A Triple Thriller Fest (125 page)

“That’s called the counterweight,” she said. She was impressed with the sophistication of his thinking. “See all those guys cranking the wheel? They’re working and working to lift the weight. All the weight does is store energy. It’s kind of like a battery that way. When the weight falls, it puts all that energy into one second of force. That’s strong enough to throw the stone all the way to the walls. Do you understand?”

Nick nodded. “I think so.”

The men stepped away from the wheel. “Everybody down,” she ordered. Across the walls, men fell to their stomachs.

They lay like that for a minute, maybe two, before Tess heard the rope snap. She had to look. She lifted her head.

Damn. The stone caught a lucky gap in her defenses and bashed the wall just inches from one of her pillows. The wall shook and splinters of stones showered into the air. She grabbed Nick and shielded his face and head.

Tess looked over the edge. Kirkov had hit that spot before. She had to buffer that spot; too many more direct shots and he’d reduce the wall to rubble.

“He’s got one thing down,” Niels said. One by one, people cautiously lifted their heads and resumed work. “He’s found the weakest spot and is attacking it.”

“What about the gates?” Peter asked. “And the vaults?”

“They’re weak, but deceptively so,” Tess said. “I shut off the power and the climate control to the vaults. They try it, they’ll get a nice surprise. It’s the same with the gatehouse. We don’t have a moat, and the portcullis is still weak, but that spot beneath the gatehouse is a kill box and they know it.”

“Kind of like your pillows,” Peter said. “The first time I saw them I thought you were grasping at straws. What’s a pillow going to do against a hundred and fifty kilogram stone?”

“Still, none of that matters if they hit us hard enough. We feel strong up here, but they hit us hard enough and we’re going to crumble.”

And with that, the last piece of the puzzle abruptly fell into place. Tess stood and blinked and then grabbed Peter’s arm.

“I’ve got it,” she said. “I know what they’re doing and why.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“I know why they killed Borisenko, and why they’re trying to take the castle. And it explains why they don’t have rifles down there, sniping at us. They need to take some of us alive. Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the dungeon. To make Dmitri talk.”

#

Dmitri looked up blearily when Tess and Peter arrived. Bloodshot, baggy eyes, half-naked, shivering body: he looked twenty years older. She kept her expression cold, unfeeling. Maybe it would mask the absolutely shitty way she felt when she looked at him.

“It’s only been a couple of hours since I saw you last, but god, you look terrible.” It was a lie. She’d seen him that morning and it was now late afternoon. He’d have no way to know that.

She sent off Lars, who fled as if afraid he’d be the next in chains, then took a dipper and splashed Dmitri.

“No need to bother,” Dmitri said. “I’m awake at the moment. It comes and goes, you know. Mostly comes.”

Tess, Peter, and Dmitri said nothing for a long moment. Water dripped off Dmitri’s outstretched arms and plinked to the ground. He stood in a puddle; the end result of many such dousings.

“If you could just let me sleep for a few minutes,” Dmitri said. “What’s the harm in that?”

“Like last time? That was fun, right? Drift off for a few seconds and then get jolted awake.”

“Tess, for god’s sake, don’t do this to me.”

She said nothing, but gave Peter a sideways glance to remind him to keep his mouth shut. He looked anguished.

“Please?”

“What’s the net worth of this place, Peter?” Tess asked. “If you liquidated every penny of your rich friends in both camps, how much cash could you raise?”

“A hundred billion, maybe.”

It was a staggering sum, especially since she’d seen half those people sleeping in cold rooms, crapping in garderobes and covered in mud.

“That’s a hell of a lot of money. If you took all that money, what kind of damage could you do?”

“You could corner the market in gold,” he said. “Or you could bankrupt a small country. I know I said the global system is fragile, but trillions of dollars are sloshing around in there at any one time. A hundred billion is not enough to bring it down.”

“What about someone like Alexander Borisenko, the Russian Oil Minister? He’s got access to more money, doesn’t he?”

“That would be Anton Kirkov, now, but yes, some. Not a lot at any given time.”

She kept digging. “Who moves all that government money, then? If the government of China wants to buy a bunch of treasury bills, who makes that decision?”

“Varies from country to country. It’s extremely complex, although…” He stopped and thought for a moment. “What do you know of sovereign wealth funds?”

“You mean, like Norway’s oil money?”

“Right. They’ve saved all their oil wealth and put it into something like a huge mutual fund. It’s meant to keep the social system intact once the North Sea oil runs out. Norway’s is more transparent than most. There are trillions of dollars in these funds, and some of them are vulnerable to abuse.

“Isn’t that what Hao Chang does?” she asked.

“Right. He works for Temasek, which is a fund owned by the Singapore government. He could single-handedly move billions of dollars of assets.”

“And he’s with Kirkov right now, maybe working with him, maybe a prisoner.”

Peter spoke more quickly. “There are three others in the castle who do pretty much the same thing.” He glanced at Dmitri. “I’ll tell you later who they are, if it’s important. Together, they could move three hundred billion dollars, conservatively.”

“So they kill the people they don’t need and force the others to move their money around. Take these funds and throw in the hundred billion net worth you mentioned earlier. Would four hundred billion dollars be enough?”

“Maybe,” he said in a skeptical tone. “The most dangerous thing right now would be a run on the dollar. Everyone owns a mountain of US debt or assets in one form or another. But you drive it low enough and the central banks start to intervene. They can’t see all that wealth just vanish.” He shook his head. “My gut feeling is that the money isn’t enough. You’d need something else to give the system a shock. A major terrorist incident or something.”

“The answer is right in front of your nose,” Dmitri said.

They turned to him.

“You, especially, Peter, should see it. It’s in your family. It powers everything. You said it yourself.”

“You’re talking about turning off the oil,” Peter said. “Nobody could do that except maybe the Saudi royal family. And they’d never do it. It would be suicide. They need that money and the Americans would never stand for it.”

“You’re forgetting the world’s number two oil exporter,” Dmitri said. “The Russians. And Anton Kirkov.”

“How do you mean?” Tess asked.

“Borisenko is dead. Kirkov is his number two. He got his finger on the Russian oil spigot to Europe.”

“The Russian Oil Minister is powerful,” Peter said, “but he’s not Joseph Stalin. He could shut it down for about fifteen minutes before the Federal government intervened.”

“Sure, if he were just going to shut down a few computers,” Dmitri said. “The Druzhba Pipeline is four thousand kilometers long. Knock open a few holes, take out a few pumping stations and it would be down a lot longer than fifteen minutes. Try six months, a year.”

“That’s about a million and a half barrels a day,” Peter said. His voice was barely a whisper.

“What’s that as a percent of global use?” Tess said.

“What’s two liters of water as a percent of your body weight?” Peter asked. “Take it out and you die. Oil supplies are balanced on a knife’s edge.”

“And there’s one sovereign wealth fund you missed,” Dmitri said. “Yekatarina has infiltrated the Stabilization Fund of the Russian Federation. The instant the pipeline explodes, she moves tens of billions of dollar-denominated assets into oil.”

“Then what?” Tess urged.

“We pile it on. We buy gold, we set an Saudi oil field on fire. We attack the dollar from every direction. Like a sinking ship, the dollar will create a downdraft that brings in hundreds of billions in panic sells, and shuts down half a dozen stock exchanges. A few faked terrorist incidents and false reports of chaos and the whole thing comes down. No more financial system. No more transportation. The world has about three weeks of food supplies at any given time before it’s in trouble. Enter the Black Horse.”

“My god, Dmitri,” Tess said. “This so-called Black Horse is the greatest slaughter in human history. It’s the next Dark Ages.”

“They set everything in motion already. Bombing the pipeline, attacking the financial system. The only thing left is to take the castle, kill the useless people and capture everyone else.”

“Maybe it’s inevitable,” Peter said. “These guys are just bringing it on a little bit early.”

“It’s not inevitable, you ass,” Tess said.

“But how did Kirkov and Yekatarina turn so many people?” Peter asked. “That’s the part that confuses me. Most of those guys were friends of mine.”

“What? That’s the easy part,” she said. “You gave them a fertile field and then you planted the seed. That’s right. You hand-picked men and women who already thought the world was coming to an end. You convinced half of them yourself. The rest are just mercenaries, ex-Blackwater contractors, soldiers of fortune, the like. Kirkov probably threw some money at them and threatened them at the same time and they all turned.”

Lars climbed down the stairs. He avoided looking at Dmitri.

“We’ve got it, now,” Tess said.

“What did he say?” Lars asked.

“That your dreams are about to come true. We’ll see how much of Eric Bloodaxe is still in you. There will be plenty for Vikings to do, if Dmitri’s friends get their wish.”

Peter looked thoughtful, but Lars’s expression grew even more glum. It sucked to be disabused of your fantasies, she supposed.

“Let Dmitri down,” Tess said.

“Are you sure?” Peter asked.

“Look at him. I can’t stand it anymore.”

“What are you going to do?” Lars asked. “You’re not going to—?”

“No, I’m not going to kill him. Don’t you know me better than that? I’m going to get him down from there and let him sleep.”

Dmitri let out a sob. His whole body slumped forward. Tess went to the wheel and relaxed the chains. He collapsed toward the floor. She had Peter bring over the chair and then she helped Dmitri sit down.

“You were so sure of yourself,” she told him. “Arrogant. A few days of lost sleep and look at you.”

He trembled all over. “Just let me lie down. Please.”

“Find a good, secure room,” she said to Lars. “Not this dank pit. We’ll need it anyway. It’s the only way in and out of the garage. Let him sleep a couple of hours, then give him food and water and a hot bath. Assuming we’re still alive then.”

Dmitri couldn’t climb the stairs without Lars practically carrying him up. Tess looked around the room and settled on the bench where she’d left the torture devices, just to remind Dmitri. She swept it all onto the floor with a cry.

“Clear out this room. Melt this stuff down burn it, or whatever.”

“So that’s it?” Peter asked. “Are you sure he told you everything?”

“He told us enough.” She took a deep breath, then a second and a third. When she spoke again, she’d regained control. “The bit about taking people captive we can use. And we know we can’t just hole up and wait out the siege, and hope someone rescues us. The world is going to have bigger troubles than us in a couple of days. But we can use that, too. I’ve got to find Niels.”

“What are you thinking?”

“It’s simple. They need to attack the castle. We need to let them in.”

Chapter Thirty-seven:

Jim Grossman got up at five in the morning on November 30
th
 to watch the Weather Channel. He’d made his first delivery to King’s Island with little trouble, but there was another storm on its way. This time of year the cold air from the north warred with warmer southern air and the transitions meant lots of wind. The Weather Channel predicted sixty to seventy mile gusts that evening.

There was almost no traffic on the lake this late; even the Coast Guard had slashed its patrols. Jim would be in serious trouble if the sailboat went down. And the cargo this time was heavier than a few men; he’d be riding low in the water.

His wife came downstairs in her nightgown. He flipped the channel to ESPN, feeling as guilty as if she’d just caught him watching porn on pay-per-view.

“Jim? Something wrong?”

“No, nothing is wrong, just couldn’t sleep is all.”

Barbara opened her mouth to say something, but the phone rang. They both started. She answered the phone, then handed it over with a frown.

He took the phone and covered the mouthpiece. “Who is it?”

“Some guy with a foreign accent. Sounds like a long-distance call. Really long distance.”

“Jim speaking.”

“It’s Black Horse,” the man said on the other end.

“No, no,” Jim said. “No problem. This is Eastern Time Zone, not California.” He realized as he said it that California would be even earlier in the day than Vermont, so that didn’t make any sense.”

Jim’s wife watched with a curious expression, so he told her, “It’s about the new radar. A technician from Sweden. Better take it in the garage so I can hear better.”

“Did you see the weather?” Jim asked once he’d shut the garage door behind him. “You want to wait a couple of days?”

There was a delay before Kirkov’s reply came. “No, I didn’t see the weather. What’s happening?”

He told Kirkov about the heavy wind tonight, followed by the sleet. Hell of a time to be sailing on the lake.

Another delay, and Jim thought for a moment he’d lost the connection. “No, you’ve got to come tonight,” Kirkov said.

“I know where it is, but that’s not the problem. I can’t sail in this weather. That’s what gets guys killed. It should clear up in a day or to and I—”