The Poseidon Initiative (14 page)

Finally, with Dante straining his arm muscles to hold his foe’s head up, Naomi saw her chance for a shot. She held her breath. Pulled the trigger back.

That was when the lab door burst open.

Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Den Hoorn, Netherlands

Naomi counted four men, guns drawn, pouring into the lab. She ducked behind a lab bench. Dante still grappled on the floor with the Hofstad man. He was finally gaining the upper hand, rolling onto his side while pinning his opponent’s arms unnaturally beneath him. Naomi heard the snap of bone followed by an agonizing wail.

Dante kicked the man away from him and was about to pull his weapon when two of the newcomers appeared to their left, and two to their right.

Four snub-nosed automatic weapons were aimed at Dante, Naomi, and Jasmijn. Dante could see that the extremists also carried backup weapons — pistols and knives worn on utility belts. Two of the men were typical looking light-skinned Dutchmen, early thirties, Dante guessed, while the other two had a more swarthy complexion that suggested North African descent. Regardless, all four them appeared deadly serious to the point of holding back anger.

One of them glanced down at their fallen comrade but did not bother to render aid.

“Search them for weapons,” he said in Danish, understandable only to Jasmijn. She translated for Nay and Dante, who emerged slowly from the floor with his hands held high. His Hofstad opponent lay on the floor writhing in agony, favoring his broken arm.

“You three — line up!” One of the swarthy complected gunmen waved his auto-rifle at the lab bench behind them. Naomi and Jasmijn put their backs to it. Dante walked to the bench and did the same.

“Hands up!” Also in accented English. The trio of captured lab inhabitants complied.

The fallen Hofstad man looked up as his comrade approached. The Dutchman kept his automatic rifle leveled at the three prisoners while he looked down at his injured colleague. He directed angry words to him in Dutch. The wounded man responded, apparently trying to defend his actions, to explain why he had failed. Whatever he said, it wasn’t enough.

The man standing over him grew red in the face, shouted something and then planted one of his black boots on the agent’s broken arm. He continued to yell at him over his screams of misery until the man passed out in a messy fount of his own blood.

Dante watched the eyes of the other Hofstad men. They appeared to show no signs of apprehension or discomfort at what they were witnessing. Were these men higher up in the organization than the two they had just replaced?

“You!” A light-skinned Dutchmen pointed his weapon at Jasmijn as the other three gunmen converged on their three lined-up captives.

“We said we would be back and we are true to our word.” He leered at her two companions. “I see you have recruited help in the lab. Good. What is the status of the STX antidote?” He glanced at the microscope. “You have been working on the antidote, I trust?”

“Yes, I have.”

“Good. And if you’ve had a chance to check the news, you’ll know that there are a good many people who could have benefited from it.”

“As if you would let them have it, anyway,” Jasmijn spat.

“We cannot give what does not exist. Or does it?” He looked again to her workstation by the microscope.

Jasmijn hung her head. “It does not.”

“Explain yourself.”

She looked up at her captor and took a deep breath before speaking. “I attempted a cloning technique I thought could be effective. It wasn’t. Then I tried a variant cloning method utilizing an artificial instance of a key molecule that unfortunately does not seem to exist as a commercial preparation. That didn’t work either.” She paused to catch her breath, staring at the unfriendly face aiming a gun at her that she knew could cut her to ribbons in seconds.

“If you have lost your usefulness to us,” the man with the machine gun said, then I suppose our work here is done.” He pointed the barrel of the snubnose at her neck.

“There is still hope! After the first unsuccessful trial, I stopped and I thought about it. I conducted a literature search, consulted some of my old notes, and then it finally came to me: the compound I need does exist, and I know where to find it.”

Naomi and Dante nodded, playing their roles as scientists affirming their boss’s efforts.

“Where?” His eyes bored into hers.

“There is a species of sea anemone I have done nerve cell work with before that lives on the pilings of oil rigs in the North Sea. Not terribly deep — within scuba diving depths — that’s how I used to collect them.”

“These…aneme-what?”

Jasmijn frowned at his lack of comprehension.

“Sea a-nem-O-knees,” she said, over-enunciating each syllable. “They’re simple, primitive animals related to jellyfish that are fastened to a substrate of some kind — to rocks or some other hard surface, in this case the support pilings of oil rigs. They look superficially like flowers but are invertebrate animals that use their stinging cells to catch and eat prey like crabs, shrimp and even small fish.”

“They catch prey…” The man with the gun seemed to ponder this.

“Yes. The venom they produce is quite powerful. And I think I can use it as a key ingredient in my STX antidote. But I need to get some of the anemones. About a dozen or so large, adult specimens should do.”

The gunman turned to his associates and spoke rapidly for a few seconds in Dutch. One of them said something back to him and he turned to Dante and Naomi.

“Is what she says true? You require the anem—” He fumbled over the pronunciation and started over. “You require this sea creature to complete work on the STX antidote?”

Both of the undercover OUTCAST operatives nodded. The Hofstad man seemed to study them for a moment. Then he jerked his head at his colleague to his left.

“Search these two.”

He indicated the closest man to his right. “Search her.”

The man eagerly stepped up to Jasmijn and thoroughly patted her down, enjoying the look of revulsion on her face. After groping her longer than was necessary under the guise of a pat-down, he stepped back and turned to the team leader.

“She’s clean.”

The two men searching Naomi and Dante each came away with a pistol and two extra clips at about the same time.

The leader raised his eyebrows in their direction. “Scientific instruments, these are?”

Dante shrugged. “We were excited about being invited to work with our esteemed colleague, Dr. Rotmensen, but at the same time concerned about some of the attention around her lab lately.”

“Which you can see was justified,” Nay added sourly.

The man who found the weapons handed them over to the inquisitor. He turned them over in his hands appreciatively. “These are nice weapons. Sophisticated. Well cared for.” He looked up at them as though he had asked a question.

“We both like to hit the shooting range in our spare time,” Dante said. A true statement. Though vastly out of context, it nevertheless gave him the confidence he needed to state it with conviction.

“If you were to obtain these…sea creatures,” the leader said, directing his attention back to Jasmijn, “how long would it take you from that point to complete the antidote?”

Jasmijn’s reply was immediate. “About three days. A couple of hours to complete the integration, then forty-eight hours to incubate, then the rest of the time to check results and run test procedures.”

“Then we will see to it that you get these animals.”

“You are divers?”

He turned to his associates, all three of whom shook their heads. He conferred with them in a loose huddle for a minute, speaking Danish in hushed tones such that Jasmijn could not hear. After seeming to reach some kind of decision, three of the men fanned back out into formation, with the leader turning to address Jasmijn.

“We will arrange for a boat and escort you — all three of you— to dive on the site.”

“I need a dive partner. It’s not safe to dive alone, and it makes the collecting work very difficult.”

“I’m certified, I’ll dive with you,” Dante said.

“Really, I didn’t know that!” Jasmijn was not lying, of course. She’d barely met Dante.

“I thought you work together, how could you not know such a thing?” the group leader demanded.

“Relax. We do lab work together, not field work. Usually when I need to collect specimens I go with a support team from the marine lab. They operate the boats, they have the equipment, experienced people to dive with me so that I can just stare at the bottom looking for my specimens.”

“Very well. You and he will dive to collect the sea creatures.”

Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Den Hoorn, Netherlands

Stephen Shah did not last as long as he had in a spy career — indeed, even live as long as he did — without being able to pick himself up off the floor and give things another try. His false embassy shutdown orders had fallen flat. But as he walked onto the campus through a side entrance, he was ready to rejoin the fight. Even though his personal side-mission had not succeeded, he could still assist with the lab effort.

To this end, Shah had donned a shabby suit and carried a beat-up leather messenger bag, assuming his new identity of visiting professor from a prominent Iranian university. Before visiting the campus he had checked in with Tanner, who had filled him in on the events stateside, including the Hawaii attack. Tanner had expressed mild concern that he hadn’t been able to reach Naomi, Dante or Jasmijn, and was pleased to hear that Shah was heading over there.

As he approached the Sea Research Institute, Shah forced his mind to transition from thoughts of the overall OUTCAST mission to the kind of specialized tunnel vision he adopted when on an individual sortie. This kind of mental process had served him well over the years and he even found it sort of relaxing in a perverse kind of way. He was assuming another identity yet at the same time retaining the unusual abilities of his true self, the skills that allowed him to stay alive in the face of lurking danger presented by men and women a lot like him.

Shah smiled at a man and woman conversing softly, each holding a small stack of books, near the entrance to the research institute. They smiled at him politely and he nodded in return. He entered the building and was instantly on high alert.

He hadn’t seen any security detail yet. Wasn’t the university supposed to have beefed up its presence? He took the stairs to the second floor. As he moved down the hall at a casual pace, he saw a men’s room and went inside even though he didn’t have need of a bathroom. Decades of experience told him to check places like restrooms and supply closets whenever a situation was unfolding. He unlatched the safety catch on his holster and pushed his way into the restroom.

He took it in at a glance. Medium sized with three stalls on the left and two sinks next to those, three urinals on the right. No windows. Lights on, a couple of damp paper towels on the floor beneath an overflowing trash can. He walked to one of the sinks and turned it on, letting the water run while he backed up and bent low enough to peer beneath the stalls.

All appeared empty. He got up and turned the water off. Then he went to the door, saw the wedge used by the cleaning staff and crammed it underneath the door. He moved back to the sinks and climbed on top of the one nearest the stalls, allowing him to look down into the first one. It was unoccupied.

Like an oversized spider monkey belying its age, Shah crawled out onto the stall, hands on the front supports and legs on the side, until he could see into the second stall.

Clear.

He continued out along the middle stall in the same fashion until he could see down into the last one.

He suppressed a jolt of adrenaline at the sight of the dead body. Male, late twenties or early thirties, clad only in a pair of underwear. Quickly he dropped into the stall and felt for a pulse. None. A bullet hole on the right temple, no exit wound.

Shah rested the dead man’s head against the toilet tank and exited the stall. He went to the trash can and lifted some of the paper towels out of the way.

There.

Dark material, cloth.

He pulled a pair of pants and a shirt from the waste receptacle. No doubt this was what the Hofstad actor had been wearing before taking out the security guard in order to appropriate his uniform. He carefully searched the pockets but they came up empty.

But he had seen all he needed to. Shah pulled the wedge from the door and walked out into the hall. He had no doubt that if he was to check other nearby restrooms or perhaps supply closets or little used areas such as rooms housing electrical / HVAC infrastructure, that he would find more stripped bodies.

On high alert now, Shah focused on maintaining a normal breathing rate as he passed down the hall, which was now empty although he could hear voices from behind some of the closed doors he passed. The lab was all the way at the end and there was little he could do to conceal himself as he approached. He mentally reviewed his cover story should he be confronted by anyone while he walked up to the lab.