on him, the Uzi still pointed.
In another screen, a door to the children’s ward was now wide open. A
nurse appeared to be waving the children out, looking around furtively.
“So they are escaping,” Lenz said, “but for you it will not be so easy.
Forty-eight security guards have been trained to shoot any intruders on
sight. You will never make it outside.” He reached for a large ornate
brass lamp to switch it on, and Ben snapped to attention, sure that Lenz
was about to pick the lamp up to hurl or swing it, but instead Lenz
tugged at a protruding section of the base and pulled out a small oblong
object that he instantly pointed at Ben. It was a compact, brass-plated
pistol, cleverly concealed.
“Drop it!” Anna shouted.
Ben was a few feet to Anna’s side, and Lenz could not cover them both.
“I suggest you put down your weapon at once,” Lenz said. “That way no
one will be hurt.”
“I don’t think so,” Anna said. “We’re not exactly evenly matched.”
Lenz, unfazed, said blandly, “But you see, if you begin to fire at me,
your friend here will be killed, too. You must ask yourself how
important it is to kill me–whether it’s really worth it.”
“Drop the goddamn toy gun,” Anna said, although Ben could see it was no
toy.
“Even if you succeed in killing me, you change nothing. My work will
continue even without me. But your friend Benjamin will simply be
dead.”
“No!” came a hoarse shout.
An old man’s voice.
Lenz spun around to look.
“Lassen She ihn lost Lassen She mein en Sohn los! Let him go!”
The voice came from a corner of the great room that was hidden in
shadows. Lenz pointed his weapon toward the voice, then seemed to
reconsider, and swung it back toward Ben.
The voice again; “Let my son go!”
In the dim light Ben could just make out the seated figure.
His father. In his hand was a gun, too.
For a moment Ben couldn’t speak.
He thought it might be a trick of the strange oblique light, and he
looked again, and knew that what he saw was real.
Quieter now, Max’s voice: “Let them both go.”
“Ah, Max, my friend,” Lenz called, in a loud and hearty voice. “Perhaps
you can talk reason to these two.”
“Enough of the killing,” Max said. “Enough bloodshed. It’s over now.”
Lenz stiffened. “You are a foolish old man,” he replied.
“You’re right,” Max said. He remained seated, but his gun was still
trained on Lenz. “And I was a foolish young man, too. I was beguiled
by you then, just as now. All my life I’ve lived in fear of you and
your people. Your threats. Your blackmail.” His voice rose, choked
with rage. “No matter what I built or what I became, you were always
there.”
“You can lower your gun, my friend,” Lenz said mildly. His weapon was
still pointed at Ben, but for a split-second he turned to Max.
/ can rush him, tackle him to the floor, Ben thought. The next time his
attention is diverted.
Max continued as if he hadn’t heard, and as if there were no one in the
room but Lenz. “Don’t you see I’m not afraid of you any longer?” His
voice reverberated against the stone walls. “I will never forgive
myself for what I did, for helping you and your butcher friends. For
making my deal with the devil. Once I thought it was the right thing to
do, for my family, for my future, for the world’s. But I was lying to
myself. What you did to my son, ray Peter ” His voice broke.
“But you know that should never have happened!” Lenz protested. “It
was the work of overzealous security people who exceeded their
authority.”
“Enough!” Max bellowed. “No more! Enough of your god damned lies!”
“But the project, Max. My God, man, I don’t think you understand ”
“No, you don’t understand. You think I care about your dreams of
playing God? You think I ever did?”
“I invited you here as a favor to you, to make amends. What are you
trying to tell me?” Lenz’s voice was controlled, but only barely.
“Amends? But this is only a continuation of the horror. For you,
everything and everyone were sacrificed to your dream of living
forever.” A labored breath. “You’re about to take my only remaining
child from me! After everything else you’ve taken from me.”
“Then your overtures were merely a ploy. Yes, I’m beginning to see.
When you joined us it was always with the intention of betraying us.”
“It was the only way I could gain entrance to a walled city. The only
way I could hope to monitor from within.”
Lenz spoke as if to himself. “My mistake is always to imagine that
others are as philanthropic as I am as concerned with the greater good.
How you disappoint me. And after all we’ve been through together, Max.”
“Ach! You pretend to be interested in human progress,” Max shouted.
“And you call me a foolish old man! You talk of others as subhuman, but
you are yourself not human.”
Lenz briefly turned his gaze toward Max, seated in the dim corner, and
at the same instant that Ben coiled to spring forward, he heard the
hollow pop, the retort of a small-caliber pistol, and Lenz looked more
surprised than stricken as a small but widening red circle appeared on
the breast pocket of his white lab coat near his right shoulder. Aiming
in Max’s general direction, Lenz squeezed the trigger three times,
returning fire wildly.
Then a second blotch of red appeared on Lenz’s chest. His right arm
dangled uselessly at his side as his pistol clanked to the floor.
Anna lowered the Uzi slightly, watched him.
Suddenly Lenz lunged at Anna, knocking her to the floor, the Uzi
clattering.
His hand was at her throat, squeezing her larynx in an iron clutch. She
tried to rear up, but he slammed her head back against the floor with an
audible crack.
Again he slammed her head against the stone, and then Ben, enraged,
leaped on top of Lenz, gripping the plastic cylinder she’d handed him
earlier. Ben roared with exertion and fury as he swung his right hand
up and jabbed the hypodermic needle directly into Lenz’s neck.
Lenz howled in pain. Ben had hit the internal jugular vein, he could
tell, or had at least come very close to it, and he depressed the
plunger.
Lenz’s expression of horror seemed frozen on his face. His hands flew
to his neck, found the syringe, yanked it out, and he saw the label.
“Verdammt nochmal! Scheiss Jesus Christus!”
A bubble of saliva formed at his mouth. Suddenly he fell backward like
an upended statue. His mouth opened and shut as if he were trying to
scream, but instead he only gasped for air.
Then he went rigid.
Lenz’s eyes stared in fury, but the pupils were fixed and dilated.
“I think he’s dead,” Ben gasped, short of breath.
“I know he’s dead,” Anna said. “That’s the most potent opioid there is.
They keep some pretty powerful stuff in their locked medicine cabinets.
Now let’s get out of here!” She glanced at Max Hartman. “All of us,”
“Go,” Ben’s father whispered from his chair. “Leave me here, but you
two must go now, the guards ”
“No,” Ben said. “You’re coming with us.”
“Dammit,”v Anna said to Ben. “I heard the helicopter taking off, so
that’s out. How did you get in, anyway?”
“A cave under the property opens into the basement. But they’ve found
it.”
“Lenz was right, we’re done for, there’s no way out ”
“But there is a way,” Max said, his voice faint.
Ben ran over to him, stricken by what he saw.
Max, dressed in a pale blue hospital Johnny, was feebly holding his
hands to the base of his throat, where, as Ben now realized, a bullet
had lodged. Blood was spreading insistently beneath his trembling
fingers. The thin cotton garment was stenciled with the black numeral
eighteen.
“No!” Ben shouted.
The man had taken a bullet in order to kill Lenz and protect his only
surviving son.
“Lenz’s private helicopter,” Max whispered. “You reach the bay through
the back passage on the far left…” He murmured instructions for a few
moments longer. Finally he said, “Tell me you understand.” Max’s eyes
were imploring. In a voice barely audible he repeated the words: “Tell
me you understand.”
“Yes,” Ben said, hardly able to speak himself. Tell me you understand
his father meant the instructions to the bay, of course, but Ben
couldn’t help thinking that he meant something more, too. Tell me you
understand: tell me you understand the difficult decisions I made in
life, however mistaken.
Tell me you understand them. Tell me you understand who I really am.
As if in resignation, Max pulled his hands from his throat, and blood