Death Wave (34 page)

But he was saying, “She wants you to know where she is being held.”

Adri's image was replaced by a graphic showing habitat
Gandhi
's interior layout. One of the buildings was highlighted by a blinking yellow cursor.

That's where she is, Jordan said to himself. Unconsciously clenching his fists, Jordan said, “Tell her I'll come to her. Tonight.”

 

PLANS OF ATTACK

From her private compartment aboard a World Council executive rocket, heading for the habitat at a strenuous two
g
s, Nordquist sifted through the ID imagery of every passenger who had booked a flight to
Gandhi
in the past thirty-six hours.

The security team flying with her was seated in the general passenger section, the men glued to their seats, looking tense about the strain imposed by the ship's heavy acceleration.

Nordquist was using comparative graphics to try to spot Jordan Kell among the
Gandhi
-bound travelers. Her handheld computer was linked to the display screen on the bulkhead of her compartment. Even so, she felt thankful that the computer was voice activated, and she didn't have to move her hands. Weighing twice as much as usual, even breathing was laborious, almost painful.

As each image came up on the screen, she superimposed an image of Kell's face. Only one ID picture came close to matching. It showed the same basic bone structure as Kell's, although the man's skin and hair were much darker and his nose was larger and bent crookedly. It looked like it had been broken and never properly repaired. Same jawline, though. Almost the same cheekbones.

Calling for the retinal scans, she saw that the traveler's did not match Kell's at all. Contact lenses, she thought. They can fool the stupid scanners with contact lenses.

She stared at the facial image. Lakshmi Ramajandran, the data bar across the bottom of the screen said. From the state of Gujurat, in India, now working as an accountant for the U.S. security firm Unicorn Recovery Agency.

Jordan Kell. She was certain of it.

Nordquist put in a call to the head of security aboard habitat
Gandhi
.

*   *   *

“Looks sort of like a castle,” muttered Hamilton Cree.

He and Jordan and the other two Unicorn operatives had pedaled on electrobikes from the town where their hotel was located to this village, some five kilometers away. It had been an easy bike ride: the winding road was quite flat, no inclines steeper than a few degrees. The bicycles were freely available in storage racks at almost every street corner.

Now they stood on the edge of a park—grassy grounds with well-tended shrubs and small trees—and studied the gray stone building across the wide lawn through digitally boosted binoculars. Its front door was elaborately carved wood, its walls covered with intricate high reliefs of animals, sword-armed men, voluptuous women.

Jordan peered at the narrow windows set into its walls amid all the sculptures. “According to the tour guide information, it was originally built to be a replica of a temple in India, for a tourist attraction, but the World Council took it over to be used as a residence for their people.”

“That means a lot of World Council people inside,” said Cree.

Jordan shook his head. “I wonder. Aditi told me there's no more than a half-dozen security people there.”

“Plus the scientists,” said one of the Unicorn agents.

“Geek guys,” Cree said, with a slight grin. “No trouble from them.”

It was nearing nightfall inside the giant habitat. The solar windows that ran the length of the cylinder were slowly, almost reluctantly closing, like the eyes of a sleepy child.

Aditi had contacted Jordan, at last, toward the end of the day.

“Castiglione has asked me to dinner,” she had told Jordan. “And I've agreed.”

“You agreed?”

With an almost impish smile, she had answered, “I thought it would be impolite to refuse.” Her face turning more serious, she added, “Besides, I don't want to arouse his suspicions. We'll have dinner and I'll thank him very politely and retire to my room.”

“Alone,” Jordan had snapped.

Her smile had returned. “Of course alone. Until you get here.”

So Jordan had fidgeted and bristled all through the early evening. Cree and his two cohorts had gone to dinner, then rejoined Jordan for the bike ride to the building where Aditi was returning—with Castiglione.

“It'll be full night soon,” Cree said, gesturing toward the slowly closing windows.

Jordan nodded. They had decided to wait until dark. Even with high-tech sensors, darkness provided a cloak for intruders—at least emotionally.

How our emotions control us, Jordan thought as he waited impatiently. We still prefer to do our skulking in the dark.

One of the other Unicorn men held a palm-sized scanner in his hand. “No cameras or motion detectors,” he muttered to Cree. “At least none that this handheld can spot.”

“That building wasn't designed to repel attackers,” Jordan said.

“We're only four guys,” said Cree. “They won't need fancy electronics to stop us.”

They had already decided that they would approach the building once it was fully dark, creeping across the park toward its far side, away from the main entrance. Jordan would scale the ornate carvings to the top floor and go in through one of the windows up there. He knew that Aditi's bedroom was on the top floor. The three Unicorn men would then go to the front door and pound on it until someone opened it: a diversion that Jordan hoped would keep their security guards on the ground floor while he and Aditi scrambled down from the window. Then they would return to the hotel that Otero's people had booked for them. With Aditi.

It should work, Jordan told himself as he crouched in the shadow of a large rhododendron bush with his three cohorts. Looking at the ornately carved walls, he thought, I can climb to the top floor, even in the dark. But then he wondered, Can Aditi make it down?

Grimly he determined, I'll bring her down even if I have to carry her on my back.

As they started to get to their feet, though, Cree gripped Jordan's shoulder and pulled him back down behind the foliage.

“Somebody's coming,” he hissed.

Jordan saw one of the habitat's glaringly colored minibuses pulling up to the building's front door. It stopped and two people got out: Aditi and Castiglione.

*   *   *

All through dinner at the posh Mediterranean-style restaurant that Castiglione had picked, Aditi tried to disguise her anxiety about Jordan's expected attempt to rescue her. She spoke little through the many courses of the meal and sipped meagerly at the wines that were placed at their elbows.

If Castiglione noticed that she was tense, he gave no sign of it. More likely, Aditi thought, he's attributing it to my being nervous because of him.

Castiglione chattered away cheerily, smiling, telling jokes, speaking of his many accomplishments in the service of the World Council.

“Anita Halleck herself depends on me,” he boasted. “Whenever she has a difficult or important task to be done, she calls on me.”

Aditi said, “Is it so difficult to look after me?”

“Not at all, my beautiful one. But it is very, very important.”

She realized that almost anything she said, short of an outright insult, would make him think she was enjoying his company. She felt appalled at the depths of the man's ego.

Castiglione was thinking, I'm being the perfect gentleman: witty, interesting, intelligent. If only she would drink a little more of the wine.

The dinner ended at last and the restaurant's maître d' summoned one of the habitat's minibuses to take them back to their quarters.

As the automated minibus pulled up to their building's front door, Aditi realized that this was the most dangerous part of the evening.

She stopped at the door, Castiglione beside her, while the bus drove away.

“Look up,” he said softly.

Aditi saw that the landscape curving overhead was dotted with lights: roads, buildings, homes scattered across the darkened fields.

“It looks like stars,” she said.

“Some people have seen patterns in the lights,” Castiglione told her. “They've created artificial constellations in their minds.” With a laugh, he added, “They even cast horoscopes on them!”

“How interesting.”

“And beautiful.”

Aditi avoided looking directly at him. “Well, it was a lovely dinner, Rudy. Thank you so much.”

As he opened the heavy wooden door, Castiglione purred, “The evening is far from over, lovely one. In fact, it's just beginning.”

 

DEPLOYMENTS

Jordan watched the two of them enter the building. Turning to Cree, he said, “Let's go. Now.”

Cree nodded agreement and the four men hurried across the darkened greenery of the park to the base of the building's side wall.

“We'll wait here and make sure you get up to the top okay,” said Cree.

With a crooked grin, Jordan added, “And catch me if I fall.”

Cree chuckled softly.

Jordan peeled off the jacket he'd been wearing and handed it to Cree. Like the others, he was wearing a dark blue turtleneck shirt.

“All right then,” he said. “It's time to go.”

“You're sure you don't want a gun?” Cree asked. “They're not lethal.”

Jordan shook his head. “No, I'm not a trained marksman, like you. I don't want my wife in the middle of a firefight.”

In the shadows, Jordan couldn't make out the expression on Cree's face. But he heard his disappointment. “Well … good luck, then.”

“Thanks.”

Jordan gripped an elephant's tusk in one hand and the outstretched arm of a warrior in the other and started to climb.

One step at a time, he told himself. Don't hurry, be careful. But his overriding thought was to get to Aditi before Castiglione tried to force himself upon her.

*   *   *

“I want a full security team surrounding that building, at once,” Nordquist almost shouted at the man in the screen of her shuttle compartment.

He was brown-skinned, wearing a tunic with a stiff high collar, smiling blandly at her. “I will put your request through to the head of our security department.”

“I thought you were the head of the security department!”

“Oh, no. Not so. I am only the acting head. The actual security director is at home, having dinner with his family.”

Nordquist said, “As acting head of the department you can surely order a security detail to surround that building.”

“I can, yes, certainly I can. But what if my chief disapproves of what I have done? What if he believes that I have overstepped my authority? What then?”

“But this is an emergency!”

“What is the nature of the emergency, please?”

Between the rocket's enervatingly high gravity that made every motion a struggle and this bureaucrat's obtuseness, Nordquist was ready to scream.

“The chairwoman of the World Council wants Jordan Kell placed in protective custody. It's a direct order from the chair of the World Council!”

“I understand,” said the bureaucrat, still smiling insipidly. “But this is not a dangerous situation, is it? There is no threat of violence or physical danger.”

Thinking of the physical danger she would like to expose this moron to, Nordquist said through gritted teeth, “Put me through to your department head, then.”

The man looked startled. “At his home? At his dinner?”

“Yes! Now!”

Blinking rapidly, the man said, very reluctantly, “If you insist.”

Nordquist wanted to pound the armrests of her seat, but the doubled gravity forestalled that. Glancing at the digital clock readout in the corner of the display screen, she saw that her shuttle would be docking at the habitat in another hour. We'll rush to that building and grab Kell before he can get away. With my own assault team. To hell with these bureaucrats!

*   *   *

There's something about being watched by men who are younger and more athletic than you are that brings out the best in a man, Jordan thought as he sweatily climbed the ornate wall carvings.

Reaching from one figure to the next, his shoes barely maintaining traction as he scaled the wall, Jordan knew that Cree and his buddies were watching him and probably thinking that they could make this climb much better than he could. He felt the spool of hair-thin buckyball cable in his pants pocket. At least the way down will be easier than this bloody ascent, even if I have to carry Aditi on my back.

Looking up, though, he saw that the window he was aiming for still seemed to be a hundred miles away.

*   *   *

“There's no need for you to come all the way up to my room,” Aditi was saying.

Castiglione was at her side as she walked up the curving staircase that led to her top-floor bedroom.

“It's nothing,” he said, waving an insouciant hand in the air. “I feel as though I'm escorting a beautiful princess to the castle tower where her chamber lies.”

Aditi knew that Castiglione was quartered in the floor below her own. She wondered if a slap in the face would stop him tonight. Where is Jordan? she asked herself.

Castiglione was chattering away as if he had no idea of what was going through her mind. “Besides, fair one, there is a surprise waiting for you once we get to your chamber.”

“A surprise?”

“You'll see.” The man's smile was almost leering.

Aditi thought that the surprise she most wanted was to have Jordan waiting for her. Adri must have shown him where I'm quartered, she said to herself. Jordan must be on his way to me.

But then she wondered if her husband would be stepping into a trap. Once Halleck has us both in her hands, what then?