The Council of Ten (32 page)

A farm in Wapello, Iowa, and now this. Wayman knew he had to be careful. The incidents in Wapello would have forced an alert to be sent out to all other drop points to be on the lookout for him. That probability made a close, thorough inspection of the building too risky to contemplate. It was certainly large enough to accommodate an underground structure on the same scale as the one beneath Tumblefig’s farm. But how could Wayman learn if one existed without making a careful search?

The answer came with surprising swiftness. He never even had to leave his car to see the iron sign posted off to the side of what used to be the building entrance. The letters were rusted over from long years, but its triangular logo was unmistakable.

It seemed that 1812 Mohican Lane housed a massive fallout shelter.

The connection with what he had stumbled upon in Wapello was undeniable. Wayman’s heart was pounding as he entered Dearborn City Hall to check for the building’s owner and thus a concrete lead. The land records were being refiled in a new computer system, so his search proved far more frustrating and arduous than should have been the case, mostly due to the time involved in getting distracted workers to lend assistance.

But in the end his patience paid off. The building and land designated as 1812 Mohican Lane had been purchased six years before by a group known as the American Workers Regime, better known as the American Nazi party.

Further research revealed that the local chief, almost certainly the man in charge of whatever was going on, was named Edgar Brown. He lived off Gulf View Drive in the city’s plushest section and was by all accounts a very successful man. He was divorced, and his one son, aged thirteen, spent all weekends at his home. It took the Timber Wolf until Saturday night before the opportunity presented itself to approach Brown directly.

The local Nazi leader had just arrived home from a dinner at the Dearborn Country Club and stepped into his downstairs den to turn off the lights before retiring.

“Good evening, Mr. Brown,” Wayman greeted him from a leather desk chair.

Brown felt along the wall for the panic button rigged into his alarm system.

“I wouldn’t,” the Timber Wolf warned, “at least not until you check your son upstairs.”

Brown bolted up the stairs only to return breathless seconds later.

“What have you done with him?” he demanded.

“He’s safe,” Wayman assured. “But how long he stays that way depends solely on you.”

Brown was shaking. “How much do you want?”

The Timber Wolf rose from behind the desk. “Money? None. I’m here for information. Answer my questions truthfully and completely and your son will be returned to you safe and sound. Lie or withold information just once and he dies. Very simple. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes. Oh God, yes. Anything!”

“Good. Tell me about 1812 Mohican Lane.”

“What? It’s, it’s just an abandoned factory.”

“I’m talking about the shelter beneath it.”

Brown’s face paled at that. “Christ, who sent you?” he managed.

“It might as well have been Christ for all it matters to you. Now the shelter. It’s been renovated, updated, hasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I want the specifics.”

Brown fought to compose himself. “The walls and ceilings had to be relined to make sure they were totally airtight. Generators were installed along with refrigeration systems for food and water. A huge air system was the biggest job, similar to the kind used on submarines, only much larger. Enough air in the tanks to last at least a week, maybe longer, probably longer.”

Wayman’s mind was working feverishly. Brown might have been describing the structure beneath the farm in Wapello.

“Are these tanks in place now?” he asked.

“They have been for months.”

“Then there must be plans for people to flee down there. What’s going to happen? Who’s behind it?”

Brown interlaced his fingers before him as if to pray. “I don’t know the answer to either. I swear it!”

“But you’re in charge of the shelter, aren’t you?”

Brown nodded. “Only from an organizational standpoint, though.”

“What kind of organization?”

“To signal the people when it’s time to go down and to take charge once we’re down there.”

“You don’t know what’s going to happen, but you’ll know when to contact them …”

“No!” Brown shrieked. “I’m to be contacted first. The people all listen to a certain radio station at certain times of the day. If a specific message, an advertisement, comes over the air, they know it’s time. I don’t know when or why. I just have my orders.”

“From whom?”

Brown squeezed his lips together defiantly.

The Timber Wolf walked out from behind the desk. “Listen, your people are going to be running down there to escape something horrible going on above. Don’t tell me you haven’t figured that much out. If you haven’t, let me tell you it means lots of people on the surface are going to die and if you think the life of you or your son matters to me when measured against that, you’re—”

“All right, I’ll tell you what I know, but I’m signing my own death warrant.”

“Your son’s is made out as well.”

Brown took a swallow of air. “My orders come from Heinrich Goltz.”

“The West German cabinet minister?”

“The man who has remained ever true to the Nazi cause. He recruited me because I had come to loathe everything this country has come to stand for. We’ve become a land of the weak. Goltz promised me that was going to change. There was a plan, he said, and I was a part of it.”

“That was all he said?”

“That and the assignment to reconstruct the Mohican Lane fallout shelter to meet his specifications. That was almost six years ago.”

“And you’ve met with him regularly since?”

“No, only his contact.”

“What contact?”

“I never knew his name. I didn’t want to. He scared me. So goddamn white… .”

The Timber Wolf felt a rush of blood to his cheeks. “What? Did you say white?”

“Yes. Features almost like an albino.”

“Was he old?”

“Not particularly. He just looked it. His hair was ash-white, too.”

The heat turned to ice and Wayman felt cold everywhere. Corbano! No other man fit Brown’s description. But how did the White Snake fit into all this?

“This man relayed Goltz’s instructions to you,” Wayman said finally.

“In part. But his major concern was the powder.”

Wayman’s eyes bulged. At last, everything was coming together.

“Cocaine?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I never examined it. What about my son?”

“Keep talking.”

“The powder came regularly every six months, sometimes nine, over the last four-and-a-half years or so. I was always there to pick it up at the very same place. Never had my hands on it for more than an hour, though. The instructions were precise as to where and how to get rid of it.”

“How much powder?”

Brown stopped to calculate. “It varied between thirty and forty pounds per shipment. Say a couple hundred in all.”

“And you have no idea what happened to it after you turned the stuff over?”

“Not a clue. I wouldn’t lie. My son …
please!
”

Wayman found himself speechless. Too much information had come in all at once and he tried to assimilate it into some sort of context.

“I’ve told you everything!” Brown pleaded. “Now tell me where I can find my son. Please, God. You promised!”

“Upstairs,” Wayman said simply.

“I checked!”

“Only his room. Not your own. He’s safe.”

Now, as the plane neared Bonn, the Timber Wolf was still assimilating. Clearly this white powder, whatever it was, was connected to the shelters and ultimately what would force a select group of people into them. Drew Jordan’s grandmother and the other women had smuggled it into the country under the guise of cocaine, where it ended up with the Riveros who waited for Lantos to arrive with payment and specific instructions as to shipping. To Wapello, or Dearborn, or one of twenty-eight other drop points. All he was missing now was the why. Find the answer to that and the problem of what the powder really was would be solved in turn.

Wayman expected Goltz to shed a great deal of light on the picture, although not reveal it totally. Goltz, too, was part of something much greater, and whatever it was America’s fate was now hanging in the balance thanks to it.

Wayman spent the last minutes of the flight staring blankly at the fresh map of the United States on which he had placed Xs on all the distribution points in search of some sort of pattern. Maybe because he wasn’t trying, a point of connection at last came to him. He wasn’t sure what he had, but it had to be something. He checked again.

All but one of the drop points were located next to a large body of water.

From Spain, Elliana proceeded slowly to Bonn. There was no need to rush; it would be impossible to gain access to Goltz until Monday, even if she were able to do so then.

Here she got lucky. Old sources, nearly forgotten, informed her that the defense minister reserved an hour every day from ten to eleven in the morning for interviews with the press. Further, the sources were able to pinpoint for her which particular periodical was on the docket for that Monday since, thankfully, Goltz
was
in the city.

At eight-thirty Monday morning she called the minister’s office and requested that the scheduled interview be moved back to nine. His secretary was happy to comply since Goltz’s schedule was extremely tight in the later morning.

Since the interview involved a foreign periodical, Ellie did not expect that her face would be known within defense ministry headquarters. Trying to pass herself off as a reporter from a West German daily or newsmagazine would have been fraught with risk. She had nearly forgotten to ask her source whether the actual reporter was a man or a woman, and was relieved to find that it was the latter. Otherwise, her plans would have been delayed.

Bonn, the most modern of Germany’s cities, stands as a paradox. The capital is actually very old indeed, with plenty of buildings left intact from World War II still standing in the historic district. Around this, ultramodern buildings have been constructed in uneasy contrast, steel and glass being too ugly and functional to mix well with the wood, stone, and concrete from years before. The government buildings lie, also functionally, in the heart of the new construction, one indiscernible from the next.

The Ministry of Defense complex was no exception, and Ellie’s head was pounding as she approached it from across a square on Monday morning. The long days were finally starting to take their toll. She felt tired and sluggish and could afford neither. Her body, far from recovered from the wounds suffered on the mountain, rebelled against the demands being made on it. Ellie knew her limitations well enough to know she had exceeded them. Yet, she knew she must stay sharp and alert, for Goltz was not about to answer her questions of his own volition. With the Council on to her, she felt sure he would recognize her almost immediately. She would have to move fast, but once she reached him, the rest would take care of itself.

She patted her handbag to assure herself that the black pouch was still inside.

Bringing in a weapon such as a pistol had been out of the question since she fully expected the most thorough of searches and a gun seldom lasted beyond even the most cursory of frisks. She entered the Ministry of Defense building and announced herself at the guard table. A phone call later she was told she was free to go up to the fourth floor where Goltz’s office was located. She was expected. It was exactly nine o’clock.

She was actually searched twice: first before stepping onto the elevator and again at a guard station down the hall from Heinrich Goltz’s office on the fourth floor. She was escorted the rest of the way by one of the guards and waited as a receptionist informed Goltz of her arrival and then smiled up at her to go right in.

Heinrich Goltz had risen from behind his desk to greet her as she entered. Ellie closed the door behind her, shielding as much of her face as she could, before stepping forward.

Goltz’s expression changed immediately, first to apprehension and then to fear. He felt for something beneath his desk.

Ellie covered the distance in an instant. She plunged one hand into the defense minister’s throat to shut off a possible scream and used her other to yank his right arm to her. Using her upper arm to hold it in place, she fumbled for the loaded syringe stored within the handbag now dangling from the arm she was using to keep Goltz pinned silently to his chair. Grasping it firmly, she lifted the syringe out and jammed it through the sleeve of his jacket into his forearm. Goltz’s eyes bulged with terror, then glazed over as his entire frame went limp with the serum’s immediate effects.

Sodium Amytal, the truth serum Ellie was using, was basically a very strong sedative, which in this dosage numbed the inhibiters deep within the mind in order to break down will. For a man of Goltz’s years, the amount surging through his system could easily cause death if the battle between his subdued conscious will and activated subconscious response caused the kind of agitation Ellie expected. Still she had no choice. A lesser dosage might keep him alive but would go nowhere toward gaining her the answers she so sorely required.

“What is your name?” Elliana asked the minister.

“Heinrich Goltz.”

“And before that?”

“Johann Krieg.”

“You were a Nazi?”

“I
am
a Nazi.”

Ellie passed her hand in front of Goltz’s eyes. They didn’t respond. The serum had achieved its full effect.

“Does the Council of Ten exist?” she asked, holding her breath.

Goltz resisted briefly. “Yes.”

“And are you a member?” Ellie raised next, trembling slightly, confirmation of something she had always known finally obtained.

“Yes.”

“A strike against America is about to be initiated, correct?”

Goltz’s lips trembled. “Yes. It’s called Powderkeg.”

Ellie felt a shudder of realization. “That has something to do with a white powder compound produced in Spain, doesn’t it?”