Chapter Sixteen

Lights came on and a dozen men dressed in black fatigues of the Technocracy, Inc. Army drew on me. I looked up to see Lee standing on the scaffolding, disarmed and held at gunpoint.

Two more chairs were brought to bind us to the Russian spies. It wasn’t making any sense until Burke stepped out of an alcove. “Wow, Glass. Yer really gonna take down Cecelia LaMent, are ye now?”

“Burke, you son of a bitch! You ratted us out?”

He walked over to where I was being tied down. “Come on, Glass. You said you owed me one. Well, we’re square, you and me now, aren’t we? She was payin’ good, and well, you know the horses; I’m a shitarse trainer. Now I can break free from Sully fer good. Sorry.”

And then he gave me some chin music. “That was fer the lump in the stalls, you bloody basterd.”

He packed an Irish wallop. I blinked water from my eyes and tried to see past the blur.

“She’ll be wantin’ the big brute,” Burke said to the soldiers.

They cut Vincent loose from the rest of us, but he was in no shape to fight, especially a losing battle. One got under each of his armpits and hoisted him up. They showed no outward signs of exertion. That took strength considering his size. Burke walked back over and addressed a twist in the alcove. Probably LaMent.

I could just make out her silhouette. She was lean, but that was all I could tell with her hair pulled up tight under a hat and scarf. She wore sunglasses even in the dark, but then a soldier stood on either side of her, so she didn’t have to worry about running into anything. She handed Burke a package, which he quickly opened and checked. He tipped the rim of his hat then vamoosed with the guards hauling Vincent away.

LaMent looked my way, and I saw again that strange sort of puzzlement she had shown in Liberty Tower when she wore the Mayan mask. I sensed … what? Some sort of recognition. I knew this woman, but I couldn’t tell from where. Her manner, bearing … it was familiar. She turned on her gams and was gone.

Our armed guards didn’t hover over us, so I felt safe to lean toward Lee. “How’s Sacha?” I whispered to Lee.

“He loopy, but better than Ilya.”

“Sacha? Sacha?” I whispered as loud as I could without attracting the guards. I got a slight moan as a reply. Lee, who was closer to Sacha, kicked him as best he could until he got a coherent reply.

“Wha—?”

“What happened? How’d you end up here?”

“Vadim … knew guy … named Burke.”

I thought back to what Vincent had said outside Chance City, that he knew a guy who knew a guy. I should have figured it was Burke. Everyone knew Burke.

“Vincent wanted in touch with the local Russian mob, only, as Burke said, there is no Russian mob. He sold you to LaMent instead.” Sacha nodded against my back. I kicked myself for not checking to see if there was a price on Vincent’s head. He’d been with Reece to the end. There was no telling what secrets the old man had passed on to him before his death. LaMent would want him dead, too.

“Sacha. What can you tell me about Alexander Bogdanov?”

“Wha—? Ilya. Ilya would—”

“Ilya’s dead. I’m pretty sure about it. He smells dead, at least. His chest wasn’t moving when we came in.”

“No,” Sacha whispered. “Ilya.”

Lee managed to get a reassuring hand on Sacha’s leg. “We mourn him later. For now, answer Glass.”

“Bogdanov?” Sacha went away from us mentally for a while, and I thought he might have passed out again. “Scientist. Specialized in blood.”

“Like vampire?” asked Lee.

Sacha laughed, but it cost him. He coughed and had to spit blood when he regained control. “Yes, like vampire, only for science. Believed he could extend life through blood transfusions. Even bring back dead.”

Lee and I gave a collective, “What?”

“His institute specialized in such research. He was given Lenin’s brain in hopes of restoring Communist party at roots. He failed.”

Lee, stunned, said, “Yes, if he succeeded, we hear about it by now.”

“However,” came the shattered voice of the physician, “he did prove he could extend life, make men more powerful through transfusions. Men in their fifties looked like they were thirty and were just as strong.”

I looked at our black army captors. These men had been strapped to those beds. Hundreds of beds, hundreds of soldiers. No—super soldiers, if what Sacha said was true.

He continued as a bit of his strength returned. “Bogdanov felt he could keep a man alive indefinitely in what he called stasis tubes. Constant supply of fresh blood, alpha waves to stimulate brain while inducing coma. Electrodes stimulated muscles to prevent—how you say? Atrophy? Government gave him all best technology. Even had those counting machines, what do you call?”

“Computers.”

“Da!”

It didn’t make sense. “When did Bogdanov die?”

“In 1928.”

I couldn’t believe that. Bogdanov had computers twenty years before anyone else? That meant …

“Ah, shit!”

“What?” asked Lee, but I had slipped up. A guard had heard my curse and came quickly over to me.

“No, wait!” Too late. I saw the butt of the rifle come down, and I went back into the dark.

* * *

It hadn’t seemed a big thing at the time, but as I recalled the scene in a dream, the planets aligned and it all made sense.

I was back at NMIT.

Tangie and I were on our way to the lab. We swung by Dean Amanda Orchid’s office to ask her if she wanted to walk with us to the lab. Orchid had Yousev in the office with her, but he waited nervously, as he often did, while she talked on the phone.

“I’m sorry, C.J. I can’t help you.… No, I won’t take it higher up.… We have everything in place.… Good—” She paused as a male voice spoke loudly through the earpiece. “Good-bye, C.J.!” She slammed down the phone. She was about to say something to Yousev but caught sight of us. “Oh. Tangie, Noel. How are things progressing this morning?”

“Fine,” I said. “How are things with you?”

Tangie echoed, “Yes, Dean Orchid, that sounded concerning.”

She looked down, away from us for the moment. When she straightened up, it was like the phone call had never happened. “No, no problems. Nothing the board can’t handle.”

I wrote the whole conversation off. I instead asked Yousev, “Are you coming to the test today?”

“No. I have to, to—”

“He has to get ready for a trip. We’re sending Professor Studanko to a conference in Russia.”

“The USSR? I didn’t think we even recognized them as a country yet. Didn’t the Bolsheviks steal power?”

“Ah, but Noel,” Amanda said with the air of her station, “science knows no political boundaries, nor nations.”

Tangie elbowed me. “Yes, Noel. Don’t you remember Goethe?” I remembered, but I let her refresh me.

“‘God could cause us considerable embarrassment by revealing all the secrets of nature to us; we should not know what to do for sheer apathy and boredom.’”

“And what does that have to do with Russia?”

“It means,” Amanda said as she joined us in the hall, “that God has chosen to reveal something to a research organization in Russia and we should see it as a sign to go investigate.”

I laughed. I was stuck between two women who loved science more than anything in the world. “Fine, you win! Does this organization have a name?”

“The Bogdanov Institute for Hematology and Blood Transfusions.”

Focused on radars, I could’ve cared less.

* * *

I woke at the sound of yelling. Men were running around and there was gunfire. I don’t know how long I’d been out, but I could feel the throbbing of a stock-shaped bruise on the side of my head.

“What’s going on?”

But before Lee or Sacha could answer, one of the side doors blew open and armed men stormed the warehouse to the shouts of “FBI! Drop your weapons!” One agent got to the big hangar door and rolled it up on its tracks. There must have been two dozen agents waiting to get in. The black army soldiers dropped their guns quickly. As I had suspected, these operatives were better suited for relief efforts than combat.

The lead agent strode over to us after making arrangements to hold the prisoners. He took out a knife from a belt holster and made quick work of our ropes. G-men must shop at the same department store; gray three-piece, fedora, holster under his armpit. I’d seen pictures of Eliot Ness in the papers, and this guy could be a ringer.

“Dr. Glass? I’m Agent Cartwright. Are you okay?”

I rubbed the side of my head. “Yeah, but these guys need attention.” I indicated the two Russian hostages. As I deduced, when they cut Ilya free, he fell forward into a lump. An agent bent down for a quick check of his pulse and shook his head. They flipped him over and I had to turn away. No man endures that sort of torture and lives. My guess is he never broke, even at the end.

Cartwright asked, “These are our two MVD agents?”

I nodded.

“Where’s the other one? The sleeper?”

“They took him. I have no idea where.” I watched federal agents as they performed their mop-up operation. I asked Cartwright, “How’d you find us? Wait!” I thought about their history and Al Capone. “You watch all racketeering in the United States.”

“Bingo! We have a wiretap on the grocery store owner’s phone. Got a tip from an outside source that the Russian mafia was taking an interest in Industry City.”

“I don’t suppose this tipster had an Irish brogue, did he?”

He smiled wider. “Now, Dr. Glass, I’m not at liberty to reveal our sources, but needless to say, this source has been useful in several operations. In fact, we’re also taking down Sully, the local Italian Mafioso tonight, based on the same source.”

Burke.

He sold me out because he knew I’d be rescued. He gets to start a new life with LaMent’s money and, by turning state’s evidence on Sully, there would be no one to come after him.

That little, red-headed ba—

My thoughts were interrupted by a field agent rushing forward.

“Sir?”

“Yeah?” Cartwright answered.

“We got a black army member to talk.”

That was quick!

“They loaded the sleeper agent on a private plane that just took off.”

That meant we were not that far behind the Technocrats, for once.

“Where to?”

“The soldier said Chicago.”

Chi-town. Home. I’d find LaMent where it all began for me. Only I had a pretty good guess who I’d find under those glasses, hat, and scarf.

* * *

“Amanda Orchid is Cecelia LaMent?”

I broke the news to my former NMIT peers first thing in the morning, after a shower and a fruitless attempt at sleep. Fred couldn’t believe it. He rubbed the top of his head while he tried to make sense of it all. No wonder he didn’t have hair—probably rubbed it all off.

Horatio found it easier to adjust. “Yes, yes. I can see it being so. This LaMent woman, as described, travels a lot and how many times has Rocky filled in for Amanda? Plus, from conversations we have had, I can now see she was trying to recruit me as well. Can you not also remember such conversations?”

“I suppose.” Fred gave in. “But to have done all this?” He waved his arm around the lab were they had been working on a counteragent for the exciter drug. “Does that mean she …?”

“Killed Yousev?” I nodded. “Yes, most likely. He knew too much, and if I got to him first, he wouldn’t have held up under interrogation. I’m guessing he helped design all the equipment the Technocrats are using to make their super army. His visit to Bogdanov’s institute and those computers above the stasis beds must have been his work.”

They ruminated on this. I hated to add insult to injury. I knew they had just found out their boss was the leader of an evil organization bent on world domination and all, but …

“Guys? I’m sorry, but the FBI is going to question you again. Your security clearances are revoked until then.”

“But—but …” Fred stuttered, again casting a glance around the room. “We have work to do!”

Horatio walked up to me and handed me his pass. “The sooner we get on with this, Fred, the sooner we will be getting back to the task. I know I am clean. How is your conscience?”

Fred was outraged. He marched behind Horatio, who winked at me as he passed by. We both knew the only way to get Fred to do something unwillingly was to challenge his ego. Fred’s ID card in my hand, I motioned them forward to the waiting guards. I tossed their clearances onto a bench. I had no doubt they would be cleared. Neither was any good at poker.

Archdeacon came in shortly after they left. I’d already been reamed for my escape, but since I’d given him two Russian agents and a hand full of T.I. soldiers, he stopped yelling after only twenty minutes. A record, I was sure.

“Wheels up in an hour, Glass. We’re going to Chicago.”

* * *

“He’s coming with me!” I shouted over the whirling of helicopter blades to the soldier blocking our path aboard. Lee and I were bent low, each with duffel bags.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Glass! But Mr. Lee has not been cleared for this operation! The background check came back inconclusive! There is still too much we don’t know!”

We had been allowed to stop by our tenement to pack a grip; our other bags were still somewhere in a T’laquepaque evidence room. For Lee, the homecoming had been hard. His wife hugged him then proceeded to chew him out. He cringed at every other word. Someone had retrieved Obasaan, Lee’s granny, and she kicked one of the guards in the shin to get by. She stared at me so intently, I had to avert my eyes. She asked for my hand and placed a black Go stone in it.

“Don’t forget.”

I told her I wouldn’t.

We were driven straight away to the airfield. A soldier had directed me on to a waiting helicopter but had stopped Lee. I stepped back to address the obvious SNAFU. “He’s coming with me or I’m not coming! Have I made myself clear?”

Archdeacon approached from behind, put a hand on each of our shoulders, and shouted, “What’s the holdup?”

“Sir! This man has not been—”

“Soldier, get these men on board. Time is of the essence. Orchid’s plane went off military radar over Iowa. There’s no telling where they landed.”

“Sir, yes, sir!”

“You’re not coming?” I asked the general.

“I’ll be coming with the president! Didn’t anyone tell you?”

“No! Why is the president going to Chicago?”

“Oktoberfest! Geez, Glass! Don’t you read the papers?”

From his back pocket he pulled a folded, crumpled section of the day’s newspaper and stuffed it in my duffel. He pushed Lee and me onboard then moved quickly away to allow the Piasecki H-25 mule to lift off. As the noise increased with the rotor’s spin, I strapped myself in and unfolded the fish wrapper, the Chicago Tribune.

Trumble Park Riots Continue, President Urges Tolerance

Ike to Attend Chicago’s First Un-segregated Oktoberfest

Local Blues Singer Merlot Sterling to Sing National Anthem.

Oh, man. That wasn’t good.