Labyrinth (37 page)

“So basically you're asking me to trust you instead of these diplomats I was planning to utilize,” Masvidal concluded.

“I didn't give you my gun out of bravery,” the American told him. “I did it out of fear. I've escaped them several times myself but my luck won't hold out much longer. If I don't get them, they'll get me. But to get them, I need you … and your people.”

“You already said we're no match for them.”

“Not on their terms. We must make the terms our own.”

“By raiding their headquarters? Terms that include suicide aren't acceptable.”

“They won't be expecting an assault, nor will they be prepared for it. We've got to find out the details of the operation they're about to initiate. I don't think we can stop it altogether in Austria, but we can at least learn where and when it's going to start … and why San Sebastian is still important to them.”

“San Sebastian doesn't exist anymore.”

“There were armed guards down there two days ago, and I need your help in Austria to find out why. It might take an army to defeat them before we're through.” Dogan paused. “
Your
army.”

“You're mad, Grendel.”

“So are they. We start out even.”

Masvidal moved forward and handed Dogan back his gun. His features were softer, more reflective, but equally determined.

“I've been fighting this war for years,” he said distantly, “even before the Committee, for as long as I can remember. We started as children, throwing rocks through the windows of capitalist invaders. When armed guards came to scare us off, we attacked them with sticks. Others have always wanted our land for themselves. They deny us an identity. We exist only to serve them. I grew up hating these men for their manipulations but I never feared them.” Again the color drained from Masvidal's face, flashing only in his long scar. “The Committee frightens me, chills my very soul. They deny us not only identity but also our very lives. They stand against everything I have fought for these long years. I have seen evidence of their work for years but never do they leave more than a shadow for us to pursue. If you can turn that shadow into substance, I will help you any way I can.”

Dogan breathed easier. “How long before you can call up your people?”

“For a trip to Austria, an hour. I have enough to suit our needs right here in Geneva.”

Dogan started for the phone. “Let's hope we've got a target.” He dialed the Du Rhone and asked for Vaslov's room, dreading the possibility that the Russian's computers had turned up nothing.

“How nice to hear from you, comrade. I was beginning to think Masvidal had gotten the better of you.”

“We've reached a mutual understanding.”

“With good cause, I can now safely say.”

“You found it!”

“Kreuzenstein Castle, comrade. Did you ever doubt me?”

When Locke awoke that morning, Nikki had already showered and dressed.

“We've got to get moving,” she told him. “Austria's a long way away.”

Locke stretched. “Have you made the arrangements?”

She nodded. “We have reservations on a nonstop excursion flight. It should be jam-packed, so it will be easy to hide ourselves.”

“And then?”

“From Vienna, we'll drive to the castle. Then everything will be made clear for you.”

Locke didn't press her further. He would let Nikki lead him because he was sick of making the decisions for himself and so far they had got him nowhere. This was her world he had entered. She knew its territory and laws far better than he did. In the dim light of their room with the shades still drawn, she looked suddenly familiar to him. He knew her face, yet he didn't know it. The spell faded. It was time to get ready to leave.

They ate a quick breakfast and made the long drive to Heathrow, arriving at a peak late-morning time. Their flight was overbooked and delayed, and the gate was much too small to accommodate all the frantic passengers waiting to board. Chris had become quite frantic himself when he remembered his lack of a passport but Nikki swiftly produced one with a different name but
his
picture. He would have asked her how she managed it if the answer had mattered at all.

They were the last two people to receive seats and had to sit separately, he in the front and she in the back of the plane. That vantage point allowed her to watch for any people watching them. Chris had a seat next to an older man wearing a green porkpie hat who passed the flight doing crossword puzzles. Locke was grateful for his silence. The last thing he felt like was talking.

The plane landed in Vienna over an hour late. Locke rose from his seat, exchanged smiles with his crossword-playing neighbor, and headed out into the aisle after him. Waiting for Nikki inside the plane would make them stand out too much. Just because they had made it safely out of London did not mean Mandala would not have men waiting for them in Vienna.

She passed him as they moved into the terminal and smiled, as if at a stranger. Chris got the message and fell in comfortably behind her. He stayed always within sight as they passed through Customs, and finally caught up outside, crossing into one of several parking lots.

“You're getting rather good at this,” Nikki said as she led him toward a dark-brown Mercedes. She inspected it very thoroughly to insure it had not been tampered with and, satisfied, she jammed her key in the door.

“How far to the castle?” Locke asked, climbing in.

“Twenty minutes,” Nikki replied. “Far enough.”

When they swept into the semicircular drive before Kreuzenstein, her hands tensed on the wheel.

“The guards,” she uttered breathlessly. “Where are the guards?”

“Maybe they're—”

The crunching sound of tires spitting gravel buried Locke's words as Nikki jammed the brake pedal down. She screeched to a halt before a pair of huge doors and sprinted up the heavy granite steps. Chris kept up as best he could, feeling out of place and unwelcome. The doors swung open just before Nikki reached them.

“What happened?” she asked a butler standing just inside.

“It's bad, miss, very bad,” he reported grimly. “She's waiting for you. She wouldn't let the doctor sedate her until she spoke with you.”

Then Nikki was sprinting up the wide, carpeted stairway. Locke followed. He could feel the tension and despair in the air mixing with the ancient rustic-ness of Kreuzenstein itself. They had reached the third floor when Nikki veered to her left down a corridor and entered what looked to be the master bedroom. Chris heard her muttering to herself as she approached a bed containing an old woman propped up on several pillows. A man was moving a stethoscope over her chest.

“You're just in time,” the doctor reported softly.

“Is he here?” the old woman asked Nikki, grasping blindly for her hand.

Locke moved into the room, noting the woman's ghastly pale face and empty stare. Obviously, she had been expecting him too, but why?

Chris stopped in his tracks, seized by a chilling realization of something both awful and incredible. His eyes fell on the woman in the bed just as Nikki's voice reached him.

“She's your mother,” Nikki said.

Chapter 30

LOCKE FLOATED, UNABLE TO
move, barely managing to breathe. His whole body was tingling. He might have even passed out for an instant; he wasn't sure. He just kept staring.

“Come closer,” the old woman beckoned him.

“You know who … I am?”

She managed a weak nod, the motion obviously a struggle for her. “And now you know who I am … or was.”

Locke did nothing but stand there.

“Stop dawdling and come closer,” the old woman ordered. “I'm in no condition to shout.”

Chris found his feet and shuffled forward, stopping just out of reach. He could see the bandages covering the old woman's entire midsection. She looked so old and frail, such a contrast with the young and vibrant mother who sometimes came to him as a stranger in his dreams.

“I have little time, Chris,” the old woman muttered through dry, cracking lips. “None to spare on apologies or explanations. There is much you have to learn and none of it concerns personal things. The past must be put aside, if there is to be a future for anyone.”

Locke wanted to say something but there were still no words.

“It was all many years ago,” the old woman said, eyes drifting, voice fading. “If I had it to do again, I would have changed much, all perhaps. I loved your father, I truly did. But times were so different then. We all had our duty, and that duty had to come first. He understood that.”

“He never understood!” Was that his voice? Had he said that?

“It was not easy for me to leave him or you. And it was even harder never to contact you after my escape was complete.”

“They caught up with you at a farmhouse.”

“There was an escape runnel that was never discovered. For me the war was over, for Germany too. I knew it; others didn't. I used the time to arrange for the requisition of funds. Years later, when the world was ready, that money gave birth to the Committee.”

“You were its founder,” Locke said.

“And only leader these many years.”

Chris looked at his mother, wanting to feel bitterness, hate, sadness, anxiety, even affection. But he felt nothing. He stood there transfixed, feeling overloaded. Too much was coming in too fast.

“We searched for methods of control,” Audra St. Clair said. “We sought from the beginning to succeed economically where the Nazis had failed militarily. We came close a few times—the oil embargo, the wave of international terrorism unsettling governments everywhere. But only with the latest operation did we see the opportunity to truly realize our goals.”

“Tantalus,” Locke muttered.

The old woman nodded weakly. “Food became our weapon. We would destroy America's crops and dangle our own grapes beyond their reach.”

“And you used me to help you!” Chris charged. “From the very beginning you used me!”

“But the risks you faced were minimal.” The old woman's dying eyes tilted toward Nikki. “Nikki was around to protect you. I had a brief love affair some years ago and from that she emerged. I was so grateful for the chance to have another child. Abandoning you had left a hole in my life.”

Locke felt his knees wobble. “Then she's—”

“Your half sister.” She struggled for breath. “Weeks ago, when we learned of your involvement from our Washington representative and elected to … use you, I dispatched her to keep you alive. With Nikki in your shadow, I never feared for your safety. She's quite good at what she does. I've made sure she's had the best training available.”

“You turned her into a killer.”

“To survive, one becomes what one must.”

Chris shook his head. “You want me to accept all this but I won't. I've seen too much, been scared too much these past weeks. My son, your
grandson
, had a finger chopped off and I couldn't even stay long enough to comfort him when he came out of shock. Not that I would have known what to say. All of you seem the experts when it comes to explanations.”

Audra St. Clair's eyes moistened. “That was Mandala's work,” she said softly.

“So was this,” Locke told her, showing her his hand.

The old woman's features squeezed together in anguish. “Retaining his services was the one mistake I made,” she said distantly. “But he was an expert in fields we needed covered. We hoped that through him we might avoid direct entanglements with authorities. He was our cover. The strategy seemed sound.”

“Because it allowed you to keep your hands clean of the blood he spilled,” Chris charged. His feelings confused him more than anything. He couldn't look at the old woman as a stranger, yet she was nothing more. Anxiety knotted his stomach.

“No, you don't understand,” St. Clair said. “It was never meant to be like this. Mandala exceeded his parameters. I should have put an end to it earlier. I should have known what was coming after the massacre.”

“San Sebastian …”

“It was the key to everything, but I didn't see that in time. He killed an entire town acting totally on his own. He loved death; we knew that and accepted his actions. We still needed him, you see. Something else was involved, though, something he had to hide. He had done more than subvert Tantalus. He had remolded it to fit his own goals. He was out of control. We had given him the rope he needed to hang us.”

“And the United States.”

“More than just the U.S.,” the old woman said with a sudden burst of energy. “He's after much more now, and you and Nikki are the only ones left who can stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“There are things you must hear about Tantalus before you can understand. Years of exhaustive and expensive research paid off some months ago with the discovery of a fungus that destroys all field crops in an amazingly short period of time. The fungus, through a toxin it produces, kills them almost on contact and is spread both through the air and the soil. It is swept over the earth remarkably fast by weather systems. If the jet stream cooperates, all American and Canadian crops would be affected within a week, dead within two at the outside.”

“Oh, my God!”

“Nothing can stop the fungus once it's released. It's unkillable, a perfect organism. It regenerates and multiplies at an incredible level. We developed it in a vacuum. It contains qualities literally not of this world. The only way to destroy it once the spoors are active would be to deny it a food supply, roughly a hundred square miles for every ounce released into the atmosphere.”

“Which explains why San Sebastian had to burn.”

“Exactly. But keep in mind what I said about the potency of one ounce and then consider that nearly one thousand canisters containing a hundred and twenty-eight gaseous ounces each are going to be released over the United States. The whole country would have to be burned to destroy the fungus.”