Into the Black (15 page)

The refrigerator tilted away from the wall, slowly at first, until gravity's downward influence assisted his efforts.  The heavy appliance disgorged its contents in a rush upon the unsuspecting German, and then it crashed down on top of him.  There was a grunt as the freezer compartment struck him in the head, knocking him senseless, just before the wire shelves pinned him to the floor.

Kismet inspected the mayhem.  All that was visible of the man were his feet and his right hand; his swollen fingers were still locked in the jaws of the trap.  The intruder did not seem to be moving, but Kismet was nevertheless cautious as he knelt and pushed the refrigerator aside.

He turned the appliance over on its back, so that it resembled a waiting sarcophagus.  The cavity inside was now totally vacant, the food and shelves in broken disarray all around the stunned spy.  Three holes, each no bigger around than a pencil, perforated the door, and two similar piercings had ventilated the side panel.

Before the German could regain control of his faculties, Kismet kicked the silenced automatic pistol out of reach.  He then inserted one arm under the fellow's head, the other under his legs, lifted him up and dumped him unceremoniously into the ruined refrigerator.

The German grunted again, the pain of striking his head a second time rousing him.  He started thrashing briefly as his awareness returned, then stopped moving when he realized that his prey now held the upper hand. Kismet picked up the pistol and trained it on a point roughly in the area of the other man's nose.  "Now will you tell me why that statue is so important,
mein Herr
?"

There was a flicker of an eyebrow in response to the last two words, but the foreign agent quickly mastered his emotions.  He would give nothing away.  "You may as well shoot me, Kismet.  I have nothing to say to you."

"How unfortunate," mused Kismet, taking a step closer.  He slid his foot under the door and leaned over the German.  “However, I have no intention of killing you.  I'm sure the authorities have more persuasive ways of getting answers from you, and I know they'll be interested in what kind of operations the German intelligence service is running on American soil."

The man did not react at all; his face was an unreadable mask.  Kismet frowned as he considered his options, and then decided to play one last wild card.  "If you see him, give my regards to Halverson Grimes."

The German jerked suddenly as if suffering an electric shock.  "How did—" He silenced himself almost immediately but could not hide his dismay.

Kismet kicked the door of the refrigerator, lifting it high enough with his foot so that it slammed down, entombing the intruder.  He hastily grabbed a roll of silver duct tape from the bottom drawer of the kitchen cabinets then leaped onto the door just as the captive inside tried to push it open.  The man's cries were muffled by the insulation.  Kismet quickly began running strips of the heavy duty adhesive back and forth across the door until even the German's most ferocious efforts failed to crack it open so much as a millimeter.  The tiny bullet holes would provide adequate ventilation for the captive, Kismet reasoned.  And if they didn't?  Well, that was too bad, wasn't it?  Spying was a dangerous business after all.

After laying aside the silenced pistol, Kismet stroked his chin thoughtfully.  His final comment had been a bluff, based on a whisper of doubt in his mind about Grimes.  He hadn't really expected a reaction, but was alarmed by what the German's response suggested.  In any event, the entire incident, unexpected as it was, had placed Irene and himself in jeopardy once more.  The German might have comrades—reinforcements waiting in the shadows.  And eventually, Grimes would send his goons to ransack the residence in search of clues as to where Kismet had gone.  They had to get out, and quickly.

Before he could reach the bathroom door, it swung open to reveal Irene.  She wore only a towel, wrapped around her torso and tucked in over her left breast.  A second towel was twisted turban-like upon her head.  Clouds of steam billowed out from behind her.  "What was that noise?"

"A big rat in the kitchen.  You know how these old buildings can be.  Hurry up.  There's not much time left."

"Time for what?"  Her question became a gasp.  "My God, is that blood?"

Kismet looked down, following the direction of her pointing finger.  Three crimson spots were visible on the fabric of his undershirt, though the cloth itself was intact.  He touched the spots, rekindling the pain in the nerves of his abraded skin.  The bullets had given up lethal velocity as they passed through the impromptu shield of the refrigerator door, but had still hit hard enough to cause superficial abrasions.

"It's nothing," he lied, taking her arm and guiding her curious eyes away from the hallway.  "You'll have to make do with some of my clothes."

As Irene unfurled her turban, releasing a cascade of damp hair, Kismet felt a pang of regret that their meeting had been so ill-timed and under such desperate circumstances.

Instead of dwelling on the missed opportunity, he opened the closet, pulled a pair of khakis and work shirt from a hanger, and passed these to Irene.  As soon as she took them, he abruptly pushed all of the clothes hanging on the dowel out of the way, exposing the wall.  He then turned the wooden rod until he heard a click from within the wall itself.  Gentle pressure on the panel caused it to swing inward, exposing a small room beyond.  Kismet ducked under the low lintel and entered the secret room.

The small chamber was only slightly bigger than the closet through which he had passed.  Kismet had built this room himself by creating a false wall in what had originally been a much larger walk-in closet.  The space beyond was empty, save for a small worktable against the back wall.  The tabletop was piled with various papers, many of which were documents pertaining to his personal quest—more than a decade spent trying to find some trace of the wolf-like Ulrich Hauser and the organization that man had hinted at.  Kismet had been discreet, never sure who could be trusted with his knowledge, content to simply listen for certain keywords to pop up in conversation with people who seemed to have a little too much interest in legendary antiquities.  Beyond that, the search for answers had begun to resemble a campaign against windmills.

Also occupying the tabletop was his
kukri
, along with a Glock 17 pistol, a cleaning kit, and several boxes of ammunition.  He left the .44 Special and the silenced .22 automatic alongside the other weapons; he would think of some way to dispose of them later.

One other item occupied a place on the table.  Hidden inside a plastic grocery bag was the object of the German agent's quest.  Kismet took it out and held it up to the light.  "What are you hiding?" he whispered.

"So exactly what is it that you do, Nick Kismet?"  Irene stood just behind him, gazing in awe at the hidden room and its contents.  One of his Ex Oficio shirts now clothed her upper body.  In spite of the fact that she had left the top three buttons undone, exposing a healthy amount of cleavage, her breasts strained at the fabric beneath the chest pockets.  Kismet silently cursed the German once again for his untimely intrusion and tore his gaze from her.

"Believe it or not, I'm a lawyer."

She raised a dubious eyebrow.  "This should be interesting."

He laughed.  "I work for the United Nations; specifically, for an agency that deals with issues regarding art and antiquities.  We basically make sure that art treasures and so forth don't get snatched up illegally by private collectors and black marketeers."

"You make it sound so pedestrian."

Kismet chuckled at the observation.  "Well, I do occasionally go into battle in the courtroom, but mostly I inspect digs to make sure that the laws are being observed, and try to shut down illegal art smuggling operations."

Irene pointed to the statue.  "Is that something you got to keep?"

"I'm not sure, but it just might be our ace in the hole."  He ran his fingers along its length, probing for unnoticed irregularities or incongruous defects.  He turned it on its side, and then examined the calf's belly.  Finally, he turned his attention to the sun disk between the horns of the idol.  The block Hebrew characters--engraved characters of the Aramaic alphabet rather than the  more spidery paleo-Hebrew used prior to the third century BCE--looked back at him with all the authority the word inscribed there carried.  Some rabbis held that the name itself was a word of great power, but its actual pronunciation was an incomprehensible mystery because the vowels that connected the four consonants were unknown.  Did those letters, the anachronism that had revealed the idol's fraudulent nature to him, hold the secret that made the golden calf statue so desirable, both to the German agent and to Lysette Lyon?  If it did, the significance escaped him.  He turned the artifact once more.

There it was: a faint line as thin as a hair encircling the circumference of the disk.  He inserted a fingernail and exerted pressure until the disk popped open like a keepsake locket.  A concealed jeweler's hinge held it fast on the bottom edge.

Kismet swiped his finger across the inside of the hollow space and dislodged a tiny reclosable bag, about the size of a postage stamp, which contained a wafer thin piece of blue plastic.  Laying the statue aside, he gave closer attention to this new item.

"It's a memory card," he realized aloud.  He had completely forgotten his houseguest, and Irene was forced to quickly back out of the hidden enclosure as Kismet raced purposefully back into the bedroom.

Kismet grabbed his notebook computer off the nightstand and slipped the secure digital file storage device into the appropriate port.  The file directory opened, but the card evidently had only one executable file, which Kismet double-clicked.

The screen abruptly went black then words started scrolling from bottom to top.  German words.  He mentally paraphrased a translation, quickly getting the gist of the two paragraph long messages that commenced the program.  The first was a security warning, stating that only certain people were authorized to view what followed, and that if one was not a high ranking member of the Bundeswehr, the German ministry of defense or something called Alb-Werk, then continuing to watch constituted espionage and would be dealt with in the most severe way.  Kismet glanced at Irene, who was staring once more over his shoulder.  "Do you speak German?"

She shook her head.

"Good."  The second paragraph was more of a proprietary statement, once more invoking the name of Alb-Werk, followed by a brief introduction stating that what followed was for general presentation purposes only; further technical information would be made available upon request.  As the scrolling words left the screen, a logo, stylized from the name of the parent company, flashed in the center, then again went dark.  What followed looked incredibly realistic, but Kismet noted a distinctive uniformity in the texture of the images that gave it away as the product of computer-generated animation.

The visual presentation began with a sweeping aerial shot descending down toward a dense forest in the purple of twilight falling.  As the perspective leveled out, Kismet saw a generic military compound looming ahead.  The point of view switched suddenly to a loose cluster of soldiers standing on the ground and gazing up at the barely visible silhouette of the aircraft as a cylindrical object, presumably a bomb, fell from its undercarriage.  The device deployed stubby wings, and adjusted course incrementally as momentum carried it forward in a downward curve.  The delivery aircraft then kicked in its afterburners, disappearing from the sky in a blaze of blue flame.

Two seconds later the bomb detonated high above the military base in a burst of brilliance that filled the screen.  The light, probably a graphic special effect designed to impress the viewing audience, quickly faded, only to be replaced by what Kismet took to be a more accurate expression of the bomb's capability.  The presentation broke from real time in order to relive the bomb blast from different perspectives and at different rates of progress.  It was difficult in the first few scenes to understand how the device differed from a nuclear or large conventional explosive, but in the fourth cut scene, Kismet realized what he was witnessing.

The bomb created no shock wave, no blast of kinetic force.  Instead, the airburst unleashed a cascade of particles, shown in the presentation as a silvery rain, which destroyed electronic equipment and central nervous systems alike.  Living tissue, whether human flesh or vegetation, was vaporized instantly, while radio equipment and missile guidance systems began to spontaneously burst into flames. 

The final scene showed a fleet of helicopters moving into the affected area, deploying ground troops across the compound.  The men wore traditional combat gear, rather than special protective equipment, as might be used in a nuclear or biological hot zone.  It was, Kismet realized, the holy grail of warfare: a bomb that killed the enemy without destroying infrastructure or permanently contaminating the drop site.

The dramatization ended with one soldier stepping forward to proudly raise the black, yellow and red flag of Germany.  Immediately, the image on the screen segued into an exploded schematic of the weapon itself.  Kismet recognized the basic components of an implosion device, a ball shaped charge surrounded by titanium plates that forced the blast inward, focusing the explosive energy into the fission core.  He knew that in a nuclear device, the implosion would drive neutrons through the core material—plutonium or uranium—splitting the atom apart and releasing its latent energy in a tremendous blast, but this bomb was different.  The core material was not a radio-isotope.  It was identified only by its designation on the periodic table of elements, modified by a minus sign: Au-.  The screen continued to show this final piece of information for few more seconds, then blinked out.

On an impulse, Kismet grabbed a battered copy of the New York Library Science Desk Reference from his bookshelf and thumbed through until he found the periodic table of the elements.  "Gold?" he murmured.  "Negatively charged gold?"