Robert Doherty - The Citadel

"The mess hall now!" he barked, and was gone as quickly as he'd come.

Tai rushed to the mess hall to find Vaughn leaning over an unconscious Brothers. The pilot was slumped in a chair, his clothes covered with melting ice and snow.

"What happened?" she asked.

"I found him outside, lying in the snow, just like this." Vaughn was checking the pilot's bare hands for frostbite as he spoke. "Another five minutes and he'd have frozen to death."

"How'd you find him?" Tai inquired.

"I heard a noise. Sounded like the main door slamming shut. I don't know." He shrugged. "Something just didn't seem right, so I got up and checked."

As Vaughn explained, the other members of the team filed in until all were assembled.

"So what happened to him?" Logan wanted to know. "Did he fall and knock himself out?"

Vaughn shook his head. "I don't think so." He broke open a medical kit and pulled out some smelling salts, waving them under Brothers's nose. The pilot gagged briefly, and then his eyes flickered open. He reached up for his head and moaned. Tai stepped forward and looked. A large purplish bruise was visible through the thinning hair on the back of the pilot's head.

Vaughn moved around to face Brothers. "What happened?" he asked.

Brothers tried shaking his head, but the pain got the better of him and he held still. "Shit. I don't know. I was going to take a piss and was in the corridor when someone whacked me on the back of the head. That's all I remember."

Six sets of eyes met, flickered to one another and then back to Brothers. The silence lasted almost a full minute, and then Vaughn asked, "Was anybody awake when he left?"

The three other men shook their heads.

Vaughn turned to Tai. "When I came in, all three were in their beds and appeared to be sleeping. You were in your room. The three people from Earth First were all accounted for also."

"That leaves you, then, doesn't it?" Logan observed.

Vaughn shrugged. "Then it would have been pretty stupid of me to have rescued him, wouldn't it?"

Tai decided to take charge before things went totally to shit. "Are you able to fly?" she asked Brothers.

He nodded carefully. "Aye. I don't think I have any permanent damage."

"Then we leave now." Vaughn turned to Smithers and Burke. "Get your gear ready to go. We leave for the plane in fifteen minutes."

Logan gestured at Brothers. "What about whoever knocked him out? I don't think it was chance that it was the pilot who was attacked. Somebody is trying to stop us from getting to this Citadel."

"And that's why we're leaving right away," Vaughn replied. "You have as much of an idea who did it as I do. But if we wait around here any longer, whoever it is will have a chance to do something else. I don't want to give them the opportunity. Let's load out."

When the others left the room to get their gear, Tai looked at Vaughn. "We've been infiltrated."

"No shit," he said.

Tai took one of the pistols out and offered it to Vaughn. He took it, checking the magazine. "Make sure you keep it close to your body," he said. "The gun is sweating in here and will freeze up if you don't keep it warm."

Tai nodded, took her pistol out, opened her parka and pile shirt and stuck it inside. "Going to be hard to get to in a hurry if I need it."

Vaughn was doing the same. He shrugged. "Everything is going to take longer down here. Let's hope if we need the guns, whoever we need them against is just as slow."

Geneva, Switzerland

Dyson was not used to being made to wait. Before becoming the head of the North American Table, he had been CEO of one of the top three corporations in America. He'd advised Presidents. Been on the boards of dozens of organizations. He was worth untold billions.

And now he waited after having been summoned like an errant schoolboy to the principal's office.

After forty minutes the door to the Intelligence Center opened. There was no secretary to usher him in. Just the open door. Dyson got up and walked through, eyes blinking as he tried to adjust to the dimmer light inside. He saw the four Assessors in their chairs. He headed for the fifth chair, glancing at the large video displays lining the walls, trying to get a quick glimpse to see if any of the data referred to the current situation he had been summoned for. He could see that one of the large screens displayed a map of Antarctica, but his quick look couldn't reveal anything else.

He sat down, picked up the headset and put it on. He had never met the High Counsel in person. As far as he knew, none of the heads of the various Tables ever had.

"We have received your report," the High Counsel said, his voice coming through the headset. "It was woefully lacking in information. I want to assume that during your flight here you had time to reflect and come up with possible explanations."

Dyson cleared his throat. "I believe David Lansale planned all of this a long time ago, and he set it up that if he died, this information would be released to cause us problems."

"Explain."

"Understand that this is speculation on my part, not hard data," Dyson said.

"We understand."

Dyson could see that two of the four Assessors were watching him, the other two intent on the screens.

"I've tried to line up what we do know and added in the unknown of Lansale's motivations. Lansale was a very good agent, one of our best, and he participated in many top level assignments. But our psych profiles-which we did not have when he was first recruited out of the Office of Strategic Services in World War II-indicate he had maverick tendencies. He questioned things. I believe he questioned who he worked for.

"This all started when he parachuted into Japan as part of Doolittle's raid in World War II. He rendezvoused with Emperor Hirohito's nephew, Prince Chichibu, to negotiate for us. Part of those negotiations were the Golden Lily, the fledgling Japanese atomic weapon program, clemency for the Imperial family-all this is in your database. He did as he was ordered to do, and the mission was a success.

"However, I believe he did more than he was ordered to do. I think he began planning this Citadel operation. After all, the Japanese submarine, I-401, was tasked during the waning days of the war to conduct a mission to Antarctica prior to the establishment of the Citadel."

"Do we know what was on the I-401 or the two German submarines?" the High Counsel asked.

"I believe the I-401 carried part of the Golden Lily. We always knew parts of it were missing. Abayon and the Abu Sayif, of course, have recently revealed they held a significant portion of the treasure on Jolo Island, but there are still many missing pieces."

"And the German submarines?"

The American head shifted in his seat. "It might be part of the Nazi Black Eagle treasure. Most likely some of it that has never been accounted for in public or by us. But I fear that they also might have carried weapons of mass destruction." Dyson noted that all four Assessors were now looking at him.

"Explain," the High Counsel said.

"We know the Germans sent uranium to Japan via U-boat after they surrendered and before the Japanese did. Lansale helped keep that from developing into anything via his Japanese contacts in the Far East Table. But-we also know from Operation Paper Clip that a large amount of experimental nerve gas that the Germans developed went missing at the end of the war. I believe some of that gas was on those two U-boats that linked up with the I-401."

"And your agent did not get the location of the I-401 and the two German submarines, correct?"

"He only called in the information. He was supposed to fully debrief Royce later. He never made it to later. His body was found, and there was no sign of Fatima. We have to assume she's on the trail of the I-401."