Chapter Fifteen

In the hours after my escape from Liberty Tower, the CIA combed the offices of Little Technologies and found nothing to link them to the T.I. army. They went floor by floor with an armed escort and searched every room, every closet, save for one.

The area below Reece’s vault office had been cordoned off by the fire marshal.

Fred, Archdeacon, and I looked over the marshal’s report. Lee looked out the window; reports meant nothing to him. When I’d visited Little Technologies, I’d assumed that the area under the safe was reinforced, and by the rough drawings laid out before us, I’d been correct. The vault’s supports separated the west side of the floor into three areas. Area one had been labeled Storeroom C. Within the largest one, labeled Main Floor, there sat another area Electrical Room. Comparing it to the drawing of the floor above, it appeared that the fire started in the electrical room, directly under the vault.

Passcode doors secured one area from the next. Few knew both those codes, which ultimately hampered the firemen’s effort when they first arrived. When they did get the door open, the backdraft was instant and several men had to be pulled out with burns. The rest managed to get the fire contained, but the damage had been done.

The arsonist had cut the power to the offices above and sealed Reece in his vault. The fire hadn’t been created to burn Reece. The old man had died of smoke inhalation, funneled directly from the fire through the ventilation into the vault. The fire marshal brought in the best locksmith in Industry City to open the vault, and it still took him more than two hours to do it. By then, the old man was cold.

The police went the direction of inside job, but none of the employees questioned by the police or fire investigators added anything relevant to the investigation. Little Technologies workers had been trained to ignore anything dealing with Reece and his office unless specifically addressed. They could have been working for a different company altogether, so little did they know about the inner workings of Little Technologies.

Whoever the torpedo was, I’m guessing he or she walked right in as if belonging there. Vincent was their primary suspect, seeing as how he disappeared right after the fire. I could fill in that blank, as he was following me at the time of Reece’s murder.

Cecilia LaMent would have access to those pass codes and one of her Hero Twins could have waltzed in and out without notice—maybe even in his mask. She controlled the whole hit remotely.

What I found so puzzling from the report is the way our firebug set the fire. First was location. While the ventilation did run through the electrical room, there were other places that would have been a far more effective area to create the fire. The arsonist removed a lot of asbestos from around the ducts first. Then they removed insulation that was packed into the walls. Why?

Fred found yet another irregularity. He said the type of accelerant used resulted in a high-intensity burn, meant to create the fire, burn hot briefly, then burn itself out, leaving no trace. According to their calculations, had the firefighters not created the backdraft by opening the electrical room door, the fire would have been out shortly. They estimated the total burn time as about fifteen minutes. That would have just been enough smoke to kill a man but not enough to burn down a building. They wanted the offices intact. Specifically, they wanted the rest of the floor intact.

We arrived at Liberty Tower and ascended to the floor in question. I stood surveying the store room with Archdeacon, Lee, and Fred—them, and about a dozen armed soldiers. Archdeacon had insisted on their accompanying us. The CIA had all but ignored this room in their search due to the fire damage. My gut told me this room was made to be ignored.

“Okay, guys. Spread out and look for anything … I don’t know—wrong.”

The general didn’t spread. He stayed with me. He wanted to pass on intelligence he’d gathered that morning.

“So this is what we have on Cecelia LaMent. Little Technologies lists her as a distant relative of C.J. Reece, but his actual family has no record of her. We subpoenaed the company’s employment records, and they show her coming into their employ in 1939, hired directly by Reece himself, and then she was immediately sent to Jakarta.”

“Let me guess. Right after the experiment, correct?”

“Almost to the day. The CIA sent operatives to roust Little Technologies employees over there and found out that few people have ever met her. She has an almost empty office. Her personal secretary says she travels a lot and rarely spends more than a week there a year.”

I walked around smoke and water-damaged boxes. I motioned for them to be popped open and a couple G.I.s went to work with a crowbar. They found nothing but packing materials. Desk drawer were empty of everything but office supplies and empty folders. It all seemed very kosher.

“She must have a passport, then?”

“Not that we can find in her name.”

“An alias?”

“That’s the idea. We have only a cursory description, as she usually wears dark glasses and a hat with a sun veil around it.”

I looked at him. “For fourteen years?”

“What do you want, Glass? It’s only been six hours since you put this together. We’re not miracle workers.”

He was right. I was angry for no reason. I felt itchy and I don’t think it was the asbestos.

“I want answers. If she was the one, the one that put this into play fourteen years ago, then she’s the one responsible for Tangie, for Mendelssohn, for Reece, for Yousev. She’s the murderess and I want to be the one to bring her down.”

Fred beckoned us, having overheard our discussion, “Don’t forget she’d also be responsible for the other deaths. NMIT lost five students, as well.”

I wasn’t discounting them. Fred nodded and continued his work in the electrical closet.

“She is a vile creature with nine known kills, Glass. We know that,” said Archdeacon. “I hope she doesn’t go quietly. I’ve never fought against a woman opponent before. History shows they are fiercer then men. They think much farther ahead and actually derive pleasure from seeing men suffer.”

“Oh? You’ve met my wife?” asked Lee.

“Glass, come here!”

I moved quickly to where Fred was. He had put on a mask and pried open an asbestos-lined box. I could see sophisticated electronics inside, some which had melted in the heat.

“Something bothered me about the fire report,” he began. “How did the firemen know there was a fire when it was behind two locked doors and the power had been cut to C.J.’s office so he couldn’t call for help?”

I hadn’t considered that. “Smoke?” asked Lee.

The engineer shook his head. “No, the smoke was all trapped in the vault. There was no sign of the fire until they opened this door.”

I added, “The report said the fire would have been out if it hadn’t been reported so quickly. How did they find out so soon?”

Fred pointed. “I think this. It’s some sort of warning system.”

I knelt in close by him. I could see a battery inside, smaller than any I had come across.

“What do you think, Fred?”

“I think this thing powers up when the power to this room gets cut. See the phone line here? I believe this device somehow calls for help.”

I stepped out of the room and went back to the file. I reread the initial report. It listed an older man’s voice as making the call. The voice said, “There is an emergency at the Little Technologies offices, forty-third floor of Liberty Tower, electrical room.” The operator tried to ask questions, but the voice repeated the message again and disconnected.

“Reece prepared for this too.”

“Glass?” Fred sounded nervous.

“Yeah, Fred?”

He stood up and handed me a thin piece of metal. The label on it was burned, but I could still read the name, Noel R. Glass, written on it.

“I found it behind the wiring.”

It was a calling card case. I opened it and found a single note. It read, Go to Storeroom D.

“That’s strange. I didn’t see a Storeroom D on the blueprints. We’re next to Storeroom C, with A and B on the opposite side of the hallway.”

Lee was over by another set of doors leading into the second half of the room. “Maybe they mean here?”

The room had been sectioned off. It didn’t take up the whole floor, so maybe Storeroom D meant the other side of Storeroom C. I looked in. The door had been opened during the fire investigation, but since it was clean, they didn’t need to go in. I stared at the empty room. It went back as far as the south wall and was completely empty.

I kept staring. Something wasn’t right. I remembered staring at Reece’s “windows” in the vault until I figured out the trick. That time the illusion was broken by a flicker in the image. This time it was a dust particle. It floated down and froze in midair, as if it landed on something. “General? Your gun.”

“Huh?”

I asked for the gun again, and he begrudgingly acquiesced. I picked a spot in the ceiling just beyond where the dust had settled and fired.

The mirror shattered into a quadrillion pieces, and with it, the illusion. Hollywood and magicians employed the same trick to make sets look bigger, only the technique had been enhanced to make a near perfect representation of an empty space that was anything but.

On the other side of the magic, a medical bay sat empty. There were beds by the dozens, each with electronic equipment around it. Wires led to lit boxes situated on adjoining shelves. These boxes had screens labeled with numbered gradients. A pole with two hooks sat between each bed, and empty tubes lay limp across every pillow.

“This tech,” Fred said, “It’s like nothing I’ve seen. I don’t think there’s a University with a lab this advanced.”

Fred and I moved in closer while Lee and Archdeacon went through the desks. The guards set up a perimeter, but it was clear that no one had been back since they were evacuated.

“This is a transfusion setup.”

“Fred?”

“Seriously, Glass, this is the most technologically advanced apparatus I’ve ever seen. See here and here? This drains blood, this replaces it.”

“And these electrodes?” I showed him the vine I found dangling at the side.

“For monitoring heart rate and brain waves, I guess. The readings show up on this screen.” He indicated the box. “These empty tubes look like they’re to deliver plasma.”

I took one of the boxes and tried to get inside. I finally had to smash it, which elicited a panicked yelp from Fred.

“Don’t break it!”

“What? There’re others.”

The insides were even more complicated and wondrous than the stuff we saw on the outside. The way the circuits were laid out was just short of miraculous. Like one of my half-remembered dreams, there was a sense of déjà vu when trying to understand it all. It looked like something out of Babbage’s designs, only moved forward a hundred years.

I had an idea of who’d done the evolving too. I opened my mouth to speak, but Lee opened a cooler door and gasped. “Ai-yah!”

We gathered behind him and agreed. It was filled with bags and bags of blood and plasma, labeled by type.

I turned to Archdeacon. “What did you find?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. Anything important left with them.”

“I have something,” said Fred from inside the cooler. “A name.” He held up a bag; on the label were the words Project Bogdanov.

* * *

Finding the medical lab made finding Vincent and his two comrades imperative. The topic of Alexander Bogdanov’s questioning by the Soviet secret police came up during the meeting with Ike and team, but what was discussed and revealed was still unknown to the CIA, FBI and military.

I knew, personally, two Soviet agents who might have that information.

According to Lee, before they’d parted company, the three Russians had talked about going underground. They hoped to connect up with operatives of the Russian mafia and find a safe house. If they succeeded after Lee left, then I would have to go underground too.

Tracking them was near impossible, starting with an escape from the military base lockdown. Archdeacon didn’t want me out from under his thumb. He would nix any plan involving me leaving the base. Sending his people after Vincent had proved futile. Hell, they hadn’t caught me, and I wasn’t all that sneaky. We’d have to escape from our temporary holding pen. Lee was the one to come up with the idea.

We ordered pizza.

A new service had started in Denver called pizza delivery. A local pizzeria would actually drive a pizza to you if you called them. There was an extra fee, but they’d come out in all weathers and drive however far. The base had started using the service regularly, so it was not out of the ordinary for us to place a call for dinner. I had Fred pay for the pizzas when they arrived, while Lee and I picked the lock on the trunk of the delivery car and slid in. If we were lucky, Archdeacon wouldn’t notice we were missing until noon the next day.

Once again, I was hiding in a cramped space, but I wasn’t alone this time.

“Lee!” I said in a serious whisper. “Move your hoof. It’s in my groin.”

“Glass, I should tell you. I have kimchi for lunch.”

“Damn it, Lee! It’s been you stinking up our bathroom! When we get out of this mess, I swear I’ll cement that ass of yours closed!”

* * *

Sean Burke had quarters next to Sully’s stables. I guess being on a Mafioso’s property gave you a false sense of security because he hadn’t bothered to lock his door.

Quietly, we hovered over the tight-eyed trainer. Lee drew his gun, and I placed a hand over Burke’s mouth. He woke with a start.

“The only thing I want to hear you say is—ow!” I pulled my hand away.

“Not that shite again, okay, Glass? And thanks fer the lump, you basterd. I woulda kept mum until you were gone. Oh, hiya, Wan. I’ve got a great bet in the third tomorrow. You interested?”

I shook my hand and rubbed the bite marks out of my palm while they chatted about “sure things.”

After Burke got dressed, he’d poured us three fingers each of some fairly decent sauce. We sat around a table in what passed for his kitchen; a lazy Susan, sink, and a hot plate.

“I knew you’d be back.”

“How so?”

“Well, I don’t be meanin’ to brag, but I’ve been gettin’ some hot juice about you. Seems like since you’ve been in custody, the price on yer head tripled. I heard the survivin’ Twin won’t even take the money anymore. He’s got somethin’ wicked personal with you now. It wasn’t what you did to his brother; that’s a hazard of the business. Hell, I’m not even sure they’re really related.”

“Then what?”

“It was what you gone and done to his face. He had to get a new mask made, and I hear tell there’s nuthin’ but bandages under it now with two mean-looking eye holes.” He mimicked a mummy, making angry eyes between fingers. With Sean, it wasn’t just the information you got, but the show that came with it. “I thought you only made women that mad, Glass.”

“So then he’s probably not at his best?”

“I wouldn’t be sayin’ that. Word is he put three guys in the hospital that tried to calm him down.”

This was going to be harder than I thought. Sean offered a shot and I threw it back. “What do you know of the Russian mafia in Industry City?”

I thought the runt would choke on his medicine. “There’s no Russian mob here, Glass. Sully wouldn’t be allowin’ it. Hell, Chicago would have kittens.”

“Don’t shit me, Burke. They’re here. They put people in every major city, looking for holes within the current underbelly to exploit. They may be quiet and they may be avoiding the same trades as the Italians, but they are here.”

Sean’s eyes darted around in their sockets quickly, nervously. It was his tell. The only time he did that was when he had information he couldn’t sell.

“What, Sean?”

“Nuthin’, Glass. I got nuthin’ to give you.”

“What if I had something to give you? Something worth an even exchange?”

“You’d have nuthin’ that was worth me—” But it was too late. Burke has slipped and he said a few curses. I smiled at him. “Okay, Glass. You caught me. But I really can’t be tellin’ you anythin’. These Ruskies are brutal. Not in the Italian way. Fer the wops, it’s enough to see you dead. The Reds, well, they like to see you suffer even after you’ve given them everythin’ you know. Then they kill you … if yer lucky.”

“I just need a place to start. We’ll climb the tree and shake the monkeys loose.”

“Do you really have anythin’ worth that?” Always the bargainer, that Burke. We both knew he’d gladly trade his life for a hot bit of information.

“Yeah, I know who’s after me and I’m coming for her.”

Sean gave me the Irish grin again. “I knew ’twas a woman, Glass. What’s her name?”

“Cecelia LaMent.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Little Technologies’ new head honcho? You don’t piss them off small, do you, Glass.”

I leaned in closer. “No, and I’m going to take her and her whole damn organization down with me. You got that, Burky? You get that out to as many people as you want. She wants a war? I’m going to give her one.”

* * *

The Russian immigrant area of Industry City didn’t go by some fancy name, like Little Osaka or Greektown. In fact, if you didn’t have a bit of Russian blood in you, you wouldn’t even know where to look. Having worked the streets, I knew the place existed within a several block radius, but with anti-Communism in full swing, they did their best to stay low key.

Eleven at night and the streets from downtown to the suburbs were bare. People stayed at home, watching Ed Sullivan. Lee and I could see them through the windows of the cab—flickering glow on laughing faces; Mom, Dad, sometimes the kids. In too many homes, we just saw Mom and the kids. Whether that was because Dad worked a night shift to make ends meet or he hadn’t come home from Korea, I didn’t know.

The little corner grocery store where the nighthawk dropped us still had its open sign lit. Bells rang as we entered. I hurried forward past rows of Quaker oatmeal and various sundries, checking for other shoppers. I nodded to Lee that we were alone. He pulled the chain on the open sign and locked the door behind us. The owner, who looked to have been doing paperwork in the back office, stepped forward at the bell ring. When he saw what Lee was doing, his face drained of color and he reached under the counter for something heavy. I drew a gun I’d borrowed from Burke and put one round in the neon Atlantic Brewery sign above the registers. Sparks rained down on the man, which distracted him long enough for me to slide over the counter. I batted the shotgun from his hands before he could aim it. He was a beer barrel of a man, but small enough for me to push against the wall.

“You know who I am?”

He shook his head violently. “Wrong answer. Try again.”

“Da—I mean, yes. I know who you are. Your picture—”

“No, not in the paper. You were told to watch out for me, weren’t you? By Ilya, correct? Comrade Ilya. Or maybe Vincent. One of them must have warned you I would be coming.”

He tried to deny it again, but Lee reached the counter and added conviction to our cause. The owner admitted that Vincent/Vadim had predicted my arrival. The shop owner was supposed to stall me long enough to make a call.

I told him to call.

Two thugs showed up within five minutes. Lee and I were ready for them. We jumped and bagged them in record time. I didn’t know why I’d rarely used Lee on cases before. He was fast and efficient, wasting no energy. I thought back to Merlot’s dressing room and how helpless he looked. I’m sure that was an act for my benefit, or maybe he just didn’t hit the dames.

I peeked out the window and saw a wheelman in the mob’s coupe. Taking the hat off one of the thugs, I kept my face low. The plan entailed me getting into the car before the driver noticed his mistake. There were few lights outside, so I planned to reach the car before being recognized. I moved quickly toward the car while Lee made his way toward the driver’s door. When I popped into the backseat, the driver turned and said something in Russian. By the time he discovered the switch, Lee had opened his door and pressed against his ribs.

“Da,” I said. “Slide over.” He moved and I pressed my gun to the back of his head. “Now give us directions to where Vadim, Ilya, and Sacha are.”

“I know nothing of—”

The click as I drew back the hammer was enough to change his mind.

He directed us back into the city, which worried me, but then he veered us out toward the airport. There were hangars there, storehouses and a hundred other places to hide someone. Plus, if my three Ruskies were sent home because they’d blown their cover…

Vincent would have no trouble arranging more fake passports for them all.

Once our Russian guide identified the warehouse where the spies waited, we drove around the back and made him get in the trunk. Next, Lee scaled a ladder while I picked the backdoor lock. I slid in as quietly as I could, the exit sign as my only light. The hallway was lined with offices on both sides. I moved down the hallway, gun out, checking each room as I went. I reached the door into the main loading dock and paused. Lee needed enough time to make it to the top, jimmy his own lock, and get into position on the scaffolding above. We both assumed there would be scaffolding. There always was.

When an appropriate amount of time had passed, I opened the door slowly and slid past it. The warehouse was empty, save for a single light that hung over three men tied to chairs, back to back to back. One slumped motionless over his bonds, so I couldn’t see his face. A second sat upright, fresh blood glistening in the illumination from the bulb. He moaned just a little, and I recognized Sacha. The third was shirtless with three times as many ropes as the other two. He was facing me.

Vincent looked at me through swollen eyes, the black and blue clearly decorating his face and body. Recognition swam into his battered consciousness and he mouthed the word—Trap.