The Last Oracle: A Sigma Force Novel Page 10

  Recruitment failed…disastrously.

  Brought to the Warren, the man had ended up escaping with valuable intelligence. They had no choice but to hunt him down.

  “I’m sorry about Archibald,” Yuri said.

  And he truly was. Dr. Polk’s death, while a tragic necessity, was still a profound loss. On his own, the professor had accomplished so much, even coming close to exposing what the Russians had been keeping secret from the Americans. Ultimately both sides had underestimated Dr. Polk’s resourcefulness.

  Both prior to kidnapping him and afterward.

  Yuri continued. “In regards to the missing girl—”

  McBride interrupted. “I presume she is one of your Omega subjects.”

  He nodded. “Tested at the ninety-seven percentile range. She’s vital to our project. To both our work. I fear Mapplethorpe doesn’t understand the delicate balance needed to keep an Omega subject alive and functioning.”

  McBride rubbed the bridge of his nose. “During my phone conversation with him, Mapplethorpe did happen to suggest that we might want to acquire the child ourselves.”

  “I suspected he would try something like that.”

  Behind Yuri, the door to the outer office opened. He heard Dr. Chen greet someone, stiff and formal.

  Yuri swung around, shocked to see the subject of their discussion appear at the door. Mapplethorpe’s sagging features looked even more dour than usual. A chill of misgiving spiked through Yuri.

  McBride stood. “John, we were just talking about you. Did your team have any luck acquiring the augmented skull?”

  “No. We’ve scoured both museums.”

  “Odd,” McBride said with a worried frown. “And what word on the girl?”

  “We have helicopters sweeping the entire city grid, section by section, radiating out from the zoo. Still no hits on the tracking device.”

  Yuri fixed upon this last bit of information. “Tracking…what tracking device?”

  McBride stepped around the desk. He held out a closed fist toward Yuri—then opened his fingers and exposed a tiny object resting on his palm.

  Barely larger than the head of a pin.

  Yuri had to lean closer to even see it.

  “Wonders of nanotechnology,” McBride said. “A passive microtransmitter with burst-pulse attenuator, all housed in a sterile polymer sleeve. While on my last visit to the Warren, I had all the children injected with them.”

  Yuri knew nothing about such implantations; then again, he wasn’t kept abreast of everything. “Did Savina approve such trackers?”

  He glanced up to see McBride lift one eyebrow at him. Surely you’re smarter than that, Dr. Raev, he seemed to imply.

  Yuri realized what the American was insinuating. Savina knew nothing about the matter. It was McBride who had injected the children—in secret, without anyone’s knowledge. He’d had plenty of access to the children, but always while being monitored. Yuri studied the size of the microtransmitter. It was small enough to have been delivered in a hundred different ways.

  Why would McBride—?

  Yuri’s mind quickly cascaded through the possibilities, implications, and consequences. McBride must have placed trackers in all the children. Once he had the children implanted, all he had to do was set up the proper scenario that would require one or more of the children to leave the nest.

  Yuri pictured Archibald Polk’s face. The realization struck him like a blow to the solar plexus.

  “It was a ruse all along,” Yuri gasped out. “Dr. Polk’s escape…”

  McBride smiled his agreement. “Very good.”

  Mapplethorpe’s shadow fell upon him like a physical weight.

  Yuri had been played the fool. He glared over at McBride. “You were at the Warren when Archibald escaped. You helped him escape.”

  A nod. “We needed some way to lure one of your Omega subjects out into the open.”

  “You used Dr. Polk like bait. Your own friend and colleague.”

  “A necessity, I’m afraid.”

  “Did he…did Archibald know he was being used?”

  McBride sighed with a tired ache in his voice. “I think he might have suspected…though he didn’t have much choice. Die or run the gauntlet. Sometimes you have to be a patriot whether you want to or not. And I must say he did well. He almost crossed the goal line.”

  “All this, to kidnap one child?”

  McBride rubbed the bridge of his nose. “We suspected you Russians were hiding something, yes?”

  Yuri kept his face passive. McBride was right, but he had no idea of the breadth of what was hidden.

  “We will use this child,” he continued, “to start our own program here in the United States. To study in greater detail what you’ve done to the child. Despite our repeated inquiries, your group has not been forthcoming with a full account. You’ve been holding back key data from the start.”

  And they had—not just data, but also future plans.

  Yuri asked out loud, “What about Sasha’s medications?”

  “We’ll manage. With your cooperation.”

  Yuri shook his head. “Never.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  A flick of McBride’s eye drew Yuri’s attention over his shoulder.

  Mapplethorpe held a gun in his hand.

  He fired at point-blank range.

  9:45 P.M.

  Gray was not one to stomach coincidences. Two scientists on the same project go missing at the same time—then one turns up in Washington, irradiated and on death’s door.

  Gray massaged an ache behind his temples. “Elizabeth, all this has to somehow tie back to your father’s original research.”

  Painter nodded. “But the question is how? If we knew more details…perhaps something not in your father’s records.”

  The question hung in the air.

  Elizabeth glanced down to her lap. Her hands were clutched tightly together. She seemed to finally note the tension there and unlatched her fingers, stretching them a bit.

  She mumbled dully. “I don’t know. These last years…we weren’t talking much. He wasn’t happy I was going into anthropology. He wanted me to follow in his…” She shook her head. “Never mind.”

  Gray reached out, poured a mug of hot coffee, and passed it to her. She accepted it with a nod. She didn’t drink it, just held it between her palms, warming them.

  “Your father must not have been too unhappy with your career choice,” Gray offered. “He obtained that research position for you with the museum in Greece.”

  She shook her head. “His assistance wasn’t as altruistic as it sounds. My father had always been interested in the Delphic Oracle. Such prophetic women tied into his studies about intuition and instinct. My father came to believe there was something inherent in these women, something they shared. A genetic commonality. Or a shared neurological abnormality. So you see, my father got me that position in Delphi only so I could help with his research.”

  “But what sort of research was he doing exactly?” Gray said, encouraging her. “Anything you know might help.”

  She sighed. “I can tell you what started my father’s obsession with intuition and instinct.” She glanced between them. “Do either of you know of the earliest experiments the Russians did involving intuition?”

  They shook their heads.

  “It was a horrible experiment, but it meshed with my father’s own line of neurophysiology. A couple decades ago, the Russians separated a mother cat from her kittens. They then took the litter down in a submarine. While monitoring the mother cat’s vital signs, the Russian submariners killed one of her kittens. At the exact moment this happened, the mother’s heart rate spiked, and her brain activity registered severe pain. The cat became agitated and confused. They repeated it with the other kittens over the next few days. Each time with exactly the same results. Though separated by distance, the mother seemed to sense the death of her kittens.”

  “A form of mate
rnal instinct,” Gray said.

  Elizabeth nodded. “Or intuition. Either way, to my father, this was verifiable proof of some biological connection. He focused his research to seek a neurological basis for this strange phenomenon. Eventually he teamed up with the professor in India, who was studying similar abilities among the yogis and mystics of that country.”

  “What abilities?” Painter asked.

  Elizabeth took a sip of the hot coffee. She shook her head slightly. “My father began reading up on anecdotal stories of people with special mental talents. He weeded out crackpots and charlatans and sought out cases with some measure of verifiable proof, those rare cases substantiated by real scientists. Like by Albert Einstein.”

  Gray did not mask his surprise. “Einstein?”

  A nod. “At the turn of the century, an Indian woman named Shakuntala was brought to universities around the world to demonstrate her strange abilities. She had no more than the equivalent of a high school education, but she had an inexplicable skill with mathematics. Doing massive calculations in her head.”

  “Some form of savant talent?” Painter asked.

  “More than that, actually. With chalk in hand, the woman would begin writing the answer to a question before it was even voiced. Even Einstein bore witness to her skill. He posed to her a question that took him three months to solve, involving an intricate number of steps. Again before he could finish even asking the question, she was chalking out the answer, a solution that covered the width of the blackboard. He asked her how she was able to do that, but she didn’t know, claiming that figures just started to appear before her eyes and she simply wrote them down.”

  Elizabeth stared over at them, plainly expecting disbelief. But Gray simply nodded for her to continue. His acquiescence seemed to irritate her, as if Gray dismissing such stories would somehow vindicate something inside her.

  “There were other cases, too,” she continued. “Again in India. A boy who pulled a rickshaw in Madras. He could answer mathematical questions without even hearing the question. His explanation was that he would be overcome with a sense of anxiety when someone with a mathematical question was near him. And the answer would appear lined up in his head ‘like soldiers.’ He was eventually taken to Oxford, where he was tested. To prove his skill, he answered mathematical questions that were unsolvable at the time. Oxford recorded his results. Decades later, when higher levels of mathematics were developed, his answers were proven correct. But by that time, the boy had died of old age.”

  Elizabeth set down her mug of coffee. “As astounding as these cases were, they also frustrated my father to no end. He needed living test subjects. So, as he continued to collate anecdotal evidence, he found many of the most intriguing cases clustered in India. Among their yogis and mystics. At the time, other scientists were already discovering the physiological basis for many of the yogis’ amazing skills. Like withstanding extreme cold for days by adjusting the flow of blood to their limbs and skin. Or fasting for months by lowering their basal metabolic rate.”

  Gray nodded. He had studied many of such yogis’ teachings. It all came down to a matter of mental control, of tapping into bodily functions that were considered to be involuntary.

  “My father immersed himself in Indian history, language, even with the ancient Vedic texts of prophecy. He sought out skilled yogis and began to test them: blood tests, electroencephalograms, brain mapping, even taking DNA tests to track the lineage of the individuals with the most talent. Ultimately he sought to scientifically prove that there was an organic basis in the brain for what the Russians had demonstrated with the mother cat.”

  Painter sank back into the sofa. “It’s no wonder he was tapped for the Stanford project. His research certainly dovetailed with their objective.”

  “But why would my father be murdered over this? It’s been years.” Her eyes met Gray’s. “And what does that strange skull have to do with any of this?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Painter answered, “but by morning, we should know more about the skull.”

  Gray hoped he was right. A team of experts had been called into Sigma to examine the strange object. It was with some reluctance that Gray allowed the skull to be couriered over to central command. Sensing it was the key to the mystery, he hated to have it out of his sight.

  A knock at the door ended further discussion.

  Painter craned around; Kowalski stood up, one of his shoes in hand.

  Gray climbed to his feet, too.

  Two plainclothed guards had been posted outside the house. If there was any problem, they would have radioed. Still, Gray unsnapped his holster and slipped out his semiautomatic pistol. Outfitted with radios, why would one of the guards be knocking?

  He waved the others back and approached the front entry. He kept to the side and crossed to a small video monitor split into four views, each a live feed from exterior cameras. The upper left featured a view of the porch.

  Two figures stood there, a few steps from the door.

  A wiry man in a red Windbreaker held the hand of a small child. A girl. She fidgeted with a ribbon in her hair. Gray read no overt threat in the man’s manner. In his other hand was a thick sheet of paper. Maybe an envelope. The figure bent down to the bottom of the door.

  Gray tensed, but it was just a sheet of yellow paper. The man slid it under the door. The sheet skittered across the waxed wooden floor of the entrance hall. It sailed to Gray’s toes.

  He stared down at a child’s scrawl in black crayon. In crude but deliberate strokes, it depicted the main room of the safe house. Fireplace, chairs, sofa. Exactly as the room was laid out. Four shapes were drawn there, too. Two sat on the sofa, one on a chair. A larger figure leaned by the hearth with a shoe in his hand and had to be Kowalski.

  It was a child’s picture of their room.

  Gray stared back at the video monitor.

  Movement drew his attention to the other feeds from the three exterior cameras. Men stepped into view, also in Windbreakers. Gray watched one guard, then the other appear, held at gunpoint.

  Kowalski stepped to Gray’s side, having crossed silently on his stocking feet. He also studied the screen, then sighed.

  “Great,” Kowalski commented. “What do you all do? Post the addresses for your hideaways on the Internet?”

  Outside, the guards were forced to their knees.

  The house was surrounded.

  They were trapped.

  On the other side of the world, the man named Monk sought his own path to freedom.

  As the three children stood guard at his hospital room door, Monk struggled into a pair of thick denim coveralls, dark blue to match the long-sleeved shirt he wore. It was difficult with only one hand. All that remained on the chair were a black cable-knit wool cap and a pair of thick socks. He tugged the cap over his shaved head and pushed into the heavy socks, then into boots that were a bit snug, but the leather was worn and broken in.

  The privacy allowed Monk to gather his wits about him, though it had done little to fill in the blanks of his life. He still couldn’t remember anything beyond waking up here. But at least the exertion of dressing helped steady his feet.

  He joined the oldest of the boys, Konstantin, at the door, which was steel and had a locking bar on the outside. The stoutness of the door confirmed he’d been a prisoner and that this was an escape.

  The youngest of the trio, Pyotr, took Monk’s hand and tugged him down the hall, away from the glow of a nurse’s station. He remembered the boy’s earlier plea.

  Save us.

  Monk didn’t understand. From what? The girl, who he had learned was named Kiska, led the way to a back stairwell, lit by a red neon sign. Passing under it to the stairs, Monk stared up at the sign’s lettering.

  Cyrillic.

  He had to be in Russia. Despite his lack of memory, he knew he didn’t belong here. His thoughts were in English. Without a British accent. That meant he had to be American, didn’t it? If he could recognize
all that, why couldn’t he—

  A cascade of images suddenly blinded him, frozen snapshots of another life, popping like camera flashes in his head—

  …a smile…a kitchen with someone’s back turned to him…the steel head of a sharp ax flashing across blue sky…lights rising from deep in dark water…

  Then it was gone.

  His head pounded. He tried to catch himself on the stair railing and instinctively grabbed out with his stumped arm. His scarred forearm slid along the railing. He barely caught his balance. He stared down at his stump and recalled one of the flashes of memory.

  …the steel head of an ax flashing across blue sky.

  Was that how it had happened?

  Ahead, the children rushed down the stairs. Except for the youngest boy. Pyotr still held his one good hand. He stared up at Monk with eyes so blue they were almost white. Tiny fingers squeezed his own, reassuring. A gentle tug urged him onward.

  He stumbled after the others.

  They encountered no one on the stairs and exited out a back doorway and into a moonless, overcast night. The air had a chill to it and hung still and damp. Monk took in deep breaths, slowing his hammering heart.

  The massive hum of a generator filled the space. Monk studied the size and breadth of the hospital, sprawling out in low wings and encompassing two five-story towers.

  “Come. This way,” Konstantin said, taking the lead now.

  They hurried down a dark cobblestone alleyway between the hospital and a wall that climbed two stories on their left. Monk looked up, trying to get his bearings. A few lamps glowed beyond the wall, highlighting the tile roofs of hidden buildings. They reached a corner and slipped behind the walled enclosure. The ground became raw rock, slippery with dew. There were no lights here on the back side. All Monk could make out was the wall they followed, built of concrete blocks. His palm ran along it as they ran. From the rough mortaring and uneven lay of the bricks, it must have been hastily constructed.

  Monk heard an eerie yowl echoing over the wall. This was followed by muffled barks and stifled sharper cries.

  His feet slowed. Animals. Was this some form of zoo?

  As if the tall boy ahead had read his thoughts, Konstantin glanced back and mouthed the word menagerie and waved him onward.