CHAPTER 110
Kate sat on the small plastic bench and stared at the white walls. She was in some sort of lab or research facility, but she had no idea where. She rubbed her temples. God, she was so groggy. Somewhere over the South Atlantic sea, a man had walked back into the plane and offered her a bottle of water. She had declined, and he had proceeded to hold her down and cover her mouth with a white cloth, the type that promptly induced unconsciousness. What had she expected?
She stood and paced the room. There was a small slit in the white door, but the window revealed only the hallway outside and a few more doors like the one to her room.
One of the long walls of the room had a rectangular mirror, recessed a few inches into the wall. This was no doubt an observation room, similar to the ones in her lab in Jakarta, except infinitely more creepy. She stared at the mirror. Was someone in there, watching her right now?
Kate squared her body to the mirror and looked into it as if she could see the mysterious man behind it — her captor. “I did my part. I’m here. I want to see my children.”
A voice broke over a loud speaker. It was muffled and computer-altered. “Tell us what you treated them with.”
Kate thought. She would have no leverage after she revealed what she knew. “I want to see them first, then you release them, and I’ll tell you.”
“You’re not in a position to negotiate, Kate.”
“I disagree. You need what I know. We both know your drugs won’t work on me. Now, you show me the children, or we’ve got nothing to talk about.”
Nothing happened for almost a minute, then on one side of the mirror, a video flickered to life. That part of the mirror must have been some sort of computer screen. The video showed the children, walking in a dark hallway. Kate stepped closer to the mirror, holding a hand out. Ahead of the children, a massive portal opened, revealing only darkness inside. The children walked through. The video paused with an image of the portal closing.
“You’ve read the tunnelmaker’s journal. You know about the structure in Gibraltar. There is a similar structure twenty times larger here. We think it’s eight times the size of Manhattan, almost five miles wide and 50 miles long, and it’s two miles below us. It’s been there, beneath two miles of ice, for countless thousands of years. The children are inside.”
The screen in the mirror switched to a close-up image of the children before they crossed the portal. It zoomed in on packs the children carried. There was a simple LED readout, the type you see on alarm clocks — a series of digital numbers. A countdown.
“The children are carrying nuclear warheads in those packs, Kate. They have less than thirty minutes left. We can deactivate them remotely, but you have to tell us what you did.”
Kate stepped back from the mirror. It was insanity. Who would do this to two children? She couldn’t trust them. She wouldn’t tell them. They would only hurt other children; she was sure of it. She had to think. “I need some time,” she mumbled.
The image of the packs disappeared from the mirror.
A few seconds passed, and the door swung open. A man wearing a long black trench coat stepped robotically into the room and… Kate knew him.
How could it be? Flashes of expensive dinners, her laughing as he charmed her, a candle-filled apartment in San Francisco, him unbuttoning her shirt, his head moving down her, kissing her stomach — a stomach without a scar. And the day she told him she was pregnant — the last day she ever saw him… until now, here.
“You—” was all Kate could manage. She stepped back as he marched into the room. Kate felt her back hit the wall.
“Time to talk, Kate. And call me Dorian Sloane. Actually, let’s dispense with the aliases. It’s Dieter. Dieter Kane.”