"I didn't see much after the first few minutes they were in the house. The leader, the guy in black leather, spoke with an ac cent I can't place. His pals had heavier accents."
Sandecker had been sitting back in his chair, fingers tented in front of him, listening to the conversational byplay. He snapped upright.
"These hoodlums are the small fry. We must go right to the top. We must find this woman with the Wagnerian name who runs Gogstad."
"She's a ghost," Austin said. "Nobody even knows where she lives."
"She and Gogstad are the key," Sandecker said firmly. "Do we know where their headquarters are?"
"They have offices in New York, Washington, and the West Coast. There must be a dozen scattered across Europe and Asia."
"Quite the hydra," Sandecker said.
"Even if we knew where their central office was, it wouldn't do much good. To outward appearances, Gogstad is a legitimate business. They'll deny any accusations we make."
Hiram Yaeger slipped quietly into the room and settled into a chair. "Sorry," he said. "I had to run some stuff off for the meeting." He looked expectantly at Austin, who took the cue.
"I was thinking about something Hiram showed me earlier. It was a hologram of a Viking ship. The same ship is the centerpiece of the Gogstad corporate logo. I reasoned that this ship must have some significance to be given such a prominent place. I asked Hiram to start playing around with Gogstad, to go beyond the scant corporate stuff Max dug up for us."
Yaeger nodded. "At Kurt's suggestion I asked Max to go back and brush over the historical and maritime links I had pretty much ignored before. Tons of material on the subject exist, as you might imagine. Kurt had said to look for a California connection, perhaps with the Mulholland Group. Max picked up an interesting newspaper story. A Norwegian designer of antique ships had come to California to do a replica of the Gogstad ship for a wealthy client."
"Who was the client?" Austin asked.
"The article didn't say. But it was easy to track down the Norwegian designer. I called him a few minutes ago and asked about the job. He had been sworn to secrecy, but it was years ago, and he didn't mind saying he built the replica for a big woman in a big house."
"Big woman?"
"He meant tall. A giantess."
"Sounds like a Scandinavian folktale. What's this about the house?"
"He said it was like a modern-day Viking compound on the shores of a large lake in California surrounded by mountains."
"Tahoe?"
"That was my conclusion."
"A big Viking house on the shores of Lake Tahoe. Shouldn't be too hard to find."
"Already done. Max linked up to a commercial satellite." Yaeger passed around copies of the satellite photos. "There are some big places around the lake, trophy homes, resorts and hotels. But nothing like this."
The first picture showed the icy blue waters of Lake Tahoe viewed from a high altitude as if it were a puddle. In another photo the camera had zoomed down on a dot alongside the lake, enlarging the details so that the sprawling building and the nearby helicopter pad were clear.
"Does this hovel have an owner?" Austin said.
"I was able to tap into the local assessor's office and tax data base." Yaeger grinned. If he had a tail he'd be wagging it. "It's owned by a realty trust."
"That doesn't give us much to go on."
"How about this, then? The trust is part of the Gogstad Corporation."
Sandecker looked up from the photos. He had kept his famous temper in control throughout the meeting, but he was furious at the kidnapping of one of his favored staffers and the wounding of another. He was enraged, too, after all she had suffered, at the abduction of the lovely Dr. Cabral. Once again a discovery with lifesaving implications was being kept from the world.
"Thank you, Hiram." He glanced around the table with cold, commanding blue eyes. "Well, gentlemen," he said with a voice as sharp-edged as a razor. "We know what we have to do."
Chapter 34
The men watching Francesca were either twins or some mad cloning experiment gone bad. The most terrifying thing was not their repulsiveness. It was their absolute silence. They sat a few yards away, one on either side, leaning on the backs of chairs that had been turned around. They were identical in every way, from their troll-like ugliness to their preference for black leather.
She tried not to look at the dark, red-rimmed eyes under beetling brows, the metallic dental work, and the bloodless pallor of the psychopathic faces. They were looking at her hungrily, but there was nothing sexual in their leers. This was not the ignorant savagery she was used to with the Chulo. This was pure animal lust, hunger for blood and bone. She glanced around the strange circular white room with the plain walls and uncomfortably cool temperature. At its center was a computer console. She was thinking how absurdly big the furniture was and wondered whether the outsized chairs, like the low temperature, were a psychological ploy to make people brought there feel small and inadequate. She could be anywhere in the world.
Francesca had no idea how she had come to this sterile chamber. She was vaguely aware of being moved from one place to the other. At one point she thought she heard jet engines, but she was injected with drugs again and slipped off into black unconsciousness. She had seen no sign of Gamay, and that worried her, too. She had felt a pinprick in her arm and awakened quickly as if she had been injected with a stimulant. As her eyes fluttered open she saw the twins. No one had spoken for several minutes. She was grateful when the door hissed open and the woman entered and waved the grotesque twins away.
Francesca wondered if she had blundered into a freak show or the set of a Fellini movie. She knew the reason for the out sized furniture. The woman dressed in the dark green uniform was a giantess. Settling into a big sofa, she smiled pleasantly but without warmth. 'Are you well, Dr. Cabral?"
"What did you do with Gamay?"
"Your NUMA friend? She is comfortably quartered in her room."
"I want to see her."
The woman lazily reached over and tapped her computer screen, and Gamay appeared on the monitor, lying on her side on a cot. Francesca held her breath. Then Gamay stirred, tried to rise, only to fall back onto the cot.
"She has not been given the drug antidote as you were. She will sleep it off and awaken in a few hours."
"I want to see her in person to make sure she is all right."
"Later perhaps." The answer was uncompromising. The woman touched the screen, and it went dark.
Francesca looked around. "Where exactly is this place?"
"That's not important."
"Why have you brought us here?"
The woman ignored her question. "Did Melo and Radko frighten you?"
"Do you mean the human mushrooms who just left?"
She smiled at the comparison. 'A clever metaphor, but you would do better to compare them to poisonous toadstools. De spite your bravado, I can see the fear in your eyes. Good. They should frighten you. During the ethnic cleansing campaign in Bosnia the Kradzik brothers personally killed hundreds of people and planned the deaths of thousands. They destroyed entire villages and engineered numerous massacres. If not for me they would be sitting in the prisoners' dock at the World Court in the Hague, charged with crimes against humanity. There is no war crime they did not commit. They have absolutely no conscience, no morals, no sense of remorse for anything they do. Maiming and killing are second nature to them." She paused to let her words sink in. "Am I making my point?"
"Yes. That you have no scruples yourself about hiring murderers."
"Exactly. Their murderous character is precisely why I hired them. It is no different from a carpenter buying a hammer to drive nails into a board. The Kradzik twins are my hammer."