Even the Wind: A Jonas Brant Thriller (48 page)

 
``Looks abandoned,’’ he finally said. He was about to give up on the lock when the rings crumbled and broke. The padlock fell to the ground, missing the toe of his right boot by inches.

 
``That wasn’t too difficult,’’ Mallek said. ``But it also makes me suspicious. This place doesn’t look like it’s been used in years.’’

 
Brant opened the door as thunder roiled like gunshot in the distance. Moments later, lightning flashed, filling the room with a silver glow. Chairs, tables and bookshelves seemed to levitate. He stepped into the cabin’s main room.
 

 
``Not what you expected?’’ Mallek stood by his side, flashlight at the ready. A slack-jawed Brant continued to the scan the room for signs of life.

 
``This isn’t right,’’ he said. ``It’s got to be here.’’

 
``Maybe the bedroom?’’

 
``Help me look.’’

 
He cleared some of the furniture, stepping over boxes stuffed with newspapers and books. Dust motes stirred to life by the opening of the door hung suspended in the air, illuminated by the occasional flash of lightning.
 

 
The cabin was barren, unloved, abandoned. A search of the bedroom yielded nothing.
 

 
``What about outside?’’ he finally asked more out of hope than reason.
 

 
``You saw. There’s nothing.’’ Mallek shook her head in exasperation. She was growing tired and weary. How long would they chase ghosts?

 
``It’s worth a try.’’

 
She followed out the back door and into the clearing at the rear of the cabin. Stones had been buried into the ground, forming a path leading into the woods. They followed the trail to the edge of the clearing where a stand of daffodils yielded to the encroaching forest. Triumphantly, Brant started clearing long tuffs of grass and assorted brush until the vague outline of a door appeared. Satisfied, he stood back to admire what he’d uncovered. Though cloaked in darkness, the prize was clear.

 
The doors were unlocked. Without much effort, they removed the remaining vegetation and were soon descending into the dark, dank opening. Stairs led to a small foyer, which led to a larger room that appeared to stretch for seven meters or so in each direction. The space was small but sufficient. Brant searched the room with his flashlight for a bulb or light switch. None was to be found.

Eventually, he found an electrical cord and plugged it in. The room came to life.

 
The room’s walls were concrete polished so smooth they seemed to glisten. Wooden shelves lined one end of the room. At the other end, a desk and benches had been fashioned from sheet metal. A half dozen clear plastic boxes sat in a plastic trolley. A small refrigerator hummed in the corner.

 
Brant’s eyes widened as he focused on the plastic boxes, each filled with three white mice scratching and sniffing at the walls of their transparent jails. Ventilation holes had been drilled into the blue plastic lids on the boxes. He moved to the refrigerator where he found glass Petri dishes. Flasks, roller bottles and pipettes sat on the metal desk.

 
``Don’t touch,’’ Mallek barked when he’d started to reach for one of the glass trays. ``Those Petri dishes have cell cultures in them.’’

 
``Mouse shit,’’ Brant said, watching the rodents scratching and pawing as they sniffed the air.

 
``What was that?’’

 
``The medical examiner found mouse dander and hair on Allison Carswell’s body. I have a good idea now where it came from. If not from here, probably from the Genepro labs.’’

 
``What is this place?’’ Mallek asked in amazement as she scanned the room.

 
``I’m guessing it’s a storm shelter or maybe an old bomb shelter. Some of the folks around here were pretty paranoid in the `60s. Those were crazy times.’’

 
Mallek scanned the bookshelf. Volumes of leatherbound books had been placed in neat rows, their spines facing outward to reveal their titles.
 

``This is high-level biology,’’ she said, remarking on the texts. ``Look at this.’’

 
She took the plastic hood off what appeared to Brant to be a large, expensive microscope.
 

 
``What are we looking at?’’

 
``Well, it’s not exactly a clean room but there’s enough equipment in here to do some serious laboratory work.’’

 
``How serious?’’

 
``DNA sequencing. Growing cultures. Bacteriology. You might even be able to manufacture some kind of biological agent.’’

 
``What, you mean like anthrax?’’

 
Mallek pursed her lips. ``As I said, bioterrorism is notoriously difficult. But biological agents have their advantage. They’re almost impossible to detect for one thing. I suppose that in theory you could use some of this equipment to synthesize the beginnings of a weapon. Maybe you could manipulate botulinum toxin or anthrax. You’d need to be extremely careful or you’d kill yourself in the process. I understand why you’d want to do it out here in the middle of nowhere. It makes sense. You don’t want anyone around. But you don’t seriously think Eichel and Carswell were working on a biological agent, do you?’’

 
Brant shrugged. ``I don’t know what to think anymore. I’m guessing that whoever killed Eichel, and maybe even Allison Carswell, didn’t want anyone to know about this place.’’

``That’s about right.’’

 
They turned in unison toward the voice. Out of the darkened doorway, Ingrid King stepped into the light. Brant’s eyes focused immediately on the Glock 19 she held with the confidence of someone who knew their way around firearms. The barrel of the Glock swung from Brant to Mallek as she motioned for them to step away from the sheet metal table.

 
The Glock 19 was a small gun, easily concealable and light enough for King to handle with ease. But it was also deadly. Brant preferred the larger Glock 26 or a Beretta but he knew the destructive impact of a slug fired from the 19. King continued to brandish the Glock with aplomb, clearly emboldened by the power she held in her slender hands.

 
``Don’t think I don’t know what I’m doing,’’ she said, reading Brant’s mind. ``I know how to use this. Hands in front and in the air.’’

 
Brant and Mallek did as they were told. Mallek shot him a questioning look as if momentarily confused, her brain no longer able to process events.

 
Ingrid King took a second step into the room. She was dressed in rain gear, the hood of her outer shell pulled away from her face to reveal strands of blond hair pasted to her forehead.
 

 
``Give me your gun, lieutenant.’’

 
Reluctantly, Brant reached for the Beretta, cursing himself for being distracted by the discovery of the lab. After he’d handed the piece over, Ingrid King placed the Beretta snuggly between the small of her back and her waistband.

 
``I’ll shoot if you move any further,’’ she said, her voice flat. ``Now give me the USB drive.’’

 
``What drive?’’

 
Ingrid King pointed the gun at Mallek.
 

 
Brant nodded.

Mallek unzipped her jacket and reached into the inner pocket where she’d stored the USB dongle. She extended her free hand in front of her body as a sign of surrender, indicating she intended no harm or action.
 

 
``Put it on the table. And you, sit over there.’’

 
King nodded in the direction of a metal stool at the edge of the table.

 
``What’s going on, Ingrid?’’ Brant pointed to the Glock with his chin. He fought to hold his voice in check. Thunder cracked in the distance. Brant’s heart leaped and for a moment he had a vision of the Glock spitting bullets into the room. King held her ground and steadied the gun as if she were lining them up in her sights.
 

 
``You want some answers?’’

 
``Answers would be nice,’’ Brant said, turning imperceptibly toward Mallek.

 
``Yes, I suppose it is time for answers.’’

 
A smile crossed Ingrid King’s face as she retrieved the USB. The face he’d found so beautiful just two days earlier suddenly seemed to have taken on an outsized severity and hardness.
 

 
For one of the first times in his life, Brant was scared.
 

``You’re owed an explanation, I suppose.’’

 
Ingrid King’s face was a pale mask. She stared beyond them, beyond the metal counter, the wooden bookshelves — even beyond the concrete walls of the bunker.
 

 
Brant shifted his weight. The metal stool was uncomfortable.

 
They’d been sitting across from each other for 10 minutes. None of them moved. Finally, King cleared her voice.
 

 
``What do you think of the bunker?’’ she asked, a note of forced frivolity entering her voice.

 
``It’s cosy,’’ Brant said, scanning the room again. The shelter appeared more cell-like with each passing minute. It was small and dank, the air heavy and rank.
 

 
``Franz found it. He was out hiking one day and stumbled on it. He came back to the lodge with the excitement of a young child. It would be our little nest, you see. But I’m jumping ahead of myself. We’ll get to that. But you have to understand first.’’

 
``What exactly is this place?’’ Mallek asked.

 
King clucked as she drew air in through the small opening of her pursed lips.
 

 
``I would have thought that would be obvious to such a smart girl as you, Christine.’’

 
Mallek shot King a look of contempt.

 
``It’s a lab, of course. It was our little experiment. A place where we could come and get away from John and the other guests. It’s a relief in many ways…now that you’ve discovered it. I suppose there’s no going back to what we all were before.’’

 
``That’s not much of an explanation,’’ Brant said.
 

 
He held his hands in front. His shoulders sagged from the effort.

 
``We really need to start at the beginning. Why don’t we do that, yes?’’

 
Brant and Mallek looked at each other, their thoughts unreadable.

``I was raised in Sweden. A small town outside Trelleborg. Do either of you know much about Sweden? No? It doesn’t matter. It’s not really important except for a starting point. You need to understand how we got here, you see, and this is the best way. In any event, I grew up in Trelleborg. As with most towns in Sweden, we were near the water. I used to love going to the beach. I would spend hours out on the sand. When I finished high school, my mother and father wanted me to go to an art college in Stockholm. I had other ideas. I took the ferry from Malmo to Copenhagen. From there it was a matter of hitchhiking and then some trains, a bus or two and I ended up in London. I didn’t want art school. Not because I didn’t like art, but because it was what my parents wanted for me and I suppose I was being rebellious.’’

 
Ingrid King smiled as she stared at the blank concrete wall and, Brant supposed, the tendrils of her memory floating away somewhere in the recesses of her mind.
 

``I met a fellow…Richard Addison-Smith….Terribly impressed with himself as all those upperclass Brits can be. He was superior to everyone and he made sure you knew it. Anyway, he was good-looking, intelligent, had money. The whole package. I fell in love with him and foolishly followed him to Edinburgh where he had enrolled in the university to study medicine. Everything was going along swimmingly when I found him in bed with one of my friends.’’

 
King exhaled as she tightened the grip on the Glock. Though deep into her story, she was unwavering in the intensity with which she held the 9 mm. Nothing was going to pry it from her hands. Not in this life anyways, Brant reckoned.

 
``Well, long story short, I ran away. Back to Europe where I bounced around for a few years. I did some guiding, some housekeeping work. Whatever paid the rent. I met Franz Eichel three years before I met John.
 
John came later. He moved to France where he was working as a ski instructor in the winter and a hiking guide in the summer. I was seeing both of them at the same time. They didn’t know it, of course. But eventually I had to chose and it was John who I married but I guess I always held a torch for Franz. He was very exciting. Very daring. He was always willing to try out new things, experiences.
 

 
``John and I moved to Maine to start up our own hotel. But I knew Franz would come back into my life. The bond between us was too strong, you see. It was an atomic bond. Nothing was going to break us apart. So I wasn’t really surprised when Franz showed up on the doorstep one day looking for a job. I was afraid to say anything so I let him talk his way into John’s confidence. John is very trusting. He’s a kind, gentle soul. But also very stupid when judging people.’’

 
``So you loved Franz still?’’ Mallek asked.