Jenny Plague-Bringer

Chapter Twenty-Nine



Esmeralda stood in the high concrete room and stared at the dead body on the gurney in front of her. A sheet covered him to the chest, hiding the bullet wounds that had killed him. She’d been told nothing about him, but he looked Arabic to her, or maybe Pakistani.

Two scientists, two U.S. military intelligence officers, and General Ward Kilpatrick watched her from across the room, as did a digital video camera.

“Anytime, Miss Rios,” Ward said.

Esmeralda sighed. She didn’t want to help this man, who’d had her drugged and kidnapped from her home. She had no idea where in the world they were, and there were no windows anywhere to give her any clues. The lack of windows made the place even more creepy and sinister. She had a constant bad feeling, as if the place were haunted by angry ghosts. At night, in the dark, she spent hours laying awake in terror, expecting something to grab her.

Her kidnappers belonged to some kind of secret government agency, the same people who’d recruited Tommy. Ward had approached her in person a week after Tommy left, asking if she was ready to join him, but Esmeralda had turned him down. So he’d had men kidnap her instead.

Now she was cooperating reluctantly, out of fear of what he might do if she didn’t. She kept asking him to let her see Tommy, but Ward just smirked and said she had to “earn” a visit with him. This involved reading bodies that Ward brought to her, while his researchers monitored her through sensors attached all over her body.

Esmeralda took a deep breath, placed her hands on the corpse, and closed her eyes.

Immediately, she saw flashes of life in a city of bombed-out and blackened buildings...Afghanistan. He was Pashtun, not Arab.

“I see Kabul,” she told them. “Now, another city, Herat, full of ancient towers, not so destroyed...He traveled back and forth, buying and selling...Dishes? Dishes and teapots from Iran. He preferred Herat. He died in Kabul.”

“He brought weapons from Iran to Afghanistan,” said one of the intelligence officers who’d brought the corpse to the base. “A gun dealer.”

Esmeralda’s forehead wrinkled as she concentrated. “No...I don’t see anything like that.”

“He has to be the guy. We worked hard to track him down. A paid informant assured us he was a gun runner.”

“Maybe you should ask for your money back.” Esmeralda opened her eyes.

“We were told he was involved in guns and heroin,” the officer told her.

“No. He did make a sport of sleeping with the wives of other men. Perhaps that is why someone wants him dead.”

The intelligence officers looked at each other.

“This girl’s a fake,” one of them said to Ward. “She doesn’t know anything.”

“Is she?” Ward asked. “Or are you trying to cover your own ass?”

“We didn’t make a mistake,” he said. He looked at Esmeralda. “This is the right guy.”

“Thank you, gentlemen. Your response is noted. I think we’re done here,” Ward told them.

The dead Pashtun was wheeled away, and the two visiting intelligence officers left.

“He sold teapots, huh?” Ward asked her.

“Teapots.” Esmeralda shrugged.

“Guess they aren’t sending the high-value targets for our tests.” Ward shook his head, chuckling as he left the lab. Guards in black uniforms escorted Esmeralda away, down the elevator, and back to her room in what they called the cellblock. She sat on her bed as the steel door of her cell clanged shut. She was cooperating now, but was still treated like a prisoner because they knew she didn’t want to be here.

Esmeralda shuddered as the dark, fearful feeling washed over her again, more strongly ever before. Goosebumps rose all over her. Every shadow and shape in her concrete cell suddenly seemed threatening, as if it were all stage dressing concealing a dark, dangerous evil.

She tried to push back the tide of dark feelings, but they overwhelmed her, drowning her. She felt a flood of memories of another life, like when she touched a person who had died, but somehow these were her own memories.

She stood in the lab again, looking at a different body, a middle-aged man with a long beard. There were scientists in white coats again, as well as uniformed men with red patches and swastikas on their sleeves. She knew that she was terrified of them, especially their leader, a man with dark red and gray hair and evil green eyes. Kranzler.

“Go ahead, Evelina,” said a balding, fat man with neck beard. Dr. Wichtmann. “Tell us what you see.”

She took a breath and reached out, touching the dead man’s cold, stiff shoulder. She told Wichtmann about the last months of the man’s life—he was a rabbi who’d spoken against the National Socialists, and even published pamphlets against them. This was the reason he was dead.

“He was involved in a plot against the state,” one of the men in black uniforms said. “We want to know details—time, place, the kind of bombs they will use. All you can tell us.”

Evelina concentrated for several minutes, trying to find what they wanted. Then, slowly, she shook her head.

“There is nothing,” she told them, in her hesitant German. “Writing and speaking, yes, bombs, no.”

One of the uniformed men exploded, shouting at Kranzler, speaking too fast for Evelina to follow. Though she did catch the words “filthy Slav,” clearly referring to her.

“Evelina,” Kranzler growled as he approached her. “You must tell us about any conspiracies. You cannot protect anyone.”

“I am protecting no one, only telling the truth. If there was terrorism, he was not involved.”

“We are talking about plots for the future!” shouted the S.S. officer who’d called her a filthy Slav. He must have been the one who’d captured the man. “Not events that have already passed.”

Evelina shrugged. “This man was involved in no such plots.”

“What about the larger Jewish conspiracy?” the officer asked. “The banks? The gold?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she replied.

“Look again!”

She sighed and touched the dead man for another minute. “I don’t see what you’re talking about. Gold? Banks?” She shook her head.

“You lying dirty whore!” the officer shouted. “Kranzler, she is a fraud. She is of no use to us.”

“Evelina, this is your last chance,” Kranzler said. “No more lying to protect the Jews.”

“I am not lying!” This was the first time Evelina had raised her voice, or done anything but whisper, nod, and cooperate.

“She is a dirty animal and should be tied up!” the S.S. man yelled. “She speaks nothing but lies.”

“Evelina, tell us about the Jewish plots!” Kranzler said.

“There are no plots! Why are you all too stupid to understand that?” Evelina shouted back at them. She immediately regretted her words—they were sure to get her in trouble—but it was too late to take them back.

“Guards,” Kranzler snarled, “Let her spend a night in the cellblock. Perhaps that will convince her to stop protecting Jewish conspirators.”

S.S. men seized her and carried her out of the lab. She didn’t struggle as they brought her down to the floor beneath the dormitory hall, to a guard station with two armed guards. One of them opened the steel door to the cellblock, and they escorted her to a concrete cell and locked her inside.

She didn’t mind being in the cellblock—this was where the Germans had housed her first, after she’d refused to come with them and they’d responded by forcibly taking her. After cooperating for a time, she’d been allowed to move up to the residential dorm with other test subjects, provided she kept quiet and complained about nothing. She’d kept almost perfectly silent the entire time.

While it was better to be upstairs with the others, a night or two alone in a cell would at least give her a respite from Alise’s cold, gray eyes boring into her, filled with suspicion each time they saw each other. In her own way, Evelina thought, Alise seemed almost as sinister as Kranzler himself, even if everybody else seemed to love her.