Game of Shadows (4 page)

He pulled it out and glanced at the name. It was Emily. He hit the talk button and put the device to his ear, hoping she wasn't calling about Dufort. She had connections everywhere, but no way had she already heard about his mark getting away.

"Hello, Em," he said, turning his head toward the ocean, squinting into the bright sunlight. A group of Asian tourists was on the other side of the road pointing at the hotel where smoke continued to pour into the clear blue sky.

"I'm sorry to bother you on your vacation, Zero, but I need you to come in."

He laughed at her insinuation. "I wish I was on vacation."

Another fire engine whined in the distance. "What's that noise?" she asked. "Do I even want to know?"

"Dufort got away. Pretty sure he tried to blow me up. All he managed to do was make a wreck of my very nice rental."

"He got away?"

"I'm fine, though. Thanks for asking."

"I figured you would have dispatched him two days ago."

"These things take time, Em," he said coolly and stole a quick glance back at the chaos as he turned down a side street, effectively disappearing from view.

"Well, you'll have to pursue him later."

"I plan on it. What's so pressing that you would have pulled me off him?"

"Order from the president. Get to Frankfurt. Let me know when you arrive. I'll pick you up and brief you there."

The phone went dead, and he looked down at the screen. She'd ended the call without much fanfare. Her directness was one of the things Sean liked best about Emily.

He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. It seemed like every part of his body was hurting. Now he was heading to Germany and had no idea why.

An old, beat up Toyota rounded the corner. The words in Arabic on the side indicated it was a cab. Sean held up his hand and waved to the driver.

Back in the game
, he thought, pushing away a twinge of regret. He got in the car and told the driver where to go. The man nodded and sped away, leaving the chaos behind to the voyeurs. 

Washington, D.C.

Adm. Corbett McClain stared across the Resolute desk with tired eyes. The president had called him in earlier that morning while the admiral was still brewing his coffee.

"Less than twenty hours ago, a terrorist group known as the Black Ring broke into a research facility in Lucerne, Switzerland, and abducted a scientist by the name of Franziska Ott. She's local to the city of Lucerne. According to that report," he pointed at the paper in the president's hands, "she was working on a high-security project that deals with quantum gravity and magnetism."

His sagging eyes, set amid age lines, a high wrinkled forehead, and a broad jaw, told the tale of a man who'd been around the block a few times. The various medals on his uniform gave many of the details to that story. While he didn't know much about the science featured in the report he'd given the commander in chief, he knew enough to realize when something was grave.

President John Dawkins scanned the sheet of paper in his hand. His light-brown hair had streaks of gray in it. The skin on his face had grown looser over the years, but he still had the rugged good looks that endeared him to so many people. It was nearing the end of his first term, though few people believed he would lose a bid for a second. The other party was scrambling to find a sacrificial lamb to throw out into the ring, but it seemed no one was willing to be humiliated by what was sure to be a landslide election. There were, of course, nominations of candidates, but they would see less than forty percent of the votes.

He'd helped bring about a peace between the legislative and executive branches of the United States government, and together they had accomplished more than he'd anticipated. His casual yet stern, no BS way of leading was something others couldn't deny.

For the most part, Dawkins preferred not to get involved with military matters. Men like the admiral were the ones with more experience in those sorts of things. He scrutinized each member of the Joint Chiefs, as well as the rest of his advisers, with a heavy magnifying glass. Having trustworthy people around was one of the things Dawkins valued most.

Admiral McClain had brought in a report that was troubling. A physicist had gone missing in Switzerland. Initially, that might not have been something the United States should have been concerned about. However, the scientist's projects were believed to be high security. Either that meant she was working on something that could be weaponized by enemies, or it represented a significant danger to America or its allies.

The president finished reading the report and laid it on the desk. "You're certain about this?"

"Yes, Mr. President. Our scientists believe that she could have been very close to a breakthrough in that field, as crazy as that may sound." The admiral answered with no emotion, only looking to relay the facts as he saw them.

Dawkins leaned back in his chair. "It's like something out of a science fiction movie, if that information is correct."

"I'm aware of that, sir. But we don't want to mess with these terrorists. The Black Ring is known for upping the ante when it comes to brutality. I fear for what they've already done to Dr. Ott, much less what they will do."

The Black Ring was a European-based terrorist cell. They were hard to track and even more difficult to study because they didn't act like other terrorist groups. While most Islamic militants used various forms of aggression to further their religious war, the Black Ring performed acts for a variety of reasons, some of which were curiously capitalist, despite their clearly communicated disdain for Western economic philosophy.

"What would a bunch of terrorists want with technology like that?" the president asked, staring through the admiral's calculating eyes.

"We're not completely sure. If what that report says is true, some of the theories include cloaking of entire vessels, planes, tanks, pretty much any kind of vehicle. On the furthest end of the spectrum, well, you read the details. The implications are potentially very dangerous."

"I'd say all of it is dangerous, Admiral."

McClain didn't disagree, but merely nodded. "How would you like us to proceed, Mr. President? I can have a SEAL team on it within the next six hours."

Dawkins shook his head. "No offence, Admiral, but we don't even know where to send a SEAL team right now. These animals could be hiding anywhere, and we don't have the foggiest idea of where to start."

"Then what will we do? Sit around and wait until they send us footage of cutting the poor girl's head off?"

"No," Dawkins said, his tone grave. "No, we won't be doing that. As soon as I got wind of this and saw the video of Dr. Ott in a basement with her hands tied behind her back, I made a phone call."

A brief second of concern crossed Admiral McClain's face. "You made a call? CIA?"

"I decided to leave Langley out of this one, Admiral."

"But certainly they know about the video and the kidnapping."

The president shrugged and crossed one leg over the other knee. "Of course they do. Heck, the entire world knows about it thanks to the Internet. I'll let Langley do what they do. But I've got another asset in play that could well reap faster results than the big machine that is the CIA."

McClain looked pensive for a moment as he considered what the president was saying. Another asset? What other assets did he have? FBI didn't get involved with things of this nature unless it was in the country. NSA? Surely not. He'd heard rumors about other, higher security special operations units working for the government, but most of what he'd heard was the stuff of urban legend.

One name did continue to pop up. "Called in an Axis agent, eh?"

The president's face remained stoic, as if he'd just bet all his chips in a high stakes poker game.

"This isn't a covert hit, Mr. President. We need someone to be able to track down these people and get that young woman out alive. The SEALs are just as good at that as anyone."

"Almost anyone,” Dawkins corrected. “If our asset needs backup, he'll let us know, and then you can send in your SEAL team."

It was nearly an insult, but the president meant nothing by it. The admiral doubted the faith his leader put in one agent, led by what he considered to be a shadowy special ops organization. His place wasn't to question the president, though, and he nodded his approval.

"If that is what you believe is the best course of action to take, sir, I am fully behind you."

"Good," Dawkins said and stood up. He extended a hand as McClain also stood, and the men shook briefly. "As always, Admiral, I'll keep you in the loop with any progress that's made."

"Thank you, sir," he said appreciatively.

The admiral showed himself to the door and exited the Oval Office, into a room awash with clerical workers pecking away at keyboards, and other people hurrying about in a dozen different directions.

A Secret Service agent standing outside the door gave a curt nod to the admiral, who returned the gesture before stalking out of the office and through the main corridor toward the front of the building. He took a left at the main foyer and followed the hallway out to one of the side exits and proceeded outside to one of the security stations.

The Secret Service detail allowed him through in quick fashion, one of the perks of being an adviser to the president. He circled around to the private parking area, got into a black Lincoln Town Car, and turned on the ignition.

He felt his phone vibrate in his pants pocket and retrieved it to see who had messaged him. The number was unidentified, but he knew who it was. There was only a question mark on the screen.

He tapped away at the keys for a few seconds and then sent his two-word response.

Sit tight.

Frankfurt, Germany

Sean strolled out of the Frankfurt International Airport, weary from his journey. Even taking a private charter with all its amenities was still traveling, and traveling always seemed to wear him out.

He noticed a blacked out BMW with heavily tinted windows, not unlike the one Dufort had escaped Agadir in less than twenty-four hours ago.

This time, the front passenger window rolled down, and he could see Emily in the driver's seat. She motioned for him to get in. Sean opened the back door and plopped his bags inside before joining her in the front. The door had barely closed behind him when she stepped on the gas and accelerated down the airport street.

"Nice to see you too, Emily," he said, hurrying to put on his seatbelt.

She raised an eyebrow and passed him the slightest grin. "Always a pleasure, Zero."

"Do you really have to call me that? I just picked it because of the whole twelve agents thing and I sort of work outside their..." he fumbled for the word, "boundaries."

"Actually, I was going to assign that to you anyway. You know the protocols, Sean. When you're on assignment, I will only refer to you as Zero." She paused for a second. "Except for just then when I called you by your name. And you know what you have to call me." The last part carried a little playful edge to it.

Sean sighed. "Yes, Director."

The BMW zoomed around the curved on-ramp to the Autobahn and merged into traffic behind a shipping van. A few seconds later, after a gray Volkswagen passed them on the left, she changed lanes and sped up.

"So," Sean said, watching as Emily left the slower vehicles behind on the right, "you were a little skimpy on the details as to why I'm here right now."

"You know me. I prefer to talk about that sort of stuff in person."

"Worried about bugs, are we?" He grinned, but his question carried serious implications.

"Never know," she said. "Better safe than sorry."

She guided the car back into the right lane once they'd passed all the slower drivers, allowing a red Ducati 899 Panigale to zip by. Sean stared longingly at the motorcycle, as if he'd just seen the most beautiful woman on the planet walk by.

Emily went on. "Yesterday, a Swiss research scientist by the name of Franziska Ott was abducted from her lab in Lucerne. A few hours later, a video was released online. It featured the young woman, bound and gagged."

"Confirmed it's really her?"

"Yes. Facial recognition software analyzed the footage. She was taken by a terrorist organization known as the Black Ring."

Sean gave a nod, now staring forward down the road. The overcast skies above looked as if they were about to burst with rain. "I've heard of them," he said. "Shady, even for a terrorist group. They've been rebuked by other jihadists for being capitalistic. I guess the others don't feel like eating is important."

She addressed his humorous comment with a dry observation of her own, apparently not in the mood for laughs. "It isn’t when dying is the secondary goal. Still, seems like a racket if you ask me. Now it seems they want something from the professor." She pulled out her phone and handed it to him. "Press play."

Sean did as told and watched the short video clip of the woman in her lab coat, gagged with a rag in her mouth and her hands behind her back. She was on her knees in what appeared to be a damp basement. A single lightbulb hung from the ceiling in front of the woman, and a wet line proceeded down the concrete blocks behind.

Sean finished watching the video, listening to the demands of the kidnappers. He handed the phone back to Emily. "Well, at least we know they're not in the Middle East."

Emily frowned, her eyebrows knit together. "What do you mean? How do you know that?"

"In fact," he said, ignoring her question, "I'd go ahead and rule out some of the African nations as well. Definitely Somalia. I'd say Libya and Egypt are probably out as well."

"How do you know that just from watching ninety seconds of footage?" she asked, incredulous.

"First of all, isn't that one reason you love me? I'm observant. Secondly, that kind of masonry work doesn't occur in the areas with a high Arabic architectural and engineering influence. It's European, probably an Eastern Bloc country, somewhere wet."

"Why is that?"

"The line of water streaming down the cinder blocks behind the woman. It's either a very damp place, or there's been a lot of rain there lately. In both cases, that probably eliminates a lot of the dryer climates."

Her lips parted into a thin smile. "Impressive."

"Thank you. And I know."

"That narrows it down to only a few million possibilities. And according to the man in the ski mask on the video, they're going to kill her in three days."

Sean pushed on, in spite of her cynical response. "Check the weather across all of Europe to start. Look for anywhere that has been rainy for the last day or two. That should help narrow the search field a little. It’s not much but it’s a start. Last I checked it hasn't been a particularly wet beginning to summer."

Emily nodded. "Makes sense. Anything’s better than nothing at this point."

"Also, what was it that she was working on? It seems odd that a group of terrorists would put out a video, claiming what they would do to the hostage without asking for something in exchange. Doesn't that strike you as strange?"

"It does," Emily agreed. "And they did ask for something. From what we know, Dr. Ott was working on something in the field of quantum gravity, something to do with big magnets and a bunch of physics stuff that I don't understand. What I was able to glean from the briefing is that her research could lead to extraordinary advancements in the fields of deep space exploration, cloaking, and any number of other things. It seems they’re interested in something she has or had in her possession. We’re not sure. They sent an encrypted message with the video, low level, nothing anyone else would see. They’re demanding we recover whatever it is she’s hiding. Problem is, we don’t know what she’s hiding or where it might be."

It was Sean's turn to be confused. "Sounds like heavy stuff. You said one of the implications could be cloaking. As in, invisibility?"

"Maybe. I would guess it has more to do with radar and sonar than anything else. A kind of stealth technology, if you will."

Sean snorted. "Stealth has been around for a while."

"Not like this. Her work would effectively make any object, small or large, impossible to detect with standard instrumentation. If terrorists were able to get their hands on something like that, it could mean big trouble."

Sean considered the possibilities. A device of that kind would mean anyone could fly a plane right into any airspace they wanted. They could steer a ship right into the Hudson, park it next to Wall Street, and blow the whole thing up. He still had questions, though.

"One, is that even possible? I'm no expert in physics, but I've dabbled in it. How would something like that work? And two, not to repeat this, but why in the world are the terrorists broadcasting that? If I were them, I'd keep a lid on this one as much as I could."

"Maybe they're trying to make a statement. When was the last time a terrorist did something that actually made any sense?"

"Good point."

"But yes, they are acting differently than most known cells. As to the facts behind those weird, science fiction things I mentioned, our experts are suggesting that she was on the edge of a breakthrough that would change what we know about physics forever. It might have even brought about a unified field theory between classical physics and quantum mechanics."

Sean's eyebrows rose involuntarily. "That's impressive."

"Considering no one has been able to do that so far, not even some of the brightest minds in the world, yes, I would say that's an impressive accomplishment."

The car went silent for a minute. Off to the right, the downtown area of Frankfurt passed by, a powerful reminder that German commerce and economic power still had a strong foothold in the region.

"It's well within the character of Black Ring to do something like this," Emily said finally. "To flaunt the fact that they have a scientist that could change the world for the better and potentially take humanity to the very far reaches of space is a huge power play for them. They're taunting the Western world."

"They want to sell that technology for their own, greedy devices." Sean said. "That's the only thing that makes sense. They're going to have that scientist create something like what you described. With that, they can sell it to anyone in the world. They'll make billions, maybe more if they sell to China."

"Or worse," Emily added.

Sean grimaced at the comment. "True. There is the other communist country." He paused for a second and then asked, "What's my play?"

"I'm taking you to Lucerne and dropping you there. You'll need to go through Dr. Ott's research, her personal things, her apartment, anything that might give you a clue as to what specific project drew the interest of Black Ring."

"Okay," he said after a minute of contemplation. "I assume I’ll be able to use whatever resources I deem necessary."

"This mission is highly classified. So long as you don't blab your mouth about who you're working for, I don't care how you get the job done."

"Good enough," he said. "Oh, and by the way, that video has had over ten million views on YouTube, so the mission isn't really that classified."

She shook her head at him with a smug grin. “They don’t know about you. No one does but me.” The car went silent, save for the hum of the tires on the pavement beneath. For several minutes, neither of them said a word.

In the distance, a castle loomed on top of a hill, a shattered and ruined remnant of its former might. Villages sprang up seemingly everywhere. Some of them had been homes to people of this area for nearly a thousand years. Thick forests of lush, green trees stretched out between the farms. A few massive windmills dotted the landscape, providing power to the growers, their white blades swinging around in slow, wide circles.

Sean spoke up, breaking the long silence. "It could prove difficult to find this...Dr. Ott, Emily. I might be a bit rusty."

"You'll be fine," she said quickly, brushing aside any doubts he may have had. "And you will find her. You're the best. That's why I chose you for this mission. No one else I know of has the mind of a detective and is capable of...." She stopped herself midsentence.

"Killing the way I do?" he finished the sentence for her. "Em, I admit I'm good at it, but there are others out there who are better than me."

"Surviving the way you do,” she corrected. “Like I said, no one has the combination you have. And besides, you're one of the only people on this planet I can trust."

The words hung heavy in the cabin for a minute before he responded. "You can always trust me, Em. And you know I'll do whatever I can to get that woman back."

"I know you will." She took a deep breath, shrugging off any emotions she might have been feeling. "You have less than seventy-two hours. The terrorist said they would kill Dr. Ott in three days. That was over twelve hours ago. So you're on the clock. No pressure. Oh," she caught herself before she finished what she was saying. "If I had to guess, I’d say wherever you go, they’ll likely follow."

"Always nice to have fans.”

"The terrorists are looking for something they don't know how to find. They believe that Dr. Ott can tell them where it is. Up until this point, she has evidently refused. If she continues to hold out, at least they’ll have plan B in play. That's you." She jerked a thumb in his direction. "If it has anything to do with something historical, they might know that you would be a perfect answer for the problem. Your reputation, after all, does precede you. That means you'll need to watch your back. It's highly plausible that the leaders of Black Ring know about your exploits and want to use you for their efforts. Once you find what they're looking for, they'll execute you." 

“Perfect.”

Find a scientist’s secret…whatever it is, with no leads as to its whereabouts. Save her from a barbaric group of terrorists. Kill said terrorists. Get the woman back to safety. And all in around sixty hours. Oh, and survival is a bonus.

Good to be back in the game,
he thought cynically.

Something still bothered him. "They made that video public."

"Correct."

"But if I'm their plan B, that means they've reached out to our government with their demands aside from that encrypted message."

"Bingo."

"Which means if I find what they're looking for, we have a way to contact them?"

"Right again."

Sean shook his head. "I was kind of hoping I could ease back into things with you," he said in a weary voice.

Emily laughed. "You know it doesn't work that way."

She was right. He did know.

Might as well dive right into the fire,
he thought.