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  He straightened, struck her back-handed, and stepped in front of her. She thrust fingers of her free hand toward his eyes. He grabbed her flailing left arm and taped it down. Bitch! he wanted to scream at her, but he didn’t because the videotape was running. The intercom buzzed three times. Singh’s buzz.

  He flipped the wall switch. “Hass hier,” he snapped.

  Singh spoke in excited German. “Have you seen Maurus? I must find him at once, Helmut. Our target will leave Munich a day early. We must cancel.”

  “When did you receive the message?”

  “Only moments ago.”

  “Maurus assures me we are still secure. In which case you need only advance the operation by a day.” He checked the clock on the workbench. Apparently, if they were going to run the operation at all, Gall would have to go in less than twenty-three hours. Only Maurus would know if that were possible. “I will try to find him. He can take the helicopter and easily go to Munich and return in time if necessary. I suggest you begin what preparations you can to advance the action.”

  “Are you…?”

  “Do not argue. Just do it.” He switched the intercom off.

  He walked to the Blair woman and caught a fistful of her hair. She tried to twist away. He slid a finger inside her bra and rubbed hard round the nipple, to hurt her. “You are mine, bitch. But it seems we are to be interrupted. That’s the way of things sometimes, is it not? Plans become disrupted. You, for example, are not having the day you planned. Well, I must find out if our latest project can be completed. If so, in a few hours, in less than a day to be precise, I will share with you the good news of our success.”

  He withdrew his finger. “Until then, I trust you will wait for me here.”

  When he’d left her, Hass had shut off all the room’s lights. The silence and darkness were absolute. Nova sat in a tomb.

  She’d worn herself out thrashing and twisting. Her arms and legs burned. Now she rested. The exertion had helped distract her thoughts from Jean Paul, from the monstrous statues, from the White Mantis and his plans for her. But as she sat still in the darkness, nightmare visions uncoiled again. All the living models for Hass’s monstrosities had been here before her. Their pain cried out from the walls.

  She forced her thoughts to Cupid. When their next scheduled message wasn’t found in the cola-can drop, he’d know something was wrong. But without proof, there would be nothing Cupid could or would do while she was within the Compound.

  And Joe. It was good she and Joe had found “The Fucker,” as Joe so enthusiastically persisted in calling him. She and Joe together. They were a good team. Better than a team. She remembered him being brutally beaten and a tear slipped down her cheek. She was still alive, so maybe he was.

  When she and Joe turned up missing, the Company wouldn’t sit idle. Hass had to know he was under intense suspicion. But he wasn’t running. It didn’t make sense.

  Then a stunning thought hit. Was Hass’s confidence in his “dedicated” assets in positions of power so great he believed he might succeed with his warped plans?

  As time passed, she lost track of time. She had been up for hours and exhaustion and letdown were settling in, and the utter darkness, silence and lack of even the tactile brush of a breath of air put her into a deep sleep.

  Chapter 28

  12:30 p.m.

  The Hass Chemie helicopter touched down at the private airport in a southern suburb of Munich. Maurus climbed out of the passenger seat, swiveled and fetched out a duffel bag. Stooping slightly, he ran toward the Hass Chemie hangar, hair and clothing whipping against his body. The pilot settled in to await his return.

  Maurus had adequate time to get the delivery van packed with explosives to Kariango, the man assigned to detonate them, and still return to the Compound. But he didn’t want to press his luck. He would move swiftly. The final delivery itself had been planned, timed and practiced to perfection. From that schedule, there would be no deviation. Except, of course, for the fact that Kariango would set it all off a day early.

  The van was crammed full of enough plastique to demolish anything within three hundred feet of it. It was painted to match exactly those of the company that brought fresh bakery goods to the Hotel Daimler somewhere around three every morning. The team he had assigned to make sure the real truck did not show up was already in motion. Maurus would deliver the truck to Kariango and then fly back to the Compound.

  The Founder’s intelligence had, days ago, pinpointed the location of the chancellor’s suite. When parked, the truck would be one hundred and twenty feet from where the chancellor now slept. And when Kariango set off the plastique, Wilhelm Gottfried would become a name for history books.

  The door opened and Nova snapped awake and fully alert. A shaft of light burst in from the corridor. Oh, God. The metallic taste of fear filled her mouth. The studio lights went on. She blinked once against the sudden brightness.

  “Nova?”

  Jean Paul stood in the doorway. She blinked several times. With oddly uncoordinated movements, he closed the door and then walked toward her. Relief washed her with a warm flood, but fast on its heels came a cold slap of suspicion. Why was he here? He knelt and touched her cheek and asked, “What has he done to you?”

  “I’m okay, Jean Paul. I just want to be freed.” She had no choice but to trust him. She nodded toward the carton razor. “Use that. Please cut the tape.”

  Would he cut her free or cut her throat?

  He slit through the tape on one arm, then the other. Relief left her momentarily light-headed as he cut her legs free. Stiffly, like a recording, he said, “You must get away from here at once, Nova.”

  Flee? Perhaps Hass was using Jean Paul to somehow set her up. “Jean Paul, do you know where Joe is?”

  “Joe?”

  She couldn’t comprehend the change in him. He sounded as if he’d never heard of Joe. “Yes, Joe. Do you know where he is?”

  “No. But I know you must get away from here.”

  “I have to look for Joe first.” She stood. “What time is it?”

  “Nearly midnight. Everyone is sleeping, I think. They left me alone. Do you want my shirt?”

  Midnight! How could she have slept so many hours? She touched his cheek and immediately regretted having done so. This tenderness made her weak, unfocused. Any weakness now could mean death.

  “Thank you,” she said, taking the shirt. She buttoned it and tucked it in. While Jean Paul stood flat-footed, watching, she put the carton razor in a pant pocket then checked Hass’s desk drawers and side cabinets for a gun. No luck.

  “Come.” She opened the door a crack and checked the corridor. Nothing but concrete silence. She eased the door closed behind them.

  Mutely, Jean Paul followed her. Both electric carts were gone and unfortunately with them the disk she’d hidden in the cushions. She returned to the first office. Joe was there, alive but tied to a chair. She felt like raining kisses on his silly, relieved-looking grin. “You’re supposed to be dead,” she said.

  He said flatly, “That pleasure went to Wyczek.”

  The guard’s face was a mess. She didn’t ask for an explanation.

  The razor made short work of Joe’s bonds. She shoved Wyczek’s Beretta into her waistband at the small of her back. She frisked Wyczek’s body, found a knife in a sheath on his leg and strapped it to her leg.

  “Don’t I get anything?” Joe asked.

  She looked pointedly at his useless right arm. “How good a shot are you with your left hand?”

  “Fair.”

  “And left-handed with a knife?”

  “Lousy.”

  “So that answers your question.” She handed him the razor. “For close-up work.”

  He nodded and slipped the razor into his left hip pocket.

  Jean Paul broke his unnatural silence. “You must leave the Compound, Nova.” Arms that had hung limply at Jean Paul’s sides raised slowly and he embraced her tightly, as if afraid she might vani
sh.

  Joe frowned. “I think he’s all screwed up between his conditioning for loyalty to Hass and wanting to help you.”

  She stepped back from Jean Paul, holding on to both of his forearms. “I agree, Jean Paul, that we have to find a way out of here, and we need a telephone.”

  Joe nodded toward the door. “Let’s try the steel doors opposite this room. They don’t have a security patch, just a regular-looking call button. I think it’s an elevator to the mansion. The only problem is, if we come out inside the mansion, we may find ourselves face-to-face with Hass.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’ll tell you why in a minute.” She hurried across the hall, pressed the button. The door slid open. It was indeed an elevator. “Listen, Joe,” she said, fishing out the Beretta, “things have changed and not for the better.” As the elevator rose she told Joe half of the conversation between Hass and Singh. The elevator stopped.

  The door slid open. Step by cautious step, she preceded Joe and Jean Paul into a large, unoccupied paneled den. She scanned for a phone, still explaining. “It’s midnight now. Hass said something that made me think if they do advance the assassination, it’ll go down in about three hours. He said he’d send Maurus by helicopter. That had to be hours ago. So if they don’t cancel, we probably have only a little over two or three hours to warn the chancellor. Or stop Hass from okaying the attempt.”

  Joe’s eyes rounded with disbelief. “Two to three hours?”

  “Correct.” She spotted the phone. “There,” she said, pointing to a table next to a wing-backed chair.

  Joe beat her to it. “You have the gun,” he said. “I’ll call. You watch for bad guys.”

  Using his left hand, Joe cradled the phone between left shoulder and chin, then dialed. A pause. “Super,” he muttered. “I think the damn thing’s dead. Tell me again how you dial outside.”

  “A seven, then just dial normally.”

  “That’s what I did. Nothing happened.”

  He tried again, shook his head. “It’s definitely dead.”

  “Dial the switchboard. Ask if she can place a call.”

  Joe was already dialing. He talked, then listened. “No kidding,” he said. “No, no. That’s all right. It’s not urgent. It can wait.”

  “So?”

  “The outside phones are dead. Security thinks the tree-huggers did it.”

  The ironic absurdity nearly took Nova’s breath away. “Well isn’t that just marvelous.”

  Joe strode to one of the den’s draped windows. “Let’s get out of this house. This way.” The window was large, climbing through it easy for her and Joe, but Jean Paul clambered through with the stiffness of a bear coming out of hibernation.

  Her arm linked with Jean Paul’s and Joe leading, they crept downhill toward Hass’s private tennis court, passed it, then stopped. In a small grove of oaks, she and Joe squatted beside bushes. She yanked Jean Paul down beside her.

  She needed to make some fast decisions. “The radio you stashed may be our last chance to stop the assassination.”

  “Agreed,” Joe said. “What happened to the disk?”

  “I hid it on one of the carts, which is probably sitting back in the tunnel at the door to the hump. We don’t have time to hunt for it, though, if we’re going to stop the assassination. One of us has to get to the radio ASAP. If their dog sniffed our clothing, though, then that same person will have to get into Turm. By then it’ll probably be too late to save the chancellor, but we have to try.”

  Joe frowned. “Why do you say, ‘that person’? I don’t like the sound of where you’re going with this.”

  “One of us has to go back into the red zone. If our radio was discovered, the only way to stop the assassination may be from this end. And we need that disk.”

  Joe’s whisper exploded as if someone had goosed him. “This place will be armed to the teeth now, especially the red zone.”

  They heard footsteps. A guard carrying an Uzi was headed their way. She put her finger to her lips, signaling Jean Paul to remain silent. When the guard drew opposite to the bushes where they were crouched, she rushed forward and tackled him. Joe used her Beretta to knock him out. He went down like a felled tree, and Nova passed the Uzi to Joe. He slung it over his good shoulder. Together they dragged the guard off the trail, then Joe reached toward the pocket where he’d put the carton razor.

  “No,” she said. “We tie and gag him. No one’ll find him before morning.”

  They stashed the guard under a bush, and as they huddled again with Jean Paul she said firmly, “Look, we don’t have time to debate. How’s your arm?”

  “You know damn well it’s useless.”

  “Exactly. That means you go for the radio and into Turm if necessary, and I go for Hass and the disk in the red zone.”

  “That’s insane, Nova. For one thing, there’s no way to get in now.” It was dark, but she imagined she saw Joe’s face glowing red with anger. “They’ll have figured how we got in. And even if you could get in, how far do you think you’ll get before they catch you?”

  “We’ll find out.”

  “I won’t let you do it. At least come with me to try the radio first?”

  “Please, Nova. Listen to Joe.”

  Her throat tightened. To see Jean Paul so maimed was hideous. No matter what Singh had said, she had to believe there was some way to reverse the process.

  “You can’t go into the mountain,” Jean Paul continued. “I beg you. Leave. Go away from here.”

  She squeezed Jean Paul’s hand gently. “Both of you listen. I’m not going to repeat myself. We’re wasting critical time. Joe, you know I’m right. We don’t have the luxury of trying the radio first. We have to split up and hope at least one of us is successful in stopping the assassination. And one of us also has to try to find the disk.” She gave him a smile. “I can handle it.”

  “Handle it.” He shook his head. “How will you get in?”

  “I’ll figure something. More important, if the dog found our radio, how will you go into Turm?”

  He clamped his mouth into a firm line, tightened his jaw. “I can’t leave you here.”

  “You can. You will.”

  They both knew what her chances were.

  Just as she decided she’d simply have to order him, he blew out a breath of air he’d been holding in and said, “I don’t think with one arm I would be able to drive a car past the guards at the front gate. They’ll be heavily armed. I think I’d do better stealing a plane than crashing the front gate in a car.”

  “How well do you ride? The stable’s three times closer to where we hid the equipment than the airport.”

  He nodded. “I’ll keep it in mind.” He nodded toward Jean Paul. “What about him?” He spoke as though Jean Paul were a child.

  “Jean Paul stays with me. He’d slow you down.”

  The time had come to part. Their hands reached out at the same moment. His left-handed grasp was awkward, but very firm. Then he grabbed and one-armed hugged her so hard it knocked the breath out of her. “Take damn good care.”

  “And you bring the cavalry back pronto.”

  Chapter 29

  12:30 a.m.

  Joe hadn’t been out of her sight more than twenty seconds before Nova realized she’d have no trouble at all getting inside the mountain. She sucked in a shaky breath. “Jean Paul, I need your help. Will you help me?”

  “Yes.”

  She squeezed his hand. “Good. Follow me. Walk exactly like I do.”

  By a miracle they reached Research Building No. 1 without being seen by guards.

  “We’re going straight to the Communications room,” she said. “We must be very cautious and quiet.”

  “We shouldn’t go here.”

  “Just do as I ask. Please.”

  She took Jean Paul’s forearm and pulled away the gauze patch. The tiny incision, halfway between his elbow and wrist, was less than half an inch long. “Hold it over the detector.
” He did. The steel doors sucked open. The corridor, leading directly south, was empty. She laid the gauze back over his incision and refastened the bandage.

  “Follow me. Do just what I do.”

  Fifty feet inside, they came to the first cross-corridor. They’d almost reached the door to Singh’s demonstration laboratory when two figures rounded the corner at the far end of the long hallway. She grabbed Jean Paul’s arm and yanked him into the lab, hoping the men hadn’t seen them.

  Lights were on in the small central cubicle and at the lab’s other end. She hurried Jean Paul past the cubicle and they were ten feet from the far door when, right in front of her, Singh walked in. He was five steps inside before he looked over his left shoulder. He spun to face her. “You. How can you be—”

  Singh’s gaze flicked to her right and she followed its trajectory to the door and an intercom. Jean Paul was three feet from the intercom, his body blocking her from it. Singh edged back toward the door. He was going for the intercom. Her mind flashed the image of the two ravaged golden retrievers.

  Singh whirled. From the counter behind him he snatched an iron ring stand. She raised her leg and palmed the knife from the leg sheath.

  His voice quivering, Singh shouted, “Do nothing further to help her, Jean Paul.”

  Singh rushed for the intercom and Nova shoved Jean Paul aside. The scientist swung the base of the stand at her head. She threw up her left arm. Pain like exploding shards of glass rammed into her armpit. Singh stumbled against her. She put the knife just below his rib cage. Shoved. Hard. Upward. Singh gasped, then sagged to the floor.

  She knelt and gagged. She swallowed several times, forced down stomach acid, brushed her hand across her forehead. Not now!

  She stood, but didn’t bother pulling the knife out of Singh’s body.