Shadow Hand Page 6

  Consciousness came like a hard, vicious slap. From the major’s expression, it would have been an actual slap if she hadn’t been using both hands to restrain Ash.

  “What? Did I...?”

  “No, but you came too damned close!”

  “How could you tell?” Ash didn’t try to deny it. There was a hint of a tingle in her right hand.

  “I could feel your energy gathering. For God’s sake, learn some control before you kill yourself and everyone around you!” At such close quarters, it was all too easy to hear the major’s fury even though she kept her voice low. She eased off, releasing Ash’s hands. “I’d been wondering whether taking you to the PsyCenter was the best plan after all, but you’ve clearly got a whole lot more learning to do.” Her tone slumped from anger into frustration. “I’d hoped...” She shook her head and swung back into her own seat. In the whole attack-and-retreat maneuver, Ash didn’t think the major’s sleek skirt had once slid above knee level. That took talent.

  Ash felt too wrung out, too ashamed, to ask what the major had hoped for. She knew, had known all along, that she had to learn to control a power that could be deadly. If they had only left her alone, with Cleo to support her, steady her! Cleo had already been helping her to test herself—subtly, carefully, feeling out what she could do and how to control it.

  But she’d left Cleo behind without even a struggle. It didn’t matter that resistance wouldn’t have done any good. She’d owed it to Cleo to try. She could have pointed out that Cleo had been with her at the start, and every time she’d done something major—the jeep, the medevac about to crash. Maybe Ash couldn’t do as much without her. In spite of how strong the thrill of power made her feel at times, maybe she really, really couldn’t.

  Before meeting Cleo, Ash had been more or less on her own since her early teens, but she’d never felt as alone as she did now.

  They transferred to an Army plane headed, Ash noticed, to Munich, not Berlin. Whatever their actual destination, the major didn’t want it widely known. Ash wasn’t surprised. She didn’t bother to ask where they were going, but turned to her companion once they were at cruising altitude.

  “Major, I apologize for my negligence. But I want to assure you that I couldn’t have damaged the ‘copter’s rotors even if I’d tried. I need to see things before I can affect them, or at least have them in my line of sight.” It didn’t seem necessary to mention the key ring in Cleo’s pocket. That was something else entirely. Something profoundly private.

  “Don’t count on that. You haven’t known before what you could do until you did it. There’ll be more times like that. Just be damned well prepared to stop yourself if your impulse is wrong.” McAllister didn’t sound angry anymore, just tired.

  “I will. I’ll learn whatever they can teach me.” That much, Ash thought, was absolute honesty. How she used what she learned would be her own business.

  The major sighed, then startled Ash by nearly echoing her thoughts. “Lieutenant, I’ll be honest with you. You’d better manage to learn more than they can teach you. They’ll have no idea what to do with you. Oh, they’ll have plenty of ideas about things they want you to do for them, but not how to train you to do them. We’ve never found anyone with quite your talents before. Nobody who could do more than move a chess piece or flip a card, although we have some hotshots who can read your mind enough to know what cards you’re holding. Don’t get suckered into any poker games.”

  The major’s odd lack of military formality in spite of her immaculate uniform had been evident from the start, but the way she was talking now to a junior officer was astounding. How did she get away with it? Maybe she didn’t, entirely. If she’d been in training with Colonel Rogers, she hadn’t been promoted as far, as soon.

  “What you’ll get, I hope,” she went on, “is space to experiment, try things out, without worrying about panicking bystanders. There are more places in this world than you might think where you’d be accused of witchcraft.”

  “If they can’t help me, why couldn’t I do all that experimentation someplace else?” Someplace in Montana, in the mountains, Ash thought wistfully, with a cabin in a forest-ringed meadow, an Appaloosa mare grazing out back, and Cleo to share her bed and her life. And, knowing Cleo, a couple of old junkers out front to tinker with until they became stealth race cars.

  “Reg-u-la-tions, of course.” McAllister’s tone was mocking, and more than a touch bitter. “Besides, it’s my job to deliver you there. My ‘patriotic duty’ as an officer and a, well, whatever.” For a couple of minutes, she was silent, then said abruptly, “Hell, I may be wrong about what they can do. There are a couple of other PsyCenters, much farther away, and this one has been declining for the last year. A new director has just been appointed, though. I haven’t even met him yet. Maybe he’ll do better. I hear through the grapevine that he’s a bit of a loose cannon, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.” She must have noticed Ash’s expression, half shock and half barely suppressed laughter. “You’re thinking I’m pretty much a loose cannon, too. Why not? None of us involved with Psy research are what you’d call normal. What use would we be if we were?”

  Now Ash did laugh. “Then Cleo—Sergeant Brown—would fit right in. You should have brought her along, too.”

  McAllister turned serious. “I thought about that. But something tells me that she has more important things to do where she is, for now.”

  In Munich, they boarded a much smaller plane. When it headed approximately north by northeast Ash was even less surprised than she’d been on the first flight. This was a route she’d flown before.

  “Hohenfels?” she asked, but it wasn’t really a question.

  “You got it. Familiar territory, right?”

  The Joint Multinational Readiness Center at Hohenfels was a major base for training soldiers before they were sent to assignments in the Middle East, although the Bavarian hills and villages weren’t at all like the terrain and culture where they’d be going. Four years ago, Ash, already missing the forested mountain slopes in Montana she’d been so eager to leave behind, had taken full advantage of all the running trails steep enough to be challenging, and even managed a couple of trips for Alpine skiing in the south. The training had been rough, and Ash had been glad enough to leave, but life since then had been even rougher, and the green woodlands would be a welcome change. If, that is, she’d be allowed the freedom to enjoy them.

  “I never heard of the PsyCenter. It must be pretty hush-hush, which makes sense, I guess.”

  “It’s only been there for about three years. I never did know who pulled what strings to get the funding, but they’ve had just about enough in the way of results to keep it going.”

  “What do you consider ‘results’?” Ash figured she might as well be as frank as the major. “Psychic warfare?”

  “Hah. They wish. Nothing proven yet. A guy who can tell what card somebody in another room is holding might be able to read a document somebody else is reading, but strings of words are more complicated than numbered cards with simple pictures. Besides, they’d have to get the card-reading guy in the room next to the document guy, when he was actually viewing the document, and that’s not about to happen any time soon. And predicting the flip of a coin even three times out of four is still poor odds when they need to know which way a tank is going to fire next. Naturally, the prime form of entertainment there is betting on or against each other.” Her tone became more thoughtful, and a bit sad. “There are also some seriously gifted people there, and a couple of seriously disturbed ones who should be getting help instead of being made to perform, but no actual weaponization has been worked out. Yet. Not that they aren’t trying.”

  Ash hadn’t missed her use of “they” instead of “we,” yet McAllister was the one forcing her to join this ominously screwball group. Probably just a trick along the lines of “good cop, bad cop.”

  “
So you think I could move the document itself into your hot little hands, if I could be, say, in the same building? I already told you I have to be able to see the objects I move.”

  Ash’s emphasis on “your” didn’t escape the major, whose lips twitched into a near smile. She gazed at Ash thoughtfully for a long minute. “Not even if the object is in someone’s pocket? Someone very…close?”

  So she was more of a mind reader than she’d let on. Ash gazed levelly back at her and didn’t answer. Finally, the major shook her head. “Just a very fuzzy impression I got. Once in a while, when someone’s on a wavelength very close to mine, I can see a few things.” She paused again, then shrugged. “I’ve never told them that at the Center, so I’d appreciate it if you don’t, either. And don’t, whatever you do, show them more about what you can do than you absolutely have to. Official questions, direct orders if you can’t avoid them, yes, but don’t make things too easy for them too soon.”

  This time Ash came right out with it. “‘Them’? You’ve got this ‘good cop’ thing down pat.”

  “One of my many talents.” McAllister’s grin was wide but brief.

  Chapter 5

  The PsyCenter turned out to be in a looming stone building high on a hillside and set partially into the earth behind it, bunker-style. Barbed wire–topped concrete walls surrounded it, but there was no other indication of it being an Army facility.

  The heavy gate opened for the military car that had met them at the airfield. An armed sentry waved them through.

  “This place!” Ash shook her head. In her many times climbing the trails nearby, she’d never noticed any signs of life here at all. “I always figured it for some kind of abandoned insane asylum.”

  “How appropriate,” McAllister said dryly. “It was a summer lodge for one of Hitler’s minor flunkies. A lot of that kind of thing in these hills and down toward the Bavarian Alps.”

  “Oh, great.” Ash couldn’t figure out what the major’s game was, but she clearly had one, and it concerned Ash herself in some way. Just then, though, they stopped at the entrance, grim in spite of elaborate stucco ornamentation, and guarded by two more armed sentries. Why all the security? But she had no more time to ponder.

  An orderly took their bags and disappeared into an antique gated elevator, while the major took Ash on a tour of the main floor.

  “Introducing you around will let me assess what’s going on with new director here.”

  Ash let herself be used. She wanted to assess what was going on, too.

  In a spacious room furnished with cushioned sofas and chairs, a billiard table, and a well-stocked bar, several card games went on at green baize-covered tables. McAllister nodded to a few men who looked up.

  One said, “Hey, Mac, who’ve you got there? About time we had more ladies around here.” At that, most of the others looked up, too.

  “Gentlemen, this is Lieutenant Ashton, who’ll be training in this fine establishment for a while. I suggest you be very, very nice to her. And very, very careful. The lieutenant knows how to handle herself.”

  There was general laughter, except from a couple of men who never raised their eyes from whatever they were studying—cards, books, or in one case, a bare tabletop. One with sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve stood and saluted, but the rest appeared to be civilians, and even the sergeant wore jeans with his Army-issue shirt. Ash returned the salute, looked the group over, and gave them a casual nod.

  “Ladies?” she asked. “Are there not many here already?”

  The men looked at each other like teenage boys waiting for somebody else to field a question. “Just one,” the original speaker said at last. “Mona Litvik. Two, if we can count Major Ratlaff’s secretary.” This brought sly grins and subtly shuffling feet.

  I have GOT to get out of here soon, Ash thought as McAllister steered her toward the hallway.

  “Let’s go see how Mona is doing, shall we?”

  Mona, it turned out, was lurking just around the corner. The major gave her a gentle hug, and Ash, noticing the pale, wispy hair and narrow face lined with anxiety, thought she must be one of those disturbed souls who needed help.

  “Hello, Mona, I’m Ash,” she said, and Mona, looking over the major’s shoulder, gave her a tremulous smile.

  “You’ll be good friends.” McAllister stepped back and gave Ash a look that said she’d damned well better be a good friend. “How are things going, Mona? What do you think of the new director?”

  Mona’s face tightened. “Major Ratlaff is crazier than anybody else here.” Her low voice shook from time to time. Her slight accent might have been Polish, or from one of the Baltic states. “He takes me through the cellars and the tunnels and out in the hills looking for where things might be buried, things from the Nazi officers, or even from very ancient people. Bodies too. And if there’s treasure he wants it for himself.”

  “Come on, we’ll talk upstairs.” McAllister led them to the room allotted to Ash, who didn’t miss that the door could be locked from the outside, but not the inside. Maybe this building had been an insane asylum after all. Maybe it still was. The major saw that too, frowned, then went on in.

  Ash’s bags had already been set on the bed. There was only one chair, so she amused herself by making the bags rise from the bed and tuck themselves underneath it so she and Mona could sit there. No point in pretending when everybody else here had talents too.

  “Cool!” Mona gazed at her, wide-eyed. “I wish I could do that!”

  “What do you do?” Ash asked, then wished she hadn’t.

  Mona bent her head, looked down, and muttered, “I find dead people. And places where things have been buried.”

  “But…don’t they have dogs for that?” Ash blurted. “And metal detectors and X-rays or something?”

  Mona looked up and said, simply, “I do it better.”

  “Yes, you do,” McAllister said. “But the director has no business using you for his own purposes.”

  “He wants to take me to the mountains, to the Untersberg, where there is a legend that Charlemagne is sleeping in a cave of ice deep inside the mountain, waiting for the time when he will be called back to save the Holy Roman Empire.”

  “Wow,” McAllister muttered. “Okay, that’s crazy. I may have to pull some strings in high places. We’ll see.”

  Ash decided that if the major didn’t handle things, she herself would take drastic steps to keep poor Mona from being abused. Her sad talent was hard enough for anyone to bear.

  “Meanwhile, Mona, have there been any messages for me?” McAllister shifted in her chair, nervous in a way Ash had never expected to see.

  “Oh, yes, two days ago. Hidden in the usual place.” Mona fumbled inside her shirt and brought out a folded paper.

  “Maybe I should go, um, stretch my legs.” Ash stood, but the major shook her head.

  “No. Stay.” The paper she unfolded looked, from what Ash could see, like a crossword puzzle in some language using foreign characters. Not Arabic, but vaguely similar.

  McAllister studied it. A guttural sound deep in her throat was quickly stifled. She stood, grasping the back of the chair for a moment, and Ash began to step forward in case she staggered, but the major waved her back. “I have to leave. At once. Mona, stay close to Ash. Ash, take care of Mona. Let your inner bear loose if necessary.”

  Then she was gone, and minutes later they watched through the window as she strode across the driveway, duffel bag in hand, wearing not a skirt but full desert camo, boots and all. The car that had brought them was still there, and its driver came running out of the building, got behind the wheel, and they were off.

  “What’s that all about?”

  Mona shrugged. “I just save the messages for her. She’s never run off that fast, though. And just before dinner time!”

  So I’m left holding the bag, Ash thought,
with no idea what’s in it.

  By the end of dinner, though, she had a pretty good idea. There were other people around besides those she’d seen in the card room, mostly civilians, mostly keeping to themselves. There were also staff members who appeared to do nothing but watch the…well, the inmates. The new director gave off creepy vibes, and from the way several guys eyed him—or avoided looking at him—he’d already given cause to be hated. His secretary, a specialist with the same build and coloring as Ash herself, was pretty clearly having an affair with him, and glowered at the way he was blatantly checking out Ash.

  After dinner, Major Ratlaff summoned her to his office, closing the door in his secretary’s face.

  “So, Lieutenant, I hear you have some major chops. Bringing down a helicopter!”

  “No, sir, holding up a helicopter. It was an emergency. I couldn’t do it again.”

  “Up, down. What’s the difference? Bringing one down should be easier. We can’t requisition one to practice on right away, though. We’ll just have to work closely together on useful exercises. Very closely.”

  She’d throw him over one of those rocky cliffs out back before she’d work “closely” with him. “Sir, it’s been a very long couple of days. I don’t think I can work on anything right now, so I’ll just say good night.” She swung around, made the door open well before she reached it, nodded to the secretary lurking outside, and went to her room.

  Mona knocked softly a few minutes later. Ash let her in and got right down to business. “Do you want to get out of here? Do you have somewhere to go?”

  Mona shook her head slowly, sadly. “No place I could get to. I don’t have any money, and all my documents are locked in the office.”

  “So that bastard doesn’t give you a cut of any treasure you help him find?”

  “All I’ve found here so far is a hidden room full of wine bottles in the cellar, and a cave in the hills that somebody had already cleaned out. Just a couple of coins in the rubble. He did offer me a drink of wine, but his eyes scared me and I wouldn’t take it.”