"I'm retired."
Silence reigned.
"What information?" Whitaker finally asked.
"We need information on an operation you were involved with. An operation we have no record of."
The Short Man flicked open the locks on the briefcase.
Whitaker frowned as he searched his memory. "That was a long time ago."
"The Citadel?" the Tall Man asked.
Whitaker felt his stomach flip.
The Short Man lifted the lid on the briefcase. Then he turned it so Whitaker could see the contents. Various hypodermic needles were arrayed in the padding on the top, and serum vials were secured in the bottom. The Tall Man gestured at the contents with a wave of his hand.
"The art of interrogation has progressed to much more sophisticated levels than what you dealt with when you were on active duty. We're less crude and much more effective.
"You know, of course, that everyone talks eventually." The Tall Man reached in and pulled out a needle, holding it up to the light. "With these sophisticated drugs, that eventually comes much faster. Unfortunately, the side effects, particularly for a man of your advanced years, cannot always be controlled." He put the needle down. "Why is it that there are no records of the Citadel?"
Whitaker considered his options. "What do I get out of this?"
The Tall Man shrugged. "It depends on what you tell us."
Whitaker sighed. He knew what the Tall Man had said was true-he would talk sooner or later. He'd been on the other side of this table too many times not to know that. Jesus, to have it all come to this because of that stupid base! He talked.
"I was the ops supervisor for the construction of the Citadel in 1947 in Antarctica. It was a group of buildings-twelve, to be exact-that were buried under the ice. The sections-"
The Tall Man interrupted. "What we want to know is who was behind the op and why."
"I worked directly for Sidney Souers."
"Who?" the Tall Man asked.
"The first director of Central Intelligence," Whitaker explained.
The Short Man had pulled out a PDA, punching information into it. He held it out now in front of the Tall Man, who read it and nodded. "Souers was a founding member of Majestic-12, wasn't he?"
"Yes."
The two men exchanged glances. "How did Souers give you this assignment?"
"Personal briefing." Whitaker sighed. "It was an unofficially sanctioned mission-no paper trail and denial if uncovered. Souers brought me back to Washington from Japan, where I was doing work trying to track down some of their scientists. When I got to D.C., Souers told me he had a mission that could be very profitable to both of us and had the President's blessing."
"Who was Souers working for?"
Whitaker shrugged. "I don't know."
"Souers never told you who the place was for or even what it was designed for?"
"It was easy to see what it was designed for," Whitaker said. "It was a survival shelter. As far as the who goes, it had to be somebody that had quite a bit of money and resources, along with leverage with the White House."
"Tell us about Lansale," the Tall Man said.
"Who?"
The Tall Man looked at him dispassionately. He turned to his partner. "I'll be back in an hour. Prep him."
"Wait a second!" Whitaker shouted as the Short Man pulled out a vial of clear liquid and picked up the nearby needle. "I'm telling you everything. You said if I cooperated that wouldn't be necessary."
"I said it depended. You just told us you did freelance work while at the ISA. You broke the rules, and now we're going to find out what other rules you might have broken in your career."
The Short Man approached with the needle.
Antarctica
They'd managed to clear not only the west tunnel of ice, but also the entryway into the west ice storage area. That room was as large as the eastern one, but there was no ramp at the end. It was also stocked with supplies and food. Then, using the diagram in the instructor binder, they turned their attention to trying to find the site of the inert nuclear reactor.
Now, Tai was lying behind Logan and Vaughn in the power access tunnel. The tunnel was made of corrugated steel tubing approximately three feet in diameter. They'd been digging here by hand for two hours already. It was slow work because as they removed ice, they had to drag it back out on a blanket the length of the tunnel, where Tai would take it and dispose of it along the south ice wall.
She thought it might have been easier to go up to the surface, try to use the sonar to find the reactor, and then try to dig out its access shaft. But then the weather would have been a problem. She'd gone up to the main surface shaft not long ago with Vaughn and Logan and taken a look outside. As Brothers had said, visibility was close to zero as the wind lashed the countryside with a wall of white. Ten feet from the doorway a person would be lost, and only find their way back with a large degree of luck. It was hard to believe the latest radio message from McMurdo that the intensity of the storm was actually lessening.
Looking into the blowing snow, feeling the icy talons of cold ripping at her clothes through the open door and thinking about the frozen body lying at the foot of the stairs, Tai recalled something she'd read during her two-hour guard shift: the fate of Captain Lawrence Oates, a member of Scott's ill-fated 1911-1912 South Pole expedition. Scott's party had arrived at the South Pole after man-hauling their sleds most of the way, only to discover a tent and note that Norwegian Roald Amundsen had left behind, proving that Amundsen had beaten him there by a month.
On their return trip, running out of food and in the middle of a blizzard, Oates, suffering from severe frostbite, walked out of the party's campsite into the blowing snow and disappeared, sacrificing himself so the party could continue on more quickly. His noble gesture was all for naught, though, as the rest of Scott's party died only eleven miles from a supply depot. Their bodies were discovered eight months later, along with Scott's journal, which told the sad tale.
"I've got an opening," Vaughn said, snapping Tai out of her ice-bound reverie. He was poking his shovel ahead, through the ice. Then he and Logan scratched away, widening the opening. The tunnel continued for another ten feet before angling off to the right.
"Let's see what we have," Vaughn said as he led the way.
The environmentalist followed, and Tai crawled along behind them on her hands and knees, her Gore-Tex pants sliding on the steel. Fifty more feet and they reached a thick hatch. Vaughn turned the wheel and the door slowly opened. Another two hundred feet. Then another hatch. They squeezed out of the second one and could finally stand. A small, shielded room opened out onto the reactor's core. Radiation warning signs were plastered all over the walls. Tai looked through the thick glass at the slots where the rods were to be inserted in the reactor core itself. In front of the glass was a small control panel with a few seats.
Logan shook his head. "Unbelievable. They really thought something as poorly constructed as this could work. No wonder the one at McMurdo had to be taken apart."
"You have to remember this was put in a long time ago," Vaughn reminded him.
"Hell, even twenty or thirty years ago someone should have had more common sense." Logan ran his hands over the thick glass separating them from the core. "Why are people so stupid?"
"So we have nukes and a nuclear power plant," Tai said. "But we're still not any closer to the Organization."
Vaughn peered once more through the thick glass at the inert core of the reactor. "You know, we might not be any closer, but it might be closer to us."
"What do you mean?" Tai asked.
Vaughn looked at Logan. "You once accused me of trying to take out Brothers. But I know I didn't do that. And I think whoever did only did it to try and slow us down a little bit, not stop us. Because sabotaging the plane would have worked much better. And the only reason to slow us down is if someone is behind us."