Nineteen
Finally a break. We're on a WSB charter jet, headed to Amsterdam and Robin. Oude Kerk. The irony is that Robin may be being held in, or rather underneath, one of my mother's favorite architectural marvels…Anyway, I was so exhausted that I actually fell asleep after takeoff and I had the oddest dream. My mother put her hand on my shoulder and whispered in my ear, "I'm looking out for her." Then I felt my head jerk and I woke up, my head nearly on my dad's shoulder and, he claimed, a puddle of my drool on his arm. It's ridiculous really, but in a strange way it gave me a sense of calm to be surrounded by my parents.
We're so close now. I'm so close to having Robin back in my arms, so close to being able to tell her how I really feel. Actually, do I really have to say the words out loud? Still pretty nauseous about that whole love thing.
Oh. Here's Sean, wanting to go over the plan one more time. Honestly, what's so hard about going through the front door of a church and asking to speak to the man in charge?
The explosion rattled the windows of the old shop.
"Dammit." Sean ran a hand through his thinning hair, his face red with anger and, if he was honest with himself, fear.
He and Mantz were alone at their base of operations, a Dutch chocolate shop called Het Huishouden een Bonbon or, as the French like to say, Ménage -a-Chocolate. Mantz had discovered it, and as it was located down the street from Oude Kerk they had all agreed it was the perfect location to base their rescue mission, the décor of chocolate penises and breasts notwithstanding. Not to mention the 3-D chocolate ménage-a-trois the shop was apparently famous for. Fortunately, the owner hadn't flinched when Sean had offered him a fistful of cash to close early and allow them full access. Being Amsterdam he hadn't asked one question before handing over the keys and leaving them alone in the cocoa porn shop.
"Anna, do you copy me?" Sean spoke urgently into his headset.
"My God," Mantz cried and ran over to the front window and looked outside, trying to spot the stark outline of the Oude Kerk. "What's happened? Where is it?"
Sean gave the doctor a quick glance before he retreated to the counter in the corner where the communication equipment was set up. "It looks like we may have a slight problem. Patrick may have tripped an alarm or someone figured out we were coming," he explained as he tried to get a reading or a connection to Patrick's device.
Sean's headset crackled and a faint voice came through. "Sean, it's Anna. The whole church….it's gone."
"What do you mean it's gone?" Hearing Sean's panicked tone, Mantz rushed over to him and leaned in, listening to the report coming in from the church perimeter.
"There was an explosion just seconds after Patrick entered." Mantz and Donelly could hear Noah in the background, screaming for his son. Sean closed his eyes, his face paling.
"Aidan and Brenda went in from the back, I haven't been able to get a hold of either of them yet….I don't know…"
"Anna, you need to get out of there," Sean was desperate to get through to his friend. "It's not safe. Come back here and we'll put a rescue plan together."
"Sean, I can't leave them here. And Robin…she's under that rubble. We're going in." With that, the line went dead.
"Anna? Anna!" Sean yelled, throwing his ear piece onto the counter.
"The DVX. They've won again." Mantz's head lolled down, the picture of a broken man. He grabbed his head with both hands and started to pace back to the front of the store.
Sean pulled the laptop closer, his back to Mantz, and began frantically typing. "Don't be so sure about that. This isn't over."
"Oh, but it is," Mantz said tearfully. "They will always win. Everyone dies." Tears streamed down his face as he shot a quick glance over his shoulder to see the aging spy's back still facing him. And then a smile began to form.
Mantz felt in his pocket for the piano wire he'd stashed there and grinned a smile of pure evil. Piano wire. It was so 1940's film noir, but it was effective and far quieter than the 9mm Glock he'd hidden in the empty chocolate vat in the back room. Morons. They had let him wander around unsupervised from the moment they had untied him back in Geneva – they really hadn't proven to be much of a challenge, taking in his sob story like it was candy.
"If only I hadn't remembered that lab in Oude Kerk. Your friends would still be alive." Mantz slithered across the room as he wailed his pathetic lament.
"It's not your fault, Dr. Mantz. We're professionals. We knew what we were getting into." Sean continued to type, seemingly not noticing the other man's movements behind his back.
"Professionals," Mantz thought, rolling his eyes and slowly working his way back towards Sean. Inches away, Mantz lifted his arms in the air, the wire stretched taut. His smile widened. "It's just such a shame…"
Sean twirled around, gun trained on Mantz. "It is a shame that you think we are just that stupid." The malevolence of Sean's smile outdoing the greasy little man's pathetic attempt at it.
The look of shock on Mantz's face made Sean laugh. "Put your arms down and throw me that wire, you…what did you call your brethren? Oh yes, you Russkie bastard."
Mantz's face twisted into a grimace. "You think you're so smart, Donnelly? You sent that arrogant doctor to his death. You WSB are so predictable. Show a little emotion and you'll fall for anything."
Sean cocked his gun and stared at the madman silently.
"You're not scaring me." Moving at a snail's pace, Mantz slid next to a free standing cake case, showcasing confections in shapes Sean had never seen before. "You fools…" With that, Mantz pushed the case over, the glass shattering inches in front of Sean.
Sean squeezed the trigger, his shot just missing the DVX operative as Mantz dove on the ground, rolling towards the swinging doors that lead to the back room and his gun. As Mantz rolled one more time and sprung to his feet, Aidan ran through the swinging doors, Mantz's own 9mm ironically trained on him.
"Looking for this, Mate?"
Mantz slowly raised his arms. "From that look on your face I'm guessing, yes." Brenda walked in behind Aidan, a single streak of soot on her left cheek.
The front door swung open. The tiny bell above it rang, normally an alert for the shopkeeper that a new customer was waiting. This time, however, Sean, Brenda and Aidan looked over to see Anna, her arm wrapped tightly around Noah's waist, limp inside. Noah's face was pale, his clothes torn and filthy, his dirty face streaked with tears. As he brought a bloodied hand up to his face, Brenda gasped, thinking it was obvious he'd been digging in the rubble for his son.
"Patrick?" Aidan let the question hang in the air. Anna simply shook her head no.
"Noah-" Brenda choked and then stopped. What was she supposed to say to a man who had just lost his son? She ran over to help Anna with the distraught elder Drake.
Aidan's jaw tightened and he used his gun to gesture to the man who arranged for the murder of his friend. "You. In the back. We need to have a little talk."
Aidan pulled out the piano wire and waved it in front of Mantz's face. "I think it's only fitting that we tie you up with this." He grabbed the DVX agent's wrists and tied the piano wire tight around them, attaching him to the giant mixer in the back room of the chocolatier.
Brenda picked up a chocolate penis and bit the head off. Sean catching the sight out of the corner of his eye winced visibly. "You pissed off the wrong people, Mate." The sweet liqueur squirted out of the tip onto her chin and she wiped it off with her middle finger and then licked the digit clean.
Aidan looked up at her use of the British phrase, in time to see her enjoy the cordial. He shot her a flirty grin, then he turned in time of see Alex come up the stairs that led to the storage room with a large needle in her hand.
"Dr. Mantz, this is my aunt, Dr. Devane-Merrick. I believe your people are familiar with her work. You've been targeting her as well, haven't you?" Aidan said. Mantz was silent, his eyes on the needle.
Anna walked in from the other side, Noah behind her, satisfied to see the prisoner glance back and forth between the two women with unconcealed fear. "My sister is very good with serums." She stopped and laughed. "I'm sorry. Again, you probably already knew that. What you don't know is that she mixed up a special one just for you. Us Devanes just don't like anyone trying to make fools of us. Why don't you tell Dr. Mantz what we've got in store for him, Alex?"
Alex smiled. "Why Anna, I'd be happy to." She walked up to the DVX agent and stuck the needle into his neck with one swift motion. Agent Mantz's body jerked and he cried out in pain. "This, my friend, will kill you if you are not administered the antidote within thirty minutes."
Mantz's eyes grew wide with terror, that this time was not feigned.
"Oh, that's not even the best part, asshole," Noah spat out.
"Since you like distorted fear so much this little serum has the added benefits of hallucinations. They should be starting any minute now. Unless you tell us what we want, in which case we'll give you the antidote," Anna finished.
"I'll tell you nothing. You're still just going to kill me."
"Suit yourself," Brenda shrugged, munching happily on more chocolate; she had found the stash of cocoa kama sutra figures. Aidan couldn't stop darting looks at her while he kept the gun trained on the prisoner.
"You're willing to go to the grave with your secret?" Sean laughed. "I highly doubt that."
Noah leaned his exhausted body back against the wall. "Good," he said softly. He looked at the prisoner, his eyes dead, his breath coming quicker and the words now spilling out in anger. "I say we let him suffer and die. He killed my boy, Anna!" Noah's voice cracked as he said her name. "He doesn't deserve our mercy!"
A bead of sweat trickled down Mantz's jawline and fell to the floor. He could hear it splat on the ground loudly. He looked around the room anxiously. Ambient noises were deafening, but he could barely hear what his captors were saying. What was happening to him?
As if in slow motion, he made out a shadow entering the room and approaching him. His eyes tried to focus on the shape, but it was made difficult by the beads of sweat that now seemed to be pouring off of him and into his eyes.
Noah's face sprung in front of him, inches away. His voice was soft and muffled. "You deserve to die! You killed my son!"
Aidan pulled Noah off, the handsome doctor fighting him all the way, trying to get a punch in on Mantz.
The shadow was back and towering over him. He squinted his eyes and looked into the face of Patrick Drake.
"It's you," Mantz gasped. "How-"
"You killed me. I'm here to kill you." Patrick grinned, his dimple peeking out. "Fair's fair."
"You're not real." Mantz's voice was a disbelieving whisper.
"No, but I'm real enough to you. And let me tell you, I'm one pissed off ghost. Do you know how good my life was?" Patrick walked around the large mixer, disappearing from Mantz's view.
Relieved, Mantz shouted out to his captors. "It's not working."
Patrick popped out from behind the mixer base, causing Mantz to scream. "Not working, huh? Then why can you see me?"
"Go away." He closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to block it all out. His head swum and he had to open his eyes to try to fight off the feeling of vertigo.
"Not until you tell them where Dr. Scorpio is."
Mantz let out a whimper. Patrick disappeared from his view again. He could hear the air swirl around him. Shadows. Unintelligible whispers assaulted him from all sides. Mantz's eyes flickered back and forth in double time, unable to focus on anything.
Patrick's voice came through clearly from behind him, soft and ethereal. "Where, Mantz? Don't make me angry." A beat. "Mantz!" Patrick's voice echoed in his head.
"Stop! I'll tell you what you want," Mantz cried.
Patrick leaned in, his face inches from Mantz. "Where. Is. She."
"Centraal Station," Mantz whispered. "There is a lab underneath the train station. You can enter through a panel in the lost baggage claim room." He looked up at Alex. "Please, give me the antidote. Make him go away."
"So, it looks like we're headed to Centraal Station," Patrick said.
"Looks like it, Sport." Noah clapped a hand on Patrick's shoulder.
"You can see him?" Mantz asked in wonder.
"Yeah. That hallucination stuff? We lied." Brenda hopped off the counter and wiped the chocolate off her hands. "Can I carry a gun this time?"
"Dad, you were fantastic. If that rock star thing doesn't work out you should try acting."
"I think the groupies are better in music. How are you feeling?"
"A bit singed, but okay. I had less time than I thought to get out of there."
An inhuman growl rose from deep within Mantz and he jerked his body repeatedly, trying to free his hands from their binds. He only managed to force the wire to dig further into the meat of his wrists.
"Mate, you do remember we've tied you up with piano wire. All you're doing is cutting your wrists."
Mantz followed Aidan's eyes to his wrists, bloody and raw, and stopped struggling. He hadn't noticed the pain. The DVX operative's breathing quickened and he looked around the room, settling on Patrick. "How did you escape?"
Sean leered at him. "Like I said earlier, did you really think we were that stupid?"
"Agent Mantz, you must know that we are in the espionage business," Anna stated matter-of-factly. "That means we are in the business of watching. Observing. Waiting patiently for someone to make a mistake."
Brenda snorted. "Yeah, and we didn't have to wait too long for you to screw up. Loser."
"Did you really think we were going to leave you alone?" Sean asked. "Doesn't take a genius to figure out a doctor who plants a gun in a chocolate vat is probably not who he says he is."
"Add that to the intel my ex-husband had passed on to Sean before he disappeared, and it was really quite easy." Anna folded her arms across her chest and stared at Mantz, daring him to make a move so she'd have an excuse to hit him. "There was a slight language barrier between my ex and the Romanians, but he knew enough of the language to understand a long-haired German had been seen with a struggling American brunette. We knew you were setting us up."
"So, the train station," Noah said. "When do we leave? And what's the plan?"
"Well, the plan depends on the intel Dr. Mantz here gives us." Sean looked pointedly at the stringy-haired German.
Mantz laughed. "I'll tell you nothing."
"Yeah, we heard that already," Brenda laughed. "And you spilled like a wuss."
"There is no way I am helping you get to Dr. Scorpio. She is finishing important work. Work my agency will use to help further our agenda…"
Frustrated, Sean crossed his arms over his chest. "I don't have time for this. Alex? Bring over Dr. Hayward's truth serum."
Again, Alex appeared out of nowhere, holding an even larger syringe filled with a pink liquid.
"Agent Mantz, are you familiar with my ex-husband, Dr. David Hayward?" Anna smiled. "Ah. I see from the fear in your eyes you are familiar with his work. Sis?"
At Anna's urging, Alex walked up behind Mantz and again stabbed the needle into the side of his neck, this time slowly pushing the liquid into his veins. The prisoner's body writhed from the pressure of the liquid entering his system. Mantz looked up wearily, seeing his captors in a semi-circle around him, waiting for the serum to take effect.
Brenda leaned over to Patrick, chomping the tip off of another chocolate penis. She waved the squirting base in his face, Patrick unconsciously placing a hand in front of his groin. "We should really bring a bag of these for Robin," she whispered. "She would love them!"
They left under the cover of night. Patrick couldn't help but think what a cliché that was, but when he mentioned this to Sean, the old spy had fixed him with a glare.
"What do you suggest, Drake?" he snarled. "You want to go in tomorrow morning with a big sign saying 'Hey, look at us! We're going to break into your lab!'!"
Patrick still couldn't figure out why the guy didn't like him.
Not only was it night, they were each dressed head to toe in black (again, another cliché, but Patrick had decided to keep his mouth shut). Not for the first time, or even the fifty-first time, Patrick wondered just how he had ended up here - plunging through a manhole cover, walking through a sewer system searching for an entrance to a train tunnel. And that had only been the beginning of their journey.
They had shimmied 500 feet through the tunnel, making sure to hug the wall in case an oncoming train not listed on the schedule surprised them, until they were able to find the air duct that led them to the lost baggage claim room through whose ceiling they promptly dropped out of.
Anna scrambled over to the east wall and quickly located the fake panel Mantz had told them about. Pulling out what looked like a compact power screwdriver, she easily removed the panel and stepped aside.
"Is everyone ready?"
Under the influence of Hayward's truth serum, Mantz had given them the location of several security check-points, which Sean had insisted he handle. Anna, Noah, Brenda, Aidan and Patrick each had their own assignments. They'd be splitting up here. Hopefully, they would meet up again in another couple of hours. If all went according to plan.
Patrick looked over at his father. Noah gave him a small smile and nodded his head. Patrick swallowed hard and nodded back. This was it.
TBC
