The Patriot Threat (12 page)

SEVENTEEN

V
ENICE

Malone opened his eyes.

His head throbbed. He was not a drinker and had never experienced a hangover but, from listening to others complain, he imagined the agony currently raging between his ears had to be what it felt like. Where was he? Then he remembered. Still in Larks’ suite.

Something was in his right hand.

He blinked the cobwebs from his eyes and saw a syringe.

He was lying on the carpet, Larks still dead in the bed. Light washed in from the outer room. His right leg hurt where something had pierced his skin, which he assumed was the needle from the syringe. His left leg remained sore from the helicopter drop. He rubbed his temples and sat up. Whatever had taken him down had worked fast and left a lingering punch.

He checked his watch. 5:20
A.M.

He’d been out a few hours.

He stood and steadied himself on the wall. His clothes were finally dry, but still reeked of the lagoon. He’d certainly managed, in a short while, to find a fair amount of trouble. The only difference this time was that by accepting Stephanie’s job offer, he’d actually gone looking for it. He shook his head, tried to clear the fog, and allowed himself an empty minute.

He heard movement beyond the open doorway and cocked his head toward the noise. A shadow preceded someone’s entrance. A woman. She was lean with a narrow waist and long, straight red-gold hair that swept around a middle-aged face. Three dark freckles formed a triangle on otherwise unblemished cheeks. Her blue eyes seemed dulled by a want of sleep—and given the hour, he could understand—but were otherwise focused and intent. She carried the oddly anxious look and feel of a personality he’d seen too many times to count.

Law enforcement.

“I’m Isabella Schaefer,” she said. “Treasury Department.”

“You have a badge?”

“Do you?”

He felt his pockets and feigned a search. “No, guess not. I assume you know who I am.”

“Cotton Malone. Once with Justice, at the famed Magellan Billet. Now retired.”

He caught the sarcasm. “You don’t approve?”

“I want to know what a bookseller from Copenhagen is doing messing up three months’ worth of my work.”

More news. Neither Stephanie nor Luke had mentioned anything about others being at this party. Which made him wonder if they knew. It wouldn’t be the first time the left hand of the intelligence community had no idea what the right was doing.

He motioned to the bed with the syringe. “Who killed him?”

“Looks like you did.”

“Yeah, let’s go with that.”

“Who said someone killed him?”

“Okay, I like that one, too. That’ll be the story. He just died.”

“You don’t get this, do you? I ask the questions, you answer them.”

“You’re not serious? Pulling rank? You’re just a Treasury agent a long way from home, way outside your jurisdiction.”

“And what the hell are you? A damn bookseller. What authority do you have?”

“I have my International Antiquarian Bookseller membership?”

“I see you truly don’t get it. I found you here with a dead man, holding a syringe that, I’m sure, is the cause of death.”

“And how did you just happen by?”

“I was doing my job and saw the door propped open by the latch bolt.”

“You understand that was all by design. Whoever killed Larks wanted me found with him.” He tossed the syringe onto the bed. “You’ve obviously been waiting for me to wake up. My bet is I’ve been snoozing from whatever killed Larks. Probably a sedative of some sort. There’s a hole in my leg where the killer injected it.”

She nodded. “I checked and found it.”

“Gee, I feel so violated. And we hardly know each other. What does Treasury want with Larks?”

“He copied some classified documents. We want them back.”

“Must be important stuff.” Now he was trolling. But this woman refused to take the bait, so he asked, “Have you been on this cruise the whole time?”

He could not recall seeing her. And he would have noticed her. Truth be told, he had a weakness for redheads.

“I’ve been here,” she said. “Waiting to take Larks into custody. Which I would have done tomorrow, as he left the ship. Unfortunately, now he’s dead and the documents are nowhere to be found.”

“They were inside the black Tumi case?”

She nodded. “That was my guess. The old fool hasn’t gone anywhere without it.”

She really had been on board.

“I need to call my boss.”

“Don’t bother,” she said. “My boss has already contacted Stephanie Nelle. Which is why you’re here with me, and not in police custody.”

Finally, some interagency cooperation.

Treasury and Justice. Together again.

“I need an aspirin,” he said.

She’d actually done her job. Contain and control. But he decided to try one more time. “What are these documents? Why are they so important?”

“Let’s just say that they contain information the U.S. government would not want on public display.”

“You mean Wikileaks missed something?”

“Apparently so.”

“Then why didn’t you take them from Larks when the taking was good? Why wait?”

He could see she was done answering.

“You need to go home,” she said.

“No argument from me. First, though, a shower and change of clothes would be good.”

A shave, too. Patches of stubble itched on his neck and chin.

“You do stink. Where have you been?”

“Rough night in town.”

“I know about the money transfer, and that you were sent to the mainland to observe.”

She truly was informed. More so than him, in fact. “Let’s just say that meeting didn’t go as planned.”

“Then definitely go home, and leave this to us.”

Not bad advice, actually. “What about Larks?”

She retrieved the syringe from the bed. “Not our problem. Like I said, he just died.”

He recalled his confusion and concern from earlier when a woman had emerged from beneath the bed, after plunging a needle into his leg. “By the way, you never showed me a badge.”

She stood before him, dressed in dark jeans and a long-sleeved silk shirt, which complemented her fair skin and red hair. She was attractive in a Kathleen-Turner-Sharon-Stone kind of way. Pretty, but not spoiled by knowing it. Confident, too. And she seemed unconcerned about projecting even a smoke screen of goodwill. He watched as she reluctantly reached into her back pocket and found a badge stamped
DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY. SPECIAL AGENT.
A photo ID read
ISABELLA SCHAEFER
.

“Satisfied?” she asked.

He nodded and smiled, never really thinking she was his assailant. No. That was someone else. A new player.

“Of course,” she said, “there was no ID on you, besides your ship’s keycard, which you would have needed to come back on board. So you were off with no wallet, no identification, nothing to point to who or what you are. But I understand why that was necessary.”

“It’s so refreshing to deal with a professional.” He brushed past her and headed for the door.

“I don’t want to see you again,” she said.

He neither stopped nor turned back, saying only, “Not to worry. You won’t.”

EIGHTEEN

Isabella watched Malone as he left Larks’ suite, the door snapping shut with a metallic finality. Luckily, she’d planned to be up and going by 4:00
A.M.
When she’d checked Larks’ room, she’d noticed the cocked-open door. Malone was right, nothing but an invitation. Inside she’d found Larks and Malone, who’d clearly been drugged. She’d told him the truth. A small puncture wound was visible on his left leg, the culprit behind it all easy to ascertain. Kim Yong Jin. Who else could it be? Both Kim and Malone had been on board the entire cruise, both keeping close to Larks. Malone personally. Kim through his stoic daughter.

What a mess.

Kim obviously knew about Malone. So she hadn’t lied. The ex-agent had screwed up a lot of hard work. She’d carefully kept her distance the entire cruise, wearing wigs and other accessories to alter her appearance. She still had no idea why Malone was here. She’d reported his presence ten days ago, but Treasury had told her nothing since, just that she should keep Larks under surveillance, watch out for Kim, and monitor Malone. Most disturbing was the fact that she hadn’t found the black leather satchel in Larks’ room. The older man had last cradled the satchel at dinner. She assumed that today, at debarkation, something would happen. Her employer had already checked. Larks was not booked on a flight home until the day after tomorrow.

She did not like surprises and especially those that interfered with careful planning. Preparation was the key to any successful operation. And she’d fully readied herself. This was her operation and hers alone. The Treasury secretary himself had personally recruited her. Not even her immediate supervisor knew where and what she was doing. She’d been required, for the first time, to sign a top-secret nondisclosure agreement, which compelled her silence about anything learned on threat of imprisonment.

Obviously, the stakes were at their highest.

Hopefully Cotton Malone would go home. She had enough to worry about with Larks dead and Kim Yong Jin still breathing. Larks and Kim were connected. That they knew from covert wiretaps and email monitoring. Kim had actually paid for Larks’ airfare and cruise, the idea being to set up a face-to-face encounter with Anan Wayne Howell. Her orders were to observe, then retrieve the copied documents. Now Kim might actually have them. And all thanks to Malone.

She shook her head.

She’d been waiting her whole life for this opportunity.

Was it gone?

*   *   *

Stephanie glanced up from the manuscript as the door to the conference room opened and Joe Levy entered alone.

“Okay,” Harriett said. “We’ve read what you marked.”

He sat at the table. “About two months ago the NSA monitored some chatter out of North Korea that was all about Kim Yong Jin. Stephanie, you were right. This guy is supposedly an idiot. All he seems to do is drink and gamble. But then, all at once, he becomes real important and Pyongyang starts to focus on him. They’re talking crazy stuff, specifically mentioning Howell’s book. It seems Kim is real interested in that, too.”

“I never saw a thing on this,” Stephanie said. “And I get NSA tickle sheets every day.”

“I put a lid on. To be provided only to Treasury.”

She knew that any arm of American intelligence could claim a priority, keeping information solely within that department or agency. That could be risky business, though. If no one else knew what you knew, and everyone should have known, guess who shouldered the blame if things turned sour. Still, it was done every day, sometimes if only to shield sensitive investigations from being broadcast across the grid.

“Let me guess,” Harriett said. “You pigeonholed it because in that chatter the name Paul Larks was also mentioned.”

He nodded. “It had to stay here.”

“What’s Kim’s interest in Howell and Larks?” Stephanie asked.

“It apparently started with Kim and Howell. Then Howell connected Kim to Larks. We got in late and missed out on a lot of the prior conversations, but we know that Kim is trying to prove an odd theory that concerns Andrew Mellon. Howell wrote about it there, in the book.”

“About what?” Harriett asked.

“An old debt this nation owes.”

They both waited for the Treasury secretary to explain.

“This is all … complicated. More so than I need to get into right now. Let’s just say that your searching for Howell has interfered with my trying to minimize the damage Larks did by copying those documents, then communicating about them with Howell and Kim.”

“What kind of damage?” Harriett asked.

“I can’t go into that. And it’s not important to what I need from you at the moment. Suffice it to say that we’ve been before this court here several times and obtained surveillance warrants on Kim, Larks, and Howell. They like to email.”

“Larks and Howell are U.S. citizens,” Harriett said. “This court’s jurisdiction applies only to foreign nationals.”

Probably another reason why the secretary had avoided the Justice Department for his warrant applications.

“They’re both working with a foreign national, and together they’re compromising the security of this nation. That makes them this court’s business.”

“Kim and Larks have been openly and knowingly communicating?” Harriett asked, with a lawyer’s tone.

Levy nodded. “Many times, though Paul Larks is unaware that it’s Kim he’s speaking to. He thinks it’s a South Korean businessman, living in Europe, whose companies are being wrongfully taxed by the United States. He has no idea of Kim’s true identity, or at least that’s what we believe.”

Something bothered Stephanie. “You knew that there’d be a robbery in Venice, didn’t you? It was Kim. He went after that $20 million. Yet you told us none of that, and put my man at grave risk.”

He nodded. “We knew Kim was going to make a move on the money.”

Now she was pissed. “We don’t send people into something like that blind. Not ever.”

The secretary said nothing.

“Whatever this is,” she said, “it better be really important.”

“You have no idea.”

“What is it you want from us?” Harriett asked.

“To back off. Let me handle this.”

Harriett shook her head. “We’re done playing games, Joe.” Stephanie had heard that tone before. “You’re way out of your league.”

“And you’re not?”

“That’s why I have the Magellan Billet. This
is
its league. You’re taking crazy risks, talking riddles, dodging questions. I’ve got no choice. I have to go to the White House.”

Stephanie checked her watch and knew what was happening in Venice. “That cruise ship is emptying its passengers right about now.”

“Call your people,” Harriet said. “Advise them of the situation.”

The door to the conference room burst open.

A man entered.

Tall, broad-shouldered, with thick graying hair, dressed in a shirt, no tie, wearing a distinctive blue nylon jacket. Embroidered above the left breast was the seal for the president of the United States.