by Camilla Monk
I cringed. “Like?”
“There’s nothing about the circumstances, but it says he had a severe facial trauma, third-degree burns on his arms and thorax. They also mention skin grafts and maxillofacial surgery.”
“Something blew up in his face,” Stiles concluded.
Colin tilted his head. “Like his own crystals, maybe . . .”
Some rustling followed by a muted grinding sound caught my attention: March had pulled his precious tube of mints. “Mr. Jeon, apart from the facial trauma, what else can you tell us?”
“Well, he’s dead.”
My eyebrows sprang up. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Yeah. He went into cardiac arrest during his surgery. They signed everything. I even got an autopsy report in Italian. How cool is that?”
I deflated in my chair. “And that’s it? Just a cool autopsy report?”
A grin split Colin’s face. “Of course not. I just wanted to amp up the tension. Remember how I said it was a lab accident? That also means a work accident. And guess what?”
I thought none of us would bother with offering any kind of astounded repartee to urge Colin on, but Stiles indulged him with a wink. “Tell us, please?”
“He settled out of court,” Colin said with a dramatic swipe of his arm. “Four weeks after his death, a Panamanian foundation named Salieri Fondazione signed a confidential agreement with Novensia for almost a hundred million euros. His only living relative was his mom, and the agreement basically stated that neither she nor anyone else could sue over the incident. The thing is, Salieri Fondazione was three days old at the time, and if you dig hard enough . . .”
A humorless smile creased one of March’s dimples. “Gerone was the sole beneficiary?”
“Almost. Him and his mom. But she died a year later. The foundation is still listed as being active though, and by the way, Novensia patented the Ceraglass three months after Gerone’s ‘death,’” Colin finished, with air quotes and a grimace of disgust.
Murrell opened a small laptop. “Can you send me all that? Who organized the settlement, by the way?”
“Studio Legale Aureli-Cesari. I guess that doesn’t ring any bells?”
“None.”
“And if I tell you that Antonio Aureli was, until very recently, Pio Maraì’s personal lawyer?”
March’s knuckles rapped against the shiny wood. “He was disfigured, left for dead, and Maraì paid him, so he’d disappear for good.”
“That’s what it sounds like. That way no one would ever know that Ceraglass presented a risk. Novensia made some serious money with it . . . Maybe the settlement wasn’t good enough, and Gerone couldn’t forgive them,” Colin said with a shrug.
I noticed that Murrell was going through a series of files on his laptop. “The Poseidon Dome is the largest use ever made of Novensia’s Ceraglass: twelve hundred tons for the dome alone and another three hundred tons all over the resort, in windows, balconies . . .” he muttered. “Let’s say Gerone hated Maraì, and he wanted to destroy him completely. It’d make sense for him to want to take down that kind of symbol. But that doesn’t tell us what the Lions get from that.”
“Indeed,” March concurred, his gaze unfocused.
I massaged my temples, sorting out my ideas. “Actually . . . I don’t want to extrapolate too much from what Ale—Agent Morgan told me, but I got the feeling that to the Lions, the plane and Novensia were just massive decoys. We were all looking at Dries while Gerone tested his technology, and so he had free range to take his revenge on Maraì and Novensia. That worked for Anies because he wanted to kill everything about Dries, him, his reputation. And the plane crash did just that. The entire planet saw his face linked to the attack, like he was Bin Laden or something: there’s no going back from that. We all know”—I looked around the table—“that even if we catch Gerone, you guys won’t make the truth public. It’d be too messy.”
Stiles and Colin carefully avoided my eyes, while Murrell cleared his throat.
I turned to March. “So that was step one. I think step two is about power. Anies wanted Dries out of the way to take control. Back in Tokyo, Dries said something to you about how the Lions could become more, train millions of men, grandiose stuff like that. On the roof, you remember, right?”
For some reason, March looked uncomfortable. Pissed even. “Yes, I remember.”
“Well, maybe that’s what Anies wants too, and there’s something about the Poseidon Dome that’s important for him, in that grand scheme. The Lions wanted the Cullinan because it was worth two billion dollars, and it’d pay for their dream—maybe that’s a question of money. Maybe taking down the dome would profit them somehow.”
Stiles chimed in. “We found no ties between the Poseidon’s owners and the Lions, but it could be something less evident.” He looked at March. “There’re at least three thousand people in there, and the only access is by air or by sea. Do you think they could go for a good old-fashioned hostage taking?”
March still seemed distracted, like he barely saw Stiles sitting right next to him. “That would be new for them.”
“All right,” Murrell said. “Colin, you keep running everything we know against our databases; see if anything comes up.”
“Got it. But so far we’ve been combing through the list of every guest, member of the personnel, accredited contractors . . . we got nothing. Most of them have a clean record, and those who don’t, they just have no link to Gerone or the Lions.” He skimmed through the data on a screen to his right. “Famous French chef who used to beat his wife, a few tax evaders, and . . . oh—”
Stiles frowned. “Oh what?”
“Anyone looking for a German pedophile?”
Murrell rubbed his eyes tiredly. “No, we got enough on our plate; thank you.”
March too ran a hand across his face. He wouldn’t show it, but I feared he too was completely exhausted. “I contacted a friend before we left. He might be able to help.”
Interesting . . . “Who?”
“Ilan.”
Murrell’s brow creased in apparent worry.
“He’s cool,” I reassured him. “He’s this super dangerous guy who used to work for the French secret service, but now he’s like Stiles, a fairy godmother, but for criminals.” I left out the part about him being the husband of March’s ex: they didn’t need to know that.
Stiles side-eyed me. “A fairy . . . godmother?”
“I mean it in the best way possible.”
The Caterpillar had locked himself inside one of the cabins to get some sleep. March eventually did the same. I kissed him good night but didn’t join him. In part because I felt it would have been awkward to follow him in there with the Caterpillar’s agents watching us over their snack trays but also because I wanted to let him get the rest he desperately needed.
For my part, I just couldn’t close my eyes. So much had happened over the past few days, and it was like my brain was running on overdrive, refusing to shut down even for a minute. So I stayed in the conference room to browse the Internet and read articles and technical data on the Poseidon Dome, until Stiles joined in for a little movie session.
“See this one,” he said, launching a video of a fat Maine coon sprawling itself directly in front of a white Roomba so that the side brush would scratch his belly. “See how he angles his body, and the Roomba keeps spinning. It’s a symbiotic relationship.”
“You’re making me want one.”
He drew out a world-weary sigh. “It’s a huge responsibility. Don’t take it lightly.”
And who could know better than the man who secretly ran YouTube’s most-watched Roomba cats channel? Like I said earlier, I didn’t know how to explain to March the bond Stiles and I shared. It had nothing to do with sexual or romantic love: Stiles was as deep in the friend zone as one could get, and he was perfectly content with that. Back in New York, Murrell had called him my soul mate, and while I disagreed because I wanted to believe that March held the position, t
here was a bit of truth in that. Stiles and I shared the same sort of ardent dedication to the things most people don’t care about.
Like dressing up his four cats and filming them interacting with his Roomba.
As the video ended, another started automatically. My mouth fell open. Someone out there was seriously raising the bar. Stiles, for his part, appeared unimpressed. He watched, with a contemptuous sneer, the Roomba cat ambling around a kitchen, dressed as a shark, while a bulldog dressed as a duck sat in a corner, next to an actual duck. The duck kept waddling, quacking, until at the end of the video, the owner dressed it with the shark costume and placed it on the Roomba in its turn. I couldn’t look away, mesmerized.
“Show off,” Stiles said with a little snort.
“New to the business? I’ve never seen her channel before.”
And yet, OregonGirl80 already boasted a staggering six hundred thousand views for this video alone.
“Yeah.” He glowered at the screen. “Ain’t gonna be around for long.”
Ouch. Stiles was getting all emotional about the meteoric rise of shark cat. That girl didn’t know it yet, but she was in for a bad time.
His soft Southern drawl enveloping each word, Stiles explained to me that beyond buying the costumes and filming, he dedicated a fair amount of his free time to eliminating competition—something made easier by his particular reach and abilities. Don’t worry—he never killed anyone . . . where Roomba cats were concerned. Just some subtle tipping of the universal balance, now and then, when a particular YouTube account started to accumulate more views than it should have. Like that ninth grader from Washington, who had to shut down hers after someone mailed her parents a report card suggesting her grades were slipping because she spent too much time on the Internet, or even the dental assistant from Maryland and her five Siamese cats—aka “the Chocolate Point Crew.” Her rise to the top was thwarted when it was discovered that she helped her boyfriend grow pot in their basement—they never found out who had tipped the police.
“What are you gonna do?” I murmured, after he was done revealing the ugliest secrets of his hobby.
He scooted closer. A conspiratorial whisper tickled my ear. “She filed a false 1099.”
“Island, what are you doing?”
Oh shit. I jerked away from Stiles, my cheeks reddening with irrational guilt. Another video of Roomba duck wearing a pink thong was playing in the background.
March’s brow furrowed in suspicion. “We’ll be landing in Los Angeles in a few minutes. I believe we must return to our seats.”
I got up on my feet, and he offered me his arm with a wary look in Stiles’s general direction. For now, his inner caveman was in charge, and he wanted me away from the Roomba cats.
The break on the LAX tarmac felt like the calm before the storm. It was 3:00 a.m. The tar still glistened black from a recent downpour. Workers hurried around the Caterpillar’s stolen 787, their fluorescent vests flashing in the night. Conspicuously followed by three agents, March and I strolled around the plane, stretching our legs, breathing the humid air and a touch of kerosene fumes. At last, I could feel my body giving up. Even with the constant ache in my left arm that the painkillers wouldn’t dim, I knew I’d fall like a log the moment we returned to the plane.
“I could let you go.” March’s hand squeezed mine as I gazed sleepily at the gracious arches of the Theme Building glowing blue in the distance. “I could take care of Erwin’s men, and it’s a short run to the nearest terminal.”
I snuggled closer to him. “And they’d catch me before I could make it out of the airport. I have a gun and no passport.” Dangling at my side, the little green shoulder bag suddenly felt much heavier.
“Island, we didn’t have many options in Croatia, but this is US soil. We could alert your father. Erwin doesn’t want any more publicity for now—”
“If Dries is there, I need to see him.”
“Because of the picture?”
“Among other things, yes. I talked to Jan while you were at Santa Lucia Station. He kind of implied that Dries and Anies had fought over my mother, and I’m thinking that maybe it has something to do with all this, the way Anies is trying to destroy him like that.”
March stroked my cheek. “I don’t know . . . but I doubt you’ll see him. And it’s better this way. I don’t want you anywhere near Morgan or Gerone.”
I forced a grin on my face. “I’m armed and dangerous.”
“That you are.” March’s mouth twitched involuntarily despite his somber mood. “Would you like to hear what Erwin told me about you?”
“I suppose.”
“He called you an agent of chaos. ‘Worse than a whitlow,’ to be precise.”
It felt good to laugh; I let each burst shake my frame in earnest. “I hope you defended me.”
“I did. I said”—he threaded his fingers in my hair, a wistful expression softening his features—“that you don’t see the world the way we do, and that, mistaken as you may sometimes be, I try to follow you . . . because I think you set me on the right path.”
I hugged him tight, unable to control the quivers in my body, the glow I could feel inside me. “Did you really say that?”
“Yes. Now he believes I’m clinically insane.”
Shaking with renewed laughter, I held on to him, rubbed my cheek against his chest the way he liked. And I didn’t give a damn if the Caterpillar’s agents saw me.
“March,” I murmured. “There’s something else I need to ask you.”
“What is it, biscuit?”
“You seemed weird, back in the meeting room, when I brought up what Dries told you in Tokyo. You were thinking about something. What was it?”
His hand rubbed my back. “Nothing. I suppose I’m just a little tired; don’t worry about it.”
It was the second time it happened, and now I recognized the feeling, that pressure in my chest, like my rib cage was suddenly a size too small for my heart.
The feeling you get when someone you love lies to you.
28
Declaration of War
On the battleground of passion, his mind and his breeches warred relentlessly.
—Jade Mulhouse, Raked by the Duke
This could be a tale about me and my chalk-white skin catching fire the second I stepped out of the plane and running around Rangiroa Airport like a human torch. But Stiles had remembered to take sunscreen, so I survived that too. We landed around 11:00 a.m., and as soon as we were standing on the tarmac, I was swallowed by wind and light. Everything was so incredibly blue, the sky, the turquoise sea beyond. My tunic was flapping in a strong breeze, and I couldn’t stop staring up at the clouds stretching above us.
Once I did look down, I realized that there was a welcome committee: several Jeeps and a sedan waited at the other end of the tarmac. I overheard someone saying that the Caterpillar had requested reinforcements from the Honolulu station, in case things went really bad. I wondered what they’d do though, if the Crystal Whisperer managed to blow up the dome. An army wouldn’t suffice.
A bit farther, a different sort of company awaited us: a couple of armored station wagons that screamed French secret service. The Caterpillar walked to them with an escort. Indeed, armed men came out, along with older guys wearing linen suits—no doubt local caterpillars. A heated negotiation began, which I gathered went along the lines of “This is our country, and we’re totally in control of the situation.” “Fuck you, cheese-eaters, this is our investigation, and mine is bigger.” “Non, mine.” “Someone find us a ruler, terrorism can wait!”
Stiles scratched his head. “It might take a while . . .”
“Then perhaps we should leave these gentlemen to their administrative concerns,” March said, observing the palavers disdainfully. “Besides”—he squinted his eyes in the direction of the airport’s low building and its traditional tiled roof. There, a tall guy in a yellow Polynesian shirt and cargo pants stood, his arms akimbo—“I believe my friend is
here.”
I think he said something else to Stiles, but I was already running to greet Ilan, so I didn’t listen. When the two of them followed me, one of the Caterpillar’s agents yelled that we couldn’t do that. That’s all he did though, because he didn’t have the balls to stand up to March, now that most of his pals guarded the Caterpillar and were busy stare-fighting with the French.
Unlike mine, Ilan’s leathery olive skin didn’t fear the tropical sun. He greeted me with a wide grin piercing through his silvery stubble. “Alors, on continue de foutre le bordel partout où on va ?” So, still wreaking havoc wherever you go?
“Ouais, ça va . . .” Yeah, kinda . . .
He frowned down at the purple cast around my wrist. “C’est pas beau ça . . . c’est récent?” That doesn’t look good . . . happened recently?
“Je t’expliquerai. Mais le résumé c’est: évite la drague sur le net.” I’ll tell you later. Long story short: stay clear of online dating.
Ilan nodded in puzzlement and raised an eyebrow at March, whose jaw clenched in response. It didn’t make me happy or anything, but I was almost certain that if March caught Alex, the first damage he’d inflict would be a clean fracture of the left wrist.
I decided to change the subject. “Kalahari va bien?” How’s Kalahari?
“Pretty good,” he went on in English once March and Stiles had joined us. “She has some news for you two; she’ll call you when you’re done destroying the country.”
“Hopefully we won’t have to,” March said with a weary sigh. “Thank you for responding so quickly.”
Ilan towered over his old rival—just because he could—with a benevolent smile. “Don’t mention it. Besides, I know half of the guys baring their teeth to Erwin back there.” He rubbed his hands. “Couldn’t pass on that kind of thrill. Who’s the guest, by the way?” he asked, noticing Stiles behind March.
The interested party stepped forward and extended a hand that Ilan proceeded to crush in his big paw. “Special Agent Joshua Stiles, Directorate of Foreign Operations.”
