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“Excellent. Listen, we caught Basque.”

“He’s in custody?”

“Yes.”

I summarized the fight in the marsh.

“And Miss Weathers and her daughter are okay?”

“It looks like they are. Yes. Ralph got bitten by a dog—”

“I’m fine,” he grumbled loud enough for her to hear on the other end of the phone.

“So he says,” I told her.

Now for the news I hadn’t really wanted to share: I related what Basque did to the two agents and the Maryland State Police officer.

There was a long stretch of silence and at last Lien-hua said, “At least it’s finally over.”

“Yeah. It’s over.”

Another moment passed. “I’m not sure this is the right time to bring this up, but Margaret assigned Agents Davenport and Perry to look into the possibility of other Calydrole-related suicides. A few minutes ago Davenport stumbled across a suicide in Montana that looks related.”

“What did he find?”

“A woman named Natalie Germaine took her life about two weeks ago. The mechanism of death was different from Corey Wellington’s — she overdosed rather than stabbing herself — but she was taking Calydrole, and here’s the clincher: she was the sister of Congressman Welker.”

“Siblings of two important public figures — the FBI Director and a congressman — both commit suicide and both are taking the same medication for depression?”

“It could have been a coincidence,” she said unconvincingly.

“Yeah, I don’t think so.”

“In this case, I’d have to agree with you.”

“Was any Calydrole found at the scene?”

“No. But Natalie had been spending a few nights each week at her boyfriend’s house and left a blister pack of pills over there — and yes, it’s the same lot number as the empty pack found in Corey Wellington’s house. Perry just confirmed the lot number not five minutes before you called.”

“So we have samples of the pills?”

“There are ten left.”

“Alright, tomorrow morning have them next-day-air the pills here to DC — some to the FDA and PTPharmaceuticals for testing, and let’s have a couple sent to the FBI Lab for analysis.”

“Already packaged and ready to go. Davenport and Perry are going to broaden this thing, look more carefully into other government officials and members of Congress who’ve had family members commit suicide recently.”

“Good. And have the police out in Montana look for Tyree’s prints at the scene. Especially on the medicine cabinet.”

“I’ll have Davenport put the request through.” Then she added, “And, Pat. I’m glad you got Basque. And that you’re okay. Good work.”

“I’m glad we got him too.”

It seemed like there might be more to say, but neither of us came up with anything and we ended the call.

We had Basque.

Saundra and Noni were safe.

Lien-hua was scheduled to be released tomorrow morning.

We were moving in the right direction to decipher the Calydrole riddle.

Despite all the tragedy that had happened tonight, starting tomorrow, maybe things would finally settle down and begin to get back to normal again.

53

Keith closed the hotel room door and set his suitcase beside the bed closest to the bathroom.

“I may be up for a while,” Vanessa told him. “I have a brief I’m preparing.”

“I understand.”

“You did a fine job in India. With Eashan and Jagjeevan.”

It wasn’t really something he wanted to talk about. “Thank you.”

“We get paid this weekend. Maybe you can retire those pruning shears.” But she gave him a half grin that spoke for itself: Or not.

Honestly, there was nothing Keith wanted more than to be done with those shears for good. However, fear of Valkyrie had kept him involved in this so far and, although he hated to admit it, would keep him involved as long as Valkyrie wanted.

“Good night, Corporal,” Vanessa said. “I’ll try not to keep you up too late.”

“Alright, good night.”

When pharmaceutical products are shipped to the U.S. from overseas, as long as they’re part of the legitimate supply chain, they’re not inspected. They arrive at a dock or an airport, the paperwork is verified, the packaging is checked for tampering, and then, rather unceremoniously, they’re loaded onto semis and shipped to distribution centers.

Tomorrow, he and Vanessa would be taking the steps necessary to ensure that this process went by without a hitch for the seventy thousand pills that were on their way to Logan International Airport.

* * *

Valkyrie reviewed his plan.

Keith and Vanessa had untangled the snags at the facility in Kadapa; the shipment would be ready for distribution Friday evening. The packets of medication would be sent out and the irreversible effects would ripple through the pharmaceutical industry.

PTPharmaceuticals’ shares would plummet, he would cash-settle his options, and the transaction would be complete.

It would provide him with enough funds to take revenge, not on the person who’d taken Tatiana’s life, but on the people who had trained her killer to do so.

Valkyrie unlashed the tarp covering the deck of the thirty-five-foot cruising yacht he had acquired yesterday. The boat was still docked at Seaboard Marina on the Potomac River, but it was going to provide him a way to leave the city if circumstances called for it.

Airports and roads would be out of the question.

The river would work.

Last winter, after dealing with a misunderstanding in Pakistan involving a terrorist sympathizer named Abdul Razzaq Muhammad, Valkyrie had been able to funnel a substantial amount of money into the hands of the Chechens to help fund an upcoming attack against Moscow. Now he would get the amount they would need to complete their mission.

In September of 2004, they’d taken over a middle school in Beslan and 335 people were killed when Russian troops entered the building and failed to stop the rebels.

That was one school.

And although the Chechens hadn’t been nearly as proactive over the last few years in contending for their independence, a small group of determined freedom fighters had been putting some rather elaborate plans together to strike at the heart of Moscow, at twenty-two schools where the majority of the children and grandchildren of the ruling party attended.

Valkyrie recalled something he’d read long ago: “Vengeance will never bring you peace, only a new kind of prison.”

Well, over the years he had learned that it was true.

After all, there is a beast that lives within each of us, a beast that screams out for its own kind of justice and will be restless and enraged and sometimes all-consuming until it gets what it wants.

Even if it destroys you.

Or seals you in your own personal prison.

He’d taken the life of the person he loved the most. Now he would punish the people who had created the beast that he was.

Not justice, perhaps, but at least fulfilling the role of the Valkyrie in deciding who will live and who will die on the battlefield of life.

He finished rolling up the tarp.

According to the message Alhazur Daudov, the Chechen paramilitary commander he was working with, had sent him, the meeting to iron out all the details was scheduled to happen on Friday night at 7:30 p.m. here on the yacht. From there, if necessary, they would travel together to the distribution center here in DC where the drugs would be waiting, to ascertain that everything was in place for the shipment to go out the following morning.