Iron Dove

by Leon, Judith

  Provenza looked at one of the Special Ops guards and said in Italian, “Apparently he doesn’t intend to do anything but swear at us. He’s not going to tell us if he’s immune or not. We don’t assume anything. Keep him in isolation. And make damned certain he doesn’t get away. We’ll know one way or the other by tomorrow.”

  Taking hold of Nova’s arm, Provenza guided her and Joe to the gangway. Once off the train, he kept them walking into a clearing on the train’s north side, a good hundred feet away, to a place that seemed almost quiet compared to the small army of HAZMAT-garbed soldiers and medical personnel swarming over the train, disgorged from a couple dozen helicopters. Men were beginning to set up powerful floodlights. She smelled some sweet night flowers, like honeysuckle, in bloom.

  Provenza pulled off the HAZMAT helmet. “I’m quite sincere. You’ve done a superb job. Whatever you two want to do, wherever you want to go, I’ll see to it.”

  “I’m staying,” she said. “I’m going to keep the cover of Jane Blair, private investigator on vacation, so that anyone who makes it out of here alive won’t be able to link me with SISMI. But I’m going to stay, to be with the dying.”

  Provenza’s eyes widened and he leaned toward her, as if he weren’t sure or couldn’t believe what he’d heard. “I beg your pardon.”

  “The people who will come now to help the folks who are going to sicken and die with this miserable thing will have to wear HAZMAT gear. The suits are hateful. Impersonal and ugly, even frightening. And the authorities can’t allow loved ones of the dying to come to this site. Right?”

  “Well.” He stuck his hands in his pockets, clearly not comfortable with the question.

  “So I’m going to stay,” she added. “I estimate for the people who are infected the virus will run its course here in about ten days. I intend to write final letters for them and hold the hands of those who aren’t going to make it. They’ll have a person with them. Real flesh. Not a white glove and a face behind glass. And then,” she gave Provenza a little smile, “you can count on it, Signore Provenza. I’ll hit you up for some really fine reward afterward.”

  Provenza looked at Joe. “It’s a wonderful gesture, but not necessary. Surely you can persuade her.”

  “Of course it’s not necessary. We’re staying because it’s what we’d want someone to do for people we love.”

  Joe took her hand and squeezed. She slid her arm under his, as if they were going to take a stroll, and squeezed back. Partners. All the way to the end of the job.

  At the sound of crunching footsteps, they turned toward the rear of the train. Moonlight shone on an approaching figure, one not wearing HAZMAT gear.

  “Good evening to you all,” Cesare said. He must have hitched a helicopter ride. “At least, it’s a relatively good evening. The carrier has been stopped. I can tell you that the country is now under full quarantine. It is even possible we might get through this without a disaster of global magnitude.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “You don’t think for a minute that I could resist the need to satisfy my curiosity, do you? I also wanted to be certain that you both were intact. Remember, while you are in Italy, you are my responsibility.”

  Joe grinned.

  Provenza said, “Cesare, they both intend to stay to tend…well, to help the medics with the ill until it’s all over here. Quite unnecessary.”

  “Ah, but what a perfectly sensible thought,” Cesare said. “I will, of course, join the two of you. I believe I have the makings of a fine nurse.”

  She hugged him, her dirty jumpsuit brushing a horrible mess on his while silk jacket.

  Provenza shrugged. “Well, crazy or heroic, I don’t know which. I myself have to get back to headquarters and start filing endless reports.”

  They walked him to the helicopter that had brought him to the train and waited until it rose and headed toward Rome. Joe took her hand in his. She didn’t pull away.

  “Well,” Cesare said, “shall we not go and inquire of whoever is in charge of setting up tents where our lodgings will be? And I must make up a list of things I will need.”

  Chapter 44

  “Only one. One must wait,” said the jail guard to Nova in passable English.

  “No problem,” Joe said. “I have no desire to visit the son of a bitch.” He nodded to the chairs in the reception room for jail visitors. “I’ll wait.”

  Nova handed her purse to the short, intense-looking jailer.

  “Those,” he said, pointing to her white porcelain hoop earrings.

  She took them off, as well, and placed them, along with two rings and her cell phone, in the tray and then walked through the metal detector.

  On the other side, a different jailer said, “Follow me.”

  Ten days had passed since the train wreck. Ten days of hell for Italy and the world, as people everywhere held their breaths to see how bad and widespread the outbreak would be. The peak of the infection had now passed in the country and, mercifully both the rate of contagion and the death rate were much lower than what the terrorists would have wanted. Of the train’s one hundred and eighty-five passengers and crew, only twenty of the forty-two in Car No. 3 and six of those in Car No. 4 became infected, and more than sixty percent of those who’d become infected were still alive. According to experts, everyone still alive now would recover. She was especially pleased that Diego would return to his wife and kids. And to everyone’s enormous relief, the menace had been successfully contained within mainland Italy and Sicily.

  But among those she’d tended who had died had been the young terrorist, al Hassan’s son, Saddoun. That was the reason for this morning’s unpleasant visit to Rome’s central jail.

  She could visit al Hassan because, along with Joe and Cesare, she had a pass entitling her to travel freely anywhere in Italy or leave the country if she chose. The three of them were not only immune, but also weren’t manufacturing any of the virus in their bodies, so they were non-infectious. Provenza had also called ahead to let the jail authorities know that two Americans, Jane and James Blake, were to be accorded visiting privileges with the terrorist prisoner.

  The guard led her through several barred gates until they reached a simple white visiting room with two chairs. A bare wooden table sat in the center.

  The guard indicated the chair she should take. The chair on the table’s opposite side had a metal ring in the floor beneath it. A sign on the wall said, “Visitors, be informed that you are being watched and, unless you are a lawyer, your conversation may be tape-recorded.”

  Ahmad al Hassan shuffled in, wearing a bright yellow jumpsuit and leg and wrist irons. His guard sat him in the chair, attached his leg irons to the ring in the floor, and left the two of them alone.

  The man sat erect and defiant, offering only a sullen glare to the woman who had captured him.

  “You’re not curious as to why I’m here?” she asked.

  Silence. He looked away, instead gazing at the wall behind her.

  “I bring a message from your son, Saddoun.”

  His gaze snapped at once to her face. “Saddoun?”

  She took a deep breath. She should hate al Hassan, this mass murderer who had draped himself in religious clothing. If she hated him, then she would find some pleasure or satisfaction in the next moments. But she had a hard time hating. So far in her life, she had hated only one person—her stepfather.

  “Your son, without telling you, joined up with that little band of killers you put together to unleash this virus. But he joined up too late to get vaccinated.”

  Al Hassan blinked several times, his expression blank. Apparently he didn’t immediately understand.

  “Your son, Saddoun, went with the others to the Coliseum and onto the train to Munich. He was taken captive when the train was stopped. Because he wasn’t vaccinated, he contracted the virus and died. I was with him shortly before and he begged me to bring a message to you.”

  “Saddoun.” The man’s f
ace sagged, and he aged before her eyes. His shoulders collapsed, his neck seemed to shrink so that his head nodded forward and tears began to flow down his cheeks.

  Saddoun had refused to talk to anyone, including her, until he got the rash and started bleeding from…well, from everywhere. That’s when he’d said he needed to have her go to his father. He’d made her promise that if he talked, and explained as much as he knew about the plot, she would carry his message.

  Now it was time to deliver on her promise. “I was with him until he died. He said to tell you he was sorry that he did not obey you, because he loves you and because Allah commands that children obey their parents. And that I should tell you that he hopes you will be proud that he died in the fight against those who would destroy the true faith.”

  Al Hassan, silent sobs shaking his body, leaned his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. Saddoun had explained that he was his father’s only son, that he should have lived to carry on the family name. From al Hassan’s response, she knew that the man would never recover from this loss.

  “You know, your son died a painful, agonizing death.”

  “He was my son. A good son.”

  She stood up, message delivered.

  Before she left the room, she turned to the man whose hands covered his weeping face. From her heart came her own message. “Would that Allah spare all of us from fools like you.”

  Cesare grabbed Nova in a hug that crushed the breath out of her.

  “I will miss you, you beautiful and courageous creature,” he said, not letting her go.

  They stood at a safe distance from the blades of the helicopter waiting to take her and Joe to Capri for two days of recuperation. Then it would be back to the States to face an intensive debriefing in Virginia.

  From Claiton Pryce, the DDO at Langley, came words of praise for a successful operation, but the debriefing would be no less intense and exhausting. Smith had said that someone from the CDC would also be waiting to pump them for information on the course and nature of the disease, since they’d watched its effects close up during their days with the sick and dying from the train.

  “Why don’t you come to Capri, Cesare?” she said, hugging back. Cesare had also been offered rest time, but had declined.

  He let her go. “I’ve been to Capri often. And in truth, I want to get back to Principessa. And to my work. But you will find your stay there a delight. I know the hotel. And you both deserve the best.”

  Cesare turned to Joe, who was patiently observing this farewell with crossed arms. After having watched Cesare tenderly care for ill passengers for several days, Joe had told Nova he thought Cesare was a good man, and a good agent, even though, he’d added, the man could talk your ear off.

  “Do not let her be sad over those who died,” Cesare said. “I see too much sadness in her lovely eyes. But both of you have to know that between us, we have saved thousands…no, millions, of lives.”

  “Don’t worry, Cesare,” Joe said, turning to look at Nova with those dark, intense eyes. “I’ll take care of her.”

  Chapter 45

  Nova sighed. It had been one helluva day. The visit to see al Hassan had left her drained. In fact, it had been a nightmarish twenty-one days that felt like a lifetime since Joe showed up in Costa Rica.

  An hour and a half ago, she and Joe checked into a private, elegant little hotel on Capri. She stood naked in front of a full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door in her room at the Villa Aphrodite. Turning sideways, she checked her thighs and buttocks. She had four yellowing bruises on her legs and some nearly healed scratches on her arm from the fall at Sorokin’s, but all in all, her body hadn’t suffered any severe damage during this op. This time. That wasn’t always the case.

  She should just be glad to be alive. For the last few days, that thought had hit her over and over, and every time she had felt a wave of mixed gratitude, and guilt. She’d been given the precious gift of more sunrises and sunsets, and she intended to savor every one. But others hadn’t been so fortunate.

  She turned the taps on in the bathtub and started water running for an actual bath—no shower. Her muscles and bones needed a long, warm soak, and she had nearly a whole hour before Joe picked her up for a late dinner.

  The tub was filling slowly. With the water running hot, she wrapped her hair in a towel and then studied her face in the mirror above the white marble sink. I’ll wear my hair down and pulled behind one ear. She felt a sudden, oddly disturbing urge to please Joe, to look and smell good for him.

  She strolled back into the bedroom with its light gray- and wine-colored décor and crossed to the French doors of the balcony. Provenza had chosen well. When he had asked, “Where do you want to spend your two days of R and R?” she had thought of her father and simply said, “Capri.”

  Joe, always easygoing, agreed. She felt lifted by the hotel’s location, nestled high overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea atop a cliff of one of Capri’s many limestone peaks. She pushed the doors fully open and walked outside into the warm, humid night. A salty-tasting breeze caressed her face.

  The music of sea against rocks rose from below. Lights of homes, hotels and restaurants twinkled along the dark curve of the island. Except for a scattering of tiny white pinpricks in anchored boats close to the island, the sea itself presented a vast, deeply black void. No moon tonight. She loved the perfect blackness of an ocean at night. Utter tranquility, such a blessing after so much violence and grief.

  On the way back to the bathroom, she stopped a moment to shut off her laptop and close its lid. She’d written to Star and Penny and answered a ton of e-mail.

  The best e-mail had come from Robin Scott, the girl from Costa Rica, Nova recalled as she sunk into the tub of hot water. Costa Rica felt a lifetime away. But Robin had just returned home and written to tell Nova how she had taken her “wise” advice. I learned, and won’t ever forget, that if I don’t give up and try hard, I can do a bunch more than I think I can, the girl had written.

  Nova had decided that she would not give up, either. She had the talent and the temperament for Company work. And above all, she believed that nothing more surely guaranteed that evil men would prosper than if good men—and women—did nothing.

  I’m also determined never to give up when something is important, Nova had written to Robin. I’m so happy you’ve found how empowering that can be.

  How ironic that the message she’d conveyed during a chance encounter with this teenager had been the very message she herself had needed to reaffirm.

  Nova lifted the tub’s plug with her big toe. Time to dress.

  As she rose, she noted that she hadn’t polished her toenails or fingernails. Should she? She always traveled with three polishes that pretty much covered any color outfit she might select. Maybe just toenails. She didn’t think Joe would particularly like fingernail polish on her, but he might find toenail polish intriguing.

  She shook her head. Where was this surprising urge to please him coming from? To want Joe to see her as a beautiful woman? At some point in their exploits, he’d already seen her at her very worst…and her very best when she was dressed to seduce. Why, tonight, did she want him to see her not as his partner, but as a living, breathing and passionate woman?

  The Villa Aphrodite provided fluffy white terry bathrobes. She slipped into hers and strolled into the bedroom. She went over to the stereo and put in a CD the hotel had provided—Diana Krall’s The Look of Love.

  What should she wear?

  This was weird. Really weird. She had planned and schemed over what to wear for more men than she could remember, but tonight something deep inside compelled her to dress up for Joe.

  She had six outfits with her. One by one, she took them from her bags and spread them on the king-size bed.

  She chose the outfit that Cesare had said, as he was paying for it, was “devastating.” The pants and camisole were a rich royal blue, the camisole clinging tightly to her body and revealing her
navel if she stretched up even the slightest bit. The see-through cover-up—swirls of two shades of blue and two shades of green shot through with thin, bold strokes of fiery red—was cut so that it fell off one shoulder to reveal the dark-blue strap of the camisole against her skin. Casual, but very, very sexy.

  She stood still, seemingly rooted into the luxurious, thick gray carpet. What the hell was it exactly that she wanted to say to Joe?

  She looked at the clock built into the bedside stand. She had only fifteen minutes until he arrived.

  When he did knock, she never felt more alive.

  “Wow!” he said, tilting his head to the side with a cocky grin plastered on his handsome face. “You look fabulous.”

  As he often did, he wore a silk shirt tucked into slacks. Tonight the shirt was jet black. She hugged him, then stepped back. “And I smell like…?”

  “Shalimar.”

  “Not bad, Cardone.”

  “You wear it quite often.”

  He noticed that her French doors stood open. “How’s the view from your balcony?”

  She followed him out.

  He leaned against the railing and looked down. “Quite a drop. Couple of hundred feet. Your view is definitely better.” He turned, took her hand gently in his. “How about I have breakfast tomorrow on your balcony instead of mine?”

  His hand warmed hers. Totally delicious. Totally alive. She wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to make love to her. She said, “We’ll see.”

  He pulled her closer. “I’m glad you’re not hurt. I’m even more glad you’re going to quit working for the Company. I don’t like worrying about you.”