Lipstick and Lies (28 page)

Dr. Shevchenko was in charge of some guests. Leo likely was one of them. He would know what was going on. And if I could find him, maybe we could team up, intercept V-V before it was too late.

I shoved open the door. A hedge of bushes edged the bunkhouse exterior. I did a quick visual check and dashed for their shelter.

The bunkhouse was built of the same craggy stone as the mansion. Three windows along its back wall suggested two, perhaps three, small rooms inside. I crept along the back, pausing at the first window to listen. Hearing only the chirping of a distant bird, I cautiously rose and peered in. The double-hung window was smudged, but I could make out a heavy wooden work-table strewn with lumps of coal and a timing mechanism. Electric cable, an array of fuses, and more timing devices littered the floor near the wall. A tall shelf held large commercial-sized containers labeled
Baked Beans, Fruit Salad, Olives.

Next, I panned the labels on a stack of boxes. I shivered and a fresh crop of goose bumps surfaced along my shoulders.
Tomatoes
. The shipment I’d overheard Zerov and V-V discussing earlier! A hand truck was parked alongside.

With my spine pressed against the craggy wall, I slithered sideways to the adjacent window. It was open. I crouched beneath the sill, then slowly inched upwards. The room was nearly twice as large as the first. Painted white and containing several metal tables, it was clearly a laboratory of some sort. On one table, clear liquid in a glass flask boiled above a Bunsen burner. Near the flask, an oversized syringe with a thick needle lay discarded near an assortment of potatoes, beets, and turnips.

A blur of white moved in a corner on the opposite side of the room. Dr. Shevchenko! Bushy, dark eyebrows were a curious contrast to his wild thatch of white hair. He wore a monocle and, in a second glimpse, I recognized him as the man I’d seen on the passenger side of the car fleeing the estate last night. At the time, I’d assumed he was a medical doctor; now I thought he might be the lab’s distinguished scientist.

The doctor stood up. On the floor, near his feet, two figures were partially blocked by one of the metal tables. I leaned sideways to get a better look. Otto Renner and Leo! Propped into semi-seated positions, their backs wedged against low stacks of stuffed burlap bags, they were out cold. Above the men, Shevchenko held a syringe with a long needle.

My forehead, damp with sweat, felt suddenly icy as the door opened and a man in fatigues swept in.

Shevchenko turned. “Zerov.”

My heart quickened. Up to now, I had only seen V-V’s assistant from the waist down. I stared. A thin man with a gaunt face and small eyes, he had a jagged scar along the length of one cheek and his hair was buzzed off so that he looked completely bald.

His boots clumped noisily as he crossed the room to join Shevchenko. I ducked down, my heart thumping madly inside my chest. It was imperative that I find out what they were up to. I took a deep breath and released it slowly, willing the hammering in my ears to stop.

“Ah, Dr. Shevchenko, is that one of your new incendiary pencils on the table? I tossed one yesterday, for practice.
Whoosh
.
Bang!
Marvelous! But tell me, how does it work?”

“Spontaneous combustion,” the scientist replied. “A narrow chamber inside is filled with a special compound. Once oxygen enters the chamber, the pencil—BOOM!—it explodes. Making it more wondrous yet, all trace of the device disintegrates with the explosion.”

“And this gimmick you are inventing with these vegetables. It is based on the same principle?”

“Yes. Only in these—” Shevchenko paused and I pictured him squeezing a potato or one of the other vegetables on the table. “—I
inject
the chemicals directly.”

“So then to set it off you slice open the vegetable and toss it?”

There was a long sigh. I imagined the scientist scratching his head.

“At this early stage, I am not certain the vegetable can be thrown without a finger or a hand being blown off. And the Cap-i-tan is not willing to risk one of his troops, or any more of
his
fingers, to try it.”

A restrained laugh was quickly stifled by a suggestion from Zerov. “What about his wife? Perhaps she will have a moment to toss a little garden salad before the sisters shove off on their river excursion.”

A chortle followed, then the doctor’s voice turned somewhat nostalgic. “Ah, the wife. If she had not burst in here we would all be feeling less pressure…”

“Forget it, Shevchenko. It is not your fault. With all the preparations that have been going on these past few months, it is astounding that she did not discover the truth long ago. And the Cap-i-tan does not hold this against you. He has wanted to step up the action for some time, and now he feels the initiative to move forward, strike an initial hit on the Naval Base. It is even possible that he will set things in motion on the bigger plan today.” There was a sly chuckle. “Say…maybe in considering the fate of our special guests, he will authorize a vegetable toss by one of them. What is their status?”

At Zerov’s appearance in the lab, Shevchenko had set the syringe on the metal table. He picked it up. “Renner has just received another injection. He will not move for at least another two hours. The dark-skinned new arrival I will shoot up soon, but for now he is still out cold from the blow you administered to his head. See for yourself.”

Zerov’s boots clumped off to where Leo and Renner lay in a heap. A burning sensation, worse than the one I’d felt earlier, seared my stomach. I had met the man they were calling the “Cap-i-tan.” I had shaken hands with him. He’d
kissed
my hand for godsakes! He’d lent me a book. I’d swooned over his continental charm. Tittered at his lofty jokes. But this wasn’t funny. These men were the Pastorius replacements. And V-V was their leader.

I drew a shaky breath. Disaster was brewing and I had no one to help me stop it. Enlisting Leo’s aid was out, and Dante’s arrival was a vexing unknown. Until I could devise a miracle for turning back the speeding train, I had to get every scrap of information I could. I tuned back in as Zerov spoke.

“Those labels you have designed for the canned goods are perfect reproductions.”

Shevchenko’s voice was buoyant. “We have done our best to duplicate the tomato brand the Navy base chef purchases exclusively.”

The bastards. Their plan was to hijack the real delivery truck, bring it here to the estate, load it up with crates of tomato-can bombs, and then deliver them to NAS Grosse Ile. That was why they’d wanted the map from the admiral’s wife.

“And the special feature?”

“All it takes is a puncture. Air seeps in, the can explodes.”

“Then let us hope it takes a full kitchen crew to make spaghetti!” The pair belly-laughed.

The twosome could be a couple of characters out of a bad B-movie. Unfortunately, these bad actors had serious fire power at their disposal.

Dante had suspected Kiki might be part of Renner’s gang. She clearly was not. She was, however, in serious trouble. I had to get help.

I felt the stick beneath my foot an instant before it snapped. Fortunately, another round of uproarious laughter erupted and I did not think the men had heard. But I also did not see myself waiting around to discover whether I was right.

***

Shrouded in the evergreen thicket, I fought to calm my bounding pulses. Absent Dante, it was up to me to try to rescue Kiki. But how? V-V was with her.

I knew what Gran Skjold would say. “You won’t know what’s possible until you dirty your hands trying.”

First, I needed a clear sense of what was going on. The goons in the lab had been an excellent source. I slipped my Gran’s derringer out from its holster.

The bunk house door creaked open. Zerov squinted in the grey afternoon light then turned to speak over his shoulder. “I am going to the front gate now, to await Yakutovych.”

He disappeared around the side of the building. I waited until I could no longer hear the heavy clumping of his boots crossing the hard dirt then pitched through the doorway and into the lab.

Shevchenko was standing beside the metal table. His monocle popped from his eye socket and his hand floundered as he reached to grasp the bubbling flask, the Bunsen burner, a vegetable bomb—any weapon. To no avail. He caught the glint of my gun and froze.

“Put your hands at your sides. Keep them there. I’ve no time to waste. I know there are soldiers here on the grounds. How many and where are they? Are they with the Captain? Where’d he go?”

The aggressive tone in my voice sounded impressive, even to my ears. Shevchenko’s Einstein-like shock of white hair trembled visibly.

“Don’t hurt me. The plan is underway. You cannot stop it.”

I waved my gun. “Talk.”

He clamped his mouth shut.

I hadn’t risked the confrontation for nothing. “Tell me about the plan. Details…”

“Bombs, sabotage, murder, that be the plan, you know, you know what I mean?”

The voice was weak but I would have recognized it anywhere. Leo!

I turned my head. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the doctor’s gaze veer right and left. “Don’t try it,” I warned. “Got you covered.”

Keeping the nose of my derringer trained on him, I backed toward Leo and Renner.

I looked down. My stomach flip-flopped. A swollen open gash on Leo’s forehead looked nasty. “Your head…Are you all right?”

The wound was caked with dried matter but was no longer bleeding and the surrounding area, while puffy and undoubtedly sore, looked clean.

“Uh-huh. Got caught. Got a knock to the noggin, is all, you know.”

Leo and Renner had been tied up, their hands behind their backs, with thick, coarse rope. Leo shifted and tried maneuvering upward against the stack of stuffed burlap bags supporting him. He groaned. “Ouch.”

“Wait. I’ll find more rope, tie up the good doctor here, and help you.”

“No. No time, know what I mean? There’s trouble goin’ down here. Girl, ya gotta go get Dante. His men.”

“Don’t worry, they’re on the way. But what’s going on here? Do you know?”

He spoke fast, and I strained to keep up with his patter, but Leo, under the guise of a stable hand working for the estate next door, had been observing the activities taking place on the LaVue Rouge grounds. A short while ago, he’d trailed a truck loaded with men to the outskirts of the estate.

“Them cats had a motor, I had a horse.” He lost them. “Came back here, heard this bad actor”—Leo nodded sideways in the direction of Renner—“behind the stable, arguing with the cat they call Capt’n. This here cat is all crazy-like.” Again, he was referring to Renner. “Says the Capt’n’s been movin’ in on his lady. Wants to snuff the Capt’n.

“Capt’n, he has other plans. ‘You made a second drawin’ of the air raid plot,’ he says all mean and fierce-like, talkin’ to this here cat, Renner. ‘Whatcha plannin’ on doin’ with it? Goin’ to the feds?’”

So Zerov twisted Renner’s arm until Renner confessed, Yes, that was his intent. It was the only way he could think of to get out of “the game” for good. He’d planned to do it anonymously. Then, with V-V out of the picture, he would be free to return to his normal life. And to his wife, whom he loved dearly.

The strategy might have worked, too, but when V-V began pulling Clara into his scheme, Renner lost his cool.

“Comin’ here was the cat’s undoin’, know what I mean, you know?”

I shook my head. “I, that is
we
, Dante and I, know about the drawing. Uncovered it in Renner’s safe. But that’s a new spin on what it was doing in there.”

“The cats planted a knife too. Did ya see it? See an old news article?”

“Uh-huh.” I’d been keeping one eye glued to Shevchenko. Now, in a quick sidelong glance, I mentally tried to calculate how I might free Leo from the criss-crossed rope configuration. The trussing looked so masterful I feared that even with my hands free I would not be able to undo it.
Where
was my backup?

“But how’d you get into this jam? What gave you away?”

“Had to make a move, you know, you know what I mean? Cat in the military threads had a stick, like a big toothpick. Shoved it under this cat’s fingernail wantin’ to lift it off.”

I winced. And winced again as Leo described how, while trying to stop Zerov, he’d gotten knocked to the ground, then conked on the head. He’d come to before Renner was given his second injection. Fearing he was about to die, Renner wanted Leo to know that he wasn’t a Nazi. He was the sailor in the article who’d jumped ship in Galveston, twenty-one years ago. He’d taken an assumed name, hoping the secret police in Germany wouldn’t find him. But nine months ago they’d caught up to him in the form of their sleeper spy, V-V. Renner’s position at the factory was ideal for procuring secrets for the Fuehrer and V-V had used threats against Renner’s family back in Germany to force him to go along. Renner told Leo all this in the hope that the explanation would somehow reach his wife.

“He had names. Cat called Cardillac the brains. Had the idea to plant the knife, let this cat here, Renner, take the rap for killin’ some other cat called Blount.
He’s gonna disappear anyways,
I heard the Capt’n sayin,’ referrin’ to Renner. Somethin’ about a poison the doctor’s cooked up. Makes a body decompose from the inside out. Has some crack-brained scheme brewin’ for Kiki, too. And her sister…” Leo’s voice had gotten weak and his normally rich mahogany skin looked ashen. He tried moving again. Another groan.

My gaze remained locked on Shevchenko. He wasn’t wearing his monocle so perhaps he couldn’t see me observing him. That might explain it. Or maybe he thought I was too chicken to use my gun. But the entire time Leo was recounting what Renner had said, the doctor’s hand had been inching toward a nearby cauliflower.

“Halt,” I barked. His hand jerked and whipped to his side. I gestured to the hypodermic syringe and vial at the end of the table. “Move.”

I hated shots, but I forced my hands to remain steady as, keeping Gran’s derringer pointed at his heart, I instructed him to prepare an injection. He sought my permission to replace his monocle, which had hung loosely by its strap since my surprise entry, then reluctantly did my bidding.