in Germany.”
Sarah looked as if she were about to attack the sergeant, but Will and Ryan gently placed their hands on her and turned her away.
“Comin’, Sarge,” Will quickly answered.
Sarah calmed and then tried to smile. “Thanks.”
“Well, let’s go keep ourselves busy, and hope the colonel and the others get their asses out of Germany without getting them shot completely off.”
Sarah looked at Ryan and then nodded.
“Come on, let’s go simulate crash-landing on the Moon,” Mendenhall joked. “Jason hasn’t done that in a few hours. I’m getting to where I like it. It’s so much better than the always boring landing upright thing.”
As Ryan complained how hard the lunar lander simulators were for the hundredth time that day, Sarah could only think about Collins and wonder just what he had gotten himself into.
“Jack, I swear to God, I can’t take my eyes off of you for five damn minutes without you getting into some kind of bullshit!” she hissed as she followed Jason and Will out of the locker room.
Everett had the policeman’s gun. The man was unconscious and lying by the back doorway to a Chinese restaurant. Carl ejected the clip from the nine-millimeter and then ejected the chambered round. He thought briefly about keeping it, but knew the man would probably be in enough trouble for being disarmed by a suspect. Besides, he knew he couldn’t use it against law enforcement.
Jack stood beside Carl and nodded, then he reached up and pounded on the back door of the restaurant. It was opened by a startled Chinese man who stood stock-still when he saw the large blond man and the police officer.
“English?” Jack asked.
The small man just shook his head negatively, so Everett eased the cop inside the door and lay him down gently.
“Die Polizei,” Jack said, as he pulled Carl away from the door. Everett reached out and handed the Chinese man the weapon, then turned and ran into the darkness of the alley.
Jack and Carl reached the end of the long alley and looked out onto a far quieter street. They spied Ellenshaw and Golding, secluded inside a small Audi. In the illumination of the overhead street lamp, they saw Ellenshaw raise his head on the front seat of the car and then duck back down. Jack shook his head at the suspicious way the two scientists were going about trying to steal a car. Suddenly the motor sprang to life and Ellenshaw sat up. He and Pete exchanged high fives.
“We don’t give these guys enough credit,” Everett said as he and Jack cautiously and slowly left the alley.
“Good work, guys,” Collins said and ducked into the backseat with Everett pulling the two professors out of the way.
“Get in, I’ll drive,” he said to a stunned Ellenshaw, who instead of arguing ran around to the far side and got in the front seat. His hair was a mess as usual as he looked over at Carl.
“Where’s that young policeman?” he asked, looking around the darkened street nervously.
“He went for Chinese,” Everett replied as he threw the car in gear and sped off.
“What’s the plan?” Golding asked, scanning the dark outside the rear window.
“First off, you two should stop looking like you’re on the run,” Jack said. He reached out and stilled the turning head of the computer genius.
“Oh, sorry,” Pete said. He settled in and closed his eyes. Then a thought struck him. “Did we come away with nothing?”
“Nothing but a familiar face in an old photo,” Jack said. “Right now, let’s just hope our aircraft hasn’t been compromised and that Mr. Everett here can find a back way into Tempelhof.”
“Yeah, I think it’s time to retreat from Germany,” Everett said, taking a corner faster than he wanted to.
“Where to now?” Ellenshaw asked, actually enjoying the intrigue.
“Jack?” Carl looked in the rearview mirror.
“We’re not leaving,” was Collins’s surprise answer.
“Uh, Jack, in case you didn’t notice, you’re probably the most wanted man in the Western world at the moment.” Everett grimaced at the thought of staying.
“Yeah, but we need to get to the records at Spandau.”
“We can do that through Europa,” Pete said. “And if memory serves, Spandau was demolished in 1987.”
“If the plane’s been compromised we can’t use Europa. We just can’t take the chance we’ll run into an ambush. Someone gave the authorities my picture and only one name keeps coming into my head.”
“Your old friend McCabe?” Carl asked.
“You bet. We need to know who that guy was in the photo at Zinsser’s apartment. I have a gut feeling everything here is connected somehow.” He looked to his left at Golding. “And you’re right, Pete. Spandau was demolished, but the Germans, being as honest about the Nazis as they can to the general public, have a small museum dedicated to it.”
“If we’re staying, I would feel better with a gun, and preferably not a policeman’s weapon.”
“Well, we better get some,” Collins said in answer to Everett’s suggestion. “I know a man here. But first we have to hole up somewhere and get some rest. We’ll let my celebrity cool down for a day or two, at least until I can make a few local telephone calls.”
“What about this?” Pete said, holding out his cell phone.
Jack watched the buildings of Berlin slide by his darkened window, so Pete could only see Jack’s reflection and the set of his features.
“They can trace that signal, Doc. No cell phones.”
Golding swallowed and then pulled the phone away from Collins. He nodded his head and then turned and saw his own scared reflection in the glass.
Ellenshaw turned around in the front seat and looked at Pete Golding.
“I told you, Doctor. Now isn’t this better than being stuck inside the complex all the time?”
Pete didn’t say anything as Everett sped sharply around a corner, almost bringing the vehicle up on two wheels.
For a man who had never left Nevada on a field assignment, Pete Golding was taking the adventure rather stoically, but still wide-eyed and excited, feeling alive for the first time in years as the Audi sped into the night.
Niles was examining the Moon rocks that had been couriered over from the National Geographic Society. There were two of them and they had the identical properties of those seen in the video from Paul the Beatle on the Moon’s surface. The CIA had donated them to the National Geographic Society when they were discovered in their archives back when the CIA went by another name-the OSS. Not knowing what else to do with the stones, they emptied their files of the only specimens that had survived Operation Columbus all those years before.
“As far as our records are concerned, there are only twelve such examples in the world like those. We estimate that of all the meteorites discovered in history, these are the rarest.”
“Where are the rest of the meteorites?” the president asked from over two thousand miles away in Washington.
“Several that we know of found their way to China and France after the war. The OSS was sketchy on the details of something called Operation Columbus.”
“Well, that kind of sums it up, doesn’t it? These two countries know firsthand the properties of the mineral, thus their lust for it and their massive expenditures to get to the Moon to recover more.”
Niles was silent as he listened to the president excuse the director of the CIA. A moment later the president’s face came into full view, after the selling job and acting class 101 let out.
“Niles, how is everyone taking to the fact that I advanced the timetable for launch?”
