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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Eden's Gate
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Something was going on that the officer could not understand.
First the cable winching up the submersible had gone slack, and now this. An accident?
A second air bubble broke the surface and a minute later the body of the second diver appeared a few feet from the first. It wasn't an accident. It was a trap.
The officer spun around as he yanked out his pistol. “
Bastardo!
” He fired a shot that ricocheted off a bollard as Riggiro ducked behind the winch.
The other men took up defensive postures and held their weapons at the ready, but they didn't know what was going on, or who they were supposed to shoot. The two divers were dead and one of their officers had apparently gone loco.
“Miquel,” the second officer shouted as he raced down from the bridge. “We must go. Now!”
The cutter's whistle shrieked, the noise rattling the glass in the
Deep Sound'
s bridge windows, but before the officer on deck could react, a deeper, mind-numbing roar blotted out every other sound.
He looked up as a pair of F-14/D U.S. Navy Tomcat fighters came thundering in very low from the north, Phoenix and Sidewinder missiles attached to their wing racks.
When the jets started their inbound turn two miles out, the Cuban warship's whistle sounded the recall again. All of the
Deep Sound'
s crew and scientists had ducked out of sight, and in the water the divers' bodies were being recovered.
“
Bastardos
,” the officer muttered, holstering his pistol. He headed with his men for the boarding ladder.
 
When the Cuban warship left, Lane swam over to where the tether had been lowered into the water. Susan edged the
Sounder
slowly into position and he attached the big hook and comms cable. Moments later the submersible started up and he rode on top with it, acutely aware that he had killed two men and that it was another thing he would have to live with for the rest of his life.
 
The sun was setting and the
Deep Sound
was heading back to the institute on Key Vaca. The
Sounder
was attached to her cradle on deck and the helicopter was secured on the pad.
They were gathered around a big tank of fresh water on deck in which the metal box Lane had pulled from the wreck had been placed.
Susan Hartley kept glancing at Lane as one of the technicians used an underwater saw to cut the seal holding the lid. “I couldn't believe what I was seeing,” she said.
“They would have killed both of us.”
“How do you know?” she demanded, her voice low so that the others couldn't hear her over the noise of the saw.
“I just know,” Lane said. “But I'm sorry that you had to see it. If this were a perfect world, things like that would never happen. But this is not a perfect world.”
“No, it isn't,” she said, looking away.
The technician set the saw down and carefully eased the box open with a small pry bar. One of the others took the lid from him and set it aside.
“Rocks,” the tech said. He took one of them out of the box and pulled it out of the water for them to see. It was about the size of a grapefruit, but flattened, its edges smooth and rounded. “Granite, maybe. River rock, I'd guess, though I'm not a geologist.” He shook his head. “One thing's for sure, Mr. Lane, these sure aren't diamonds.” He looked back at the box. “And another thing I'd be willing to bet money on. This box is no more than a couple of years old. It sure as hell wasn't lying around underwater for very long.”
“A decoy?” Riggiro asked.
“Looks like it,” Lane said. “The problem is, what was the Cuban navy doing out here?”
 
“Legitimizing your search,” Tom Hughes said on the phone ten minutes later.
“That's what Tony thinks, and I have to agree with both of you,” Lane said. “Send somebody out to Kalispell to take a quick look at Speyer's ranch. If he's still there, watch him to see what he does.”
“How about if he's already packed his bags and headed for the hills?”
“If there's nobody out there, it might be worth our while to take a quick look around. They might have left something behind. Check with Linda Boulton, the Bureau's SAC at Helena. She might be able to lend a hand.”
“When are you coming home?”
“We should be back to the institute sometime in the morning.”
“I'll send a jet to pick you up.”
“Good. Now let me talk to Frannie.”
“She and Moira are out shopping for baby clothes,” Hughes said, obviously delighted. “Welcome to the club, papa.”
Helmut Speyer decided as he was placing the last of his confidential papers into his attaché case that he would miss the serenity of this place after all.
Gloria was already down at the airstrip aboard the Gulfstream ready to leave, and there was no one else left in the compound. He took a moment to step out of his study onto the second floor veranda and drink the last of his wine. The mountains were beautiful at this time of the afternoon.
He smiled. The operation was proceeding exactly according to his plans. The only glitch was the stupid research ship stumbling onto the
Maria
. His military contact in Havana had assured him that the scientists would never get near the wreck, but even that was of no real consequence, because there was nothing aboard, except for a few bodies. And there were no witnesses.
Baumann parked the jeep in the driveway, spotted Speyer on the balcony and came up. He'd left with the ADM truck earlier today.
“They got clear without notice?” Speyer asked, stepping back into his study.
“Yes, sir. I followed them all the way down to Interstate Ninety, and watched them head east. There was no trouble whatsoever.”
Speyer closed and locked the sliding door, finished his wine, and set his glass on the side table. “Excellent, and is everyone else gone?”
“It's just us, Herr
Kapitän
.”
“A search has been made for anything that might … hinder our plans if found?”
Baumann nodded. “All that is left are legitimate business documents.”
“What about the confidence course and firing range? Have they been cleaned up and converted?”
“Yes, sir. We have been fond of four-wheeling and of running dirt bikes.”
“The barracks?”
“It takes a large staff to run a ranch this big.”
Speyer locked his attaché case and got his jacket from the arm of the couch. “What about Browne's car?”
“The explosives and weapons have been disposed of, and we dug a trench with the backhoe and buried the entire vehicle to the west of the orchard. Someone might find it if they look hard enough. But it would take a lot of time.”
Speyer looked around his study. “For all practical purposes by the time someone does come out here to snoop around, all they will find is what we want them to find. We're obviously away on vacation. But it'll be just as obvious that we intend to return.”
“I hope they hold their breath waiting,” Baumann made a little joke.
Speyer clapped him on the shoulder. “You have done well, Ernst. Military commanders from Sparta to Berlin understood that the men keeping their armies together were their sergeants. It is no different in my little army.”
“Thank you, sir,” Baumann said. “But there is the other problem we discussed.”
“Konrad will clean up any lingering problems. That's what friends are for,” Speyer made his own little joke.
“No, sir, I meant the woman. The glider pilot who landed here. We received a possible identification this morning. I didn't get a chance to tell you before I left with the truck.”
Speyer looked at him with some interest. Although she'd probably been the woman in the lobby of the Grand Hotel on the morning of the shooting, they had found no evidence that their perimeter had been breached the afternoon of her landing. “Who is she?”
“Her name might be Frances Shipley. Our contact in the Bureau fingerprint section was a little vague because we managed to get only a partial print off the glider canopy while she was here at the house. But if he got that right, then she worked for British Intelligence until last year.”
This news was totally unexpected and it took Speyer momentarily
aback. “Whatever she came looking for, she couldn't have found it. She wasn't here long enough. Was there any connection between her and Browne?”
“None that we can come up with so far.”
“She might have been working for the Germans,” Speyer said. “No matter, though. In ten minutes we'll be gone from here forever. And by next week, perhaps sooner, we'll be completely out of their reach.”
It was 2:00 A.M. when the Gulfstream touched down at La Guardia Airport. They'd managed to get a few hours sleep on the flight, and even Gloria, who had stayed off the booze, managed to nod off. This would be the last flight in or out for the night.
“You know what to do for us in Washington,” Speyer told his wife. “I'll join you and the others sometime tomorrow.”
“Do you want me to send the plane back for you?” she asked. She was like an actress playing an earnest part in a bad movie.
“Send it to Miami. If anybody is looking for us, that'll throw them off in the wrong direction.”
“What about the crew?”
“Ted knows what to do,” Speyer said. “Don't worry about that part. Your job is to make sure that the safe house is ready for us.”
She reached up and touched his lips with her fingertips. “We're almost finished with this, aren't we, darling?”
“Soon.”
“All this running around and uncertainty is very hard on my nerves. I don't know how much longer I can stand it. We need a little fun in our lives again, like the old days in Hollywood.”
Speyer smiled although he didn't mean it. He'd had just about enough of her to last a lifetime. “It's only a matter of a few days now,
Liebchen
, you'll see.”
Baumann came to the door of the plane. “I have the car,” he said.
“You shouldn't run into any trouble. Just stay put,” Speyer told his wife.
“Anything could happen—”
“Do as I say.”
 
The Japanese cargo vessel
Akai Maru
was tied up to the Brooklyn docks below Red Hook. Speyer and Baumann arrived in the rental Mercedes E320 a little before 3:00 A.M., the deadest hour for traffic
in the entire five boroughs. They parked just outside the security gate. Speyer called the ship's captain, Shintaro Kato.
“You are on time, Mr. Speyer,” the captain said. He'd been waiting for the call. “Do you have the remainder of the money?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. In five minutes you may proceed through the gate onto the dock. My first officer and I will meet you in front of the warehouse directly across from my ship. It is thirty-seven B.”
“What about customs?”
“The package has already been cleared. Be there in five minutes.” The captain hung up.
“All he wants is his money and we'll get it,” Speyer told Baumann.
“I don't trust the bastard.”
Speyer chuckled. “You don't trust anybody. The good captain neither knows nor cares what's inside the box. He's just interested in getting paid.”
Baumann started to object, but Speyer held him off.
“If Kato had wanted to double-cross us, he could have taken our money when he picked us up after the
Maria
went down, killed us and let our bodies go down with the captain's gig instead of taking us to Miami. The only reason he took a chance bringing the box here to New York and clearing it through customs was for the second half of his money. He's not going to do anything to jeopardize his position now.”
Baumann held his silence. He was glum.
“The next twenty-four hours will be the most difficult. After that we'll really be on our way.”
 
The security guard raised the barrier to let them through without asking to see their passes. Baumann drove down the lane between warehouses, across three sets of railroad tracks, beneath the legs of a gigantic crane, and onto the docks. There were a lot of lights and activity at a couple of ships farther up the quay, but here the night was quiet. The
Akai Maru
had already been unloaded, and was waiting for clearance before leaving.
The service doors to warehouse 37B were slightly ajar. Baumann parked the Mercedes in the deeper shadows on the south side of the big building and they went the rest of the way on foot.
“Did you bring a weapon?” Speyer asked.
“Naturally.”
“Good. But don't even think about using it except as a last resort. All Kato wants is the money.” Speyer raised the small leather bag he carried. It contained one hundred thousand dollars in one hundred dollar bills.
“If he sticks with the plan, he'll get no trouble,” Baumann said menacingly. “If not, I'll kill him.”
The captain and first mate were waiting for them in the darkness just inside the service doors. Kato was typical of many Japanese, short and slightly built. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and was dressed all in black. His mate was huge, built like a sumo wrestler, with a permanent scowl etched on his broad features. He, too, was dressed in black.
“Where is it?” Speyer demanded.
“Inside,” Kato said. “Did you bring the money?”
Speyer held up the leather bag. Kato reached for it, but Speyer pulled it back. “Let me see the package first. An even trade.”
The first officer, whose name they never learned, looked as if he was ready to tear them apart. Baumann was to the left of Speyer and half a step back. He would have only a moment to draw his gun and fire if the big Japanese started to make a move.
But Kato smiled. “Of course. It is business,” he said. “Just this way, gentlemen.”
They followed him and the mate into the dimly lit warehouse. Crates and pallets of boxes and what looked like machinery were stacked in long rows, sometimes all the way up to the rafters twenty-five feet overhead. One corner of the warehouse was screened off from the rest as a bonded holding area, secured by a heavy mesh door that was padlocked. Inside they could see crates and boxes marked with the brand names and logos of expensive products; Her-mès, Cristal, Baccarat, Louis Vuitton.
Captain Kato unlocked the door and the mate stepped inside and brought out an olive drab duffel bag stamped U.S. ARMY. A customs clearance tag was attached to it. He set it on the floor, opened it and pulled the bag down around the metal box with the skull and crossbones and the single German word VORSICHT!
“This is what I believe you want returned to you,” Captain Kato said.
“Yes, and this is yours,” Speyer said, handing the leather bag to the captain.
The first mate stepped back so that Baumann could inspect the
box, and then resecure the duffel bag as Kato opened the leather bag and checked the money.
“Everything is in order?” Speyer asked.
“Yes. And it would be to our mutual benefit if this transaction were never to be spoken of again.”
Speyer nodded to Baumann, who hefted the duffle bag and slung it over his shoulder. It weighed one hundred pounds, but Baumann didn't let the effort show. The first mate had tossed the duffle bag around with one hand as if it were a loaf of bread.
“You cannot know how correct you are, Captain,” Speyer said. “Give us a couple of minutes to get out of here. It wouldn't do for us to be seen together.”
“As you wish.”
Thirty minutes later they were across the Manhattan Bridge and had picked up East River Drive heading north. Almost all the traffic at this hour were trucks.
“Are we being followed?” Speyer asked.
Baumann, who was driving, had been checking the rearview mirror since they'd left the docks. He shook his head. “You were right about the money.”
“Yes, I was, Ernst. But you were just as right to be cautious. It could have gone either way.”
“They didn't tamper with the seal. I checked.”
Speyer chuckled. “Kato wouldn't have answered his phone had they opened the box.”
Baumann shot him a sharp look. “Do you know that for a fact, Herr
Kapitän
?” No one knew what the box actually contained except for Speyer, though Baumann had guessed some of it.
Speyer was too keyed up to let Baumann's tone of voice irritate him. “If you would like to check it out we can pull over and you can open the box. Only you'll be good enough to let me get upwind of you first. Three or four miles, perhaps.”
“No thanks,” Baumann said.
They took 79th Street west through Central Park, coming out by the American Museum of Natural History, and drove up to West 86th where they got lucky with a parking spot in front of a fashionable four-story brownstone a half block west of Columbus. The only thing moving was a garbage truck in the next block.
Baumann shut off the car and started to open the door.
“Wait,” Speyer said.
They sat for a full five minutes. The garbage truck finally turned left a couple of blocks away. A cab cruised past, and the street was quiet.
“It would be good to have Browne with us now,” Baumann said softly.
“He asked too many questions.”
“He had a conscience.”
“Yes, it was too bad,” Speyer said, missing Baumann's meaning.
They locked up the car and went inside. Speyer dropped their overnight bags in the front stairhall, and went with Baumann, who carried the duffle bag down into the basement.
Speyer had arranged to buy this place and have it remodeled three years ago for this operation. He and Gloria had come out here a few times since then to shop and see some Broadway shows, so the neighbors were used to the place being empty most of the time.
He unlocked the steel door at the end of a short corridor, flipped on the lights, and stepped aside. Baumann brought in the duffle bag and set it on a bench in the middle of the small room, which was no more than twelve by twelve with a low ceiling. It was crammed with state of the art scientific equipment, including a powerful microscope connected to a computer via a CCD, or charge-coupled device, so that whatever was being studied could be manipulated on the computer monitor. There was a mass spectrometer, a powerful centrifuge, a cryogenic unit that used liquid nitrogen to quick-freeze and hold samples, and a very sophisticated laminar air flow glove box in which samples could be isolated from the outside air, and yet be safely manipulated by the operator.
All of it had been purchased at various times by dummy labs and research institutions and shipped here over the past eighteen months. No matter how thoroughly any one checked the records, none of this equipment could ever be traced here.
Knowing about the disassembled agplane heading east by truck, listening to Speyer's comments and now seeing this set-up, Baumann put it all together.
“This will be worth more than three hundred million dollars, if we can pull it off,” he said, awed.
Speyer smiled with pleasure. “A whole lot more. But you haven't seen everything yet, because when you do you won't be asking
if
we can pull it off, but
when
we'll do it.” He clapped Baumann on the
shoulder. “Let's have something to eat, and then get a few hours sleep. The next twenty-four hours are going to be busy.
 
Speyer, dressed in a dark tweed sport coat, polo shirt, and tan slacks, headed on foot down Columbus behind the museum. It was four-thirty in the afternoon and he was well rested. Despite his tension he'd managed to sleep most of the day. Baumann stayed behind to keep watch. Everything was proceeding according to his plans.
There were a lot of shops on this street, restaurants, small specialty grocery stores, and a few bars, some with apartments above and others with private clubs in the basements, holdovers from the speakeasy days of the twenties and thirties. Below a shop selling German cookware and foodstuffs was the German-American club that the locals called the Bund. Speyer was well known here, stopping by whenever he was in New York. Six months ago he'd asked the manager, Rudi Steiner, to keep his eye open for a guy with the right background for a little job of work that would pay very well.
Three months ago Steiner had come up with a good possibility and he'd begun working the mark. It was his call that had allowed Speyer to start on the final stages of his operation: finding a diver, setting up the German end of the mission including finding the ex-KGB officers, and finally arranging for the two ships to get him and the box back to the States.
The barroom was dark. Four men played cards at one of the tables. In back someone was playing
Füssball
; he could hear the click of the ball and the thumps as the paddle handles were slapped sharply. Four men were scattered at the bar, drinking beers while watching the German television program
Deutsche Welle
.
Rudi Steiner had worked undercover for the Stasi at the United Nations before the Wall came down. He looked like a character from a movie about the
Afrika Korps,
blond, blue-eyed, with craggy, weather-beaten good looks. “
Willkommen, Herr Kapitän
,” he said as Speyer took a seat at the bar.
“Not too busy this afternoon.”
“Sometimes it's for the best.” Steiner nodded toward the end of the bar. “That's him at the end. Name's Bernhard Metzler. Associate professor of molecular biology at New York University.”
Metzler was a stoop-shouldered man with long gray hair in a ponytail. He was hunched over his beer.
“What's his story?” Speyer asked.
“He should have made full professor five years ago, but he's been passed over every year.” Steiner smiled. “He's a bitter man.”
“What'd you tell him about me?”
“That you're a wealthy eccentric, and you need some work done by a competent man. He practically jumped over the bar trying to get me to give him your name and address.”
“What's he drinking?”
“Weiss Bier.”
“Send us down a couple.” Speyer got up, walked down to the end of the bar and took a seat next to Metzler.
“What the fuck do you want?” Metzler demanded, looking up.
“The right man for a difficult assignment,” Speyer said. Steiner came with their beers, and he gave Metzler a nod.
“There I go with my big mouth again,” Metzler said, sheepishly. “Sorry about that.”
“No problem. Rudi tells me that you're a molecular biologist and that you'd be willing to take on a little job for the right price.”
Metzler eyed him speculatively. He was hungry. “How little a job, and how much money?”
“The work might take you a couple of hours, and I'd be willing to pay you fifty thousand dollars. For your discretion as well as your expertise.”
Metzler practically fell off his stool. “Where and when?”
“About two blocks from here and right now if you're sober enough to do the work. It's delicate.”
Metzler shoved the beers aside and held out his right hand. It was as steady as a rock, and Speyer nodded.
“Very well. We'll see if we can't get you home in time for dinner a richer man than you are right now.”
 
Speyer had been gone less than a half hour when he returned to the brownstone with Metzler. Out of old habits he scanned the street for the out of place car or pedestrian, the rooftops for the glint of binocular lenses, and the windows of the houses for surveillance. He spotted Baumann at a second floor window. The curtains had been drawn aside, and when Baumann stepped back the curtains remained open. It was the signal that all was well.
He mounted the stairs, opened the door with his key, and showed Metzler inside. Baumann was just coming down.
“Ernst, this is Bernhard Metzler. He's come to do the work for us,” Speyer said, locking up.
“Pleased to meet you,” Baumann said, shaking hands with the biologist. “Rudi Steiner gave you high marks.”
“He said you guys were okay, too.” Metzler was looking around the stairhall. “I'm going to do the work here?”
“Yes. We have a small laboratory set up in the basement. I think that you'll find it's more than adequate.”
“Well, if I'm going to get home by dinner like you promised, let's get started.” A crafty look came into his eyes. “How about the money?”
Speyer opened a small leather bag on the hall table and showed Metzler the money. The man practically licked his lips.
“It's downstairs,” Speyer said. “I'll show you what I want you to do for us.”
 
Speyer and Baumann waited in the doorway while Metzler inspected the laboratory equipment. He was impressed by what he saw, but he kept glancing nervously at the metal box with the skull and crossbones and warning in German.
“This is first-class stuff. Looks like it's never been used.”
“We tried to think of everything that you might need,” Speyer said.
“So what's in the box? Obviously a biohazard of some sort, but what?”
“It's a virus. But I'm not really sure what kind, or even if it's deadly or not. But I don't want to take any chances.”
“What form is it in? Gas, liquid, powder?”
“I don't know. That's one of the things I want you to find out.”
“What else?”
“The money I'm paying you is just as much for your discretion as anything else,” Speyer warned.
“Look, I don't give a shit if you dump the lot into the reservoir. Once I get paid you can color me gone, because I'm getting out of this shithole of a city before the sun comes up again.”
“What about your wife? Your family?”
“I don't have any. I was a hatchling.”
Speyer gave Baumann a look. Metzler's situation was better than he'd hoped it would be. No one would miss him.
“I need to know exactly what we're dealing with for starts. Then I want a sample prepared for shipment and the rest of the material placed into the two air tanks next to the cryogenic unit.”
Metzler looked at them. “Nitrogen. It's inert so no matter what
form the material is in the gas won't affect it, and yet when you want it released all you'll have to do is open the valves.”
“That's the plan.”
Metzler gave Speyer a hard look. “One hundred thousand dollars,” he said. “For my discretion, because the work isn't going to be all that tough.”
“Very well. Ernst will see to it when you're finished.”
“Then it's settled,” Metzler said, rubbing his hands. He took off his jacket and had Baumann help him place the metal box into the chamber of the glove box. He put the two nitrogen tanks inside along with a half-pint air bottle for the sample, a battery-driven cutting tool, a pry bar and some wrenches, as well as the CCD microscope.
As the unit pressurized, he switched on the computer that was connected to the microscope, then pulled on the crisp white biohazard suit with a small air bottle. He sat in front of the box and placed his hands in the gloves, the sleeves coming all the way up to his shoulders.
“Are you going to tell me where this came from?”
“No,” Speyer said. “I believe that you already have enough information.”
“Just curious,” Metzler said. He had the seal cut and the cover removed in less than ten minutes. The box was divided into four sections, each containing what looked like a small air cylinder with a standard high pressure metric laboratory valve. Each section was filled with a clear liquid.
“Feels like oil or maybe glycerine,” Metzler said, removing the bottles. He used a small wrench to crack the valve on one of the cylinders and held a glass slide in front of the nozzle opening for a second, before closing the valve again.
He mounted the slide on the microscope's stage, then as he adjusted the focus he looked over his shoulder at the computer. The screen was filled with thousands of hook-shaped stick figures. Even as they watched, the figures started to come to life, twitching and moving after lying dormant for nearly sixty years.

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