The Devil's Triangle

by Catherine Coulter

  CHAPTER THREE

  Capri, Italy

  Present Day

  Kitsune only wanted to get home to Grant. When she’d called him on her burner phone, an ironclad rule when they were separated, she knew he was as angry as she was that the client had tried to kill her. They would discover the identity of the client together, and see them punished.

  She took the hydrofoil from Sorrento across the bay to the island of Capri, blending in with the tourists. She was in disguise, of course, a blond wig, shorts, flowy top, and flip-flops, a white sweater knotted around her shoulders, and round white sunglasses. Kitsune never arrived on or left the island looking the same, and she never came and went as herself.

  At last she reached the villa on the island’s eastern hillside, her own glistening white slice of heaven she’d inherited from her mentor, the Ghost. She missed him, sometimes, but her only thought of him now was that he would tear her limb from limb at how badly she’d managed to let this job go south.

  She paused only a moment to look out over the glittering water of the Bay of Naples, then back at her home. The house itself had open verandas, all four tiled in black and white. Ancient stone columns rose up, seemingly from the mountain itself, supporting two stories. Inside, it was light and open, windows everywhere. Kitsune remembered how intimidated she’d been when she’d first lunched here with Mulvaney as a teenager. Now the magnificent house was her home. It represented not only safety but also security and love. It meant Grant.

  But her sanctuary was empty. The house was trashed, a major battle fought here, and she was too late. Grant was gone.

  There was a sheet of paper on the kitchen counter, printed in bold black letters:

  COME BACK TO VENICE OR YOUR HUSBAND DIES.

  She wadded up the paper, blind with rage and fear. How had they found this house? How? Both she and Grant were always so careful. She heard something and looked up to see the television was on, and why was that? Then she couldn’t believe what she saw.

  Nicholas Drummond’s face was on the screen. She quickly turned up the volume.

  While she’d been trying to get home, the Iranians had attempted to assassinate both the president and vice president of the United States, and Drummond and Caine—of course it was Drummond and Caine—had brought the Iranians down. Those two, they always seemed to be in the eye of the storm, and from personal experience, they usually won.

  The thwarted-assassination story was abruptly suspended to a horrific sight. A mile-high wall of swirling sand was sweeping up from the Gobi Desert, headed directly for Beijing. It was an unreal sight, terrifying, far beyond any previous sandstorms that had plagued Beijing since time began. This was the mother of all storms, the broadcaster said, the desert sand being whipped up by a giant cyclone that no one could explain, and it kept growing and growing, moving faster and faster, miles of thick killing sand bearing down on Beijing.

  Kitsune suddenly remembered the strange conversation she’d overheard in Venice. She’d been too busy saving her own skin to think about it, had actually forgotten it, until now that she was witnessing what shouldn’t be possible.

  The woman: I wish I could see it, the Gobi sands—a tsunami sweeping over Beijing.

  The man: We will see it on video. All the sand, do you think? Could Grandfather be that good?

  You know he is. And we will see the aftermath for ourselves. We will leave in three days, after things have calmed down.

  Can you imagine, we are the ones to drain the Gobi?

  Kitsune didn’t believe in coincidences. She’d bet her last euro there was a connection between the Gobi storm and the staff of Moses she’d stolen from the Topkapi—but what? What would tie the two together?

  Kitsune suddenly knew she was in over her head. They’d tried to kill her, these clients who predicted the emptying of the Gobi Desert, these same clients who wanted the staff of Moses, a fake, Kitsune was sure of that, because biblical lore stated the staff was inside the Ark of the Covenant, and if the staff was real, the Ark would be in a museum, too.

  She had to go back to Venice, immediately. She had to save Grant. But what to do?

  And then she knew.

  She pulled out her burner cell and dialed a number she’d long ago committed to memory.

  Moments later, she heard a deep male voice with a posh British accent say, “Drummond here.”

  “Hello, Nicholas. I trust Michaela is nearby?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Kitsune. I need your help.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  FBI Headquarters

  26 Federal Plaza

  22nd Floor, Home of Covert Eyes

  New York, New York

  Nicholas grabbed Mike’s arm, mouthed Kitsune, and the two of them stopped, leaving Ben, Louisa, Gray, and Lia to their merriment as they set up their stations, argued over space, plugged in their computers, and settled in. He pressed Speaker.

  “Kitsune, we didn’t expect to hear from you again. What sort of help could you possibly need from us?”

  There was no teasing soft Scottish burr, no smart mouth, only a whoosh of breath, then her frantic voice. “I’m in real trouble, and my husband—they kidnapped Grant to get me back to Venice, to kill me.”

  Mike met Nicholas’s eyes. “Kitsune, it’s Mike. Tell us why your husband was kidnapped. Who wants to kill you?”

  Nicholas said, “You stole something, didn’t you? And pissed off your client, right? And here I thought marriage to a straight-up Beefeater would turn you legit. Tell me right now, Kitsune, what did you steal?”

  “The line isn’t secure. No, don’t hang up on me, Nicholas. Grant’s not a Beefeater anymore.” A pause, then her voice came back again, more under control. “No, I did everything just as I usually do. There’s something more, something really big and scary. Quickly, turn on the television.”

  Mike said, “We’re setting up our new offices, it will take a moment. This better be good, Kitsune, or I’ll kick your butt if I ever see you again.”

  Kitsune said, “You could indeed try, Michaela. Hurry, turn on the television.”

  They went into the conference room just as Louisa plugged in the huge wall television and turned to CNN. What they saw made their jaws drop. It was beyond scary, it was surreal, like a special effect in a movie. They watched as miles of whipped-up sand hurtled madly into Beijing. Everyone was too shocked to speak.

  Mike said quietly to the team, “It’s Kitsune on Nicholas’s cell. Please listen and take notes.” Everyone nodded, not looking away from the terrifying real-time mountain of sand, miles wide.

  “Okay, Kitsune,” Nicholas said, “we’re watching the Gobi Desert whip a bloody big sandstorm into Beijing.”

  “It’s not just a bad sandstorm, Nicholas. People are dying, they can’t breathe. It doesn’t matter if the people are indoors, the sand is forcing itself into their buildings. It’s been going on for hours, it came on with no warning. Beijing is being wiped out.”

  “Kitsune,” Mike said, “there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s a horrible natural disaster—”

  Kitsune interrupted her. “That’s the thing. I don’t believe it is a natural disaster, and that’s why you have to come to Venice. You have to figure out how this happened and why. It’s not only for Grant and me, you see that, don’t you?” She was talking fast, her words tumbling over each other. She was very upset and very frightened. Nicholas raised an eyebrow at Mike. This was not the Kitsune they remembered: no fear, lightning fast reflexes, and a powerful brain.

  Mike said, “You said there were no warnings? That hardly seems likely.”

  Gray Wharton was now on his laptop, one eye on his screen, the other on the television. He rolled his wrist toward Nicholas in a keep her talking motion. He was trying to trace her call. Good luck, Nicholas thought. He’d bet the bank she was using a burner.

  Kitsune said, “You see the extensive satellite imagery, right? You see that the loss of life will be in the thousands. It came o
n too fast for anyone to escape. People are lost on the roads, dying in their cars.”

  Nicholas said, “Yes, we are seeing all that. But how can it not be a natural disaster?”

  “Because it’s an engineered storm.”

  That brought everyone in the room to a standstill. Brows raised, mouths opened to ask questions, but Nicholas raised his hand. “They have sandstorms in Beijing all the time. Granted, this one seems terrible, but it happens from time to time, right?”

  “This one’s on a much bigger scale than anything anyone’s ever seen before. Eleven provinces in the north are unreachable. They’ve issued a red-alert warning, but it’s come much too late.”

  Mike said, “But who could engineer a sandstorm? It can’t be done.”

  Nicholas grabbed his tablet and tapped into NASA’s Aqua satellite, pushed the content on his tablet to the large screen in front of them, so everyone could see the satellite imagery. The images made Mike’s heart go to her throat. The satellite images were more horrific than the ground footage. Walls of sand, hundreds of feet high, battered the edges of the skyscrapers, filled the spaces between buildings, covered the roads and streets twenty feet deep; it was a monstrous, massive tidal wave of sand.

  She couldn’t imagine being in that storm and prayed for those who were. When Kitsune spoke again, Mike realized she truly was scared, very scared.

  “Here’s the deal. The delivery I was making to the client wasn’t a run-of-the-mill thing. It was an artifact. A historical object.”

  “What was it?”

  “No secure line.”

  “Okay, who were you working for?”

  “I can’t tell you because I don’t know. But I do know that the clients have something to do with the sandstorm. I’m positive it was engineered. No matter our differences in the past—”

  “Our differences? You mean the times you tried to kill us?”

  She went on, speaking faster. “Remember I gave you the Koh-i-Noor and the pages of proof, just as I promised I would. I kept my word. You’ve got to help me, you’ve got to find out who’s doing this.”

  Nicholas switched screens, typed in “stolen artifact.” The Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul was first on the list, with multiple stories dating back a week.

  Mike whistled. “Only you could have stolen the staff of Moses from the Topkapi. That place is guarded by Turkish military. How in the world did you pull it off?”

  Silence from Kitsune, which said it all.

  Nicholas said, “Tell me more about the client, Kitsune. Even if you don’t know who it is, there must be a trace of some sort, a way for you to figure out who is behind this.”

  “I can’t contact them. You know I have rules—all correspondence was in timed email accounts, destroyed now. I can give you the account numbers and phones we used, but I checked, they’ve been wiped clean. The note they left in our house—I’m to come back to Venice or they’ll kill Grant. So I know they’re in Venice. Listen, it’s not so much about what I stole, it’s about what it might mean.”

  “Explain,” Nicholas said.

  “What do you two know about the Ark of the Covenant?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Nicholas watched Mike pace. She was talking to herself, waving her hands when she made a point. Their first disagreement about an assignment of Covert Eyes was under way.

  “Come now, Mike, why not?”

  “I believe this is all about Kitsune’s rescue—”

  “—and her husband’s rescue.”

  “So you want to fly to Venice, Italy, where I’ve never been, spend thousands of dollars to rescue a thief?”

  “—and her husband, the former big-gun Beefeater. I’ve never met a Beefeater I didn’t like.”

  She was shaking her head. “I know, another Brit, but you know Zachery will have a cow. As for Dillon, he’d probably laugh his head off. We are not riding to Kitsune’s rescue—”

  “—and her husband’s.”

  “Yeah, neither are American citizens, there’s simply no way to justify it. And how can you seriously believe this sandstorm in the Gobi was engineered, and probably by her clients? Get real, Nicholas.”

  “There’s the Ark of the Covenant,” he said, voice mild. “Do you believe it exists, Mike?”

  Mike stopped in her tracks. “No, well, who knows? It’s a myth, a legend, and a screenwriter’s dream for Indiana Jones.”

  “That’s certainly true, but personally, I’ve always believed it does exist, that it’s been lost over the eons.”

  “Nicholas, it’s an allegory from the Bible. There are dozens of legends of magical artifacts, but that’s what they are, legends, myths, like I said, simple tales to tell and retell, since they didn’t have television for millennia.”

  Nicholas smiled at her. He loved watching her get worked up. Truth be told, watching her, listening to her, turned him on, but still, he knew her well enough to go carefully. He wouldn’t tell her just yet that he was already mentally packed for their flight to Venice in their brand-new airplane. He knew she’d love Venice.

  “Don’t most legends have some basis in fact, even ones from so long ago? Think of it, Mike. For the first time, we have permission from on high to go off-book, to take chances, to fight for truth, justice, and the American—and British—way, without the bureaucracy weighing us down. Imagine: the Ark of the Covenant, the staff of Moses, an engineered sandstorm. What more could you possibly ask for? This could be a groundbreaking case for our new team.”

  “Are you forgetting that Kitsune is dangerous? She almost got us killed. She lied and cheated and—”

  “Well, maybe a little bit, but Mike, she did keep her promises.”

  “Yeah, yeah, you’ve always had a soft spot for her.”

  “Not a soft spot. Professional respect. She came through the last time. Well, maybe something of a semi–soft spot.”

  “Well, okay, she did, but Zachery will sit on us, probably handcuff us, before he’ll approve our going to Venice.”

  “Not if he believes it’s possible the Gobi sandstorm was engineered. He’ll drive us to our plane himself.” He grinned. “Time’s a-wastin’. Let’s go see how far our new powers stretch.”

  Nicholas and Mike walked up the stairs to their boss’s office, Mike still arguing all the way, more to herself than with him.

  Before they stepped into Zachery’s office, Mike turned, looked up at Nicholas, and asked, “Do you believe Kitsune is telling the truth? About all of it?”

  Nicholas framed her face with his hands and said, without hesitation, “Yes.”

  He watched her come to a decision, watched her finally nod. “All right, then. Let me think. This calls for some discreet strategy.”

  Milo Zachery and Dillon Savich were in Zachery’s conference room, working out some of the last-minute details of Nicholas and Mike’s new group. The wall television was on CNN, showing the destruction in Beijing.

  Nicholas knocked on the doorframe.

  “Back so soon?” Savich waved them in.

  Zachery frowned. “The space won’t work for you?”

  Mike said, “The space is perfect. That’s not why we’re here. We have it from a reliable source that this monstrous sandstorm from the Gobi Desert that is hitting Beijing isn’t a natural disaster.” She drew a deep breath. “It was engineered.”

  That stopped the two men in their tracks.

  Zachery started shaking his head. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “No, sir,” Nicholas said.

  Savich sat forward on the sofa, his full attention on them. “Engineered? Admittedly, there have been plenty of scientists over the years who’ve tried to manipulate the weather. Cloud seeding for rain is a multibillion-dollar industry right now. There was a story only last week about cloud seeding in California as a way to help them get out of their drought. They can create a fog, cool things down, which will help save the trees. Weather manipulation isn’t unheard of, in fact, it’s readily available, and worldwide.�
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  Zachery said, “But to create a dust storm big enough to kill thousands of people in Beijing? You heard the broadcasts—they’re describing it as an inland hurricane of sorts, only made up of sand instead of rain and tornadoes. Who would want to do that, even if they could? It makes no sense.”

  Savich studied them a moment, then asked, “You said you got this engineered-storm business from a reliable source? Who is it?”

  Nicholas said, “Kitsune.”

  Zachery said, “Victoire Couverel, the Fox, that Kitsune? The Kitsune who nearly blew up the Met? The Kitsune who tried to kill you? That one?”

  Mike said, “The one and only. Actually, she nearly blew Nicholas up in Geneva, too. The Met was just a small bomb, easily defused. She’s offered us a sort of trade. She’ll help us find out who’s engineering this sandstorm and we’ll save her bacon.”

  “—and her husband’s.”

  “All right,” Savich said, “enough playing around. What did Kitsune steal this time that’s gotten her into trouble?”

  “She stole the staff of Moses from the Topkapi Palace.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Zachery said.

  Mike said, “No, sir. This is by far the highest-profile case of artifact theft since the Koh-i-Noor. We believe our team can recover the staff, just as we recovered the Koh-i-Noor. Imagine how great that would make the FBI look. Think of all the goodwill we’d engender if we can return it to the Topkapi. Plus, maybe, just maybe, we’ll find the Ark of the Covenant on the way. The staff is supposed to be with the Ark. Who knows?”

  Zachery shook his head. “You’re FBI, not Indiana Jones.”

  Nicholas said, “Here’s our chance to be both.”

  Savich called up the theft on his laptop MAX. “It’s a pity Kitsune’s a criminal, she is remarkably talented. What happened? The deal went south? Why?”

  Nicholas said, “She told us she didn’t know who her clients were, but that didn’t matter. She said everything went shipshape until they tried their best to kill her. She has no idea why. Then they kidnapped her husband. For leverage.”