The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Volume One (19 page)

Williams withdrew his hand as the massive doors swung open, seemingly of their own volition. Escorted by the three looming goondas, Seven followed the portly Englishman into a spacious yet shadowy rotunda lit only by swatches of sunlight that fell from the fractured dome high above onto the bare stone floor. Long stripped of the rich carpeting, jeweled mirrors, and other furnishings that would have decorated the chamber at the height of the palace’s glory, the empty rotunda still contained hints of its former elegance. Fluted columns supported the high ceiling, while an ornamental frieze ran along the upper boundaries of the room. Small altars, each housing the idol of a separate Hindu deity, were tucked away in closet-sized alcoves stationed at regular intervals along the perimeter of the chamber.

The scene still looked deceptively antiquated, Seven noted, despite the jarring incongruity of those automatically opening doors. Chrysalis had obviously gone to great efforts to conceal their presence, even this far off the beaten track. Any stray travelers who might wander by, such as curious tourists on a camelback tour of the forbidding desert, would perceive only yet another colorful old fort, neither as well preserved nor as impressive as, say, the more famous citadels at Jodhpur and Bikaner.
All this secrecy implies that Chrysalis has a lot to hide,
he worried, recalling all the peptone and processed uranium that Offenhouse had shipped to this
site. Just what is the long-term agenda of this entire conspiracy?

Ignoring all the other idols, Williams headed straight for a murky alcove devoted to Ganesh, the elephant-headed god of wisdom and
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prosperity. A layer of artfully applied dust covered the bronze idol, but Seven observed that Ganesh’s single tusk, curving upward beside his trunk, looked much less dusty than the rest of the shrine, so that he was not too surprised when Williams took hold of the ivory tusk and twisted it so that it now pointed downward. A metallic click accompanied the gesture, and the entire altar, idol and all, rose toward the ceiling, revealing a pristine white cubicle large enough to hold three or four full-sized adults.

Very ingenious,
Seven thought, although the lack of dust on the elephant-god’s tusk had been a bit of a giveaway The whole set-up reminded him of his own office in Manhattan, whose futuristic hardware easily disappeared behind a facade of twentieth-century interior decoration. Who knew what else these crumbling fortifications concealed?

Williams retrieved his pistol from the pocket of his sweat-stained jacket. “Right,” he said curtly, addressing the assembled goondas. “You lot finish up unloading the new equipment, taking special care with the crates marked ‘fragile.’ ” He jabbed Seven in the ribs with the muzzle of his Browning pistol, then stepped inside the previously hidden elevator. “You’re with me,” he ordered Seven.

I should hope so,
Seven thought, following Williams into the elevator. “Going down?” he predicted confidently, seeing there was nowhere else Chrysalis’s deadly laboratories could be lurking. Seconds later, the entire cubicle began sinking into the floor, and he waited patiently as his view of the forsaken rotunda swiftly disappeared from sight, replaced by the smooth black wall of the elevator shaft.

“You think you’re smart now,” Williams sneered, “but just wait until the director gets through with you.” He kept a few feet away from Seven, the point of his Browning never veering away from his prisoner’s chest. “You don’t get something like Chrysalis off the ground, and keep it secret, without learning how to handle sneaky little spies like you. She takes no prisoners, I can tell you that.”

Sounds like a Romulan commander I knew once,
Seven thought. He could have disarmed Williams easily, of course, but that was hardly the point of the exercise. There would be time enough later to regain his liberty—after he reached the nerve center of this ambitious conspiracy.
If I’m not already too late.

CHRYSALIS BASE

GREAT THAR DESERT

RAJASTHAN, INDIA

MAY 17, 1974

SOFTLY, WITH ONLY A WHISPER
of a thud, the elevator came to a
halt, and Roberta found herself deep inside an environment very different from the crumbling ruins she had just left.
We must be hundreds of feet beneath the fortress,
she estimated, judging from the speed of the elevator and the length of their descent.
Talk about private!
she thought, making no effort to conceal her astonishment from Lozinak, Takagi, or even Carlos.
I’ve been in bomb shelters that were closer to the surface.

Even more impressive than its subterranean depths, however, was the size of the installation that greeted Roberta’s awestruck eyes when the spotless white elevator doors slid open, revealing a spacious courtyard at the center of an enormous vertical shaft that extended for a mile or so above her head. “Wow!” she exclaimed, stepping out of the elevator to take it all in. Her jaw dropped and even Isis squawked in amazement. “I mean, wow.”

“Welcome to Chrysalis,” Dr. Lozinak said proudly, finally revealing the codename that Seven had already told her about.

Like the petals of some colossal lotus flower, five tunnels led away from the tiled courtyard, burrowing deep into the solid bedrock beneath the desert. Between the tunnels’ entrances, sturdy ladders and
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catwalks rose up along the sides of the central shaft, apparently leading to multiple levels above the ground floor of the elaborate facility. Dozens of men and women, of diverse hues and ethnicities, circulated throughout the vast complex, going briskly about their daily errands. Roberta spotted technicians in white lab coats as well as maintenance workers wearing matching orange uniforms. Looking around, she was startled to see, one level above her, a group of small children being led along a catwalk by a trio of attentive caretakers in paint-smeared smocks. The babbling preschoolers looked happy and completely at home within the sprawling installation.
Chrysalis has even got its own underground nursery school?
she marveled.
This is bigger than I ever expected.

One of the children, a neatly groomed Indian boy, maybe three or four years old, noticed the adults standing by the open elevator. Perhaps intrigued by Roberta’s unfamiliar face, he paused upon the catwalk to stare down at the blond-haired stranger. Smiling back at the boy, Roberta was struck by the seriousness in the child’s expression and the obvious intelligence in his dark eyes; in a strange, indefinable sort of way, this little kid reminded her of Gary Seven. Before she could put her finger on the precise quality the boy and her boss had in common, however, one of the boy’s watchful caretakers tugged gently on his hand, urging him to keep up with the other children. Roberta watched as the entire class, perhaps on a field trip of some kind, disappeared into one of the upper tunnels.
So long, kid,
she thought.

Mounted sunlamps, far more gentle than the blazing orb Roberta and her companions had left behind, simulated daylight, while a silent and efficient ventilation system provided a gentle breeze that felt blissfully cool after the sweltering heat of the sunbaked desert. The marble tiles beneath her feet repeated the butterfly motif that she had previously noted on the tail of the private jet that had picked her up in Rome.
Nice design,
she observed; somebody had taken the trouble to make the secluded lair attractive as well as functional.

She felt oddly humbled by her futuristic surroundings; Chrysalis HQ made her and Gary Seven’s own secret headquarters look like a high-tech lemonade stand. “Umm, does the Indian government know
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you’ve got your own little city down here?” she asked her fellow travelers.

Behind her, the elevator headed back toward the surface, leaving her with no obvious means of escape. Roberta tried not to look as trapped as she felt, even though the looming Carlos continued to watch over her as implacably as any prison warden.
He’s sticking to me like Super Glue,
she thought irritably.
And me without any solvent.

“Various individuals in the government have been paid not to know,” Lozinak explained. His cane tapped against the blue-and-white tiles covering the floor of the courtyard. “Sadly, even in this brave new world we are entering, old-fashioned bribery remains a potent force.”

“Chrysalis has really deep pockets, huh?” she observed, almost embarrassed to state something so manifestly obvious. From the looks of this place, Chrysalis had a budget comparable to NASA’s.

“You’d be surprised how many successful billionaires and tycoons are willing to pay in order to give their offspring a better start, genetically speaking, than they themselves had,” Takagi told her. “It’s all about leaving a legacy, and guaranteeing that one’s heirs are among the best of the best.” He grinned mischievously. “I can even think of a few royal families that aren’t above improving their precious bloodlines, provided it’s done on the sly.”

“
All the advantages—and premium DNA—that money can buy, huh?” Roberta said, nodding. “I can see where that would be tempting to social-climbing rich folks with money to burn.” She gave Takagi a conspiratorial wink as they headed for the arched entrance to a tunnel directly in front of them. “So who are we talking about here? Howard Hughes? OPEC? The Kennedys?”

Takagi looked like he couldn’t wait to spill the beans, but, as usual, his more cautious colleague intervened before Walter could compromise too many secrets. “That is, I think, more than you need to know,” Lozinak said, shrugging his stooped shoulders apologetically. He shot a warning glance at Takagi, who blushed visibly. Carlos smirked cruelly at the young scientist’s discomfort. “At least for the present,” Lozinak added.

Party pooper,
Roberta thought, repressing a disappointed scowl.
I’m
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definitely going to have to try to get Takagi away from Lozinak at some point, preferably without going the full Mata Hari route!

“Come,” the old scientist said to Roberta, as they approached the glass doors at the mouth of the tunnel. “There is someone you should meet.” A red telephone and a blank video screen were mounted on the wall next to the entrance, at approximately eye level. Lozinak lifted the receiver and keyed a numerical code into a shiny push-button display. Moments later, a woman’s face appeared on the monitor.
A videophone,
Roberta realized.
Cool.

“Viktor, welcome back,” the woman said, her voice emerging from the screen. An attractive Indian woman, probably in her early thirties, she had large brown eyes and short, Twiggy-style hair. Roberta thought she looked familiar, but couldn’t place the face just yet. Was this the infamous director that Carlos had invoked earlier? Roberta took a few steps closer to Lozinak, hoping to eavesdrop on his conversation more easily, but the aged Ukrainian pressed another button, silencing the audio so that he could converse with the woman more privately via the receiver. He lowered his voice and turned away from Roberta as he replied to the unidentified woman’s greetings.

Darn,
Roberta thought, unable to hear what was being said. Lozinak’s successful attempt to protect his privacy made her nervous, mostly because it implied that the old scientist didn’t yet trust her entirely. Had she blown her cover somehow? She crossed her fingers instinctively, praying that she could still count on the welcome wagon instead of the third degree.

After a brief, frustratingly inaudible discussion, Lozinak hung up the phone. “Excellent,” he announced jovially, his warm tone going a long way toward allaying Roberta’s paranoid fears. “It seems we’re just in time to have lunch with the director.” He smiled in her direction. “No doubt you could eat a house after our long journey.”

“I think you mean ‘horse,’ ” she corrected Lozinak mildly. To be honest, she was more exhausted than hungry, but she wasn’t about to pass up a chance to meet Chrysalis’s fabled director face-to-face. Besides, it was almost noon anyway, so lunch was not a bad idea; several hours, and a couple of hundred miles, had passed since she’d eaten
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breakfast in the back of the limo. “Lunch sounds great to me,” she agreed cheerfully. Isis meowed loudly, to remind all concerned that she required sustenance as well.

“Very good then,” Lozinak declared. Glass doors slid open automatically to admit the party into the central tunnel. A moving conveyor belt ran along the left side of the enclosed corridor, and Lozinak stepped carefully onto the mechanized walkway, which carried him down the length of the tunnel, while Roberta and the others promptly followed his lead. Peering past Lozinak, she could not see any end to the tunnel, although they soon passed several intersections and diverging corridors.
How big is this place anyway?
she wondered, experiencing an irrational urge to leave a trail of bread crumbs behind her.
Hooking up with Seven down here is going to be like searching the Smithsonian on a crowded Sunday afternoon.

She gave her arm a rest by placing Isis’s carrier down on the conveyor belt in front of her. With nothing better to do than play tourist for the time being, she scoped out her surroundings as the moving sidewalk carried her deeper into Chrysalis’s underground extremities.

For the secret headquarters of a bunch of card-carrying Mad Scientists, the installation around her was a lot less sterile and utilitarian than she might have expected. The walls of the tunnel were a bright turquoise, while regional artwork and tapestries adorned the corridor at regular intervals, providing a treat for Roberta’s tired eyes. She particularly admired a robustly colored mural in which stylized peacocks, elephants, and camels gamboled throughout an ornately painted jungle of vines and blooming flowers.
Chrysalis could teach your average evil underground organization a thing or two about interior decoration,
she thought approvingly. Maybe this whole operation wasn’t as much of a Bad Thing as Seven kept assuming? The more she saw of Chrysalis and the people behind it, the less certain she was that they needed to be stopped. Aside from a slight mania for secrecy, as embodied by the ever-present Carlos, everyone involved seemed to be motivated by only the best and most humanistic impulses.
I
definitely need to have a long talk with Seven,
she decided,
before I start actively trying to sabotage the proceedings.