The Devil's Triangle

by Catherine Coulter

  “What a lovely surprise,” she said in Italian, and, quick as a cobra, she dove at Mutt’s feet. He had been expecting her to run, and he hesitated a moment. She rolled into him and knocked him backward, his arms flailing for purchase, and he fell against a chair. She popped back to her feet—Mutt on her left, struggling to get back up, and Jeff on her right, his Beretta aimed at her chest.

  Kitsune fell to her knees, whipped out her two Walther PPKs cross-armed, and pulled the triggers almost before she’d squared the sights. Jeff fired at the same time. If she’d stayed standing, she’d be dead. Now he was the one who was dead, sprawled on his back on the floor, blood blooming from his chest. She’d missed Mutt, but his gun had clattered to the floor and slid under a red velvet sofa. He sprang to his feet and came at her, fast and hard, fists up and flying, trying to knock the gun away and kill her with his bare hands. He was fast, she’d give him that, but she was faster. A heartbeat later he was on the floor with a hole in his forehead.

  Kitsune had never used guns, but in the past few months, Grant had trained her in them, and trained her well. And when he was satisfied, he’d given her the two Walthers. Almost as if Grant had known she would need them. She sent him a silent thank-you as she pointed the gun in her right hand over her shoulder, toward the locked door, just in case, and walked to the opposite side of the room. She listened but didn’t hear anything. The house had gone silent. Too silent. As if someone was listening. She had to get out of there, now.

  She heard voices shouting. She yanked open the door and ran down a long hallway ending in a staircase. The house itself was narrow and old, the walls cool gray stone. She had no choice but to run up the stairs.

  She heard feet pounding after her, shouts growing closer. Kitsune burst through onto a rooftop terrace. Up this high, she saw that terraces littered the rooftops, and the Venetian houses were crammed cheek by jowl, separated by the small canals that crisscrossed Venice.

  She didn’t look down at the murky canal below, paid no attention to the shouts from the staircase, as men ran up to the terrace. She leaped across to the neighboring terrace. She felt a bullet whiz by her ear, and she dropped and rolled, was on her feet in a second, running to the next terrace. She heard the man leap after her, moving fast, gaining on her. She raced to the end of the rooftop and leaped again, barely missed a window box overflowing with pink and red geraniums, and skidded along the pebbled roof.

  He followed her, shouting, shooting. People screamed through open windows, gondoliers looked at the sight and shouted, tourists stared up in awe as light-footed Kitsune soared over them like a bird in flight. Laundry lines tumbled into the water below. She was careful to avoid the electric lines; she’d be dead and gone before she hit the water if she grabbed one of those by accident.

  She looked back, saw that it was Pazzi chasing her. She hadn’t expected him to be so fast, but he was reaching his limits, and dropping back. With a yell of frustration, he took another shot. The bullet skimmed her arm, cutting the fabric of her shirt, stinging like mad. Blood began running down, turning her hand red. Not good.

  She made a last desperate leap, grabbed a laundry line, swung down and smashed against the wall of a redbrick house, knocking the air out of her lungs, and dropped, hard, onto the deck of a water taxi.

  The captain, gap-mouthed, stumbled back, and she pushed him overboard, roared the engine to life and took off. She heard shouts, curses behind her, but didn’t look back. She pressed her right hand against the wound in her upper arm.

  The boat shot out by the San Zaccaria vaporetto station. She was free now, in the lagoon, and she gunned it.

  She was breathing hard, and bleeding, but for the moment, she was upright and safe, cool water splashing her, the wind tearing through her hair. She heard sirens. The police would be after her any minute now. She had to ditch the boat. It was a thirty-minute run to the airport, but that would be suicide; she could never fly out.

  Think, Kitsune.

  South, she’d go south, to Rimini, dock there, and start her way home.

  She checked the gas, excellent, the tank was nearly full. She left the channel and headed into the open seas, leaving behind the wails of the sirens. She remembered she’d stuffed the white envelope Pazzi had given her inside her shirt. At least she’d been paid for the job. Or had she? She ripped the envelope open and inside she saw a folded sheet of paper. She opened it and saw a rough drawing of a dead fox. She felt the tearing pain in her arm as she wadded up the paper and tossed it overboard. Five million euros was that critical to them? But why had they wanted her dead? It didn’t matter, she didn’t care. There would be hell to pay.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Venice, Italy

  Cassandra Kohath lay back on a chaise, watching her twin brother, Ajax, stare out the window toward the lagoon. Was he thinking about the now-dead thief, carted out to the channel by Pazzi, weighted and tossed into the water? They heard the wail of sirens, rising and falling in time with the lapping of the water against the lower walls of their villa, and both snapped to. What was that all about?

  Ajax’s phone buzzed. He listened, then punched off and turned to her. “That was Lilith. Two of Pazzi’s men are dead, and he couldn’t catch the Fox. Don’t worry, he has the staff and will be here soon, doubtless full of excuses why he and his men failed to kill the wretched woman.”

  Cassandra said, “I hate loose ends, Ajax, and she’s a big one.”

  He thought a moment. “We don’t want the polizia to catch her, that could prove fatal if our friends aren’t the ones who control the situation. Lilith knows everything about the thief, her habits, her disguises, where she lives with her husband. We’ll get her, don’t worry.”

  A knock sounded on the door. Cassandra called, “Come in,” and Pazzi entered, sweating, his beautiful suit ripped and dirty, his hair wild around his face. He said nothing at all, simply came forward and placed the wrapped staff on the chaise near her feet. He straightened, continued standing silently, waiting for punishment he knew would come. He feared Ajax more than Cassandra, because Ajax was the devil he knew. He’d seen Ajax slip a stiletto into a man’s chest, after one small inadvertent insult. He’d watched Ajax pull the stiletto out of the man’s chest, swipe off the blood across the man’s face, and slip it back in its sheath. And then he’d continued his conversation with Pazzi—over the man’s twitching body.

  As for his sister, he didn’t know if she was as deadly as she was beautiful, but he didn’t doubt it. The two of them, side by side, were striking, mirror images of each other—blond, blue-eyed, strong, born of wealth, raised on power. Both deadly. Was the sister smarter than her twin? He didn’t know that, either. At first he’d wanted her, as he imagined most men did when they saw her, but that had passed when she’d looked at him as if he were nothing more than a piece of dirt beneath her feet, and he’d known, deep down, this was exactly how she viewed him, a clod of dirt, not to be shaken off so long as he was useful.

  Would Ajax slip his stiletto in Pazzi’s own heart, wipe his own blood on his face? He wanted to tell them that the woman, the Fox, was beyond anything he’d ever seen, and even now he couldn’t believe she’d taken out his men in less than a minute and she’d actually not killed herself flying high over Venice. He’d hit her, he knew he had, but he also knew it would do him no good at all to tell them. He calmed himself. After all, he’d brought them the staff.

  His eyes strayed to the frame on the wall above Cassandra’s head. Heavy and ornate, it nearly overpowered the small parchment inside—a careful, intricate drawing of a lightning bolt, faded with age, spots of black along the top edge. Such a curious piece. It was rumored to have come from Da Vinci himself, though Pazzi couldn’t believe such a thing, but if it was true, his bosses had certainly stolen it. Arranged for it to be stolen, that is. Had they killed the thief who’d managed it?

  Maybe his failure was more important at the moment than their precious staff. With this thought, his heart was pounding hard now,
bile rising in his throat, and he had to swallow. His wife had never asked him why he chose to live with such fear because she already knew. They paid him very well and he was a venal man.

  A lifetime of waiting to Pazzi was only a couple of seconds. Ajax said only, “Well?”

  Cassandra wasn’t looking at him, all her attention was on that tube that held the staff.

  He tried to stand tall and straight. “I did all I could. That woman, the Fox, she killed my men and escaped over the rooftops. I went after her. I know I hit her, but she didn’t slow.” He could barely get the words out. “She has escaped.” He bowed his head, braced himself.

  Ajax said quietly, “We pay you a great deal, Pazzi. Yet you have bungled things.”

  “I am sorry, sir. I did everything I could.”

  Ajax let the silence grow heavy, then said, “You will have one more chance. The woman is a loose end that could ruin us. Only a fool would trust a thief with such knowledge as she has now. We are not fools. As I said, we will give you one more chance. If you fail to kill her, then your life is forfeit. Do you understand me, Pazzi?”

  His heart gave a leap. He wasn’t going to die—this time. “Yes, sir, I understand. What do you wish me to do?”

  And Ajax told him.

  Cassandra added, “Since we have friends in the Carabinieri and the polizia, we can add another layer to the plan. That house isn’t connected to us, it was only a drop site, nothing more. We left nothing behind. The Rinaldis will not be home until late this afternoon. Murder them, Pazzi, ransack the place, and then let your friends in the polizia know the Fox was responsible. If I recall, Signore Rinaldi is a member of the Venetian council. There should be plenty of outrage in finding the killer of such a prominent Venetian citizen.”

  Murder the Rinaldis? They were good people, but—He didn’t want to be dead. Pazzi bowed his head. “Yes, madam. This is a wonderful plan. I will handle it directly.”

  “See that you do it right, Pazzi,” Cassandra said, and smiled at him—a smile so cold it froze him to his bones. “Or it will be your headless body floating in the Grand Canal. Now, off with you. I want to hear nothing more of this but a success story. Find the Fox, kill her. Now.”

  Ajax said, that smooth voice low, “Don’t fail us again, Pazzi. Lilith wouldn’t like it.”

  Lilith, another demon from hell.

  The instant he was out the door, Cassandra lightly touched her fingers to the wrapped staff, Pazzi and the Rinaldis forgotten. Had it really belonged to Moses himself?

  Ajax came and stood by her chaise. “Shall we?”

  “You know what is supposed to happen when we open it, when you and I together touch it.”

  Ajax said, “Yes. We will soon see. Are you ready?”

  She slowly unwrapped it, so afraid and excited, her fingers shook. She said, “I’ll be careful not to touch the staff itself. The prophecies are clear. We must do it together. We are the last twins of the Kohath line. We are the only ones who can bring the power of the staff back to life.”

  He patted her face, almost a slap, but not quite. “I know. We’ve spent our whole lives listening to the prophecy.”

  She continued to reverently remove layer after layer. “If it is the real staff the Turks stole from Egypt, then it means we’re probably looking for the Ark in the wrong place.”

  Ajax said, “We will soon know if the Ark is in Egypt. I believe whatever the outcome, our expenditure of five million euros was worth it.”

  She carefully peeled away another layer of linen. Pazzi had been careful to rewrap it securely. “I want it to be real, I do, but I cannot believe our mother was led astray by faulty information.”

  “You’re being too slow, Cassandra. Open it now.”

  She pulled away the last covering, a layer of even softer white linen, and they looked down at a staff made of brown wood—almond wood—their mother had told them, about forty-eight inches long, with a thick knob on the side, near the top of the staff, that gave the impression of a small branch beginning to sprout out the side.

  Cassandra reached toward it, her fingers nearly touching it. “It’s not singing to me the way I expected, the way Mother told me it would.”

  “We won’t know if it’s real until we pick it up.”

  “Yes. Together.” Their hands hovered over the staff. “One, two, three.”

  They grasped the staff with both hands and stood it upright, their hands stacked upon the other, each fully touching the staff.

  According to the prophecy they’d heard since they were old enough to repeat the words, their united hands should instantly make the knob on the staff begin to bud and bloom. But there were no buds, no blooms. There was nothing at all but the old misshapen stick.

  Cassandra wanted to weep. “It’s a fake.”

  Ajax said, “Come, you really didn’t expect it to be real, now did you? And now we know Mother was on the right track all along.” He walked to the desk, pulled out a tape measure, measured the length of the staff. He smiled. “The staff is over three inches too long to fit inside the Ark. The Topkapi had to know it was fake.” He picked up the staff, broke it over his knee, and threw the two pieces out the window into the canal.

  She heard the wood pieces splash into the water below. She walked to the bar in the corner of the large room, opened the small refrigerator, and popped the cork on a bottle of Veuve Cliquot. She poured two glasses, handed one to Ajax.

  “Screw the Topkapi. Serves them right for perpetuating a lie all these years. Now the good news: we now know for sure the Ark isn’t in Egypt.”

  They clicked glasses and drank.

  “And to the death of the Fox,” Ajax said. “The only thread left to snip in our needful experiment.”

  They drank deeply.

  A moment later, a knock sounded.

  “Come,” Cassandra called.

  The door opened, and a tall, slender woman, with long blond hair curving around her narrow face, stepped into the room.

  Ajax went to her, took her arms in his hands, and smiled down at her.

  Lilith said, “Don’t tell me the staff from the Topkapi is the real deal.”

  “A fake, as we suspected,” he said, his hands moving to her face, lightly stroking. “You’re grinning like a loon, Lilith. What is it?”

  “The storm will be under way in two days, no longer.”

  “Excellent news.”

  It was indeed good news, and it was news that Cassandra should have known before Lilith. She’d planned to call Grandfather that very evening to get the status. She eyed her brother, his arm still around their own private assassin. Lilith Forrester-Clarke was from Roslin, Scotland, the small town made famous by the novel The Da Vinci Code. Cassandra found herself wondering yet again how the very bedrock of Christianity could have spawned this devil’s seed. Lilith and Ajax had been together for nearly four years now, lovers, confidants, but Cassandra knew he was the one who had the control, she’d never doubted that. He was Lilith’s handler, fondly called her his ultimate weapon. Together they formulated plans, and she executed them. As far as Cassandra knew, Lilith had never failed. So why hadn’t Ajax assigned Lilith to deal with the Fox instead of that buffoon Pazzi?

  Cassandra watched Lilith pour herself a glass of champagne, turn and smile at both of them. Lilith raised her glass.

  Ajax said, “To fulfilling our destiny: bringing the Ark back to the Kohaths. To our mother, and may we prove she was right all along.” And they all drank. He said, “Lilith, turn on the television, let’s see the latest reports on the theft from the Topkapi Palace.”

  Lilith switched on the television and heard a cardinal talk about what the loss of Moses’s staff would mean to the biblical community.

  Lilith drank more of her champagne. She loved the taste of it on her tongue, loved the slide of it when she swallowed. She watched Ajax, then his twin. Both were athletes, strong and fit. She knew both believed it critical to keep themselves in perfect condition in the field, and out of i
t. Of course, they weren’t yet thirty, not her thirty-six, and that made a difference, though she’d never admit it.

  She knew Cassandra distrusted her, but usually she managed to hide it, at least in front of Ajax. Cassandra probably wouldn’t believe it if she knew Lilith admired her more than Ajax, more than any other person on this earth except for Benjie, her young brother, who’d died so very young and so needlessly. The drunk driver had lived only six more days before the life left his body at the bottom of a quarry near Edinburgh.

  She drank more, looked toward Cassandra using her hands as she spoke to Ajax, such excitement in her voice when she spoke of bringing the Ark home. Cassandra was the face of the Genesis Group, a flawless face, and her wit and charm were legendary in the archaeological community. Few knew that her charm and beauty hid a coldness so profound it even occasionally gave Lilith pause. The Genesis Group, a perfect name, Lilith had always thought, and what a history. The vast, very wealthy international archaeological firm had been started by the twins’ great-great-grandfather Appleton Kohath, back in the 1920s. From the beginning they had sponsored digs across the globe, providing funds when budgets ran short. In the past forty or so years, their financial assistance to the archaeological community had grown exponentially. They were respected, honored in every country.

  Cassandra’s was a huge responsibility for one so young. As Ajax would remind Lilith in the dark of night, deep inside her, it was her responsibility to ensure his twin remained safe when she stepped in front of the cameras.

  She listened to brother and sister crow and laugh as they listened to all the moaning and groaning about the theft of the famous staff. The authorities still had no leads, and no clues.