The Russian Deception

CHAPTER 13

In a wealthy enclave outside the city of Leipzig, Germany, a deeply disfigured man sat in a wheelchair in a darkened room staring out at the distant glow of the city. A morphine drip was plugged into the back of his left arm. His face and neck were scarred by terrible burns. The fire had left a face that could give you nightmares.

He wore a tailored silk robe of purple silk embroidered with gold thread. Under the robe most of his body was covered with scar tissue. His left arm was held up close to his chest. He had been burned so badly that the muscles had contracted and the arm was now all but useless. The room was always dark. In daytime, the blinds were kept closed.

People knew him as Johan Kepler, a retired businessman who had suffered an unfortunate car accident. His real name was Johannes Gutenberg. He had been the leader of AEON, a group of powerful men that had been accumulating wealth and manipulating events since the time of the Knights Templar.

Now he was the leader of nothing.

AEON was gone, brought down by the Project and by the Russians. Gutenberg's wife was dead, killed in the same fire that had left him hideously scarred. His name was gone. His beloved Swiss château was gone, a charred ruin. What wasn't gone was his enormous wealth, the secret accounts and hidden contacts. His power had been reduced but he could still make things happen on the world stage.

He'd almost made it to the end of the escape tunnel under the château before the flames blasted down the passage and over him. The tunnel had ended in a detached garage set apart from the main building. His chauffeur had been polishing a Bentley in the garage when Gutenberg stumbled out of the hidden entrance, his clothes on fire. The chauffeur had pulled an extinguisher from the wall and put out the fire but the damage was done. Gutenberg had gasped out instructions before he lapsed into unconsciousness.

The pain had been agonizing, the treatments as bad as the injuries. Even now, the burns were not completely healed. Several times a day a nurse covered them with a foul-smelling ointment to keep the skin from cracking.

He was alive in Hell.

The Leipzig house had been built in the middle of the eighteenth century by a prosperous merchant as a country retreat, in the middle of extensive landscaped grounds and surrounded by a stone wall. Nothing of the exterior hinted at what was within. One wing of the house had been turned into a barracks and given over to a squad of former special forces soldiers turned mercenary. They provided twenty-four hour security and were paid well to ask no questions. Cameras monitored everything. No enemy was getting close to him again.

No one thought anything about Gutenberg's reclusive existence. All it took was one look at that face to understand. It would've been bad form to display such horror in public. It helped that the man everyone knew as Kepler seemed to have unlimited funds at his disposal.

It was amazing that he was still alive. The power of hatred and the contemplation of revenge was strong motivation. Planning revenge kept him going through each day, through the unending pain, the looks of pity he caught when no one thought he was looking. Elizabeth Harker's Project had put him in this chair, in this body. Along with the Russians, they had destroyed a glorious plan that would have given him control of the world's future.

What had kept him alive through the agony of the surgeries and skin grafts was planning his revenge. He would have it, no matter what. He and many others would die in the process but that was of no concern to him. Death would be a welcome release. Before he died, he would see to it that Harker and her team and their Russian counterparts were annihilated.

He was no longer able to move about freely in the outer world but technology and money made that unnecessary. Everything could be arranged with enough money. You could even buy a government like Russia's. Of course it couldn't look like that. Gutenberg had co-opted important players in the Federation. Through them he had propelled Orlov into power. Through one of them he would drive Orlov to make a fatal mistake. Only one man in Orlov's inner circle had actually met with Gutenberg. Through him the others were drawn in without realizing where they were being led.

Gutenberg knew Orlov dreamed of a new Russian empire, one to rival the czars at the height of their power. His towering ambition had blinded him to the ways he was being shaped by Gutenberg's hidden intermediary.

Gutenberg dabbed with a tissue at the constant drainage from his left eye, the movement of his right arm awkward and painful.

In the old days, before the Project had ruined everything, Gutenberg and his secret organization of conspirators had been close to achieving world domination. In the modern world that meant control of the global economy. He'd been on the verge of success when everything had come crashing down around him. Now he couldn't care less what happened to the economy. What mattered was his revenge.

He had been burned and suffered unspeakable pain. Before he was done he intended to see his enemies suffer the same fate.

He would destroy them all.