The Lost Key

Pearce found out through his spies in Berlin and immediately notified Curie. She realized she’d been betrayed. She couldn’t allow the kaiser to get his hands on the weapon, (probably she decided better the devil you know), and so she told Pearce the truth about the what she’d created and why she’d lied to him. She told him the weapon wouldn’t kill a few people, it had the capacity to kill them all.

Even though Curie no longer had the key to her secret lab, she could have figured out how to destroy it, but evidently before she could act, Pearce told her he’d arranged for a spy to steal the key and the notebook from the kaiser. All he ever told her was that the sub with her key and notebook on board sunk, and they didn’t know its location. She must have been very relieved to learn this, and thus, why destroy her lab? No point.

—

NICHOLAS LOOKED UP, his voice quiet. “That’s it. That’s all he had time to write.”

Mike said, “Mini-nukes with a new radioactive element. Here we’ve been worried about suitcase nukes. But, Nicholas, if Havelock gets his hands on the über-polonium Madame Curie developed, and makes a nano-nuke with the bigger load, creating a massive fallout, we don’t know what the results will be.”

Nicholas nodded. “And unlike dirty bombs that can be detected, these nano-nukes could go anywhere, no one the wiser. And since we don’t know the makeup of Curie’s extreme polonium, we don’t know how big a payload it can deliver.” He paused. “Über-polonium, extreme polonium, enhanced polonium—hard to know what to call it. Like Adam, I don’t understand how it would work, either, only that it does.”

“Deadly will do the job since all we really understand is the consequences would be bad.”

The pilot of the Hawker came over the intercom. “We will be on the ground in five minutes. The chopper is waiting to take you to Loch Eriboll. The Dover is looking for the Gravitania now.”

Mike fastened her seat belt. “Clearly something went wrong along the way if the Order lost the key and Madame Curie’s notes. And now Havelock is close to having it.”

“We’ll get there first, Mike. We must.”

Mike looked out the window, to the barren hills below. “I wonder where Curie’s secret lab is located.”

“We have to find Adam Pearce alive to get the rest of the story.”

73

Ten minutes later they were buckled into the seats of a Merlin chopper on their way to the frigate HMS Dover. The pilots were curious; it wasn’t often they were diverted to a closed air base to pick up two civilians for a ride up to the North Sea.

The pilot said, “Be prepared, it’s choppy as hell out there right now, so buckle up. We’ll have you over the loch in thirty minutes and land you on the Dover. She’s waiting for us. The minute we’re on board, the boat will head into the loch. This ship you’re searching for, the Gravitania, they’ve already moved into position, they’re in the loch as we speak.”

Nicholas said, “If that’s the case, can you put us down on the Gravitania?”

“Unadvisable, sir. It’s an enemy ship, we don’t know who or what’s down there. Our captain would have us for breakfast if we pulled a stunt like that.”

“Gentlemen, I am not lying to you. This is a matter of national security. All of our lives are going to depend on you getting us on that ship.”

“No can do, sir.”

Nicholas looked at Mike, raised his eyebrows, then said, “Alert me when we are nearing the ship.”

“Roger. I have a call to patch through, from a Superintendent Penderley. You want it?”

“I want it.”

There was static for a second, then Penderley’s voice came clearly through their headsets.

“Drummond, there’s blood all over Weston’s Oxford house, but no sign of Sophie Pearce. There was one dead man in the house, shot through the head, no idea who he was. There had also been an MI Five agent on the grounds, Alex Shepherd. He left us a note saying they’d gone to Scotland, to the Gravitania.

“Looks like Havelock and Weston are together, with Sophie Pearce. The note has a time on it. They left less than an hour before we got here.”

Nicholas said, “Then they’re all on the Gravitania now. Sir, I need another favor. You have to get us on board that boat. I can’t waste time landing on the Dover, then sailing into the loch. It’s all going down on the Gravitania. If I get there first, I may be able to stop this whole mess before it goes up in smoke.”

When Penderley remained quiet, Nicholas said, “I promise I can stop them, sir. Can you get me on that boat?”

Penderley heaved a huge sigh. “Do try not to get yourself killed, Drummond.”

The call abruptly ended. Mike shouted into her headset’s microphone, “Say they pull it off and get us on Havelock’s boat. Do you have a plan?”

“Oh, yes. You and I are going to put down on the Gravitania, shoot the bad guys, and hand the ship over to Her Majesty’s Navy. Then we’re going to stop Havelock before he gets to the sub and steals the key.”

“Well, okay, sounds like a good plan to me. Let’s do it, sounds like fun.”

He gri

Should she call Zachery, tell him what was happening? She looked at her cell, then shoved it back in her pocket. She caught his eye, and read his unspoken words clearly—Good call.

The chopper was skimming the land below, its flight path on a northerly heading. The moors of northern Scotland spread before them in a glorious multicolored pattern, greens and browns and oranges muted into rusty grasses and yellow fields, colors Mike had never seen before.

It was bleak, desolate beauty. Sheep dotted the fields like tufts of white cotton, and the fields ran up the hills into thick, green forests. Fog was threatening; her map showed the Firth of Moray to the east, but the late-evening sun was keeping the fog at bay.

The hills swelled into sudden mountains, gray and forbidding and sharp-edged. The chopper flew over misty peaks, swooped down the lee edge of the mountain, letting the wind take them, and the moor spread again before them. The loch appeared suddenly, a long, blue finger of water, and she could swear she could smell the peat fires burning below.

She said to Nicholas, “That has to be the most beautiful fifteen minutes I’ve ever spent.”

“Lovely, isn’t it? Cold as the dickens, though.”

The pilot broke in. “You must know some pretty impressive people, sir. We’ve been instructed to put you down on the Gravitania. The ship’s too small for us to land, you’ll have to fast-rope onto their deck.”

Nicholas punched his fist in the air. “Great news. Now, do you have a few weapons we could borrow? I don’t feel like going up against a whole ship of bad guys without some serious firepower.”

The pilot laughed. “Check the cabinet to your left. There’s some C-Eights in there. Plus ammunition. You’re going to need backup. I’m going to send Lieutenant Halpern here to watch your back when you drop on.”

“Perfect.” Nicholas reached over and unstrapped the cabinet, pulled out two C8s, paused for a moment, then took an emergency first-aid kit.

He handed one weapon to Mike, and a pair of thin, sticky gloves. “This is like the M-Four assault rifle, but the barrel is up instead of down. It takes a thirty-round clip.” He pulled out two and handed her one. “So here’s a spare. It’s a little heavier than the M-Four, so it’s go

He’d gone operational on her, his perfect, crisp, posh British accent was changing into adrenaline-driven military-speak.