Code Name: Dove Page 23

  And the Company expected her to tell all. And unless she was both very clever and very lucky, during debriefing they would catch her. Was she willing to pay the price?

  In human affairs, knowledge had displaced brawn as the base of power: a few smart bombs were superior competitors to any second-rate army. Beyond question, Singh’s drugs constituted a terrible power. It was often said, and she believed it, that men had never invented a weapon someone didn’t eventually use.

  Finally the waiting time was over. And she’d made her decision. She rose, stepped past the dazed Braunwin, and headed for the Communications room.

  Chapter 30

  At one fifty-three in the morning, Joe fell off a winded horse in front of the pension in Turm. He stumbled up the single flight of stairs to Cupid’s room. Cupid’s first call was to station head in Berlin. Another agent—Johann—did a fair job of cleaning Joe’s wounded arm and rigging a sling while Joe thumbnailed The Founder’s assassination scheme. Word went quickly from Berlin to the chancellor’s security team.

  A second call rounded up the cavalry: in little more than an hour, he was on his way back to the Compound with Cupid, German soldiers and five helicopters. Halfway there, Cupid took a call from the chancellor’s security detail. The chancellor was safe, a bomb planted in a delivery truck was being defused.

  Shortly before three, hovering over the Compound, Joe peered through binoculars. His gut was rolling. The scene was bizarre. All the lab buildings had lights on inside.

  His chopper came in closer and he scanned the grounds. Finally he saw Nova, sitting on the grass well away from the mountain, not far from the lake.

  Relief momentarily doused his guilt for having left her.

  König lay with his head on Nova’s lap. Braunwin Hass sat beside Nova. Joe blinked several times and squinted. Yup. Definitely Braunwin Hass.

  Clouds of steam or smoke from the hump’s air vent openings billowed into the night. Not far from Nova, König and Braunwin, a couple of handfuls of the Compound’s armed guards stood gaping at the helicopters and the mountain. The helicopter lowered and touched down. The German soldiers began rounding up the Hass Chemie employees.

  With Cupid, Joe raced to Nova. Braunwin Hass looked as though she was in a trance. König was bleeding from the chest and unconscious. Nova, too, looked dazed.

  He saw blood on her hand and a wound high on her arm. On shaky legs, he knelt beside her. “We brought stuff to blow the security door. Your arm?”

  She shook her head. “It’s nothing. And you don’t need to blow the door. In fact, keep everyone away. It’s dangerous. Braunwin set the place on fire.”

  Braunwin?

  Nova looked at Davidson. “We must get Jean Paul to a hospital at once.”

  Davidson squatted in front of Nova. “Where is Hass? Where is The Founder?”

  She said, “Hass wasn’t The Founder. I’ll explain everything to you only when I see Jean Paul on his way to a hospital.”

  Two soldiers ran up. They started to lift König but Nova bent over and kissed the man on the cheek, whispered something into his ear. Then she let the soldiers take him.

  “What do you mean, Hass wasn’t The Founder?” Davidson asked.

  Watching as the soldiers put König into the helicopter, she said, “Braunwin Hass is The Founder.”

  Dumbfounded, Joe looked at Hass’s strangely tranquil wife.

  Davidson said, “I don’t understand.”

  “Hass was a demented front man.” Nova proceeded to tell a wild tale. She had overheard men talking. One had said, “die gründerin,” not “der gründer.” Shots were fired. Hass was killed. Jean Paul was wounded saving her. The communications equipment had been destroyed. “Before I caught up to Braunwin, she’d started fires in several of the labs. The place is full of chemicals and explosives.”

  The word “explosive” had barely left Nova’s lips when the backside of the mountain blew. Trees, dirt, rocks—all lifted skyward accompanied by a ground-shaking, bone-rattling boom.

  All activity on the lawn froze. Some soldiers crouched or threw arms over their heads. Joe flinched and then just watched the rising mass of earth and stone. Within moments debris rained around them, smaller bits of pulverized rock and vegetation.

  When it seemed that no further eruptions would occur, Davidson nodded toward Braunwin and said to Nova, “What’s the matter with her?”

  Hass’s wife—apparently The Fucker—still sat calmly, her knees up, staring at nothing in particular. She seemed scarcely to have noticed the explosion.

  Nova shook her head. “What about Willy Gottfried?”

  “He’s okay,” Davidson said. “And they caught a Nigerian who showed up with a truckful of explosives. But what’s wrong with Hass’s wife?”

  “Her own damn drug. The only way I could think to stop her was by breaking open a vial.” She looked at Joe. “And neither of us had gas masks when we started struggling. We were already fighting when I realize it was the Pacification Inducer.”

  In a flash of frightening detail, Joe saw their struggle—blond Braunwin, dark Nova—in an embrace that meant living death for one or both of them. He searched her green eyes. No wonder she seemed dazed. There sat Braunwin Hass: deflated, defeated, dependent on others for the rest of her bodily existence. To take a gamble that big took guts. Or maybe just Nova’s own brand of insanity.

  Nova looked to Davidson. “It makes you a vegetable.”

  Davidson shook his head. “When will she snap out of it so we can question her?”

  “Never,” Joe answered. “The drug’s effects are permanent.”

  Davidson recoiled. “Never?” He glanced back at the entry to the red zone, then at Nova. “Singh, then. Where is he?”

  “Inside. Dead. Also Maurus.” Joe watched as Nova pulled a computer disk from her shirt pocket. “This details the structure of the Hass organization.”

  Davidson stood, whipped off his glasses, his eyes narrowed in agitation. “But what about the drugs? The research? You do have samples.”

  “No. Braunwin erased the memory of the computer. When I caught up to her, she was making off with what were probably the only backup files and they got burned.”

  Joe suddenly noticed blood on Nova’s left pant leg. “Nova, your leg’s also hurt!” He put a hand to the wound and Nova flinched. He looked up at Davidson. “She needs a medic.”

  The chief of station’s cherubic face had hardened to stone. “What about the backup files?”

  “I went back for the files, but fire from the next room had broken through the wall. The case had already burned. Sprinklers never did come on. I got Braunwin out, and then I found an equipment cart and packed out Jean Paul and the three other men who were still alive.”

  “Three men?”

  “You’ll find three men hog-tied in a storeroom in Building No. 1. I told the guards out here that Singh shot Jean Paul accidentally. They also think the fire’s an accident, in case you want to leave them with that impression. When Peter Grund finally came down from the house and saw Jean Paul wounded and I told him there was no way to call out for help, he started screaming. When he stopped, he ran back toward the mansion. Said he was going to drive into Turm for a doctor.”

  Nova brushed her hair away from her face, leaving a streak of blood. Joe fought an intense urge to wipe it away. She looked at him, gave him a crooked, shaky smile. She said, “It was only a few minutes before you showed up with the cavalry.”

  Joe had reached a point way beyond astonishment. But Davidson wasn’t thinking along the same lines. His voice projected all the warmth of a lender telling you the mortgage is overdue and he’s selling your family home. “Are you saying this place is on fire and you have no evidence of any kind of what was going on inside? Specifically, no data on Singh’s project?”

  Joe scowled. “That’s what she said. And she’s hurt. Let one of the choppers take her to a hospital. We can debrief later.”

  For the first time, Nova tried to stand
. An intense grimace flashed on her face.

  “You don’t look so good, partner,” he said. He gave her a shaky smile. “No earrings.” That won him a small smile. “Here,” he said. “Let me help.”

  Joe envisioned Nova lying on the Fairbanks hospital floor. He remembered how he had doubted her ability to lead or her ability to fight. The thug in Fairbanks had been doped up on one of Singh’s drugs, doubtless something more powerful than PCP. And he guessed she’d just single-handedly blown up the bad guys’ lair. He knew she wouldn’t risk letting Singh’s sick drug formulas fall into anyone’s hands—not even the CIA’s—and he didn’t blame her. In fact, a profound feeling of respect and admiration for Nova filled him. He’d been a fool to think she wasn’t one of the toughest and bravest agents working for the CIA.

  With his good left arm, he lifted Nova gently onto her right leg. She gulped in a pained breath but made no comment. He wasn’t surprised—not anymore. She wrapped her arm around his neck and together they hobbled to the nearest helicopter.

  Chapter 31

  August 16

  “Nothing about it will touch you adversely, Jean Paul.” Peter Grund grinned and poked a finger toward Jean Paul to emphasize his point.

  Grund reminded Nova of a gleeful, mischievous child who had lied to the school principal and gotten away with it. The press had bought his fabricated explanation that Jean Paul had been injured in a disastrous accidental explosion in Bavaria, the same explosion that had killed gazillionaire Helmut Hass, his wife and several of his staff.

  Jean Paul smiled at Grund, then turned to look at her. Nova’s gut suffered a painful twist. She clasped her hands together tightly in her lap. Lying on this hospital bed in front of her was a man who loved her and offered her the stuff of dreams. Love. Children. Happiness.

  Peter Grund lifted himself out of the chair he had taken beside the bed. A surge of panic prickled the skin at the back of Nova’s neck. The moment had come.

  Grund said, “We should leave. We’ve exceeded our half hour.”

  Joe had been leaning against the wall with arms crossed, patiently listening while she and Peter Grund and Jean Paul had chatted. Joe straightened and walked toward Jean Paul’s bed, then, leaning down, took hold of Nova’s hand and squeezed it gently.

  She glanced up at him and felt the intensity of his compassion wrap itself around her like a soft down comforter. He was a good friend, a solid man, a wild and free spirit like herself. He knew what she did and he accepted her just as she was, without reservations. It suddenly struck her that she could trust Joe every bit as much as she had learned to trust Jean Paul. And in a way, sharing this dilemma with Joe had given her the strength to do what she had to do now.

  She looked back at Jean Paul. Knowing him had profoundly changed her. Despite what she had believed for years, despite a past so twisted she could never share it with anyone, she could now trust a man, and trust enough to accept love and return it. Jean Paul had given her this precious gift.

  Her mind and heart waged war with each other as she watched Joe bend over the bed to shake Jean Paul’s hand. They were two amazing yet vastly different men who had touched her life briefly and altered it forever.

  Jean Paul said, “Let me say again, Joe, I am most deeply grateful.”

  Her partner’s smile was warm, generous and as big as all Texas. “No thanks necessary. Accomplish half the things you want to, and I’ll have the thanks I need.”

  Grund and Joe turned toward the door and Jean Paul said, “Nova, wait a minute,” just as she said, “I’ll be out in a second, Joe.”

  The moment the door closed behind the two men, Jean Paul held out a hand toward her. “Nova, how I’ve missed you. Why did you take so long to come? It’s been four days.”

  She stepped to the bed. He took her hand. “The doctors said only family and close friends. And I don’t fit into that category.”

  “Nonsense. You could have gotten Peter to make up some excuse.” He placed her hand against his chest.

  “I didn’t think it was wise.”

  “Wise? Nova, I needed to see you.”

  She pulled her hand away.

  He looked at her hand, then back to her eyes. He frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  “I am so grateful that you’re alive. That you’re going to be okay.”

  “Nova.” His voice held more force now. “What’s wrong?”

  My God, this was so hard. And because she couldn’t tell him the whole truth, he would probably never understand.

  “I think it’s best that we don’t see each other again.”

  He moved to sit up but instead grimaced and fell back. She continued, certain she had to get it all out now or never. “Please know that I love you. Not seeing you again will be hard for me. But you don’t really know me.”

  He stared at the sheet covering him a moment, then fixed her gaze with those startling blue eyes. “Of course I know you. I love you. I’ve told you I want to divorce my wife and marry you.” He started to protest further. She quickly put a finger to his lips. He put his hand over hers.

  After a moment she pulled away. “No, Jean Paul. You barely know the real me. And you know nothing significant about my past. There are things I have told no one. Ugly things.”

  “I don’t believe it. And I don’t care about your past.”

  “One of us has to. You have a destiny to fulfill. Like it or not, you belong to the world. You know this is true. And the world just came frighteningly close to losing you. The truth is…you’ll have to trust me about this…I’m the wrong woman for you.”

  A sudden dark cloud of anger passed over his face. “That isn’t so, Nova. I need you. I love you.” He tried to sit up, winced and clutched the bandage over his chest wound as he sank back again. “I want to marry you.”

  Nova Blair would be nothing to Jean Paul König but a scandalous, destructive liability. And slowly her feelings for Jean Paul would change as time passed.

  She was truly an independent woman, and needed control over her life—control she would surely lose as a politician’s wife. She’d won that control as a fifteen-year-old in a most brutally hard way and hadn’t this mission only cemented how much she valued that independence?

  Jean Paul waited, his eyes willing her to love him, to share his life with him.

  But what if she was all wrong? What if true happiness required giving up some of that control. She inhaled a steadying breath. “I’m simply not willing to take that ride to fame and power with you.”

  He frowned. She rushed ahead, desperate now to get away. She felt dizzy. Nauseated. She must say something convincing. Something he could understand. “I don’t want the publicity. I don’t want the pressure. I don’t want the worry. And I would never ask you to give up what you are meant to do. If I did that, and if you quit, then I couldn’t live with either of us.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t believe any of what you are saying.”

  She looked at the floor, swallowed, looked at him again straight-on. Jean Paul had no idea what kind of life she was accustomed to. “Believe me,” she said firmly.

  Using both hands, he pushed himself past his pain until he was fully upright. He reached a hand toward her.

  She didn’t take it. “When I leave,” she said, “you won’t be able to contact me.” Her voice sounded hard in her ears. Did it sound hard to him?

  She backed away a step. “I want very much to kiss you. On the cheek. Will you let me? And then let me go?”

  His eyes held her gaze, but he said nothing.

  She stepped to the bed, bent to him and kissed his cheek.

  He touched her lips. Stunned, she realized that something had happened. The chemistry, the magic, had changed. It was over and she would never look back.

  She stepped away, turned and walked to the door.

  Outside, she leaned against the wall. As he’d promised, Joe was waiting.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  Th
ey turned and headed together down the corridor toward the entrance. Joe said, “You know, partner, you may have convinced Davidson and the others, but I’m never going to believe that all that damage to the hump and to Singh’s research was caused by Braunwin Hass setting some room on fire.”

  She made no comment. He knew her better than she’d realized and, in turn, she knew he expected no answer.

  She had worked hard during debriefing to convince her interrogators that there had been nothing she could do to save the data on Singh’s drugs. She had easily fooled the lie detector test.

  Although, at the end, one of her agents had let it slip that word had actually come from Washington, through the office of the DDO—Claiton Price himself—that her debriefing should be considered over. She might never know exactly what they would put in her file concerning her loyalty or truthfulness, but her conscience was clear. No fear that someone might ever use Singh’s drugs would haunt her.

  “Why do you do it?” Joe asked. His voice had taken on a different tone. Gentle as well as puzzled. “Why did you ever start working for the Company?”

  They arrived at the waiting room near the entrance and stopped. “I do it because I’m good at it.”

  “It’s dangerous. The people are stinging hornets or sucking leeches. You don’t need this.”

  “Why do you do it, Joe? Why does anyone do it?” She looked into his eyes and felt an inexorable pull of a whirlpool dragging her under into dark places where she didn’t want to go. He said nothing, waiting for her to answer.

  “Maybe I do it,” she said haltingly, searching for words, “to make up for things I’ve done that I prefer to forget.” Heat rose to her face. She’d said too much. “Let’s just leave it there.”

  Joe touched her arm, his hand strong but tender.

  She imagined—was it possible?—that her face grew still hotter. Once again she thought how, unlike Jean Paul, Joe was the opposite of tame.

  Joe pulled his hand away, jabbed it into his jacket pocket and retrieved a small purple box. Her first impression, because of the box’s small size and shape and the gold lettering she couldn’t read, was that it might hold an engagement ring. What an odd thought.