The Cold Smell Of Sacred Stone

19

I was at my bank in the morning when it opened. I gained access to my safe deposit box, took out the black leather attache case inside, opened it and studied the magnificent knife and scabbard nestled in a bed of red velvet. I had not looked for years at Whisper, with her jeweled handle and blade made of Damascus steel by a process lost for centuries, and now memories cascaded through my mind. I had stolen it from a murderous commune which had intended it as an "offering" to a man they considered the Messiah-Siegmund Loge; now I needed the blade to try to save another man many people considered the Messiah. I closed the case, walked out into the morning. It had begun to snow.

It was after ten by the time I got to the converted bathhouse. The street in the front of the building was clogged with television equipment trucks; all three networks were to televise the Christmas Eve proceedings, and the broadcast would be relayed around the world by satellite. Whatever was going to happen, Tommy Carling had gone to great pains, on relatively short notice, to make certain a global audience would be watching.

I hoped it meant that Garth wasn't already dead.

In view of the fact that scores of sports figures, movie stars, and politicians had indicated their desire to attend the event, it didn't surprise me that the two green-jacketed men flanking the entrance to the bathhouse carried metal detectors. I'd anticipated some kind of security check; I unstrapped the shoulder holster holding my Beretta and slung it over my shoulder, then ducked under a police barricade, skipped over a treacherous sea of thick electrical cables, and went up to the entrance.

"Here," I said, holding out the gun to the burly, sandy-haired guard standing to the left of the door. "I assume you'll want to take this off my hands before you let me in there."

"What is it you want, Dr. Frederickson?" the thinner guard on the right said in a voice that was polite but cold. Both men ignored the gun I was holding out.

"I want to see my brother."

"You can see him tonight, sir. You're much too early. Nobody is allowed in the building now but our people and the television technicians."

"Garth's People used to be more hospitable."

"I apologize, sir, for the inconvenience. We feel these measures are necessary for the security of some of the people who will be celebrating here with us tonight."

"Check with Garth; he'll want to see me."

"He's not to be disturbed," the sandy-haired man said.

"Do you know where he is?" I asked the bigger man.

"He's not to be disturbed. We'll reserve a place for you in the reserved section if you'd like, Dr. Frederickson, but we can't let you in now."

"I have something to give him; it's very important to him, and to Garth's People."

"What?"

I slung the Beretta in its holster back over my shoulder, hefted the attache case. "This."

"What's in it, sir?"

"It's for Garth. If you're not authorized to put me in touch with my brother, at least let me inside to talk to Tommy Carling."

The thinner man on the right switched on his metal detector, passed its steel wand back and forth over the surface of the case to an accompaniment of harsh, insistent buzzing. He shut off the detector, shook his head. "There's no way you can go in there with that, Dr. Frederickson; not unless you show us what's inside."

"Very well," I said with an exaggerated sigh as I rested the case on my left forearm, unsnapped the clasps, lifted the lid, and shoved Whisper toward the two men. "This is my gift to my brother and Garth's People."

My little theatrical flourish had the desired effect; the eyes of both men opened wider and they took a step backward as they stared at Whisper.

The thinner man licked his lips, then looked at me. "Is that. .?"

"Yes. It's the Great Knife. I want Garth to have it with him when he makes his announcement tonight." I closed the case, took my gun and holster off my shoulder, and once again offered it to the two men. "Now will you let me in to see Carling?"

The sandy-haired guard took my gun, set it down behind him, just inside the entrance to the bathhouse. "I don't know where Tommy is at the moment, Dr. Frederickson," the man said with just the slightest touch of awe in his voice. "He's been all over the place supervising things all morning. But you go on in, and we'll send somebody to scare him up for you."

I'd like to scare him up, I thought as I walked between the two guards, and I couldn't. But I was inside the bathhouse. And I was armed. As I'd hoped, the men with their metal detectors had been so distracted by all the hardware I was carrying upstairs, that they'd neglected to check downstairs; I still had my Seecamp in its holster strapped to my ankle. And I had Whisper.

Inside the cavernous bathhouse, hordes of workers and members of Garth's People were milling about, attending to their various tasks as they threaded their way up and down, back and forth across the hall through a polished wood sea of folding chairs tightly packed together in narrow rows. Speakers, klieg lights, and television cameras were mounted on the stone balcony ringing the hall, and at the far end, erected in front of the entrance to the showers, was a huge stage. At the lip of the stage was a lectern, and at the rear a huge bank of electronic equipment. Above the stage a massive green banner with the rings-and-knife logo of Garth's People hung suspended by wires strung from one of the four curved steel girders supporting the vaulted glass dome, which now glowed with milky light. I didn't like the light from that glass sky, which suffused the entire hall like a shroud.

Everything seemed to indicate that Carling planned to use Garth in whatever production he was planning, and logic dictated that Carling would have Garth locked up somewhere inside the bathhouse, ready to be marched out-drugged, or with a gun at his back-at the appropriate moment, if only to step through the curtains at the rear of the stage into bright television lights before being gunned down. At least that was the logic I had to operate on. If Garth was somewhere inside the building-and, if he wasn't, all of my machinations were going to be largely irrelevant-I had to find him. But first I had to run the gauntlet of Tommy Carling and Sister Kate, who sooner or later would learn that I was inside the bathhouse.

Wanting to get as far away from the main entrance as possible, I started walking casually down the side of the hall toward the massive stage. Carling intercepted me just as I passed a row of pea-green Port-O-Johns.

"Hello, Mongo," the ponytailed male nurse and K.G.B. officer said as he stepped down out of a staircase. His voice was flat, his eyes cold, as he studied me, and he did not extend his hand.

"Hello, Tommy," I replied, and forced a smile. The other man was not even bothering to play his usual role of good-natured, slightly effeminate healer, and I wondered why; it most certainly disturbed me. I heard a faint rustle in the darkness of the staircase behind him, but nobody emerged.

That, I thought, could very well be Sister Kate, riding shotgun. Something had happened to convince Tommy Carling that it was no longer necessary-or possible-to accommodate me with his fun and games, and I didn't like that one bit. "How are you?"

"I'm just fine, Mongo," Carling replied in the same flat voice. "How are you?"

"About half."

"What do you want here, Mongo?"

"Didn't you get the message?" I asked as I hefted the black leather case.

"I was told you'd brought the knife you call Whisper."

"And which Garth's People call the Great Knife. I'd understood that it had become an important religious symbol for a lot of you, but you don't seem all that impressed-or even curious. Wouldn't you like to see it?"

"Why bring it now?"

"Because I thought it might be nice for Garth to have it with him tonight when he makes his announcement-I assume he's going to tell the world that he is, indeed, the Messiah. I thought his followers might enjoy the experience of actually seeing the Great Knife. Don't you?"

"Why didn't you bring it to him before? Why now?"

"Why not now?" I replied with a shrug. "Better late than never. I want to make peace with my brother, Tommy. I still can't say that I believe he's the son of God, but there's no question that he's become a world-class religious leader, and will remain so for the rest of his life. I love him, I'm proud of him, and I just want him to have the knife; it means more to him and the rest of you than it does to me."

"I'll give it to him."

"No. This is a very personal thing for me, Tommy, and it will be for Garth too. I want to give it to him myself."

"Then you'll have to give it to him tonight. I have express orders not to disturb him for anything, no matter how important it may seem to me."

"When can I see him? I'd think he'd want to be carrying the Great Knife when he appears on stage."

"I won't know when he's emerged from retreat before he actually appears here. You're welcome to stay around and wait if you'd like. There's plenty of work left to do, and I'll assign you to one of our setup crews. Then you'll know the minute he arrives."

And Carling would be able to keep a close eye on me. "I'd love to, Tommy, but I've got a luncheon date, and then a whole load of last-minute Christmas shopping to do. I figure I can't be back here before seven or eight. One of the guards said he'd be able to save a seat for me in the reserved section."

"No problem," Carling said evenly. "I'll put you in the front row."

"See you tonight, Tommy," I said, and started back up the hall.

"Mongo?"

I stopped, turned back. "What?"

"Did this sudden change of heart you've experienced come before or after all the work you've been doing and the conversations you've been having during the past week? Did Harry make you a believer?"

Oh-oh. "How do you know what I've been doing in the past week, Tommy?" I asked in as mild a tone as I could muster.

"You're marked, Mongo, remember?" Tommy Carling said with what I thought was just the faintest trace of a humorless smile. "It's not only the scar on your forehead that marks you, but your stature. Garth's People are everywhere; they know who you are, and they very much fear that you mean to cause Garth harm. They repeat things."

It could very well be that Mrs. Daplinger had told Carling about my visit to her, but it was also possible that the K.G.B. had been tailing me. Or Harry August. Or both of us. It would explain Carling's attitude, and sudden lack of pretense. Game time had been over before I'd ever walked in the bathhouse door, and I hadn't even known it. The only question that remained was how much Tommy Carling knew I knew-or had guessed. Staying around to explore that question didn't seem like a good idea.

"What I did last week, or last year, is none of your business, Tommy," I said evenly. "I'll see you tonight."

"Good-bye, Mongo."

Exit stage right, very quickly. I'd feared that Carling would try to escort me to the door, but he seemed content to remain where he was as I turned and walked back up the hall. It was only after I had made my way through a knot of TV technicians that I abruptly turned left and ducked into the first stairwell I could find. It led down, which was fine with me; I had no idea of the dimensions of those sections of the bathhouse I hadn't seen, and in my search for Garth one direction seemed as good as another.

I emerged from the stairwell into a narrow, musty corridor that went both left and right. I went to the right, and passed through the first door I came to; it was a huge boiler room, complete with a tangled network of pipes and ducts, two enormous furnaces, and what sounded like a battalion of rats that scurried away as I found and turned on the light switch. I rummaged around inside the grime-encrusted room, but found nothing but more doors opening on to more corridors. All had to be checked out.

Lugging around the attache case, I felt like a stockbroker on his way to work. I opened the case, took out the set of lock picks I had hidden under the red felt padding. Then I put Whisper into her scabbard, slipped it into the waistband of my jeans, behind my back, before going back out into the main corridor.

Working my way through the bowels of the bathhouse was dirty work; more important, it was maddeningly time consuming. There were a number of corridors, and in each a number of locked doors. I knocked at each locked door and called Garth's name, but the lack of a response didn't mean that I could go on; Garth could be bound and gagged, or drugged into unconsciousness. Each lock had to be picked, the room searched. Most were storerooms.

Sweaty and grimy, I was into my second hour, my fourth corridor, and inside my ninth room when Marl Braxton's voice came from the doorway behind me, chilling me.

"Stop right there, Mongo."

I wheeled around, found Braxton standing behind me just inside the door. His head and shoulders were cloaked in the shadow of a duct pipe, but I could see that his face looked drawn, his dark eyes haunted. He'd lost weight, and there was a marked tremor in both hands.

"Hello, Marl," I said quietly.

"What are you doing here, Mongo?"

"I'm looking for Garth. What are you doing down here?"

"Looking for you," the man with the haunted eyes said in a curiously halting voice. Marl Braxton, I thought, was in bad shape.

"Tommy Carling sent you, didn't he?"

Braxton nodded. "You didn't pick up your gun. Didn't you think Tommy would check to make sure you'd left?"

"I thought he might, fervently hoped he wouldn't. Do you know where Garth is, Marl?"

"Yes."

My heart began to beat faster. "Where, Marl?"

"He's in retreat, preparing himself for the moment when he will announce to the world that he is the Messiah, sent by God to save humankind."

"Wrong, Marl. Tommy Carling has him locked up someplace, and if I can't find him, he's going to die. I could use your help."

"You're a liar. You're the one who wants to harm him."

"Tommy Carling is a K.G.B. officer, Marl. So is Sister Kate."

"You lie."

"It's the truth. What the hell do you think I'm doing down here, if not searching for Garth? Did Carling explain that to you when he sent you after me?"

"You're hiding, waiting until Garth appears upstairs so that you can kill him."

"Marl, look at me; I'm covered with about fifty pounds of grease and spider webs. If I wanted to hide down here, don't you think I've have hunkered down before this?"

"You could be planting explosives."

"If you were going to explode anything down here and be assured of killing anyone, much less a particular individual, it would have to be an atomic bomb. Does it appear to you that I'm carrying an atomic bomb? You have to believe me, Marl-and you have to help me. You can move around through this building a hell of a lot easier than I can."

"Garth is the Messiah," Braxton said distantly.

"Help me find the Messiah before Tommy Carling kills him."

But Marl Braxton, deprived of Garth and his medication and removed from the psychiatric support system that had nurtured him for decades, had drifted beyond the meaning of anything I was going to say to him. Words could not pierce the gathering darkness of his madness.

"I will not let you kill him, Mongo," Braxton said in a low, barely audible voice. "I must stop you."

"How, Marl?" I said quickly as I watched him reach with his right hand across his body for the button on his left sleeve. "Will you kill me in the same way you killed Bartholomew Lash and Timmy Owens?"

That got his attention, and his hand froze with his fingers on the button. He stepped forward into the light, and I could see by the astonished expression on his face that my something less than totally wild guess had hit the target dead center. "How did you know?" Marl Braxton whispered hoarsely.

"I suspected for a while, but I wasn't sure until now," I said, speaking rapidly, playing for time as I searched for something I could say that might break through the roiling, murderous clouds in Marl Braxton's mind. I did need his help; and I didn't want to kill him.

"Having both of those TV preachers die of the same thing, both within twenty-four hours after attacking Garth and calling down God's wrath on him, was just a bit too much of a coincidence for the deaths to be natural," I continued in a flat, matter-of-fact tone which I hoped might be mildly hypnotic. "God certainly didn't kill them, which meant that someone else did. K.G.B.? Why not? Except that the more I thought about it, the more that seemed like a move which might be just a bit too cute for them. Both of those preachers were big-time celebrities, which meant that the mansions they lived in were at least moderately guarded. There is no question that the K.G.B. has the personnel needed to pass through that kind of security and carry out an assassination, but why should they bother? Why take the risk? So, who else did I know who had the sort of special training that would be needed, and who could kill a man and make the death look natural? Who else did I know who might want those men dead, who might think that the men posed some kind of real threat to Garth and deserved to die? You, Marl. You see yourself as Garth's avatar on earth, his protector. If I wanted to ask around here, or if I wanted to take the bother of checking airline records, I'll bet I could tie you to those deaths."

Braxton started to unbutton his sleeve.

"Leave your maid of constant sorrows where she is, Marl!" I snapped.

"Satan speaks to you!" Braxton shouted as he pulled up his shirt sleeve to reveal a thick, three-inch wire embedded in a stubby wooden handle wrapped in black tape and strapped to the inside of his forearm.

"Satan and I may be drinking buddies, Marl," I said evenly, keeping my eyes on the shiv strapped to the other man's forearm, "but he never tells me a damn thing. Once I figured that you were a likely suspect, I had to ponder the question of how you-or anyone else-would have done it. There are drugs that can cause, or mimic, stroke and brain hemorrhage, but they're fairly esoteric and I didn't see how you could have gained access to them. Wielded by an expert, a needle shoved up a nostril and threaded through the occipital orb into the brain will also do the trick quite nicely. That was it. Having figured that out, the rest fell into place. I remembered that you'd threatened Mama Baker with a visit from your maid of constant sorrows; you specifically said that she'd 'stick it to him.' At the time I took it as the obvious sexual metaphor, and it was, but it was also more than that." I paused, pointed to the sharpened wire he was absently, nervously, stroking with his fingertips. "My guess is that's a straightened spring from your bed. The Koreans literally tortured you right out of your mind with needles, and-"

"How do you know that?!"

"I know it. A lot of that torture was probably genital, and they made you impotent-except, perhaps, for pain-oriented sex. That shiv is your 'maid of constant sorrows' because you use her at night to hurt yourself for sexual pleasure. But you were also prepared to kill with your 'maid,' if the need ever arose-as it did, in your mind, when those two tube boobs threatened Garth. None of this is important, Marl; I'm telling you things we both know to be true so that you'll believe the other things."

Tears streamed from Marl Braxton's eyes, rolled down his cheeks, and dripped off his chin as he slowly withdrew the shiv from its sheath. "Garth gave me back my mind and my life," he sobbed. "He'll be here tonight. You mustn't hurt him."

I reached behind my back, gripped Whisper's handle, and drew her from her scabbard.

Shhhh.

"The Great Knife," Braxton whispered, stepping back into the doorway and staring wide-eyed at Whisper as I held her, like a talisman, before me.

I sent the "Great Knife" flying through the air, and Whisper landed with a solid thunk in the wood frame of the doorway, two inches from Braxton's right ear.

"If I'd wanted to, Marl, I could have stuck the Great Knife right between your eyes," I said evenly. "But the Great Knife is not meant to kill you, but to help clear your mind. Take it; feel it."

Marl Braxton slowly reached up, gripped Whisper's handle, worked it back and forth until the blade slipped free of the wood. Then he held it in the palms of both hands, at arm's length, staring at it. I sat down on the floor and brought my knees up to my chin, resting my right hand on my right ankle, over my Seecamp. My somewhat unorthodox therapy session with the other man was just about at an end; if the sight of Whisper couldn't clear the fog in his mind, I was going to have to cure him of his psychosis permanently, with a bullet in the brain.

"Heft the Great Knife, Marl," I continued softly, watching him carefully. "She's yours if you want her, to give to Garth. But know by the power that you feel in that blade and the fact that I've made myself defenseless before you that Garth, and maybe a lot of other innocent people, are going to die this night unless you help me find him. Think, Marl. You know this building. Where could Carling have him locked up? For that matter, how might Carling be planning to kill him for the benefit of a worldwide television audience? You mentioned explosives. Could he have rigged the stage to blow up without anyone seeing him do it? Could he have rigged the entire hall to blow up? Think, Marl; help me."

But I'd overloaded his circuits, and he couldn't think. Suddenly Marl Braxton's mouth dropped open to form a great, round O, and he began to moan; the moan grew in volume and went up the scale. His hands began to tremble violently, and Whisper slipped from his grasp and clattered on the floor. But he maintained his grip on the shiv, and for one horrifying moment I thought he was going to drive the point of his maid of constant sorrows into his eye; instead, he gripped his head in his hands and began to scream. Then he turned and ran from the room.

"Marl!" I shouted, springing to my feet and running to the doorway. "Marl, wait!"

But Marl Braxton had already disappeared from sight, and all I could hear was the receding, ghostly echo of his footsteps as he ran through the basement of the bathhouse, perhaps to be swallowed up forever by the night in his mind.

I picked up Whisper, put her back in the scabbard in my waistband. Then I leaned against the doorjamb, wiped sweat and grime from my face, glanced at my watch. It was two o'clock. I had ten hours-perhaps considerably less time if Tommy Carling found out that the Marl Braxton card he'd played against me had become wild.

20.

I spent another ninety minutes in the catacomb of corridors in the basement, found nothing.

The good news was that nobody had found me. I'd worried that Marl Braxton could very well have gone running amok up in the main meeting hall, which could have triggered an intensive search for me by K.G.B. soldiers. But either Tommy Carling had not heard about what had happened, or he was short of help; the only sounds I'd heard in the basement since Braxton had run away had been my own heavy, anxious breathing, the scuffle of my feet on the dusty floors, my knocking on locked doors, the scratching of my picks.

There was a freight elevator at the end of one corridor. Not wanting to risk being seen or intercepted on a stairway, I got into the elevator, drew my Seecamp, and pushed the Two button. The elevator lurched upward, the doors jerked open onto the relative darkness of the stone balcony ringing the hall. I stepped out, pressed back against a wall, and glanced back and forth. There was nobody in sight.

But something was wrong. Music was playing from the suspended loudspeakers — Das Rheingold. I darted across the balcony to one of the flat steel braces that was part of the support system for the great glass dome, looked down over the railing, and felt my heart begin to beat more rapidly.

The hall was already half filled with people, and more were being admitted through the entrance far down the hall to my right. Hundreds of men, women, and children sat in the wooden folding chairs; some were quietly chatting with their neighbors, while others had their heads bowed in silent prayer or meditation.

I tried to convince myself that the fact Tommy Carling was filling the hall hours before the scheduled announcement was not necessarily ominous; it was cold, windy, and snowing outside, and Carling might simply have decided to provide the people with shelter.

Or the K.G.B. operative could have found out what had happened between Marl Braxton and me; rather than hunt for me and risk an embarrassing shootout that could have unknown consequences, he had simply decided to alter his timetable and move up the schedule.

If that were the case, I might have only minutes left, not hours.

There were four corridors branching off from the balcony, and one of them was right behind me, to the left of the elevator. I headed down it. There were doors on both sides, and the first one I tried was locked. Reasoning that Carling would have imprisoned Garth as far away from the centers of activity as possible, I immediately went to the far end of the corridor. I picked the lock on the door to my right, stepped into the room.

The room was really no more than a cubicle, probably formerly used for either dressing or sex. I had counted twenty doors on my way down the corridor; assuming there were as many rooms off the other three corridors, it meant I could have seventy-nine more locks to pick-with no guarantee that Garth was in any of the rooms. It was too many.

There was a radiator in one corner of the room. I went to it, used the butt of my Seecamp to tap out an SOS in Morse code. I did it three times, then paused and listened.

The signal, clear and strong, came back. Three times.

Now we were getting someplace, I thought, barely managing to stifle a raucous cheer that probably would have been heard all the way down in the meeting hall. Garth was not only in one of the rooms, but-judging from the strength of the return signal-almost certainly in that corridor.

I hurried to the door, then abruptly stopped when I heard a sound that caused the hairs on the back of my neck to rise.

The sound of my brother's voice was muffled, but unmistakable; he was singing not Wagner, but a Mozart tune.

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star …"

Welcome back, Garth, I thought, wanting both to laugh and to cry and knowing I didn't have time for either.

"I certainly am wondering where the hell you are …"

I was too close to the meeting hall to run up and down the corridor shouting, and so there was nothing else to do but try to home in on the singing. I picked the lock and went in the room across the corridor, immediately came back out when I could no longer hear the singing. In the corridor I could hear it again.

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star …"

I entered the room next to the first one I'd tried. Garth wasn't in it, but something else was that caused a chill to run up my spine. There were a number of small, oblong cardboard cartons strewn about the room, and in the bottom of one I found a piece of gray, gummy, claylike material that I immediately recognized as C-5 plastic explosive.

If placed properly, there would have been enough plastic explosive in the empty cartons to blow up ten stages-if that was what Carling was planning to blow up.

"… how I wonder where you are. High above-"

Garth and two men in green jackets were in the next room, handcuffed to pipes. On a small table in the center of the room was a black case with three hypodermic needles, each filled with a pinkish fluid.

"It's about fucking time you got here, brother," Garth said with a grim smile.

"Pick, pick, pick. You know how busy everybody gets during the holidays."

"Well, I suppose it doesn't make any difference. You wouldn't have found us here before last night; we were kept someplace else."

"Are you all right, Garth?"

My brother nodded, swallowed hard, grimaced. "Yeah. But for a week I've had what feels like a hangover you wouldn't believe."

"I believe," I said, walking over to him and examining the pipe to which he was handcuffed; it, like the ones the other two men were cuffed to, was solid, with no chance of breaking it at the seam. The cuffs themselves were of high quality steel, and I knew I was going to have a difficult time unlocking them.

"Remind me not to eat any more of that spy dust shit."

"I'll remind you," I said as I began sorting through my picks, looking for the smallest.

"There's no time for that, Mongo," Garth said in a low, tense voice. "Incidentally, this is Aaron Lake and Samuel-"

"Mossad," I said, nodding to the two men. "I know."

The man cuffed to the pipe on the wall behind me said, "Carling has one of the support girders under the dome laced with plastique. If that dome goes, it could kill everyone in the hall."

"Mongo, get the hell out of here and warn those people," Garth said tersely. "I know something about handcuffs, and I'm telling you you're not going to get these suckers open with those toothpicks you're using. Carling knows you're on the loose, and he'd have put a guard outside the door if he hadn't been afraid it would attract attention from the TV people. He was here forty-five minutes ago, and he'll be back. He's going to blow the place when the hall is filled, so you haven't got a hell of a lot of time. You've got to go warn those people."

The pick I'd been using was no good; I selected the next larger one, inserted it in the narrow keyhole and began twisting. Nothing was happening. "Which girder, Aaron?"

"I don't know," the man on the wall behind me said.

"How does he plan to set it off?"

"We think he's set a number of charges along the girder, and they'll all go off if an electrical current runs through them."

"He told you this?"

"No, but there were plans. Samuel and I found them; the Russian found us. Each charge has a primer embedded in it which is radio controlled. Carling is carrying a transmitter; the charges will go off fifteen minutes after he activates the primers. Samuel and I will be found in the rubble, with documents linking us to Mossad, and the transmitter on one of us. It will look like we accidentally blew ourselves up in an explosion we set off."

"Mongo, go, damn it!" Garth snapped. "You don't have time to screw around with these cuffs; he's going to be back here any minute."

"I'm not going to leave the three of you cuffed to these pipes," I said curtly. "It will take me longer to lock all the doors I left open around here than it took me to unlock them. If Carling even suspects I've been here, he'll just cancel the preliminary parts of his pageant, shoot the three of you, and blow the dome."

"Now that won't be necessary, Mongo," Tommy Carling said from behind me. "The show will go on as scheduled."

I wheeled around, grabbed for my Seecamp, froze when I saw Tommy Carling standing just inside the room with a 9mm pistol aimed at my head. The woman, still dressed in her nun's habit, was standing beside him.

"Drop your gun, Mongo. Do it!"

I did it. "Tommy-"

"Colonel Vladimir Kreisky," the K.G.B. officer with the pony tail and earring said easily. "You may as well know me by my real name, Mongo."

"Tommy," I repeated. "You have all the information you could possibly want on the effects of NPPD poisoning. Why do you have to kill us and all of those people out there? It doesn't make any sense."

"I'm truly sorry, Mongo," the man said as he nodded to his companion. "You have a point, but I have my orders."

I watched as Sister Kate picked up one of the hypodermic needles, pressed the plunger slightly, and shot a thin stream of pinkish fluid into the air. "Cut new orders. For Christ's sake, Tommy, take what you know and go home. All of this killing isn't necessary!"

"You're wasting your breath," the Israeli chained to a pipe against the far wall said.

"What you're planning won't work, Tommy."

"Really, Mongo? Why not?"

"For one thing, Mr. Lippitt knows all about you, and he knows about your plan to pin all these murders on the Mossad. He'll get the truth out."

"Will he? Somehow, I don't think the word of the Director of the D.I.A. will be believed when it's weighed against the evidence that will be found here." He paused, took a small gray box with a black button out of his pocket, held it up for me to see. "I'm sorry none of you will be around to see how the debate is finally resolved."

At another nod from Colonel Vladimir Kreisky, the woman went over to Garth and pulled up his left sleeve. The man I had known as Tommy Carling was watching her. .

Shhhh.

I hurled Whisper and flung myself to one side as the gun exploded. A bullet slammed into my right thigh, spinning me in the air-but not before I had seen Whisper bury herself to the hilt in Tommy Carling's chest. Blood spurted from the man's mouth and nostrils, and he slumped to the floor.

Lying on my side and clutching at my bleeding thigh, I glanced over at the woman. The hypodermic needle had fallen from her hand, and she was staring in shock at Tommy Carling's corpse. The Seecamp was ten feet away, closer to me than to her, and I started crawling for it.

But Sister Kate was closer to the door. She recovered, saw that I almost had the gun, then snatched the gray control box from her companion's lifeless hand and darted from the room.

Fifteen minutes.

"Mongo, you've got to get her!" Garth shouted. "If you can get the control box back, you may be able to deactivate the timing mechanism before the charges go off!"

I struggled to my feet as pain knifed through my right leg. Holding my thigh with both hands, I staggered across the room to Tommy Carling's body, began fumbling in his pockets.

"Mongo!"

"I can barely walk, Garth," I said through clenched teeth. "There's no way I can catch her. When those charges go off, this whole building could collapse. I'm not going to leave the three of you here. Carling may have keys on him."

"Then drag the prick over here! I can search through his pockets as well as you can! Get out there and at least try to warn those people! Even if they panic and rush for the exits, at least some will survive; if this place collapses on their heads, nobody is going to get out. You just make sure you get yourself out before it blows. Go, Mongo! Do what you have to do! If the keys to the cuffs are in his pocket, I'll free us; if they're not, there's nothing you can do for us anyway."

My brother had a point. I yanked off Carling's belt, used it as a tourniquet around my leg. I withdrew Whisper from Carling's chest and replaced the knife in the scabbard in my waistband, then dragged the corpse over to where Garth could reach it.

"Garth. .?"

"Damn you, Mongo, go! And keep an eye on your watch! If we get out and you get blown up, I'm going to be really pissed at you!"

Clutching the loose end of the belt tied around my thigh, I hobbled as fast as I could out of the room and down the corridor toward the stone balcony. Already I was feeling faint from shock and loss of blood, and the fiery pain in my leg had become a dull ache-not a good sign. I desperately hoped Garth would be able to free himself and the two Israelis, and that they would survive.

My situation was different. I had limited strength and mobility, and very little time-no time at all to do what I had to do, and still get out. I didn't much care for it, but I was resigned to the fact that if and when the building collapsed, I was going to be at the bottom of the rubble.