Labyrinth (24 page)

Chapter 27

Annja drew closer to the light and the noise. She could clearly hear multiple voices in the room ahead. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, but the tone of the conversation seemed light. Not dangerous.

Was it possible she had nothing to fear from going into the room ahead of her? Had she found some sort of safe zone?

Yeah, right, she thought. Fat chance of that happening. Everything to this point had been carefully calculated and plotted out by Fairclough. There was no way he’d ever let something like a safe zone find its way into his maze.

Annja kept her grip on her sword.
I won’t trust anyone until I know for sure I’m not about to be stabbed in the back.

And even then, she might not trust any of them completely.

“H
ELLO
, K
ESSEL
.”

In front of him Greene aimed a silenced pistol directly at Kessel’s chest. He had to remember that the charade was up; they’d had video cameras watching him talk to Annja. No sense prolonging the inevitable, he supposed.

“Greene, you’re looking well.”

The ecoterrorist looked incredibly smug. Kessel found the expression slightly nauseating. Or was that just his head injury?

“I’m glad to see you’re not going to insult me by pretending to still be a mute.”

Kessel shrugged. “What’s the point? I know you guys had the maze wired for sight and sound. I’d only be fooling myself if I still played the part.”

Greene nodded. “And now you and Annja have been separated again. How tragic for the both of you.”

Kessel frowned. “Do you know where she is?”

The other man laughed. “Know where she is? Of course we do. We’ve known where you’ve been the entire time you went into the maze. There’s nothing going on here right now that hasn’t been planned for months, years even.”

“You mind giving me a clue?”

Greene waved the pistol. “Come with me and we’ll see if Fairclough feels like divulging anything or if he simply wants me to kill you right now.”

“Oh, well, good,” Kessel said. “At least that way I’ll know what to wear to my funeral.”

A
NNJA
SAW
THE
OUTLINE
of a doorway more clearly now. The light coming from the room was bright. Yellow. And she smelled something.

Food.

Her mouth swam in its own juices as she detected the scent of roast chicken. It had been hours since she’d eaten and the stress was catching up with her. She’d been running on fumes. The thought of actually filling her stomach with food was almost too much to bear.

Annja could barely resist the urge to run into the room. But she held back, one last vestige of her discipline still intact despite the stress and exhaustion she’d had to deal with since being plucked out of Brooklyn earlier today.

Or was it yesterday?

Annja frowned. She no longer knew how long she’d been in the maze. A quick glance at the watch told her the thing had stopped working hours ago.

Or was it minutes ago?

Stupid watch.

She took another step closer to the room.

Another step closer to food.

G
REENE
KEPT
K
ESSEL
in front of him as they headed down a hallway lined with fluorescent bulbs overhead that flickered when they walked under them.

“What happened to your head, Kessel?”

“I got thrown into a wall by that thing you guys put down in the maze. What was it? A bigfoot or something?”

“Something,” Greene said. “What’s the matter? Did it get the better of you?”

“Temporarily.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means it’s dead,” Kessel said. And he felt good saying that.

But if Greene was upset by the news, he didn’t show it. He merely sniffed and told Kessel to keep walking. “We’ve got an appointment that I don’t want to keep waiting. I think he’s quite interested in talking to you about your work.”

“My work?”

“Yes, you being a special agent with the FBI and all. He’s quite keen on hearing about your exploits.”

“My exploits,” Kessel repeated. “Well, he ought to ask you about them, then. After all, I’ve been assigned to penetrate your organization and bring you down.”

Greene laughed. “So much for that, then, eh?”

Kessel shrugged. “Day’s not over just yet. Who knows? Halley’s Comet could come crashing through this place and wipe us all out.”

“But that would mean you’d be dead, too.”

Kessel stopped, turned and looked at Greene. “As long as you’re dead, I don’t care about my own life.”

Greene’s smile spread across his face. “I do so love how superior you try to make yourself appear even in the face of defeat. That’s something from your military career, isn’t it?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, we’ll see how high and mighty you are when Fairclough asks me to serve you a dish of hot lead.” Greene gestured with the pistol. “Now keep moving.”

A
NNJA
BRACED
HERSELF
on the doorjamb and prepared to enter. Sounds continued on the other side of the doorway. The voices were lower now. But she still couldn’t hear what they were talking about.

The smell of freshly cooked food was almost too much to bear. She gripped the sword and closed her eyes. Please don’t let this be a trick. Please let it be real. I just need something to eat.

She opened her eyes, took a breath and then steeled herself. On a count of three, Annja swiveled away from the door frame and entered the room.

W
HEN
K
ESSEL
MADE
his move, it caught Greene completely by surprise. Instead of turning and knocking the gun out of Greene’s hand as the ecoterrorist might have suspected he would try, Kessel instead jumped straight up and punched his hand into one of the overhead fluorescent lights.

Shattered glass rained down on Greene’s unprotected head, while Kessel landed and tucked himself into a ball, rolling as far away as he could.

The shattered bulb produced a chain reaction and the hall filled with the sound of exploding lightbulbs that shot down like a million tiny mercury-tipped spears. Greene looked up in horror and then screamed as a shard punctured the membrane of one of his eyes.

He dropped the pistol and ran past Kessel, screeching. He vanished into the darkness.

Kessel waited until the last of the bulbs had exploded and finished shattering their glass into the hallway before he got up and found the pistol.

The weight of the gun felt good in his hand. For the first time, he felt like maybe he’d just done something to tilt the odds in their favor.

He frowned. Well, at least, his favor for right now.

But he’d find Annja.

He would.

A
NNJA
LOOKED
around.

The room was deserted. She frowned. Where was everyone? Where were those voices coming from?

She crossed the floor and saw the stereo speakers set up behind a table. The sounds came out of the speakers.

No.

She wheeled around, searching for the food that had teased her.

But the table was bare. And there was no other place the food could have been.

The smells, though, she wondered. Where were they coming from? Surely not the stereo speakers.

And then she saw the vent. It measured only about two feet by one foot but it was through this that the smell of food had been piped into the room.

Everything had been done to give the appearance that there were people eating in here.

But why?

More torture?

Or something more sinister?

K
ESSEL
TOUCHED
THE
WOUND
on his head and found that it didn’t hurt any worse than before he’d made his move. Everything still seemed to be intact.

Good.

Kessel checked the slide on the pistol. He could tell even in the dark that he was holding a 9 mm suppressed Beretta. He popped the clip and checked the spring pressure. The weight of the clip and the resistance when he pressed on the top round told him he had enough rounds to make his point loud and clear.

He slid the clip back into the gun, racked the slide and then put the safety on before adopting a low-ready stance.

Then Kessel started off after Greene.

Wherever he was, Kessel would find him.

A
NNJA
STARED
at the empty table.

Okay, she felt like shouting, so what’s the goddamned point of this? If Fairclough wanted to break her, he was very close to succeeding. But Annja also didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of displaying her emotions.

So she clamped her jaw shut, aware that Fairclough might have cameras in the room watching her right at that very moment.

She looked at the table. The speakers.

The vent.

She frowned. The vent was obviously too small for her to crawl through. And she was willing to bet it wasn’t that far away from the actual food she was smelling. That’s what made it so incredibly tantalizing.

So especially painful.

Damn you, Fairclough, she thought. I don’t know what I did that would make you want to do this to me, but I promise, when I get out of here and find you, I’m going to do something far worse than anything I’ve done so far.

And then it occurred to her.

There was no exit from this room.

There were no other doors.

She’d come down the tunnel and landed in the one place that then led her to this room. There were no secret passageways in the other room and now here she stood alone with a table, speakers and a vent.