retrieved it from the train station at Vaduz” was all he said. “Without it, travel at this point would prove extremely difficult.”

“I thought you guys had contacts all over the world who could whip one up in no time.”

“And all of them are being watched hoping I’ll do just that.”

“So I remain Sam Babbit.”

“Felderberg was the only one who knew you under that name so it should be safe to keep it.”

“Burgess knows about it too,” Locke reminded him. “He set the identity up, and you expressed reservations about him before.”

“But from what you’ve said, I doubt we have anything to fear from him. Besides, we haven’t got much choice.”

“Then maybe I should call the contact number and fill him in.”

“No. By now someone has probably linked him to Charney, which means they’ll be watching him. You’ll only throw Burgess into more danger and risk exposing yourself at the same time.”

Locke lowered his eyes to the ceramic floor of his room’s balcony. “I suppose the same can be said about contacting my family.”

“Even more so,” Dogan said softly, trying to comfort Locke as best he could. “They would ask questions you couldn’t answer, ask for reassurances you couldn’t give. Worse, contacting them could place their lives in jeopardy.”

“And what if that’s already the case?” Locke demanded suddenly. “The Committee stops at nothing — you said that yourself. My family are sitting ducks for them.”

“Only as leverage against you, leverage they didn’t think they needed until yesterday and leverage that means nothing since they have no idea where you are. The Committee stops at nothing, true, but none of its motions are wasted. You can count on that.”

“Excuse me if I don’t.” Locke sat down wearily. “God, this is crazy. A week ago I hated my life. Everything was falling apart and I would have grasped for anything just for the sake of change. That’s probably what drove me to accept Charney’s offer more than anything else. Now I find myself trapped in a labyrinth, and everywhere I turn there’s another wall. This may sound nuts, but all of a sudden I realize maybe I didn’t have it so bad. Maybe my problems at home weren’t worse than anybody else’s.”

“I know how you feel.”

“Do you? Do you have a life back in the States that you’ll probably never make it back to?” Locke challenged, feeling guilty even before the hurt appeared on Dogan’s face.

The agent looked away. “A family never meant much to me, just something to tie me down. We can’t have that in my profession, can we?”

“Brian tried. It didn’t work.”

“It seldom does. The profession has to be everything.” A bitter tone entered Dogan’s voice. “Especially for me because I was the best. But the only thing being the best does for you is set you up as a target, for the opposition and for your own people. And it’s your own people who are the worst. When you’re too good, they start to fear you’ve gained too much control. That’s when you become expendable. You work your whole career to attain something and then they take it away because to them you’re just a machine; no, less than a machine — a number, a number they can delete from the central computer with one touch of a key. Then you don’t exist anymore because maybe you never did in the first place.”

Dogan was breathing uncharacteristically hard. Locke found himself smiling.

“Is this the moment we cry on each other’s shoulders?”

Dogan chuckled, then checked his watch. “Not if I want to make my plane. It leaves for Bogotá in an hour and yours leaves for Rome tomorrow morning. After landing, you’ll enjoy a scenic train route north into Florence. I’ve already contacted the Dwarf’s people. He’s expecting you.”

“So I just walk right into his office and tell him you sent me….”

“Hardly. Something seems to have spooked the little man rather badly and he’s gone into hiding. You can bet it won’t be easy to get into see him. He’ll have you checked out carefully. It may be a long afternoon.”

“I’ve heard Florence is beautiful this time of year.”

“That’s good because you might be seeing a lot of it. Standard procedure in this situation dictates you’ll be run around a bit to make sure you’re alone. Just follow their instructions. The Dwarf takes precautions, but if you cooperate, you’ll see him.”

“And then?”

“Back to Rome and the Hilton Hotel, where a reservation for you has already been made. You’ll stay put there until you hear from me. We’ll set up a contact code through the hotel manager. I’ve worked with him before and he’s very reliable. If he doesn’t present a warding-off signal, I’ll know it’s safe to come in. I don’t expect to be in San Sebastian long anyway. I should be in Rome by late Wednesday with any luck.”

“We haven’t had much yet.”

“We’re alive, Chris, and that’s a start.”

Calvin Roy finished going over Brian Charney’s file for the sixth time. The feeling that something was missing was still very strong in him. His eyes tired and bloodshot, Roy started his seventh survey.

What he sought was there, he felt certain of that. The problem was to find it. Proof positive that a high-security file had been tampered with could confirm his, and Charney’s, greatest fears: Whatever was happening had deep roots in the United States government.

Roy kept reading.

Charney would have sent Locke to someone in England, a person who had to be present in the dead agent’s file. The key was there, the answer sure—

Roy’s eyes froze. He went over the section a second time, a third. He flipped the page over and studied it closely.

He had found what he was looking for!

The file had been tampered with, all right. The evidence was quite clear. The question was why? And by whom? Something was very wrong here and somehow an innocent college professor had been thrust into the middle. Roy reached for his phone and hit one button.

“This is Roy. Put me through to the Secretary on the scrambler, wherever the hell he is.”

Locke’s train from Rome deposited him in Florence at four o’clock in the afternoon. The trip had been hectic but, incredibly, nothing had gone wrong. He hailed a cab and gave the driver his destination: the Palazzo Vecchio. Chris felt he was prepared for anything.

The palazzo was a medieval palace in a large piazza. Its single tower rose the length of a football field into the sky and featured a huge, ancient clock. Statues of varying sizes and constructions adorned the palazzo’s front, while its insides were dominated by artistic treasures unaffected by the centuries. Locke would not be entering, though. His instructions were to wait outside among the statues, pigeons, and horse-drawn carriages. He mingled with the natives and other tourists. Someone would contact him there. Chris had to make himself seen but not obvious.

He was strolling amid the pigeons, amused by their boldness, when a horse-drawn carriage pulled up near him.

“A ride, mister?” the driver asked in poor English.

“No thanks,” Locke said, turning away.

“A ride, mister?” the driver repeated.

“Not right now,” Locke said as politely as he could manage.

The driver smiled faintly and moved his right arm over the side of the carriage, holding the reins with only his left.

“A ride, mister?” he repeated a third time.

“Look, I told you—”

Locke’s eyes strayed down and fixed upon a tattoo on the driver’s right forearm, an impression of a small man standing between two large ones. A very small man.

A dwarf.

Locke looked up. The driver winked.

“A ride, mister?” he offered yet again, and this time Chris climbed into the back.

The horse trotted through the center of the old city, undaunted by the small cars surging past blaring their horns. The horse pranced as if it owned the streets and the machines were intruding. Soon it passed onto narrow streets where automobile traffic was prohibited. The ride lasted just over five minutes and ended in a square before what Chris recognized as the famed Baptistery, one of the oldest buildings in Florence. The driver yanked the reins hard, thrusting Chris forward a little. The man signaled him to get out. Locke reached into his pocket for some of the lire he had obtained in Zurich, but the man waved him off and slapped the horse gently with the reins, taking his leave.

Locke moved into the square.

The Baptistery was a striking, octagonal building made of different-color marbles and surrounded by a collection of pilasters that supported its arches. Locke started toward it, watching the numerous pigeons maneuver to avoid his feet without giving up their precious share of ground and breadcrumbs. An old, white-haired woman tossed feed to the birds by the handful, and their movements were dictated by the motions of her fingers.

Chris passed her and felt a batch of crumbs fall against his feet. The pigeons approached tentatively, grabbing their feed but pecking clear of his pants and shoes. Locke looked up at the old woman to find her sauntering away. He looked back down. A rolled-up piece of paper rested between his feet. Cautiously he knelt down and retrieved it, keeping it hidden from anyone close by as he unrolled it. The paper’s few words provided his next destination:

Uffizi Gallery, Madonna Enthroned …

The gallery was located back near the Palazzo Vecchio in the Square of the Uffizi. It contained some of the greatest art treasures in the world, the Madonna Enthroned by Giotto as great as any. As he snared a cab back beyond the Baptistery square, he mused that the Dwarf must be an art lover.

Because it could not use the mall streets and had to negotiate through dense traffic, the cab took ten minutes to get him to the Uffizi Gallery. The gallery was surprisingly empty and Locke had no trouble locating the massive Madonna. The painting dominated an entire wall, which Chris had all to himself. He was glancing at the painting, expecting a nudge to his shoulder or note stuck in his pocket, when he noticed a flicker of white sticking out from beneath the Madonna’s frame. Pretending to inspect the wood, he reached under and snatched it free. An envelope! Glancing around him to reassure himself no one was watching, Locke withdrew its contents.

West side of Ponte Vecchio Bridge. White Alfa Romeo.

The walk across the bridge, past a variety of open-air shops set up along it, took only ten minutes but seemed much longer. The spring warmth of Florence had begun to take its toll on Chris. His shirt was soaked through with sweat and he resisted the temptation to strip off his jacket for fear it might cause the Dwarf’s men to lose him. His mouth was dry and he was horribly thirsty. He realized his last drink had been a mouthful of water from a fountain before boarding the train from Rome.

Locke reached the far side of the bridge. An engine kicked on somewhere up the narrow street. Locke swung quickly, senses alert.

A white Alfa Romeo was inching its way into traffic. It stopped right next to Chris, doors snapping unlocked. He couldn’t make out the driver clearly through the tinted glass, but he opened a rear door and climbed into the backseat anyway.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Locke. We are satisfied you are who you say you are and that you have come alone,” the driver said in decent English. Locke was about to respond when he spoke again. “I will take you to the Dwarf now.”

They followed a winding road as it bent around the bank of the Arno River, then swung right into the hills above the ancient city. They wound up a road enclosed by lavish greenery, cars coming from the opposite direction seeming to miss the Alpha only by inches. Locke flinched with each pass. The driver seemed unbothered. Before long, he turned onto a private road and a sign made their destination clear: FORTE DI BELVEDERE.

The driver disregarded a smaller sign beneath it announcing Chiuso in Restauro and continued on until they reached four armed guards at the fort’s entrance waiting to meet any tourists who had not heeded the earlier warning. One of the guards spoke briefly in Italian to the Alfa’s driver, a chain was lowered, and the car slid forward into an impenetrable fortress built nearly four hundred years before.

The Forte di Belvedere consisted of one large central building surrounded by huge fortified parapets offering a fantastic view of the city below and the hills in which it was nestled. Obviously, though, the Dwarf had chosen it for its strategic advantages rather than its aesthetic ones. The Alfa came to a halt and Locke noticed a makeshift tent set up in the center of the fortress’s courtyard. A small man eyed him from beneath it. A giant flanked him on either side.

Locke stepped out of the car and was met by a smiling, tanned man with a rifle slung over his shoulder.

“Welcome to Florence, Mr. Locke. We apologize for any inconvenience our precautions may have caused, but I’m afraid I must now also ask you to submit to a search.”

Chris obliged and as the hands ruffled along his body and clothes, he noticed far more precautions had been taken. Stationed on the parapets were a number of armed men. A sandbagged station at each end was occupied by two men and a tripod-held heavy machine gun. The guards were everywhere, including on the roof of the central building and in the bell tower. The Dwarf was prepared to fend off a full-scale attack.

“You approve of my choice of retreat, Mr. Locke?”

The hands holding Chris allowed him to turn round and face the small man behind him.

“I’m happy to be at your service,” the Dwarf pronounced, extending a thick, miniature hand.

Locke took it and found the grasp surprisingly firm. The Dwarf’s features were not twisted or scarred at all. Instead, his face was dominated by a perfectly trimmed mustache and goatee, eyes above it full but somehow tired. He wore gray slacks and a blue sports shirt.

“I’m impressed,” Locke said, glancing around him.

The Dwarf followed his eyes. “This structure was originally built to protect Grand Duke Ferdinand I. I appropriated it recently because it remains a superb defensive fortress. You can’t be too careful these days.”

“Especially with the information you possess.”

The Dwarfs eyes dimmed. “I possess much information, Mr. Locke, and every piece of it brands me someone’s enemy. In my business there are no friends, only associates. No matter. People have never done anything but disdain me. So I turned to art and history. There I found a refuge where size didn’t matter and prejudice never entered in. You should see my villa, Mr. Locke. I make vast sums of money and great portions of it go into the purchase of original art treasures. There are days when I do nothing else but stare at them, trying to appreciate their fantastic beauty. They are timeless and exquisite, a welcome relief from my dealings with men.” The Dwarf took a deep breath. “But you have not come all this way to listen to my ramblings. We shall get out of this hot sun. You look thirsty.”

Locke kept his pace slow to allow the Dwarf to keep up with him. The little man’s legs were turned outward at the knees, and Locke detected a slight grimace with each step. But not a single complaint emerged from his host’s lips. They moved into the cool shade provided by the tent and sat down at a table. The Dwarf’s guards backed off a little but their eyes remained alert.

“What would you like to drink?” the Dwarf asked.

“Anything cold and nonalcoholic.”

“Two iced teas,” the Dwarf called behind him. “Bring a pitcher.” Then his eyes returned to Locke. “You have nothing to fear from my guards. They are here to ward off any assault on the part of the Committee.”

Locke tried to wet his lips, but his tongue was also dry. “You know that’s why I’ve come here.”

“Dogan hinted as much but I wasn’t sure until I saw the fear in your eyes when I mentioned their name. The Committee is quite good at stirring fear in men’s souls, though few live long enough to express it. My compliments in that respect, Mr. Locke.”

Chris shrugged his thanks. “Felderberg believed you’d know much about them. He sent me to you just as he sent my friend Lubeck.”

“And now both of them are dead. An unfortunate legacy.”

“I don’t plan on joining them.”

“And you won’t if I can help it. But first you must highlight for me what you have learned so far.”

When Chris finished, the Dwarf was nodding. “You are to be complimented on your resourcefulness, Mr. Locke, and now I will tell you just what I told your friend. But beware of information. It’s like an anchor. After you have dragged it from the water, it must be carried on your back.”

Strangely, Locke didn’t feel frightened, just more determined. “But the weight can be spread out. Knowledge can balance it.”

The Dwarf looked impressed. “Spoken like a true scholar.”

“A long time ago I used to be a college professor.”

“I know,” said the Dwarf with a slight smile.

A burly man set down a tray containing two glasses and a pitcher misted with ice. He filled both glasses with iced tea, allowing several cubes to slide out and clink together.

“I was never involved with the Committee in a direct sense,” the Dwarf began. “I was one of many middlemen retained by them for a specific purpose, in this case to provide sensitive information pertaining to certain South American leaders.”

“For purposes of blackmail?”

“And assassination. Sooner or later the land deals Felderberg spoke of had to be extended beyond paper transactions into active development. At that point governments would raise questions, present barriers, create inconveniences.” The Dwarf sipped his tea. “Consider, Mr. Locke, that the Committee is trying to achieve in South America what no one has ever dared attempt before: the fullest development of its agricultural resources. But the land is spread out, much of it isolated. To achieve their full goal of production and export, then, a strong central organization was necessary, apart from and above the governments of the individual nations. They needed absolute control.”

“So leaders were replaced.”

“Entire governments were toppled. Check the pattern of communist-terrorist activities in that part of the world. It was too precise, too organized to be random.”

“Organized by the Soviets, most thought.”

“Which is exactly what the Committee wanted people to think. The Soviets were responsible for enough of it to provide the screen, and they deny everything anyway. The Committee has mastered the art of misdirection. That explains how they have survived unnoticed for so long. Much of the unrest in South America was arranged by the Committee to distract attention from what was really going on.”

“And to place puppet leaders in positions where they could manipulate decisions and affect policy.”

“All toward the successful end of the operation you have stumbled upon,” the Dwarf completed. “Exactly, Mr. Locke. I’m impressed with the degree of expertise you’ve gained.”

Chris took several large gulps of his iced tea and reached for the pitcher. “Desperation makes a better teacher than I could ever be.”

The Dwarf leaned forward. “And now we come to the greatest lesson of all: What was the Committee to do about North America? Here they were with millions of farmable acres and a means of turning them full of crops almost overnight. Yet the United States presented a seemingly impenetrable obstacle, for how could they possibly hope to compete with the world’s greatest crop producer? A factor was missing.”

“Something to do with the U.S. no doubt.”

“Yes,” the Dwarf acknowledged. “Its economic destruction.”

Chapter 20

The glass of iced tea supped and tilted in Chris’s hand. A pair of ice cubes toppled over the side to the ground below.

“Understand, Mr. Locke,” the Dwarf continued, “I have no proof of this, only speculation. But the evidence exists and it is overwhelming. To begin with, the Committee has been moving its vast deposits from U.S. banks for some time now. The process has been too gradual to stand out, but billions and billions have been either withdrawn or divested from U.S. holdings. Much of the money has shown up in Euro-dollar transfers and in new accounts from England to Switzerland. But more has been used to purchase gold, diamonds, silver, even oil resources, along with tremendous quantities of land all over the world.”

“All natural resources …”

“As if an impending collapse of the dollar-based economy was imminent.”

“Inevitable because the Committee made it so. But how?”

“That I don’t know,” the Dwarf replied. “All I have is a word one of my people stumbled upon in the course of work: Tantalus.”

Locke’s eyebrows flickered. “Greek mythology …”

“Then the term is familiar to you.”

Locke nodded. “The Gods punished Tantalus for his crimes by placing him chin-deep in water he couldn’t drink. Over his head were fruit-filled branches he couldn’t reach. It’s where the word tantalize comes from.”

“Yes,” added the Dwarf, “and as I recall the punishment was to last for eternity.”

“With no chance for a reprieve. But what does that tell us about the Committee’s plan?”

“Their recent financial resettlements indicate a plot to render the United States as helpless as Tantalus was in determining its own fate.”

“Food,” Locke muttered. “The allusions all come back to food. Food that can’t be eaten, lying out of reach for …”

“Eternity,” the Dwarf completed.

Locke returned to Rome some hours later on a private plane arranged for by the Dwarf. The shape of what he was facing was clear now, and he found himself more frightened than ever.

Tantalus….

The Dwarf’s portrait of the Committee painted them as invulnerable. This was the ultimate criminal organization, for its crimes lay less in action than in the ways in which forces around them were manipulated. Those ways were always subtle, the shadowy sub-layer behind them hiding their true intentions behind screen after screen.

In the cab from the airport to the Rome Hilton, Locke determined Dogan was probably in San Sebastian by then and his family was God knows where. It was afternoon in Washington. If all was well, Greg would be dragging through the last hours of school thinking about baseball practice, Whitney would be passing notes in math, Bobby would be pounding out guitar riffs, and Beth would be showing a house in Bethesda. Locke prayed that was the way things were because it would mean the Committee hadn’t touched them.

He’d know for sure soon enough, because he was heading home. As soon as Dogan reached Rome, Chris would advise him of his plans and refuse to be talked out of them. Charney had told him to trust no one. The arguments had seemed valid when the enemy had been merely a shadowy outline. But now that enemy had taken a shape that held terrifying implications. Someone in Washington would listen. Information relayed by the Dwarf and Felderberg could be confirmed. The Committee would not be allowed to condemn the world to the fate of Tantalus.

Locke checked into the Hilton exhausted, craving a shower and a long sleep with the air conditioning turned on high. He had only the one bag from the Vaduz Station locker that Dogan had returned to him, so he told the desk clerk a bellhop would be unnecessary; the fewer people who saw him, the better.

His room was on the sixth floor, and in his fatigue he neglected to press the proper button in the elevator until it stopped on two. Four floors later he moved thoughtlessly for his room. The key slid in easily, the door just clearing the carpet as he swung it open.

A light was on in the far corner. A shape was seated not far from it.

“Good evening, Mr. Locke,” greeted the shape.

Panic seized Chris and blood rushed to his head. He swung quickly back toward the door and found himself facing the biggest man he had ever seen.

The giant stepped forward. Locke moved backward. The giant, a grinning Chinese wearing a white suit, closed the door and threw the bolt.

“We have some business to transact, Mr. Locke” came the voice of the shape, and Locke turned back toward it. The speaker was on his feet now. He was a tall, striking man with perfectly styled jet-black hair and dark eyes. A cigarette in a gold holder danced in his right hand. The man pressed the cigarette out in an ashtray. His features were not American, European, or Oriental but somehow a combination of all three.

“Who are you?”

“Ah.” The dark man smiled and Locke felt the giant draw up close to his rear. “The standard question. Who I am doesn’t matter,” the man continued. “I suspect you know who I represent.”

Locke said nothing.

“The Committee is most unhappy with this crusade you’ve been waging. We thought we’d give you the opportunity to agree to a business arrangement between us. You possess some information we wish to purchase.”

Locke held his ground, coiling his fingers into fists to still their trembling. Escape was clearly impossible. His greatest weapon was his calm, if he could keep it.

“A purchase implies you have something to offer in return,” he said coolly.

“An accurate analysis.” The dark man’s eyes moved toward the giant. “Show him, Shang.”

Locke turned in time to see the Chinese giant pull a handkerchief from his pocket. He unraveled the layers and held it forward for Locke to see its contents.

Chris saw the blood first, dried and purple, and then the object.

Bile bubbled in his throat. The object was a small finger with a—

“Oh, my God!”

— ring still wedged past the middle joint. Greg’s Little League championship ring.

“We offer the life of your son,” Mandala said flatly.

But Locke had already sank to his knees, opening his mouth for a scream that was choked off by the giant’s hand.

The jeep crept down the last of the desolate stretch toward what remained of San Sebastian. Dogan could still smell the residue from the fire in the air, could feel the death it had brought in the hot wind. The closer the jeep drew to the site of the massacre, the more uncomfortable he became.

At the wheel was Marna Colby, a CIA operative who had spent the last four years at substations throughout South America and the six before that working under Dogan at Division Six. There were few women he had ever allowed himself to become attracted to; Marna was one of them because she tempered tenderness with strength. Dogan responded best to strength and a woman who showed it. Marna was as brave and skillful an operative as he’d ever worked with, and he had genuinely lamented her reassignment, both for her talents in the field and in bed. For Dogan, sex had seldom proved fulfilling. Marna provided an exception. But sex was the furthest thing from their minds now.

The jeep had behaved like a loyal animal, pushing past or climbing over debris tossed into the road by the fire. One mile before they reached the remains of the town, the vehicle met its match in a series of huge branches charred black as charcoal. They climbed out and started walking.

“Why so much interest from Division over a dead town?” Marna prodded Dogan. “I know we’re the last to hear things down here but if San Sebastian’s important, I should have been informed.”

“The interest isn’t Division’s, it’s mine. And the interest comes from the hope that the dead might be able to tell me what the living can’t.”

“It’s good you’re not expecting to find anyone alive. The fire got them all.”

“Something else got them all. The fire was just a cover.”

Dogan’s grim tone silenced her as much as his words. They continued walking, and with each step Dogan felt his heart thudding harder. Death was something you never got used to, and he could feel the agony of those butchered in the hail of bullets Lubeck had described. Maybe their ghosts walked the charred land. Maybe they could tell him what the hell it all meant.

Finally they reached an empty piece of land marked with pieces of San Sebastian. What was left of a church bell lay half embedded in the ground, the crude foundations of collapsed buildings were now graves. Dogan moved past the church bell into the center of town and stopped with Marna lagging several yards back. The authorities had already stripped the ground free of bones but it didn’t matter. The feeling was still present.

“It happened here,” he said absently. “The massacre happened here.”

“Massacre? What are you talking about?”

If Dogan heard her, he didn’t show it. He drifted about slowly, kicking at the dirt with his feet, occasionally lifting a charred piece of wood as if expecting a survivor to lie beneath it. He glanced around him.

“Lubeck must have been sitting on one of those hills, probably with his back to the sun so it would be in the eyes of anyone who looked up in his direction. He watched them all shot. He saw it all.”

“Shot?” Marna swallowed hard. “I wasn’t told anything about that. Christ, you’re talking about a town of two hundred and fifty people. I thought you said Division wasn’t interested in this.”

“They’re not.”

“Then why—”

Dogan swung toward her, the intensity of his stare making her break off her words. “Listen to me, Marna, this is part of something much bigger. All of South America might be at stake.”

She regarded him strangely. “You sound like Masvidal.”

“Who?”

“Masvidal. He’s the one-eyed leader of a bunch of terrorist Robin Hoods. They see themselves as the saviors of the continent.”

“Terrorists?” Dogan said softly, and suddenly everything fell into place. He had found the mysterious third party who had been trying so desperately to kill Christopher Locke. “Who are they?” he demanded. “What’s their name?”

“They call themselves SAS-Ultra. The SAS stands for South American Solidarity. They’re dedicated, or claim to be anyway, to freeing these countries from any foreign intervention whatsoever. The Carter Doctrine was prime fuel for their fire, but they’ve got a gut hatred for the Soviets and Cubans as well. I guess you could say they choose their enemies without prejudice.”

“But they’re not part of the international terror network?”

“No,” Marna acknowledged, “they’re the ultimate revolutionary isolationists. They even loathe publicity. I only know about them from some investigations I was pursuing on the destruction of oil fields in Paraguay. It turned up more questions than answers. I haven’t even got enough to file a report on them yet.”

“What about Interpol or the CIA data banks?”

Marna shook her head. “Nothing. Officially, SAS-Ultra doesn’t exist.”

No wonder Vaslov found no trace of them, Dogan realized. The wind swirled through the town, its howling sounding too much like the screams of a child. Dogan suppressed a shudder. Marna wrapped her arms about herself.

“But a group that wide in composition,” Dogan started, “would take one hell of a central organization.”

“Masvidal is mostly to blame for that.” Marna’s eyes swept the dead town. “But you can forget about his troops having anything to do with what happened here. The people who were killed in this … massacre are the kind SAS-Ultra’s been fighting for, not against, if I’ve got my signals straight.”

Dogan thought briefly. “But how do you suppose they’d react if a group as powerful as any nation moved in and started …” He grasped for a way of accurately describing the Committee’s methods. “… manipulating things? Displacing people and taking over huge acres of land for their own benefit?”

Marna didn’t hesitate. “I think they’d go at them with everything they had.”

It made sense, Dogan figured. SAS-Ultra was not part of San Sebastian but they were tied directly to the larger picture.

Kill me and another will replace me.

The threat the old hag in Schaan had shouted at Locke. Yes, SAS-Ultra possessed an inexhaustible supply of fanatical manpower, if not their own, then hired out from across the globe. The Committee had been using Locke all along to flush them out, and SAS-Ultra had responded by repeatedly trying to kill an innocent college professor made to look like their enemy. Sooner or later, the Committee would find and destroy them.

Dogan looked beyond the edge of town to huge patches of dust between a pair of hillsides, a graveyard for the crops that had burned along with the people who nurtured them. Wordlessly he started walking, and Marna followed. Dogan moved right into the center of the dust patches, squinting his eyes against the wind. The ground was hard and parched. He felt a softening in his stomach. Here lay the key to everything, the missing piece of the puzzle. If only the ground could tell him what horrible things had been done here before the massacre.

Suddenly Marna was at his side, grasping his elbow.

“Up there, high on that hillside.”

Dogan held a hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun. He made out what looked to be a small shack camouflaged among what remained of the flora.

“An old shack,” he noted. “Why the sudden concern?”

“Because it wasn’t there last week.”

Chapter 21

“This doesn’t have to be difficult,” Mandala said calmly as the giant Chinese lifted Locke onto a chair near a round table in the back of the room.

The balcony’s glass doors were slightly open and a cool breeze slid through, awakening him to the madness.

They‘ve got Greg! Oh, God, they‘ve got Greg!

Thoughts of the severed finger, ring and all, sent a shudder through him. He couldn’t stop shaking.

Mandala nodded to Shang and the giant started for the door, grabbing something from the dresser on the way. Mandala showed his gun. Locke noticed all lights in the room had been turned off except for a powerful pole lamp directly over him.

“You have turned into quite an inconvenience for us,” Mandala said evenly. “But you can make up for that now. Your son will be released. You as well. All you have to do is answer a few questions.”

Locke looked away from the dark man, flirted with the notion of jumping him while the giant was still gone, but dismissed it quickly after considering the gun. The man held it tightly, just out of range of a quick lunge. He was a professional and not about to be taken by a fool’s act.

“Come now, Mr. Locke, you don’t want to make things any more hard on yourself than they already are. Why bother resisting? It is too late for you to do us any harm. We are unstoppable now. Only a few holes remain to be filled and we need you to point them out for us.”

Locke remained silent.

“Do you want further reassurances that your son will be released? I can’t give them. All I can give you is the promise that his finger might be only the beginning. If you don’t cooperate with us, we will cut him apart piece by piece.”

The door opened and Shang returned with a white plastic bucket in his hand. Mandala returned the pistol to his belt. The giant’s presence was a better deterrent than bullets.

“You see, Mr. Locke,” Mandala proceeded, “your son is being held by a team of Shang’s persuasion — experts in torture. They can remove any limb without the subject even passing out. Amazing, isn’t it? Tricks of the dreaded Tong Society, which was Shang’s first employer.”

The giant lowered the plastic bucket to the table. It was filled with ice. Locke kept himself calm but left the fear plain on his face. He had to convince them he would give in. His chance would come, an opening to be taken advantage of. To create that opening, he had to make his captors underestimate him.

The giant grinned.

“Shang is quite an expert at torture himself, Mr. Locke. In fact, he quite enjoys it. But sensible men like ourselves are too civilized for such base undertakings, aren’t we? Simple answers to simple questions and Shang will stay just as he is.” Mandala settled himself in the chair across from Locke. “Now let us begin. You visited the Dwarf in Florence. Where is he hiding?”

Locke swallowed hard, said nothing.

“Where is he hiding, Mr. Locke?”

Still no reply.

Mandala shook his head as if disappointed. “We know you met with the Dwarf, Mr. Locke. Where can we find him?”

Locke bit his lip to stop it from trembling.”

“Shang!”

In an instant the giant had leaned over Locke’s shoulder and grabbed his left hand, still bandaged from the wounds inflicted by the hag’s teeth in Schaan. Shang ripped the dressing off and grabbed the left pinky in one massive hand, clamping the other over the back of Locke’s hand.

“Pain, Mr. Locke, is a great persuader,” the dark man said softly. “It is most effective when the level starts relatively low and is then increased gradually. I believe you must be given a sample.” He nodded.

Shang bent the pinky finger back viciously until it snapped at the joint. Agony exploded through Locke’s hand and his teeth sliced through a section of his tongue. He had started to scream when the giant’s hand covered his mouth and forced back his breath. Blood bubbled in his ears. His left hand was trembling horribly. His pinky was bent at a sickening angle. The pain remained intense. Locke steeled himself against it as best he could.

“As I said, Mr. Locke, just a sample,” the dark man explained. “It gets much worse from here.” He grabbed Locke’s battered hand almost tenderly and lowered it into the bucket of ice, covering the mangled pinky with cubes. The numbing started almost immediately, the pain retreating. “Relief is that simple. The comfort can continue in place of the pain. Just answer the question. Where is the Dwarf?”

Inside Locke wanted to answer but he couldn’t let himself weaken. He focused on Greg and what they had done to him to maintain his rage, and thus his strength.

“Very well, Mr. Locke, I will give you the benefit of the doubt on that one,” Mandala said patiently. “We will turn our attention to more important matters. Where is Grendel?”

Locke stayed silent.

“Where is the man you know as Ross Dogan?”

Chris wet his trembling lips.

“He is meeting you here soon, isn’t he? All we have to do is wait and he will come walking in.”

Locke looked away.

I‘ll kill you for what you did to Greg. Somehow, someway …

“No,” the dark man continued, “he has gone somewhere, hasn’t he? He is looking for evidence to tell him what is going on. Tell us where he has gone, Mr. Locke, tell us where.”

Chris just stared vacantly ahead.

Mandala nodded quickly.

Shang snatched Locke’s hand brutally from the ice and slammed it down on the table, clamping it there. The pain returned with a rush, exploding through the swelling portion of his hand. The giant was grasping his ring finger now.

“Where can we find Grendel?”

When Locke stayed silent, the dark man nodded again.

Chris closed his eyes, feeling Shang’s hand tighten and lift. The snap sounded like glass breaking. The pain exploded everywhere and a kaleidoscope of colors burst before his closed eyes. He opened them to the sight of crackling silver lights. A scream rose within him, which the giant promptly choked off.

Breathing hard, Locke glanced down at his two ruined fingers, twin distortions cracked clean at the joint. The pain was battering his head. He had never experienced anything like it.

Mandala seemed to read his mind. “Yes, it hurts quite horribly, doesn’t it, Mr. Locke? Yet we are at the early stages of our evening. Would you like to hear what follows if you continue to be stubborn? We will repeat this process with two fingers on your right hand, and if you still persist we will be forced to become more … persuasive.” Suddenly Shang was flashing a knife in his hand. “You have undoubtedly heard of the Chinese torture in which the fingers are severed one knuckle at a time. Shang prefers a cruder version of this. The knife he is holding is a more elaborate version of a kitchen paring knife. He is a specialist in cutting the flesh away layer by layer until he reaches bone. One finger at a time. And you will not pass out, Mr. Locke. He will see to that.”

Locke shuddered again, seized by a fear greater than any he thought could exist. These men were animals, brutal killers of woman and children, torturers. Dogan had described the Committee as being civilized, organized toward accomplishing their ends economically instead of with violence. Well, perhaps the architects of the Committee held to that credo, but the men they retained as soldiers simply ignored it. Locke knew he had to act while he still retained a measure of his senses. Any further agony might ruin his response and thought processes. He couldn’t afford that.

The dark man was lifting his mangled hand back into the ice. It stung his flesh at first but relief came quickly again after his skin grew accustomed to being pricked at by the sharp edges of the ice.

Sharp edges … Yes, it might work! But there were two men to consider. If only one of them would leave the room or at least back off. If only …

“Where is Grendel, Mr. Locke?” the dark man asked him. “Come now, my patience is wearing thin and so, I trust, is your tolerance of pain. Let us end this stupidity. We will find him whether you help us or not. How can you possibly think you can stay clear of us? We are everywhere.”

Mandala paused to let his words sink in.

We are everywhere….

Charney had said that too, and suddenly Locke saw the reality of his situation with stunning clarity. Nothing he could say here could save Greg’s life. If the boy was still alive. If he escaped, though, they might need to keep the boy alive to use as leverage against him later. It was time to move. Now!

“Where is Grendel, Mr. Locke? I will ask you one—”

Locke acted. Grasping the rim of the ice bucket as best he could with his twisted hand, he brought it up and over his shoulder, smashing it hard into the giant’s face in the hope that an edge might find Shang’s eyes. The giant reeled backward.

As the dark man rose and went for his gun, Chris snapped to his feet, left side angling toward him. His next move astounded himself even more than it did Mandala. He used his ruined hand for the assault, not for surprise but simply because it was the closest, chopping hard into the bridge of the dark man’s nose. It was hard to tell at impact whose pain was greater. Locke screamed in terrible agony but still managed to tear the pistol from Mandala’s hand before the dark man pitched backward. Chris turned it on Shang, who was charging back toward him.

Locke fired into his midsection, emptying the clip, the roar of the bullets sandblasting his ears. The giant slammed into the dresser and knocked it over with him to the carpet.

The dark man was lunging for him. Locke twisted around the table and kicked him first in the stomach and then under the chin as he keeled over, slamming him against the wall. Wasting no time, Chris dropped the gun and scampered toward the narrow opening in the glass doors, ducked behind the curtains, and slid the doors open enough to pass through.

The fresh air sharpened his senses. He had to get off the balcony. The question was how. A leap to one of the neighboring structures was fifteen feet at least; out of the question. A drop to the floor below was at least that much and at a difficult angle to boot. But he could manage it if he could swing himself beneath this balcony properly and work up enough momentum.

Locke gripped the balcony railing with his ruined hand. It seemed to catch fire. The pain brought floods of tears to his eyes and the swelling made a sure grip impossible. He did the best he could, lowering himself until his legs were stretched toward the ground six stories below, hands supporting his entire weight.

The pain in his broken fingers was worse than he could have imagined and he grimaced against it, starting to sway back and forth, trying for enough impetus forward so that when he dropped, the angle would carry him to a safe landing on the balcony below. Incredibly, it seemed to be working, each sweep bringing him closer over his target.

Then a massive hand reached over the railing.

Locke looked up and saw the Chinese giant. Six bullets in the gut and still alive! Black powder burns dotted his white suit jacket but no splatters of blood surrounded them.

Why didn‘t you die? Locke wanted to scream.

But he couldn’t waste the effort. His final swing was almost complete when the giant’s hand found his hair.

Chris’s legs carried him well beneath the balcony, and out of reflex he let go his hands an instant before Shang’s grasp on his hair became firm. Then he was falling, unsure in that drawn-out moment whether his movement had carried him far enough or if he would drop sixty feet to oblivion.

He landed hard on the balcony tile below, breaking the fall with his left side and sending bolts of electric agony right through to his brain. His eyes dimmed and he felt himself hitting a wrought-iron table. But he couldn’t give in to the pain or the force of impact, couldn’t let himself forget Greg and what they had done to him.

Chris pushed himself back to his feet and staggered to the glass doors of the room directly beneath the one he had escaped from.

They were locked.

He picked up one of the wrought-iron balcony chairs, taking as much of its weight as he could in his right hand, and smashed it against the glass door. It shattered into a spider-web pattern on the first thrust and gave way on the second. Locke reached inside, unbolted the door, and slid it open.

He rushed through it into the darkness of the room without stopping. Shapes were indistinct, and he did his best to avoid them. A footpost of the bed nearly tripped him up and he wondered madly if someone there might be asleep. No matter. He was in the corridor an instant later holding his breath against the very real possibility that Shang and Mandala would smash into him around the next turn.

Footsteps pounded the floor in the corridor immediately ahead of him. Locke turned onto another hall and bolted for the first exit sign he saw. He wasn’t sure if his pursuers saw him as they passed and didn’t bother thinking about it. Instinctively his feet carried him up to the floor he had just left. They wouldn’t expect that. An amateur’s move would have been to make a straight line for the lobby and a desperate escape. But he wasn’t an amateur any longer. They would still consider him one, and that was the best thing he had working on his side.

He emerged back on the sixth floor with no plan of what to do next. He couldn’t stay in the open. The dark man could have people scouring the hotel even now. He would be spotted too easily. A room, he had to get into a room. But how?

If you‘re in trouble, contact the hotel manager. Tell him you work for the Grendel Corporation and your room isn‘t satisfactory.

Some of Dogan’s last words to him. But to get to a phone he had to first get into a room, which put him back where he started. Locke kept himself moving. There had to be something, some way to—

He saw a maid with a towel cart close a door behind her. She was doubtless on her nightly rounds to turn down beds and replenish bathroom supplies. That was it!

Locke started to tuck his shirt back tight into his pants, briefly forgetting about his swollen hand. The agony bit into him like a sharp knife. He withdrew his left hand from his pants slowly and set about tucking the rest of his shirt in with his right. Satisfied, he started down the corridor whistling, his pace that of a contented tourist.

The maid had just stopped her cart in front of another room and was sliding her passkey into the door.

“What timing,” Locke announced buoyantly, pretending to tuck a nonexistent key back into his pocket. “I need two glasses.”

Startled, the maid looked at him. She didn’t speak English well, if at all.

“Glasses,” Locke said slower, pointing to a tray of paper-wrapped ones on her cart and stealing a glance back down the corridor.

The maid nodded her understanding and handed him two.

“Anything else?” she tried to say in English.

Chris shook his head and thanked her, already inside the room and closing the door behind him. He glanced quickly about to assure himself he was alone, then hurried over to the phone. His left hand was still ravaged by pain and he could feel the sweat dripping from his brow.

“Front desk.”

“I’d like to speak to the manager please.”

“I’m afraid he’s busy at the moment. Is there something I can help you with?”

“No. I need the manager,” Locke insisted.

“If you leave your name and room number, I’ll—”

“This is an emergency, goddammit!”

The clerk hesitated. “Hold for a moment please.”

Seconds passed with agonizing slowness. Chris’s eyes fixed themselves on the door, expecting Shang to burst through it any moment.

“This is the manager” came a male voice in Italian-laced English.

“This is Mr. Locke. I work for the Grendel Corporation and my room isn’t satisfactory.”

A short pause.

“What room are you in, Mr. Locke?”

Chris eyed the number on the phone. “Six twenty-seven.”

Another pause, longer this time.

“My records show that is not the room you checked into.”

“Circumstances forced me to move.”

“Very well. Stay where you are. I’ll be up presently.”

The phone clicked off. Locke tried to steady himself with a series of deep breaths. The throbbing in his hand was incessant. His gaze fell on his mangled fingers. They made him think of Greg, of what the bastards had done to him.

Show him, Shang.

Locke’s mind filled with a picture of the championship ring caked with dried blood. He fell backward on the bed and stared mindlessly at the ceiling. He wanted so much to cry, as if tears might purge his emotions. But no tears came. He was beyond them, beyond everything.

They had mutilated his son!

Chris felt himself about to pass out when the knock came on the door. He swung it open without checking the peephole.

A gaunt man with olive features and dark hair, in his late thirties probably, stepped in. One foot dragged behind the other in a slight limp.

“My name is Forenzo, Mr. Locke,” the man said, closing the door behind him. “I am the hotel manager. You must tell me what has happened.”

“When I got to my room less than an hour ago, two men were waiting inside. They … tortured me in an attempt to gain certain information I possess.”

“And you are working with Mr. Dogan on this?”

“Yes.”

“What did these men do to you?”

Locke held up his swollen hand.

Forenzo’s eyes bulged. “We must have the hotel doctor look at that immediately. There will be time to finish your story later.”

Chris shook his head. “No doctors. I’ve had my fill of strangers for one night.”

“Please, Mr. Locke, I have had experience in these matters before. The doctor is a man to be trusted and your hand must be treated. If the bones are set wrong, the damage will be permanent. We have splendid facilities within the hotel. Everything can be handled here, I assure you.”

“The men who did this are still in the building.”

“Then you must give me their descriptions and I will have security watch for them.”

“Make sure your men carry bazookas,” Chris said, still wondering why his bullets had not killed the giant.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Forenzo cleared his throat. “The first thing we must do is get you settled in another room. After the doctor has attended to you, the next step will be to determine how we can get you out of here safely.”

“I’m supposed to stay and wait for Dogan.”

“To insure your safety, that is out of the question. Where might safe ground exist for you?”

Locke hadn’t considered that question yet but the answer was quick in coming. Colin Burgess! England. He would call the contact number and have the girl set everything up. Burgess would take care of him now as he had before. Together they would link up with Dogan again somehow. Maybe the man who had tracked down German spies would be able to track down the bastards who had his son. The big Brit was the answer!

“England,” Locke said finally.

“And your passport, should I have it retrieved from your old room?”

“Ye — I mean, no. The people who were waiting for me there must have known the alias I was traveling under. They’ll be watching for that name at the airport. Can’t you arrange for a new passport?”

Forenzo tried to smile. “I am only a simple hotel manager, Mr. Locke. I possess no such resources on such short notice.” Something seemed to occur to him. “But wait. England is your destination, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Chartered flights travel several times daily from Rome to London and the Customs officials are sometimes lax in checking passports for charter customers. Random collections and stampings are made to speed up the process so as not to create logjams. We Italians prefer to pass such problems onto you. Yes, I think I can come up with a way to get you out of Rome. The problem is what happens once you reach London….”

“Let me worry about that. Just get me safely to the airport with a ticket and keep me alive for tonight.”

“That much I can do. Mr. Dogan is an honored guest of the hotel. Any friend of his …” Forenzo’s shrug completed his thought.

“Speaking of Mr. Dogan, he said you would provide a warding-off signal if things weren’t safe.”

“Indeed. When is he scheduled to arrive?”

“Tomorrow evening sometime.”

“My eyes will be alert and the proper signals will be in place.” Forenzo started back for the door. “Now I better see about arranging for the doctor and getting you moved. It’s going to be a long night.”

Locke’s new room was on the tenth floor. As soon as he had chained the door behind him, he made for the telephone and read the instructions for dialing beyond Italian borders. The line in this particular room was not routed through the hotel switchboard, so no one could trace the call back to him there. He pulled the girl’s number in Falmouth from his memory and dialed it properly.

“Hello,” she said tentatively.

“I’m in trouble. I need Colin.”

There was no response.

“Didn’t you hear me? I said this is Locke. I need Colin.”

Locke could hear the girl’s erratic breathing on the other end before she spoke again.

“Uncle Colin has gone Fishing.”

The phone clicked off and Chris felt the walls closing in around him.

Chapter 22

Dogan and Marna moved up the hill together, keeping the shack always in sight.

“It looks deserted,” Dogan said as they moved within killing range for his Heckler and Koch P-9.

“It’s not,” Marna responded confidently.

Dogan made sure the P-9 was ready for a quick draw, wishing he had taken the Mac-10 machine pistol along instead. Its nine-millimeter, thirty-shot clip would be infinitely more comforting at this point.

They had cleared a ridge thirty yards before the shack when the blast rang out. Instinctively both Dogan and Marna dove to the ground.

“You all right?” he asked her.

“A little shaken, that’s all. What did you make it?”

“Shotgun, double-barrel. Whoever’s inside isn’t much of a shot.”

Another blast sounded, apparently aimed at nothing.

“Just trying to scare us away, you think?” Marna asked.

“They would have waited until we were in range if they meant to kill us. Hell, they could have waited till we were right on top of their doorstep the way we were moving.”

“Then who the hell is it?”

Dogan was already starting to rise. “There’s only one way to find out….”

“Ross!” Marna shouted as loud as she dared.

But it was too late. Dogan was already standing straight up with his hands held directly over his head and pistol plainly in view.

“I’m throwing my weapon down,” he yelled to the inhabitants of the shack. He tossed the P-9 aside. It rolled across the dirt. “I’m unarmed now,” he said calmly, still holding his hands high. “We mean you no harm. We only want to ask you a few questions.” A pause. “We can help you.” Another pause. “I’m going to walk slowly forward. Please signal me if it’s all right to keep going.”

Dogan started walking, heart in his mouth, ready to lunge to the side at the first sight of a gun barrel. His actions represented a clear violation of every rule in the book. This was the last thing a field agent was supposed to do, but his instincts overruled standard precautions.

Dogan kept walking, his pace slow and measured, until he was within ten yards of the shack and could see that it was haphazardly constructed almost totally of nearly burned wood. There was movement inside, followed by a loud creak. Dogan froze.

The door swung open. Still he could make out nothing inside. He reduced his pace slightly, ready to spring.

When he reached the doorway, he had to bend at the knees to pass inside. His vision fizzled in the darkness. He started to straighten up and something crashed into his back, pitching him down hard to the floor.

“The other one I saw, tell her to come in too!” a voice demanded in broken English.

Dogan looked up. His eyes adjusted to the darkness. Before him was a boy of barely thirteen, dressed in tattered white clothes. His dirty face was all but hidden by his long, scraggly hair. Dogan raised himself to a sitting position slowly, keeping his hands in the air so not to spook the boy who held a shotgun in trembling hands before him.

“I’m going to stand up now. Don’t worry, I mean you no harm.”

Dogan rose deliberately and moved to the doorway. He could have stripped the gun away from the boy effortlessly at any time but he needed his trust, and that was no way to gain it.

“It’s all right,” he yelled to Marna. “You can come in. And pick up my gun on the way.”

The boy paled at that.

“You can hold it if you want,” Dogan told him. Then he heard the others.

They emerged from the shadows of the makeshift shack — two girls and another boy. The oldest girl seemed eleven, twelve maybe. She held the other girl, three or so years younger, from behind at the shoulders. The second boy was the youngest, about four. The small shack stank of dirt, sweat, and above all, fear.

“Ross, are you—” Marna’s eyes bulged in shock as she entered the shack. “Ross, who are these … children?”

“That’s what I was about to find out. How’s your Spanish?”

“Better than ever.”

“Good. Tell them we mean them no harm. Tell them we’re here to help them.”

The oldest girl screeched out words Dogan couldn’t keep up with. “What did she say?” he asked Marna.

Marna’s eyes showed fear. “She said that’s what the others said and they killed her town.”

“Ask her who the others were.”

Before Marna could oblige, the boy with the shotgun spoke in broken English.

“Men, señor, many men. Bad men with guns from far away.” Dogan could see the tears welling in the boy’s eyes. The contrast between the sweaty hands grasping the shotgun and the scared, vulnerable eyes of youth was bizarre. “My papa did not trust them. When the … bad things started he sent us away. Now we can never go back!”

The gun slipped from the boy’s hands and he collapsed to his knees crying. Dogan felt for this boy as he hadn’t felt for anyone in years. He moved forward to grasp him at the shoulders.

“We will help you, all of you. We will take you away from here, where the men can’t get you. But you must tell us what happened. Can you do that?”

The boy nodded, hiding his eyes as though ashamed of his tears. “But my English, it is not very good yet.”

“Speak in your own language. My friend Marna will translate. Try not to get too far ahead of her. My name is Ross.”

The boy slid out of Dogan’s grasp and backed away until his shoulders struck one of the walls. Dogan sat again on the cold dirt floor.

“My name is Juan, señor,” the boy said in his best English. “But my padres called me John because someday I would go to live in los Estados Unidos and live better than they.”

“Are these your brothers and sisters?”

“The two girls, yes. The boy is my primo.”

Dogan looked at Marna.

“Cousin,” she said.

Dogan looked the boy warmly in the eyes, trying to reassure him that he was not alone anymore.

“I want you to tell us the story of what happened from the beginning. Take your time.”

The words started spilling out in a flood and Marna began translating them into English almost as fast. Locke knew quickly there would be no sense in interrupting the boy to ask questions; that would only break his train of thought. Eventually he would answer all the questions he could anyway.

“It started many months ago, half a year maybe,” Marna began, and almost immediately her voice matched the boy’s so that his words seemed to emerge in English. “There were only a few of the men at first, but then more came. They said they could help us. They said they had a way to make our crops grow faster, stronger, and more plentiful, so the weather wouldn’t affect them as much and they wouldn’t need as much water.

“The village elders agreed to let them help us, and more men followed in many trucks with much equipment and bags and bags of special seeds. Our old crops were destroyed and the land tilled over. The new seeds were planted immediately. The crops began to sprout the next day or the day after. They were full grown in—”

The boy kept speaking but Marna stopped.

“What’s he saying?” Dogan asked her.

“It can’t be right,” she said, her face suddenly pale.

“What did he say?” Dogan repeated. The boy was silent now.

Marna took a deep breath. “That the new crops were ready to be harvested in only three weeks.”

“Tell him to go on,” Dogan instructed.

“But three weeks, Ross! Doesn’t that—”

“Just tell him to go on.”

Marna complied reluctantly and started translating again, her voice nervous now. “The elders started asking about the harvest. In time, in time, the men said. But the crops had reached full growth. Only three weeks, but they were ready for harvest. Everyone could tell. But the men would not allow us to touch them. The village grumbled. Our food supply ran low and there was little to replenish it. We were not even allowed to leave the town. Guards were posted everywhere with big guns. People became angry and scared. Many would sit all day watching the crops that had taken only three weeks to grow to perfection. But we couldn’t touch them. It was like a dream. You can see, but not taste or touch. The elders, some of them, protested. They … disappeared.”

Dogan could see the boy was holding back tears. He could almost hear the youth urge himself to be brave, to act like a man. He had seen enough death for any thousand men, though. He had the tears coming to him.

“More men with guns began to arrive, a whole truck full. Suddenly we were treated like sheep. The entire town was herded into the church and ordered to eat and sleep there. We were allowed to wash or use the toilet only in shifts. They started feeding us well, though, and most people relaxed and stopped worrying. Others, the smart ones, feared the worst was coming.” The boy gulped some air and swallowed hard. “My father was one of these. One night he awoke the four of us very late when the crickets’ chirp was at its loudest. There were only two guards and neither paid much attention. We crawled across the floor past all the sleeping bodies into a secret room behind the altar. The room had a trap door in it leading into a tunnel. And the tunnel led outside to the hillside on the edge of town.” The boy was crying now, not bothering to hold back. “He made us go! We didn’t want to but he made us! He said he’d follow as soon as he could but for now he had to stay with the rest of the family. The guards would miss adults, he said, but four children could slip by them.”

The boy broke down and smothered his head in his hands, squeezing his knees to his chest. He steadied himself as best he could and spoke again through sobs and whimpers.

“The next morning a jeep arrived carrying two men. One was dressed like a soldier but he didn’t look like one. With him was a giant with slanted eyes and a white suit. The giant lifted a steel box from the back of the jeep. The new man talked with the leaders of the troops who had become our jailers. A little after that another man came out of the building dressed like a spaceman in a gray outfit that shone in the sun. He was carrying a funny-looking spray gun and he pulled a can from the steel box and stuck it in the back of the gun. Then the spaceman moved off into the fields. He stood where the new crops started and sprayed a gray mist from inside the gun. He sprayed for just a few seconds. Then—”

The boy kept speaking. Once again Marna had stopped.

“Marna,” Dogan prodded.

She rubbed her face with her fingers. They were trembling. “I misheard what he said. I’m going to ask him to repeat it.”

She spoke to the boy in Spanish. He nodded and did as she told him.

Still Marna remained silent. “I’ve got to be hearing this wrong,” she said finally.

“What did he say?”

“He said a few minutes after the mist was released, the crops started … dying, crumbling into the ground. Ross, what the hell’s going on?”

Dogan fought back the chill of fear. “What else? What else did he say?”

“They fell row by row, one after another,” Marna continued, “like something under the dirt was yanking them back down.” Her eyes flashed wildly. “Ross, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on!”

“Oh, my God,” Dogan muttered, rising to his feet. It was worse than he possibly could have imagined, much worse. The missing piece had finally been added. Not only had the Committee discovered a way to genetically alter crop growth, they had found a means of killing crops on contact. The boy said the destruction started after only a slight amount of the gray mist had been sprayed. It was incredible. No wonder San Sebastian had to burn. All evidence of what the Committee had done there had to be wiped out. Suddenly the massacre made very clear sense. Everything made sense.

The Committee was going to kill all of the U.S.‘s crops and replace them in the marketplace with genetically accelerated crops grown on the South American lands they now owned!

Just considering the prospects brought the chill of fear back to Dogan, and this time he couldn’t suppress it.

“Have the boy go on,” he told Marna.

“Ross, it’s true what he said, isn’t it? You’ve got to tell me what’s going on down here.”

“Later,” Dogan said firmly, sitting back down. “I’ve got to hear the rest of his story.”

The boy was trembling harder but still he went on. “Less than an acre of the crops was still standing when the trucks arrived.” His voice became frantic. Marna struggled to keep up with him. “Men climbed off, soldiers with heavy guns. They took them from their shoulders and spread out. The people inside the church were forced outside. I remember seeing them shield their eyes from the sunshine. I tried to pick out my parents but everyone was dressed almost the same. I tried and tried. It was so important to me but I couldn’t find them.

“More of the soldiers came down the street pushing the townspeople who had wandered off or tried to hide maybe. People were screaming and crying. It was horrible, horrible!

“The soldiers fired their guns over and over again. All I could hear were gunshots. The people kept screaming but the screaming made less and less noise as they fell dead and the blood ran everywhere. I wanted to cry but I couldn’t. It felt like I was forgetting how to breathe. They left the bodies piled on top of each other. Some of the bodies fell off the top, and it was then that …”

The boy stopped suddenly. His eyes grew glazed and distant. When he continued, his voice had turned maddeningly calm.

“… I saw my parents. They were lying next to each other, their arms touching. Their eyes were open but they couldn’t see me. I made myself be brave like my father would have wanted and took the others far up the hillside, as more of the soldiers soaked the fields and the town. They were going to burn everything, I knew it, so I led us high up into the wind so the fire would stay away. It burned for three days, turning our skin red and hot. But then the rains stopped it and we built this shack farther down the hill so we could see the place where our town had been.” He took a deep breath, started shaking all at once. “Their eyes were open but they couldn‘t see me!”

The boy’s voice had turned hysterical and so loud that Dogan barely heard the gunshot fired through an opening in the shack. It splintered wood just above his head and he spun quickly toward Marna, thinking of his pistol still tucked in her belt.

She already had her own gun out and was firing from a crouch when three bullets pounded into her, shredding her chest and turning her face into pulp with a huge crater where the nose and eyes had been. She rocked backward to the floor, writhing in death throes.

Dogan felt a scream of rage rising in him as he dove across the room, reaching for Marna’s belt and his P-9. A bullet exploded in the area he had vacated and the boy screamed in agony. Dogan feared he was dead too. The other children were screeching now, drowning out the other shots that sent dirt and wood chips everywhere. Dogan gripped the P-9 hard and, still rolling, came up to his knees in firing position facing the area the shots were coming from.

A flurry of bullets punctured the wall, and a large figure smashed through behind them. Dogan pumped three bullets into him. Two more figures rushed forward. Dogan took the first out with a head shot and the second with a bull’s-eye to the heart. The two bodies toppled over backward, their blood splattering the walls.

Dogan held the P-9 steady, calculating how many bullets he had left. He stayed there for several long seconds, the exact number he didn’t know or care. The children were still screaming. The boy Juan was moaning softly on the floor, a neat red splotch widening on the rag he wore for a shirt, mixing with the dirt. Dogan started to move for him.

The woman crashed through the hole in the wall and fired before her aim was clear. The bullet whistled by Dogan’s hair. She was tumbling, spinning on the floor, a blur before his eyes. Dogan might have been able to take her out easily if he hadn’t chosen instead to move sideways to shield the boy’s body with his own. He got off one shot, a hit but a poor one, and before he could get off another the woman had grabbed the oldest girl and shrank down behind her, using her thin body as a shield.

Dogan raised his gun. The woman raised hers. A stalemate. He could see where she was wounded. Left shoulder, just a nick but she was losing lots of blood.

She backed up toward the hole in the wall, yanking the girl with her.

“You won’t get away,” she growled.

“You’re the last one who can stop me,” Dogan said, still trying to figure out who had sent her and the others. Was it the Committee or SAS-Ultra? “Tell me who sent you and I’ll let you live.”

The woman’s response was to squeeze her pistol against her hostage’s head. “You’re in no position to issue ultimatums.”

“The Committee or Masvidal?”

The woman just looked at him, breathing heavily.

“It was the Committee, wasn’t it? SAS-Ultra couldn’t possibly have known I was here and they wouldn’t have reason to—” And then Dogan realized. “Wait a minute, you didn’t come here to kill me, you came to kill the children! You fucking bastards!”

“More children than these will die,” the woman said with strange calm, blood and sweat staining her face. “All the world’s children if that’s what it takes.”

“The Committee wouldn’t have much of a world to own then.”

Her eyes flickered. “The Committee is changing and there is nothing you can do to stop it. It’s too late. You can’t fool me with your words. I know they sent you.”

Pistol hand trembling, the woman kept inching toward the window, lowering herself even further behind the girl, free hand draped over the child’s neck, obviously confident that if the man was going to chance a shot, he would have done so already.

“It’s as good as over,” she taunted.

“Absolutely,” Dogan muttered, and fired the P-9 from his hip.

The bullet ripped into the woman’s neck and tore most of it away, pitching her backward through the remnants of the wall. The child she’d been holding cowered screaming on the floor.

Dogan moved back for the boy but his eyes strayed to Marna’s corpse first and he felt the tears welling in his eyes.

He was Grendel, named for the monster who ate human flesh.

And he was crying, the rest of the world be damned….

The boy was whimpering now and Dogan hurried over, lifted him gently from the floor into his arms. There was a lot of blood but he judged that the wound had missed all vital organs. The boy might live.

“It hurts! Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!”

“I’m here,” Dogan soothed, cradling the boy close and wishing he could have been there for Marna as well. “I’m here.”

But only for now, he thought to himself. The words of the woman he had just killed fluttered through his consciousness. What did they mean? He was in no condition to figure it out now but there would be plenty of time later. Yes, plenty. Much traveling lay ahead of him. There were scores to be settled, a vent to be found for the anger and rage that swelled within him. Violence would be met with violence.

Death with death.