The Doomsday Key (45 page)

“And when did you learn about this?”

“During the project in Africa.”

“Yet you had already initiated seed production in the U.S. and abroad?”

Karlsen’s expression grew pained. “It was at the insistence and assurance
of our project leader and chief geneticist. She said the results of preliminary safety tests were sufficient for us to move forward. I trusted her; I never checked the results myself.”

“Who was this woman?” Painter asked.

Senator Gorman guessed, his voice bitter and hard. “Krista Magnussen.”

5:52 A.M.

Ivar Karlsen knew he could no longer avoid the senator’s fury. But it took him a moment to meet the man’s eyes. Instead, he stared down. From a pocket, he had removed a coin and let it rest in his palm. It was the Frederick IV four-mark, minted in 1725 by the traitor Henrik Meyer. His reminder of the cost of betrayal.

Karlsen’s fingers clenched the coin, recognizing how far he had fallen, led astray by Krista Magnussen. He finally lifted his eyes and faced Senator Gorman. The man had paid a stiff price in blood. Ivar could not deny him the truth.

“The senator is right. I hired Ms. Magnussen when we started the Crop Biogenics division six years ago. She came with a slew of recommendations from Harvard and Oxford. She was young, brilliant, and motivated. She produced results year after year.”

“But she wasn’t who she claimed to be,” Painter said.

“No,” Ivar said. “About a year ago, we began having serious problems at our facilities. Arson in Romania. Embezzlement at another. A rash of thefts. Then Krista revealed that she had access to an organization that could shore up our global security, quietly and efficiently. She described it as a corporate version of a private military contractor.”

“Did this organization have a name?”

“She called it the Guild.”

Painter failed to react to the name. Not even a twitch. His total lack of response convinced Ivar that the man knew about the Guild, possibly more than even Ivar did.

“It was all staged,” Painter said. “The accidents, the arson, the theft … the Guild made those happen. They needed you. So they softened you up to earn your trust. They pulled your butt out of the fire enough times, and you began to relinquish control. You grew dependent on them.”

Surely that wasn’t possible. But the pattern Painter laid out … it was so clear, like a deadly hand of cards.

“Let me guess,” Painter continued, adding to the pattern. “When things really began to go wrong … at the test farm in Africa … who did you turn to?”

“Krista, of course,” Ivar admitted, his voice catching. “She reported the mutations, that some of the camp refugees were becoming sick after consuming the corn. Something had to be done. But we’d already planted production fields around the world. She said the situation could still be salvaged, but she and her organization would need a free hand. She warned I must harden my heart.
To save the world, what were a few lives?
Those were her words. And dear God, I was desperate enough to believe them.”

Ivar’s breathing grew harder. His heart pounded in his throat. He pictured Krista naked, kissing him, her eyes fierce and bright. He had thought he’d known the game being played.

What a fool I’ve been …

Painter continued the story, as if he’d been standing beside Ivar these past days. “The Guild razed the village and told you that was necessary to prevent the organism from spreading. They took the bodies of some of the afflicted villagers for study and justified what came next.
Let their deaths not be in vain. If more could be learned, others could be saved.
And with seed production already begun, time was essential.”

Senator Gorman sat with his eyes wide, his fists clenched on his knees. “What about my son?”

Ivar answered that agonized plea. “Krista told me she found Jason copying secure data. She said he planned to sell it to the highest bidder.”

Gorman pounded his fist into his thigh. “Jason would never—”

“She showed me his e-mail with the stolen files attached. I privately confirmed that the file was sent to a professor at Princeton.”

“Princeton wouldn’t engage in corporate espionage.”

It pained Ivar to tell the man about his son. “Her organization had proof that the money trail led to a terrorist cell operating out of Pakistan. To expose him would expose us. It would also destroy your career. Krista tried talking to him, to convince him to give up his contacts, to keep silent. She said he refused, tried to run. One of her men panicked and shot him.”

Gorman covered his face.

Ivar wanted to do the same, but he had no right. He knew that the boy’s blood lay on his hands. He had ordered Jason held and questioned by those brutal mercenaries.

Then Painter tore away the last of Ivar’s delusions. “Jason was innocent. It was all lies.”

Ivar stared across the table, dumbstruck. He wanted to dismiss what the man was saying.

“Jason was killed because he inadvertently sent the incriminating data to Professor Malloy. It was why they were both murdered. To cover up proof of the crop’s instability. The Guild didn’t want that exposed.”

Painter stared hard at Ivar. “Once the information was leaked, they needed a scapegoat. You were to be thrown to the wolves. After they killed you in Svalbard, the Guild could safely fade away and take all the prizes with them: both a new bioweapon and the means to control what had already been unleashed. The global contamination by your crop would be blamed on the reckless ambition of a dead CEO. And with you eliminated, no one would be the wiser. To the Guild, you were no more than a pawn to be sacrificed.”

As Ivar sat perfectly still, cold sweat trickled down his back. He could no longer deny it. Not any of it. And down deep, maybe he had known the truth all along but dared not face it.

“But I have one last question,” Painter continued. “One I can’t answer.”

He slid a sheet of paper across the table. Written on it was a familiar symbol.

A circle and a cross.

Painter tapped the sheet. “I understand why the Guild would kill Jason and Professor Malloy, but why murder the Vatican archaeologist? What does this have to do with the Guild’s plan?”

6:12 A.M.

Painter knew Karlsen was near the breaking point. The man’s eyes were glassy, his voice a hoarse whisper. He clearly struggled with the depth of betrayal perpetrated against him. But the Guild were masters of manipulation and coercion, of infiltration and deception, of brutality and violence.

Even Sigma had once fallen prey to them.

But Painter offered no solace to the man.

Karlsen slowly answered his question. “Father Giovanni approached our corporation two years ago to fund his research. He believed that the mummified bodies found in the peat bog were the victims of an old war between Christians and pagans. That the fungus was used as a weapon to corrupt crops and wipe out villages. And this secret war was buried in code in a medieval text called the Domesday Book. His supporting documents were impressive. He believed a counteragent existed to the spread of the fungus, a cure, a way of eradicating it from land and body.”

“And you financed the search for this counteragent?”

“We did. What could it harm? We thought he might turn up some new chemical that we could exploit. But about the time we began to suspect
that our new crop was unstable, we heard that Father Giovanni had made a huge breakthrough. He had found an artifact that he was sure would lead to the location of this lost key.”

Painter understood. “Such a counteragent, if it existed, would solve all your problems.”

“I had Krista interview him to judge the validity of his claim and to secure the artifact.” Ivar closed his eyes. “God forgive me.” “But the priest ran.”

Karlsen nodded. “I don’t know what happened. Whatever he told her over the phone drew the full attention of her organization. And after the disaster in Africa, we had to secure that artifact. If there was even the remotest possibility of a counteragent …”

“But you lost it. Father Giovanni was killed.”

“I never learned the exact details. After the mess in Africa, I had more immediate fires to put out. I left the matter to the Guild to pursue, to see if there truly was any validity to Father Giovanni’s claim.”

“And how did that go?”

He shook his head. “The last I heard from Krista was that another team was still searching for the key.”

That had to be Gray,
Painter thought.

“Krista assured me that the Guild had a mole on that team.”

Painter went cold at his words.

If the Guild had infiltrated Gray’s team—

He struggled for any way to help them, to get word to them. But he didn’t even know if they were dead or alive. Either way, there was nothing he could do for them.

They were on their own.

28
October 14, 12:18 P.M.
Troyes, France

A library was an unlikely spot to plan a prison break.

But they had to start somewhere.

Gray shared a desk with Rachel. Stacks of books were piled around them. Sunlight streamed through the tall windows of the modern library in the city of Troyes. Computer stations dotted rows of tables in the research room.

Despite its glass-and-steel architecture, the library was ancient. Founded in a convent in 1651, it remained one of the oldest libraries in all of France. Its main treasure was a collection of manuscripts from the original Abbey of Clairvaux. After the French Revolution, the entire abbey library had been moved to Troyes for safekeeping.

And for good reason.

“It was Napoleon who turned the abbey into a prison,” Gray said, pushing back a book and stretching a kink out of his neck.

Since driving from Paris, they had spent all morning in the library, researching the abbey and its saints. They’d had little sleep, only what they could manage in the airport or on the short plane hop from England.

With the clock ticking, Gray faced two challenges: how to reach the ruins that lay at the heart of Clairvaux Prison and what to look for once they got there. With much still to learn, he had no choice but to assign tasks and split everyone up.

Gray accompanied Rachel and Wallace to Troyes. The town lay only eleven miles from the prison. Its library contained the greatest collection of
historical documents about the abbey. To expedite their research, Gray divided their tasks. Rachel concentrated on Saint Malachy’s life, death, and entombment at the old abbey. Wallace was off with a clerk to the restricted Grand Salon of the library to review original documents concerning Saint Bernard, the founder of the monastic order and a close friend of Malachy’s.

Gray concentrated on digging up every architectural detail he could find on the original abbey. He had a stack of books equal to Rachel’s. Open before him was a text that dated to 1856. It contained a map of the original abbey precinct.

A tall outer wall surrounded the property, interrupted by watchtowers. Inside, the grounds were divided into two areas. The eastern ward held gardens, orchards, even a few fishponds. To the west spread barns, stables, slaughterhouses, workshops, and guest lodgings. Between them, secured behind its own inner walls, stood the abbey itself, including the church, cloisters, lay buildings, and kitchens.

With the book open before him, Gray studied the nineteenth-century map.

Something kept drawing him back to this picture, but the more he concentrated, the less sure he became. For the past half hour, he had used the map to pinpoint the few surviving structures of the abbey. All that still stood were a couple of barns, a few sections of walls, a nicely preserved lay building, and the ruins of the original cloister.

It was the latter—
le Grand Cloître
—that most intrigued Gray.

The Grand Cloister lay immediately next to where the old abbey once stood. And it was beneath that church that Saint Malachy had been buried.

But was he still there?

That was another worry. According to Rachel, after the French Revolution, the tomb of Saint Malachy disappeared from the historical record.