Once Dead Read online

  CHAPTER 41

  Awakening at two a.m. was nothing new to Rachel Koenig. It had become a part of her normal sleep pattern. She’d read somewhere that before electric lights had been invented, this had been the normal sleep pattern for nearly everyone. In agrarian society days, people went to bed with the sun, but after about five hours of good hard sleep, they woke up and spent a couple of wakeful hours before falling back asleep for the few hours before dawn. Rather than lie in bed working to still her busy mind, Rachel switched on the lamp atop her nightstand, swung her long legs off the bed, stood up, and stretched her naked body. The chill in the night air dissuaded her from the Pilates session that had briefly crossed her mind, so she slid into her thick bathrobe. Perhaps a hot cup of tea and a good book would do the trick.

  Putting on her slippers, Rachel opened her door and stepped into the hall, the motion detector softly raising the hall lighting to illuminate her way to the elevator. As long as she’d lived in Königsberg, you’d think she’d be used to the odd way Rolf had blended modern gadgetry with fifteenth-century architecture, but it still freaked her out.

  She touched a button and the elevator doors closed, preceding a brief ride down to the second floor. There it stopped to release her into another hallway that would lead her to her office and its single-cup coffee machine. Tonight it would serve up a nice cup of chamomile, maybe more than one. As she passed the door to Rolf’s office, she noticed that the closed door hadn’t fully latched. Pressing her hand against it, she pushed the door open, the room lights rising to greet her arrival.

  Weird. Rolf never left his door unlocked unless he was present and, even then, he usually kept it closed and locked. Since he’d been gone for several days, it was amazing she hadn’t noticed that the door wasn’t completely latched before now. Rachel considered just closing the door to engage the automatic lock, but discarded the idea. What if someone else, one of the staff perhaps, had been in Rolf’s office? Although unlikely, it wouldn’t hurt to take a cursory look to verify everything looked in order.

  Although she’d been in Rolf’s office several times, she’d never been in it without Rolf. Empty, it felt huge, as if it had magically grown during his absence. Rolf’s desk didn’t face the door. Instead it faced the wall opposite the door, where the outside window had once been. The wall had been turned into a huge high-resolution display that Rolf could control from his desk or with voice and gestures as he stood before it. Right now the wall display was in screen-saver mode, currently showing an alpine village in the French Alps.

  The other walls were white, as was the door, all completely devoid of decoration. Depending on the level of immersion Rolf desired, he could project imagery on these other three walls using the ceiling-mounted projector, something he’d personally demonstrated just after their wedding, taking her on a live virtual tour of one of his Hamburg factories.

  The only two pieces of furniture were the U-shaped glass desk and his office chair. Even the desktop was empty except for the telephone, a wireless keyboard, and a device that looked like a large drink coaster. It wasn’t, of course. Another of Rolf’s designs, the flat rectangle sensed hand movements in three dimensions, providing Rolf with far greater capabilities than a common computer mouse or touchpad.

  As Rachel walked around that desk, she noted that nothing was out of order. There was nothing to be out of order. Rolf abhorred paper. Even his signature was digitally reproduced by a remotely located robotic ballpoint printer. All incoming documents were digitally scanned and converted at that same facility. Rachel paused by his chair, impulsively settling into it, rotating it to face forward as she tried to see this workspace through Rolf’s eyes. Strangely enough, sitting here in this sterile environment, she could understand a little of what it felt like to play God.

  Her eyes were drawn to a blinking indicator on the phone display, highlighting the text that read, New Voicemail.

  Knowing she was being stupid, she reached across and pressed the play button. An unfamiliar man’s voice, vaguely feminine and vividly disturbing, emanated from the speakerphone.

  “Rolf, this is Petor. I tried to reach you on your cell and left a message there, too. I spoke again with Roskov. He’s nervous, but he assures me he remains strictly focused on your task. The CIA man is headed to Kyzylorda and that seems to have calmed Roskov some. Don’t worry. I’ll deal with The Ripper before he leaves Germany.”

  As the phone began reciting options for deleting, replaying, or saving messages, Rachel felt her mouth go dry. Certain that she must have misheard the recording, she pressed the replay button. Then, as she played it a third time, a new worry crowded its way into her roiling mind.

  In addition to other sensors, the room’s 3D motion detection system had multiple cameras and microphones that were activated whenever Rolf entered the room so that he didn’t have to press any keys to give commands to his networked computers. Jesus. That system would have recorded everything she’d done since she entered this office. Even if she knew the login and password to access the system, which she didn’t, she had no idea how to delete those sound and video files.

  When Rolf got back and discovered that she’d been in his office and listened to that particular voice message, she was good and royally screwed. Maybe even before he got back if he happened to remotely access the system.

  Struggling to control her shaking hands, Rachel made a decision. She rose to her feet and hastily left Rolf’s office, closing the door firmly behind her. Hot tea long forgotten, she returned to her bedroom, put on slacks, a pullover, and hiking boots, pulled a suitcase from the closet’s high shelf and set it on the bed. Grabbing things from hangers and drawers, she tossed them, unfolded, into the suitcase.

  Her thoughts returned to the voice message. How stupid could she have been to believe that Rolf could be manipulated by some Russian thug? Apparently that thought had been scampering around her subconscious for a long time, judging by how the short message had filled in the one missing piece that enabled her to recognize the big picture. It had confirmed her secret fears. Something important enough to kill for was happening and Rolf wasn’t just in the middle of it; as with everything he involved himself in, Rolf was running the operation.

  Rachel tapped the right edge of the painting that hid her wall safe, the movement releasing the magnetic latch, letting it swing outward on a hinge. Rachel pressed her palm to the scanner, rapidly rewarded by a solid thump as the locking bars withdrew from their slots to allow her access. She opened the heavy door and grabbed a packet of hundred euro bills and ten small plastic cases. While each cylindrical case was only slightly larger than a roll of quarters, it didn’t take a lot of gold coins to add up to more than a hundred and fifty thousand euros. Right now, with what she needed to do, cash was queen and gold was king.

  Tossing the gold in the suitcase, she stuffed the bills in her purse. Rachel extracted her cell phone, left it on the dresser, and walked out of the room. Two minutes later, she pulled out of the eight-car garage and pressed down on the accelerator, feeling the power of the black Mercedes SEL-600’s twelve cylinders thrust her back in the leather driver’s seat.

  The dashboard clock showed 3:15 a.m., plenty of time to get to the Heidelberg Hauptbahnhof to catch the 9:12 a.m. train to Munich. Once Rolf discovered that she had gone he would have his people searching. Always a big city girl, he would assume she would hide in one of the major European cities. Rachel knew that Rolf had connections in all of them. That was why, by mid-morning, she would be well on her way to disappearing in the sleepy alpine village of Oberammergau. Disappearing was definitely her first consideration.

  Reestablishing contact with Jack Gregory would be her second.

  CHAPTER 42

  Admiral Jonathan Riles stared across the conference table in the White House Cabinet Room at President Tom Harris, barely managing to hide the anger that threatened to break his practiced exterior calm. Riles glanced at the man seated next to him, noting the hint of a smile on CIA D
irector Frank Rheiner’s broad face.

  It was an odd setting. To be meeting in the Cabinet Room, sitting directly across the great conference table from the president was odd enough in itself; to be the only three seated at the table that seated twenty just felt strange. It also felt strange to be summoned here and arrive to find the president already chatting with the meeting’s only other attendee. The president had greeted Riles and directed him to his current seat, as if his attendance here was an afterthought or a matter of courtesy after the final decision had already been made.

  As the president spelled things out for him, Admiral Riles had his suspicions confirmed. He didn’t know exactly how this had happened, but it was pure, political bullshit.

  “Mr. President. I don’t understand what you’re telling me. You want me to cease critical ongoing intelligence gathering activity in parts of Europe and Asia?”

  President Harris’s lips tightened in irritation. “Admiral Riles, you know damn well that is not what I’m telling you. Director Rheiner has made a very good case that the NSA’s activity threatens to draw unwanted attention, possibly exposing this critical operation. So, I am directing you to temporarily cease all independent analysis of intelligence data related to Vladimir Roskov or Rolf Koenig.”

  Riles, feeling the blood pulse in his temples, took a single deep breath before responding. “I can’t just turn off part of our data collection, Mr. President. As you know, our intelligence-gathering apparatus is extremely broad based, often deriving critically important information from complex correlative algorithms that automatically search the entire spectrum of available data. There’s no easy way to implement the type of exclusive filter that Director Rheiner is requesting without blinding ourselves in the process.”

  Director Rheiner leaned forward. “Jon, that’s not what I’m asking for here. All I want is to have you, for a limited time, while our operation reaches a critical juncture, route all of your data that correlates to Vladimir Roskov or Rolf Koenig through my deputy, Nolan Trent. That way you’re not turning off anything, just directing specific information to the people who best know how to make use of it.”

  Riles looked back at the president, noting the slight lift to his left eyebrow. “I strongly disagree with this approach. This is exactly the kind of myopic, stove-piping of intelligence information that has gotten us into big trouble in the recent past.”

  “I’m sorry, Admiral Riles. I’ve made my decision. The NSA will give the DCI his temporary operational window.”

  “Can you tell me for how long?”

  President Harris turned his gaze on the DCI. “Frank?”

  “Four weeks is all I’m asking for.”

  The president nodded. “Okay, you’ve got your four weeks. Make the best of it, because I won’t approve an extension. Gentlemen, we’re done here.”

  Rising to his feet, Riles watched as the president left the Cabinet Room, walking through his secretary’s office on his way back to the Oval Office.

  “Who will be Nolan’s point of contact at NSA?” The DCI’s voice carried just a faint note of satisfaction.

  Admiral Riles made his way around the conference table, not bothering to look at Rheiner as he responded. “I’ll have Dr. Jennings contact him.”

  Then his long stride carried him into the hallway and, shortly thereafter, out of the White House. When his driver pulled the black NSA sedan onto the Beltway for the first half of the trip back to Fort Meade, traffic had already achieved its usual rush-hour crawl. It would give him plenty of time to stew about this latest political debacle before he got back to his office and relayed the orders.

  As Admiral Riles looked out the darkly tinted window at the gleaming white spires of the Mormon Temple, backlit by the sinking sun, he found himself thinking about the Ten Commandments. While Riles did not consider himself a religious man, he had at least read parts of the Bible. He found the Ten Commandments specific in certain areas and broadly applicable in others. The president’s commandment to him, on the other hand, had been full of specificity about what the NSA would and would not do with certain intelligence data.

  But the president didn’t know about Janet Price’s involvement. Therefore nothing he had said instructed Admiral Riles to change her mission in any way. At least that was how Riles chose to interpret it. Unfortunately, the order he had been given meant that, for the next four weeks, she was going to be flying blind.

  CHAPTER 43

  Personality profiles didn’t lie. Certainly not the ones created by Petor Kline. A trained surgeon in his last lifetime, Petor had discovered a much more exciting way to put to use his fascination for things that stopped the human body’s workings. He avoided using brute force to kill his targets. His long, slender hands weren’t really designed for raw violence. But his mind was. Eleven percent of his targets killed themselves. Some succumbed to fatal illness. Many died accidental deaths. Some simply disappeared.

  As he watched the black Mercedes leave Koenig castle, he thought Rachel could up his self-kill average. But she wasn’t the target, just the extremely enticing bait.

  The setup had been simple enough. He’d used her curiosity while taking advantage of her subconscious need to prove her worth to a domineering husband. If he left Rolf’s diary open on a nightstand, Rachel could no more resist reading it than she could deny the need she felt to keep her body looking like it had when she’d married him five years ago. The danger of getting caught doing something that would make Rolf furious only sweetened the forbidden fruit. Although Rachel would deny it, she needed that risk of punishment, even needed the punishment.

  Rachel liked to believe that she’d been tricked into marrying the famous Rolf Koenig, seduced by the false façade he projected. But Rolf didn’t project a false façade. He was exactly the man he seemed, a driven, domineering genius. On a subconscious level Rachel had known exactly what she was getting into when she married him.

  As Rachel’s taillights followed her twin headlight beams around the bend in the steep, winding road, Petor turned and walked to the elevator. He didn’t have to follow Rachel immediately; the micro GPS tracker he’d placed in the seam of her purse would tell him where she was going.

  Pausing at Rachel’s bedroom, Petor switched on the lights, his gaze taking in the tossed closet and open drawers. He noted the open wall-safe and the cell phone atop her dresser. Rachel wasn’t stupid. She would take precautions, ditch the car and acquire other transportation. At this time of night that meant she’d hop a train, probably a high-speed nonstop, headed somewhere far from Heidelberg. No matter where she’d gone, he’d be on her tail in a few minutes. But first, he had a call to make.

  Stepping off the elevator on the second floor, Petor walked directly to Rolf’s office and pressed his hand to the scanner just to the left of the locked door. The panel glowed pale blue, and then, with a soft click, the door lock released, a temporary access authorization Rolf Koenig had granted him. Pushing the door inward, Petor stepped inside as the room lights rose to greet him. Three strides in, Rolf Koenig’s image filled the far wall, the seated industrialist leaning in toward his laptop’s webcam.

  “So Petor. Your theory proved correct.”

  “Rachel just left.”

  “And Gregory?”

  “He’s the only go-to guy she knows. Once she thinks she’s safe, she’ll try to contact him, probably setting up a personal meeting. If he comes to her, then I’ll deal with him.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “Then he’ll try to get to Roskov in Kyzylorda. In that case your CIA guy will have to handle him. Either way, we’ll know.”

  “Okay. Make it happen.”

  As Rolf’s image faded out, replaced by a stunning view of the Mediterranean, Petor Kline was already on his way out the door.

  CHAPTER 44

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  Janet felt the anger flow from her lips through the encrypted cell phone and into Dr. Denise Jennings’s ear.

>   “I’m sorry, Janet. I’ve been ordered to route all Big John information relating to Vladimir Roskov through CIA. They have the lead on this one.”

  “Damn it! This is bullshit. Who gave the order?”

  “Admiral Riles.”

  Janet paused, struggling to deal with this new information. It made zero sense. Why would Riles pull her out of Cartagena, fly her halfway round the world on a high-priority mission, only to cut her off at the knees just when she was about to deliver the goods? Jack Gregory had made contact. She had until the end of the day on Friday to deliver the requested information on Roskov’s current location or she could kiss the chance of further contact goodbye.

  Denise’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “I really am sorry, Janet.”

  Janet thumbed the END CALL button, pulled up Admiral Riles’s contact information, and pressed CALL. She knew she should probably go through Levi Elias, but right now she was pissed and just didn’t give a rat’s ass about protocol.

  Admiral Riles’s distinctive voice answered. “Hi, Janet. I’ve been expecting your call.”

  “Sir, do you mind telling me just what the hell is going on and why Denise Jennings is denying my requests for mission-critical information?”

  “I don’t like it either. But this comes straight from the president.”

  The answer stunned her. Why the hell was the president involving himself in this?

  “So you’re pulling me out?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You might as well. There’s not a damn thing I can do if you cut me off from all my intelligence resources.”

  This time Admiral Riles paused before responding. “I still believe Jack Gregory is at the center of whatever is happening in Germany. Just because I’ve been told not to probe into Roskov’s or Rolf Koenig’s activities doesn’t mean you can’t continue your Gregory mission. You’re just going to have to invent more creative ways to dig up the answers you need. Talk to Levi and keep us informed of your progress.”