Eden's Gate (15 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Eden's Gate
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In Lane's befuddled state he stared at the box for perhaps as long as a minute. It rested in a compartment in the exact middle of the safe. The compartment was held in place by a series of springs, like shock absorbers. Whatever was sealed in the box had to be sensitive to vibration or else the Germans would not have gone to such lengths to protect it.
If they were diamonds, Lane thought, they were unusually delicate stones.
He slid the box out of its compartment and was immediately weighed down to his knees, the box sinking at once to the concrete floor, silt rising in thick clouds. The damned thing had to weigh at least one hundred pounds.
Working almost completely by feel, Lane wrestled the box up to
his chest where he braced it against the edge of the safe as he pushed the pressure button on his chest, dumping gas into his BC. He rose off his knees. The box was still as heavy as before, but he wasn't being weighed down by it.
He dumped a little more gas into his BC, turned and slowly made his way through the almost completely opaque water to where he thought the door was. He bumped into the wall, and he remained motionless for a second or two, until he gathered his wits enough to follow the wall to the left.
Five feet later he came to the opening and swam out into the corridor where he stopped again. He had come down the shaft and through the opening. But which way had he turned after that? There were other laboratories, and he vaguely remembered that one of them had been sealed.
He swiveled to the left and tried to peer through the silted water. He was very cold; his throat was dry and raw. Think. He swiveled to the right. He'd come stright down the main corridor and then turned … left into the laboratory. It meant that to get out he had to turn in the opposite direction. Right. But he was already facing right.
With agonizing slowness Lane swam to the end of the tunnel and half-swam, half-crawled up the pile of rubble, through the opening, and into the shaft. Home free now, except that he could no longer hold the box in his arms. He eased it down on top of the rubble, let go, and shot upward immediately.
A huge pressure stabbed his eardrums as if someone had driven hot pokers into his skull, and his lungs felt as if they were being ripped out. He was rising too fast.
He fumbled in the darkness with the pressure valve on his BC, finally making his fingers work to release some of the gas. His rise slowed immediately. He released more gas until he was ascending at a slow, even rate and the pressure in his head and lungs cleared as did the cobwebs in his brain.
He passed the stairs and the skull and crossbones and the cable, finally breaking the surface, the beam of a flashlight directly in his face.
“Did you get it?” Baumann demanded. His voice was hollow in the chamber. Lane pushed his face mask back. “I need the rope. It's too heavy to bring up by hand.”
“Where is it?”
“At the bottom of the shaft. I managed to get it that far.”
“Wait,” Baumann ordered. He raced back up the stairs and slipped through the door.
“We were ready to give up on you,” Schaub said. “It's been over an hour. The filming is done and the Russians are on their way back to the truck.”
“Tell Helmut to stall them if he wants his diamonds,” Lane said. “But I don't want anything to happen to the caretaker. Do you understand?”
Schaub nodded, his face ghostly in the reflected light from his flashlight beam. “He's my cousin. Nothing will happen to him.”
“Does Helmut know that?”
Schaub shook his head as Baumann returned from the truck and rushed down the stairs. He carried the big coil of nylon rope, which he undid and handed an end to Lane.
“I'll secure it up here,” he said urgently. “When you're ready, give me a couple of pulls. But for Christ's sake hurry, they're on the way back.”
“It's heavy, so be careful,” Lane warned. “I don't want it coming back down on top of me.” He secured his mask, released some pressure from his BC, and started back down into the shaft.
 
Golanov led the way back up the hill from the pavilion. Cherny, carrying the camera and bulky battery pack, was right behind him. Hans Mueller, the caretaker, was heading back to his office for his mid-morning tea and schnapps break. With the bad weather he wasn't expecting any tourists this morning.
“Do you think that he suspected anything?” Cherny asked.
“No, he's got an authorization document to file.”
“What if he calls somebody?”
“He won't call anybody, Danil,” Golanov shot back impatiently. They were no longer filming so the sound equipment was off and there was no chance that anyone in the truck could overhear them. “I want you to get into the truck through the driver's side door. Keep whoever's in there busy. I'm coming in the back way, and with any luck we'll end it right here.”
“Only if you have a clear shot,” Cherny said. “I don't want to end up at the bottom of the bunker.”
“Just do your part and I'll do mine.”
Cherny went to the front of the truck, and Golanov went around
back. The side door was ajar as was the steel door into the maintenance shed, but there was nobody about.
He took out his Glock 17 and silently made his way along the side of the truck to the open door. He overheard Cherny say something, though he couldn't make out the words. Then Speyer replied, “No delays.”
Golanov swung around the corner and into the truck. Speyer reared back in surprise and grabbed for his gun from the top of the radio.
“The instant you touch it you're dead,” Golanov said.
Speyer's hand stopped. “I don't know what the fuck you think you're doing, but you're throwing away a lot of money.”
Golanov laughed. “From where I'm standing I'd say that you're in no position to be giving orders now.” He turned his head slightly. “Keep a sharp watch for the caretaker, Danil,” he said. He backed up and motioned with his pistol for Speyer to come along. “You first, Herr
Kapitän.
”
Speyer did as he was told, but very slowly, obviously looking for an opening. Golanov backed up, keeping a respectful distance, and waved Speyer inside the maintenance building.
Inside, they started down the stairs, Speyer in the lead. Below, at the open shaft, Baumann and Schaub looked up in surprise.
“Gentlemen, I want you to raise your hands right now,” Golanov said. “If you try anything your captain will take the first bullet.”
For a long second neither of them moved.
“Do as he says,” Speyer told them.
Schaub tossed something into the water with a soft splash and he raised his hands.
“Where's Browne?”
“Still in the bunker,” Schaub replied. “And it looks as if your timing is perfect. For a fucking Russian, that is.”
 
At the bottom of the shaft Lane tied the rope to the container's handles. It was all by feel because of the silted water. He turned and gave a couple of sharp tugs on the line, but it was slack. Baumann had paid it out meter by meter as Lane descended so that he could feel when the two pulls came, but Lane continued to bring the line down, hand over hand, until he had ten or fifteen meters of it. Something had gone wrong.
Looping the rope through his weightbelt, Lane started to the top, conserving his energy, letting the BC do most of the work.
There was no telling exactly what he was going to find, but he suspected that the Russians had gotten the drop on Speyer and the others and were waiting for him to surface with the diamonds. If it was Mironov, he wouldn't hesitate to shoot first and ask questions later.
Lane stopped his ascent a few meters from the surface. He could see the beams of two flashlights shining down into the water. He swam to the forward wall of the shaft directly beneath their feet. Hopefully they were watching for him to come up in the center and might not spot him until it was too late.
Very slowly and precisely, so as to make absolutely no noise, Lane's head broke the surface. He pulled his mask off. Baumann and Schaub, their hands up, were directly above him. To the left he could make out Speyer's figure in the light reflecting crazily off the water. Behind him there was someone else. One of the Russians.
Pumping more gas into his BC, Lane rose even farther out of the water. He unzippered his dry suit, took the Beretta out of his holster and switched the safety off. There was no one else down here with them, and he didn't know what that meant. But the present situation would not last much longer. If he was going to do something it had to be now.
“Help,” he shouted, his voice echoing throughout the chamber.
Schaub pushed Baumann aside, and swung his flashlight around so that the beam caught the Russian in the face. At that moment Speyer stepped to the right, giving Lane a clear shot.
“Put it down,” Lane shouted.
Golanov fired into the water, forcing Lane to fire back, hitting the Russian in the middle of the chest, and driving him back off his feet.
“Where's the other one?” Lane demanded.
“In the truck,” Speyer said. He grabbed Baumann's gun just as Cherny appeared in the doorway above. Schaub shined his flashlight on the Russian, who dove to the right. Speyer fired two shots, both of them ricocheting dangerously off the concrete walls.
Cherny rose up from the shadows, a pistol in his hand, but Lane fired twice, at least one of them hitting the man, sending him tumbling down the stairs and half into the water, dead.
“I'll check the caretaker,” Schaub shouted, and he raced up the stairs.
Lane untied the rope from his waist and handed it up to Baumann. “Careful with it, the damned thing is heavy.”
He levered himself out of the water, and as Baumann started hauling the container up from the bottom of the shaft, Speyer came over and helped Lane out of his diving equipment. He was very excited.
“You actually found it? You got it?”
“Yeah. So let's clean up this mess and get the hell out of here now. I don't want the German police barging in here, guns blazing.”
“You're right,” Speyer agreed. He helped Baumann pull the container the rest of the way out of the shaft, and they manhandled it up onto the concrete floor. They all stared at it for a long moment, but then Lane finished pulling off his equipment. He bundled it in his dry suit, wrapped his weightbelt around it all, and dumped the lot into the bunker shaft. Speyer and Baumann rolled the two bodies into the water.
They lowered the double doors. Baumann took a new padlock out of his pocket and secured the latch. “It's not an exact match,” he said. “But it'll pass unless they try to open it.”
Schaub appeared at the doorway, out of breath. “It's all right,” he called down. “He didn't hear a thing.”
“How do you know?” Speyer demanded.
“I went down to the pavilion and looked in the window. He's having his tea, and you can hear the television all the way up the hill.”
“No tourists?”
“Nobody else.”
Baumann carried the heavy container up to the DF 1 truck. When it was loaded aboard, he replaced the lock on the maintenance door. Speyer got behind the wheel, and as they headed out of the memorial parking lot he thumped his fist on the steering wheel. “We did it. Son of a bitch, we did it.”
 
Mironov, his pistol to Gloria's head, watched from the front entry hall as the DF 1 truck came up the driveway. The big grin on his face died as he saw who was driving. He pulled Gloria back into the living room. “Say one word and I'll blow your goddamned brains out.” He was glad now that something had prompted him to park his car out of sight behind the garage. Something had gone wrong, and now it was just him.
Gloria said nothing, her eyes flicking back and forth between her captor and the kitchen.
He could hear them outside, laughing, as they got out of the truck. They came onto the back porch to the kitchen. Mironov hauled Gloria around and, using her as a shield, covered the door.
Speyer was first into the house, but he didn't spot Mironov and Gloria in the living room until he was halfway across the kitchen, and Schaub and Baumann were inside. He pulled up short, a look of surprise and consternation on his face, and he started for his gun.
“I'll kill her,” Mironov warned.
Speyer stopped. “What the hell are you doing here? What do you want?”
“My car is parked in back of the garage. I want whatever you pulled up from the bunker put in the trunk.” Mironov knew that he was in trouble. Without Golanov and Cherny it was just him against the four of them. “And where's Browne? I want him.”
“Here I am,” Lane said from the front entry hall.

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