The Doomsday Conspiracy (9 page)

"Tsk, tsk. That's terrible."

"Would you mind giving me a lift into Zurich?"

"Not at all. Get in, get in."

The hitchhiker opened the door and climbed in beside him.

"This is very kind of you," she said.

"My name is Karen."

"Hans." He started driving.

"I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't come along, Hans."

"Oh, I'm sure someone else would have picked up a pretty woman like you."

She moved closer to him.

"But I'll bet he wouldn't have been as good looking as you." He glanced over at her.

"Ja?"

"I think you are very handsome." He smiled.

"You should tell that to my wife."

"Oh, you're married." She sounded disappointed.

"Why is it all the wonderful men are married? You look very intelligent, too."

He sat up straighter.

"To tell you the truth, I'm sorry I ever got involved with my boyfriend." She shifted around in her seat, and her skirt climbed up her thigh. He tried not to look.

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"I like older, mature men, Hans. I think they're much more sexy than young men." She snuggled up against him.

"Do you like sex, Hans?"

He cleared his throat.

"Do I-? Well, you know ... I'm a man.

"I can see that," she said. She stroked his thigh.

"Can I tell you something? That fight with my boyfriend made me very horny. Would you like me to make love to you?" He could not believe his luck. She was a beauty, and from what he could see, she had a great body. He swallowed.

"I would, but I'm on my way to work and-"

"It will only take a few minutes." She smiled.

"There's a side road up ahead that leads into the woods. Why don't we stop there?"

He could feel himself getting excited. Strher. Wait until I tell the boys at the office about this! They'll never believe it.

"Sure. Why not?"

Hans turned the car off the highway and took the little dirt road that led into a grove where they could not be seen by passing motorists. She slowly ran her hand up his thigh.

"Mein Gott, you have strong legs."

"I was a runner when I was younger," Beckerman boasted.

"Let's get your trousers off." She undid his belt and helped him slide his pants down. He was already tumescent.

"Ach! Ein grosser!" She began to stroke him. He moaned, "Leck which doch am Schwanz."

"You like to be kissed down there?"

"Ja." His wife never did that for him.

"Gut. Now just relax."

Beckerman sighed and closed his eyes. Her soft hands were caressing his balls. He felt the sharp sting of a needle in his thigh, and his eyes flew open.

"Wie?"

His body stiffened, and his eyes bulged out. He was choking, unable to breathe. The woman watched as Beckerman slumped over the steering wheel. She got out of the car and slid his body into the passenger seat, then got behind the wheel of the car and drove back down the dirt road onto the highway. At the edge of the steep mountain road, she waited until the road was clear, then opened the door, stepped on the gas pedal, and as the car started to move, she jumped. She stood there Page 51

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watching the car tumble down the steep cliff. Five minutes later, a black limousine pulled up beside her.

"Irgendwelche Problem?"

"Keins."

Fritz Mandel was in his office ready to close the garage when two men approached.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I'm closing. I can't" One of the men interrupted.

"Our car is stuck down the highway.

Kaputt! We need a tow."

"My wife is waiting for me. We are having company tonight. I can give you the name of another-"

"It's worth two hundred dollars to us. We're in a hurry."

"Two hundred dollars?"

"Yes. And our car is in pretty bad shape. We'd like you to do some work on it. That would probably come to another two, three hundred." Mandel was becoming interested.

"Ja?"

"It's a Rolls," one of the men said.

"Let's see the kind of equipment you have here." They walked into the service area and stood at the edge of the pit.

"That's pretty good equipment."

"Yes, sir," Mandel said proudly.

"The very best." The stranger took out a wallet.

"Here. I can give you some money in advance." He removed some bills and handed them to Mandel. As he did so, the wallet slipped out of his hands and fell down into the pit.

"Verflucht!"

"Don't worry," Mandel said.

"I'll get it." He climbed down into the pit. As he did so' one of the men walked over to the control button that operated the raised hydraulic lift and pressed it. The lift started to descend. Mandel looked up.

"Be careful! What are you doing?"

He started to scramble up the side. As his fingers touched the ledge, the second man slammed his foot down on Mandel's hand, smashing it, and Handel dropped back down into the pit, shrieking. The heavy hydraulic lift was inexorably descending on him.

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"Let me out of here!" he cried.

"Hille!" The lift caught him on his shoulder and began pressing him down into the cement floor. A few minutes later, when the terrible screams had stopped, one of the men pressed the button that raised the lift. His companion went down into the pit and retrieved his wallet, careful not to get blood on his clothes. The two men returned to their car and drove off into the quiet night.

FLASH MESSAGE TOP SECRET ULTRA

ESPIONAGE ABTEILUNG TO DEPUTY DIRECTOR NSA

EYES ONLY

COPY ONE OF (ONE) COPIES

SUBJECT: OPERATION DOOMSDAY

1. HANS BECKERMAN-TERMINATED

2. FRITZ MANDEL TERMINATED

END OF MESSAGE

Ottawa, Canada 2400 Hours

Janus was addressing the group of twelve.

"Satisfactory progress is being made. Two of the witnesses have already been silenced. Commander Bellamy is on the trail of a third."

"Has there been a breakthrough yet on SDI?" The Italian.

Impetuous. Volatile.

"Not yet, but we're confident that the Star Wars technology will be up and functioning very soon."

"We must do everything possible to hurry it. If it is a question of money" The Saudi. Enigmatic. Withdrawn.

"No. There's just a bit more testing to do."

"When is the next test taking place?"

The Australian. Hearty.

Clever.

"In one week. We will meet here again in forty-eight hours." Day Four-London

Thursday, October 18

Leslie Mothershed's role model was Robin Leach. An avid viewer of

"Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," Mothershed carefully studied the way Robin Leach's guests walked and talked and dressed because he knew that one day he would appear on that program. From the time he was a small boy, he had felt that he was destined to be somebody, to be rich Page 53

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and famous.

"You're very special," his mother would tell him.

"My baby is going to be known all over the world." The young boy would go to sleep with that sentence ringing in his ears until he truly believed it. As Mothershed grew older, he became aware that he had a problem: He had no idea exactly how he was going to become rich and famous. For a period of time, he toyed with the notion of being a movie star, but he was inordinately shy. He briefly contemplated becoming a soccer star, but he was not athletic. He thought about being a famous scientist, or a great lawyer, commanding tremendous fees. His school grades, unfortunately, were mediocre, and he dropped out of school without being any closer to fame. Life was simply not fair. He was physically unprepossessing, thin, with a pale, sickly complexion, and he was short, exactly five feet five and a half inches. Mothershed always stressed the extra half inch. He consoled himself with the fact that many famous men were short: Dudley Moore, Dustin Hoffman, Peter Falk....

The only profession that really interested Leslie Mothershed was photography. Taking photographs was so ridiculously simple. Anyone could do it. One simply pressed a button. His mother had bought him a camera for his sixth birthday and had been wildly extravagant in her praise of the pictures he had taken. By the time he was in his teens, Mothershed had become convinced that he was a brilliant photographer. He told himself that he was every bit as good as Ansel Adams, Richard Avedon, or Margaret Bourke-White. With a loan from his mother, Leslie Mothershed set up his own photography business in his Whitechapel flat.

"Start small," his mother told him, "but think big," and that is exactly what Leslie Mothershed did. He started very small and thought very big, but unfortunately, he had no talent for photography. He photographed parades and animals and flowers, and confidently sent his pictures off to newspapers and magazines, and they were always returned. Mothershed consoled himself with the thought of all the geniuses who had been rejected before their ability was recognized. He considered himself a martyr to philistinism.

And then, out of the blue, his big opportunity had come. His mother's cousin, who worked for the British publishing firm of HarperCollins, had confided to Mothershed that they were planning to commission a coffeetable book on Switzerland.

"They haven't selected the photographer yet, Leslie, so if you get yourself over to Switzerland right away and bring back some great pictures, the book could be yours."

Leslie Mothershed hurriedly packed up his cameras and headed for Switzerland. He knew-he really knew-that this was the break he had been looking for. At last the idiots were going to recognize his talents. He rented a car in Geneva and traveled around the country taking pictures of Swim chalets, waterfalls, and snowcapped peaks. He photographed sunrises and sunsets and farmers working in the fields. And then, in the middle of all that, fate had stepped in and Aged his lile. He was on his way to Bern when his motor failed. He pulled over to the side of the highway, ~ous. why me? Mothershed moaned. Why do these things always hap~ ~ me? He sat there fuming, thinking about the p~o~ time lost and how expensive it would be to have his oar towed. Page 54

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Fif:een kilometers behind him was the village of 'l'him. I'll get a tow from there, Mothershed thought. That shouldn't cost too much. He flagged down a passing gasoline trnc~.

"I need a tow truck," Mothershed explained.

"Could you stop at a garage in Thun and have them come and get me?" The truck driver shook his head.

"It's Sunday, mister.

The closest garage that's open will be in Bern."

"Bern? That's fifty kilometers from here. It will cost me a fortune." The truck driver grinned.

"Ja. There they get you by the Sundays." He started to drive on.

"Wait." It was difficult to get the words out.

"I'll-I'll pay for a tow truck from Bern."

"Gut. I will have them send someone out." Leslie Mothershed sat cursing in his disabled car. All I needed was this, he thought bitterly. He had already spent much too much money on film, and now he would have to pay some bloody thief to tow him to a garage. It took almost two interminable hours for the tow truck to arrive. As the mechanic started to attach the cable from his truck to the car, there was a flash of light from across the highway, followed by a loud explosion, and Mothershed looked up to see what appeared to be a bright object falling out of the sky. The only other traffic on the highway was a tour bus that had pulled to a stop in back of his car. The passengers from the bus were hurrying toward the scene of the crash. Mothershed hesitated, torn between his curiosity and his desire to move on. He turned and followed the bus passengers across the highway. When he reached the scene of the accident, he stood there transfixed. Holy God, he thought. It's unreal. He was staring at a flying saucer. Leslie Mothershed had heard about flying saucers and had read about them, but he had never believed they existed. He gaped at it, awed by the eerie spectacle. The shell had ripped open, and he could see two bodies inside, small, with large skulls, sunken eyes, no ears and almost no chins, and they seemed to be wearing some kind of silver metallic suits.

The group from the tour bus was standing around him staring in horrified silence. The man next to him fainted. Another man turned away and vomited. An elderly priest was clutching his beads and mumbling incoherently.

"My God," someone said.

"It's a flying saucer!"

And that was when Mothershed had his epiphany. A miracle had fallen into his lap. He-Leslie Mothershed-was on the spot with his cameras to photograph the story of the century! There was not a magazine or Page 55

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newspaper in the world that would reject the photographs he was about to take. A coffee-table book about Switzerland? He almost laughed aloud at the idea. He was about to astonish the whole world. All the television talk shows would be begging from him, but he would do Robin Leach's show first. He would sell his photographs to the London Times, the Sun, the Mail, the Mirror-to all the English newspapers, and to the foreign papers and magazinesLe Figaro and Paris-Match, Oggi and Per Tag. Time and USA Today. The press everywhere would be pleading with him for his photographs. Japan and South America and Russia and China and-there was no end to it. Mothershed's heart was fluttering with excitement. I won't give anyone an exclusive. Each one will have to pay me individually. I'll start at a hundred thousand pounds a picture, maybe two hundred thousand. And I'll sell them over and over again. He began feverishly adding up the money he was going to make. Leslie Mothershed was so busy adding up his fortune that he almost forgot to take the pie.

"Oh, my God! Excuse me," he said, to no one in particular, and raced back across the highway to get his camera equipment. The mechanic had finished hoisting the front end of the disabled vehicle in the air, ready to tow it away.