by Judith Leon
She stood and squeezed the hand that had been touching her in an oh-so-possessive way. “Okay. We go with this.”
Marko made a gung ho gesture with both fists.
Tito called in. Their ETA was 5:30.
“You should meet your extraction team colleagues at the airport,” Bendrich said. “It’s not too far out of the way to this chateau. If you wait for them to come here, you will lose half an hour.”
Lindsey agreed, and Bendrich went to fetch and load the SUV with the gear and few weapons they had available at the safe house. Dita went to her apartment four blocks away to fetch Lindsey some ski pants, long johns, a thermal pullover and a parka. While she waited, she and Marko threw out ideas as they studied the photo of the chateau and its grounds.
By the time Lindsey had changed her clothes, Marko showed her his rough sketch of the plan so far. “We park here,” he said, pointing, “get out and climb double-time to this point, which looks like it’s a little above and behind the building, a good spot for a secure area. We leave the intelligence person, if the team has one, there with a grenade launcher, an MGL-140. Will he have brought one?”
“Tito absolutely will have one, Marko. Plus other equipment. Tasers and paintball launchers and who knows what else. Stuff for rappelling. He promised to come ‘ready to take down the Death Star.’”
The main road ran east and west. The chateau sat well north of the road, its entrance facing south, and it was reached by a sweeping circular drive that looped up from the road. She studied the coordinates Marko had labeled: ground level of the northwest corner of the chateau was NW1, second floor at that end would be NW2. A basement in that area would be NWB, and so forth.
A modest-sized octagonal building stood separate from the chateau and in front of it, on the opposite side of the circular drive. He’d labeled it OS for the south side octagon. Marko guessed it might have been and still might serve as a guardhouse and it was therefore to be a major objective.
A third building at a right angle off the east side was evidently a garage. He’d labeled it simply G. Two fountains appeared to sit in the front, one on either side of the entry door, although they were covered with snow and so fuzzy in the photo she couldn’t be certain they were, in fact, fountains instead of statues or maybe huge planters.
When she felt she’d memorized the layout, she had Dita make copies of the sketch for Tito’s team. Marko bundled up, as well, and at 5:12, they were just about to head to the airport when another e-mail from Allison came in for Lindsey:
In all the pressure to contact art researchers and coordinate the team’s arrival, I almost forgot to check on the Kestonian who was sweating, Todor. Our experts think he may have taken a temperature-raising drug for purposes of site location through use of a heat-sensitive tracking and targeting device. Be prepared for anything. Good luck.
Chapter 32
A t 5:23 a.m., Pietro Albioni sat bundled up in the darkness of his cold room in the chateau and aimed a small flashlight at the list of buyers for the girl and the CDs. He sat in darkness, wanting Jeremy to think he was sleeping. Pietro’s brain had teemed with larval ideas ever since Foo Hai’s parting comment at
Old Town Square
, ideas now beginning to hatch. Was Foo Hai the one to deal with, though?
Escorting Foo Hai and Bing back to Prague, Pietro had ridden behind the driver of the rented limo, his Beretta holstered just inside his suit jacket. Bing, the clever psychic, sat next to him, Foo Hai in front. The driver was one of eight head-bashers Pietro had hired for two days to help handle the bidders. Jeremy had insisted that Pietro serve as an escort along with the hirelings, and this infuriated Pietro until he realized that for once Jeremy was right. Foo Hai and Todor were the bidders most likely to pull something.
Hudak could take care of anything Todor might try, but it was up to Pietro to keep Foo Hai in line. He was one dangerous bastard. It took one to know one. Pietro would bet big money that Foo Hai was some kind of Chinese mafia. Less than ten minutes after leaving the seven-kilometer radius covered by Jeremy’s jamming device, Foo Hai’s backup men had found them and followed the limo. Very impressive, although it had made Pietro cross his arms, reach inside his jacket and keep his hand on the Beretta for the remainder of the trip into town.
Once parked in the square in Prague, Foo Hai stepped out from the front seat and shut the door. Bing and Pietro also climbed out, and Pietro strode around to the front passenger door. Foo Hai had stepped in front of the door, blocking Pietro’s entry.
“You’re still a wiseguy,” Foo Hai had said, an edge of contempt in his voice. He slipped Pietro a business card. “Deal with me and I can make you your own man.”
Foo Hai hadn’t needed his little pipsqueak psychic to know that Pietro used to be in a Family. Foo Hai probably also knew that his offer would release dreams Pietro had tucked in the hiding places of his mind and set them slithering out over every old idea. Pietro didn’t have to remain a victim, a muscleman for Jeremy or anyone.
Pietro grabbed his smokes and lighter and headed downstairs to the chateau’s old wine cellar turned bomb shelter in WWII where the girl was kept. God, he hated the freaky little witch, always watching him with those damn spooky eyes. And damned if he could stare her down, not even if he smacked her a few times. She was tough on the outside, but he also could smell fear coming off her now and then.
He couldn’t smoke anywhere in the main house. Jeremy would wake up and whine about it. And just now, Pietro wanted Jeremy to sleep as long as possible. Candy-ass scientist trying to play with the big boys.
Pietro sat on a folding chair beside the stairwell where he didn’t have a direct view of the girl’s cell. A low-watt light-bulb burned in the hallway at all times. The stone walls around him harbored mold, fungus, bugs, rat holes and the grime of centuries. His cigarette smoke drifted upward, and a black spider dropped down from the cobwebby old rafters. He plucked the spider’s line loose and held it, watching the thing turn and try to climb back up. Pietro let it fall onto the dark, ancient stone of the floor. Four hundred years of spider droppings alone probably made up the dull, fetid shellac covering. He covered the spider with his boot and ground it into a paste.
An overwhelming sense of satisfaction came over him. For a moment…
You’re still a wiseguy….
Foo Hai had nailed it. Pietro had been a low-level Mafia soldier, and if things stayed the same, he might always be. Always doing work that enabled someone else to get rich off his risk and his pain and his smarts.
Just like Uncle Luigi.
Because Luigi really was his uncle, he hadn’t whacked Pietro for trying to take over one of his cousin’s operations—which Pietro could have run far better than his babbo cousin. Pietro had been “chased.” Was dead to the family.
And now in the same rut, he was working, not for Jeremy, as Jeremy stupidly supposed, but for the one Jeremy only knew as A. The one who branded Pietro with her web. The one who’d learned what his uncle would have whacked him for, nephew or not. Pietro had been the one who named his cousin to the cops.
Somehow, A found out about it and had blackmailed Pietro into being her slave ever since. He was still a wiseguy, only instead of his uncle, his boss was an evil bitch, far worse than Luigi had ever been.
And for all the work he’d done on this current job, all the shit from Jeremy that he’d put up with, his cut of this latest fat deal was a mere twenty-five K. A for Arachne. A spider woman. She was as powerful, if not more so, than any Mafia—Italian, American, Russian or Chinese. There was no direct way to compare their power to hers, but she had contacts all over the world who did whatever she told them to do. Blackmail. Pietro was almost certain that was how she did it. She found out things. And the more things she found out, the more things there were to find.
If Pietro could deliver the little freak in the cell a few feet away, plus Jeremy’s CDs, all sold to the right buyer, it would change everything. Pietro could be his own man. He’d h
ave money to go where his uncle couldn’t find him, where even Arachne couldn’t find him. An island in Fiji. Or some little spot off South America. He’d buy his own goddamn island.
Pietro ground out his cigarette stub with his boot, as he’d done to the spider. He’d decided.
The real question still was, who was the right buyer? Foo Hai was just plain scary. Capable of a deal followed up with a knife in the back. The Kestonian was nuts, and didn’t really have any money. Neither did Yun, the North Korean. Yun just didn’t seem to want the package that much. The Russian woman and the Platt woman probably had the most money, but didn’t seem like the types to risk a double cross. They might just back out of the whole deal, or even alert Jeremy. Pietro couldn’t read women the way he could read men. Didn’t want to deal with the bitches. None of the buyers were quite right for what Pietro had in mind, but if he waited for perfection, he’d be as old as Luigi before getting anywhere. This was the moment. He pictured a tiny, jagged crack in the window of opportunity and brightened at his poetic thought.
The girl started coughing. She’d complained the first day about Pietro’s smoking, and he had taken a full ashtray and dumped it on her. She was slowly learning to be less of a bitch.
5:34 a.m. He wanted more time, but if he was going to pull this thing off, he had to move now. Pietro made his choice. He’d just have to anticipate every possible way Foo Hai could sabotage him and be one step ahead.
Pietro called Foo Hai and made arrangements for the sale of Teal. Foo Hai need not bid against competitors. Pietro guaranteed Foo Hai delivery of Teal and the disks with information on the genetic procedures to produce modified embryos. The deal included fifteen million for Pietro alone in U.S. dollars, to be deposited in a Swiss account he’d kept secret since his Mafia days.
“I’ve made plenty of trades of goods for money,” Pietro said. “And to be damn certain the bitch and the disks don’t get away at some point in the transfer, I want to put a GPS on them.”
“Why would they get lost?”
“Like I say, I’ve done this plenty of times. Things happen. I want to be able to find the girl and the disks. When you take possession, you can take the damn things off if you want. I can get my hands on Jeremy’s bugs and tracking devices. Do you have the ability to find the girl and the disks if I give you the tracking codes?”
A silent pause—Foo Hai probably trying to figure out if there was some trick involved. There wasn’t. It was simply good insurance, learned mostly from Pietro’s experiences selling drugs, but he figured the same principle would apply here. Any time things were in transit, something could go wrong.
“Of course, I have tracking equipment. Go ahead. Plant your bugs. But we have to move fast. How soon can you deliver?” Foo Hai asked.
Pietro needed an hour to plan and pull everything together and a half hour to drive to the city. “I can reach the Prague address by 7:15 a.m. Just after sunup.”
“Too light. And we have a long drive. We’re not waiting around. 6:45.”
“You’d have had to wait until noon, even later to take possession, if I didn’t deal with you.”
“This change of plans only works for us on a much earlier time frame.”
Pietro broke into a light sweat. Foo Hai was pushing him, deliberately undercutting Pietro’s planning, rushing him, confusing him.
“7:00 is the best I can do. Final offer.”
Foo Hai accepted and Pietro hung up.
It was now 5:37. Shit! He’d have to bust his balls. He stood, walked to her tiny room, and looked inside. “I got new plans for you.”
Chapter 33
A t 5:38, Sam’s plane had arrived at the small, private airport, but not Tito’s. Lindsey felt nauseated, her guts twisting slowly. Their best hope of taking Teal back was rapidly slipping away. Standing beside the SUV, she and Sam exchanged hugs. Marko shook Sam’s gloved hand.
“Your team?” Sam asked as she looked around the empty space.
“Not yet here. Late. Due in at 5:30.”
After a small silence, Lindsey said, “Do you agree, Marko, that we’d have very little chance to succeed if we attempt the extraction ourselves with the equipment we have and only the three of us?”
“Totally. Eye-to-eye. We could modify a bit. We’d still have the cover of darkness. But depending on how many goons Jeremy has kept around, this will be difficult to pull off even if your team arrives. On the other hand, we have zero chance of success in daylight.”
Lindsey slid into the driver’s seat and restarted the SUV’s engine. “We can’t wait for daylight and we can’t rely on winning the bid. We have to go now.”
Her outlook was grim as they drove out of the parking lot.
“Wait, Linds!” Marko shouted. He’d been looking into his side-view mirror. He turned around and looked back. “There’s a jet coming in.”
Lindsey used Marko’s cell phone to connect with Tito. The extraction team was there and ready to boogie.
Two women and two men lugged gear to the parking lot and dropped it beside the white SUV. They all looked like they meant business in their snowy-patterned camo overalls and parkas in shades of white, gray and light gray-brown.
Marko, Lindsey noted, automatically inventoried the weapons as Tito made introductions—first names only. Ferris, the team’s information coordinator. Monique, a willowy brunette, expert in munitions and weapons. Tia, six foot two, looked to be half Asian, half African, their electrical systems specialist.
Lindsey introduced Marko. “My…associate, well trained in tactics. He’ll brief you on the plan as we go.” Marko shook hands heartily with the two men, Tito and Ferris.
Sam introduced herself quickly to Tito’s team as people stacked gear in the SUV.
Lindsey did the driving, and they roared off in a direction southwest of Prague. Marko immediately began explaining the plan. When there were no questions, Marko said, “Okay, let’s do a static run-through.”
Very slowly, they all talked through each position and each tactical movement. Then they did a “fluid” step-by-step with only short prompts from Marko. Then came the “dynamic” unprompted, rapid run-through. They repeated it. Were they able to, they would have done every move many times in real time and with a physical mock-up. This time, repetition with the map of the property in their hands would have to suffice.
“According to the SUV’s GPS map, we’re about seven minutes from target,” Lindsey said.
She pulled over and jumped out, Marko relieving her at the wheel. As they drove ahead, Lindsey squirmed into the Kevlar vest, the boots, helmet and high-performance gloves they’d brought for her. Everyone else donned full gear, as well. Tia passed out individual audio units she called “earwigs,” and everyone put them on. Tia and Sam ran a quick operational test of the devices that would keep them all in constant contact.
The first message through the earwig was Monique saying, “Who’s T-1? Tito or Marko?”
Lindsey said, “Marko’s plan is good as far as it goes, and we’ll begin with it, but since we don’t have a floor plan of the chateau or any idea where we’ll meet resistance, or even where the girl is, the assault is highly dynamic. This is Tito’s team. He should run it. Marko can be T-2.”
They memorized everyone’s alphanumeric designations. The intelligence officer, Ferris, was T-3. Lindsey was T-7, dead last in the chain of command. Fair enough. She clearly was the person here with least experience.
The SUV turned onto a road lined with barren trees on either side, sturdy silver-gray branches gleaming in the headlights. Her linden trees. Lindsey almost shouted for joy. This was the place. All their research had paid off. They’d gotten it right.
“Cut the headlights,” she said to Marko. “This is it.”
Chapter 34
W ith the SUV parked off the road between the lindens, team members unloaded and stuffed backpacks and gear belts. Lindsey was running on high speed and happy that someone else was in charge for the time being. She could just f
ocus on getting to Teal and not have to worry as much about the whole team.
She watched Marko run in a crouch across a narrow, snow-covered field, occasionally sinking into snow almost up to his knee. In the gray dawn twilight, his dark green parka marked him as someone different in a way the team’s uniform camo-patterned clothing would not. He became a shadow, charging the darkness like a moose. Lindsey’s borrowed parka was white, fortunately, and her ski pants gray. Thank God for the boots Sam had brought. Lindsey wasn’t comfortable with the close helmet worn inside the parka hood, but it was necessary.
A wooded area—blackened with a scattering of dense, dark, evergreens—bordered the field. Marko became a mere blur as he moved along the tree line and up a little ridge. And then she couldn’t see him at all, but he spoke inside her ear, as he did to the whole team.
“T-2,” he said.
“T-1, responding,” Tito replied.
“Secure area site seems okay,” Marko said as clearly as if he stood right beside Lindsey. “High-gable, two-story building looks dark inside. Shabby. First-floor windows barred or shuttered. Entry from this side unlikely. Round tower, capped like a witch’s hat with a spire rises up from the back. Looks like four stories. Center front of the chateau is a square tower like a castle. Three stories. Flat roof. Satellite photos didn’t show it clearly. Wait, there’s movement…Two men are up there, armed with rifles. Ground level of the tower has massive entry doors, flanked by two more guards…. Across wide driveway area, the O building. Light on. Its entry faces chateau…Someone’s moving there, too. Armed.”
O building. The octagonal building in front, Lindsey reminded herself.
