Carpathian (50 page)

“May I ask what is so humorous?” the general asked as he slowly placed his feet on the floor and sat up. He rubbed his burning eyes and then tried his best to focus on his old friend.

“You sleep like a big child, do you know that?”

“Anyone below the age of eighty is a child to you,” Shamni said as he tried again to focus. “Why are you here?”

“I wanted to tell you myself.”

“Oh, this is going to be good. If something were bad enough to take you away from your books to come all the way down here we must be at war or damn near it.”

The PM reached out and slapped the general on his knee. “It is good to see you can still be funny.” He lost his own smile. “Not war, but trouble is brewing in Romania.”

“You mean more trouble, don’t you?”

“Yes, more trouble. Our radical friends in the Knesset have been in contact with your Colonel Ben-Nevin. As far as your people know and mine, the bastard separatists have directed Ben-Nevin to make inroads to the owner of that cursed resort. This is a development that needs to be attended to.”

The general rubbed his hand over his face and then stood and walked over to the coffeepot. He slapped the radio operator on the shoulder and told him to excuse the PM and himself. The old man watched the commando leave and then watched as the general leaned over and turned up the volume on the long-range radio set that was being monitored.

“Going deaf, I’m afraid,” Shamni said as he smiled in embarrassment and then went and poured himself a cup of cold coffee.

“No word at all,” the PM asked as he turned in his chair to face Shamni.

“No, but that is expected. We won’t be contacted until the very end, when need outweighs common sense.”

“I am detecting quite a bit of animosity coming from you, old friend.”

“This should have been taken care of long before you and I took the seats we currently hold.” The general looked down at the cold coffee and made a face and then placed the cup on the desk he was sitting on. He looked at the silent radio and shook his head. He stood and walked to the window that looked into the hangar and the clean-looking lines of the Hercules C-130 as it sat waiting in alert status. “I don’t think the lives of one of those boys out there are worth one thing buried inside that damn mountain.”

“I agree, old friend, but send them into harm’s way is just what we will do. We cannot allow this discovery to give our radical friends the ammunition for separation from our neighbors, this has to end. If they get ahold of what’s there we will be fighting for a thousand more years, or until someone delivers a little atomic package on our doorstep.”

The general saw the worry in his friend’s face. The problems of the old world intruded on what they were trying to achieve in the region and they couldn’t have that. The beliefs of the tribes had mellowed over the years and now the extremists wanted the world to think that, indeed, they were the true chosen people. The PM and the general both knew that the old prejudices would begin anew if that mountain spilled out its secrets.

“If we don’t receive word by midnight tomorrow, we move with or without a signal from Patinas.”

The general nodded his head. “Will this never end?”

14

THE EDGE OF THE WORLD HOTEL AND RESORT CASINO

Sarah watched as the huge helicopter that had seen far better days as it touched down roughly on the lawn outside of the large pool area. Her eyes lingered a moment by the window and then she smiled as she recognized the brash—and broke—Las Vegas entertainer Drake Andrews as he stepped off the helicopter. It looked as if he were very irritated at everyone around him. She shook her head and then turned away from the window.

Sarah walked to the room’s dressing table and studied the experiment she had running. The tall glass of water sat motionless. Floating in the center of the glass was a golden aluminum candy wrapper shaped like a small cup. Attached to the floating foil was a small wire that Sarah had connected to her cell phone, which was open and broken into three distinct pieces on the table next to the glass. Next to the phone was what remained of the thermostat that controlled the temperature inside their room. The small vial of mercury sat in the bubble of the floating foil where Sarah had attached the leads from the cell phone. She concentrated on the digital readout on the screen. The application was for a musical tone graph used in many areas of downloading music for variance control and noise level.

“Well, Mr. Wizard?” Jack asked as he stepped out of the bathroom drying his hands on a towel.

Sarah held up her hand as she studied the makeshift seismograph she had constructed in place of her more expensive equipment accidentally absconded by the Romanian army. She shook her head as the numbers slowed down from their previous high.

“The movement has increased by point one since four o’clock.”

“I take it that’s bad?” he said as he tossed the towel onto a chair in the far corner. Jack then started putting on a button-down shirt as he stepped up to Sarah and watched her write down her current set of numbers.

“No, bad is the fact that I just saw Drake Edwards arrive and that means he’s the entertainment tomorrow night.” She looked up and smiled—Jack didn’t. “Okay, the readings are bad, but with no previous record to compare it to I have no way of knowing just how bad. But we have earth movement here and it’s due to the natural hot springs. We may not have a severe volcanic situation happening here but we do have a pressure buildup of some kind. I just wish I had the seismic history of the pass before I make any conclusions. I need Europa.”

“Well, you don’t have Europa or any more history than you already have, so I need a best guess from our resident geologist and I need it now. We have people up on that mountain and very little time to warn them if you think there’s trouble up there.”

Sarah bit her lower lip and turned her back on Jack. He shook his head and then reached out and zipped up the back of Sarah’s evening dress. They had received an invitation for dinner from the general manager as a thank-you for Ryan and Pete’s assistance the night before. They were to be joined by Dmitri Zallas’s partner, Janos Vajic. Jack figured they could try and get as much information as he could before he declared Zallas too hostile for him and Sarah to remain at the resort. Once her dress was zipped she turned and wrote down her final set of numbers.

“I just don’t know where this is headed, Jack. It could be just tremors we’re facing or it could be a disaster the size of Mount St. Helens. I really need to get into the Romanian Interior Ministry.”

“Believe me, we would like to get inside and find out how much cooperation Zallas really received from their interior minister. We give it tonight and then I figure it’s time we left the resort and find our people. I don’t think Zallas would try anything out in the open even with such a seedy guest list. But that doesn’t mean he won’t either. More than likely he would wait until after his nightclub opening tomorrow night, so if you don’t mind, short stuff, I would prefer not to be here for those festivities.”

Sarah slipped into a light satin shawl and then looked up at Jack, who was just sliding into a casual navy blue sport coat. His eyes found Sarah and he had to smile as he took her in. If this mission had taught Collins one thing it was the immutable fact that he loved the small woman standing in front of him like he had never loved anything in his life.

“Well, rock hound, would you like to go and show ourselves to the seedier side of the underworld and try to blend in? Let’s do what we came to do to and see if we can make a provenance claim on any antiquities there may be on the property. That would make our job of proving theft a lot simpler when we give the proof to Interpol. We may as well act like crooks after dinner and break into the big man’s office.”

Sarah laughed as she placed her arm around Collins.

“The strange thing is you seem to slide right into the category of crook rather seamlessly.”

“Yeah, I’m a regular Scarface.”

“More than you think, Colonel Darling.”

They were about to step out the door when Sarah froze and then her head perked up as she suddenly turned and ran for her notes on the table by the window. In her haste she bumped it and spilled the water that was still attached to her useless cell phone.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Jack asked as he took a quick look into the hallway and then eased the door closed.

“Jack, I’ve been looking at this thing from the wrong angle. The figure I’m seeing on earth movement is a constant and that is an impossibility. The power of an eruption or any sort of seismic event has to build up over a period of time. That’s why we get tremors and then suddenly the big one. But this, Jack,” she said as she reached for her notes and started jotting down a new formula, “this is too damn steady. It’s more like I’m calculating for a mud slide or something similar. It’s earth movement all right, but on a smaller scale. This is too localized, if it wasn’t close by we would have picked up on it all over the world from monitoring stations.”

“You have totally lost me.”

“Jack, this is like it’s man-made. It’s a constant and there are no constants in seismology.” Sarah ripped her notes free of the pad and then scanned them. “You’re right, Jack, we have to get into the office of Dmitri Zallas and while you look for your artifact thief I’ve got to get into the geology report on this resort.” Sarah stepped to the window and pulled back the multicolored drapes and looked up at the swirling blue and purple colors of Castle Dracula. “If the foundation of this building is shaking like this I need to know what’s happening up there. How in the hell was that thing built? Look, Jack, it clings to the side of the mountain like it’s glued on. I need to know how they set their anchor studs.”

“What are you saying? That the instability we’re feeling could be brought on by a shoddy geology workup?”

“The movement is less the further south we go on the property. It only stands to reason that the problem is north of our current location, and the only thing that has changed on this mountain in a few thousand years is—”

“The castle.”

“Right. We need to know if the construction up there has caused any environmental damage to the mountain it’s anchored to.”

“Sometimes you professors scare me. All you needed was a broken cell phone, a glass of water, and a few sheets of paper and you come up with this?” Jack said as he turned for the door.

“Yeah, now all I have to do is calculate how we find Carl and Charlie and warn everyone else about not to climb the mountain because it just may come tumbling down.”

Collins was silent as they stepped out into the hallway.

“What are you thinking?” Sarah asked as she linked her arm through Jack’s.

“I’m thinking we may have to get out of here in one hell of a hurry if this thing goes south on us. And that will entail finding Captain Everett, Alice, Niles, and the others, and we need Pete and Ryan for that.”

“Yeah, and just where in the hell are they?” Sarah asked as she nodded at a portly gentleman with a nineteen-year-old on his arm.

“Knowing Ryan’s work habits he’s probably lying by the pool.”

THE EDGE OF THE WORLD HOTEL AND RESORT CASINO, PATINAS, ROMANIA

It seemed to Pete Golding that he had picked up every species of burr and sticker known to nature in the Romanian region. By the time they were allowed through the very much heightened security by having their IDs checked against their reservation and their invitations, Pete was about to die for a bottle of calamine lotion.

As they walked up the long circular drive they were both grateful the sun had slipped beneath the mountains and their fruitless day of searching the lower elevations for Captain Everett and Charlie Ellenshaw had come to an end. The only thing they may have possibly confirmed was that they were more than likely up in Patinas where the colonel had suspected they would be.

“I am tired and worn out and I think I have a burr in my sock about the size of a baseball bat.” Pete limped along as the hotel grew closer.

“All I want is a beer and cheeseburger, and then nothing more than sleep,” Ryan countered.

As they approached the hotel’s entrance they spied the troublemakers from the night before, only this time they had grown in number. Ryan nudged Pete to the left and headed for the pool entrance around the side of the hotel. As they made the turn Jason pulled up and placed his back against the building and made Pete do the same.

“This isn’t doing anything to relieve my legs of these naturally formed torture devices I have embedded in my socks. I thought—”

“Doc, be quiet and listen,” Ryan hissed as he took a fast peek around the corner of the building. He counted eight men and as he did a ninth walked up with his two bodyguards. Dmitri Zallas stood speaking in hushed tones with the brutes from the casino. As Ryan strained to hear, his eyes widened when another man approached the group. He was smoking one of the Russian’s larger-than-life cigars and he seemed very interested in the conversation between the gathered men.

“Regardless, we will manage to get him here. We will seal off the basement and work from there.”

“If this man is taken so easily, why don’t you have your men do it?” one of the large Romanian men asked Zallas. It was the same brute that had been molesting the waitress that had started all of the trouble the previous night.

“The man will be hesitant and extremely untrusting around me and my people. He will not see you or your men coming. Just get him here and my people will handle it from there. I want this business finished before the grand opening of the castle tomorrow night.” Zallas reached into his coat pocket and brought out a thick envelope. “Here is your advance payment and ten thousand dollars’ worth of gaming chips. Make sure when he arrives tomorrow that it’s done quietly. I don’t need this man’s people learning what happened to him.”

The Romanian criminal placed the envelope in his coat pocket and then the brutes left. Ryan watched the group of eight miscreants walk away, leaving only Zallas and his guest, whom Ryan recognized immediately.