by Tom Wilde
Despite the chill I felt within my sodden clothes, I was slowly surrendering to the embrace of exhaustion and had to fight to keep my head from dropping on the table. Finally, I heard the far side door open, and Vanya made his entrance, with Rhea in his wake. Vanya was wearing a dark shirt and slacks, a change from his usual Greek philosopher garb, while Rhea was all in tight-fitting black, and when she took a step to the side, I saw she was wearing a holstered automatic pistol on her belt. What was striking about the pair were their disparate expressions: Vanya glowered, his anger clearly evident on his face, while Rhea looked at me with a smile reminiscent of a kid who’d found a live pony beneath her Christmas tree.
I cut to the point before anyone could suggest cutting my throat. “I’ve got what you want,” I said, glad to hear my voice sounding steadier than I really was. “I know the location of Alexander’s tomb.”
Vanya leaned his hands on the end of the table, fixing me with a stare. “You’re too late,” he said in a voice laced with menace. “So do we.”
I laughed. “No, you don’t. Because if you did, you’d be on your way already. Or you’d at least have sent your pet assassin. I’m betting the Fouché documents you stole from Château de Joux weren’t nearly as informative as you hoped.”
Vanya tried to stare me down, but I had too many years of facing Nicholas Riley across a poker table to be bluffed. I just smiled and waited, until Vanya broke and said, “Tell me what you know, and I just may let you live.”
“Let’s put everything on the table, shall we,” I said. I hadn’t been idle while waiting for Vanya. I’d used the time to unlock the handcuffs with one of my safety pins that I’d converted into a lock pick while I was waiting for liftoff back at the air force base. I tossed the cuffs on the table along with the combat knife that his guards had overlooked in their haste to drag me down here. Vanya thrust himself backwards as if I’d thrown a pair of live snakes at him, slamming into Rhea in the process. While the two of them were off balance, I stood and held my hands up just in time to keep Rhea from shooting me. I said quickly, “Listen to me, I’ve got what you want, but because of you and that homicidal lunatic girlfriend of yours, I’ve been implicated in murders and a string of other crimes, and now my own government wants to send me back to prison. So the bottom line is, you took my life from me, and I want another one in return. I suggest a trade.”
Rhea kept her small black pistol pointed at my face as she said, “If you know where the body of Alexander is, why didn’t you go get it yourself?”
“Because you have Caitlin.”
I got a sick feeling in my stomach when I saw the looks Vanya and Rhea traded at the mention of Caitlin’s name. “She’d better be alive,” I growled.
“She is,” Rhea said quickly. Too quickly. “But you didn’t answer the question.”
I dropped my hands to my sides. Since Rhea didn’t shoot, I said, “I have the location, but that’s all I have. To actually get to the tomb and recover what’s inside, you need manpower and equipment. All I have is me. So here’s the deal: You let Caitlin go free and give me ten million dollars for my trouble, and you get the location of the final resting place of Alexander of Macedonia. Oh, and there’s one other thing I’ll need.”
Vanya was stroking his beard, his eyes calculating. “What’s that?”
“The antidote for your Pandora plague. No point in getting rich if you’re not alive to spend it, right?”
Vanya’s head slowly turned toward Rhea, anger clouding his face. Rhea just gave a small shrug. “Blake wasn’t supposed to survive,” she explained softly. “I told him about Pandora to gain his trust.”
Everything went quiet inside the conference room. Vanya’s eyes kept flickering to the knife on the table. Finally, he slowly eased himself into the chair at the head of the table, and I followed suit in mine. I kept my hands in the open while Rhea stepped in and stood behind her master, all the while still smiling at me like I was a long-lost love returned.
Vanya said, “We could make you talk.”
I flexed my scarred right hand. “Sure you could. But that would take time, trust me, and in the meantime I could send you off on wild-goose chases all across the globe, knowing you couldn’t kill me until you’d checked out what I told you.”
“How is it that you know the location of the tomb?” Rhea asked. “How could you possibly know?”
“Especially since you killed everyone at the Château de Joux and burned the library to cover your tracks?” I said. “Good try, except for the fact that you bungled the murder of Madame Ombra. She was still alive when you left the dungeon. If you weren’t in such a hurry to knife her to death, you might have learned what she told me.”
“Just how did you manage to get out of the dungeon?” Rhea asked.
I tossed a contemptuous glace at the open handcuffs lying on the table. “Please; locks and I are old acquaintances. Which is another point. Alexander’s tomb will doubtless be protected. As I’ve just proven by waltzing onto your little island retreat, I’m pretty good at getting past defenses. Also, since your Commander Vandervecken is no longer with you, I figure you’ll need all the help you can get.”
“Vandervecken,” Vanya said flatly. “You killed him.”
I didn’t bother to reply. Vanya looked like he was trying to swallow broken glass, but Rhea’s smile never wavered, and she kept her eyes on me as she bent down and whispered into Vanya’s ear. Her words seemed contagious, because Vanya’s face started to rise in a smile too, until he nodded once, then got up and left the room, but not before giving me a look like a hungry wolf spying a crippled goat.
When the armored door shut behind him with an airtight sound, Rhea walked over toward me, casually picking up the knife from the table. “I really am pleased to see you,” she said in a languid tone.
“Oh? Run out of butterflies to pull the wings off of?”
She slowly walked around behind my chair, and then slung a slim hip onto the table as she leaned in close, gently waving the big knife blade like it was a fan. The shimmer of the blade was reflected in her obsidian eyes. “Let’s have no more lies between us,” she purred. “How did you get back to the island?”
“I used up a lot of money and cashed in a lot of favors. This was a one-way trip for me.”
“But why come back at all? You should have known that we’d kill you.”
“Like I said, you have Caitlin.”
She gave a low, throaty laugh as she suddenly slipped the edge of the knife under my chin. “And you came back for her. How sweet. But you have already told me she’s not really your wife.”
“No. But she is a government agent, and it’d be stupid to kill her.” I felt the sharp edge press in, and I pulled my head up. My voice was tight as I said, “And speaking of governments and agents, looks like you’re out of a job too.”
“What do you mean?” she asked quickly.
The razor’s edge stayed in place and I could feel my pulse against the steel. “I used up one of my favors checking you out. You’re not with the Japanese government anymore. Rumor has it they’re not pleased with you.”
I felt the edge turn up, and Rhea slowly scraped the knife against the skin of my throat, cutting a swath off my whiskers—a haunting reminder of the last time she held a blade to my neck. “So, no more lies indeed,” she said as she laughed softly. “It’s better this way, is it not?”
A bite of pain shot along my neck, and I saw Rhea pull the knife away. She reached a finger to my skin and came back bearing a bright drop of my blood. She kept her dark eyes locked onto mine as she took my blood with a flick of her tongue.
“That’s not what they call a safe practice,” I uttered through a strained throat.
“There’s no fear here,” Rhea said. “Everyone who comes to Vanya’s island is examined by his doctors. You and that woman were medically screened before you were allowed to wake up.”
“Why?”
“Vanya is a complete germophobe,” she whispe
red conspiratorially. “No one is allowed near him without a thorough examination.”
“What? Wait, if that were true, then why in the hell would he be developing a biological weapon? It doesn’t make sense.”
“It does for him. Death by infection is the most horrible thing Vanya can imagine. It is a measure of his true courage that he has chosen this to be his weapon against the world. Although he is almost obsessive the way he constantly checks on our medical containment facility.”
“So it’s all true? Vanya really does have biological weapons?”
Rhea suddenly tilted her head and put her hand up to her radio earpiece. Then she slid off the table and said to me, “Come. We have something to show you.”
Rhea led me out into the bunker hallway and took me back to the room marked “L-13,” the observation room where I first saw Ombra after his torture session. Rhea activated the door and as I entered I saw Vanya inside, bracketed by two of his soldiers along with a woman. She was a short, rounded Asian with her glossy black hair cut into straight bangs that almost came down to the black horn-rimmed glasses she wore. Her eyes were myopically minimized behind the thick lenses. She was dressed in a white lab coat and she wore an expression of hopelessness as if she were weighted down with lead. The wall-sized viewing glass was opaque, reflecting the overhead light like polished obsidian.
As Rhea shut the door behind us, Vanya said, “This is Dr. Song Meilun. Dr. Song has produced quite an interesting little formula for us, haven’t you, Doctor? Tell us all about Pandora.”
Dr. Song swallowed, as if forcing down a mouthful of hot coal, then she bobbed her head once and said, half mumbling, “It’s a derivative of the Q fever, Coxiella burnetii. It’s been genetically modified to enhance its virulence while retaining its infectivity and resistance to heat, pressure, and various antiseptic compounds. With recombinant reconstruction, we’ve shortened the incubation period to a projected average of twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”
“And the mortality rate?” Vanya prompted sharply.
Dr. Song winced. “Possibly eighty percent. Possibly.”
“Symptoms?” Vanya prompted.
“Infected vascular prostheses, aneurysms, osteomyelitis, pulmonary and cutaneous infection.”
“In short,” Vanya announced, “you bleed out through your pores. But we have the cure, don’t we, Doctor?”
Song swallowed and nodded. “We’ve managed to produce oligonucleotides that will bind and inactivate the infection’s biological agents. They act like a synthetic antibody and can be utilized as a prophylactic vaccine.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Vanya said dismissively. Dr. Song looked up at Vanya, and then gave a quick bow as she hurried from the room, being trailed by one of Vanya’s guards.
I have an eclectic collection of words and phrases I’ve memorized from languages all across the world. I know the words for “don’t shoot” in several tongues. As Dr. Song passed by, I was certain I heard her mumbling in Mandarin the words that asked for forgiveness.
After the door was shut, I said, “So you’ve got the modern equivalent of the Black Death.”
“And more importantly, the cure,” Vanya said. “But there’s one thing we have a shortage of.”
“What’s that?”
“Test subjects.”
Vanya pressed a button on a nearby table, darkening the lights in the room. Suddenly the opaque wall that separated us from the medical lab cleared, and I saw a sight that stopped my breath like a punch in the throat.
Caitlin and Ombra were in the medical lab, the same one where I spoke with Ombra after he’d suffered through his torture session with Rhea. His face was bruised and drawn, and he was sitting up on the operating table, no longer strapped in. Caitlin was standing in front of him, and both were dressed in hospital-style gowns. As the glass wall cleared, they both turned their heads toward us. Caitlin’s eyes narrowed like a cat spotting prey, until she saw me. Then her face lit like sunshine as she hurried toward me. From a speaker concealed somewhere in the viewing room, I heard her voice as she said, “Hello, Jonathan. How goes the Trojan War?”
I pushed past Rhea and put my left hand on the glass. Caitlin looked, and saw the wedding ring she had given me was back on my hand. She smiled and brought her own hand to mine, separated by the cold, thick wall. “Hi, honey. Are you all right?” I managed to say.
Her voice through the hidden speaker sounded far away. “We’re fine. Although there’ve been no shortage of threats.” Caitlin shot a look of pure poison over my shoulder. “That creature standing behind you told me you were dead.”
“Well, that report was slightly exaggerated. Listen, I’ve come to get you out of here.”
A look I’d walk through fire for welled up in Caitlin’s eyes. “I knew you would,” she said.
Before I could respond, Caitlin faded from view and I was left staring at a dark reflection of myself. I said to Vanya over my shoulder. “All right, damn it. You’ve made your point. Let her go, and I’ll give you what you want.”
Rhea’s laughter gave me the answer I dreaded before Vanya said the words: “It’s too late, Mr. Blake. Ten hours ago, she and Ombra were infected with Pandora. Now the question is, what will you give me for the cure?”
I had just enough sense left to know that the moment Vanya got the location of Alexander’s tomb out of me I’d be demoted into one more disposable test subject. “What you want is on Corsica,” I said. “But you’ll need me to get it.”
“Corsica?” Vanya said quickly. “Where? Where on Corsica?”
I turned my head, and whatever Vanya saw in my face made him take a step back. “Like I said, you’ll need me to get it. We’re going to be partners, remember? So where you go, I go.”
I looked back to the oil-black mirror that separated Caitlin from me. Behind me, I heard Vanya muttering quietly to Rhea while I studied my face in the reflection. The man before me displayed an expression of dark and dangerous promise, and I wanted this face to be the last thing on earth Vanya ever saw.
I was marched back under guard to the conference room and left there on my own. I shrugged out of my sodden leather jacket, and the combination of air-conditioning and evaporation along with my exhaustion gave me shuddering chills. I attempted a cure by raiding the liquor cabinet for a bottle of Napoleon brandy and taking a mouth-scalding pull that dropped like a burning bomb to my gut. At least it smoothed out the shakes somewhat while I worried about whether all my half-made and half-mad plans were going to unravel on me.
Almost two solitary hours went by and I was starting to feel like the Forgotten Prisoner of Castel-Mare when the hallway door finally opened to reveal Rhea, dressed just as she was before our flight to the Château de Joux and carrying her large black shoulder bag. “Come on,” she said. “It’s time to get going.”
I peeled myself off the chair and grabbed my jacket. “Where to?”
“You did say Corsica, did you not?”
She didn’t wait for a reply and I followed her down to the elevators. Once we were in the topside lobby we proceeded out the double front doors to a waiting electric Jeep. The sultry night air felt good as we rode the twisty seaside trail toward the helicopter pad, and though I was glad to get moving, I wasn’t looking forward to another chopper flight. But I was far less happy when the Jeep pulled over next to the boat dock.
“What the hell are we doing here?” I asked.
Rhea said over her shoulder as she headed for a powerboat, “Going to Corsica.”
That’s when I looked over the water and out to sea, where the navigation lights of Vanya’s yacht haloed the ship’s sleek outline. “You’re kidding,” I said. “We’re taking that tub all the way to Corsica? How the hell long is that going to take?”
“Longer if you just stand there.”
We barely got aboard the powerboat when one of Vanya’s troops at the helm cast off and fired up the engine. I fell onto one of the cushioned seats in the stern next to Rhea as the boat leapt f
orward and skipped across the low waves. As we approached the yacht, I saw another powerboat heading back toward the island at full speed. There wasn’t much chance of conversation between the roar of the engine and the jaw-clapping slaps of the boat on the water, and I turned my attention to the yacht.
Even in the moonlight, the ship looked like a creature born for speed. From its sharp prow to its curved radar mast, it looked as smooth and sleek as a polished ivory shark. And although I’d been under the belly of this beast, I couldn’t appreciate its sheer size until we angled toward the stern. Our pilot executed a fast bootleg turn, killing our speed, and then gently motored up to the lowered landing platform. From the aft view, I could see this seagoing creature was four decks tall and displayed the name of PHAETON flying under the flag of the Cayman Islands. Rhea tossed her bag up to a waiting soldier, and I followed her aboard. There were twin sets of stairs going up either side, and I climbed the port set after Rhea. She led me along the covered outside deck until we reached another set of stairs amidships and went up one more level, then into the ship. Once indoors, it was like we’d crossed over into a low-ceilinged luxury hotel, with soft indirect lighting overhead that gleamed off polished wood and marble-inlaid floors. Rhea took me around a corner to a set of double doors, and opened them up like a magician performing her best trick, snapping the lights on to reveal a stateroom that put almost every landlocked hotel I’d ever stayed in to shame. The suite was appointed with black lacquered wood and chrome accoutrements, surrounding a king-sized bed dressed in black silk on a room-sized Oriental rug. Taken at a glance the place brought the contrary phrase “samurai decadence” to mind. “You’ll be staying here,” Rhea announced. “There will be guards posted outside, of course.”
“Of course.”
I could feel more than hear enormous engines being unleashed below my feet as the ship lurched forward. That’s when a wasp’s sting spiked me on the back of my neck. I whipped around to face Rhea as the feeling of ice-cold water being poured directly on my brain took hold. Rhea’s smiling face was bordered in a halo of wavering color as I launched myself toward her to take her down and out, only she wasn’t there anymore, and the last thing I heard as solid blackness reared up and hit me was the sound of her laughter somewhere far off in the distance.
