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“Telesh.” Maddock wheeled around, groping for the SIG with his left hand, but before he could grasp it, the voice called out again.
“That is very bad idea, Mr. Maddock. I am not alone. I would prefer not to stain Helen’s Charm with any more blood, but I will if I must.”
Maddock left the pistol where it was.
“Very good,” Telesh said. “Stay right where you are. I am coming out now.”
It was not Sergei Yukovitch Telesh that stepped through the doorway however, but another familiar figure—a hulking figure with dull eyes and an ugly bruise that darkened his face like a mask. Tweedledum.
Tweedledee was right behind him, but they were only the vanguard. Six more men, along with one woman—the alluring Nadia—strode in behind the pair, every single one of them armed with a pistol. Maddock recognized a couple of the men from the group that had chased him and Leopov—
Zara! I’m sorry!
—through Moscow. The others were strangers to him. They spread out across the breadth of the hall, forming a picket line even more impenetrable than Müller’s paramilitaries. Only then did Telesh appear, with one more man following behind him like a loyal pet.
“Petrov,” Maddock said.
“Oleg?” Lia cried out in dismay. “How can you be here? I thought you were...” She trailed off as realization dawned. “You are working with this gangster? How could you?”
“I think Nadia there might have had something to do with it,” Maddock muttered.
Petrov ducked his head in evident embarrassment, all but confirming Maddock’s supposition.
Bones shrugged. “Well, she’s smoking hot. Can you blame him?”
“Nadia certainly provided an enticement,” Telesh said, stepping forward. “But Oleg Ivanovitch was only trying to save his own skin. I almost had him killed after he tried to warn you, Lia. I am glad now that I spared him. I could not have found this place without his help.”
Maddock shook his head, bewildered. “He only knew we were going to Argentina.”
“True, but that was enough. Agents of the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki picked up your trail as soon as you arrived, and followed you when you left.”
“The Foreign Intelligence Service,” Lia said, translating almost automatically. “You are working with SVR? I thought you were Bratva? A criminal.”
“Like there’s a difference,” Bones put in.
Telesh laughed. “Are you making joke, or are you just hypocrite. Most powerful man in your intelligence service was escaped Nazi. Oh, yes. I heard everything.” He shrugged. “I am pleased he’s dead. You deserve medal for killing him.”
Bones wagged his head. “When a Russian gangster calls you a hero...”
Telesh’s eyes narrowed into cruel slits. “There is that word again. Gangster. Why don’t you ask Mr. Maddock what happened the last time someone called me ‘gangster’?” He flicked a meaningful look at Lia. “Gangster is word weak men use to insult powerful men. But I do not think very many people will call me gangster now.” He looked past them to the flag hanging over the dais, and started toward it. “They will worship me.”
As if anticipating some act of desperate defiance, Nadia took a step toward Maddock and the others, brandishing her pistol. “Don’t move. One move and you die. All of you.”
Maddock clenched his fists—or tried to. His right managed only a pathetic curl. “You’re just going to kill us anyway.”
“Might as well go out in a blaze of glory,” Bones said in a low voice.
Willis seconded the suggestion. “I’m down.”
“He doesn’t want to kill you,” Petrov squeaked. “All he wants is Helen’s Charm. Let him have it, and he’ll let us go.”
“Us?” Maddock retorted. “You’re not part of us anymore, Petrov.”
Telesh stopped, glanced back. “You don’t want him?” He shrugged. “Well I don’t need him anymore. Nadia.”
Nadia immediately turned her gun on Petrov.
“Wait!” Maddock shouted. As pissed off at Petrov as he was, he couldn’t bear to see anyone else gunned down in cold blood. Nadia shot a glance at Telesh. When the gangster merely shrugged again, she lowered her weapon and then gestured for Petrov to join Maddock and the others.
When he reached them, Petrov seemed to be on the verge of tears. “Forgive me, Lia. I had no choice. He said that if I helped him, he would let all of you live.”
Bones rolled his eyes. “And if you shove essential oils up your butt, you can cure cancer.”
“Man, is this really the time?” Willis mumbled.
“There’s never a bad time for calling out stupidity.”
Willis flashed a puzzled frown. “Do you stick the whole bottle up there?”
“Petrov is right,” Telesh said loudly, resuming his trek up to the dais. “I could have you all killed, but that would be very...” He stopped abruptly, his eyes coming to rest on Leopov’s unmoving form. He frowned and then stepped around her. “Very messy. One of you might survive long enough to do something desperate. What did the big Red Indian say? ‘Blaze of glory,’ da? Maybe hurt me or one of my associates. Maybe damage Helen’s Charm. I don’t want that. All I want is the flag.”
Maddock and the others watched, impotently, as Telesh stepped up onto the dais and moved to the rear wall where he reached up and removed the flag’s staff from its wall mount. The Blutfahne must have been heavier than it looked because it dipped suddenly, the wooden pole twisting out of Telesh’s grip, and fell to the floor, completely covering Müller’s corpse. Maddock wondered why he hadn’t just asked one of the Tweedles to get it for him, but then realized that the Russian probably didn’t trust anyone else with the power of Helen’s Charm.
Telesh gave a disapproving grunt, but promptly knelt and began patiently sliding the flag’s sewn sleeve down the length of the staff. With this task completed, he haphazardly folded the flag, then tucked it under his arm and started back down the hall. When he reached Nadia’s side, he turned and faced Maddock again.
“I know what you are thinking,” he said. “Now that I have Helen’s Charm, I will kill you anyway.”
“The thought crossed my mind,” Maddock admitted, though in truth, knowing what the Blutfahne could do—what it could make others do—a quick death was not the worst possible outcome. “I know how you feel about tying up those loose ends.”
Telesh smiled. “You are worth far more to me alive. Do you want to know why? I want you to tell what happened here. All of it.”
“Seriously?” Bones asked, without a trace of sarcasm. “Have you got a death wish or something?”
Telesh laughed. “What do I have to fear? I did not shelter a war criminal for nearly six decades.”
Now Maddock understood. “That’s what you really want. For us to tell the world about Müller and his shadow army, and how the CIA colluded with former Nazis.”
“And why not? It’s all true. You call me gangster. America is gangster nation. And when the world finally learns truth about it, it will be end of American hegemony. The NATO alliance will fall apart, and when it does, I will lead a glorious new Russian empire into the Twenty-first Century. With this.” He thrust the bundled flag at them.
“What makes you think we’ll talk? Or that anyone will listen to us?”
“I know you will try. You are a white knight.”
Maddock recalled Jimmy’s comment about sunlight being the best disinfectant. While he agreed in principle, the thought of being responsible for exposing a scandal that might completely upset the global balance of power gave him pause. But that was tomorrow’s problem. The only thing that mattered right now was destroying the Blutfahne, or at the very least, keeping Telesh from taking it out of the country.
Okay, so he doesn’t want to kill us, he thought. I can work with that.
There were four perfectly good MP5s scattered about the room, and one of the dead paramilitaries had the bag with their personal weapons in it.
Telesh must have read his mind. “One thing. Since I can’t very well have you following me, I had my men wire the house upstairs with explosives. Semtex. Wired into the house’s alarm system.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “SVR is very good at getting alarm codes. If you try to follow, house will blow up.” He made a little explosion with his fingers.
Maddock glanced over at Petrov.
The historian, correctly interpreting the unasked question, nodded. “I saw them wiring blocks of plastique all over house.”
“Someone will come save you eventually,” Telesh said. “By then, we will be far, far away from here.”
And then, as if that was the final word on the subject, the gangster turned and headed for the exit. The rest of the Russians backed away, keeping their weapons leveled at the group as they, one by one, slipped through the doors. Nadia was the last to leave, and before she went, offered a final warning.
“You will stay put if you know what’s good for you.”
“What’s your hurry, babe?” Bones said. “Why don’t you hang around a bit, get to know me. I know Maddock can be kind of a stiff, but I dig Russian chicks.”
She gave him a disgusted look and muttered something under her breath—it wasn’t do svidanya—and then she too was gone.
Maddock turned to the others. “You think he really plans to let us walk out of here?”
Bones shook his head. “I wouldn’t bet on it.”
“I don’t understand,” Petrov said, looking puzzled. “You heard what he said. He wants you to tell the world about all this.”
“I’m sure he does,” Maddock said. “But he also knows that we’re going to do everything we can to stop him, first. And we are.”
“But the bombs—”
“Are probably going to detonate as soon as they get clear of the house. Even if we aren’t killed in the blast, it will take days to sift through the rubble, giving Telesh all the time he needs to get out of the country. We need to find another way out of here.”
“The tram?” Bones suggested.
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Maddock replied. “Go see if you can get it running. If not, we’ll have to walk.”
“You realize it probably comes out in some deep dark basement at the CIA,” Bones went on. “They aren’t exactly going to be pleased to see us. Especially when they find out what happened here.”
“I’m hoping that not everyone in the CIA is a secret Nazi. Either way, I suspect they’ll want to know about Telesh.”
“Fair enough,” Bones said, and started for the exit. The others followed, but Maddock turned and headed back to Leopov.
He knelt beside her and gently pulled her eyelids down. He considered trying to brush away the blood, but knew it would probably only make it look even worse. But for that and the hole between her eyes, he thought it might be possible to believe she was merely asleep.
Swallowing down the lump of emotion in his throat, he whispered, “I’m sorry.”
And he was. Not just for getting her killed, but for all the times he had doubted her, questioned her loyalty... Refused what she had willingly offered.
That was the worst thing about losing someone. Not just that they were gone, but all the things forever left unsaid.
He slid his left arm under her legs, and tried to reach under her shoulders with his right, but his injured arm could not bear her weight.
“Damn it,” he whispered, angrily.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. Bones.
“Let me.” The big man’s voice was uncharacteristically soft.
Maddock swallowed again, nodded, and moved aside to let Bones bear her in his arms.
The tram was electrically powered and proved simple enough to operate. It had just two settings—forward and reverse—and a maximum acceleration that felt about like a jogging pace. The two-way train had bright headlights to illuminate the journey through the tunnel, which was round and smooth, like the inside of a giant concrete pipe, save for the bed of gravel upon which the tracks rested. A third rail situated between the other two was intermittently marked with yellow signs displaying red lightning bolts and the words: “Danger—High Voltage.” If Maddock’s mental map was accurate, the CIA complex was less than half a mile away—a distance they could cover in about three or four minutes.
Ninety seconds into the journey, the lights went out and all motion abruptly ceased.
Maddock instantly knew what this signified. “Everybody down!”
A moment later, a hot wind blew up the tunnel from behind them, followed immediately by a deafening concussion and a vibration like a magnitude seven earthquake. It felt to Maddock like the detonation had completely destroyed the house and dropped the rubble entirely into the hidden sublevel.
There was no rolling wall of fire like in movies, but the tunnel conducted the resulting overpressure wave like the barrel of a cannon, and when it hit them, it was like being shot out of one. The little tram was bucked off its rails, and caromed back and forth along the tunnel walls until the force of the wave passed. By some miracle, the cars remained upright, though in the darkness, it was hard to tell which way was up. The scorching heat lasted only a moment, but the wind continued for several seconds thereafter, bearing with it a noxious dust cloud. Maddock covered his mouth and nose with a sleeve and took shallow breaths until the worst of it was past.
“Everyone okay?”
A chorus of voices answered back, and then a light flashed on—Bones’ penlight—revealing air that was thick with dust. The beam swept back and forth, illuminating all five of the tram’s passengers, confirming that no major injuries had been sustained. Petrov wore a chagrinned expression.
“You were right,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper.
“We usually are,” Bones agreed.
“If we had stayed there...”
“Yup.”
They left the useless tram behind and continued up the tunnel, Bones still bearing Leopov in his arms. After about five minutes of walking they reached an open area that was a mirror image of the loading area they had left behind. Beyond the arched entrance was a long, narrow rectangular room with a pair of silver doors—presumably leading to an elevator—in the wall opposite the arch, and another regular wooden door on the side wall to the left, a good hundred feet or so distant. The elevator doors looked as if someone had tried to kick them in—blast damage. Bypassing them, Maddock went to the wooden door and tried the lever handle. It opened, revealing a cramped, and to all appearances, seldom used skeletal metal stairway that ascended two flights to a landing. One more flight continued up from there, but the steps rose up to ceiling level and stopped. There was a sturdy looking metal box with a hand crank protruding from it, mounted to the wall to the right of this final staircase.
Maddock tried rolling the crank. It turned counter-clockwise with little effort, so he kept going in that direction several more turns. He could hear a rattling sound behind the wall, like a bicycle chain turning on a sprocket. After about ten rotations, he glimpsed movement above, and looked up to see that the ceiling had risen a few inches, swinging away on concealed hinges. Faint light was visible through the widening crack.
“I think we found our way out,” he announced to the others, and then redoubled his efforts.
It took a couple minutes, but the trap door finally rose up high enough for them to continue up the stairs. As he ascended, Maddock noted that the barrier consisted of a six-inch thickness of concrete bordered by a metal frame, but it was only when he got above it that he realized that the whole affair was actually a section of sidewalk.
They emerged into a well-lit courtyard, that looked to be a little smaller than a football field, surrounded on all sides by modern-looking structures of glass and concrete. The area was dominated by a large half-circle of lawn. The rest of the courtyard, including the spot where the trap door had opened, was paved with concrete. Café tables were placed along the sidewalk and trees sprouted through here and there.
At the far corner of the concrete arc, about a hundred and fifty feet away and lit up with spotlights was a curious structure. It was a curved, green-tinted screen, about eight feet high, perforated with irregular shapes that weren’t quite discernible at a distance, but which Maddock knew were letters—eight hundred and sixty-five letters, along with four question marks.
It was the Kryptos sculpture, created by artist Jim Sanborn with the help of a since-retired CIA cryptographer, and it contained a four-part encrypted message that, in the nearly ten years since its dedication, had not been completely solved, despite the best efforts of code-breakers both in the government and the civilian world. Maddock, who was a fan of puzzles and unsolved mysteries, had read about the sculpture and its seemingly uncrackable code, but had never seen it up close, mostly because, as it was situated smack in the middle of the George Bush Center for Intelligence, it was off-limits to the public.
“Well, that answers that,” he murmured. “Definitely CIA headquarters.”
Spotlights suddenly flashed on all around the perimeter of the courtyard, transfixing them in blinding light, to the accompaniment of shouted commands to “Freeze!” and “Put your hands up.”
Bones shook his head. “Like there was ever any doubt.”