The Last Airship Read online

  I was on bloody holiday!

  Sam knew better than to get into this argument with his father. Besides, given what had happened, the point was moot.

  “This isn’t about work. This is serious!” Sam said. “Someone tried and very nearly succeeded in killing me.”

  “Really?” His father sounded interested, or at least somewhat amused – certainly not concerned in the way a reasonable parent would be, but rather in the way that a rich man might enjoy hearing a good anecdote.

  It took Sam several minutes to relate the entire story to his dad, omitting how he survived by using his dive equipment, and focusing on the fact that someone wanted him dead. He also included his opinion that at this stage, his only guess as to the reason why, was because he’d discovered the possible resting place of an old WWII airship filled with what he assumed were Jewish treasures. He concluded with the name on the back of the helicopter, which had been aboard the offending ship, Wolfgang Corporation.

  Sam’s father didn’t interrupt, and allowed him to finish the entire story.

  “Oh, by the way, I met a beautiful girl when I got back to shore,” Sam said. “I don’t know if I’d ever welcome another near death experience just to meet her, but she seemed pretty great to me.”

  “A girl, hey?”

  Sam knew that his father would be far more interested in hearing about her than he was in hearing the rest of Sam’s story.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Aliana.”

  “Nice name. So, what are you going to do about all this?” His father was always direct.

  “Tom and I are going to Europe to see what we can find, and where it leads us.”

  “And the Maria Helena? What about your responsibilities there?” his father asked.

  “We’re finished in Australia. Matthew is transferring her back to San Diego. She needs an overhaul anyway. I won’t be missed, and Tom is owed leave.” He then paused for a moment, and asked, “Dad, have you ever heard of the Wolfgang Corporation?”

  “No, should I have?”

  “I don’t know. It’s the only name I have to link to the man who attempted to kill me.” Sam paused, and then said, “Dad, I need you to look into the Wolfgang Corporation for me.”

  “I understand.” His father had many connections, and they went just about as high up and as low down as could be imagined.

  Sam knew that his dad had sunk large amounts of money into Obama’s election campaign in 2008, and, ever since the man’s presidential success, the two men had maintained a close relationship. As a result, his father had been appointed a senior financial advisor to the Obama administration. The President would have been pissed as hell if he ever learned that Sam’s dad had also poured money into John McCain’s campaign coffers. Sam doubted that his father would use any official channels to conduct this search. His father kept a number of mercenaries around the globe who provided very specialized services. Some of them were legal, many were questionable, and others were utterly, outright, illegal.

  In this case, Sam was entirely indifferent as to the method his father would use, but he was certain that his father would be able to get him some answers without revealing the fact that Sam was still alive.

  His father was an immensely intelligent, mostly self-centered, megalomaniac, who had spent his entire life satisfying his own appetites, but in the few rare times that Sam had needed his help, his dad had been there for him.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Take care of yourself, son.” As an afterthought, he added, “Say hi to your mom for me, will you?”

  “Will do, Dad.”

  “By the way, how was your sailing trip? Did you find what you’ve been looking for?”

  Sam thought about it for a while.

  His mind flashed back to the terrifying night with his brother, and then to the more recent night, when he sailed through Bass Strait while it was squeezed between a catastrophic high and low convergence.

  The night was rough, that was for sure, but no, it wasn’t the same.

  “No, not yet.”

  Chapter Nine

  Blake Simmonds walked out of his office on the afternoon of the August 26th and strolled up Waldorf Street, in the heart of Berlin. Standing at a height of six foot, five inches, he had always been tall, and found that as he’d aged, it became harder to disguise the fact that he walked with a limp.

  At the age of 68, he had begun to hope that he would be long gone before his current problem came to the light of man.

  He caught a taxi to a place where he’d worked hard to forget for many years. Before reaching his destination, the taxi slowed to a halt near the site of a recent accident. Paramedics were still at the scene and were attempting to free an injured man from his vehicle.

  “I’ll walk from here.” Blake said, as he rapped on the divider which separated the driver from his passengers.

  The man pointed at the fare owed, and he paid it in full, without adding a tip.

  As he began to walk along the footpath, his cell phone rang.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Blake, its James Reilly here. Can you talk?”

  He almost laughed. James never asked for anything, he only ever commanded.

  Something’s up.

  “Of course,” Blake said. “What I can I do for you?”

  “John Wolfgang just fucked me good. He’s stolen it from me, and after we had made a deal! I want it back, and I want him to suffer for his impudence. I don’t care what it costs – just make it happen.”

  “Really?” Blake Simmonds kept walking; a broad smile appearing on his face. “Yes, of course. I will fix this for you.”

  “See that you do.”

  The phone went silent.

  It was turning into a much better day than he’d anticipated.

  With his cane in his left hand, he walked the three blocks until he reached the new Remington building, and without pausing to admire its futuristic architecture, he entered.

  He looked at the receptionist.

  Now in her late forties, she had lost none of her youthful looks. She’d been there since the first time he’d been there. She had fair hair, blue eyes, and a slim figure. She was beguiling. Her fingers didn’t pause for a second, he noticed as they danced over the keyboard on one of those old-fashioned typewriters. Her master, Blake knew, was a cautious man by his very nature, and would never allow company records to be placed on anything that a fifteen year old computer whiz could hack into in a matter of minutes. The information collected in this building was far too valuable for that.

  She smiled politely at him without saying anything, as if she’d expected him to show up today.

  Blake walked past her without saying a word, entered the room behind her, and then closed the door.

  The man in front of him didn’t bother to stand up or greet him. His skin was relatively dark, and gave him the appearance of someone of Mediterranean or even Middle Eastern descent.

  It had been a long time since Blake had seen the man.

  The man sighed, and then finally spoke to him, “We both knew this day would one day come.”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, what are we going to do about it?”

  *

  John Wolfgang looked out the window of his Lear Jet.

  It was a never-ending desert in all directions. Then, as the pilot made his approach, and softly set the jet down, until it lightly touched Sheik Abdulla Azzama's private runway, he noticed a large, luxurious building, with an enormous pool surrounding it as if it were an island, like a mirage up ahead in the distance.

  He could already see the man’s armored Bentley drive along the runway towards them.

  The pilot had stopped the plane, but its engines could be heard idling in the background. He watched as several men rolled a gold-plated set of stairs towards his aircraft. Then, Sheik Abdulla stepped out of his vehicle. Confident from any threat in his own land, he alone walked toward the plane.

 
; John had no love for the man or for his damn holy wars, for that matter, but as he admired the gold-plated stairs, he had to admit that nobody could pay like the oil-rich masters of the Middle East.

  Abdulla was escorted into John’s luxurious board room, which was big enough to seat more than a dozen people. Today, it was to be the meeting place of just two men. In so doing, it provided both he and Abdulla a private place to converse with the absolute certainty that no one else was listening.

  John had already guessed that a number of intelligence agencies had captured the image of his jet setting down on the Sheik’s runway. He wasn’t worried. There was nothing illegal about that in itself. By all openly accepted and provable facts, the man he was here to meet was simply one of the region's wealthy Sheiks, but it didn’t take a genius to see where his money flowed further downstream. As far as John was concerned, it didn’t matter. By the time they completed their terrifying plan, the most powerful nations in the world would be crumbling and would be unable to harm him.

  The man came up to him and shook his hand, warmly.

  “So, the Magdalena’s vault has been found?” Abdulla spoke quietly, and animatedly.

  “Not quite, but we have the closest thing to a lead which seventy five years of searching for her has ever produced.” John said.

  “But, it gives us hope that it really did exist, and after all, hope is all that any of us can ask for?” Abdulla sighed. “It is proof that the Nazis never got their hands on it.”

  “Yes, if they’d made such a discovery, the world would have known about it. That’s for certain.”

  “And, you believe that you will be able to find her?” Abdulla stared at him, trying to discern whether or not John could actually provide what he had offered.

  “Yes, I’m certain of it. We have our best men on the job.”

  “But, will it have survived intact, after all this time?”

  “Yes.” John wrote something on the small piece of paper before him with his gold tipped Biro and then said, “Influenza A1W5 was designed to survive in environments that would destroy all other microbes, whether: viral, bacterial or fungal. It doesn’t require oxygen to survive, and consequently, it is completely viable in environments where other strains of virus wouldn’t survive. It spreads rapidly through both air and liquid vectors, but has an incubation period of up to three months, followed by an 80 percent mortality rate. With such a prolonged incubation period, the disease will spread globally before the CDC or WHO even knows that it exists. By the time the first horrified scientist examines it, the entire world will be infected.”

  “How long will it take them to combat it?”

  “I have no idea, but I am certain that someone will eventually be able to beat it,” John said. “But, by the time someone does, the world will have changed so much that who knows how many people will be left alive.”

  “How can you be so certain that a cure for the virus will ever be developed?”

  “Because my father created such a vaccine,” John replied.

  “Where is that vaccine now?”

  “Destroyed.” John lied, “Many years ago. Along with the life’s work of my father before the Berlin wall was finally demolished.

  “And the price?”

  He then slid the paper slip of paper over to him.

  The sheik smiled as he looked at the price tag.

  “Twenty billion dollars is a lot of money.” He looked as though he was considering the price of a pound of fish, and then he said, “But then resetting the key players in the world is worth it.”

  “I’ll need half the money now and the other half on delivery.”

  “But, of course. My men will take care of the transfer of money to a bank of your choosing.”

  With no further discussion, Abdulla left the room, walked through the narrow passageway, down the stairs, and climbed into his car, closing the door without looking back.

  John heard the jet engines power up to full.

  The entire aircraft shuddered under their force.

  Once airborne, John placed another secure call on his Sat phone. It rang a couple times before someone answered. This time, it was a woman’s voice on the line.

  “Yes?” She said.

  “I’ve done it,” he said. He then disconnected the phone and looked out the window once more, at the desert below.

  He would be glad to leave this desolate place.

  *

  Aliana was worried about her father.

  He had sounded more concerned than normal over the phone. Something was wrong. She was certain of it. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that she would have to fly to Europe and meet up with him before returning to her studies.

  She had three weeks left before she had to return to her university. Aliana’s thoughts instantly turned to Sam Reilly, the unique man she’d met in Australia. He’d said that he wanted to meet up again if she was ever free, and their lives crossed paths.

  And it appeared, that they just did. She would be in Europe the same time as him.

  Aliana looked at the phone number that Sam had given her. She could do with some fun, but she’d only make the call if there was time.

  Her father, she realized, often worried about a number of things which mattered little to her –money, younger women, expanding his already enormous wealth, and most of all, beating his father in the world of medicine. Her father's recent Nobel Prize went a long way toward improving his self-esteem, but like all great men, he needed more.

  When she’d spoken to him today, it was different. All those things, the money, the women, they were simply games to a man at the top echelon of a life filled with politicians, rich tycoons, and world-changing scientists.

  Something had rattled him.

  Whatever it was this time, it was different. It had really frightened him.

  Obviously, he wouldn’t talk to her about such things. He never had. To him, she would always be his 16 year old girl, despite her pursuit of a PhD in microbiology at MIT.

  That night, she made the decision to stop in at her father’s Berlin office before returning to Michigan. The next morning, she changed her flights, and 18 hours later, she was standing in front of his office building enjoying the warmth of a mild German summer.

  “Hey Dad…” she called out to him, as he came through the revolving door in front of his building.

  He stopped walking immediately.

  Aliana was happy to have genuinely surprised him.

  “Aliana.” He bent down to kiss her cheeks. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was worried about you.”

  “Me? Why would you worry about me?”

  “Come on, Dad. You can take me to dinner and tell me all about it.” Aliana said, knowing that her father would never betray his feelings out in the open.

  He took her to the Lorenz Adlon for dinner, located in the heart of Berlin. The two spoke about simpler things – how her studies were progressing, the growth of bacteria off the coast of Antarctica, and the effects of the further stabilization of the American dollar. After dinner, they walked back to the penthouse he kept in Berlin.

  Aliana was about to go to bed when she turned towards her father and said, “Dad, really … is everything all right?”

  “Yes, of course it is. Work’s just been keeping me busy, that’s all.” His words seemed sincere, but she noticed that he avoided meeting her eyes as he spoke.

  “Okay, then.” She kissed him on his cheek. “I’m going to bed. I just want you to know that I’m not a little girl anymore. If you need me, I’m here for you. I don’t start classes again for another two weeks.”

  “I know, but you will always be my little girl.”

  A half-hour later she heard a gentle knock on her door. She’d been reading a new thriller to take her mind off things.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you still awake, my love?”

  It was her father.

  “Yes,” Aliana replied as she met
him at the door.

  “Would you like a hot chocolate?”

  Years ago, the two of them would stay up chatting for hours, while sipping their rich hot chocolate. Real hot chocolate, the kind that only the Europeans believed in. None of this watered down, milky stuff they made elsewhere in the world.

  “Yes, I’d like that.”

  She followed him downstairs to the kitchen and watched as he added rich, cocoa into a flame-lit saucepan, followed by several blocks of solid chocolate, and stirring it slowly until it turned into a molten goo of chocolate.

  He then added several drops of rich liqueur.

  The two moved to the couch and sat alongside one another, sipping their hot chocolate for a few minutes before Aliana finally spoke.

  “Dad. What’s wrong?”

  “When you were very little, do you remember when I took financial backing from a man so that I could finally get your grandfather’s company back off the ground?”

  “Yes, of course. For years the newspapers questioned who your backer was, and why, even though you own fifty percent of the company, the other half has never been seen.”

  “For more than twenty years I have not heard so much as a single word from that man, not until a week ago.”

  “What did he say to you?”

  “He told me that it’s time for him to collect.”

  Chapter Ten

  Sam read a book during the long flight from Sydney to Munich on Lithuanian Airlines. After years of working in and out of helicopters, and after having flown aboard a number of fixed wing and rotary aircraft, one might assume that he was comfortable aboard the enormous Airbus A380.

  Yet, somehow he didn’t trust something quite so large in the air.

  Tom, he noted, hadn’t woken since their departure. Like a cat, he could sleep anywhere. He nudged Tom with the sharp point of his elbow.

  “Everyone’s starting to deplane.”

  “Oh yeah?” Tom feigned disappointment. “I said wake me when the food comes around!”