“We’re going to search you in here,” he said, locking onto Bane’s eyes, then Trench’s. “If we find anything, it will be as far as you get.”
Bane held the man’s stare a bit longer, lingering even when he looked away. He was a professional, all right, who had killed often and well before.
Bane and Trench submitted to a thorough, expert search which turned up nothing. This procedure comforted them more than anything because it significantly reduced the odds of this being a clever trap laid by Chilgers. Of course, he could be playing the ruse out to its fullest to ascertain everything they knew and to find out what information they’d passed on — and to whom. Bane doubted that, though. That wasn’t the colonel’s style at all judging by recent experience. Too subtle.
After the search, Bane and Trench were led to a polished stairway that climbed steeply to the second floor.
“I’ll leave the talking to you, Winter Man,” Trench whispered as they ascended side by side. “Less confusion for our friend Von Goss if he has only one of us to concern himself with. I’ll remain your silent partner.” They had reached the top of the stairs. “And a watchful one.”
The head mercenary led them down a narrow hallway toward a door in the middle.
“Show them in,” a voice from inside instructed after the mercenary knocked.
The man ushered Bane and Trench in, preparing to close the door with himself still between them.
“Leave us,” came the voice from the room’s rear. “I’ll signal if I need you.”
The mercenary shrugged, eyed Bane one last time, and took his leave.
“I’ve been expecting you, Mr. Bane.”
Dr. Otto Von Goss stepped out of the shadows. The room was lit, save for a single sixty-watt bulb, by a roaring fire he had been tending. It cast an eerie radiance, flames crackling and dancing about, tossing their shapes against the walls.
“In fact,” Von Goss proceeded, “I thought you’d be here earlier.”
The professor stepped further into the half-light, giving Bane his first good look at him. Von Goss was tall and painfully gaunt with a thin, angular face topped by thinning gray hair collected in bunches, one of which fell over his forehead and flirted with his eyebrows. He was wearing thick, steel-rimmed glasses which exaggerated all the more the sickly, gray pallor of his flesh. Otto Von Goss looked like a dying man, or at least one who had resigned himself to death, perhaps even looked forward to its coming. Bane looked down for the first time and saw the black glove which covered the professor’s left hand. He approached Bane with it dragging lifelessly by his side, almost as though he had forgotten it was there.
“We have much to talk about,” Von Goss said, extending his good hand forward.
“Then you know why we’ve come,” Bane responded, taking the hand and finding the professor’s grip dry and weak.
“My sources have informed me of your pursuits these past few days, the questions you’ve been asking and what you seek.” Von Goss noticed Bane’s wandering eyes. “You seem impressed with my security measures. I’ve been expecting a time like this to come for years. I’ve been prepared for it, ready to move always at a moment’s notice.”
“And Metzencroy’s death became that moment.”
“Yes,” Von Goss said softly. He glanced briefly at Trench who had retreated to a darkened corner. Then his eyes moved back to Bane. “Professor Metzencroy had stayed in contact with me religiously since the time he’d joined COBRA. Sometimes he sought my opinions with the company’s permission, other times without it. We established a whole system of relays and codes for those other times. We scientists are strange people. We can only talk seriously with our fellows and for Metzencroy and myself that left only each other, regardless of what COBRA ordered otherwise. Nonetheless, Metzencroy’s final report came to me three days ago without benefit of code or courier. He violated our own security because he was scared and because he knew it didn’t matter anymore. He knew he was finished at COBRA. He knew their plans for him, but he didn’t seem to mind. In his final report he wasn’t seeking confirmation, you see, just release for his conscience. When I learned of Metzencroy’s death I feared the worst and came here. I’m still frightened, Mr. Bane, because the professor was absolutely sure of his findings, absolutely certain that the world as we know it was about to come to an end.”
Bane’s mouth felt dry. He had been wondering for some time what could be worse than World War III. Now he knew.
“As I said, we have much to talk about,” Von Goss continued. His eyes tilted toward the fireplace. “It’s warmer over there. Let’s make ourselves comfortable in the chairs. It’s time you learned about Vortex.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Trench remained set in the corner as they took chairs facing each other in front of the fire. Bane watched the flames’ shadows dance across Von Goss’s pallid face, seeming to consume him.
The professor pulled his lifeless left hand into his lap and stroked it. “I can’t feel anything under this glove, Mr. Bane. My hand is dead,” he muttered, and Bane realized it wasn’t covered by a glove at all but more of a mitten that masked the fingers in a bunch instead of individually. “I killed it myself. I killed it because I went too far. I searched for knowledge man was not meant to possess and was not ready for. Metzencroy felt differently. He joined COBRA and continued the experiments that had turned me into a freak. He ignored my warnings, just as I ignored the last warnings of Einstein.”
“Einstein?”
Von Goss leaned forward until his whole face was splashed with light and nodded. “The origins of Vortex, Mr. Bane. How much do you know about Einstein?”
“Not much beyond E=mc2.”
“Hah! His most simple and pedantic principle. Taught in elementary schools now, would you believe it? The theory Einstein is most recognized for and yet the least startling of all his major works. The most startling is a theory he never completed: the Unified Field Theory.” Flames crackled in the hearth. “The basis of Vortex.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“Not many people outside the field of physics have, which is just the way Einstein wanted it.”
“But it was his theory.”
“And he damned himself for it in the end. Einstein hated war, Mr. Bane. The first World War was a horrible shock to his sensibility because he saw the kind of weapon E=mc2 was leading to and vowed never to work on any project that might lead to a basis for weapons again. Then the Nazis came along and he grew to fear their menace more than war itself. War, he decided, was morally justifiable if it meant wiping out Hitler’s army and cause. So he went back to the drawing board, back to a theory he had abandoned in the twenties.”
“Unified Fields …”
“Exactly. He had given it up in the twenties because he realized man was not yet and might never be ready for it. Then Hitler came along, and by 1938 he had changed his mind and set about completing it. Metzencroy and I joined him a few years later when he linked up with the Navy.”
“Yes, the Scientific Research Department.”
“Actually, it was the Bureau of Ordnance. Mere semantics, though, and not worth dwelling on. The real essence is that Einstein was petrified that the Nazis were onto the bomb too and would have theirs fully operational before ours. So he searched for another kind of weapon that would make the atomic bomb obsolete before it was ever used and his search took him back to the Unified Field Theory. How is your knowledge of science, Mr. Bane?”