'Did you hear me, Mercedes? Your boyfriend killed people today. You don't seem surprised. And that surprises me. What are you doing with a monster like Midas?'
'All men are animals.' Her eyes narrowed back into slits. 'But Roman is an adult, Conrad, not a child like you. He understands power and money and politics in a way you never could.'
'All I understand, Mercedes, is that Midas seems to have moved on from oil to arms.'
Mercedes sniffed. 'I don't believe you. Midas doesn't need anything in this world. He's as rich as, well, Midas. He doesn't have to steal anything. He can buy it.'
Conrad said, 'Then tell me what he's buying these days besides megayachts and art.'
A shadow passed across her face, betraying the fact that, yes, Midas had bought something interesting lately. 'You haven't changed, Conrad,' she said. 'You're looking for links that don't exist. The great conspiracy is that there are no conspiracies. Everybody is out for himself. Life is a big black hole. There is no meaning.'
'Your existentialism used to have some romance, Mercedes. What happened?'
Her phone beeped, and she glanced at a text message and shook her head. It must have been from Midas, Conrad thought. 'Romance is dead,' she told him. 'And so are you if you go after Roman.'
She took his hand to lead him back to the party when two security men came down the steps, talking softly into their radios. 'You fool, it's too late,' Mercedes said, sounding genuinely alarmed.
Conrad looked over his shoulder past the kaiser's stone pier. A light in the distance grew closer, and soon a dinghy emerged from the mist around nearby Mouse Island, like a boat from the River Styx, with a large, muscular colossus of a man standing at the prow.
'You've got to be kidding me.' Conrad had started to turn back to Mercedes when he felt the stab of a needle in his neck and blacked out.
9
A bucket of freezing water brought Conrad to life. He blinked his eyes open. He seemed to be inside the submersible launch bay of the superyacht Midas. The hatch was open wide over the surface of the water. Moonlight reflecting from the sands beneath the yacht bounced around the hold. He was sitting in a chair, his feet bound together at the ankles and his hands tied behind him to the back of the chair.
'What is the four-digit code, Professor?' said a voice with a thick Russian accent.
Conrad looked up to see a bodybuilder type towering over him. Behind him stood two security men and a giant basin of water. They were leaning against a double-domed deep-flight Falcon submarine. Midas must have used the Falcon to transport the Flammenschwert from the Nausicaa to the yacht, Conrad thought.
'I don't know about any four-digit code,' Conrad said, trying to quickly make sense of his predicament. He should be dead. Maybe Midas hadn't found everything he was looking for in the Nausicaa and was hoping Conrad had. 'But I'm sure glad you told me about it.'
The Russian held up an electric shock baton. Conrad recognized it as the type favored by the Chinese police in torturing Falun Gong practitioners. 'Maybe this will jog your memory,' the Russian said.
Conrad shivered as the picture came into focus: He was drenched in water in order to intensify the three hundred thousand volts of electricity this thug was about to apply to him.
'I know you,' Conrad told him, and he realized where he had seen the face. 'You're that ex-KGB guy turned fitness guru with the kettle ball infomercial.'
The Russian paused, seemingly pleased at the recognition. 'It is true. I am Vadim.'
'Too bad your website sucks. Bet your online sales of those Vadimin supplements do, too. Is this your day job, or do you have another one at some health spa?'
Vadim cocked his thick head. Conrad was clearly getting inside it, and the Russian didn't like it. He plunged the electric baton into the fresh harpoon wound in Conrad's leg.
Conrad gritted his teeth as the voltage shot up his thigh and throughout his body. For a second he thought his head would explode. When the wave of devastating pain finally passed, he dropped his head and saw that the baton had reopened his harpoon wound, which oozed blood.
'Utter a sound, Dr. Yeats, and I'll shove this baton into your mouth and shock you with a thousand root canals at once until you black out.'
Conrad could smell his own burned flesh. It would take weeks for it to fully heal. Not that Vadim was intending for him to see that day. The Russian pressed the wound with the baton until a shard of harpoon protruded up through the blood. Conrad moaned in agony.
'Go easy on the lad, sport,' one of the other guards said in a British accent. 'Midas wants to get the code out of him before he dies.'
So the other two were Brits, Conrad thought. Private security. For all Conrad knew, Midas also employed former Navy SEALs and American mercenaries in his private global army. Who said capitalism was dead?
'Shut up, Davies,' Vadim told the Brit sternly while he trained his eyes on Conrad. 'Von Berg's code,' he repeated. His breath was foul. 'Four digits. Like your hand after I cut off your thumb.' He pulled out a cigar cutter. 'Or maybe I'll cut off something else. Now tell me where the code is.'
'Of course!' Conrad cried out. 'It's all in my head!' He started to laugh uncontrollably, despite the pain. It was crazy, but by rephrasing his demand for the code in terms of 'where' instead of 'what,' Vadim had triggered an epiphany for Conrad. Now Conrad understood why nobody had found a metal briefcase containing secret codes inside the sunken sub. The paranoid Baron of the Black Order never carried secret papers in a briefcase or on his person on land, sea, or air. Von Berg knew he'd be dead if anybody found them. So he kept the code in his head, literally. And that head was back in Conrad's room at the Andros Palace Hotel.
Vadim and the Brits glanced at each other. 'You find this funny, Dr. Yeats?'
Conrad nodded. 'Let me guess. This code Midas wants. You don't know what it's for, do you?'
Vadim said, 'You will tell us?'
'Hell, no. But Midas is going to assume I did. And then you guys are dead.'
Vadim's nostrils flared. 'What are you talking about?'
'I know what Midas stole from the sub this morning. Don't you?'
It was clear from Vadim's expression that he did not.
'Oops,' Conrad said. 'Maybe you're not as tight with the boss as you thought.'
Vadim's eyes dilated at the truth of Conrad's words. Indeed, Vadim seemed to be reconsidering his relationship with Midas.
'What's more likely?' Conrad asked, relentless. 'That Midas is going to kill you because I got away? Or because you know what he stole from the sub and where it might be?'
'Kill him,' said Davies. 'But get out of him what he knows.'
Conrad looked at Vadim. 'The only way to pull it off is like this: You have to make Midas believe you killed me before I said anything. But how is he going to believe that and keep you around? You have to make it look like I killed one of the Brits while trying to escape and that the other one came in and shot me.'
'How stupid do you think I am, Dr. Yeats?' Vadim pulled out a 9mm Rook pistol of the type favored by Russian special forces and put it to Conrad's forehead.
'Quite stupid, actually,' Conrad said.
Vadim shook his head, swung his arm to the side, and shot Davies in the head. Davies fell to the floor.
'Bloody hell!' screamed the other Brit, and pointed his Browning pistol at Vadim. 'You killed him!'
Vadim shot the other Brit, and Conrad watched him crumple on top of his fallen comrade. Conrad, still in agony from the shock baton, kept laughing as Vadim put his gun away.
Vadim picked up the shock baton and glared at him. 'You will now reveal the four-digit code, Professor Yeats.'
'Look!' Conrad was staring at the bloody black hole in his thigh. 'Look at what you did.'
With a smile, Vadim bent over to take a closer look.
Conrad kneed him with both legs to the face, driving the protruding harpoon shard into Vadim's eye. The Russian snapped his head back with a howl. Then Conrad used his bound feet to sweep the leg of the table with the basin of water, sending it crashing to the floor.
