In the shadow of truth s.., p.22
In the Shadow of Truth: (Shadow Series Book 3), page 22
“Because your soul will be free,” was always the cryptic response.
The answer made no sense to the young girl who thought she was smart enough to get away with anything, but the woman she had become understood perfectly.
It was advice she couldn’t follow, and before she knew it, the path behind her was littered with lies, death, and deception. Her soul was anything but free, and the young girl they called Kathy had been lost forever.
Kathryn closed her eyes and reached for the painting. What ifs taunted her. Who would she be had her mother lived? Where would she be? Would she have found Jenny? The last question gave her pause, but then she smiled. Jenny would have found her. She was sure of it.
“Beautiful hands,” Jenny commented as she returned, holding out a glass of water.
Kathryn took it and smiled, as she stopped absentmindedly tracing the outline of the hands in the painting. “Yes, they were.”
Jenny raised her glass in a toast. “Hers too.”
Kathryn laughed and accepted the compliment on her mother’s behalf. Her demeanor changed from one of introspection to relieved distraction.
Not surprisingly, Jenny noticed.
“Are you okay?”
Kathryn smiled. “Mm.”
She was indeed okay. She had once told Smitty that Jenny soothed her soul. It was never truer than when she was in her presence, and one look or kind word made her feel alive and worthy of grace. She knew her soul would never be free, but she’d found the closest thing to it in the woman by her side.
“I love you, you know.”
Jenny smiled. “I know.”
Kathryn laughed at the self-assured reply and glanced back to the painting, certain her mother would have liked this girl.
Jenny pointed at the small signature in the corner of the canvas.
“Who’s E.K. Hammond?”
“That’s me.”
Jenny almost choked on her water. “You painted that?”
“Mm-hm.”
“You’re an artist too?”
Kathryn laughed at Jenny’s surprised expression. “Used to be.”
“You never stop being an artist,” Jenny stated with some authority. “You merely misplace your muse.”
“Oh, is that what happens?”
“Yes, it is. Don’t you think?”
Kathryn looked at the painting, feeling the guilt of wasted talent. “I suppose you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right.” She put a hand on her hip and sized up the painting like a promoter planning a campaign. “We need to find you a muse, because you are too gifted not to be doing this every day.”
While Jenny focused on the painting, Kathryn tried hard not to cast her eyes toward the closed door in the hallway, next to her bedroom. She had a muse. It just wasn’t very pretty, and the resulting art wasn’t much to look at. She’d given up painting entirely and turned her back on her studio and a talent that perpetuated more pain than pleasure.
Jenny was oblivious to her reaction, mesmerized instead by the depth of the meticulous layers of colored glazing.
“Kathryn, this is so beautiful.”
Kathryn uttered a quiet “Thanks” as her eyes drifted self-consciously to the floor.
Jenny peered closer at the signature. “What does the E stand for?”
“Ethelyn”
Jenny looked her up and down, trying the name on for size. “Oh, my.”
Kathryn laughed. “Yes, well. Mother had a curious sense of humor and a very dear aunt to appease. My father didn’t feel it his place to argue after twenty-two hours of labor, so they compromised and, mercifully, addressed me by my middle name.”
Jenny raised her brow and glass in thanks. “Here’s to compromise.”
“I agree.”
“An artist.” Jenny shook her head. “What else haven’t you told me about yourself?”
Kathryn stared at Jenny’s smiling face. The lighthearted question was a sober reminder of her complicated life and the secrets she tended.
She’d told Jenny many things—more than anyone else—but not everything. Some things she couldn’t tell her, other things she just wouldn’t, but some things were so integral to who she’d become that she felt compelled to reveal her darkest truths. You’ll be thankful in the end echoed through her mind. She set her water glass down on the coffee table and took Jenny’s hand.
“Come with me.”
Chapter Eighteen
Paul indignantly signed his name to the bottom of his statement and slammed the fountain pen on the table.
“Easy there, boy-o, that’s my pen,” Russo complained as he retrieved his green striated fountain pen and secured the cap.
“Where’s my money?” Paul asked impatiently.
Russo calmly picked up the document and blew on the wet ink. “You’re a broken record, Paul.”
“I’ve told you everything I know, now give me my money.”
“How much do you need?”
“What do you mean, how much? All of it!”
It was apparent to Paul from Russo’s widening smirk that the rules had changed. He lunged for the document, only to have it predictably snatched away.
He pounded the table in frustration. “We had a deal!”
“Yes. You give us information. We will give you money. Just think of us as your new financial institution.”
Paul peered into the dim corners of the room, knowing the agent’s boss was behind the darkened windows somewhere. “You can’t do this.”
Russo leaned in, causing the hanging light to throw menacing shadows upon his face. “You will tell us who the money is going to and why, and we’ll make sure you get what you need.”
Paul raised his chin in futile defiance. “I’m not going to be part of your rat squad.”
Russo leaned back and held up the signed papers. “You already are, Ryan.”
The smoke from Colonel Holmes’s cigarette curled loose spirals into the still air of the empty interrogation room. He had taken a drag to light it but quickly abandoned it to the ashtray in favor of Paul’s incredible story, which he held tightly in his hands.
His mind was racing as he drank in the words. He devoured page after page of the document like it was a mystery novel he couldn’t put down. It validated everything he already knew but hesitated to believe, and it proved that now, more than ever, Bouchaule was needed to make sense of the senseless.
Holmes didn’t need the papers in his hand to brand Daniel Ryan a traitor. Selling secrets to the enemy through Forrester was enough. He was disappointed that Kathryn Hammond’s assignment to the man hadn’t yielded actionable proof, but both men were dead now, so it was a moot point. Kathryn Hammond did lead them to Bouchaule, however, and he knew her particular set of skills would prove invaluable. She might not think Bouchaule would come back, but he would make sure that he did.
How long Daniel Ryan had been passing information and how much of the weapon project had been compromised was unknown. They only knew a dangerous virus sample was unaccounted for and vital archived research records had gone missing.
The government had lost control of their man and the work they’d commissioned. Holmes regarded it as damn irresponsible and the reason he didn’t trust the United States to retrieve and contain what they had let slip away. Outwardly, Holmes’s superiors gave their American ally the benefit of the doubt, but, covertly, they gave their man carte blanche to get the job done—whatever it takes, they had told him—and Holmes took the directive literally and liberally. This was war. No one would be spared.
The more Holmes learned about how Daniel Ryan had deceived his own government, the more infuriated he became. He could only shake his head at the thought of the project in German hands. Such incompetence with something as dangerous as a biological weapon was unforgivable. Madness!
Typical of the Americans, he stewed. It was not their country a mere channel of water away from invasion. It was not their country’s population that would be the first wiped out by the deadly infectious disease outlined in the Ryan files.
Over a year had passed since the FBI learned of Daniel Ryan’s betrayal, and the SOE had tasked Holmes with infiltrating the German project to uncover the extent of the damage and neutralize it at all costs.
It appeared the Germans were stalled, lacking the final piece of the puzzle to bring their diabolical scheme to fruition. They lacked a vaccine that would spare their troops and civilians the devastation that would befall the unfortunate victims of the weapon. The Americans were suffering the same dilemma, and, for this, Holmes both thanked and cursed Daniel Ryan, who had left everyone in the dark.
Ryan had been the head of a Department of War research team charged with developing a vaccine for the deadly virus they had cultivated in their labs. A rumor circulated that he had succeeded, and because of it, Daniel Ryan’s indeterminate mortality had met its measure.
The vaccine rumor delighted his superiors and stunned the tight-knit scientific community within the department. If it was true, the angel of death had been unleashed. No one dared use the weapon without a vaccine. The memory of bodies piled up like cord wood in the streets during the horrific influenza pandemic of 1918 was a sobering reminder of nature’s indiscriminate destruction. But if a vaccine was available, the virus would quickly become a viable means of warfare. The invading army could win the war without firing another shot.
Paul’s story substantiated the rumor that his brother had found a suitable reservoir for the lethal virus, where it would be innocuous until released. If true, antibodies from this reservoir would be used for a vaccine. Preposterous, claimed those closest to the science involved. It had only been a decade since advances in technology allowed the scientists to isolate the influenza virus used to create the weapon, and, in that time, no one had even come close to solving its ever-mutating riddle—the only thing standing in the way of success.
The initial reaction to the rumor was that it was black propaganda started by the Office of War Information, aimed at shaking German confidence. The charge was denied, of course, and with no evidence to show success, and Daniel Ryan himself claiming none, the rumor was dismissed as wishful thinking designed to boost morale.
A suspicious lab accident changed all that. The three top men on the Ryan project team were exposed to their own deadly virus. Two would die horrible, agonizing deaths within hours. The other, Daniel Ryan himself, appeared to be immune. The vaccine rumor resurfaced and became the stuff of legend. The hunt for the truth had begun.
With the lone survivor of that accident now dead, both sides were in a race to discover the key to the coded research documents Paul had been supplying to Forrester. Only then could they replicate the scientific breakthrough that Daniel Ryan had apparently taken to his grave.
Fear that the Germans were close to the answer led to desperate actions by otherwise rational and methodical government agencies. Holmes, with his unrelenting dedication, was the perfect candidate to allay that fear. He vowed to break the traitorous flow of information to the Germans and uncover the truth of Daniel Ryan’s elusive vaccine before the whole world paid the price.
The contents of Paul Ryan’s storage unit held some interesting items, and Holmes picked up just such an item as he waited for Agent Russo to return. It was a black and white photograph of five men in white lab coats, posing in their laboratory, with champagne glasses held high in celebration. He focused on two men in particular: a twentysomething Daniel Ryan and his proud father.
Holmes turned the photograph over. Written on the back in pencil was February 1914 Leipzig. The setting was a university in Germany, a few months before the outbreak of World War I.
Holmes wondered what they were celebrating. The officer was well aware of man’s propensity for mutual annihilation, and ever since he first saw the photo, Holmes privately held the notion that these men were somehow responsible for creating one of the most lethal biological weapons ever known to man. He found it too much of a coincidence that four years later, as the war ground into a stalemate, the world would be ravaged by one of the deadliest pandemics ever.
True or not, he’d lost a sister and a brother to the influenza pandemic, and he remembered vividly their pain-wracked deaths, marked by hemorrhagic eyes, ears, and lungs, and the horror after, as their lifeless bodies lay in their own beds, covered in bloody sheets because the hospitals and morgues were too full to take them. He would not see history repeated—by either side.
He had no pity for Daniel Ryan, whom he viewed as the bringer of devastation. His death by Forrester’s henchman, Vincent LaPaglia, was fitting retribution for the evil he tried to unleash onto the world and, frankly, saved him the trouble. It didn’t make sense that Forrester would turn on his prized scientist, and he suspected LaPaglia was hired by someone else—perhaps Thierry Bouchaule, trying to wrest back control of the project? He didn’t know, but Ryan was dead, and as far as he was concerned, the lot of them could rot in hell. Bouchaule’s time would come. He would see to it.
Holmes reached into another folder and picked up a recent photo of Kathryn Hammond dancing with Bouchaule. He studied it purposefully and reminded himself that sacrifices in war have to be made. It justified the next phase of his plan, and he could only smile at his sinister brilliance.
The graceful plume of smoke lazily wafting from his cigarette was interrupted when the unattended butt burned itself out and fell onto the table. Holmes was oblivious, lost in his narcissistic haze, until he heard footsteps in the hallway. He put his photographs away and picked up Paul’s story again.
* * *
Jake Russo returned from conducting his business and sat in the chair opposite his boss.
Holmes was indifferent as he perused Paul’s story. “Everything in order?”
“He cooperated, just like you said he would, sir.”
“Excellent.”
Russo scoffed at the document in Holmes’s hands. The connections in the ledger could come in handy, but the fantasy Paul had spun in his statement belonged in a dime store pulp fiction novel, as far as the agent was concerned.
“Some tall tale there, eh boss?”
Holmes lifted his eyes. “You read it?”
“Yeah, what a crock. That guy’ll say anything for his dough.”
“Desperate men do desperate things, Mr. Russo.”
The agent shook his head and laughed as he lit a cigarette. “And how, brother.”
* * *
Jake Russo didn’t feel the bullet that took his life. A single shot between the eyes guaranteed his silence and his eternal devotion to the cause.
His final cigarette rolled from his lifeless lips as his body slumped to the table. Colonel Holmes leaned forward to rescue it before it tumbled to the floor. He set his Webley revolver on the table and sat back, taking a long drag on Russo’s smoke as his eyes narrowed and he contemplated his next move.
His plan now set, he exhaled in satisfaction and smiled, saying, “Very desperate things.”
Chapter Nineteen
Paul tossed the leather case filled with cash onto the passenger seat as he ducked into his car. He smirked as he turned the engine over and revved it to life. The motor was racing like his heart. He had pulled it off. He had deceived Russo and, evident by the cash beside him, his superiors as well. Now it was finally over. The government was satisfied he’d revealed all he knew about his brother’s work, and thanks to a fortuitous twist of fate, Forrester was out of his life. Daniel could rest in peace. His secrets were safe.
Paul blew out a relieved breath as he gripped the wheel. He was sure he was in trouble when Russo set their meeting in an isolated building on the wrong side of town and tossed a pen and paper under his nose, demanding full disclosure. He thought they had miraculously broken his brother’s code and discovered the secret that had cost so many so much.
It seemed so long ago that his brother had come to him in desperation. It was the summer before the U.S. officially entered the war. To most, in 1941, the conflict was still something that was going on over there, but Paul Ryan suddenly found the war deposited solidly at his doorstep.
“I need your help,” Daniel had said.
“Well, well, well,” Paul had replied. “What brings the golden child to kneel at my feet?”
He was only half kidding and normally would have received a retort in the same vein, but not this time.
“I’m in serious trouble, Paulie,” Daniel had said as he pushed inside and closed the door.
His childhood name, not heard in years, sobered Paul and took him back to the innocent days of tree house forts and endless summers, when cross your heart and hope to die forged a trust that would not be broken.
Daniel peered past his brother’s shoulder. “Where’s Bets?”
“She’s out back in the garden.”
He nodded and seemed relieved they were alone. “I’m going to do something, Paul, and there’s a good chance it may get me killed.”
“Then don’t do it,” was Paul’s immediate response, still not certain his brother was serious.
“I don’t have a choice. They’ll come after Jenny.”
Paul was stunned for a moment as he processed the absurdity of the statement. “Jenny? What has she got to do with it? What have you done, Danny?”
Daniel faltered and looked away. Paul could tell from his pained expression that something was tearing him up inside, but he remained silent.
Paul grabbed him by the shoulders. “Dan!”
Reluctantly, Daniel raised his eyes. He made vague references to a Department of War project, but balked when pushed for details.
Paul reminded his brother that he knew his general area of expertise and that it wasn’t hard to put two and two together and realize the project was some sort of biological weapon. What he couldn’t understand was how his niece became involved.
“What about Jenny?”
Daniel knew his weak spot. He need only mention a danger to Jenny and Paul would move heaven and earth to protect her. Daniel claimed she was safe for the moment, but it would only be a matter of time before desperation would bring about drastic measures and his daughter’s safety would be used as a bargaining chip. Classified military secrets aside, Daniel knew Paul needed to know what he was up against.
