“Where Flight 22 originated …”
“Anyway, COBRA may technically be a government-funded installation but that funding is strictly blank check. The organization’s become more powerful than even NASA was during the peak of the space program. The Joint Chiefs lap up everything Col. Walter Chilgers has to say.”
“Chilgers?”
“Korean war hero who built COBRA from the foundation up. Well, more accurately he started from the top down with some of the greatest scientific minds in the world. Even Einstein was there in the very beginning I’ve heard.”
“Any idea what COBRA’s working on now?”
“Probably a hundred different projects, and it wouldn’t be hard for them to keep any number secret from even the White House.”
“A blank check,” Bane muttered. “What else can you tell me about them?”
“Not an awful lot. They’re way out of the Center’s jurisdiction and even farther out of our league.”
He held her eyes briefly. “There’s something else I need — the latest intelligence file on a free-lance agent named Trench.”
“I haven’t got clearance.”
“Get it.”
Janie considered the problem, then nodded. “It’ll mean a bit of eavesdropping off government discs, but what the hell. Why do you need it?”
“To give Harry in trade for the passenger manifest of Flight 22.”
“Trench was the man in Berlin,” she remembered.
Bane just looked at her.
“What happens when you get the manifest?”
“I start checking. The passengers must’ve seen or felt something….”
“If there’s anything to all this, that is.”
“You don’t believe Jake’s story.”
“It is a bit much.”
She was right, of course, and Bane didn’t bother pressing the issue. He sensed a separation, a gulf, between them that was more his doing than hers. He knew she could never understand that part of him that was the Winter Man, that part which had become active again. It had been a different man she had pulled from the emotional depths two years before. Their relationship had been built on factors which suddenly no longer seemed to exist. He still loved her in his own way, would be eternally grateful for all she had done for him, but at the same time he no longer felt he needed her. And without need, could there be love? Worse, he was using Janie, using her for the access she provided. That made him feel dirty, and yet he found it easy to rationalize his decision.
They made love that night, Bane playing his role mechanically, half as payment for services rendered and half as a mask for the emerging thoughts within him. But Janie was no fool. Bane could feel her detachment and sense of loss, the certainty of it, and he avoided her eyes so as not to see the empty glaze that filled them.
He squeezed her to him, trying to lose himself in her beauty. His pace was measured and even, his hands teasing and surgical. She clung to him tightly, digging her fingers into his back as her pleasure surged. Bane felt his peak as well, but when it was over there was nothing soothing or even comforting about the act. It was simply another task completed, lost among the many others which remained to be done.
Eventually they slipped off to sleep, grateful for the peace it might bring, while only a few miles away Davey Phelps shivered in a cold hotel room, the covers pulled over his face to shut out the presence of the Men who were drawing closer.
The Third Day:
Davey
Chapter Ten
“We’ve got him, sir,” the COBRA operations chief said, holding the car door open for Trench.
Trench climbed out flanked by the Twin Bears. He was facing a broken-down hotel called the Shangri-La on West Forty-third Street near the Avenue of the Americas. He should have known the boy would have run to this area to seek the camouflage of other youths.
“The homing device fizzled out three hours ago but not before leading us to the general area,” the COBRA man continued. “The hotel clerk remembers renting a room to a boy meeting his description last night. Room 626.”
Trench looked around him, checked his watch: 9:20. The work-day was just beginning.
“How many men have you got?”
“A dozen. I ordered four more just to be on the safe side.”
“Good,” Trench said without enthusiasm, leery somehow of the task they were about to undertake. Something didn’t feel right. He couldn’t get thoughts of the strange five dollar bill from yesterday out of his mind. He pulled off his overcoat and tossed it into the back seat of the car, surveying the scene. “We’ll move in on my signal,” he told the COBRA operations chief. “Deploy your men to ensure all exits are covered. I’ll handle the recovery myself.”
“Yes, sir.”
The COBRA operations chief took his leave, spitting orders into a walkie-talkie. Trench nodded to the Twin Bears and started moving toward the Shangri-La.
Davey Phelps watched the tall, well-dressed man approaching the entrance from the slit in the drawn blinds over his window. At first glance the man looked old, but closer inspection revealed this to be a false impression based only on his thinning, gray hair. The tall man stepped lightly with the spring of an athlete, gliding across the pavement in an evenly measured pace. That he was coming for him, Davey did not doubt. Nor did he doubt that the ten or so other well-dressed men were converging on the area for the same reason.
It had been a restless night that ended about an hour ago when The Vibes drove him from the bed. The feeling of the Men was stronger than ever, so Davey dressed and inched his way toward the steps only to find one of them perched in the lobby and two more outside the thick glass of the hotel’s front door. Cautiously, he made his way back to his room. He considered the fire escape only long enough for The Vibes to tell him the Men had that covered too.
They had found him.
And this tall one was different from the others. Davey couldn’t get into his mind, just as he hadn’t been able to get into the mind of the big man who had chased him in Rockefeller Center the day before. The blue-suited figure radiated dark coldness and the two red-headed giants walking by his side radiated nothing at all.
Davey felt the tug of desperation inside him. It had been fun for a while, adventurous. But now he missed his foster parents and the home they had made for him. He wanted to go back to them, wanted to take a shower where he didn’t have to keep his eyes trained on the bathroom doorknob. His clothes felt dirty and moist now, stuck to his skin by the sweat of fear.
Davey moved away from the window and pulled on his leather jacket.
Outside, the Men grouped, moved in. The tall cold one stood on the sidewalk below, looking up.
Davey’s eyes grew wet. His knees and fingers trembled. He tried to make The Vibes show him what they had in store for him once he was captured. They wouldn’t show him anything, though, when he tried too hard. They came when they wanted to and right now they were nowhere to be found.
The Men had him and there was no escape.
Out of the hopelessness came his way out. He felt The Chill rising up his spine, the strongest he’d felt, the sensation driving him to moan and close his eyes. He saw what he had to do, and somehow he knew he had the power to do it.
The Chill swelled in him, a rising tide of water seeking escape from the dam that pins it.
Davey squeezed his eyes shut and focused his mind on the whole surrounding block. The veins near his temples began to pulsate.
Outside, the air seemed to buckle.