“I don’t…” Taylor grasped the arm of the chair to steady herself.
Dorn said, “Have a seat, Ms. Taylor. I don’t want you falling on the floor.”
Brodie raised his pistol again. “What have you done to her!?”
Dorn looked into his eyes. “The same as I’ve done to you. On the underside of your wristbands is a dermal patch covered in hundreds of microscopic needles, presently delivering a powerful and fast-acting anesthetic into your bloodstream.” He added, “Proprietary technology.”
Brodie heard a thud behind him and looked over his shoulder to see Kim on the floor, struggling to get back on his feet. Taylor slumped into the armchair. She said, “Scott…” She tried to keep her eyes open.
Brodie could feel it now. A kind of heaviness taking hold… He looked at Dorn, who had gone blurry.
Dorn glared at him and said, “The Wall fell, and the world cheered. And then the world forgot. But we did not rejoice, and we did not forget. We toiled. And soon everyone will see the fruits of our labor.”
Brodie looked at the blurry gray panorama of Berlin out the window behind the doctor. The sun was almost down, and he could see the illuminated Alexanderplatz TV Tower in the distance.
He tried to refocus. “Let’s… go.”
Dorn shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
Brodie was losing his balance and gripped the desk. His gun slipped from his hand and clattered off the glass desk onto the floor. Brodie heard people approach from behind him, and someone shut the office doors. Afemale voice said something in German. Dorn replied to Frau Zimmermann, and they shared a laugh.
Brodie fell to the floor. He watched Dorn round his desk, and the man’s shiny black dress shoes stopped in front of him and kicked the pistol away.
Brodie looked up at Reinhard Dorn, who peered back at him and said, “The wolf is at the door.”
CHAPTER 49
Scott Brodie opened his eyes and stared up at the moon and the gray sky. But it wasn’t the moon, and it wasn’t the sky. It was a round lighting fixture mounted on a high concrete ceiling.
He became aware that he was lying on his back, on a hard, cold surface. He took a deep breath to clear his head, then slowly sat up.
Against the opposite wall he saw a man lying on his side, and it took him a few seconds to recognize David Kim, who was wearing only his pants, undershirt, and socks. Brodie realized that he too had been stripped down to the same clothing. Brodie checked his pockets for his cred case and wallet, but they were gone. So was his phone.
Taylor.
He became suddenly alert and looked around the small room. Behind him, lying on the floor, was Maggie Taylor, dressed in the same jeans and black pullover that she’d worn for her flight home. Which, he realized, she might never make.
He tried to stand, but he felt wobbly, so he slid along the floor to her and put his ear to her chest. Her breathing was shallow but steady, and he could feel her heart beating regularly. Her pulse was good, and her skin felt cool, but not clammy. He saw that her wristband was gone, as was his. He patted her cheek. “Maggie…”
Her eyes fluttered but didn’t stay open. He noticed there was a butterfly needle taped to her right arm.
Brodie slid to the wall nearby and propped his back against the concrete. He noticed now that he also had a butterfly needle taped between his right forearm and biceps. “What the hell…?” He ripped out the needle and aline of blood ran down his arm. Instinctively he knew this was the least of his problems.
He looked around the dimly lit space. It was a windowless room, all concrete, measuring about twenty feet on each side, and he had the sense that the room was underground. In fact, it was a bunker.
The walls were spotted with a black stain that was probably mold. To his left was a rusted metal door with a latch handle that would open it, except he was certain that the door was locked from the other side.
Brodie had no idea how long they’d been there, but he had the feeling that it had been a few hours since he and his posse had been arresting Chief Executive Officer Herr Doktor Reinhard Dorn in his own office. That had gone sideways real quick.
Looking back on all that, maybe he’d acted too impulsively. Anna’s murder had made him angry, and what Trent Chilcott had told him and Taylor had given them a sense of urgency that led to their reckless behavior. Well…hisreckless behavior. He was surprised, in retrospect, that Taylor, then David Kim, went along with his version of police procedures. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Regarding time, he ran his hand over his face to check his stubble. It was maybe five o’clock. Time for a drink. Maybe water.
Brodie glanced up at the lighting fixture and saw an electrical conduit pipe running from the fixture to the wall above the door where it disappeared.
There wasn’t much here in the way of clues to figure out where they were, but the lighting fixture and the door and latch looked retro, and he was reasonably sure that he, Taylor, and Kim were in a World War II bunker, maybe an air raid shelter. Hopefully they were still in Berlin, so when they broke out of here, they could hail a cab to the embassy. Or maybe the airport would be better. He laughed at his own stupid, dark Army humor; the GI’s coping mechanism for when the world was exploding around you, and things were going to shit faster than you could process it. And some asshole would yell out, “Hey, Sarge, is this a training exercise? Or for real?” Then someone would yell, “Medic!” and that was no joke.
He refocused on his surroundings. There was one thing in this bunker that was not retro: a surveillance camera mounted high in the far corner,and it was alive, sweeping the room. Brodie flashed his middle finger at it, and on the assumption that the camera had a listening device, he shouted, “Fuck you!”
