Chapter 71

 

 

When Calla’s eyes shut, her will wanted to fight—to break free, but her mind repelled.

She could hear Mason’s words. Something was wrong. Mason didn’t use belligerent words. In fact, he’d become inaudible to her, as if a voice in her spoke louder.

No! Wake up, Calla!

The voice was in her head, but where was it coming from?

It sounds like, like. . .like . . .

Nash.

Calla forced her eyes open. She blinked twice sensing an urge in her mind to resist. Mason twitched as if by some accident he’d registered strength from her active mind he’d not expected. He’d turned his back to her as he paced the quiet garden roof with his hands behind his back.

She spotted his gun in his back pocket. Calla dragged in a deep breath and recalled what had always reignited the strength she was born with. If she believed in herself and gathered strength from the conviction of those who believed in her, she would be unrelenting.

Mason shot round and with one stride her way, moved his hand to her throat as she attempted to move. She lunged forward and swung her leg across his jaw, a jolt that tossed him staggering until his back was to the ground.

Calla shotup and with both feet on either side of his neck, she brought them together until his air supply began to diminish.

His body writhed under hers.

In one able instant, she stole a quick breath and tugged at the cuffs. She’d have to bear the sting of a thousand needles and the deadly deliriant, but perhaps for a few seconds. She’d rather face potential sleepwalking, a blackout state, or even a psychotic episode before she’d let him manipulate her mind. The only one she had.

She held her breath and broke the steel cuffs free, barely noticing the sting of the microscopic needles as they shot venom in her bloodstream. With freed hands and an incapacitated, six-foot thug at her feet, she glanced around for her exit. Her eyes fell on Mason’s shirt pocket and studied a bulge the size of a child’s crayon. She reached down his shirt pocket, as his agony threatened to have him heaving, and pulled out a small bottle.

Calla sent one more blinding blow across his face and gulped the contents of a bottle. “You’re a very thorough man. You didn’t know whether the deliriant would work. So this is what I would’ve done, as one who thinks like you. I would have carried an antidote!”

 

She scuttled to the open door through which Lascar had departed earlier and set off at a run down the stone stairs. Her race down the steps brought her lurching into a charging woman. The same woman who’d greeted her earlier and had heard Mason refer to as Mrs. Hawke.

Hawke drew a firearm and held it with both hands. She backed Calla up the stairs again with its barrel almost touching her face.

Calla slid under Hawke’s gun and grabbed the back of her head. She shifted out of the line of attack, before driving her foot into Hawke’s knee, a jolt that sent the heavy woman toppling on the stairs.

Hawke’s falling body nearly bowled Lascar as he sailed Calla’s way.

Calla charged up until she was back on the roof.

With Mason shambling to his feet and Lascar making a dash for her, Calla raced to the edge of the garden and stared down one corner of the roof. Whereas three ends of the garden looked into the extensive grounds, the side Calla stood perched on overlooked the cliffs of the hundred-meter canyon. About two-hundred feet away from the roof, she saw a bridge spanning the canyon.

Could she do it?

“How many times do we have to do this, Cress!”

Mason stood unrelenting, his frame clumping toward her. Her hands crawled behind her and gripped the roughness of the garden’s edge. She got a grip of the stone and pulled herself across the roof border, leaping backward on the ledge. Hunching on her knees, she took one peek down at the decline. Ridge and Kane waited at the foot of Mason’s canyon villa.

If she shot down, she’d have to contend with them, or stay and combat with the two opponents in front of her.

She closed her eyes ready to hurdle.

 

 

 

Calla pressed her hand against her heart, feeling its irregular speed and steadied herself for a leap into the abyss of further struggle. Her feet balanced over the perimeter of the stone wall, overlooking the canyon. She glimpsed at a road off the property, which tunneled through a shoulder of the valley, leading to flatter terrain.

She would control a smooth landing. As her mind contorted her next move, her ears caught the sound of a helicopter above her. Its assertive blades fanned her hair with its blizzard force and the impeccable shrubbery that stood beneath its gust.

An air-assault rescuer, roped down, deploying himself from the open aircraft. Dark suited, he slid on the braided rope above her and seized her with a tight grip around the waist. The chopper’s blades above nearly made her lose her stability, with the wind from its rotating propellers vacillating her hair at uncontrollable speeds. Calla squinted, her eyes peering up at the chopper. The suited man hung, suspended from the aircraft with a rope to his shoulder harness. His eyes were covered with interchangeable, ballistic goggles, worn over a dark headgear hood, making it impossible to identify him. Still he remained on mission and brought her body to his, as her eyes streamed, weeping with torrid winds that tore at her face.

The rescuer signaled to his counterparts above him. The helicopter took lift and they sored over the edge. The chopper’s acceleration caused a jolt that sent it off to one side for split a second.

It steadied.

Calla forced a glimpse down at Mason and Lascar who could barely stand under the helicopter’s force. As the aircraft knifed off the property, Calla felt her heart pound against the stranger’s strong grasp. She had no choice, but to hold on to his sturdy shoulders as the chopper took flight.

Calla glanced down as Lascar attempted to fire his gun, but his spit of gunfire failed to reach them. A drowsy Mason rose rubbing his head. He too grabbed his gun and fired.

The aircraft hovered over the main villa and soon sailed westward. The man’s arms tightened around her midriff. Calla could barely breathe with his tight grip. She gasped for air as the helicopter steadied, racing across the Andalusian landscape.

The rescuer tugged at the rope signaling to a second suited associate in the helicopter. It was an indication for his partner to hoist them up. The rope began a steady ascent toward the aircraft. Once on the floor level of the craft, the second air-assault fighter grasped Calla’s arm and hauled her into the chopper. Her legs lifted to the helicopter floor and soon, he heaved her capturer into the cabin and slammed the doors shut.

Calla and the suited man took seats opposite each other. He kept his gear on and for a second she couldn’t distinguish the two. They were both clothed in midnight-blue attire; with Blackhawk tactical vests, black gloves, knee pads, elbow pads, drop holsters and spare ammunition pouches. The second man removed his headgear. “Hey there, Cal. I’m Reiner. Welcome aboard.”

Calla’s lips were drying. “Hi . . .”

His accomplice remained silent, and turned his gaze toward the window.

Calla glanced over her shoulder at the pilot with the controls.

“Good to have you with us, ma’am.” Though suited in black like the other marines, with a helmet and radio controls, Calla could pick that voice from a crowd. Jack’s blithe face smirked back at her. She forced a weary smile, turned and leaned back into the seat of the aircraft. Safely buckled in a chopper among friends, she stole a look at the man across who’d saved her life.

Nash’s face was still masked. It had to be him. His behavior was difficult to read. He’d come back, despite how she’d treated him.

Calla felt a lump rise to her throat. How senseless had she been?

She bit her lip. What would she say to him? She wanted to look into those gray eyes that she knew so well. Calla could not think straight. She couldn’t see his face, but knew it was pain he was covering with his visor mask.

Nash moved his gloved hand to his chin and still said nothing.

 

The chopper’s rotating blades made it nearly impossible to communicate. The aircraft soared above Mirabella as it left Seville behind. It ascended taking the route to the south tip of the Iberian Peninsula around its eastern coastline. Within minutes, they flew over the Bay of Algeciras, across from Gibraltar, with a gleaming view to the sea’s narrow strait that connected the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separated Spain from Morocco—visible from the full length window of the helicopter.

She pulled her eyes away from the ocean scenery, and back toward Nash, her palms perspiring with each minute that flew by. Calla needed to do this right. Out of duty, he’d forgive her, but would he still hold her in that intimate place that only they’d shared. How much rejection could a man take? How deep had she hurt him?

The chopper circled to the right. They weren’t going to land in Algeciras, which only meant one thing. They were headed for Gibraltar, and to accomplish that feat, the pilot had to have the highest clearing for flying into the no-fly-zone.

On the most southern points of the Spanish mainland, Gibraltar peered at her with its predominantly smooth, sandy-strewn rocky beaches on the western coastline.

Less than a half hour later, the chopper touched down on the grounds of a large country villa.

“We’re here,” Jack said.

Calla glanced out the window at the waterfront estate that gave way to sweeping views across a pristine bay. The Mediterranean façade, whose brilliant architectural detailing of coral cast stone, attractive cypress and baroque ironwork made Calla wonder on what sort of place they’d landed.

The front entry was spacious. Two regal porte-cocheres, more like carriage porches, sheltered the motor court and a three-car garage. As if reading her thoughts, Jack removed his helmet and goggles, his lips curled into a smile. “We’re at an ISTF safe house, courtesy of the British government.”

Calla gave him a knowing nod. Reiner and Nash unbuckled their restraints and rose to descend from the aircraft.

Calla did likewise.

Was he going to walk away without a word?

Jack turned the motors off and peered her way. “Good to have you back.” He glanced at Nash who’d yet to move off the chopper. “I’ll leave you two alone for a minute.”

Jack stepped off the aircraft and strode with Reiner toward the house.

For several seconds, neither said a word.

Nash removed his black Kevlar helmet and gloves, and set his palms over his knees. His face registered no emotion.

“Nash, I’m sorry,” Calla said.

She waited for a response, her throat fighting back a choke.

Nash cleared his throat.

Calla continued. “I’m sorry I doubted you, Nash. I was wrong.”

He rose and settled in a seat next to her. His hand slowly moved to her cheek as tears trembled on her eyelids. With a soft sigh, he first kissed the tip of her nose, then her eyes. Finally, he satisfyingly kissed her soft lips. Then pulled back. “No, I’m sorry. I should have told you about your mother. I don’t know why I didn’t.”

His face changed suddenly. “Calla, I may have withheld information from you, but only because your mother asked me to, just like you asked me to take you to Colorado without telling a soul.”

“I know, Nash. You always keep your word.”

“You didn’t wait for me to explain. I don’t think we can keep going on like this.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going to do the most difficult thing, I’ve ever done, Cal. I’m going to give you one less complication. Being with me interferes with your life, your choices and I don’t want to be the one who screws with the decisions ahead of you.”

Alarm filled Calla’s eyes. “What’re you saying?”

“I have to leave you to be who you are.”

“Nash, no. . . Please, I can’t do this without you.”

“You can.”

“But you said we should not give up.”

“I’m not giving up on you, beautiful. I’m releasing you.”

“I don’t want to be free of you, Nash.”

She set a hand on his chest. I—”

He kissed her wet eyes. “Make me proud, Cal. I know you will.”

They heard footsteps near the chopper as Jack returned. “We just got intel on Mason. We need to move.”

Nash nodded slowly to Jack and diverted his eyes back to Calla. “Jack. This is where the road ends for me. I promised to help get Calla back. Reiner in there is a good marine and will take over from where I left.”

“You can’t be serious, Nash.”

Nash stepped off the chopper and set his feet on the parched lawn. “You guys will do it. You’ll finish Mason off.”

Had she heard him right? Was he leaving? Calla stood motionless on the lawn, as Nash careered to the pilot’s seat. He buckled himself in before cackling the engine.

She couldn’t find the words.

The blades started rotating and Jack pulled Calla back from the onslaught of gust wind. Nash took one look at Calla before placing his headpiece and goggles on.

Nash, please don’t go. Before she could let the words out, the chopper ascended. Calla’s throat dried, completely choking back words and emotions she’d failed to voice.

She fixed her eyes on the flying beast. And in minutes, it disappeared over the rock-strewn cliff.

 

 

 

The wind whistled from the Alboran Sea, slapping her skin. Calla turned to Jack. “He’s gone. I didn’t know what to think about the information he had about my mother.”

“It wasn’t your mother who sent him those text messages. Nash may have gotten a call from someone claiming to be your mother, but it wasn’t her. I checked the signals myself. We both think Lascar sent those text messages. Your mother communicated with Nash by a website and an e-mail address that changed every day.”

“Why didn’t he tell me?”

“He tried, C.”

“He did, didn’t he, Jack?” She raised her chin with a cool stare in his direction. “Will he ever come back?”

“I’ve never seen him so upset but, I’ve never known him to quit any mission.”

She slumped to the ground, a sharp pain filling her gut. “We can’t do this without him.”

Nash was gone.

“I’m torn Calla. I can’t see you both like this.”

She bit her lip. She’d never told Nash the most important words he need to hear.

 

Jack and Calla strode toward the villa in silence and sauntered through ornate doors. Wrought iron detailing adorned the entire door frame. As they advanced through the entrance, Calla glanced up the two-story ceiling with its false finished dome and impressive chandeliers. Each space of the large interior incorporated opulent finishes, and displayed exceptional attention to detail. Custom cabinetry, woodwork and furniture flowed throughout, while the exceptional use of granites, marbles and onyx complimented each surface in the main rooms.

“What’s this place?” Calla asked, losing her orientation in the surroundings for a minute.

Jack strolled to the far end of the hall and pushed the doors open to a vast reception room, with a grand piano by the window looking out to the villa grounds. “An ISTF base, authorized by Allegra herself. She’s inside. Your father is here too.”

Allegra! Calla had almost forgotten. She had been on the airplane with her on leaving Islamabad.

Jack saw the alarm in her face. “She’s okay. Mason and Lascar drugged her on the plane, persuaded officials with much money to haul her off. When she came to in a business lounge at the airport, she alerted us before we left Islamabad.”

“You came straight here to get me. How did you know where Mason was heading?”

“Your phone was still on you. Remember I put a tracking device on it.” He snickered. “I always know where you are—most times.”

Calla approached Jack. “I owe you an apology too, Jack. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted on the grounds that I see what you do best. Do you still have your mother’s patches?”

Calla nodded and padded her under vest.

“Good, because the only way we can reverse the coordinates to Mason’s hack program is if your mother gives them to us. At least that’s what Allegra believes.”

“What makes Allegra so sure?”

“Calla we need to find out exactly how much your mother knew Mason. What she knows can help us greatly here before the other defense systems of the member governments go bust as well.”

Calla felt round her pockets and found the undergarment pouch, a safe place she’d carved out for her treasures. “They’re here.”

Jack interjected taking a seat on the sofa. “We need to find your mother within the next forty-eight hours, or Mason sets his computers in motion.”

Calla spread the strips of ancient cloths on the large coffee table, and observed the perplexing symbols. She turned them around several times. “I wish I could figure it out, but I’ve searched my mind completely. I don’t get what this is, what she was trying to say to me.”

“That’s because your mother was a genius,” a voice behind said.

She turned around.

Stan stood, arms folded in the arched doorway. “Father?”

“You had me so worried, Calla. And from now on, I’m coming with you.”

“So you’re not afraid to face her.” She drew him into a hug. “Thank you.”

“After that moron torched my house, with me barely able to get out, I had to teach him a lesson. He’s messed with my family one too many times.”

“Mason’s turning this into a habit,” Jack said.

“I’m sorry dad, about your house,” Calla said.

“I’m alive, you are too, now let’s find Nicole.”

They settled back around the coffee table. Stan tilted his head to one side. “This must’ve been something that meant much to Nicole. It’s like an excerpt from her diary and really personal to her. Having lived many identities as a services’ agent, she must have wanted something no one could associate with that life,” Stan said.

Stan’s lime eyes narrowed furiously. In one unforeseen movement, he rose and glided toward the window. He stood frozen before it for several seconds and smacked his fist through the pane. As if not sensing the sting from the shattered glass, he left his bloodied arm in the bed of spiked glass.

Calla hurried to his side. A bloody welt had opened above his knuckles. As it bled, Calla pulled a napkin from a nearby dining table and gently eased his fist from the glass spikes. “Father, you need to release it. Whatever you know can help us.”

“No, Calla, I’m not going back to that place. That night when we left you at the orphanage. That’s when this madness started. If I hadn’t left you, she would’ve never left me.”

“That’s not true. You yourself said that you both agreed. We can’t change what’s in the past, but we can change the future. Starting now.”

Jack swaggered across the room. “Stan, you may have let Nicole down, but she let you down too. If you don’t help us with this, then you’ve lost her forever,” Jack said.

“And never know closure,” Calla added.” By helping us find her, you help so many people.”

“All right,” Stan said. “Your mother took something from Mason. Codes of some sort, or perhaps it was coordinates that could be the location of his hideout. The week before we left you at the orphanage she’d discovered that he may have started this technology hack the minute the Internet began.”

Stan’s fist eased under Calla’s confident touch. He held back a deep pain stemming from his agonized arm. “We need to get to Eisenach. In Germany.”

“Eisa . . . what? Why?” Jack asked.

“I get it. I thought of this, but it seemed incomprehensible at the time,” Calla said before she strode back to the table and set her hands on the patches. “When you piece these together, this way round,” she rotated the documents, “they make up a bar of music.”

Calla studied her father’s face, enlightened that she had almost read his mind.

“I’m not hearing any music, Cal. Enlighten me,” Jack said.

Calla hoisted herself on the edge of the seat. “This bar of music forms a copy of an old score. At first, I was trying to decipher words, hieroglyphics and I ignored one of the world’s most obvious forms of symbols. Music notes. Look, here they’re scribbled in such a hurry and not in sync. That’s what makes it look like gibberish. One has to know how to chord them together, forgive the pun. Come.”

She ambled to the old piano and leaned over the tired keys. “I’ve not played since I left school, but listen to this.”

Bars of arpeggios seeped from the tired instrument. “It’s Bach,” Calla said.

“Okay, enlighten the few of us who’ve never crammed a note of music.”

“It’s the last movement of the cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, the ‘Heart and Mouth and Deed and Life’, or better known as ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring,” Stan said. “Your mother used to play that piece repeatedly when she learned she was pregnant with you.”

Stan moved to the piano. His fingers ran over some notes and joined her in a series of melodic cascades on the keys. He took a seat next to her. In a symphony of harmony that filled the old villa with the absorbing sound of Bach, father and daughter complemented each other’s playing.

Jack watched the reunion. A harmony and melody finally at ease and rest with each other. Calla stopped mid-stanza and turned to Jack. “There’s a radical aspect inherent in Bach’s work. He was as much what we would call a modern rocker and a classical composer. He probably helped encourage the rationale in academics that mathematics and music share.”

“Eisenach is Bach’s home,” Stan added, setting the hood over the piano keys. “Music theorists used mathematics to understand melody. Your mother took inspiration from composition as a cryptanalyst, codebreaker, and code writer. She always played Bach, Calla.”

Jack rubbed his chin. “So you’re saying perhaps the codes we need are linked to Bach’s music—”

“Or,” Calla added. “Bach’s hometown has clues to her whereabouts. Whatever it is, we need to find out, in Eisenach.”

“Calla’s right. “ Stan surrendered. “When we left you at the orphanage, Nicole must have gone there. It makes sense to me now. Bach always soothed her. It must’ve been a way of dealing with her loss of you. But maybe there was more to it.”