Stones Unturned (22 page)

Munson and her two silent lackeys looked confused. Then the woman scowled and shook her head. She reached up a hand and brushed her hair from her face.

"No, sir. You don't."

"Good," Clay said. Making Kovalik's face as stern as he could, he turned toward the two agents behind the security desk. "Now buzz me in."

"Sir, you shouldn't go in alone," Munson said.

"He's paralyzed, isn't he?"

"Yes. But you'll want to be careful. Past that door, he's living a life he's spent decades creating for himself. He's got his own security."

"Booby traps?" Clay asked, amused.

"More or less. I mean, they don't work. We put them in ourselves, and nobody was going to risk that. But don't forget who he was, fifty years ago. That's Professor Zarin in there, no matter how insane he is."

Clay strode over to the door to the east wing, the door Graves had ghosted through several minutes earlier.

"I haven't forgotten," he said as he grabbed the door handle. "Now, buzz me in."

The five agents stared at him. Munson gave a nod, and one of the men behind the counter touched a button. The door buzzed and clicked, unlocking. Clay pulled it open and stepped inside, pulling it tightly shut behind him. He heard the lock click.

Tempting as it was to shift back to his true appearance, or at least to the comfortable face of Joe Clay, he had to keep wearing Kovalik's face for the benefit of the security cameras. He didn't want Munson and her crew interfering before he and Graves got the information they needed.

The corridor had the antiseptic odor of a hospital, but there was something else there as well; something animal. The fluorescent lights cast a grim, morgue-like gloom along the hall, and the whole feel of the place reminded Clay of another era — an era he spent doing terrible things for terrible men and walking corridors much like this one. It was as though time, in this place, had stopped.

There were windows in the corridor, but he noticed that none of them provided a view of the front gates or the drive. If Zarin could make it this far, he'd never be able to see what was on the outside. But, of course, he couldn't make it this far. Clay frowned. Why bother, then, keeping this corridor looking so antiquated, and keeping the view limited?

A glance around gave him the answer.

Cameras.

Just as the security team in the foyer had cameras everywhere, Zarin must have his own surveillance cameras. Only they would only pick up what his federal babysitters allowed them to pick up. The video feed of the foyer and the front gate would show Professor Zarin only what Munson and her associates wanted him to see.

This corridor was little more than a movie set.

And here he was, a new addition to the cast.

CHAPTER TEN

Clay wondered how far ahead Graves had gone but did not want to talk to the ghost as long as he could avoid it. Not when Zarin and Munson were both likely monitoring his progress. Calling out for someone who wasn't there might cause interference he didn't want. Best to hold off a confrontation as long as possible.

Still, the ghost must be far ahead, and he wondered what Graves had encountered.

The corridor forked to the right, and there was another steel door. From the other side, muffled by the door, came the distant sound of music. He could barely make out the tune.

Clay reached for the knob.

A series of clicks sounded to his right, and he turned just in time to see metal plates in the walls sliding aside. Behind them, set into shadowy recesses in the wall, were the mouths of long gun barrels.

"Oh, shi —" he began.

The guns barked, rapid fire, a staccato burst of bullets that exploded from the wall and struck him, one after another. Clay staggered back as the bullets struck him, driving him into a window whose glass cracked but did not shatter on impact.

He dropped to his knees, breath coming in gasps. The mouths of those guns plumed smoke like a dragon at rest, and then the metal plates slid back into place, hiding the weapons away.

"Son of a bitch," Clay snarled.

He clutched at his stomach, forcing himself to keep the guise of Al Kovalik intact. A strange frisson filled the air, but he recognized it immediately. It had become familiar to him of late. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stood up, and he raised his eyes to see the ghost of Dr. Graves standing in front of him, one eyebrow arched quizzically.

"That looked like it hurt," the ghost observed.

Clay laughed. He stood and stretched, ran his hands through Kovalik's gray hair, then used his shoe to brush aside the rubber bullets that were spread across the floor.

Rubber bullets. Of course.
No way would Munson risk sending FBI agents in here pretending to be Zarin's lackeys if there were real bullets in those guns. If the professor started to distrust one of his lackeys, or wanted to set an example, he'd use a stupid trap on them, like some early James Bond villain. Clay wanted to laugh. What did the FBI agents do? They must have fallen down and had to just wait until someone came and dragged their "corpse" away.
Course, they're probably thrilled when it happens to them,
he thought
. It means they can get off of this shit detail and into something else. Some of them probably piss the old lunatic off on purpose, just so they can get terminated.

"Sorry, professor," Clay called, assuming there was audio monitoring in the hall as well. "You're going to have to do better than that."

The ghost of Dr. Graves stepped up beside him. "What are you going to do? It's a steel door. If you just break it down —"

Clay glanced at him, keenly aware that he was being observed, and that the cameras would not see the ghost. He thought about it. He could play along, explain that he'd been augmented by the government and sent after Zarin, something that might sound somewhat true to both the professor and Munson, to cover up for how strong he was.

But what would he buy? A couple of minutes?

"I wanted to do this quietly, but this is taking too long," the shapeshifter said, to everyone who was listening. "So no more screwing around."

He kept wearing Al Kovalik's face, just in case Munson was stupid enough not to realize right away that something was very wrong here. But he hauled back and kicked out at the steel door. It crumpled in the middle and tore off of its hinges with a shriek of metal.

On the second kick, it caved in completely and clanged to the ground in the corridor beyond.

"This is going to get messy," Graves said as he moved past Clay into Professor Zarin's inner sanctum.

"It's been messy for sixty years," Clay said, not caring who was listening now. "We're just trying to clean it up."

The question was, how long would Munson allow this to go on? Clay knew the answer, too. Right up until the moment that stopping him became more important than keeping up the ruse of Zarin's captivity, or the moment Clay himself revealed the truth to the old nut job.

Clay strode across the bent metal door. It shifted underfoot, clanking against the ground. The ghost walked beside him, soundless as ever. Now that they were inside, the music he'd heard earlier was louder, and he could make out the tune. Cole Porter's "Night and Day." The melody drifted along the plain, industrial hallway almost eerily, as though it were haunting the place far more than Dr. Graves ever could.

"What the hell is that music?" Clay asked.

The ghost kept pace with him. There were many rooms along the corridor, or at least many doors, all of them closed. A stairwell on the right had been blocked off, though Clay was sure he could get up that way if necessary.

"I don't know," Graves replied. "I could hear it as I made my way through the place, but it kept moving, as though the source of the music was mobile."

Clay pondered that a moment.

Then he heard two clicks from the ceiling just ahead. Panels slid aside, and a trio of silver tubes lowered on robot arms, their tips glowing with red light like the burning embers on the end of a lit cigarette.

"Oh, hell, what now?"

Burst of red light erupted from the weapons, laser beams that strafed the corridor, passing through the spectral form of Dr. Graves and dancing harmlessly across the chest of Al Kovalik. Clay stared down at the lights that crisscrossed his body.

He sighed. "Come on, this is ridiculous."

In his mind, he pictured FBI agents falling down and acting as though they'd been burned horribly by the lasers, all for the benefit of a paralyzed mad scientist, watching on his little closed circuit TV.

He could barely contain the urge to laugh.

"Let's go," he told Graves.

The ghost swept along beside him. They could still hear the music, the final strains of "Night and Day" reaching them as they strode down the corridor and came to an elevator. Clay stared dubiously at the elevator before finally pressing the button.

"This should be fun."

Another tune started playing eerily in the distance. Now it sounded as though it came from above them. This was another Cole Porter tune. "I've Got You Under My Skin."

The elevator doors slid open almost soundlessly. They stepped inside, the ghost standing so that only half of his body was within the elevator. It looked like he had been cut in two by the doors when they closed. He stuck his head out and then pulled back into the elevator.

"Nothing out there. No one is following," he said.

"They're waiting to see what happens," Clay replied. "They're going to have a lot of explaining to do, but they're not sure to whom, just yet."

The old elevator rattled as it ascended. Clay stared at the numbers atop the door. The options had been limited. Basement. First floor, which they'd started on. Second floor. Third floor. At random, he'd chosen the second, but the elevator didn't stop there.

Clay had to suppress a small chuckle.

A hiss filled the elevator, and he glanced around curiously. For a moment he'd thought there might be snakes slithering into the contraption, but instead he saw several vents at foot level, all of them pumping a fine greenish mist into the elevator.

He sniffed the air, then glanced at the ghost. Graves seemed only slightly more substantial than the mist, his spiritual form merging with the coalescing mists.

"What do you suppose it is?" he asked Graves. "Dry ice?"

"With a chemical compound," Graves replied. "I'm not sure if it's meant to be poison, or just to knock you unconscious. You might want to consider feigning unconsciousness to see what happens next."

Clay shrugged. "I don't think so. I'm impatient."

"It's your show," the ghost said.

"For the moment."

The elevator stopped on the third floor, but the doors did not open immediately. For several long minutes Clay stood with his arms crossed, whistling along to the Cole Porter melody, letting whoever might be watching through whatever cameras were in the elevator get a good look at Special Agent Al Kovalik being bored by the poison gas.

A vacuum turned on, and in seconds it sucked most of the green mist out of the elevator.

The doors opened. The sight that greeted them struck him mute. Just outside the elevator on the third floor stood a fat, ugly orangutan in a butler's jacket, with a small speaker-box around its neck like gaudy jewelry. The music came from the speaker.

The orangutan carried a machine gun, and it was aimed right at Clay.

"Good Lord. Solomon?" Graves whispered.

"No, come on," Clay said, shaking his head. "You know the monkey?"

"It can't be the same one," the ghost said quickly. "But perhaps a descendant of the creature that once served Zarin."

The orangutan bared its teeth and hissed at Clay — it could not see the ghost — and it stomped its foot, apparently frustrated that he wasn't paying closer attention to it.

The music of Cole Porter ceased abruptly, the song cut off mid-note. The speaker crackled, and they heard labored breathing.

"Welcome, sir," buzzed the voice on the crackling speaker. The orangutan studied Clay suspiciously, baring its teeth again.

"Zarin," Graves whispered, as though up until this very moment, the ghost had been unable to believe his old nemesis still lived.

"You are both formidable and persistent. How you —" a hacking cough interrupted, and then Zarin had to take a moment to catch its breath. "How you managed to survive my defense systems, I shall be very curious to learn. After that, I suspect one of us will soon die."

Clay raised his hands, staring at the orangutan a moment before turning in a slow circle, letting any cameras get a good look at him. Or, rather, at Al Kovalik.

"I didn't come here to die, Professor Zarin," he said, mustering as much sincerity as he could manage. "And I haven't come here to kill you, either. I only want to ask you a few questions."

There was a pause. The orangutan grunted and shook his machine gun as though in frustration that he hadn't been ordered to perforate Clay yet.

"Who are you?" Zarin's rasping voice asked. He coughed again.

Lying would do him no good at this point. And with luck, Agent Munson and any other observers would be so confused wondering what the hell Al Kovalik was up to that it would take a while before it occurred to them that he wasn't Al Kovalik after all.

"My name is Clay," he said. "And I wanted to ask you a few questions about the murder of Doctor Leonard Graves."

"God damn it!" Zarin screamed, voice shrill and speaker box crackling. "For the last time, I did not kill Graves. I wish I had. If I knew who did, I'd have killed the killer, tortured him for weeks, stripped his skin, murdered his family in front of his eyes. I wanted him . . ."

Zarin broke down in a fit of coughing that made the orangutan falter, eyes clouding with concern. When it saw Clay watching it, the ape flinched and snarled, raising the machine gun's barrel and training it on him, finger on the trigger.

". .. for myself," Zarin finished, when he was through with the thick, ragged coughing jag.

Clay waited a few seconds until it sounded like Zarin had caught his breath. Then, carefully and clearly, he spoke.