Ice Cold Kill (35 page)

They stood. A lot of information passed, but silently.

“Okay,” she said. “Well. See you.”

Belhadj walk-jogged the length of the cruciate cathedral.

*   *   *

Daria waited until Belhadj disappeared around the south side of the gothic cathedral, then bent over a corrugated tin garbage can and puked. She was surprised by the amount of blood in her vomit.

She sat on her haunches and gathered her wits. Once her vision refocused, she wiped her lips and blew her nose—more blood—and stood, loping down Corso Vittorio Emanuele II toward the piazza.

She studied the massive, ornate wall of the cathedral to her left. Part of it had been cleaned and glistened white. Part of it still held a centuries-old patina of soot and mold. Some was covered in scaffolding and the scaffolding itself covered in billboard-sized ads for shoes and women’s clothing.

She reached the plaza and the noise level rose. Tourists and Milanese roamed, children chased each other, African hucksters offered bright, cheap tchotchkes, a German camera crew staged a live broadcast of a travelogue show, a large cluster of Asians circled a tour guide who used a raised but closed parasol as her sigil. Pickpockets earned an honest day’s fare.

Inside of ninety seconds, Daria clocked a black Fiat with the uniformed carabinieri—state police—and a white Fiat marked Istituto di Vigilanza. Private, city-paid security.

Daria pulled a Kleenex from the tight thigh pocket of her girl’s skinny jeans and held it under her nose. No blood.

She was the only person in the plaza sweating by the time she crossed the geometrically designed pavers and approached the farthest café. Very few of the outdoor tables were occupied, and those that were served couples or families wrapping mittens or gloves around grand tasse coffees.

A lone man sat at one round, wrought-iron table, in a long silvery woolen coat with a black silk collar and short-brimmed Borsalino hat, black leather gloves and a woolen scarf. He had a long, thin neck and swept-back white hair. Daria, an insomniac, had recently watched a 1970s Hammer Films monster flick at 3:00
A.M.
and thought this man looked remarkably like the mad scientist.
Talk about typecasting
, she castigated herself.

She approached his table. “János Tuychiev?”

The old man beamed up at her. “That name is a suit I have not worn for years. Please, sit.”

She did, feeling her left knee buckle a little so that she fell, rather than glided, into the iron chair.

*   *   *

“It’s Daria.”

Eli Schullman spoke into his comms. He stood behind a spinner rack of postcards, two doors down from the café. Thirty feet to his left, Will Halliday studied a wall of Serie A football jerseys and scarves. “No sign of the Syrian. Shooters?”

The first sniper, in the men’s room on the third floor of a fashion warehouse, came back quickly through Will’s earjack. “No. Nothing.”

The second sniper, on the roof of a second restaurant and café, spoke up. “I have him. He’s on foot, coming from the south. He’s walking with a bunch of tourists.”

Schullman adjusted his position. He caught sight of a travel guide, walking backward, amid a gaggle of tourists with maps, guidebooks, and cameras. It took him a moment to spot Belhadj among them.

“I have him.”

One of the snipers said, “Shall I kill him?”

“Yes,” Schullman said. “On my mark. Ready?”

With Daria and Belhadj now on the scene and under the eye of his snipers, Schullman moved into position to knife Will Halliday, then kill Dr. Tuychiev. It was working out better than he could have hoped.

Schullman sidled behind Will Halliday. He reached for his knife.

His earpiece crackled.

Asher Sahar whispered. “Everyone … hold position, please.”

*   *   *

In the brown bus with the smoked windows, Owen Cain Thorson scoured the rooftops of the plaza with binoculars. He knew where his shooters were; otherwise, he wouldn’t have spotted them. Collier’s guys were true pros.

The team’s communications tech, Maldonado, glanced up from her monitors. “Everyone’s in position.”

Thorson turned from the window to the two monitors that Maldonado had set up. One showed an elevated view of Gibron and an old guy with long, white hair. The other framed up on Khalid Belhadj, looking inconspicuous as he listened to a tour guide pontificating. The real-time images were being transmitted from the snipers’ high-tech scopes.

He would have liked to have audio, but he understood the technical nightmare of long-distance mics in the piazza.

He toggled his radio. “Collier? Get in close. Take two guys. When you’re within ten yards, I want both snipers to open up. Put Gibron and Belhadj on the ground. The old guy is positively identified as our biologist, Tuychiev. Take him into custody.”

The Oklahoman drawled back, “Confirm.”

*   *   *

John Broom and Major Theo James shoved their way up the stairs from the metro stop below the plaza. The stop served both the red and yellow lines, and was jammed with Milanese and tourists. Climbing the stairs felt like swimming upstream.

“Now what?” Theo asked.

“Daria Gibron is five-six, straight black hair, dark skin, early thirties, and a fitness buff. My boss said she’s meeting a guy at one of the outside tables.” John hopped up on the stand of one of the plaza’s light poles, leaning out à la Gene Kelly, and scanned the open area. He saw at least a dozen restaurants with outside seating; most of them were empty due to the cold but a couple dozen brave souls were fortifying themselves with coffees or hot chocolate.

He hopped back down. “You go counterclockwise, I’ll go this way. We’ll meet at the other end. Give me your cell phone.”

John plugged their numbers into each other’s phones and handed Theo’s back. “Right. Sing out if you spot her.”

They separated.

*   *   *

Daria, in the blue shirt and tank, was the only person in the plaza without a coat save for the waiters.

Dr. János Tuychiev said, “Surely you are cold, signora.”

She was sweltering. “My name is Daria Gibron. I want to talk to you about your influenza.”

The Tajik had ordered a pot of black tea and two cups. A waiter with a long white apron brought them out. Tuychiev poured. “Which one? I have designed a few.”

“The one that targets Jews.”

“Ah!” His face lit up and he slid a cup in Daria’s direction. She almost reached for it, but a sharp pain ran through her elbow, locking the joint for a second. She struggled not to show it on her face. “Yes. That one is a masterpiece.”

“A madman has stolen a canister of it. I fear he plans to launch a pandemic.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Insanity.” She mopped sweat off her forehead. Her eyes were bright with fever. Strands of hair stuck to her forehead.

“And what is your role in all of this, Miss Gibron?”

“I intend to stop him.”

She heard a voice from behind her, very close to her ear. “Stop me?”

Daria’s heart trip-hammered.

“Remember the last time you stopped me? It ended poorly. For both of us.”

*   *   *

The CIA snipers’ scopes transmitted to the brown bus, and from there the signal traveled via secure satellite to the Shark Tank. One flat-screen for each of the snipers, plus a high-definition bird’s-eye view from the U.S. Army’s borrowed eye-in-the-sky satellite.

Nanette Sylvestri and her team watched as a slim man with a beard, thinning hair and spectacles approached the seated subject from behind. He leaned into her chair and spoke to her.

“Why don’t we have audio?” Sylvestri spoke into her voice wand.

The voice of Thorson’s comms tech, Maldonado, came back over the Shark Tank’s speaker system. “Acoustics in the plaza, ma’am. Too much bounce-back from all the stone surfaces.”

“Well, who’s this?”

The newcomer, in an olive tunic with a striped scarf and rough, brown gloves, stole an iron chair from an adjacent table and sat with Gibron and Dr. Tuychiev.

On the second flat-screen, the Syrian assassin continued to listen to a tour guide. He didn’t seem to notice the newcomer at the café.

“Unknown, ma’am.”

One of Sylvestri’s data-crunchers waved to get her attention. “Running facial-recog software now. He’s … ah…”

“He’s Asher Sahar.” Nanette Sylvestri turned to see Stanley Cohen march into the Shark Tank.

“Who?”

Cohen said, “Asher Sahar. I just got confirmation from Tel Aviv. He’s supposed to be in prison but he’s not. And we weren’t informed. That’s the traitor who shot Gibron before she defected to the States.”

Sylvestri turned back to the flat-screens. “That’s the name she used on her FBI handler’s voice mail.” She activated her transmitter. “Swing Band: get ready to bring everyone in for questioning. The old guy in the hat, the new guy in the olive jacket and striped scarf, too. Repeat: all subjects are to be held for questioning.”

Everyone in the Shark Tank waited a moment. The drama on the screens played on.

Sylvestri said, “Swing Band: confirm orders, please.”

*   *   *

Inside the CIA command vehicle, Owen Cain Thorson approached Maldonado’s communications array. He stood, she sat. Thorson made sure they had steady eye contact, then he popped the maintenance hatch off the back of her computer and used a penknife to slide out three of the sheathed wires. A flick of the wrist, and the wires sheared.

Maldonado’s externals comms—those linking her to Langley—went dark.

Thorson looked deep into Maldonado’s eyes.

She nodded her approval.

Thirty-one

Asher Sahar pulled up a chair and smoothed his tunic and sat. He set a messenger bag gingerly on the stones.

A rush of emotional slush sluiced through Daria’s veins. There was anger and hatred and love and longing and silly joy at seeing his face again and an acidic longing to pay him back for all the pain he’d brought her.

She thought about shooting him, calculated the odds, her dark eyes flashing like lighthouses amid sheet lightning. Had he come alone? Would he? No. Would she be covered by snipers? Likely.

Asher said, “May I have your gun, please?”

She slowly withdrew the Glock from the schoolgirl’s backpack and handed it to him. He nodded approvingly then slipped it into a tunic pocket. “That’s a very good gun.”

Daria studied his all-too-familiar face. He smiled shyly, avoiding eye contact, as he adjusted his coat and scarf and removed his rough gloves.

When he finally locked eyes with her, Daria’s heart stuttered. His eyes were the same soft brown she had remembered. His smile was gentle.

“I cannot…” He stopped, cleared his throat. He picked up his gloves, fumbled with them, and set them back down on the table. “I am so sorry about shooting you. There have been no decisions in my life I regret more than that.”

He looked close to tears.

“The American FBI agent, Ray Calabrese. He seemed in charge. I aimed at him. You stepped in.…”

She didn’t reply.

Asher cleared his throat. “Believe it or not, it’s really good to see you again. I’ve missed you.”

“And I, you.” She turned to the old man with the white mane. “You two have met.”

The old man smiled benignly. “Your friend reintroduced me to one of my creations. The influenza virus of which you spoke. I have not seen it in years.”

Daria said, “I’m told the Americans are calling it Pegasus-B. Asher plans to—”

“Pardon me.” János Tuychiev’s forehead wrinkled. “The Americans? They have …
named
my virus? What right have they to—”

Asher cleared his throat. “Perhaps we could get into intellectual property rights later, Professor. Daria, you were saying?”

She locked eyes with the Tajik biologist. “Asher plans to release your virus.”

Tuychiev shrugged inside his expensive woolen coat.

Asher edged his chair closer to the table. “Do you know why, Chatoulah?”

She smiled at the childhood nickname. She remembered the original message she’d received, luring her to Manhattan. “To make Israel look like the victim of another holocaust.”

Her oldest living friend smiled, nodded, his fingertips playing along the frilled edges of the wrought-iron table as if it were a keyboard. “Yes. You understand.”

“Who will you blame? The Iranians?”

“Why not? They are ready-made villains for the West. Both Syria and the House of Saud grow weary of Persian influence in the region. The Americans and the European Union will react predictably.”

“How many Israelis will you need to kill for this plan of yours?”

He shrugged apologetically. “Some. A great many. But that would be true if we did nothing. Bombardments from the Golan Heights. Another uprising from Gaza. Al-Qaida suicide squads. A strengthened Muslim Brotherhood. A third intifada. Israelis are going to die, one way or another. My way: their deaths will not be meaningless. They will usher in a new era of peace for—”

“Asher?”

He adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose, turned to her, expecting her lecture, preparing his counterarguments.

Daria touched her upper lip. Her fingertips came back pink.

“I have it.”

János Tuychiev bit off a brittle little laugh. “Oh, my.”

Asher blinked through his round lenses. “I’m sorry?”

“His flu. Pegasus-B. The factory outside Paris. I’m infected.”

Asher stared at her, his mouth open, forming silent first syllables that refused to become audible words.

*   *   *

Over their comm links, Will Halliday spoke without moving his lips overmuch. “Is he gonna green-light this bitch or cut bait?”

Eli Schullman had maneuvered around behind the American and gripped the handle of his knife in his fatigue jacket pocket. He, too, wondered what Asher was playing at.

*   *   *

In the brown bus, Maldonado said, “Collier is in position. He wants the go-no go call.”