Once Dead Page 18

  He blinked his eyes, trying to clear his vision, but it didn’t work. All he could see was the cloth of the sheet or blanket that had been pulled over his head. None of this made sense. The last thing he remembered was pulling into his parking spot and opening his car door. Something had stung him on the neck. Not a bee sting, more like a dart.

  The sudden realization caused his pulse to spike. Once again he tried to move and again he failed. The cold voice that spoke from above spiked his heart rate even higher.

  “Good evening, Dr. Kline.”

  Petor knew he needed to calm down, tried his best to do it, and failed. He didn’t want to ask the questions, didn’t want to know the answers, but couldn’t stop himself. His voice came out high pitched and slightly muffled.

  “Who are you? What do you want from me?”

  “I’m the man you tried to kill two days ago.”

  Shit! The Ripper.

  “And I just want truthful answers to the questions I’m going to ask you.”

  With his mind acquiring a sudden clarity, a new understanding dawned on Petor. He wasn’t strapped to a back-board. He was bound to some sort of torture device. His face wasn’t covered by a blanket but by a cloth sack that had been fastened tightly around his neck, intended to deny him sight and make breathing difficult. But why tilt him head down like this?

  The splash of cold water being poured over the cloth answered his question. The suddenly wet cloth rapidly absorbed the water, plastering itself to his mouth and nose as he sought to inhale. It was as if someone had just pulled a plastic bag tight around his head. He couldn’t get any air. He sucked harder, only managing to inhale some of the water.

  Like a man in an electric chair, his body went rigid as he fought to free himself, to tear the horrible thing from his face. Feeling his heart try to claw its way out of his chest, he managed to suck a tiny bit of air through the cloth before a fresh flow of water over the sack shut it off. Unable to thrash about, Petor tried to scream, but the sound devolved into a gargling sputter as his human drowning response kicked in.

  Then the flow of water onto the cloth sack stopped and he managed to draw a tiny bit of air into his lungs. Desperately, his labored lungs pulled with all their might, and where rewarded with more air, but also with a dampness that left him coughing. When the coughing finally stopped and he was able to draw a deeper breath, hyperventilation sent him into another desperate fit of thrashing against the bonds that wrapped him mummy-tight. Petor was a child trapped in a narrow sewer pipe, his arms pinned tightly against his sides as water seeped in to fill it, unable to wiggle forward or back.

  He screamed again and this time he got his money’s worth. When he finally stopped, the voice was back, speaking close to his left ear.

  “That was five minutes. I’m going to ask my questions now. Lie to me and I’ll know it. It’s one of my eccentricities. Every lie earns you another five minutes.”

  Petor felt his jaw clench as his blood pulsed through the veins in his forehead. He was a medical doctor, a skilled surgeon, not some Euro-scum to be tortured into submission by this ex-CIA prick.

  “No.”

  The immediate splash of cold water startled him so badly he exhaled instead of trying to make his breath last. Instantly he found himself transported back into the hell he had just escaped, unable to battle his body’s automatic response, even to get out a plea for mercy. He needed air, but it seemed that the harder he inhaled the less air he got. His chest moved but he barely got enough to keep him conscious. When the water stopped, Petor felt his body quake with tremors reminiscent of hypothermia victims.

  The Ripper spoke again.

  “A non-answer also earns you another session. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.” Petor felt his teeth rattle as he managed to spit out the word.

  “Good. Who do you work for?”

  With every passing moment it became easier to draw breath. Petor gulped in a full lungful.

  “Rolf Koenig.”

  “Tell me about your relationship to Vladimir Roskov.”

  Petor hesitated before answering.

  “Rolf Koenig pays me to assist Roskov.”

  “What is Koenig’s connection to Roskov?”

  “I don’t know. He doesn’t tell . . . ”

  This time it felt like a whole bucket of water was dumped on his head with such force that it penetrated the cloth, the angle of the incline forcing it up his nose and into his sinuses. He knew this was only an illusion caused by the way the impact pressed the wet cloth up against his face, but as fresh horror filled his soul, that knowledge was little consolation.

  The water stopped, the questioning started, the water returned. Always, amid the rising liquid terror that threatened to drown him, The Ripper was there, asking his questions. When Petor Kline began to talk, he told everything he knew about Rolf Koenig and Vladimir Roskov. And, at the end, he only wished he knew more.

  Now the sack had been cut free and for a brief, wonderful moment, he breathed in the fresh night air, unrestricted. Then, at the end of a dark tunnel, he saw a distant bright light. But it was only the flash from a gun barrel.

  CHAPTER 58

  Standing six feet from the table where Petor Kline struggled to draw breath, Janet watched Jack closely. Not quite textbook, Jack used his own waterboarding methodology, one that relied extensively on enhancing the claustrophobic effect produced by tightly binding the whole body. The normal drowning response was triggered when a person felt that first gulp of water enter the lungs, something that dialed the fight or flight reaction to maximum. In the water, even an experienced swimmer, under the influence of that natural bodily reaction, flailed wildly as he fought to break Neptune’s death grip. Jack was denying Petor Kline’s body that opportunity.

  Waterboarding produced the same panicked response, except the person wasn’t really drowning. If the person administering the torture knew what he was doing, he could elevate the level of panic and maintain it for an extended period. To do that, it was important to give the subject periodic breaks, not only to perform interrogation, but to allow him to regain the strength required to maximize the effectiveness of the next session.

  There were those that held to the belief that, for soldiers acclimated to battle, the longer they experienced it the better they were able to handle their situation. But most scholars who studied the effects of extended life-or-death stress on soldiers had come to the conclusion that individuals had a specific stress tolerance and that the longer they were exposed, the closer they came to exceeding that tolerance. It was as if a soldier had a certain amount of bravery, acquired from nature and life experience. Constant combat drained it and, without an extended break for rest and recovery, the bravery tank eventually ran dry.

  Nobody acclimated to waterboarding.

  Although Janet maintained her clinical observation of the interrogation, looking for inconsistencies or signs of deception in Petor’s answers, she felt a tightness grip her chest, as if her lungs were trying to breathe for him. It was a psychosomatic response, but one she couldn’t quite shake. Whether Jack was feeling some of the same thing, she couldn’t tell. Certainly there was tension in his face, but his hands were rock steady. Perhaps he was contemplating Petor’s fate.

  One thing stood out to anyone who had studied Jack Gregory. People who tried to kill him consistently found the same bad end, although the means to that end varied widely. Petor was already a dead man. The only question was how hard he would force Jack to make his passing.

  Suddenly Petor was talking, his words filled with real information, his answers long and rambling as the man sought to keep Jack from sending him back into that watery hell. Unfortunately, the more the man talked, the more Janet came to understand that he didn’t really know what Rolf Koenig and Vladimir Roskov were doing.

  Dr. Kline had been assigned the job of keeping Roskov focused on the mission Rolf had assigned him. Jack was the distraction that Petor had tried to eliminate. But when
it came to a deeper knowledge of what Koenig was using Roskov to do, Petor didn’t have any answers. What he did know was that Roskov had travelled to his warehouse complex in Kyzylorda, Kazakhstan.

  Janet found the coincidence of Vladimir Roskov being in Kazakhstan as Koenig prepared for the launch of his robotic lunar mission from the Baikonur Cosmodrome very intriguing. But not as interesting as Petor telling Jack about a mysterious CIA operative that had contacted Roskov in Kyzylorda. Although he didn’t know the man’s name, Petor said the man’s mission was to kill The Ripper before he could damage their mutual interest.

  When Petor Kline finally stopped talking, she could see Jack decide the man had nothing left to give. Reaching down, Jack tore away the sack that covered Petor’s head. He waited while the man drew in two full breaths before leveling the Glock at Petor’s forehead.

  Just before Jack pulled the trigger, Janet saw it, that red glint deep within his pupils. As the gunshot ended Petor Kline’s life, Janet’s gaze remained locked on Jack’s face. When he looked up at her, those strange eyes sent a sudden heat flowing through her veins and, this time, she knew that she hadn’t imagined it.

  CHAPTER 59

  Kazakhstan wasn’t known for its high-speed internet service, but the Baikonur Cosmodrome was an exception. Still, it paled in comparison to the direct satellite feed Rolf got from his Hamburg Technautics communications satellites. To minimize transmission delay, he had deployed an array of low earth-orbiting satellites instead of placing them in geosynchronous orbits. His communications software automatically routed data along an optimal route that minimized distance between data start and end points. Since electromagnetic waves travelled at three hundred million meters per second, he could communicate with any point on the earth in less than a tenth of a second. It had only taken the CIA slightly longer to contact him with the bad news.

  Rolf Koenig stared at Nolan Trent’s grim visage on his laptop as the encrypted video conference came online. The CIA’s deputy director didn’t bother with a greeting.

  “Your man Kline is dead.”

  Rolf felt his mouth go dry, but denied his face the emotion.

  “When?”

  “German Polizei found his body early this afternoon. My people just learned of it.”

  “You have details?”

  “Dr. Kline was taped to a broken table inside an abandoned farmhouse. He’d been water boarded and then shot in the head.”

  “Sheisse.”

  “Damn it, Rolf. I thought we agreed that I would handle Gregory.”

  “No. I told you your man could handle security in Kazakhstan. If Gregory never makes it here it’s a moot point.”

  Rolf saw Trent’s jaw clench, then release. “Let’s get something straight. I won’t get in the way of your rocket launch, but you better stay the hell out of my lane, too.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or you’ll jeopardize the whole operation. I guarantee you, right now Gregory knows everything Petor Kline knew. That makes him that much harder to kill.”

  That unpleasant thought had already occurred to Rolf and he didn’t like hearing the obvious from Nolan Trent.

  “Dr. Kline was never in the loop.”

  “For all our sakes, I hope not.”

  Rolf damped the annoyance that had filtered into his voice and shifted subjects. “Have you dropped the package?”

  “It’ll be delivered on the third shift tonight. But behind those firewalls you won’t be able to activate it remotely.”

  “I won’t need to. It’ll be part of the system, using my algorithm to decide for itself when it’s time to take action.”

  “Okay then.”

  “Oh . . . and Nolan?”

  “Yes?”

  “Get your ex-agent off my ass.”

  As Trent’s mouth twisted into the beginning of a response, Rolf killed the connection.

  Rolf stood up, placed his hand in the small of his back, and applied what pressure he could to the L4-L5 vertebrae. The polo injury tended to tighten up anytime he sat for more than two hours.

  Even more than he hated the clutter of a paper-based society, Rolf abhorred hospitals that seemed better designed to produce resistant superbugs than to cure human ills. It was the reason he had ordered the construction of a state-of-the-art medical clinic and surgery in the upper portion of the Königsberg Castle’s dungeon. Unfortunately, even the top-of-the-line spinal decompression unit had not lived up to his expectations. Perhaps, in addition to his other technology interests, Rolf would have to direct some of his genius and competitive drive at that field.

  Despite multiple operations performed by the world’s best back specialist in Rolf’s private surgery, the results had been less than optimal. Today, having reviewed the final payload software patches, he’d been sitting a lot longer than his back found acceptable.

  Prior to Nolan Trent’s call, he’d actually been feeling very well satisfied. Maybe the two girls the Cosmonaut Hotel kept on call for him could help him recover that feeling. As he made his way out of building 92A-50 and into his waiting sedan, he looked forward to finding out.

  CHAPTER 60

  For the third time, Jacob Knox watched the Schoelerpark Residences’ security camera footage, pausing it as Dr. Kline opened the driver’s door to step out of his silver Mercedes. The video quality sucked. It had been captured by a camera on the far end of the building and had been recorded in low resolution to reduce the size of the video files that had to be stored on the server. Another problem was the terrible lighting. The sun had just sunk below the horizon and the southwest-facing camera had been partially blinded by the backlighting caused by the darker terrain against a brighter sky.

  The Polizei had found the video was useless in identifying the dark figure who had approached the Mercedes, fired a pistol at Dr. Kline, shoved his body back inside, and then driven away in his car. Then again, the Polizei didn’t have access to the video exploitation tools the CIA did, like the one Jacob was using right now.

  Jacob moved the timeline slider, advancing a few frames until he had a partial profile of the right side of the shooter’s face as he approached the car. Clicking the auto-balance button helped, but not enough. He spent the next half-hour playing with the lighting and contrast settings, before running the enhanced resolution processing algorithm on that frame.

  His chair creaked as Jacob leaned back, his hands behind his head. Finally he was getting somewhere. Not a man. The profile was that of a woman. He saved the captured image, then advanced the video until the woman slid into the driver’s seat and reached out to close the car door, freezing the image with the profile of the left side of her face. Applying the saved settings from the enhancements to the previous image, he saved his second capture.

  Over the next two hours, Jacob meticulously built a collection of images of the woman’s head, each from a slightly different angle. Although he didn’t have any from the front, the software could form a pretty good extrapolation to approximate the missing details. That done, he launched another portion of the rendering application, one that used the captured images to build a 3D wireframe model of the woman’s head and then applied the captured images to build the texture that it draped over the 3D model.

  Once again, Jacob saved the results. Manipulating the touch screen, Jacob rotated the head so that he could view it from different angles. Definitely not perfect, but it should be enough to give the CIA facial recognition database something decent to work with.

  Jacob composed his request, logged in on the CIA server, and uploaded the encrypted files. Then he settled in to wait. Surprisingly, the wait wasn’t long. As he scanned the profile that came back to him, he understood why.

  Her name was Janet Price and she was ex-CIA. So what was her connection to Gregory? Further study revealed that she had been tagged as a gifted CIA field agent and had shown great promise. Then, after two years with the agency, she had abruptly quit, citing religious issues, and had dropped off the grid. The proble
m was that her timeline didn’t appear to intersect with Jack Gregory’s. Nothing in her file gave any indication she’d ever met the man.

  Of course, since she’d left CIA, they didn’t have much information on what she’d been doing. Apparently she’d found the Lord and devoted herself to missionary work in Asia and in South America. From what Jacob had seen in the video, she had an irresistible recruiting pitch.

  At least now he had some real, high-quality photographs of Janet Price from her time at CIA. Since she didn’t yet know she’d been identified, that would let him find her. Since the available evidence indicated that Ms. Price was now working with Jack Gregory, like Rita Chavez, she would have to be eliminated. It was all part of the process of stripping The Ripper of all his support systems, leaving him standing alone to face Jacob and the vast array of CIA resources at his beck and call.

  Jacob composed one more high-priority intelligence request, one that would need Nolan Trent’s personal authorization.

  All asset facial recognition search authorization request. Target: Janet Alexandra Price. Last known location: Berlin, Germany. Highest Priority.

  CHAPTER 61

  The drive to Salzburg had taken Jacob four hours. He was in no hurry. Once again his penchant for preparation would pay handsome dividends, in this case delivering Janet Price into his hands. And once he was done with her, The Ripper would once again stride a path that Jacob controlled, and he would stride that path alone.

  Janet Price surprised him. After she left the CIA, aside from cursory information that fit with her foreign missionary story, she was a complete mystery. But Jacob didn’t believe the missionary crap. As a young girl, she had put five .38-caliber bullets into her father.

  Not that the prick hadn’t deserved it, having just beat her mother to death with his fists. So much for the usefulness of judicial restraining orders. Still, if that trauma hadn’t been enough to drive her to religion, he doubted that she would have found it after two years in the field working for the CIA. It was much more likely that she had decided to monetize her skills in service to the underworld, even though he hadn’t found any evidence to support that conjecture.