Karyn kept laughing.
She fled the bedroom and hurried to the front door.
These visits were a mistake. No more. Not now. Too much was about to happen.
The last thing she heard before leaving was the sickening sound of Karyn choking on her own saliva.
TWENTY-SIX
VENICE
8:45 P.M.
VINCENTI PAID THE WATER TAXI, THEN HOISTED HIMSELF UP TO street level and marched into the San Silva, one of Venice ’s premier hotels. No weekend specials or cut-rate promotions applied here, just forty-two luxurious suites overlooking the Grand Canal in what was once the home of a Doge. Its grand lobby reflected old-world decadence. Roman columns, veined-marble, museum-quality accessories-the spacious surroundings busy with people, activity, and noise.
Peter O’Conner waited patiently in a quiet alcove. O’Conner wasn’t ex-military or ex-government intelligence-just a man with a talent for gathering information coupled with a conscience that barely existed.
Philogen Pharmaceutique spent millions annually on an extensive array of in-house security to protect trade secrets and patents, but O’Conner reported directly to Vincenti-a set of personal eyes and ears providing the indispensable luxury of being able to implement whatever was needed to protect his interests.
And he was glad to have him.
Five years ago it was O’Conner who stopped a rebellion among a sizable block of Philogen stockholders over Vincenti’s decision to expand the company further into Asia. Three years ago, when an American pharmaceutical giant tried a hostile takeover, O’Conner terrorized enough shareholders to prevent any wholesale stock ditching. And, just recently, when Vincenti faced a challenge from his board of directors, O’Conner discovered the dirt used to blackmail enough votes that Vincenti managed not only to keep his job as CEO, but was also reelected chairman.
Vincenti settled into a tooled-leather armchair. A quick glance at the clock etched into the marble behind the concierge’s counter confirmed that he needed to be at the restaurant by nine fifteen. As soon as he was comfortable, O’Conner handed him some stapled sheets and said, “That’s what we have so far.”
He quickly scanned the transcripts of telephone calls and face-to-face discussions-all from listening devices monitoring Irina Zovastina. When finished, he asked, “She’s after these elephant medallions?”
“Our surveillance,” O’Conner said, “has been enough to know she has sent some of her personal guards after these medallions. The head guy himself, Viktor Tomas, is leading one team. Another team went to Amsterdam. They’ve been burning buildings all over Europe to mask those thefts.”
Vincenti knew all about Zovastina’s Sacred Band. More of her obsession with all things Greek. “Do they have the medallions?”
“At least four. They went after two yesterday, but I haven’t heard the results.”
He was puzzled. “We need to know what she’s doing.”
“I’m on it. I’ve managed to bribe a few of the palace staff. Unfortunately, electronic surveillance only works when she stays put. She’s constantly on the move. She flew to the China lab earlier.”
He’d already been told of the visit by his chief scientist, Grant Lyndsey.
“You should have seen her with that assassination attempt,” O’Conner said. “Rode straight toward the gunman, daring him to shoot. We watched on a long-range camera. Of course, she had a sharpshooter on the palace ready to take the guy down. But still, to ride straight for him. You sure there’s not a set of nuts between her legs?”
He chuckled. “I’m not going to look.”
“That woman’s crazy.”
Which was why Vincenti had changed his mind with the Florentine. The Council of Ten had collectively ordered some preliminary investigative work on the possibility that Zovastina might have to be eliminated, and the Florentine had been contracted to perform that reconnaissance. Vincenti had initially decided to make use of the Florentine in a full-scale rush to judgment, since to accomplish what he privately planned Zovastina had to go. So he’d promised the Florentine a huge profit if he could have her killed.
Then a better idea blossomed.
If he revealed the planned assassination, that might quell any fears Zovastina harbored about the League’s trustworthiness. Which would buy him time to prepare something better-something he’d actually been conceiving over the past few weeks. More subtle. Less residuals.
“She also visited the house again,” O’Conner told him. “A little while ago. Slipped out of the palace, alone, in a car. Tree-mounted cameras caught the visit. She stayed a half hour.”
“Do we know her former lover’s current condition?”
“Holding her own. We listened to their conversation with a parabolic monitor from a nearby house. A strange pair. Love/hate thing going on.”
He’d found it interesting that a woman who’d managed to govern with unfettered ruthlessness harbored such an obsession. She’d been married for a few years, the man a midlevel diplomat in the former Kazakhstan ’s foreign service. Surely a marriage for appearance’s sake. A way to mask her questionable sexuality. Yet the reports he’d amassed noted an amicable husband/wife relationship. He died suddenly in a car crash seventeen years ago, just after she became Kazakhstan ’s president, and a couple of years before she managed to forge the Federation. Karyn Walde came along a few years later and remained Zovastina’s only long-lasting interpersonal relationship, which ended badly. Yet a year ago, when the woman reappeared, Zovastina had immediately taken her in and arranged, through Vincenti, for needed HIV medications.
“Should we act?” he asked.
O’Conner nodded. “Wait any longer and it might be too late.”
“Arrange it. I’ll be in the Federation by week’s end.”
“Could get messy.”
“Whatever. Just no fingerprints. Nothing that links anything to me.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
AMSTERDAM
9:20 P.M.
STEPHANIE HAD EXPERIENCED THE INSIDE OF A DANISH JAIL LAST summer when she and Malone were arrested. Now she’d visited a Dutch cell. Not much different. Wisely, she’d kept her mouth shut as the police rushed onto the bridge and spotted the dead man. Both Secret Service agents had managed to escape, and she hoped the one in the water had retrieved the medallion. Her suspicions, though, were now confirmed. Cassiopeia and Thorvaldsen were into something, and it wasn’t ancient coin collecting.
The door to the holding cell opened and a thin man in his early sixties, with a long, sharp face and bushy silver hair, entered. Edwin Davis. Deputy national security adviser to the president. The man who replaced the late Larry Daley. And what a change. Davis had been brought over from State, a career man, possessed of two doctorates-one in American history, the other international relations-along with superb organizational skills and an innate diplomatic ability. He employed a courteous, folksy way, similar to that of President Daniels himself, that people tended to underestimate. Three secretaries of state had used him to whip their ailing departments into line. Now he worked at the White House, helping the administration finish out the last three years of its second term.
“I was having dinner with the president. In The Hague. What a place, by the way. Enjoying the evening. Food was superb, and I usually don’t care for gourmet. They brought me a note that told me where you were and I said to myself, there has to be a logical explanation why Stephanie Nelle would be in Dutch custody, found with a gun beside a dead man in the rain.”