The Alpha Deception

Chapter 10

It was mid-afternoon Wednesday before McCracken was settled in Athens. The journey had taken twenty taxing hours, thanks to a trio of plane changes deemed necessary in case Sundowner tried to have him followed.

He checked into a small hotel located in the center of the city’s modern section. The clerk spoke good enough English to help him ascertain that Kapo Stadipopolis, the antique dealer from whom Earnst had received the Atragon crystals, maintained his shop in the heart of the famed Monastiraki Square.

Blaine would head there as soon as he managed to get washed and changed.

Spring in the Mediterranean was traditionally warm, and once back in the streets he wore only a light jacket over his shirt to keep his shoulder holster concealed. He found the city of Athens to be a paradox, but a pleasant one. It blended the modern flavor, luxury, and sense of a national and commercial capital with the ancient traditions that provided the city its fame. From his hotel in Omonia Square, Blaine had intended to walk to Stadipopolis’s shop, but he had underestimated the distance and hailed a cab instead. The driver proceeded due south down Athena Street and deposited him in the heart of the Athens shopping district.

In effect, Monastiraki Square marked the beginning of Old Athens or the Plaka. The Square itself was formed by three intersecting streets lined with shops and open-air markets of every kind. As usual, it was bustling with activity. The hot sun beat down, but the shoppers seemed not to mind, some simply strolling, others negotiating with shopkeepers in search of the best possible bargain. Waiters in long white aprons struggled to keep up with the flow of the many patrons in and out of the various outdoor cafes. Merchants selling their wares out of boxes or platforms in the street called eagerly to tourists as they passed, changing languages as frequently as smiles.

According to the hotel clerk, Kapo Stadipopolis’s antique shop was located in the center of Pandrosos Street, and Blaine made his way toward it. He was feeling quite secure. No one could possibly know that he had gone to Greece, and he took considerable comfort in that.

Stadipopolis’s shop, called “Kapo’s,” was as simple as Earnst’s parlor had been lavish. It was wedged between two other buildings, one a fruit market and the other a bakery specializing in uniquely Greek creations. Blaine passed the shop twice from the outside and saw it was packed from floor to ceiling with artifacts at various prices, all labeled in both drachmas and dollars. There were voices coming from inside, a seller — Stadipopolis probably — arguing with a prospective buyer. Blaine entered and heard the slight tinkling of windchimes. There was little room to maneuver amid the clutter near the entrance, and he moved forward.

“Not a penny less, I tell you,” a curly-haired Greek with a thick mustache was insisting. “One hundred American dollars.”

“Fifty,” replied a well-dressed man with a woman tight by his side. McCracken felt he was trying to impress her with his negotiating ability.

The Greek held up a vase. “Mister, this is hundreds of years old. You want to go home and show off something authentic or go home and brag about how you talked a poor merchant into a bargain for something less? It’s a crime what you do to us. You think I won’t be able to sell this to the next person who walks through that door? You think I won’t?”

“All right,” the man relented, “seventy-five.”

“Hah! Seventy-five, he says. I pay eighty for this and he offers seventy-five like he’s doing me a favor. How are my children supposed to eat if I lose money on all my transactions? You have children perhaps?” he asked the woman.

“No,” she replied, slightly embarrassed.

“Well, I do. Seven of them. Each looks like their mother, thank God. I tell you this, I been married to her twenty wonderful years, since I was seventeen. You married that long?”

The couple said nothing.

“We start young here. In Greece, you start young with everything. Even business. I can sell this to you for less than what I paid under no circumstances. Nothing personal. The next man through the door will jump at it for one hundred, even one-twenty-five.” He noticed McCracken. “Hey you, come over here. What you think of this? Come, be honest….”

Blaine walked over to the counter and squinted his eyes as he ran his fingers lightly over the vase. “Most impressive,” he noted professionally. “I’d say from the Hadrian period. Yes, the Ionic propylon markings definitely date it back to the second century A.D., give or take a hundred years. I’ll offer you five thousand American for it.”

The young couple were already moving for the door, shaking their heads and not offering good-byes. The door opened and closed. The windchimes tolled softly again.

The curly-haired Greek was shaking Blaine’s hand enthusiastically, eyes wide. “I tell you this, my friend. They say I know more history than anyone on the Square, but you know more even than me. I respect you, so I let you have this piece for only, well, I’m in a good mood, say two thousand American.”

“I made it up,” Blaine told him.

“Huh?”

“I doubt anything from the Hadrian period of Greece has ‘Made in Japan’ stamped on its bottom.”

Stadipopolis found himself foolishly turning the vase upside down as McCracken ambled toward an open case of “authentic” Greek artifacts demanding incredible prices.

“I tell you this, my friend,” the Greek said, following him out from behind the counter. “You cost me money a few minutes ago. You owe me for that. There is maybe something—”

“I’m not buying,” Blaine said as he rotated a small green dish in his hand. Then he turned to the Greek. “I’m selling.”

“As you can maybe see, my inventory is a bit overstocked.”

“What I have to sell won’t take up much room, Mr. Stadipopolis.”

The Greek’s expression turned apprehensive. McCracken moved back toward the counter, Kapo Stadipopolis right behind him.

“How you know me, American?”

“Only by reputation.”

“How come I don’t know you?”

“Because we haven’t been introduced, nor are we about to be.”

“I don’t buy from strangers, I tell you this.”

“Really?” said Blaine, placing the small piece of Atragon Sundowner had let him take on the counter top. “What a pity …”

Stadipopolis’ eyes bulged. His lips trembled, and his olive skin paled.

“Wh-wh-where? H-h-how?”

“America. Erich Earnst. That’s all you need to know. The rest of the questions are mine.”

The Greek didn’t seem to hear him. “Who you work for?” he demanded fearfully. “Who send you?”

“I told you no more questions. Tell me about the crystals.”

“Nothing to tell.”

“Earnst said you shipped them to him by accident, men requested their return after they had been stolen.”

“Earnst is still alive?”

“He wouldn’t have been, if not for me.”

Another couple, this one older than the last, came through the door. The sound of windchimes followed them.

“Go away!” Stadipopolis roared. “Closed!”

The couple exited as quickly as they had entered.

“I kept Earnst alive,” McCracken said, “and I’ll keep you alive too — if you cooperate.”

“What makes you think I am in danger?”

“Mostly that if you don’t cooperate, I’ll make it known on the streets that you sold these crystals to me this day. It’s not hard to figure that you’re scared of somebody. How long do you think it’ll be before word filters from Monastiraki Square to them about what you sold me?”

“No!” Stadipopolis pleaded, hands clutching for his face. “You can’t!”

“For reasons you can’t begin to understand, I can. And I will unless we talk.”

“Not here,” the Greek said, eyes darting. “I might be watched. Is possible.”

“Where? When?”

“Tonight. Ten o’clock at Kerameikos Cemetery. You know it?”

“I’ll find it.”

The Greek started to move away. Blaine grasped his arm in an iron grip. “Set me up, Kapo, and I’ll know it. The man you’re frightened of might be a match for me but then again he might not. I’m betting not. I’d hate to have to make Monastiraki Square poorer by losing you. Place just wouldn’t be the same again.” Then, in words spoken like ice, “Don’t call him, Kapo.”

“I wouldn’t! I couldn’t!”

Blaine nodded at him, satisfied, and started to turn for the door, pocketing his crystal again.

“No,” Stadipopolis said. “You must leave with something. Money must change hands. If I’m being watched, it would look strange if it didn’t.”

“Might look stranger if it did.”

“Please! Just to be safe.”

McCracken handed over a twenty-dollar bill and grabbed the much-disputed vase. “Got just the place for this….”

“But—”

Blaine was on his way for the door. “Ten o’clock tonight, Kapo, in that cemetery. You set the rules. Just don’t break them.”

And the windchimes tumbled against each other once more.

Outside, across the street from Kapo’s, a legless beggar who had been pushing himself along on a skate-wheel platform stopped suddenly. His eyes had to be deceiving him. He had to get a closer look. He tried to better his view of the man who had just stepped out of the antique store, but the flow of pedestrian traffic was too thick, forcing the beggar to risk a quick slide through moving traffic in the street.

Pedestrians lurched aside and cars were brought to grinding halts. He reached the other side of the street and caught one glimpse of the shrinking figure, then pushed himself through the door of a fruit market. A customer and his bag went reeling. A basket of oranges toppled to the floor.

The beggar didn’t stop.

“Your phone, Andros!” he screamed when he was halfway across the floor. “Hand it to me quick!”

The befuddled proprietor pried the receiver from its hook and lowered it to the beggar.

“Now, dial this number! Come on, get ready!”

Andros dialed the number the beggar recited. The ringing started, stopped.

“I must speak with Vasquez,” the beggar told the man who answered.

Chapter 11

Kapo Stadipopolis hummed to himself for distraction as a second minute ticked past ten o’clock. He’d been waiting as planned by the Tomb of Dionysios of Kollytos since five minutes of, and there was no sign of the American. Good. Maybe he wouldn’t show up. Stadipopolis wouldn’t be surprised if he was dead.

The Greek tried to light a cigarette but the stiff night breeze thwarted him. After a half dozen tries he gave up, returned to his humming, and wrapped his jacketed arms about himself to ward off the chill. Behind him the white stone bull, symbol of Dionysios, perched atop twin pillars. It seemed ready to pounce.

Stadipopolis kept humming, the only sound in the Kerameikos Cemetery.

“Boo,” whispered a voice in his ear as an iron finger poked him like a gun in the back.

Stadipopolis swung around in utter surprise. “You want to give me heart attack, American?”

“You were making enough noise to wake the dead.” Blaine glanced around him. “Literally.”

“You’re late,” the Greek managed, steadying himself.

“Hardly. Been here since just after eight. Had to make sure you weren’t planning anything.”

“You don’t trust me?” Stadipopolis seemed offended.

“I don’t trust anyone until they give me a reason to.”

“We must be quick.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

Blaine thought Kerameikos Cemetery a good choice for the meeting. It was more a testament to the past than the dead and was popular among tourists for good reason. The cemetery contained the excavated remains of the old Kerameikos quarter of Athens, along with monuments to great figures dating from the sub-Mycenean period to late antiquity. Within the excavated portions no two tombs were alike.

The cemetery was cut into sections by serpentine walkways which made it seem larger than it was. Just enough excavation had been performed to avoid clutter and promote atmosphere among the testaments to Greek history. The tomb of Dionysios was located due north from the Kerameikos Museum on the Pireos Street side. Just south of the gate through which McCracken had entered lay the Agora, the old market at the foot of the steep grassy hillside which led up to the famed Acropolis.

“You understand my meeting you might mean my death,” Stadipopolis said fearfully.

“And not meeting me would have assured it.”

The night was lit by a half moon, and the Greek moved back into the shadow cast by the ceramic bull atop the tomb.

“I want to know everything you do about the crystals,” Blaine told him. “And I want it from the beginning.”

“The beginning in this case is difficult to pin down. Before the dawn of civilization as we know it.”

“Spare me the history lesson, and let’s start with how you came to be in possession of the crystals.”

“They were stolen from a man of great power. He is called the Lion of Crete. He is mad, but nobody dares cross him.”

“What’s his name?”

“He goes by many. The closest to the truth is Megilido Fass.”

“So you stole the crystals from him and then shipped them to Earnst….”

“No!” Stadipopolis insisted, drawing back against a pillar. “This I tell you, American, for the sake of my children, I would never dare cross a man like Megilido Fass. He has his own villa in the southwest of Crete, big as a town they say. People have been known to go there and never return. Boys mostly.”

“Boys?”

The Greek nodded reluctantly. “Wealth has its luxuries, among them being the ability to indulge in whatever … pleasure suits you at the time. Fass is free to do as he wishes. As I said, no one ever crosses him, and that includes the authorities.” He made a spitting motion. “Worthless pigs that they are. Corruption is their middle name in these parts.”

“Not just in these parts, Greek. All right, so it was Fass who was originally in possession of these crystals. Then he was robbed.”

Stadipopolis nodded. “On a dare, a foolish one. A young man whose family had been wronged by the heathen vowed revenge and was coaxed on by his friends. He intercepted a shipment from Fass bound for Morocco. The crystals were among it.”

“And where do you come in?”

“How do you say, American — that in this city I am known as a man who can move merchandise that might burn one’s hand. The foolish young man brought the stolen goods to me. I purchased them for a reasonable price, of course not knowing their source.”

“Of course.”

“Had I … well, no call for such speculating. To turn a profit and avoid entanglements, I wished to move the gems quickly. Through America, as always.”

“And Erich Earnst.”

“Exactly. The crystals were of special interest to me because I had never seen anything like them before….”

“Just what Earnst said.”

“They were … mesmerizing.”

“Something obviously made you request that Earnst return them to you after you sent them along.”

“I tell you this, American. My dealings with Earnst over the years were never anything but profitable. He was a man of honor and integrity.”

“But that didn’t stop you from asking for the crystals back.”

“I had no choice. A few weeks after I mailed the shipment, men came to my shop. They were well known in the Square as hired hands of Fass. They were very polite, sickeningly polite. They even purchased several items. Then they asked about the crystals. Since I knew there was no way they could know for sure that I had brokered them, of course I denied ever having seen them. They smiled and left peacefully, asking me to please contact them if I heard any talk.”

“But they still spooked you.”

Stadipopolis swallowed hard. “Not then. It was a week later. The men returned to my shop just as polite as the first time. One was holding a box in his hand and I thought they had come just to return the merchandise they had purchased, perhaps even realize a small profit on the deal I would have been all too happy to grant. They told me to open the box.” The Greek stopped, as if he had to force himself to go on. “There was a head in the box, a head belonging to the boy who had robbed Megilido Fass and then sold his booty to me.”

“So you told them about Earnst.”

“No, American, I didn’t. I would have, had they left the box containing the boy’s head with me.”

“What’s the difference?”

“The fact that they took it with them showed me they weren’t sure I was the one who had brokered the crystals. They were showing it all around the city to men like myself, waiting for one of us to break. Fass is an awful man but not prone to making unnecessary enemies in Athens. It would not suit his needs.”

“Then Fass knew nothing about Earnst.”

“He couldn’t have. If he had, Earnst would have been dead months ago and the crystals stolen back.”

“Except they were stolen … by someone else.”

“Yes,” said Stadipopolis knowingly, “and the fact that one of them is in your possession indicates you are working for that party.”

“Working with, not for.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me.”

“Then let me tell you what matters to me, American. You are here searching for more of these crystals because this party has discovered their potential as a power source.”

Stadipopolis’s statement took Blaine totally by surprise. He fought not to show it. How could this man have known?

“Might be a handsome profit involved for the man who helps us locate the reserves.”

“The reserves should be buried forever, along with the rest of the crystals you possess.” The Greek’s voice was strained.

“No more riddles. I’m sick of them. What are these crystals?”

“Death has followed them everywhere, always. I didn’t know. If I had—”

McCracken reached out and grabbed a fistful of Stadipopolis’s shirt. “What are they?”

The Greek’s lips quivered. “Their origins I learned later, too late. They are the product of myth.”

“People don’t get killed for myths.”

“This myth may well turn out to be real.” And he swallowed as much air as McCracken’s squeeze allowed him. “Atlantis,” he said.

It took a few seconds for Stadipopolis’s words to sink in.

“Wait a minute,” Blaine responded, releasing his hold. “Atlantis, as in the island that sank into the sea?”

“The very same.”

“I came here for truth,” McCracken snapped. “Not phony mythology.”

“Truth, American, is a matter of perspective. Mine changed when I found a link I could not dismiss. Many believe that the people of Atlantis harnessed the sun to create a power stronger than atomic energy. They accomplished this by using a ruby-red crystal to store vast amounts of the sun’s energy for later use. Ruby red! You’ve seen it. You possess it!”

“And you’re going to help me find more.”

“No! Atlantis destroyed itself by abusing the power of its crystals. They tried to use them as weapons. I have read about this. And now I hear you tell me in so many words, American, that someone you represent is doing it again. Trying to harness the power of something man was never meant to uncover, never meant to—”

“Wait! Quiet!”

“Why do—”

“I said quiet!” Blaine rasped.

He had heard something, a boot kicking pebbles. Then more sounds, soft thuds of car doors closing gently.

Blaine’s eyes swung about him. The various tombs and monuments blocked his view of the nearby roads.

Where were they, damnit? Where?

The sounds stopped, which wasn’t a good sign, for it meant whoever it was had drawn close enough to be satisfied. Blaine thought of New York. Perhaps the same party was behind the men on 47th Street. Or perhaps they’d been sent by Fass.

Stadipopolis came a little forward. “American, what is it? What’s wrong?”

McCracken yanked his gun free of its holster. “Stay out of the light!”

“I’m not about to—”

“I said stay out—”

It was too late. The gunshots had begun.

Chapter 12

McCracken had already hit the ground when Kapo Stadipopolis’s face vanished. Blood and bone splattered everywhere, splashing up against a white stone pillar. The Greek’s corpse struck dirt an instant after Blaine plunged to the ground.

More shots echoed through the cemetery air. Footsteps pounded earth, coming closer. McCracken thought fast. The darkness was his ally. All the killers would have seen after firing their burst was two bodies going down; it would have been impossible to tell if they had been hit or not. Blaine hugged the ground and began to crawl away, pushing with his elbows, around the back of Dionysios’s tomb.

Two men in black rushed out of the darkness into the circle of light cast by one of the floodlights. McCracken fired and one gasped and crumbled. The other dove behind the cover of a monument. He called out for help, and Blaine recognized the language.

It was Russian!

Cars screeched forward on the nearby street. More doors pounded solidly. Footsteps smacked cement and then hard ground. If McCracken was going to move, it had to be now.

In the next instant, he was on his feet. The gunman behind the monument fired his automatic rifle at Blaine as he ran, and Blaine returned the fire with random shots to keep the man at bay. Blaine passed behind another tomb, a larger one with DEXILEOS chiseled in huge letters. He emerged on the other side to a new volley of staccato bursts and chips of ancient marble flying into his face. Again Blaine dove, firing at shadows in the darkness. His pistol clicked on an empty chamber and he rolled aside to snap a fresh clip home.

He was under cover now, but the sound of the nearby traffic confused him and made it hard to judge the number and proximity of the whispering voices.

Russians, goddamnit, Russians!

But sent by whom?

Blaine pulled himself through the slick grass, using the floodlit Acropolis above as a landmark to guide him. His problem was not to defend himself but to escape. He could kill plenty of the enemy, but each bullet used would attract more live ones. Eventually they’d have him. It was inevitable. He kept crawling.

The voices around him grew louder as his pursuers grew more impatient. Each second he evaded them would work in his favor. With the increased possibility that their quarry might escape, desperation, and with it carelessness, would set in.

Blaine stopped behind a smaller row of tombs just before Sacred Way, which divides Kerameikos Cemetery in two. Looking up, he saw they housed among others, Pythagoras. Strange, he mused, that the slightest error on his part now and he would die atop the Greek father of precise mathematics. His plan was not yet formed. The point was now to just keep moving.

A little more than a hundred yards ahead lay the remains of the wall erected by Themistokles around Athens following the Persian invasion. If he could scale it, he might get away before the Russians had a chance to react.

Quiet, he urged himself, as footsteps stopped not more than a half-dozen feet away from the tombs that shielded him. Blaine readied his pistol, determined to avoid using it at all costs because of the attention it would draw.

Fortunately, the gunmen swung across Sacred Way toward the other side of the cemetery. McCracken crawled ten more yards and then slid beneath the raised platform of another monument and rested. It was sixty yards to the walls, and he could never hope to cover the distance on his belly. He had to create a distraction, something that would draw the gunmen away from the direction in which he planned to flee.

Blaine twisted in his confined space, fighting his cramped muscles, and considered his options. First he thought of using the fresh clip in his Heckler and Koch to chip a significant piece of a monument away. He could assume the opposition would converge on it, and then he could escape. But the marble might not splinter sufficiently, and he would have accomplished nothing but to alert the killers to his actual position. No, he had to do something else.

McCracken smiled when his eyes fell upon the Kerameikos Museum, the one modern building within the cemetery. He knew it was packed with the kind of artifacts that would make an advanced alarm system a necessity. A bullet or two through the windows should create the distraction he needed. Blaine aimed toward the largest window he could find. He fired only once.

The shrieking alarm started the instant the glass shattered. Huge floodlights atop the museum blazed suddenly, illuminating irregular patches of the cemetery with an eerie glow. Blaine watched the Russians shy away from the light, dodging and darting, yelling to each other in total confusion.

McCracken pushed himself from beneath the monument and was on his feet instantly. He sprang onto the Sacred Way toward the inner wall that would lead him to the gate and freedom.

The alarm continued to wail, and approaching sirens added to the chaos.

A pair of breathless Russians swung onto the road right before him. He saw them long enough before they saw him to crack one solidly in the throat and launch a kick to the other’s groin. Two blows later, both were unconscious.

“There! There!”

McCracken heard the calls in his wake as he reached the inner wall that stood between him and the Sacred Gate.

He had just reached the top when bullets chewed at the stone near his hands. Dust and chips coughed into the air. Blaine hurdled over and took the impact on both legs equally to save himself from spraining an ankle.

He dashed fifteen yards and reached the Sacred Gate. It was part of a wall at least ten feet high, and because the gate was locked Blaine knew he had no choice but to scale the wall. The gate itself had the most footholds, so he leaped upon it, aiming his hands for a slight ridge just two feet from the top. His legs churned and kicked to keep him from slipping. With the Russians as close as they were, he would get only one chance.

McCracken hoisted himself upward, one hand over the other in a rhythm his feet also fell into. His right hand had just reached over the top when riflemen reached the inner wall behind him and began firing. The Athens police were arriving too and seemed at the outset to be most concerned with taking cover. Blaine’s vulnerability terrified him. A ricocheting bullet grazed his shoulder and the searing pain provided the last burst of adrenalin he needed to throw himself over the wall.

This time his fall was not nearly as graceful. He landed on the ground with a thud and lost his breath on impact. He tried to regain his feet and almost made it, but he fell again onto the knoll that bordered the eastern edge of the cemetery.

A pair of dark Mercedes sedans tore around a corner and headed toward him. With no other choice, Blaine forced himself to his feet and ran along the grass in a daze.

McCracken felt beaten. The cars hadn’t spotted him yet but they would, and there were the many troops left in the cemetery to consider, too. The presence of the Athens police might deter some — but not all. It would only take a few to best him in this condition.

He stumbled on with his head down, but when he looked up he saw an amazing sight. Brilliantly lit by modern floodlights, the Parthenon stood majestically atop the Acropolis, Athens’s ancient hill of state and commerce. The complex, open regularly for tours right up to midnight this time of year, might offer him a means of escape.

The rocky hill contained a set of ancient chiseled steps which provided access to the Acropolis. The majesty of the bright sight, its promise of hope, gave Blaine the energy he needed to run across the street and start up the ancient steps. The going was steep and many of the steps were chipped or rotted away. Blaine slipped regularly but never let himself lose his balance. If he could reach the Acropolis and mingle with the tourists….

Bullets splintered the silence of the night, echoing against the hill. His thoughts were interrupted. Once again only the next second lay before him.

Now three-quarters of the way up the hill, he moved off the steps onto the grassy slope of the Acropolis. The darkness hid him. He struggled on upward, climbing diagonally toward the Propylaea, which formed the original five-gated entrance to the Acropolis. Tourists normally entered by way of Beule Gate, but that was far too bright a section for McCracken to risk.

His hands scraped against jagged rock as he climbed through a restricted area. Once on level ground, he made for the Temple of Athena. Further on he could see that the bulk of the tour group was now concentrated near the majestic Parthenon itself.

“Recent measures enacted by the Greek government have drastically reduced the damage to these artifacts caused by pollution,” the tour guide, an olive-skinned woman, was explaining in English. “But still the rock surface and marble facing have been damaged beyond repair. Surviving through thousands of years of history only to be … ”

Blaine found himself standing next to a mustachioed man with a camera dangling around his neck. The man turned suddenly, surprised by his sudden appearance.

“Hell taking a piss around here, isn’t it?” Blaine quipped. “Nearly killed myself. Ancient Greece wasn’t much when it came to plumbing, I guess.”

The man smiled and returned his attention to the tour guide.

“The Parthenon was built as a temple to Athena and a statue of her stood in the east end until …”

McCracken heard the footsteps coming and didn’t have to turn to know the Russians were approaching. He had to act fast. But what to do?

When in doubt do nothing, went the humorous teaching, but tonight Blaine found more than humor in it. The killers had never gotten a good look at him in the Kerameikos Cemetery, and he doubted they had been furnished with anything but vague descriptions. Their target was not supposed to be a figure in a crowd.

Blaine’s escape had changed all that. His dusty clothes might have given him away but the night breeze had dusted other men as well. The only feature that could identify him was his wounded shoulder. The flow of blood had stopped, and the patch was drying. A skilled eye, though, might notice something out of the ordinary.

Blaine backed up so he was flanked by two women.

“That concludes our tour, ladies and gentlemen,” the tour guide said, and the group applauded politely. “Now,” she continued, starting to move through them, “if you’ll follow me, we’ll make our way down the east path back to the bus.”

McCracken let himself be absorbed into the crowd. Turning, he saw the Russians for the first time in the light, suits looking out of place and soiled by their climb up the hill. Their eyes swept the tour members anxiously, holding briefly on each of the men as they too struggled to mix with the crowd. They gave Blaine the same visual inspections the others received and then conferred with each other, shrugging. Some of their fellows had drifted back among the relics, perhaps believing their quarry to be lurking somewhere in that area.

Blaine blessed his luck. If they thought he was still hiding, he might be able to slip by them by simply sticking with the tour group. He descended with the group down the well-lit east path of the hill. He did not look ahead to his next move; there was no reason to until he found what awaited the group at the end of his descent. He was aware of a pair of Russians lagging back a bit at the rear of the group. A third walked near the head of the procession. From his position in the center Blaine could easily neutralize all three with bullets if it came down to that.

With forty more yards to go until ground level, McCracken saw the tour bus for the first time. Along with something else.

A pair of black Mercedes sedans, windows lowering as the tour group came into view. The cars were ancient, as much relics of their kind as the structures he had just left at the Acropolis. Oversized monsters from a different age, they sat by the curb, one behind the other, waiting.

Blaine also noticed a number of well-dressed men on the sidewalk near the bus across the street. All wore overcoats on the warm spring night. The enemy’s strategy was obvious: wait until the group reached the bottom of the hill and kill all the tour group patrons if their quarry had not showed himself. The media would call it a terrorist attack, and a half-dozen leftist groups would claim responsibility.

Blaine felt the cold sweat dripping down his face and soaking the skin beneath his shirt. His heart thudded against his rib cage, and his breathing suddenly felt labored. Clearly he had to act. He couldn’t allow the slaughter of innocent people. He drew his right hand slowly inside his belt to feel for his Heckler and Koch P-7, which still had seven shots left. The key questions were when to move and where to move first. The street was coming up fast. Russians lay on all sides of him. He had to act before they did but not in a manner that drew their fire randomly into the crowd.

Think, damnit, think!

The bus was right in front of him now. The shape huddled behind the wheel was obviously the driver. The large vehicle could provide cover for him. It would certainly — No, not cover…. Blaine saw what he had to do, but there was still the crowd to consider.

Ten yards from the bus now….

He had to make sure the tour patrons were safe before he acted. It was the only alternative.

Near the bus and across the street, the Russians were pulling out their automatic weapons. The windows in the black cars were all the way down. The signal to fire would come from them.

Blaine knew his next step had to come now and threw himself forward without further thought.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

His scream pierced the night and froze the tour group in its tracks just as it was supposed to. In that same instant, he had his pistol out and was firing in the direction of the black cars, for distraction as much as anything. He had done the last thing the Russians would have expected, and the action allowed him to take control of the crowd’s movement. As his gunshots resounded, the tour patrons hit the ground screaming, taking them out of the line of fire from the street.

The suddenness of McCracken’s motion had stopped the men in the Mercedes from signalling and had forced the over-coated men to take cover. By the time the enemy had recovered their senses, Blaine had reached the side of the bus and fired four bullets up the hill at the charging figures who had stayed near the rear of the pack. Two of the men went down quickly, and then a third.

Just one bullet left, and no time to snap his last clip home….

Automatic fire sliced into the side of the bus. Two over-coated men rushed across the street trying to better their angles as Blaine moved to the open door of the bus. McCracken climbed the steps with his frame low. He saw that the driver, slumped over the wheel, must have been hit by a stray bullet. Blaine pulled the man’s head back, and saw the protruding tongue and purplish features in time to realize he had been strangled. Suddenly a figure rose out of the darkness in the back of the bus.

Blaine fired his last bullet, but he was still in motion himself, and the shot went off target. It hit the bolt of the Russian’s machine gun and jammed it. More machine gun fire pounded the bus as McCracken yanked the dead driver away from the wheel and crouched low in his place. The keys were still in the ignition and he turned them. The bus engine coughed, then caught.

McCracken saw the Russian charging him from the rear, knife in hand now, and floored the accelerator pedal as he shifted into gear. The bus lurched forward suddenly and the attacking Russian toppled over backwards.

Enough bullets had found the tires to make for a bouncy, grinding ride. Blaine kept his head just above the dashboard as more automatic fire sliced through the few remaining windows. He concentrated on keeping the bus straight against its determined efforts to waver out of control. The big vehicle weaved one way and then the other, Blaine’s frantic spins of the wheel inevitably an instant late. What remained of his side mirror showed the Mercedes sedans in hot pursuit with gun-wielding men hanging out windows in both. Blaine raced the bus past the Roman Market and the Library of Hadrian, then screeched into a left toward the familiar surroundings of Monastiraki Square. He had a fleeting sad thought of shop-owner Stadipopolis’s children, who would now grow up orphans after all.

It was the sound of a boot grinding against the steel floor behind him that made Blaine swing around, and the motion saved his life. The Russian’s knife missed him and tore into the fabric of the seat back. The bus careened wildly out of control through Monastiraki Square, smashing through the outdoor tables and sheds. McCracken struggled to control the wheel with one hand while the other reached back for the Russian.

Behind him the two sedans weaved an ever-changing course to avoid the wreckage in the bus’s wake. McCracken heard more than saw them as he fought the Russian behind him. The man was raising his knife once more and Blaine knew in that instant there was no way he could possibly deflect the blow. There was only one thing he could do.

He jammed on the brakes.

The Russian went flying toward the windshield, separated from the knife. Stomping on the accelerator again, Blaine grasped the man’s hair with his free hand while his other hand worked the wheel frantically one way and then the other, tearing the front of a shop out on one side of the street and then weaving into a second across the way.

The two Mercedes sedans spun into each other, looking like bumper cars at an amusement park as they spun out of control. The skilled drivers managed to right the ruined vehicles and get them back on the bus’s tail, but McCracken had widened the gap.

Blaine slammed the Russian’s face into the bus’s dashboard again and again until the man had gone limp. He watched the man slump to the floor, then turned his attention back to the road. He spun the wheel hard to the left onto one of many smaller side streets which cut through the Kerameikos district, looking for a place to dump the wounded Russian. He had lost sight of the Mercedes sedans and clung to the hope that they had given up the chase. Blaine turned the wheel just as hard to the right down yet another side street.

He saw the horse-drawn carriage much too late to do anything but slam on the brakes and work the wheel madly. But riding on two rims and two bad tires, the bus could do nothing but lock up and roll over onto its side, missing the carriage as it slid down the street into a row of parked cars and then a building. McCracken felt his consciousness wavering and realized the initial roll had slammed him against the door. The bus had come to a halt with the door on the bottom, so he pushed his aching body upward. Blood poured down his face from a nasty gash on his forehead. He used the steel first-aid kit to knock out the remnants of a window so he could pull himself out. He smelled gasoline and heard a hissing from the engine.

Blaine managed to get his torso through the shattered window and, with considerably more effort, his legs as well. But his balance was gone and he tumbled hard to the sidewalk with the world blurring in and out of blackness.

The sound of screeching tires had him moving again and the sight of the two approaching sedans had him trying for yet another escape. He stumbled and staggered, his body a mass of pain. His gun was gone, and it was empty in any case. Blaine limped toward a shop with its light still on.

Bullets hit the ground near his feet. Car doors opened and men poured out to give chase.

Damn! He shouldn’t have tried running. He should have known they would spot him instantly.

Still staggering, he reached a sidewalk and nearly tripped on the curb. He pulled himself along the buildings now, refusing to give up. There had to be a way to survive. A weapon he could make use of, something …

A flood of automatic fire sent him diving to the sidewalk and crawling desperately for cover that didn’t exist. It seemed over. By all rights it should have been.

The small car coming toward him with high beams blazing surprised him as much as it did the Russians. They swung suddenly, awash in the light, and darted aside when it seemed certain the small car was intent on running them over. At the last instant the car, a Volkswagen Beetle, swung away from them for the curb, and slowed down between the downed McCracken and his pursuers. In the next second, an Ingram machine gun poked out the driver’s window and commenced firing at the shocked Russians. They returned the fire.

McCracken watched in a daze. If he was being rescued, this had to be a dream and soon he would wake up dead. But then the passenger door was thrown open and through the darkness he made out the coldest pair of eyes he had ever seen in a woman’s face.

“Get in!” the woman shouted. She never stopped firing.

Chapter 13

The car bucked as the woman jammed down on the accelerator. McCracken managed to get the door closed as the Beetle lurched toward the gun-wielding Russians.

“Who the he—”

The rest of Blaine’s words were lost in a hail of gunfire and glass as the windshield shattered. He ducked low, head near the gearshift, and felt the shards spray him. The woman swung the wheel hard, still firing out the driver’s side window with her Ingram.

“Shift into second!” she ordered Blaine.

He did as he was told, frozen by the fiercely resolved glare on the woman’s face. He had seen enough professionals before to know he was looking at one now.

More gunshots sounded behind them, one shattering the rear window. The Volkswagen stayed straight, the Russians thus forced to rush back for their heavily damaged Mercedes sedans.

“Third,” the woman started, hesitating as a corner came up. “Now!”

Again Blaine obliged and sat up in his seat. The woman pulled the Ingram back inside and handed it over to him, eyes alternating between the side and rearview mirrors.

“I want you to know I don’t kiss on the first date,” Blaine told her.

The woman seemed not to hear him. Her eyes maintained their intensity, narrowing suddenly.

“Damn,” she uttered, “they’re on us.”

And the Beetle picked up speed. The woman swung right off Sari Street onto a narrow side road lacking a sign. The glare of headlights shimmered off the rearview mirror as the sedans screeched round in pursuit. The woman took another right and headed straight toward an alleyway connecting this street with another. When they were almost upon it, Blaine realized its narrowness, realized even the small Volkswagen would have no chance of negotiating through it.

“Hey,” he started. “Hey!”

Again the woman ignored him, gritting her teeth and downshifting to lower the Beetle’s speed as it sped into the alley with barely four inches to spare on either side. Sparks flew as the driver’s door grazed the cement building on its side. The woman overcompensated a bit too much and Blaine’s door smashed inward.

The woman remained expressionless. The end of the alley was just thirty yards ahead. Again headlights flashed in the rearview mirror, this time dimly. Blaine turned behind him, smiling.

“Come on, you fuckers,” he urged the oncoming Russians. “Try it.”

They did, but the driver of the lead Mercedes realized the narrow width of the alley too late to pull back. He managed to brake just before the Mercedes crashed into a pair of buildings. The second sedan smacked into it solidly from behind, compressing the back end to match the crushed front, so that the lead Mercedes resembled an accordion.

The woman swung right onto Evripidou Street and eased the Beetle’s speed back with the appearance of more traffic.

“Next time I think I’ll leave the driving to Greyhound,” Blaine told her, wiping the blood and sweat from his eyes with a swipe of his sleeve.

“We have little time,” she told him flatly and Blaine noticed her accent was foreign. He felt a chill.

“You’re Russian, aren’t you?” he managed.

“Since birth,” the woman replied without looking at him.

“We have much to discuss,” the woman said as she locked the door of the hotel room behind them.

“Like to know your name,” Blaine said. “Might help avoid confusion during the course of our conversation.”

The hotel was located three blocks from his but was not listed in any brochure or travel guide. It catered mostly to patrons who booked by the hour, perhaps night, and never in advance. There were no sheets on the bed, and there was barely any furniture besides a single chair and small dresser. The window was dirt-stained, with parts of its lower rim painted over.

“Natalya Illyevich Tomachenko,” the woman said by way of belated introduction.

Blaine’s eyes wandered. “KGB. I’ve heard of you.”

“And I have heard of you, Mr. McCracken.”

“My friends call me Blaine.”

“We are not friends, just allies thrust together out of necessity.”

“I’ve slept with women out of far less.” McCracken winked.

“Your sense of humor is well known to us and not appropriate at this time.”

“‘Us’?” Blaine raised. “I thought you were speaking for yourself.”

“In the Soviet Union, the singular does not exist,” she said, without bothering to hide a note of bitterness.

“An uncharacteristic tone for a top KGB agent. Yup, it’s all coming back to me now. You retired. Then came out again.”

“I had my reasons.”

Blaine looked at her. “What have they got on you, Natalya?”

The remark stung her. She seemed about to speak, but then changed her mind.

“Relax,” McCracken told her. “My government isn’t exactly my biggest fan either.”

“You would perhaps choose to blame them for your own foolish mistakes?” she shot back.

“Such as?”

“A hotel clerk with a big mouth and an empty wallet. My Russian friends bought your room number from him for twenty American dollars.”

“Damn, I thought I was worth more than that….”

“I paid forty for a key to your room two hours earlier,” Natalya Tomachenko said, opening the single closet door to reveal Blaine’s suitcases. “I knew you would be in no position to return to your room after tonight, so I took the liberty of removing your possessions.”

“How considerate.” Blaine found Natalya more than a little attractive. There was no denying her beauty. The dark Slavic features and wide, deep brown eyes made that impossible well before the shoulder-length black hair was even taken into consideration. Still, the implacable set of her jaw and her ice-cold stare kept her from being as ravishing as she might have been. Blaine wanted to call this nameless feature something almost masculine, but even that didn’t suffice. Her coldness, an almost mechanical resolve, transcended gender. She was like a machine awaiting orders. But this machine was hiding something as well. Blaine was as certain of that as he was of her beauty.

“Your head and shoulder are still bleeding,” she said in her most tender voice yet, as if reading his mind. “I have bandages and antiseptic.”

“Did you anticipate my wounds as well?”

“Obtaining a few seemed unavoidable. You were vastly outnumbered.”

“Only until you came along. You timed your entrance to perfection.”

“That too was necessary. I couldn’t enter the cemetery or follow you up to the Acropolis. My face was too well known to your would-be killers.”

“Then you were following me.”

“No. Them. I knew you were in Athens, yes, but not where exactly, and your security precautions worked for a while.”

“Okay, how did you know that much?”

Natalya started toward the doorless bathroom which consisted of a single sink and toilet. “First your wounds must be taken care of. Detail them for me.”

“It would take all night.”

“Just the worst ones.”

“My shoulder’s felt better,” he said, grimacing as he pulled off his jacket to reveal the bloody tear caused by the bullet that grazed him. “And my head, of course.”

“Anything else?”

“Give me a few hours and I’m sure a few other spots will turn up.”

Ten minutes later, Blaine’s shoulder was swabbed and wrapped tightly with gauze stripping. The head wound, more bloody than serious, was handled with a simple strip bandage. It was already starting to clot. He sat down uneasily on the bed, with Natalya Tomachenko seated stiffly across from him on a wooden chair.

“When we left off,” Blaine started, “you were about to explain how you knew I was in Athens.”

“When word reached us—”

“Who’s us?”

“One question at a time. When we learned you had been retained by—”

“Not retained by anyone. I’m operating on my own here.”

“A poor choice of words. I’m sorry. When we learned of your involvement, agents were dispatched to various airports.”

“Plural?”

“Your sense of security is well known to us. The one stationed at Kennedy learned you were flying to Paris.”

“But the ticket I bought was for London.”

“He, too, was made aware of your methods. We had agents stationed all over Europe; virtually every major international terminal was covered.”

“Quite an operation. I didn’t realize I was being tailed because technically I wasn’t. I must be very important to you.”

“More than you realize,” Natalya told him. “Your importance to us began in New York. The men in the diamond district were Soviets.”

“Yours?” Blaine was confused.

“Not at all. The force controlling them was behind the attack tonight as well, along with the murders of those government men in New York. And the woman.”

Blaine fought to control his feelings. “A Soviet force?”

Natalya nodded reluctantly. “The force knew where Earnst had obtained the crystals and thus where you would be going next. Stadipopolis was allowed to live this long only to trap you.”

“I sense a polarity here….”

“I’m coming to the explanation now.” She rose and moved to the dirt-encased window, gazing half out it and half at McCracken as she spoke. “Five days ago, a town in your state of Oregon was obliterated by what your scientists have accurately termed a carbon-decimating death ray. It was developed in the Soviet Union several years ago but abandoned when General Secretary Chernopolov realized the mad track it would place us on. The operation was known as the Alpha project.”

“Alpha as in the Greek letter?”

Natalya nodded. “Because the research was to mark the beginning of a new kind of weapon.”

“Well, I guess the world won’t be safe until the Greek alphabet’s been expended….”

“Even as the project neared its successful completion, General Secretary Chernopolov determined the only conceivable upshot of such a weapon would be war. He knew there was a strong faction in Moscow that would have insisted on the weapon’s utilization had it been allowed to become operational. His only way of averting war, then, was to cancel the Alpha project before its completion. The decision was tremendously unpopular, causing a rift through the Kremlin.”

“And thanks to this rift the Alpha project managed to continue.”

“Through General Secretary Chernopolov’s greatest rival and the man who headed up Alpha: General Vladimir Raskowski.”

“I’ve heard of him,” McCracken said. “Sees himself as the second coming of Alexander the Great.”

“Worse now that he is in possession of the means to fulfil that destiny. Raskowski was—is—an outcast, a madman. He pushed forth the ethic that it was Soviet destiny to overrun Europe and crush whatever meager resistance NATO forces could muster. There was a time when his ideas had considerable support in the Kremlin. But the new leadership under Chernopolov shunned Raskowski and his insane schemes that would have certainly landed us in the midst of global nuclear war. The Alpha project was canceled. Raskowski’s career was ended. He was exiled, all his KGB titles and military rank officially stripped.”

“Rather extreme for you people.”

“Not extreme enough. A little more than a year ago, Raskowski vanished.”

“Along with all the records of the Alpha project, I assume.”

“Of course. The general had never gotten over the fact that when we were able to destroy America we chose not to do it. There were some in Moscow who supported his views. Several of them disappeared at the same time as the general. Others continued to work, gathering intelligence for Raskowski’s plans before they, too, vanished.”

“Traitors in the Kremlin? Pinch me, I must be dreaming.”

“Moscow is not immune and neither, as I mentioned before, is Washington. Raskowski controls the highest-placed mole in intelligence history, a man with the confidence of the President himself.”

“That would explain a lot,” Blaine nodded, recalling his own certainty that a leak had sprung within the crisis committee. “I don’t suppose you could tell me who this mole is.”

“Only by the code name Raskowski has used for him in the past: the Farmer Boy. Supposedly he was born on a Soviet farm to an American mother and Russian father. The Farmer Boy was handpicked along with dozens of other young Soviets to be groomed as spies within America. They were sent there as children. Raskowski has buried all the agents he controls so deeply that their identities, the Farmer Boy’s included, remain a mystery even to us.”

McCracken thought briefly. “Okay, so after learning through the Farmer Boy that certain crystals had been discovered which could power an energy field that could stop his death ray, Raskowski ordered Earnst’s death to destroy the trail.”

She nodded. “Because he couldn’t let his plan be stopped. There is a progression, you see, and either the destruction or disgrace of your country is a vital part of it.”

“Do us in one way or another and they’ll roll a red carpet out to him from Moscow leading straight to Chernopolov’s chair.”

“Unfortunately, yes. The destruction of the United States would propel him into power, just as your unilateral disarmament would if you accede to his demands. And if you decide to fight, the Kremlin might have no choice but to turn to him for the certain victory his death ray would guarantee.”

“In every scenario he wins and we lose,” noted Blaine somberly. “And your government can’t admit any of this because to do so would be to admit they’ve lost control. Unthinkable in the Soviet Union.”

“Because it would force the government to topple, thus accomplishing Raskowski’s goal for him. Unthinkable anywhere. I was dispatched by General Secretary Chernopolov personally to ensure that none of these scenarios comes to pass. He cannot afford to mobilize traditional forces, just as your government cannot.”

“And where exactly do I come into your scenario?”

“Two days ago we obtained a lead as to Raskowski’s whereabouts, at least the means by which his death beam has been deployed. If I … fail, our only hope will be that your search for the Atragon crystals either succeeds or flushes him out.”

“Long shots at best.”

“But you’ll take the chance, just as I will, because more is at stake here for both of us.”

Blaine let the statement pass and scratched at the bandage on his forehead. “I met with a Greek antique dealer tonight who pointed me in the direction of a man named Megilido Fass. He seems to possess some unusual sexual leanings which may provide my in to him. Think you might be able to dig up some more details for me?”

“I’ll make the necessary calls.”

Blaine shook his head. “Ironic, isn’t it? Two superpowers compromised by their own inadequacies. What’s left? Us … two outcasts charged with returning sanity to an insane world.”

“Let it stay insane. So long as it survives.”

Chapter 14

Night came early in Pamosa Springs on the second day of the occupation. Jeep and foot patrols swept through the streets to enforce curfew and by eight P.M. not a soul out of uniform could be seen anywhere. The drapes and curtains in every house were drawn, as if whatever was happening to the town could be simply blocked out.

Those residents peeking between the cracks saw a huge break in the darkness, thanks to a host of floodlights on the hillside that three weeks before had yielded up its minerals. What they couldn’t see from this distance was the large complement of men at work with hydraulic drills and manual tools, lifting and rummaging through huge slabs of the hillside. Nor could they see five truckloads of machinery and equipment still being unloaded and set up in the gulley beyond the floodlit hill.

The four members of the Pamosa Springs town council were gathered by candlelight in the attic of the oldest member’s house just after one A.M. NO one took the meeting’s minutes and everyone whispered, the only sound other than their voices being the jackhammer pounding coming from the hillside.

“Well,” said Mayor Jake “Dog-ear” McCluskey, “anyone want to get this meeting started?”

“As I see it,” responded Clara Buhl, trying to shift her bulky legs in the cramped confines of the attic, “we were supposed to figure they were the real army, Corps of Engineers probably. They musta had a cover story all set that woulda made plenty of sense to us … till Hal Taggart appeared on the scene.”

“And their story got shot to hell,” from McCluskey.

“Along with Taggart,” added Sheriff Pete Heep.

“So all hell breaks loose,” picked up Clara, “and it’s pretty obvious to us that they’re not the real army. They forget all about the niceties and take us all prisoner.”

“Which still don’t tell us what they’re here for,” the mayor raised. McCluskey was a beefy man with a belly that had long since fallen over his waist. He had once been a football star and pictures of him in various poses plastered his office walls. They made quite a collection, and most of Pamosa Springs had been given the tour often enough to be able to recite the year and day each shot had been snapped. McCluskey had a square face and straight jaw, both of which seemed even more rectangular thanks to his crew-cut. The nickname Dog-ear was due to the fact that he was missing a hefty chunk of his left lobe courtesy of a murderous beagle that had gone crazy on him as a child.

Sheriff Pete Heep, on the other hand, was rail thin, all knees and elbows, which cracked and squeaked with almost every move. A tour in Korea had sent him home with shrapnel in three of his four limbs. Heep kept his sense of humor about the squeaking — and the pain — giving himself the nickname of “Junk” Heep to describe his battered body, which took twenty minutes to stir out of bed every morning.

“Did it real organized like, too,” added Sheriff Junk. “They’re experienced, whoever they are, and damn well armed.” He moved his elbow with a resounding pop. “Can’t expect to keep us prisoners forever, though. I mean this is a town.”

“Maybe not forever,” chipped in Clara Buhl, “but long enough. Judgin’ by the pace they been working at, I’d say they don’t want to stay here any longer than they have to. They got a roadblock set up on the only road leading into the Springs and who would question the army? All they have to say is something about hazardous waste or some nuclear test gone wrong and people’ll steer clear for miles.”

Clara was a feisty woman of near sixty who had been cursed by a bad heart for over a quarter of those years. She was born and raised in the Springs and had never left the state of Colorado in her entire life. She seldom even left her house except for council meetings and could be found at virtually any hour of the day or night listening to an old radio and working her way through needlepoint after needlepoint. Her whole house was covered with her creations, few of them any good since her eyes started to go, the stitching sloppy and the colored patches running into each other to create an inadvertent impressionism. Clara refused to accept glasses and relied instead on an antique magnifying glass for her meager reading needs.

“Whoever they are, they thought this out plenty good,” put forth Dog-ear McCluskey. “Knew just where to cut the power and phone lines. Even had a list of all the registered ham radio operators.”

“It’s public record,” Clara told him.

“You know,” started the mayor, “I had a friend once in the Signal Corps and it seems to me there’s a way to convert a standard radio receiver into a transmitter. Damned if I can remember it, though.”

“Even if you could,” said Clara, “I doubt you could round up all the necessary equipment without them catching on. Lord knows there’s enough of ’em to watch our every move, even when we make those rounds of the people they let us make today.”

“I counted a few over a hundred,” said eighty-two-year-old Isaac T. Hall. “Been counting for two days solid now. A hundred’s the number all right. Seventy to eighty always working on the hillside or the gulley and the rest watching the town.”

“Lots of men,” muttered Sheriff Junk. He brought his knees up to his chest and there was a crackling noise.

“Not so many in my eyes,” Ike T. Hall responded sharply. “Been through the two big wars myself. Seen things that’d turn your stomachs so far around you’d be shitting through your belly buttons. The Nazis were the worst. Rode over people ’cause people let ’em. The ones that fought, like in them ghettos, had a chance anyway. We could do the same,” Hall insisted, pushing his thin wispy hair from his forehead. “That’d be my suggestion. We got ’em outnumbered. Hell, there’s 700 of us. Was up to me, I’d strap on Uncle Wyatt’s six-guns and have a go at the bastards. I get three or four ’fore they get me, we’re ahead of the game.”

Isaac Hall had lived in Pamosa Springs all his eighty-two years, half of them served as marshall. His greatest claim to fame was a distant relationship with Wyatt Earp himself. How he was related varied from great-nephew to cousin to great-grandson. Ike’s flesh had been wrinkled and sagging for as long as most people could remember. The hair got thinner and wispier as the years went on.

“It ain’t just the numbers, Ike,” Sheriff Heep told him. “It’s the weapons. To have any chance at all we’d have to come up with plenty more than your six-guns, and the town’s armory’s not exactly well stocked.”

“What about their armory?” suggested Clara.

“Huh?”

“Their armory. If we can find out where they set it up, we could ‘borrow’ some of their weapons.”

“And assuming we do, how many people in this town you think could make ’em work to any decent degree?” challenged Dog-ear. “Nope, I’m thinking along different lines. We ain’t so isolated we couldn’t get one person out to bring back help.”

Junk’s arm went pop as he slapped his thigh in disdain. “You thought out in which direction to send this person, Dog-ear?” he challenged. “I mean, you can forget the road the way it’s guarded and the only walk that’s even conceivable is east over the San Juans. That’s five days in the best of conditions for someone who knows what they’re doing.”

“Gotta be someone like that in town.”

“Gotta be nuts to want to chance it. This time of year I’d wager his chances of making it across the San Juans alive were no better than fifty-fifty.”

“Which might be better than our chances if we sit around and do nothing.”

A large blast sounded on the hillside, silencing the town council’s voices and stilling their hearts.

“Might help if we knew what in hell it was that brought ’em here,” said the mayor.

“Seems obvious to me,” responded Heep. “There’s something in that hillside that’s plenty valuable and they’re here to steal it right from under us.”

“Yeah,” agreed Clara Buhl, “that explains their digging on the hillside. But anybody got an idea what they’re building in the gulley?”

The soldier was bored. He hadn’t known what to expect from this mission, but he was sure it would be better than patrolling an empty street by himself after midnight. The M-16 slung over his shoulder clapped against his hip, begging to be used. The soldier yawned. The prospects for action tonight, or anytime soon, were dismal. His walk had become mechanical now. The shift had been substantially reduced at midnight and the full moon proved a blessing for some, although the soldier would have preferred a fog-shrouded night when at least some of the local assholes would try to flee through his grid. Just let them try….

A flash of movement caught his eye, a tall, thin figure moving on the outskirts of town, keeping to the shadows. The soldier was about to shout out, then elected to remove the M-16 from his shoulder instead. He brought it up as he dashed silently forward to better his angle. Standing square against a building, he pushed his eye against the infrared night scope and recognized the man superimposed in the cross hairs as the town’s sheriff. No matter. His orders were open to interpretation in such situations. He would tell the commander he thought the man had a gun. The soldier started to reach for his trigger.

He didn’t hear the footsteps coming up behind him until it was too late. He swung, expecting to see one of his fellows, but what he saw was the face of death itself.

The soldier felt himself trying to scream, feeling a horrible burst of agony in his back as a smelly hand closed over his mouth. That was his last thought — that the hand was big and that it smelled bad. The creeping figure extracted its blade, pulled the corpse between a pair of buildings, and slipped off into the night.

Chapter 15

When McCracken woke up stiff and cold on the floor the next morning, Natalya was gone, the single blanket she had tossed over herself folded neatly at the foot of the bed.

“That antique dealer was right about Megilido Fass’s sexual tendencies,” she said when she returned twenty minutes later.

“What about taking advantage of those tendencies?”

“I’m not sure.” She shrugged. “Thursday is the day Fass’s contact makes his weekly delivery, but I’m not sure what we can do with this.”

Blaine felt sickened by the perverted world of the reclusive and powerful Fass. “Learn anything about this contact?”

“Plenty.”

Blaine smiled.

Two hours later, with Natalya’s help, the disguise required for Blaine’s impersonation was complete.

“Lucky this guy’s got a beard,” he said, rearranging his hair. “I really didn’t want to shave mine.” He looked to see Natalya gathering up her things. “Where you headed from here?”

“Bangkok,” she replied matter-of-factly, “to meet with an apparently desperate aide of Raskowski who seems eager to talk. I would have been there already, if not for the detour necessitated by your involvement.”

“Please accept my apologies.”

“Only if you’ll accept my hand in good luck. One of us has to succeed. Otherwise both our countries will pay.”

McCracken emerged from the run-down hotel dressed in baggy white trousers and a slightly soiled white, unstructured jacket. He had combed out his beard to give it an unkempt look and picked his wavy hair for the same effect. A series of makeup shades mixed together produced the necessary native flesh tone and hid his more noticeable scars nicely. He would have to be careful about smiling, though, for the man whose place he would be taking had a gold tooth in the front. Blaine had wedged a crinkled, floppy hat into his back pocket, ready for wear as the final element of his disguise. The real delivery man was not known to wear one but some improvisations were needed if he was to get close to Fass.

Natalya’s information had spotted Megilido Fass on a huge estate in the Khania section of the island of Crete, specifically in Sfakia. Every Thursday a man named Manolokis took a ferry from southern Greece across the Mediterranean to the port of Khania. He always drove a white van, the windows of which were darkened to keep the curious from observing the merchandise he was retained to deliver once a week. Blaine would be waiting for him to arrive in Khania after flying in from Athens. The switch would have to be made with a minimum of fuss and even then Blaine would still have his work cut out for him in gaining access to Fass.

His parting with Natalya had been stiff and wholly professional. He admired her ability to distance herself from her mission. She had come to Greece only to save Blaine’s life and set him straight on what they were facing. This done, she could leave knowing they would in all probability never meet again. Blaine couldn’t accept that, though he sorely wished he could. After the pain of finding T.C. in New York, he felt certain he would never be able to feel close to a woman again. And yet, strangely, Natalya reminded him of T.C. so much that he couldn’t help but be attracted to her. She was strong, independent, and mysterious in the same ways that Blaine had always thought of T.C. He tried to probe Natalya’s mystery by comparing her to himself. While he wore his emotions like an old suit, tattered but open to view, she held hers within, her stoic seriousness as much a survival mechanism as his often misplaced sense of humor. Blaine didn’t doubt she was hiding a hurt so deep that it powered her single-mindedness.

Blaine started down the street, doing his best to blend with the large number of people out on a beautiful Athens Thursday morning. He had plenty of time before catching his flight across the Mediterranean and figured his best use of it would be to phone Sundowner. The best means to do so was to make his way to a top-rated hotel with a smooth-working long-distance service. Twenty minutes later, he had checked into the Athens Hilton. It was another twenty minutes before a long-distance line was available.

“Good morning, Blaine,” Sundowner said cheerfully from halfway around the world.

“Hope I didn’t wake you.”

“The Toy Factory never sleeps. How goes your search for Atragon?”

“Not in hand yet, but drawing closer. Actually I’m calling about some complications I’ve encountered along a different line.”

“Such as?”

“Suffice it to say I’ve linked up with a foreign operative with as big a stake in this as ours. She told me an interesting story about a Farmer Boy the Soviets placed in America and have been running ever since.”

“A child spy?”

“Now all grown up with the ear of the President.”

“Christ….”

“I think we can safely rule him out for the time being. But the existence of a mole would explain our problems in New York, Sundance. In fact, it would explain a hell of a lot. Go over the members of the crisis committee for me again.”

“William Wyler Stamp, CIA director. George Kappel, Secretary of Defense. And Edmund Mercheson, Secretary of State.”

“Eliminate Stamp. He fell into this position by accident and no one goes anywhere after running the Company these days. Tell me about Kappel.”

“Very hawkish. His philosophy’s a bit archaic in view of the proposed treaties, or maybe it isn’t since the whole peace process has fallen on its ass. In Washington they call Kappel a survivor. Administrations come and go, but he always manages to hang on.”

“And Mercheson?”

“A dove. Next to the President, he’s the most unpopular man in the country, according to polls, since the disarmament treaties collapsed. People feel he cheated them, made the country give up too much only to be taken in by the Soviets who didn’t want peace to begin with. I guess people look at him and expect him to work the same magic Kissinger did. No chance.”

“I assume Mercheson is career Washington as well.”

“Not as openly as Kappel but, yes, that would be an understatement. He’s been around forever and promises to be around a while longer. I’m pretty good with a computer, Blaine,” Sundowner added after a pause. “I can quietly go over their full files with the proverbial fine-tooth CRT screen.”

“Don’t bother. The truth’s been buried too deep for anyone to ever find. This is the Soviet version of the deep-cover plant. They wouldn’t have made any mistakes with their Farmer Boy.”

Something occurred to Sundowner.

“They may have made one,” he said. “Mercheson grew up on a farm in Michigan.”

Manolokis was sweating inside the steaming white van as the ferry rolled over the waves of the Mediterranean. The port of Khania had finally come into sharp view. Manolokis dreaded these Thursday voyages, but he kept making them because the pay was impossible to refuse. So much for so little work. Every week a new shipment and another cash payment. He sometimes wondered what happened to the previous week’s shipment, but he tried to think about it as little as possible. Part of his job was to ask no questions.

Manolokis gave in to temptation and rolled down the window on the driver’s side of the van.

“Stay silent,” he commanded the young passengers behind him, “or I’ll cut off your balls.”

He would round them up from various Mediterranean cities over the course of the week for delivery on Thursday. They were beggar boys willing to do anything for a decent meal and a few pennies. Manolokis promised them much more. A home. A life. For a time anyway, though he never elaborated on that. Four or five every week between the ages of eleven and fifteen. Since they were homeless or runaways, no one noticed when they disappeared.

Manolokis did his best never to consider the ramifications of what he had become involved in; it was too late to pull out in any event. His employer was not a man to cross, nor were the men Manolokis dealt with directly. Megilido Fass kept a tight net over the goings on in his Sfakia villa. News that came in never went out.

The same could be said for the merchandise Manolokis was charged with delivering.

He dozed briefly in the heat, until he was awakened by the bump of the ferry grazing the dock of the port. At last, he thought. Manolokis stretched, his sweat-soaked pants and white linen jacket clinging to the seat. He rolled up the window, turned on the engine, and switched the blessed air-conditioning back on.

There were never any questions when Manolokis drove off the ferry. The authorities who might have raised them were almost certainly on Fass’s payroll as well. This was Crete, after all. Fass owned it.

The van bucked slightly as it passed from dock to roadway. Manolokis would be in Khania proper only briefly, soon swinging east to Vryses and then toward the south coast to the region of Sfakia and Fass’s villa. At the end of the port district a shepherd was driving his goats across the road. Manolokis sat back to wait for the herd to pass.

A knocking came on the window. Manolokis turned to see a beggar wielding a tin cup. He shooed the man away without paying further heed. The knocking came again. Manolokis looked longer. The darkened windows made seeing out almost as difficult as seeing in and he decided it would be best to deal with the beggar through an open window anyway. Bastard deserved a good smack in the face for bothering him. He should report him to Fass’s people. Bastard would probably lose his hands for the effort.

“Look,” Manolokis started, “I don’t know who—”

And stopped, just like that. Because the man outside the van was no beggar. It was … him, could have been a twin. The same face he saw regularly in the mirror except when it smiled no gold tooth flashed. Manolokis saw the twin’s hand lash forward through the open window. He remembered trying to recoil and nothing else.

An instant later Blaine McCracken opened the door and climbed inside. Swiftly he pushed the unconscious Greek’s body from the seat and took his place behind the wheel.

Blaine checked the rearview mirror. Five frightened faces glared back at him, teenage boys cowering in their seats. A few began to spit words out quickly in Greek, too quick for Blaine to follow them.

“Sorry,” he shrugged, “don’t speak the language too well, but I do speak another.”

He pulled the van onto a side street and climbed out, beckoning the boys to follow him. They resisted for a moment, confused, even angry, but one by one they came forward. As they stepped toward Blaine, he handed each boy five worn American dollar bills, more money than any of them had ever seen before. The beggar boys gathered together to share their shock and then glee, jumping up and down and babbling away joyously, ultimately hugging McCracken with thanks all at once. He fought them off as best he could but they stubbornly clung to him. Blaine finally managed to force them off with instructions in decent Greek for them to be on their way. The boys resisted, then at last moved off together as McCracken climbed back into the van.

Five minutes later, the bound and gagged body of Manolokis abandoned in the nearby brush, Blaine headed south. The ride would be long and the roads unfamiliar, but the route to Fass’s villa outside of Sfakia was reasonably straight and Natalya’s directions were precise. His Heckler and Koch was history, lost the night before on some Athens street, and Natalya had done her best to fill the gap with a pair of Brin 10 semiautomatic pistols. The substitution was acceptable and Blaine had stowed both of his fresh pistols under the seat.

He knew little about the part of Crete he was heading toward. Natalya had mentioned only a countryside rich in history and containing a subterranean well of ancient caves. Of Fass’s villa little was known other than its hugeness. Fass himself was a mystery man, a smuggler of anything if the price was right. His perverted sexual leanings were the only thing known of him for sure and this the authorities did nothing about. Crete was his territory, its lavish beauty in direct contrast with the evil of a man who many believed to be a direct descendant of the devil.

It was two hours before McCracken found the private road that would take him to Fass’s villa. Video cameras rotating from their tree posts signaled its location even as they tracked his arrival. He guessed there would be plenty of guards lining the road as well, but they would be well hidden and would appear only if the vehicle seeking entry was deemed a threat.

Several miles back Blaine had stuffed the Brin 10s in his belt beneath his baggy linen jacket. His last touch was to put on the floppy, crinkled hat and tilt it just enough over his eyes to put them in shadows. He steadied himself with a deep breath as the entrance to Fass’s villa, a huge white stone gate, appeared before him. The guards on either side seemed to recognize the van and paid it little heed as he approached.

He cracked the window a few inches as he drew closer, braking the van to a walking clip. The guards never moved. The gate began to swing electronically open and they waved him through.

The courtyard is very large. A fountain, beautifully manicured lawns and shrubbery. Follow the driveway to the left where it winds in a semicircle before Fass’s mansion. The procedure is for the guards to meet the van and take delivery of the contents. From that point you’re on your own.

Natalya’s description of the villa was absolutely precise. She had left out only its true magnitude. It was certainly one of the largest houses Blaine had ever seen, built entirely of white stone.

McCracken speeded up the van as he headed toward the circular drive in the front of the mansion. At the same time, he lifted one hand from the steering wheel and pulled a razor blade from the dashboard where he had left it. For the rest of his plan to work, the mansion guards would have to be distracted enough not to notice he wasn’t the real Manolokis. Bringing the razor blade to his forehead, he made a quick slice in an old scar. Blood began pouring out instantly, dripping into his eyes. Perfect. Nothing beat blood for a distraction.

He was honking the horn when he screeched the van to a halt directly before the double entrance doors.

“Help! Help!” he called, throwing himself clumsily out of the van and making sure there was ample blood on his sleeves as well. The guards were running up. “They forced me off the road, took the boys!”

“Who?” the lead guard demanded in Greek.

“Fass! I must see Fass!”

McCracken was counting on the element of surprise once he was escorted into Fass’s chamber. A quick motion to draw his guns or knife and the Greek would be at his mercy. All the guards in the world would do him no good.

The guards were leading him into the mansion.

“He’ll be angry, I know,” McCracken continued, making no effort to clear away the blood from his face. “But it wasn’t my fault. He’ll have to understand that….”

They had reached a huge circular stairwell and ascended it toward the mansion’s second floor. The hallway at the top was long and curving. Guards flanked him on either side as they led him down it. Blaine kept his breathing rapid in mock panic but inside he was calming himself to his task.

“In here,” the lead guard signaled, throwing the door open to what must have been Fass’s chamber.

Blaine picked up his pace just a little as he entered, ready to spring now, hands already starting for his guns.

The sight of a half dozen men wielding automatic rifles froze him in his tracks. Behind the guards was a huge desk, and Blaine caught a glimpse of the man behind it.

“Welcome to my home, Mr. McCracken,” said Megilido Fass.

Chapter 16

“Please,” Fass continued, “make yourself comfortable, but first drop your weapons on the floor.”

McCracken emptied his belt deliberately, one of Fass’s white-clad guards on either side of him. Both moved closer for a frisk.

“Be careful of this one,” Fass warned them. “He could strip your rifles away in the blink of an eye.”

“It’s nice to have my skills appreciated for once,” Blaine said, the frisk nearly complete.

Fass rose from behind his desk. “Here,” he said, tossing a towel to McCracken. “The blood is most unbecoming to you.”

Blaine caught the towel in midair and swiped away at his forehead, noticing for the first time a television monitor sitting atop Fass’s desk.

“I recorded your performance outside on tape,” the Greek explained. “Most impressive.”

“I’m expecting royalties every time you show that.”

“And rest assured I will show it often. It will be added to my permanent collection.”

Blaine surveyed the scene before him, searching for options. Fass was not at all what he expected. The Greek smuggler was tall and gaunt, dressed in a white suit, white shirt, and white silk tie. His flesh was bronzed by the Mediterranean sun and his jet-black hair was slicked down close to his scalp. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of narrow sunglasses. A young boy, dressed in white shirt and pants, stood behind him against the back wall next to a dry bar. The servant had long curly locks that tumbled to his shoulders and couldn’t have been older man fourteen.

“You were expecting me,” Blaine said.

Fass chuckled, grinning devilishly. “An old friend of yours made a number of phone calls telling us to be on the lookout.”

“Vasquez …”

Fass nodded. “I’m sure he’ll be pleased you remember him. He called me twice. For some reason he was sure I would be your next target.”

“You could have killed me downstairs if you wanted to.”

“Of course I could have.” Fass beamed. “But there would have been no sport in it.” He tilted his stare toward the monitor. “No permanent recording of your exploits for an epitaph.” Fass grinned again and pulled something from his pocket as he summoned the boy from the dry bar to his side. “Human life is nothing but a possession to be dealt with and replaced accordingly. Man is an intrinsically dispensable creature. Life and death are merely relative states of being I control within these walls.”

Fass grabbed the boy by the hair and jerked his head back. In the same instant, Blaine saw the object he had pulled from his pocket was a small blade that he now whipped up and across the boy’s throat.

“No!” McCracken screamed. But it was already too late when the guards on both sides moved to restrain him.

Blood poured outward from the neat slice in the boy’s throat, rushing down his white shirt. The boy staggered backwards, eyes empty and glazing over, clutching for the wound futilely as he crumbled to the white carpet behind Fass’s desk. Blaine heard the hideous, airless gurgle as death claimed him. He saw the boy’s blood pooling on the carpet.

“As I said,” Fass proceeded calmly, “people are mere possessions. You, meanwhile, have stripped me of this week’s allotment. I’ve had to figure out a way for you to make compensation.”

McCracken stopped pulling against the guards. “How about we dismiss the rest of your ‘possessions’ here and you try to slit my throat?”

Fass laughed and moved out from behind his desk. “Your reputation, as they say, has preceded you, Mr. McCracken. Vasquez warned me to keep my distance. He said you knew a dozen ways to kill a man with your bare hands in under two seconds.”

“Fourteen. I’ve picked up a few more these last few years.”

“Vasquez has not forgotten the debt he owes you.”

“I suppose he wants you to deliver me to him.”

“No,” said Fass, “he just wants you dealt with. He left the specific manner up to me.”

“You haven’t even asked what brought me here.”

“Because it doesn’t matter. Whatever your pursuits, I’m afraid they won’t be completed.”

“Pity.”

“Not totally.” And Fass stepped still closer, baiting McCracken to move. “It’s difficult to find a specimen like you these days. Many have crossed these walls but never one with your physical abilities and prowess. Vasquez asked only that I kill you. He left the choice of means up to me but, as I mentioned, death should be regarded as sport just as life is. Have you ever heard of the mythical Labyrinth, Mr. McCracken?”

“As in the Minotaur? Sure.”

“Good, because you’re going into it now.”

“I’ve reconstructed it, Mr. McCracken,” Fass told him as the guards escorted both of them down the corridor. “Here.”

They reached a stairway at the end of the long, curving hallway and began to descend.

“Let me review for you the myth you are about to become part of,” Fass resumed. “King Minos had the Labyrinth built to house the Minotaur. Born of the unholy union between a bull and the King’s wife, who lay hidden within a wooden cow, the Minotaur was a creature with the head of a bull and the body of a man.” When they had reached the bottom of the stairway they walked down another corridor and out a back door of the mansion. “Athens was annually required to send a host of youths and maidens as tribute — and food — for the Minotaur. Finally Theseus sailed from Athens to slay the dreaded creature. And this he accomplished with the help of Minos’s daughter Ariadne, who gave him a ball of wool. He unravelled it on his way into the Labyrinth and then used it to find his way out.” They stopped at a break in a huge row of thick green bushes. “How would you like to play Theseus in my little game today, Mr. McCracken?”

“Only if I get to win like he did. But I suppose that depends on what you’ve got for a Minotaur.”

Fass grinned and led the way through the narrow passage in the bushes. Blaine saw a domed building, circular in design, perhaps sixty or so yards in diameter, though his angle made it difficult to judge. They moved toward a crowd of white-clad armed guards closer to the dome.

“Allow me to introduce my Minotaur, Mr. McCracken,” Fass announced proudly.

The guards parted, and Blaine felt himself grow cold. It was a huge man. No, more than huge, monstrous. Naked to the waist and wearing only what might have been a loincloth and sandals, the giant was as muscular as he was tall. Bulging bands of sweat-shined flesh rippled across his arms, shoulders, and chest. His thighs were layered with knobs of muscles. He stood like a statue, pectoral muscles popping slightly with his even breaths.

“Here is how the game is played, Mr. McCracken,” Fass explained. “You will enter the Labyrinth first, weaponless of course.”

“Not even a spool of wool?”

“It wouldn’t help you defeat my Minotaur. He will enter at his leisure from below, through a trapdoor. Defeat him and you win your freedom.”

“And let me guess,” Blaine said. “You’ve got plenty of your hidden video cameras down there to record every instant of the proceedings.”

“Of course. Without spectators, there is no sport. You should be grateful, Mr. McCracken. I’m offering you a chance to live.”

Even if that were true, the chance was minute, Blaine thought as he watched Fass’s Minotaur pull on a pair of gloves decorated with rows of sharp spikes protruding a half inch or so outward. Last the giant donned a bull’s-head mask complete with pointed horns which would make a formidable weapon for a man who knew how to wield them, as this one undoubtedly did.

“I must warn you, Mr. McCracken,” Fass told him, “that my Minotaur has never even come close to being defeated. But, then, he has never faced a challenge as worthy as the one you will pose. Remember, victory means your life. I expect a good show.” Then to his guards, “Lead him inside, but search him again first.”

The men ruffled Blaine twice over, until they were satisfied he had no other weapons. Then they led him up to the Labyrinth’s front door and shoved him through. The door slammed and echoed behind him. Blaine’s first thought was that the lighting was dim, little more than the glow off a digital clock in a darkened bedroom. He would make as much use of it as possible. Not waiting for his eyes to adjust, he began walking. Fifteen feet down the corridor he reached an abutment that forced him to take a right, then a left. He was totally at the mercy of the Labyrinth’s construction.

The problems it raised were many, and Blaine contemplated most of them in the seconds before the Minotaur’s expected entry. To begin with, there were the walls of the structure itself. If he became trapped in a false passageway, backed up against a corner, his chances of defeating the spiked and horned giant would be reduced significantly. He had to make the maze’s construction work for him somehow, perhaps taking the monster from behind. That task in itself would be close to impossible without a weapon. A man that huge and heavily muscled would feel little pain from a blow that would fell an ordinary man. Only a perfect strike would have any effect at all and McCracken wondered if in the near-darkness he could muster one.

Even if he managed to defeat the Minotaur, he had no illusions that Fass would in fact grant him his life. The prospect might appeal to the sportsman in Fass by providing motivation for McCracken to put on a good show. But no man in the Greek’s position would ever dare cross Vasquez. McCracken had to the here, at the hands of the Minotaur on videotape, or by the guns of Fass’s guards. It didn’t matter. Not only did he have to slay the Minotaur, he also had to escape the Labyrinth by a means other than the entrance — a problem far greater than what Theseus had faced even with his ball of wool.

Blaine kept walking, at first trying to memorize the twisting corridors for future reference. But each turn brought him to a corner he swore he had seen before yet knew he couldn’t have. He was totally confused, his sense of direction completely gone. He might have covered the entire swirling length of the Labyrinth or he might have gotten nowhere at all. Impossible to say.

There was a soft echo of a door being snapped back into place and McCracken knew the Minotaur had risen from the subterranean corridors beneath the structure. He strained his ears to hear the monster’s footsteps approaching, then recalled the giant’s feet had been clothed in light sandals that would not produce a sound. He could stay in the same place and wait for the Minotaur to make his move, but inaction was not part of McCracken’s nature. The thing to do was hunt the monster, who would expect that least of all. Fass would get a better show on his video than he could have possibly imagined.

The cameras! If he could find and disable them, he could blind Fass to whatever escape he chose after slaying the Minotaur ….

Wait, Blaine urged himself. He was getting ahead of himself, way ahead. First he had to deal with the creature, which promised to be a near impossible task in itself.

Not creature, he reminded himself. He’s just a man and that’s how I’ve got to think of him ….

McCracken swung right and found a wall before him. A quick turn to the left brought him to another. He had trapped himself and would have to double back. Damn! How could he hunt the monster hunting him if he couldn’t even find his way? He supposed the giant had memorized these corridors, but perhaps there were coded signs on the wall or floor.

Blaine felt the pounding of his heart intensify and fought to steady his breathing. He tried to listen for the sounds of the giant approaching, but his own thoughts got in the way.

Relax! he urged himself. Release! ….

Advice and training from Johnny Wareagle. Release everything, the big Indian had counseled him, and surrender to the forces. Feel what lies around you. Don’t wait to see or hear it. Release!

McCracken stopped. He had come to a point in the Labyrinth where he could go left or right. He calmed himself and let his feelings take over. Going left would take him back in his own path. Going right was the answer.

He stayed on the move, thinking now that the best strategy would be to lure the Minotaur into a closed-off corridor and then attack. He came to the end of a small corridor and turned to reverse his footing.

The noise was slight, flesh grazing wood, but he had heard it. Blaine released. The Minotaur was three turns away, coming directly for him, aware of his presence.

A weapon, I need a weapon ….

McCracken pulled up his shirt quickly. Fass’s guards had searched him but neglected to strip off his belt with its heavy brass buckle. He had forgotten about it, just as they had. Wielded properly, it could make a potent weapon indeed.

Blaine yanked it through the loops and wrapped it twice around his arm, leaving a foot-and-a-half or so extended with the heavy buckle dangling free. He could feel the Minotaur closing now, and he imagined the sharp glove spikes and head horns. Others in this position would have waited to jump out when the giant was close. Waiting was what had gotten them killed.

McCracken headed toward the Minotaur’s position, felt him just around the next turn and lunged forward at the instant he expected him to appear.

The timing of the move was perfect. The Minotaur glided round the abutment just as Blaine swung his belt into violent motion. It lashed upward against the side of the giant’s mask. He grunted, and Blaine wasted no time in whipping the belt again. The Minotaur ducked late and the belt buckle snapped into his eye. This time the giant howled in pain and staggered, blinded and instinctively bringing the back of his spiked glove up to his brow.

McCracken continued his assault, blasting the much bigger man several times in the kidneys. Then he leaped behind the Minotaur and looped the belt around his throat. He pulled both ends tight, taking up the slack and tightening the noose. Blaine heard the rush of air trapped in the monster’s throat and felt certain he had won.

But Fass’s Minotaur had managed to sneak one of his spiked gloves upward and wedge it between his flesh and the belt. One of the spikes was close to ripping through it. McCracken managed to close off most of his air but the Minotaur was conscious and still struggling.

Blaine yanked backwards on the makeshift noose, and the giant’s huge throat emitted a watery sound. Blaine drew closer, trying to increase pressure for the kill.

A mistake.

The Minotaur sensed his position and sent his free glove, the one that wasn’t fighting desperately to tear through the belt, hurtling backwards. The tips of the spikes ripped through the flesh of McCracken’s midsection. The pain was enormous, blood spreading through the ragged rips in his white shirt and jacket. Now it was McCracken who screamed, easing up enough for the Minotaur to tear free from the noose.

He swung the spiked glove at Blaine and McCracken managed to duck at the last possible instant, feeling the steel whistle over his head. The main problem now was to neutralize the monster’s deadly hands. McCracken wrapped his arms around the Minotaur’s waist, locking the bulging arms at his sides, and drove the massive frame backwards against one of the walls. The whole structure seemed to tremble and Blaine felt the monster struggling futilely to pull his spiked gloves free of the lock, while Blaine angled himself to ram his knee into the giant’s groin.

The huge testicles, a bull’s indeed, made a welcome target and Blaine pounded them twice. The Minotaur, gasping in pain after McCracken’s second strike rammed home, lowered his head, tensed his neck, and thrust the sharp horns directly at McCracken.

Blaine felt them pierce his back and screamed in agony. The giant tore them out, taking a measure of flesh with them. Then with one swift motion, he tossed McCracken to the floor.

Even in the darkness, Blaine could see the spiked gloves converging toward his head. He shrank back and the steel clanged together. McCracken backpedaled as the beast stalked him for the kill.

The belt! The damn belt! Where was it? Blaine needed a weapon, and he needed it now.

The monster had slowed his pace to regroup and ease the pain in his groin. He moved with his legs closer together, involuntarily protecting his ruined testicles. McCracken retreated until he reached a dead-end wall. He could almost feel Megilido Fass ogling in expectation of the kill. Well, it wasn’t going to come as fast as he thought….

McCracken tore off both his loafers and pushed his hands into them. In the next motion he moved away from the wall, in order to meet the Minotaur where he would have the advantage of his greater mobility. His strategy was simple. He could not possibly hope to fend off the spiked gloves with merely his hands. He needed more, something to parry with to buy himself time.

The Minotaur hesitated, unsure, then came at Blaine fast and hard. His right glove lashed out for Blaine’s throat. McCracken deflected it with the shoe and launched a kick into the giant’s knee. The Minotaur grimaced and limped sideways, swishing the other glove through the air. This time McCracken stepped to the inside and extended his shoed hand to block the spikes. With the second shoe he rammed the Minotaur’s solar plexus. Again the giant gasped and staggered backwards. For the moment the advantage was Blaine’s.

What do you think of that, Fass?

The taunt was only in his mind, but it was enough to disturb his concentration. The Minotaur swung out wildly with a spiked glove and Blaine tried to reroute the force and lodge the spikes in the giant’s midsection. But in doing so he totally neglected the second glove which pounded his left side with fiery pain as the spikes tore in and then out. McCracken closed in reflexively to prevent the giant from fashioning a killing blow, but the Minotaur was equal to the task. He heaved McCracken upward by the throat with his two huge arms, then slammed him into the wall. McCracken could see him angling the spikes for a simultaneous sweep across his throat. But before they found flesh, Blaine was able to smash the giant’s ears with his forearms. His balance shaken, the Minotaur dropped Blaine to the floor.

Blaine hit the floor hard and rolled, out of range of what he felt certain would be a countermove. But the giant was still struggling to get his balance back. He was in pain and breathing hard. McCracken, though, held no illusions he could finish the beast even on these terms. He was just too big and too strong. And Blaine had suffered too many injuries to generate the kind of blows that were required. The Minotaur swiped wildly at him once more and McCracken ducked under the blow and rushed back into the Labyrinth.

He knew the monster was giving chase, knew it even as the pain exploded through his sides and back. He could feel the warm blood soaking him everywhere. He realized he had lost his shoes back there, and he started to feel dizzy. He wavered as he ran, crashing into a wall.

No! Release! Release!

He fought to recall all of Johnny Wareagle’s lessons. What would he do faced with the same predicament? Probably rip out the Minotaur’s throat with his bare hands. Blaine had no doubt he could do it. Without Johnny’s superhuman strength, Blaine would have to find another means.

Release!

His breath came more easily, and he negotiated the twisting turns and corners with surprising ease, only once turning into a dead end.

Wait! A dead end was just what he needed, a corner the Minotaur would have no choice but to follow him into. Through all the blood and pain, McCracken concentrated on something he had noticed about the structure of the Labyrinth. The top of the inner walls had a space of an inch or so between them and the ceiling, indicating the ceiling itself must be false. The panels snapped into steel girders and would be removable. Yes, that was it!

The Minotaur’s labored breathing was around the corner from McCracken. Just a few more turns to negotiate!

Blaine scaled the wall, virtually running up it until his fingers locked on the ridge between partition and ceiling. His feet against the wall enabled him to raise one of his hands, knock aside a ceiling panel, and grab one of the steel girders. He pulled the rest of his frame upward, legs hoisted high to his chest, prepared to spring. His hands held fast, feet pressing hard against the side wall for leverage. If the darkness was sufficient, he would have one chance to pull off what he planned. One chance …

The Minotaur turned the corner and headed down the corridor just far enough to see that the dead end did not reveal his quarry. He swung around.

McCracken dropped upon him, pushing his legs out hard to cover the distance. In one swift motion he had grabbed hold of the bull’s-head mask by the horns and yanked it off. Then he fell to the floor as, disoriented, the giant reeled backwards, bellowed and charged him with both spiked gloves raised overhead.

He never saw McCracken drive the bull’s-head mask forward horns first, into the rippling flesh of his abdomen. The Minotaur’s insides spilled outward — blood and flesh pooled with steaming intestines — and the giant collapsed in a heap.

Breathing hard, McCracken slid back against the wall. The bloody headpiece fell to the floor. God, the pain racked him, but he had beaten Fass’s damn monster.

Still the Greek would have seen it all on the monitors. Even now his guards would be heading into the Labyrinth to finish the Minotaur’s job for him. Blaine needed a way out, and it had to be now!

The Minotaur would have been able to use more than one entry from the subterranean tunnels, but how could he find these entries? Where were they?

Blaine could hear the heavy footsteps of Fass’s guards charging into the maze. Their pursuit would be slowed considerably by the twists and turns which would provide some time for him. He had to make it enough.

McCracken dropped to his hands and knees, the motion sending bolts of pain through his wounded sides and back. His hands probed the floor beneath him as he crawled in search of a slight space indicating the presence of a passage from below.

The heavy boots were almost upon him when he found it. Blaine wedged his fingers tight into an opening and lifted upwards. The trapdoor came free. Beneath him the darkness was total. McCracken started to lower his frame in and then dropped down into the blackness.

Chapter 17

“What do you mean he’s not there?” Megilido Fass demanded from the safety of his office. “I saw him drop into the passageway myself! I have it on tape!”

“We have searched everywhere and found no sign of him,” the captain of the guards reported.

“Impossible! Bring him to me or I’ll cut your throat instead!”

“I cannot deliver that which is no longer here.”

“He couldn’t have escaped! He couldn’t!”

“Sir,” the captain said as placatingly as possible, “please don’t forget that the Labyrinth was constructed over several ancient entrances to the Sfakia caves. McCracken could have found one of these entrances before we arrived and plunged into it to escape.”

“Impossible, I tell you, impossible!” Fass persisted, his tone one of panic.

“So was defeating the Minotaur … or that was what we thought until today. Rest assured that the man is out of miracles, though. Once in the maze of caves underlying this area, no man could ever find his way out again.”

“I want you to send teams into the caves just to be sure.”

“Sir,” the captain begged, “it is too easy for them to lose their way. They might never make it out again.”

“Tell them to take along a spool of wool,” Fass joked madly, but the humor was lost on the captain.

Night fell with the passing of hours. Fass’s guards searched the underground chambers beneath the Labyrinth again and again; team after team of men emerged dirty and frustrated. Several groups were ordered into the maze of caves, connected to their entrances by ropes that permitted entry up to three hundred yards. The lighting was insufficient, the air stale and dank. By nightfall, it seemed hopeless and the search was called off. Somehow Blaine McCracken had found a way to elude them. Fass insisted that the guards around the villa compound be doubled. The captain agreed, knowing in his own mind that there was no way a man like McCracken would ever return so soon after leaving.

In fact, though, Blaine had never left. The pain from his wounds convinced him he was in no shape for anything but rest. But tending his wounds would have to wait. For now, all that mattered was survival.

He was betting that Fass would have moved to alert his guards as soon as he saw Blaine drop through the entrance. Fass would not be paying close attention to his monitor screens. So upon landing, Blaine counted to five, climbed back up into the Labyrinth, and ducked safely behind another partition just as the guards reached the trapdoor he had left propped up. Later he had moved deeper into what he judged to be the center of the Labyrinth. The guards would never think to check it. There was clearly no reason to, since he had been seen escaping.

In the ensuing hours, Blaine cared for himself as best he could by ripping his shirt into strips for bandages and tourniquets. Without medical supplies, all he could do was stay still and let the wounds close naturally. It took three hours for the pain to subside and another one for exhaustion to give way to sleep. When Blaine awoke, night had fallen. His built-in clock told him it was between eight and nine o’clock. Any sounds of men searching beneath him were gone.

But his business with Megilido Fass was by no means finished.

Blaine knew his wounds would prove extremely restricting but with stealth and cleverness he could do what had to be done. McCracken wanted Fass now more than anything, including the Atragon. He neither enjoyed nor loathed killing. But taking the life of a man who placed no value on life, who had slit the throat of an innocent boy just as easily as he would have swatted a fly, would give Blaine satisfaction. He could not lie to himself about that.

Near midnight, Blaine eased gingerly out of his position. He made his way to the Labyrinth entrance and opened the door a crack. The night was moonless, but light poured out of the house, making a direct approach impossible. Blaine’s first thought was to short out the fuse box, but he realized such a move would only result in Fass’s tightening security to an impossible degree.

That left a one-man commando assault as his only option. Blaine opened the door a bit more.

There was one guard posted between the Labyrinth and the tall row of bushes enclosing it. What a blessing! Blaine sighed slightly with relief; he would not have to kill the man to move on to the next phase.

He eased himself through the door, careful to make sure it closed softly behind him. Keeping his frame low and avoiding the light as much as possible, he glided soundlessly over the mist-coated grass.

The man’s head was turned the other way when McCracken lunged and seized him in a hold across the carotid artery designed to shut off the flow of oxygen to the brain. Ten seconds was all it took for a well-skilled professional, and the guard was disabled silently with a minimum of fuss.

Seconds later, the guard’s white uniform had been pulled over Blaine’s bloodied clothes. He left the rifle but pocketed the man’s knife and stuffed his pistol into the tight belt. The shoes were tight as well, but they would do. McCracken took up the man’s post and at the last second elected to sling the rifle over his shoulder on the chance that he was seen. He peered out through the narrow break in the bushes toward Fass’s mansion. The sight distressed him. Three guards were in plain view, all too well spaced to be simply overcome. With no time left for further consideration, Blaine left the rifle behind and passed through the opening into the mansion’s backyard, again keeping his frame as low as possible.

The light was his greatest foe now, as he studied the routine of the guard closest to him on the right. The man’s territory seemed to run from the start of the veranda to the far edge of the kidney-shaped swimming pool. He could tell this guard’s steps were bored and laconic. That would work for him.

Staying close to the bushes for as long as he could, Blaine edged on, closing the distance to the pool as directly as possible. Then he waited for the guard to finish his patrol of that area and start back for the veranda before sprinting toward the cover of the cabanas. The rest was a matter of waiting … and moving at the correct moment.

The guard turned at the veranda and started lazily back, almost retracing his steps. Blaine counted the seconds to distract himself before lunging at the precise instant the guard passed into the shadows. A sharp blow to the rear of this guard’s head, followed swiftly by a second blow to ensure unconsciousness. The only sound was a muffled gasp, barely finished when McCracken began dragging the frame into the cover of the cabanas. Now the next step.

“Over here! Over here!”

Blaine’s voice was raised with concern, not panic, nothing that would make the other guards use their radios before approaching. Blaine would have said more if his knowledge of Greek had not been so limited. He had to hope it was enough.

He heard the remaining two guards’ feet pounding toward him, and he didn’t look back for fear they might see his face in time to respond. As it was, they realized nothing until Blaine swung. They were very close together, which made his task even easier. He lashed out at the nearest just to stun; a stiff blow to the nose was more than sufficient to buy him the time required to launch a crunching kick into the groin of the other. The first was staggering when Blaine finished him with a knee rammed into a face forced downward to meet it. The second was on his knees going for his pistol when Blaine cracked an elbow across his temple and ear.

All obstacles to the mansion were now eliminated. He had to hope the uniform would be enough to get him by once he was inside. A quick, painful sprint brought him to the rear entrance. The door was locked but a knife blade lifted off one of the guards was narrow enough to work between the gap. Then he was inside, searching for the steps he had descended under armed escort hours before.

He found them quickly and ascended at a restrained pace. He was certain there would be a guard at the top and wished to do nothing which might make the man confront him. As it was, Blaine simply walked by the staircase guard, who seemed not interested at all in another uniformed figure. Blaine headed directly to Fass’s office and found two guards before the door with rifles at the ready. McCracken fought against hesitation and kept walking.

They regarded him only briefly as he moved by them, dismissing his presence much too early. Blaine pivoted and lunged in the same instant, driving his blade into the nearest man’s chest as the man on the other side of the door swung his rifle up and around. The move was foolish because it took much too long to execute; rifles were too bulky to be effective in close. Blaine rammed a set of rigid knuckles into his windpipe, shattering cartilage and forcing the man’s Adam’s apple into his airway. A second blow to the head forced the guard into unconsciousness.

Fass made the rest easy for him.

McCracken heard the door being unbolted from the inside and pressed himself against the wall.

“What’s going on out—”

Still clad in his white suit but lacking the tie now, Fass stuck his head out just far enough to see his guards on the ground. He was attempting to pull back and close the door when Blaine sprang, cracking him in the face with an iron fist which propelled the Greek backwards. Seconds later, the corpses of both guards lay against the wall in Fass’s office, and McCracken was grasping his slick hair to yank him to his feet. Trembling with rage, he pressed the bloody edge of his knife against the Greek’s throat.

“Wanna get your death on camera, friend? Might make for good viewing later.”

“No!” Fass pleaded. “Anything! Anything!”

“Too late for generosity. Just answer my questions. First a story. A small-time bandit robbed some crystals from you. That sound familiar?”

Fass nodded fearfully, eyes bulging as he struggled to swallow.

“They were dark red, lined with many crevices and grooves, yes?”

Another nod.

“Where did you get them?” When Fass remained silent, Blaine jolted him across the room until his back was bent over his own desk. Behind it, Blaine could see the huge patch of blood left from the boy’s murder. He pressed the blade a little closer. “Talk!”

“They were sent to me from Morocco. They were sent to many people in my field.”

“Why?”

“To solicit bids for the remaining reserves.”

“You mean you don’t have any more?”

“Just the ones that were stolen. I swear!”

“Then the rest are in Morocco?”

“I don’t know!”

“You’re lying!” Blaine drew a thin line of blood on the Greek’s neck.

“No! No! I’m telling the truth. We were told to take the crystals to our own scientific people for testing. This is months ago, months! I learned they were an incredible energy source, with the potential for a devastating new weapon. Whoever possessed it could obtain a position of incredible power.”

“An auction,” Blaine realized, “that’s what you’re describing, isn’t it? Tell me!”

“Yes! Yes!”

“And your bid?”

“Too low.”

“Who won?”

“I don’t know. Maybe no one. I was never told. I’m telling the truth! My correspondence with Marrakesh was general. It never got specific even when I was still in the bidding.”

“Correspondence with who in Marrakesh?”

“A man known as El Tan.”

“His address, what’s his address, damnit?”

Fass’s eyes darted wildly from left to right. “He can’t be reached directly. There’s a middleman, a snake charmer named Abidir from somewhere in Djema El Fna square. El Tan can be reached only through him.”

An instant of hesitation followed in which neither man knew what was coming next. The knife trembled in Blaine’s hand as he struggled to control his rage.

“I want to kill you, Fass, but that would be too easy and too quick,” he said at last. “You need to suffer longer for all those boys plucked up from the streets and served up to you here in your own private hell. So I’m going to let you live. But mercy’s got nothing to do with it, because when Vasquez finds out you let me escape — and believe me, he will — his means of dealing with you will be infinitely more colorful than mine.”

McCracken jammed the knife harder against the Greek’s throat as he stripped his belt free to begin tying him up. “Might even ask the fat man to send me a videotape of the proceedings. Have a swell eternity,” Blaine said, as he laced the Greek’s hands behind him. “You’ve earned it.”

Johnny Wareagle knelt in the meadow on the spacious Oklahoma land set aside for the Sioux Reservation. Behind him Chief Silver Cloud approached warily, stopping when he could tell the huge Indian was aware of his presence.

“I am sorry, Wanblee-Isnala.”

Wareagle stared straight ahead over the miles of rolling flatlands alive in the breeze. “There is no reason to apologize.”

“I think there is. The Sallow Souls wanted our land even though the courts ruled against them. They became cruel, angry, their spirits dark and rank. I had nowhere else to turn.”

Wareagle turned to look at the old man. He smiled reassuringly. “I am here. Nothing else matters.”

“I should have told you the truth, Wanblee-Isnala,” Chief Silver Cloud muttered, his bronzed, leathery skin looking suddenly all of its seventy years in the hard sun. His long gray hair flapped lightly. “Instead I invited you to a nonexistent convention. I knew you could not refuse that. I worried you could refuse involvement if the truth was made known.” The chief came closer, the way a wary hunter might to an animal he thinks is tame. “You are a legend among our people, Johnny. Your manitou evokes memories of the warriors of legend.”

“The hellfire did not make legends. It made memories,” Wareagle told him.

“What will you do?”

“Sit among you today.”

“And if the Sallow Souls come?”

“Then they will come.”

Wareagle had learned only yesterday of the hoax played upon him. Chief Silver Cloud explained that oil had recently been discovered on the reservation and the locals were enraged over the Indians’ stubborn refusal to sell off the mineral rights which would have brought prosperity to a depressed area. Today the locals were coming in with their own heavy equipment to clear the meadow. The local police had disassociated themselves, and the Indians were honor-bound not to turn outside their ranks for help.

So they had turned to Johnny.

He sat in the center of the two-lane road leading up to the reservation. Around him were a hundred other Sioux of all ages, men and women. The locals would have to run them over to get their equipment past, and while Wareagle felt certain they would not go that far, he knew they might come close. In his hands was a four-foot-long wooden staff that might have been a walking stick to someone seven feet tall. The staff was made of birch and he had finished fashioning it himself last night.

The convoy of heavy equipment passed over the last ridge and rolled toward them. Fifty feet away brakes squealed, and the convoy rolled to a halt. Wareagle saw that the first two trucks were packed with two dozen men who were now climbing down with chains, bats, axe handles, clubs, and assorted other weapons.

Wareagle rose with the eyes of all his people upon him, and with the staff held lightly in his hands, he approached the semicircle of men who held their ground before the idling trucks. He stopped a yard away from a mustachioed man with a baseball bat.

“You and your friends be best to move out and let us through, Indian.”

“It’s our land.”

The man smirked and gazed around for support. Wareagle towered more than a foot over him, but he had more man twenty backups who had now closed into a circle.

“‘Our’? Seems like ‘your’ since you’re the only one standing here. Don’t want to see you get hurt now, do we?”

“Then leave.”

“Can’t do that, Indian.”

The man’s bat came overhead fast, but Johnny’s staff rose even faster, deflecting it with one end and striking the man on the side of the head with the other. Three men charged from the rear, their weapons in motion, but Wareagle swung his staff in a wide loop that smashed one against another and took them all to the ground.

A man attacking from the front with a club was met with a savage thrust to the midsection while another closing from the rear was halted by an equally savage thrust backward. The biggest of the locals came at Johnny whipping a heavy chain roundhouse fashion. The Indian leaped in to close the gap and caught the chain in his fist as he launched a sizzling kick into the man’s groin.

Seeing an opening, another local swung an axe handle high for Johnny’s head. Wareagle avoided it by dropping to one knee as he brought his staff around hard into the man’s ribs. He was vulnerable on the ground and a pair of men sought the advantage by bringing their clubs straight overhead from both front and rear. Johnny angled his staff upward and blocked both at the same time, wood clacking against wood. The men raised their clubs again, but Johnny pushed his staff like a pool cue into the front man’s solar plexus and then sliced it backwards into the other’s groin.

The man with the mustache was scampering back for the cab of his truck, bleeding rather badly from the mouth and cursing up a storm.

Three men came at Wareagle with weapons flailing. Johnny ducked, lowered his staff, and tripped two of them up. Then he brought it back up fast enough to block another blow and follow with a combination strike to the man’s face and ribs.

The rest of the locals backed away fearfully.

The man with the mustache had pulled a pistol from his glove compartment and was bringing it up to aim it.

Wareagle never even seemed to look at him. In a blur the staff was out of his hand and flying. It cracked into the man’s wrist at the precise moment he squeezed the trigger. His single shot flew hopelessly errant, and he scrambled back into the cab of his truck.

Wareagle stood his ground and watched the others rush by him, a few stopping to drag their downed fellows along with them. Johnny backed away and returned to the throng of Indians who rose as he approached, gazing on him with awe. Chief Silver Cloud sought him out as the members of the convoy fled in their trucks.

“The spirits shine on you, Wanblee-lsnala,” he said, as mesmerized by what he had just seen as all the others.

“They shine on all who heed their lessons.”

“The Sallow Souls will be back.”

Wareagle shook his head. “I don’t think so. Word of this will get out. The authorities will not be able to stand aside again.”

“But you will stay with us for a time. Let us find a means to repay our debt.”

“No action requires debt. Each exists unto itself, an entity alone. I must leave.”

Chief Silver Cloud nodded sadly. “I understand.”

“It is not your doing, Chief. You did just as the spirits wanted. But last night they came to me with a message: an old friend will soon need me again.”

The chief looked at him reverently. “Keep note of the road back, Johnny.”

“There is only one road, Chief Silver Cloud, and it passes everywhere twice.”

Chapter 18

General Vladimir Raskowski hated Bangkok. He had been able to survive thanks only to his air-conditioned town-house outside the city. Plenty of wealthy locals shared the beautifully landscaped area with him but he spoke to none of them, seldom venturing out.

Years before the city had held promise, but then westernization had set in. Now the American capitalists were spreading their cancer to yet another region that should have belonged to the Soviet Union. The result was a miserable, teeming, overcrowded city where consumerism ruled above all else. In the spring heat, the collective stink of the hordes inevitably wrinkled his nose. Raskowski was so sensitive about the smell that he felt the necessity of bathing three times a day, even on days when he didn’t set foot out of his townhouse.

He was even more sensitive about his height. Of course, at just over five feet four inches he was hardly a dwarf, but he knew that compared to other Soviet generals from past and present, he was a victim of the legend. All Soviet military leaders from Peter the Great on were supposed to have been large, strapping men, and Raskowski had risen through the ranks ever conscious of the fact that the more power he obtained, the more his height would betray him. He became obsessed with it; he ordered three pair of leather boots with custom-elevated soles. He had his desk placed on a platform. And when his curly, salt-and-pepper hair began to fall out in clumps, he had a transplant. Baldness would unfairly steal several centimeters of his height.

He had spent his younger years trying to compensate for his lack of height by building muscle. With the aid of a trainer for Soviet Olympic weightlifters, he had developed a body that was much too big for its frame. His arms were huge and knobby with muscle, his chest barrel-shaped. Raskowski had always been proud of the fact that all his uniforms had to be custom-tailored; that this was still true at almost age sixty made him even more proud.

Of course, he could no longer wear his uniforms in public, not while in exile, for they would draw too much attention to him. The few times he was forced to venture out into Bangkok he did so in Western clothes and did his best to look like a tourist. It made his flesh crawl and made him feel dirty. It was those rare hours outside his townhouse that set his expression so tight that his pointed chin seemed to curve upward for his nose. It shouldn’t have come to this. By all rights he should be General Secretary at this moment. He had worked for it and deserved it, but they had stolen it from him. He was a man from a different time they said, a relic from the past. Raskowski did not disagree. But times were the product of the people living in them. They were whatever those people made them and Raskowski knew exactly what he was making them now.

After stepping from the shower he used two towels to dry every inch of his frame. He put on a freshly pressed uniform. With the shades of his townhouse carefully drawn he could smell the fresh wool and see himself in the mirror as he was meant to be seen. Soon he would be free to wear the uniforms at his leisure once again. Soon his position within the Soviet Union would require him to. The wrongs were going to be set right. He was going to make them so. He was a man totally in control of his own destiny.

And the world’s.

The general towel-dried his hair once more and combed it neatly. The meeting he was about to chair would take place by conference call instead of in person, but he had showered and changed for it nonetheless. He pulled on his elevated boots and headed downstairs toward the windowless back room where the technological implements for these meetings had been set up.

Raskowski’s starched uniform snapped stiffly as he quickly passed the large bay window he had forgotten to draw the curtains over. No one saw him. No one was looking. Soon the whole world would be watching.

It didn’t have to be this way. He had brought the results of his Alpha project to the Politburo in loyalty and good faith, and he had suffered only embarrassment and heartache as a result. Raskowski refused to take their rejection lying down, but there were just too many of the weak old men and younger ones calling themselves “reformers” to beat back. He accepted his exile with enough grace to assure the opportunity to enact the “disappearance” he was planning. He had already recruited men in all levels of the Soviet government and military who felt as he did. When he made his move, they would be with him.

The key, though, remained the death ray. Once all tests were pronounced successful, Raskowski managed to launch the satellite that made his plan operational. All over the Soviet Union his people began laying the foundation for the tumultuous upheaval to come. Every phase of the operation, every minute detail, had been thought out to the letter. The destruction of Hope Valley went off brilliantly, as did his indirect contact with the Americans. All was perfect.

Until the unthinkable occurred. A scientific miscalculation, not his at all, threw the entire plan into jeopardy. It was left to Raskowski to lift it from the heap, to reform his strategy in a daring and nearly impossible plan. Impossible for others perhaps, but not for him. The true basis of brilliance, he had always believed, was the ability to deal with change. On the battlefield especially, and that was what the whole world had become. Only a handful of people were privy to the revised operation, and that was the way it would stay. Timing was everything now. The slightest slipup or miscalculation would destroy everything.

The back room contained only a single table and chair. Atop the table rested three speaker-phones: white, red, and green. Each of his main Soviet subordinates spoke over the same one every time and Raskowski had come to think of them, as they themselves did, in terms of the color of their speakers. Raskowski sat down in the single chair and eased it gracefully under the table, careful not to wrinkle his uniform.

“Green, are you there?” he asked at precisely eleven A.M. Bangkok time.

“Yes, sir,” the voice answered in Russian.

“White?”

“Here, sir.”

“Red?”

“Ready, sir.”

“Very good. Then let us begin. My report, comrades, is simple. Everything is proceeding on schedule, as planned.”

“What of the American response to our second message sent through Turkey?” asked White.

“Befuddlement and fear. Did you expect any less?”

“I expected considerably more,” White said. “I feel we are waiting too long to use the ray to its full capabilities.”

“The reasons for that strategy have already been discussed. Let us not waste time reiterating.”

“You had planned to provide us with the details of the final stage today,” Red reminded him.

“I’m afraid that must be put off for a brief time.”

“So this continues to be a question of trust,” noted Green. “You ask us to trust you, yet you do not return the favor.”

“Moscow is too small a city to take the risk. I’ve learned that already in my career. I do not intend to make the same mistake twice.”

“All the same,” said White, “if we are in possession of the means to destroy America, it seems foolish not to employ it before the Americans have time to formulate a more active response.”

“At least a larger demonstration,” suggested Green.

“Comrade Green,” Raskowski started, groping for the advantage, “you have already informed me that your override of the Omsk communications facility cannot take place for at least four more days. At that time the Russian people will be informed of the ultimatum the true leadership of our country has issued the United States. With that time frame in mind, what could we possibly gain from escalating matters now? I would suggest, then, that you, all of us, remain concerned purely with our own individual roles. Time can only work for us. The more we give the U.S., the more she will realize her hopelessness. If she accedes to our demands, then her surrender will pave the way for our ascension to power. If she does not and we are forced to destroy her, the Soviet Union will be left as the lone superpower, and the present impotent leadership will have no choice but to abdicate to us.”

For a few moments only breathing emerged from the speakers. Finally Red spoke again.

“When do you plan to inform us of the precise timetable for the final stage?”

“In two days. Three at most.”

“I can accept that,” Red told him.

“And I.”

“And I.”

Raskowski smiled, relaxed now. “Then I believe our business for today is concluded, comrades. I will contact you again soon through the usual channels. Das Zvedanya.”

Chapter 19

“Banna es su sei! Banna es su sei!”

Natalya Tomachenko shoved through the crowd of young Thai children who continued to plead for money with their hands outstretched. She had arrived in Bangkok yesterday afternoon and checked into the Siam Intercontinental Hotel to await contact from Raskowski’s underling. His name was Katlov and the intelligence reports she had read before leaving Moscow had no trace of him. He would be checking for a certain name daily in the hotel register, and when it appeared a letter would soon arrive with further instructions for her.

True to his word, it had arrived just one hour before, instructing her to wear a blue hat and to walk from her hotel to Taa Phra Chan Pier and then take a boat to the Thonburi Floating Market. She had obtained the hat from a shop in the hotel and set straight out into the hot and humid Bangkok day. Thunderstorms were in the forecast. She loved the city for its vitality and pace, and also for the way it clung to ancient traditions and manners. The streets were crowded but locals generally moved aside to let tourists pass.

As she walked Natalya’s thoughts turned to Blaine McCracken. She was attracted to him mostly out of admiration for his personal honor. Natalya knew what he had been through, knew what his government had done to him. In a sense it was not much different from what her government had done to her. The difference was that in America McCracken had found room to slide out. It was Natalya’s lot to have to make her own room.

Even before he and his former employers parted company, though, McCracken’s career had been marked by a relentless individualism. In one respect he was a mercenary, a hired killer. Yet in another he was a liberator, a man who stood for something. Somehow these two opposites had meshed within him, creating a man of incredible complexities who was quite comfortable with himself.

His physical appearance personified this. Not handsome, maybe not even good-looking, but still attractive and sensually appealing. He didn’t try to be anything and ended up being much. Natalya could admit only to herself that Friday night she wanted more than anything to invite him to her bed. But she hadn’t let herself. It would have revealed more of herself than she was prepared to. Her shields were her greatest resource. In a world of men, she needed them always. She was an outsider in their world, tolerated by her superiors and feared by her enemies who inevitably underestimated her. But Blaine McCracken hadn’t tried to estimate her at all. His only personal comment stung her for the insight he possessed, as if he could look into her soul and read its message.

What have they got on you, Natalya?

She hadn’t told him because as much as it hurt to think about it, it would hurt even more to discuss. She had come from a family of soldiers, heroes whose coffins were weighed down by many medals. Her father had been the lone exception, an outspoken professor of philosophy whose frustration mounted with each book that was refused publication in the Soviet Union. For a time Natalya could barely tolerate him herself, considering him an embarrassment to the State. It had been a pair of uncles who had secured her appointment for her, one of the conditions being that she renounce her father, which she did willingly and with a minimum of guilt.

The guilt came later, for he never disowned her, respecting her choice as she had never respected his. The early years of her work brought them closer, as she rose through the ranks and saw increasingly that the opinions that had branded him an outcast were justified. She had just had her request for reassignment out of the field accepted when her father was sentenced to a gulag, and her KGB superior quickly made it plain that his only hope for a pardon lay in her agreeing to continue to work on “wet” affairs, the wettest in fact. They promised her just one mission would do the job and she agreed. Her father, they said, would be waiting at home when she returned.

Natalya could barely get her key into the door, she was so excited. At last they would have time together to make up for the lost years. When the door swung free her eyes fell on her KGB control, seated in any easy chair flanked by a pair of his mindless henchmen.

“My father,” she said flatly.

“Some legal problems,” came his businesslike response. “Nothing to concern yourself with. The paperwork tends to be slow in these matters. In the interim we have another mission which you might want to consider. Not part of the deal of course, merely a show of good faith on your part.”

The control didn’t elaborate; he didn’t have to. His message was clear. She resisted, and he kindly offered to let her visit her father. In three short months he had aged a dozen years. But still he bore her no ill feeling. She promised him he would soon be out without telling him that to assure his release she had sold herself to the forces he hated most.

At the end of her next mission, she was greeted with the news that he had, in fact, been released. She was taken straight to him, but not to his home of thirty years near the university. More technicalities, her control explained, which led to his being placed in a small guarded flat in Gorky. The implication was clear. A return to the university could come only after she completed yet another mission. That was it. They had her. Then, after two further missions, when he was finally allowed to return to teaching in a much lower position, the news came that he had progressive heart disease and only a visa to the United States could save his life. Just one more mission and he’ll have it, her control had told her three missions back.

Well, this was the mission that would finally win her father that visa. If she could add a few years to his life, perhaps it would make up for the years they had lost together. Natalya had become a child of the State instead of her father. She had realized too late the bitter lesson that the State was a loveless parent that cared for its children only as far as those children could provide for it. But Natalya was providing only for herself now. This time she would complete the mission with the means to finally end their extortion. Her conversations with the General Secretary had been recorded, and she would use them against him unless he cooperated. Eventually this might mean her death, but she owed it to her father to try.

Her thoughts had so engrossed her en route to the pier closest to Thammasart University that she barely noticed the thunder and pelting rain which drove a hot scent off the asphalt and had soaked through her clothes in seconds. A three-wheeled gas-driven taxi known as a samlor pulled up alongside her.

“Need a ride, miss?” the rain-soaked driver asked her.

Natalya was about to beg off when she realized the man had addressed her in English.

“And might you offer a suggestion as to where I should go?” she answered in Russian.

He smiled, teeth full and white. “The floating market, miss, of course!” In Russian.

Natalya climbed into the back of the samlor. The driver started off, leaning on his horn to clear the muddied streets of the hordes spilling off the sidewalk.

No further words were exchanged. Natalya knew now that the route to Katlov would be long and intricate; the defector from Raskowski’s ranks was not about to take chances. The complexity was unnerving yet reassuring. Precautions had been taken. The chances of a run-in with the general’s people seemed substantially reduced.

The nameless samlor driver delivered her to Taa Phra Chan Pier. In the klong below sat endless rows of rickety boats with single drivers waiting for potential fares. They began beckoning to Natalya as soon as they saw her approach.

“I will handle everything, miss,” the driver whispered and led her to a boat near the end of the row. Its driver sat placidly in the stern with a straw hat tipped over his eyes.

“Aye!”

The boatman pushed his straw hat back, and Natalya saw he had no front teeth. The samlor driver helped her down into the bow.

“Thonburi Floating Market,” he told the boatman in Thai. “And be quick about it.”

The boatman started to ease out from the pier, and minutes later they were drifting slowly south, their boat hugging the side to keep the center clear for larger boat traffic. Much of the city of Bangkok is crisscrossed by canals known as klongs, some as wide as a street, others barely two meters, and many marked for extinction by the demand for more roadways. Many of the klongs are lined by shops where the tourist can dock his boat at a private jetty. The klongs recede deep into the Thonburi district, where they finally reach the floating market: a collection of narrow skiffs packed to the brim with fresh fruits and vegetables advertised with screams and shouts by the boat merchants seeking to sell them. Cheap jewelry and pottery are available as well.

In years past the floating market was a necessary element for survival in Bangkok. Locals did all their shopping there, and the ebb and flow of the economy was tied directly to the weather. But more recently it has become a tourist attraction more than anything else.

The Thonburi Market lies within a serpentine collection of narrower klongs in the northwest section of Bangkok. Natalya saw the first of the shops thirty minutes into the ride. If the weather had been better, boat traffic would have been as thick as a New York rush hour. The rain, though, had kept most tourists away, and Natalya’s boatman was able to easily negotiate through the waters.

The rain had slackened to barely a drizzle as Natalya’s boatman pulled to a halt next to an old woman selling an assorted collection of fresh vegetables. The boatman spoke with the old woman briefly, and she proceeded to pack one box full of her best merchandise.

“Baht 500,” her toothless driver called to Natalya.

She handed him the proper collection of bills and he exchanged them for the box of vegetables, stowing it just before Natalya as he swung his craft back around.

“Your next instructions are inside,” he said in English, not looking at her.

Natalya eased herself forward and removed the top of the box. When no note was immediately visible, she began to move the vegetables aside until a sheet of yellowed paper was revealed. She left it in the box as she read.

Dusit Hall of the Royal Palace.

Natalya sighed. The grounds of the Royal Palace were located back near Taa Phra Chan Pier, where she had embarked for the floating market. She was being run around in a circle, but she was in Katlov’s hands and subject totally to his whims.

The toothless boatman deposited her in almost the very spot he had picked her up, and Natalya walked the short distance to the Gate of Wonderful Victory from which a wide street led into the outer courtyard of the Royal Palace. There were more than a hundred individual buildings situated on the grounds, starting with a number of government-occupied ones. As she moved further into the complex, the buildings grew older and richer in history.

Dusit Hall was an art gallery located within Dusit Maham Prasad, an elegant white building. The hall was actually a large inner chamber, the only part of this building open to visitors. She walked about past the various paintings, murals, and statues, trying to keep herself patient. Suddenly a blue-suited Asian was at her side readying his camera before a massive painting.

“Your next stop is the Wat Phra Kaeo,” he said, regarding her briefly. “Go to the Chapel of the Emerald Buddha.”

The man snapped a series of pictures and moved on. Natalya turned and headed back for the door.

The Wat Phra Kaeo was the most sacred of all buildings in Thailand, accessible through a side gate from the palace courtyard. Natalya paid a separate admission and was immediately awed by what lay before her. The complex, with gold-layered domes and pillars of white marble, was like nothing else here. Its beauty lay in its simplicity, as if it had been built with humility but with great reverence to the spirit housed within.

Natalya passed down a long corridor lined with murals, at the end of which lay a staircase flanked by bronze lions. Visitors were requested to remove their shoes before proceeding up and Natalya complied. At the top, directly before the entrance to Buddha’s chamber, a larger pair of lions maintained their eternal vigil between golden pillars. Natalya walked between them and into the chamber.

Before her rose the pale-green jasper statue of Buddha. Beneath a nine-tier canopy, he was huge and breathtaking, garbed in his summer shoulder cloak and headpiece. The crowd in the chamber was small — just a few tourists circling about and a Buddhist monk kneeling on a cushion before the statue. Natalya paced leisurely around, finally drawing near the monk who turned his head toward her.

“Come closer.”

The words had been spoken in Russian! Katlov!

“Kneel on one of the cushions,” he continued. “Act as if you’re praying,” he added when she was kneeling. “No, better yet, pray for real. The world could use it.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Natalya said softly, glancing over at Katlov’s face, which was framed by his orange robes. She saw he wore a patch over his left eye.

“Don’t look at me,” he ordered. “Keep your eyes on the Buddha. Lean over. Pray. Do it!”

Again Natalya obeyed, but her impatience got the better of her. She whispered, “Enough precautions.”

“No! With Raskowski, there can never be enough.” Katlov silenced himself as an American woman with twin daughters passed just behind them. “The general is everywhere in this city. Everything I’ve put you through today reflects that. Believe me, it was for both our sakes.”

“You have been with him from the beginning?”

“Yes, under the auspices of the Scientific Bureau working on the Alpha project. I had a different name back then, a different identity. He insisted I become who I am now when I followed him in exile.”

“Others followed him as well.”

“Yes, several. But many stayed behind to await the call. Besides those specifically connected with the scientific aspects of Alpha, no one else was allowed to leave. They can do more damage from within — once the time comes.”

“Raskowski gave the Americans three weeks to unilaterally disarm. Is that his timetable?”

“I don’t know. Only he does.”

“Were you always this frightened of him?”

“In awe, originally. He gave me a purpose in my work on the Alpha death ray, made me feel what I was accomplishing was crucial to the fulfillment of Soviet destiny.” Katlov paused. “It was spending so many hours close to him in the weeks prior to the initiation of the plan that made me see the truth.”

“Hope Valley made you see?”

“Was that the name of the American town we destroyed? My God, I’d forgotten it. I’m becoming as insensitive as the general.” Katlov gazed at her. “I joined him in his crusade because I honestly believed we were doing something noble. But lately I have come to see the general was only interested in doing what was best for himself. Our homeland means nothing to him, comrade. He will kill anyone who stands in the way of his plan. He will send his tanks rolling through Moscow if that’s what it takes to seize power.”

“Where can I find him?”

“I don’t know. Our meetings are always arranged by him. If I need to reach him there are drops, signals, but he never appears personally unless the advances come from him. This madness can still be stopped, though, by destroying his weapon.” Katlov paused. “You are familiar with the massive American early detection satellite Ulysses, launched six months ago?”

“Of course. But what — No, it can’t be!”

Natalya stopped. Katlov didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to.

Raskowski’s death beam had been deployed aboard an American satellite!

“It was all accomplished through the Farmer Boy,” Katlov explained. “I don’t know the specifics, only the results. Once Raskowski was exiled it was the only means of getting his death ray into space. The Farmer Boy took care of all the scientific arrangements; complicated to be sure, but obviously worth it.”

“Then if the General Secretary can convince the President to deactivate Ulysses, it will be finished. He is in a position to deal from strength now. He’ll do it, I’m sure. This will all be over.”

“Not quite, because Raskowski will still be out there and only I can lead you to him.”

“I thought you said—”

“I have learned much from the general during the course of Alpha, comrade, including what to hold back and for how long. I have furnished you with the general’s death ray, but unless he, too, is dealt with, the weapon will surface again.” Katlov stopped as a man entered and began snapping pictures of the Buddha.

“So what do you want from me?” Natalya asked Katlov.

“Raskowski arranged resettlement of our families. It was a benevolent gesture, but as with everything the general does there was an ulterior motive. By resettling our families, he controls them and, accordingly, us. If we cross him, we will be punished with far more than the loss of our own lives. That was never stated, but the implications are there.” He paused to steady his voice. “Get my family to safety, comrade. Then and only then will I….”

Katlov was still talking when Natalya recalled that no picture taking was permitted in this chamber. She turned toward the man behind them. He was drawing his gun in that instant. Natalya dove at Katlov and shoved him to the side, but it was too late. The man had already begun firing. She heard Katlov gasp as the bullets hit him.

“Traitor!” the killer shouted in Russian over the terrified screams of the other tourists who scrambled frantically for cover.

Natalya wasn’t sure whether the gunman was addressing her or Katlov’s corpse. She had whipped her pistol from her handbag and fired it just as the gunman turned his weapon on her. Natalya’s barked first; one bullet to the head, a second to the chest. The killer reeled briefly, then crumbled.

Natalya gazed fiercely around her. Procedure dictated a backup be present. Perhaps outside the chamber, though. She charged out before the cowering, still-screaming tourists recovered their senses enough to note her face. She had to move and keep moving. Somewhere more of Raskowski’s assassins would be waiting for her. She had to outthink as well as outrun them.

She slowed her pace only when she had reached the bottom of the stairs and replaced her shoes. Temple security personnel would be charging past her any second, alerted by gunshots and the witnesses who had escaped ahead of her. She had to be far off the grounds before news spread. She had what she needed.

Raskowski’s beam weapon had been deployed on board an American satellite!

But the general could be stopped now. She would contact the General Secretary, and he would contact the Americans. Ulysses would be deactivated. Out of near catastrophe, a new dialogue would be initiated.

Natalya left the grounds through a gate behind the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. Back in the crowded streets, she felt safer. Her hotel was a brief walk from the grounds and walking was her safest means of travel now. She gave any of the gunman’s possible backups plenty of opportunities to move on her but none were taken. Still, she did not let herself think it could be finished this simply.

She slowed as she approached her hotel. Something was wrong, something she couldn’t identify at first. She continued to survey the scene as her pace slowed to a crawl.

The bellhops. Suddenly there were too many of them and few seemed interested in toting the bags of arriving or departing guests. Of course. Raskowski’s men hadn’t followed her from the Royal Palace because if she survived they knew where she would go.

Natalya couldn’t risk anything that would draw the eyes of the bellhops to her. She doubted any of these men knew her from anything but pictures. A subtle disguise would be effective.

She stooped her shoulders and bent slightly at the knees. The result was to make her appear older and shorter. If she kept her head down and walked without hesitation, the fake bellmen would have no reason to take notice.

She was never sure if they even looked at her because she kept her eyes down as she passed in front of the hotel and continued on. Other problems faced her. Her hotel possessed long-distance phone service with which she had intended to get word of her discovery to the General Secretary. She would need an alternative. The Post and Telegraph Department, as its name indicated, possessed mail and telegraph facilities in addition to phones. A wire sent in code to the proper drop point would get the news to Chernopolov in a matter of hours.

Up ahead, a pair of buses were approaching a stop. On impulse, Natalya dashed toward them. If she had been spotted upon passing the hotel, this would certainly tell her. She rushed forward as the buses squealed to a halt one behind the other and squeezed herself on. Looking behind her out the windows, she saw no one sprinting to give chase. The stampede of others pushing themselves on forced her into the center of the bus, pressed against bodies on all sides. Two stops later she climbed out and began walking the few remaining blocks to the Post and Telegraph Department. She found herself breathing easier.

The building was modern in design, almost western, and Natalya walked calmly inside. The telegraph windows were off to the right. There were counters complete with pads on which messages could be drafted. Natalya had the code memorized. She worked out the proper sequence for her message in her head and got the wording right on the first draft, double and triple-checking it just to be sure. She added the drop address from which it would reach the General Secretary directly and presented it with payment at one of the windows.

In her haste to leave, she almost forgot to retrieve the change. Pocketing it, she moved away. Best to make use of a different door in leaving, she thought, and made straight for an exit in the back of the building. She threw open the door and started out, muttering an apology to a man she had nearly collided with.

General Vladimir Raskowski smiled at her. He was holding a pistol aimed at her face.

“I trust your message to the General Secretary is on its way now,” he said. Then he stepped back so Natalya could see the armed men on either side of him before she had a chance to act rashly.

It was his tone that confused her more than anything. “You let me send it,” she realized. “You wanted me to send it….”

“Guilty as charged,” Raskowski said. His perfectly transplanted hair whipped in the wind as he turned to indicate a man standing directly behind him.

She recognized the man well enough to know what she was seeing was impossible. But within the impossible lay the heart of the madness.

The one-eyed Katlov smiled at her, no longer dressed in his monk’s attire and very much alive.

“You’re dead!” Natalya said quite surely. “I saw you shot!”

And General Raskowski began to laugh.