The Loch Ness Legacy tl-4 Page 7

  She smiled, but her eyes still held worry. “Sounds great.”

  “And be careful on the walk over to the Market. There can be some sketchy people on Third Avenue.”

  “If someone messes with me, I can scream with the best of them.”

  She walked over to get her purse on Miles’ desk. Tyler noticed her whisper something to Grant, who smiled weakly at the comment and avoided her gaze as she waved and left.

  “What’d she say?” Tyler asked when she was gone.

  “Just that I don’t stink any more.”

  Tyler sniffed and smiled. “She’s right. You’re a veritable flower.”

  “Okay, gentlemen,” Miles said as he wheeled himself over to his desk and lowered the chair to a sitting position. “Now would you mind telling me what happened in California? My PR gal has been working overtime because of you two during the last week.”

  Tyler filled him in on the helicopter crash near the Pleasant Valley prison, then Grant brought him up to speed on the report from France.

  When Miles saw the swastika, he scowled and said, “Nazis? Again? I thought we were done with those guys seventy years ago.”

  “When I saw the report, I asked Aiden to do a little online research to look for Altwaffe,” Grant said. Aiden MacKenna was Gordian’s top computer expert and data-mining genius. “He came up empty on the term, but he sure found a ton on Nazis today. It seems that the neo-Nazi movement has been growing in Europe in recent years, except their hatred is now focused on immigrants from Muslim countries and Africa. Don’t get me wrong. They still hate the Jews, but guys that look like me are scaring them even more these days.”

  “Yeah, but you’re scary for a whole different reason,” Tyler said.

  “You mean my amazing physique?”

  “The smell. Apparently it’s strong enough to knock down a moose.”

  “That’s because I ooze testosterone,” Grant shot back and then immediately looked like he regretted it.

  Miles’ intercom buzzed. He picked up the phone, listened for a moment, and said, “Bring her up.”

  Once he put the phone back down, he looked at Tyler and Grant. “That’s Agent Harris. Do you have any other homoerotic banter you’d like to get out of the way before she comes in here?”

  Grant feigned shock and cranked a thumb at Tyler. “Please. You think I spend two hours a day at the gym so he’ll notice?”

  Tyler opened his mouth with a smartass retort, but thought better of it. “I’ll save that one for later.”

  “Good idea,” Miles replied.

  Harris entered with a grim expression. Her eyes flicked to Grant first, as if she were inspecting him. She nodded to Grant and Tyler, then shook Miles’ hand.

  “Dr. Benson, thanks for letting me come by on such short notice.”

  “Not at all. Please have a seat.”

  He wheeled around and joined them in the office’s sitting area.

  “You told Tyler this had to do with the Paris incident?”

  She nodded and glanced at Grant again. Tyler sensed her unease, but he had no idea what the problem was.

  “Yes, sir,” Harris said. “I wanted to come to you as soon as I could. This isn’t an official call. I thought since I owed Tyler for the incident in Miami — well, that you deserved to hear it now.”

  “Hear what?” Tyler asked. Now he was more than a little concerned. “Is this about Brielle Cohen?”

  “What? Oh, no. Nothing to do with her. Well, I suppose in a way. It’s about the guests at the party.”

  “What about them?”

  “I got the briefing this morning. They informed me because of my connection to Carl Zim’s brother, in case I learned anything about the attack from Victor.”

  “Agent Harris, they’re both dead,” Grant said. “And we saved everyone at the party.”

  “Did you?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Tyler asked.

  “Your own report said that the quadcopter bombs were so small that they wouldn’t have killed more than a fraction of the guests.”

  “True. But we don’t know what the attackers’ goals were. Maybe they simply wanted to disrupt the summit.”

  “Or maybe it was an assassination attempt,” Grant said.

  Harris nodded. “We think you’re right.”

  “Who was the target?” Tyler asked.

  “Everyone there.”

  Tyler exchanged glances with Miles and Grant before turning back to Harris.

  “You just said that you agreed with our findings that the bombs weren’t deadly enough to cause that kind of destruction.”

  “They weren’t. The bombs were merely a tool.”

  “For what?” Miles asked.

  “Altwaffe,” Tyler said under his breath. He looked up at Harris. “You know what that is.”

  “We think so. Eighteen months ago, a hidden lab was found under Dresden, Germany. It was deep enough underground that it escaped destruction during the firebombing in 1945 that killed fifty thousand people. We believe André Laroche came into possession of the weapon.”

  Grant shook his head. “What are the odds?”

  “About what?”

  “That Laroche also hired Alexa to track down the Loch Ness monster.”

  “You’re kidding,” Miles said.

  “Yesterday I saw the video footage she shot. She says the creature is real.”

  Harris rolled her eyes at the mention of the creature. “I know. He’s an amateur cryptozoologist. You should see some of the stuff at his mansion. We’ve been searching it since yesterday morning, but we’ve found no sign of him or any reference to the weapon. Did your sister say if she’s been in contact with him recently?”

  Tyler shook his head. “She hasn’t seen him in a while.”

  “When we’re done with his house later today, I’d like to talk to her.”

  “She’s meeting with a colleague right now, but I can bring her by your office this afternoon,” Tyler said. “But let me get this straight. My sister works for the same man who supposedly plotted the attack on the Eiffel Tower using a Nazi weapon he found, and the person Laroche paid to carry it out was Carl Zim, the brother of the man I helped put in prison? I was willing to chalk some of that up to coincidence before, but not anymore.”

  “I agree,” Harris said. “In fact, the connection with your sister might be why Laroche hired you.”

  Tyler was taken aback. “Hired me?”

  “We discovered the holding company that financed the display at the Eiffel Tower to hide Zim’s gunmen was the same one that hired Brielle Cohen — and subsequently Gordian — for the investigation that led you to Carl Zim.”

  Tyler shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. If Laroche was behind the attack, why would he hire us and Brielle to stop it?”

  “You might have been more efficient than he expected. We theorize that Zim was duped the way you were and was hired unwittingly by the type of people he hated.”

  “Muslims?” Grant asked.

  “Jews. Laroche’s mother was a concentration camp prisoner who survived the Holocaust, only to die later during a Palestinian suicide bombing in Jerusalem. We believe this is a case of revenge against the Muslim leadership that supports the Palestinian cause. The worst part is that Laroche had dealings with the Israeli government. He may have used his connections with the Mossad to get intel about the summit meeting that would have made the attack possible.”

  If there was one thing Tyler hated, it was feeling like he’d been fooled. “And Laroche used us to try to pin the whole thing on white supremacists.”

  “If that’s the case, it didn’t work,” Harris said. “The leaders of the summit nations think the attack was sanctioned by the Israeli government.”

  “It’s hard to believe the Israelis would use a weapon designed by the Nazis.”

  “Not if you’re a Muslim country. They wouldn’t put anything past their mortal enemy. Many of them don’t even believe the Holocaust happened
, so why would they think the Jews would have any problem using a Nazi weapon?”

  “You said it was found in a Dresden laboratory. What was the lab’s function?”

  “It was secretly established to research chemical warfare. Altwaffe was some kind of toxin.”

  More disturbed glances ricocheted amongst them.

  “What’s happened, Melanie?” Tyler asked.

  Harris took a breath. “The French say there were three hundred and ninety-four guests at the Eiffel Tower party. According to intel reports coming from the nations that were part of the summit, three of those guests are now dead.”

  “My God. Is anyone else sick?”

  “Some of the oldest attendees. All three of the people who died were men in their late eighties, including the Egyptian foreign minister. The scientists don’t yet know how the chemical works. It seems to shut down every system in the body so that the victims waste away. It’s taking longer to affect younger and stronger people, but the doctors think it will prove one hundred percent fatal to anyone who was exposed.”

  “How long do they have?”

  “A week. Maybe less. Those who are ill seem to hit a wall, and then it ends pretty quickly. If we don’t find or create an antidote soon, every person who attended that party will be dead. The surviving leaders will have the excuse and popular support to invade Israel. The forces are already massing. If an invasion happens and Israel can’t repel them, they might fight back with their nuclear arsenal. We’re looking at the potential start of World War III.”

  “Maybe it was bad food,” Grant said. “Salmonella in the caviar or something.”

  “And Grant and I didn’t eat because we were keeping a lookout during the entire event,” Tyler said. “I feel fine.”

  “And you would. We don’t think you were exposed.”

  “I thought you said it was everyone at the party. But wait, it couldn’t have been in the food or drinks. Zim was the one with the tube containing the Altwaffe, and he never got…” Tyler caught himself as he said it. “The sprinkler system. That’s why Carl Zim blew it up. He didn’t want us to know why he was there.”

  Harris nodded. “The toxicologists who are working on this — and they are the best in the world — think it was absorbed through the skin. So you wouldn’t be sick.”

  Tyler’s stomach went cold. “Because I wasn’t in there when the sprinklers went off. That was the purpose of the bombs. They were a means to set off the sprinklers. Carl was there to inject the Altwaffe into the system.”

  Now Tyler realized why Harris had been looking at Grant so oddly. From the moment she stepped into the room, she knew that he’d been poisoned.

  ELEVEN

  Brielle’s eyes adjusted as she entered the dim lighting of Grady’s, an out-of-the-way biker bar near Lyman, Washington. She’d tracked Wade Plymouth to this seedy joint, the last place his GPS had located him, right before he texted Carl Zim’s name to her. He must have discovered something in this bar that caused him to go missing, and she was determined to find out what happened to him.

  Going in with a British accent and a lot of questions wouldn’t get her anywhere with the type of men who would spend the morning in a bar. She’d already scouted the location to check out the women. All it took was a stop at a Goodwill store and a druggist’s cosmetics counter, and she had everything she’d need to blend in: cutoff jean shorts, cowboy boots, and a black T-shirt torn in the middle to reveal her generous cleavage — enhanced even further by a pushup bra. In a bar like this, it was like wearing a uniform, although much less practical than the one she’d worn in the Israeli Army. The fake dragon tattoo on her right shoulder completed the look. Her Star of David necklace, which would have been a dead giveaway, was safely tucked inside her front pocket.

  A new accent was the last piece of the disguise. She’d spent a year studying abroad at Vanderbilt in Nashville. Frequent outings to the city’s country and western saloons let her practice her American accent until it was perfected. That helped her blend in when she wanted to, though she didn’t use it often once she found that American men went absolutely mental for the BBC shtick. To the college students in Tennessee, nothing was more exotic.

  The wood floors of Grady’s reeked of spilled beer and the occasional spritzing of vomit. A neon Budweiser sign hung above the long bar, half of its bulbs dark. Grungy booths lined the opposite wall, with beat-up chairs and tables taking up the space in between. A honky-tonk tune blared from the ancient jukebox in the corner. It was thirty minutes before noon, and only a few of the tables were occupied.

  Every head turned her way as she sauntered in. As she made her way to the bar, she could feel eyes on her form, as if she were fresh meat to be preyed upon by the boldest hunter in the room.

  She took a seat on a stool midway down the bar. The bartender, a craggy old man with a full white beard and a missing left pinkie, looked her up and down.

  “What’ll it be?”

  “Whiskey,” Brielle said.

  Without another word, the bartender poured two fingers of Jack Daniels into a highball glass and set it down in front of her.

  Brielle downed it in one gulp. “Another.”

  The bartender raised an eyebrow, then poured again.

  It didn’t take long for the first man to approach her. He was a beefy leather-clad biker with “Mother” scrawled across both biceps. He sidled up to her and leaned on the bar.

  “Hey, baby,” he said. “My name’s Big Joe.” He turned to nod to his two buddies who were nursing beers, as if to say this one was already in the bag.

  Brielle looked at him for a moment and then went back to her drink. “Big, huh?”

  “Why don’t you come party with me and find out?”

  “Can’t, Joe. Waiting for someone.”

  “Yeah, you’ve been waiting all your life for me.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “How do you know until you’ve tried?”

  She looked Big Joe up and down and concluded he wasn’t the person she was here to find. There was no way someone this undisciplined was part of Zim’s group. She went back to nursing her glass.

  “You been here before?” Big Joe asked.

  “My boyfriend has.”

  “Well he’s not here now.”

  “Look, Joe, I just want to drink my whiskey.”

  Big Joe put his hand on Brielle’s shoulder and spun her around. “What if I scare off this guy you’re waiting for?”

  Now this is where it would get tricky. She had plenty of weapons she could use to defend herself: switchblade in her front pocket and compact Glock in her right boot. But getting into a brawl with a biker and two of his friends wouldn’t go well. For them. Then she’d leave with nothing.

  She slapped Big Joe’s hand away. “Get your hand off me, you prick!” she yelled.

  “Tell me your boyfriend’s name, so I know who I’m about to crush when he gets here.”

  “Carl Zim!” she shouted a little too loudly, as if she were already tipsy.

  At the mention of Zim’s name, Big Joe put up his hands in supplication, his eyes wide.

  “Whoa, hey,” he said, backing away. “I didn’t know you were with Zim.”

  Brielle was surprised by the deferential response. Zim and his militia must have had a tough reputation in this region. “Well, you know now.”

  Big Joe looked at his friends and tilted his head at the door. They scrambled out of there so fast that one of them knocked his bottle onto the floor, adding to the odor.

  Brielle turned back to her drink, but she kept her eye on the bartender. He kept looking up at a booth toward the back. Brielle followed his gaze and saw the only two men left in the bar talking to each other. The one facing her, a man in his twenties with long blond hair and no chin, looked at her briefly then back to his seatmate. He shrugged and shook his head.

  Brielle took her glass and walked over to them. The second man was slightly older and had black hair, a nose that had been brok
en a few times, and chubby cheeks. She felt sure they knew about Zim and didn’t know what to do with his now ex-girlfriend.

  They’d either deny their connection vehemently or they’d fess up and tell her they were part of Carl’s group. Either way, Brielle would be able to plant the tiny tracking device in her palm on one of them before he left. Then she’d follow them back to their compound somewhere in the Cascades forest. Once she had the location, she could either try to infiltrate it to find Wade or she could call in the cavalry in the form of a SWAT team. The latter would be preferable if she could collect evidence that Zim had been there and that Wade might still be held hostage. She tried not to think about the likelihood that he was already dead.

  “Were you two friends of Carl’s?”

  They looked at each other, then the older one spoke.

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Because he wasn’t really my boyfriend.”

  “Then why were you yelling that to the biker dude?”

  For your benefit, Brielle wanted to say.

  “I have some money for Carl,” she actually said. “For the job he was paid to do.”

  Their eyebrows went up at the word “money.”

  “Then you should give it to me.”

  Maybe this would be easier than she thought.

  “Why?” she demanded. “I thought you said you didn’t know him.”

  “My memory came back,” the chubby-cheeked man said. “Carl was a friend of mine. We worked on the job together.” He showed her a snake tattoo on his left forearm, the same as Carl Zim’s.

  “What the hell are you doing, Harvin?” the younger one said.

  “Shut up.” Harvin turned back to Brielle. “Is it cash?”

  “Wire transfer.”

  Harvin grimaced, like he was deciding what to do.

  Brielle suspected that whoever pointed the laser at the Eiffel Tower was only one of a few men Zim had used in carrying out the attack. These guys might have already been paid, but they would see more money as a bonus.

  “This is for the second job?” Harvin asked.

  That pulled her up short. Second job? She covered the falter by coughing.