Jenna set the cups in the sink, dumped the takeout containers in the trash, then sat at the kitchen table.
Briony leaned back in her chair and yawned.
“How did you learn to do all of this?” Jenna asked.
“Necessity,” Briony said with a grin. “I was such a huge outcast in school. I was bullied mercilessly.”
“Why on earth would anyone do that?”
“Too skinny, too tall, too weird,” Briony said. “You name it. You know how kids are.”
Jenna looked at her. “I’m glad you got the last laugh.”
Briony did laugh then. “I guess you could say that. It was hell at the time though. And I didn’t have any siblings, so I was just… alone, you know?” Jenna nodded, and Briony continued. “So I started fooling around on the computer after school, hanging out in online forums for computer nerds where it didn’t matter what you looked like as long as you could speak the language.” She seemed to think about it. “It was… liberating. To be outside of myself at a time when being inside myself was a bitch. You know?”
Jenna smiled. “I do.”
Farrell wasn’t surprised to see the moment of understanding pass between the two women. Jenna had always had that ability — to make people feel seen and heard, to be genuinely interested in them. It was one of the things he loved about her. It was a quality he didn't have. He was too focused on his goals to worry about what someone else was thinking or feeling. Too focused on the security of the people who mattered to him. Jenna spoke a language he didn’t understand, and he couldn’t help but be fascinated by how easily she seemed to grasp something that was so uninteresting to him.
“So how does it work?” Jenna asked. “I mean, I don’t want to take you away from the work, but I am curious.”
“No harm in it right now,” Briony said. “My work is done for the time being. I’ve got a spider crawling the web for possible hits on Denys Levchenko while another program indexes the results by relevance. We already have some preliminary information, but I want to dig deeper, see if we can find something they went through the trouble to hide.”
“Sounds complicated,” Jenna said.
“It’s not really,” Briony laughed. “The biggest problem is the sheer size of the internet. It gets bigger, the data more vast, every day. I have to target it in segments, let the spider crawl, then move onto another piece of it. Which is why I’m running down the results on Farrell’s computer while mine crawls.”
“I’m really impressed,” Jenna said.
“Don’t be,” Briony said. “It’s the result of too many nights alone.”
Farrell was surprised by the comment, but he didn’t say anything. The less he knew about his employees the better.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Jenna asked. “Anything we can do?”
Briony looked at the couch, where Kane was still asleep. She laughed. “Not right now. In fact, you should all get some sleep. I’ll have more by morning.”
Jenna rose from the table. “Tell you what; why don’t I make more coffee instead? I think I have some biscuits in the cupboard, too. Sugar always helps.”
Briony grinned. “A woman after my own heart.”
Farrell watched Jenna head to the kitchen. She wasn’t the same woman she’d been five years ago. Wasn’t the same woman she’d been even a year ago.
She was his woman now. And he would protect her to the end. Whatever it brought.
Twenty
Jenna woke up on the couch, a blanket covering her shoulders. Sunlight streamed in through the terrace doors, and the soft murmur of voices came from behind the couch. She sat up and stretched.
“Oh, good. You’re awake,” Briony said.
She was sitting at the table with Kane and Farrell, a steaming pot of coffee and a white pastry box between them, the two laptops still open.
“I’m sorry,” Jenna said, rising from the couch to join them. “I don’t remember falling asleep.”
Farrell stood and went to the kitchen, then returned with a coffee mug. “Nothing at all to be sorry for, love. You were with us almost until the end. And you lasted longer than Kane.”
Kane shrugged, rubbing the five o’ clock shadow at his jaw. “Learned a long time ago to sleep when and where I can.”
Farrell poured coffee into the mug and handed it to Jenna. He looked better than a man had a right to look after a sleepless night. He kissed her forehead. “Join us.”
She sat down and sipped at the steaming liquid, sighing with pleasure.
“There are croissants,” Briony said. “They’re heavenly in Paris, aren’t they?”
“The absolute best.” Jenna opened the box, chose one of the flakey pastries. She pulled off a piece, put it in her mouth, and brushed crumbs off her shirt. “Did your spider finish its job last night?”
Briony grinned. “It did. The little monster is safely back in its cage, and we have a lot of new information on our friend, Denys Levchenko.”
Jenna stopped chewing. “Really?”
“Really,” Farrell said. “Would you like a few minutes to wake up?”
Jenna shook her head. They didn’t have a few minutes. “Tell me.”
Briony turned her computer so everyone at the table could see the screen. There was a picture of Alex Petrov — now identified as Levchenko — alongside an older man who looked like him. “Meet Denys Levchenko, son of Alexei Levchenko, former member of Viktor Yanukovych’s cabinet.”
“Levchenko was president of the Ukraine during the Euromaidan uprising in 2014,” Kane explained.
Jenna shook her head. She was in New York in 2014, working for Nico Vitale and trying desperately to keep her head above water as a single parent to Lily. “I’m sorry. I don’t know anything about that.”
“The short version is that Yanukovych wanted closer ties with Russia and a less cozy relationship with the rest of Europe,” Farrell said. “Unfortunately for him, the rest of the Ukraine didn’t agree. There was an uprising that left a lot of people dead — Alexei Levchenko among them.”
“So Alex — Denys — is the son of a Ukrainian politician?” Jenna asked.
“You could say that,” Briony said. “But another way of thinking about it is that he’s the son of a man who was killed for wanting to enter into an agreement with the European Union that would alter the course of a country that, up until then, had maintained a largely isolationist position in the global community.”
Jenna was starting to get a picture of Denys Levchenko, one that went beyond the killer who had murdered her father, who had tried to get close to her by lying about his identity along with everything else. But she didn’t have all the pieces yet.
“What else?” she asked.
“For awhile, Denys tried to pick up the mantle of his father’s beliefs, but there wasn’t as much sympathy for an isolated Ukraine. He disappeared in 2015.” Briony tapped one of the keys and two new pictures appeared on the screen — one of a woman, obviously taken some time ago, and the other of a young man. “He has an older brother, Borys. His mother’s name is Helene. She’s French.”
Jenna set down her cup, and looked more closely at the photograph of the woman. “Helene Chevalier?”
“Bingo,” Kane said.
“It was her maiden name. The vineyard belonged to her father,” Farrell added.
“I can’t believe it,” Jenna said. But now she could see it: the bitter man who had grown to hate Europe — and probably the US and any country tied to the ideals he abhorred. His family nursing their thirst for revenge, reaching out to others who might feel the same way. “But I don’t understand… Surely Levchenko doesn’t have the kind of resources to pull off the development of a major bioweapon. With all the secrecy surrounding the Stafford Institute, CBT financial, Erik Karlsen, someone big had to bankroll the effort.”
“More like multiple someones,” Kane muttered.
“What do you mean?”
Briony leaned over and tabbed through a few more
screens until she came to a picture of several people standing in a group. The photograph had obviously been taken from a distance, the figures grainy and difficult to see clearly. Briony played with the picture for a minute, expanding it and sharpening the edges until the people became more clear.
“This photo was retrieved based on Denys Levchenko’s facial mapping. Do you recognize any of these people?” she asked Jenna. “Besides Denys, I mean?”
“I recognize David Hewitt,” Jenna said. “Although he looks a bit younger in this photograph.”
“It was taken two years ago,” Kane said. “In Kiev.”
“Anyone else?” Briony asked.
Jenna leaned in, looked more closely. “A couple of them look familiar, but I’m not sure.”
“We weren’t either,” Farrell said. “Which is why Briony ran of her spiders through the web looking for a match on the faces. Turns out, the meeting was somewhat… historic.”
“Historic?” Jenna prompted.
“What you’re seeing is Denys together with leaders from Greece, Venezuela, and of course, our very own United Kingdom,” Briony said.
“I don’t understand,” Jenna said.
“Give it a minute,” Farrell said.
She let the faces sink into her consciousness, let her mind turn over the pieces of the puzzle, looking for the edges that fit together.
“They’re in trouble,” she finally said. “The Ukraine in political turmoil, Greece in economic turmoil, Venezuela on the verge of collapse altogether.”
“Right again,” Kane said.
“And they’re all…. what? Conspiring to unleash a bioweapon as some kind of revenge on the rest of the world?"
“Do you have a better idea?" Kane asked.
“Well, no,” she admitted. “But… David Hewitt? He’s set to become Prime Minister of a First World country. Not exactly a beggar in world politics.”
“I love England,” Farrell said, “but let’s face it, our power is largely in name only these days.”
“Besides,” Briony said, “there’s room for ambition here, too. It’s completely possible the people involved are looking for a little personal power.”
Jenna stood, pacing to the terrace doors as the magnitude of what they were saying began to hit her. Beyond the terrace, daylight had dawned on a gray and rainy day in Paris. People scurried below, their umbrellas bobbing along the pavement like rubber balls in a great, stormy sea.
“Unleashing a virus like Marburg isn’t like firing a missile,” she said quietly. “These people could just as easily be killed as anyone else.”
“Unless they have some kind of antidote,” Farrell said from behind her.
She turned to face him. “There’s an antidote?”
“We don’t know that for certain,” he said. “But it would make sense.”
“In what universe does any of this make sense?” She was fighting hysteria now, trying to keep calm now that their enemy had the face of someone with an ax to grind.
An ax to grind and very little to lose.
“Think about it,” Kane said. “These assholes unleash the virus in a few key spots around the world, probably in the countries that are considered Superpowers, maybe one in a country or two of their own just to deflect suspicion. They use the antidote for themselves and their families, then wait it out. And just when it starts to get really bad, just when the rest of the world is going to shit in a blind panic, one of them pulls an antidote. And they’re more than happy to share it — providing they get a little extra consideration from the global community.”
“They wouldn’t get away with it,” Jenna said. “They’d be crucified.”
“Only if they made it look like it had been intentional,” Briony said. "If they made it look like they just happened to have the antidote, and if they made it sound like they’d put a lot of resources into developing it…”
“It would increase their bargaining power on the world stage.”
Kane snorted. “That’s a nice way of putting it. Blackmail would be another.”
“Except no one would really know they were being blackmailed,” Jenna said.
“More like no one would care,” Farrell said. “At that point, millions could be dead. No one would care about sanctions and concessions and loans and trade deals. They’d do anything to stop the spread.”
Jenna shook her head. "This is crazy. You know how crazy this is, right?” she asked no one in particular.
Farrell stood, crossing the room to where she stood. He placed his hands on her shoulders. The pressure calmed her, an anchor tethering her to land while a tsunami tried to pull her out to sea.
“Everything is crazy about this, love. Has been since the beginning. But Levchenko didn’t do this alone, and Briony is already putting more of the pieces together.”
“What pieces?”
“The wire transfers we couldn’t trace? The ones that were in the report with CBT?”
She nodded. “They originated from these countries.”
“Among others,” Briony said, tapping away at her computer.
“But how can we be sure?” Jenna asked.
“We can’t,” Farrell admitted. “Not right now. And I don’t see that we can wait for everything to be confirmed. We have thirty six hours until Kane has to hand us over.”
He didn’t say the other thing. The thing she knew was true: that Farrell would hand her to the powers-that-be over his dead body.
But then they would be on the run again, Lily farther away than ever. That wasn’t an option either. Not when they might be able to put an end to it.
“So what do we do?” Jenna asked.
“We operate under the assumption that we’re onto something,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re going to Geneva,” Briony said, obviously distracted.
“Geneva.” She felt stupid repeating it, but she couldn't seem to do anything else.
“Switzerland,” Briony said.
Jenna sighed, trying to hold back her frustration. “I know where Geneva is. I’m asking why we’d be going there.”
But it wasn’t Briony who answered, but Farrell. “Because the Levchenko’s had a house there.”
Twenty-One
“I don't want to say are we there yet, but are we there yet?” Jenna asked from the passenger seat of the Saab.
They’d been on the road for over three hours, and Kane was passed out in the backseat. The man could sleep anywhere, a skill Jenna was quickly coming to envy.
Farrell looked over at her with a smile. “You sound like Lily.” The name hit her like a punch in the stomach, and he reached over to take her hand, obviously seeing it on her face. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “It shouldn’t hurt to think about her. It should make me happy — and it does — but somehow it hurts, too.”
“I understand,” Farrell said. “I miss her every day. I can’t believe I ever lived without her. Or you.”
A flush of shame radiated through her body. She had done that: taken Farrell’s daughter from him. Deprived him of the first four years of her life.
“Don’t do that,” he said.
“Do what?”
“You know what.”
She looked out the window. “I’ll never stop being sorry for it.”
“I wish you would,” he said. “I’ve stopped being angry.”
“That’s because you’re a better person than me,” she said, still looking out the window.
He laughed. “Bollocks.”
She looked at him. “It’s true. You’re willing to fight for your principles, your beliefs. To stand by them even in the face of danger to yourself. You’re willing to risk your safety — even your life — for others.”
“That list is painfully small, love,” he said quietly.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “There are people in the world who wouldn’t risk their life for anyone.”
“But
you would,” he said. “Probably even for someone you didn’t know.”
She thought about it. “Maybe. But that feels easy. It’s what society expects, isn’t it? What they tell us is right?” She hesitated, trying to find the words she needed. “But to see the danger coming, to cut it off at the knees before it can do harm even when it makes you a criminal, that takes guts. It takes heart and courage.”
He grinned. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”
She slapped at his arm. “I’m being serious.”
He winked. “So am I.”
He was being silly, but she had seen the flash of surprise, of pleasure, in the moment before he’d hidden it with snark. A familiar melancholy snaked its way through her heart — the kind of melancholy that had always been reserved for Farrell. The kind she could never show him for fear he would think she pitied him.
The kind reserved for a man who didn’t like himself very much, who believed what the world thought about him even as he was in many ways the best man she knew.
“It’s pretty here,” Jenna said, turning her face back to the window, watching the Alps, already snow-capped, rising to peaks in the distance. The mountain range stood in stark contrast to the still grassy hills surrounding them. It was September, but she could already see the coming winter in the slightly faded green of the wild grass, the muted colors of the wildflowers that dotted the field like colored stars.
“What if they’re not there?” Jenna asked.
“We’ll hope Briony has come up with something else,” he said from the driver’s seat. “Every new clue is a stepping stone to something else. We know about the house in Chamonix now. They either still own it, or they don’t. And if they don’t, there’s bound to be an address on record for the seller of the home.”
“We don’t have time to run all over the wold looking for the Levchenko’s,” she said.
Thirty hours. That was what they had left. The rest of the day, the night, a few hours tomorrow. And that wasn’t even accounting for the possibility that the virus was already in position somewhere, ready to be dispersed into the air.
Eternal (London Mob Book 3) Page 11
