Daria slept through the ride.
The pilot set them down in a sheep pasture. The snow had melted in northern Italy but the ground was as hard as iron. A shepherd was there to collect his portion of the earnings and an extra helping of euros to lend them a Volkswagen bus, white and swimming pool blue, circa 1985, that might get them to Milan or might just explode.
Daria and Belhadj packed their gear in the bus. Daria gave him a lewd grin. “Want to
talk
about it some more?”
“We’d best hurry. To make the meet in this thing, you might have to get out and push.”
“See how you changed subjects there? That was quite clever. You should have been a spy.”
Belhadj had been bantering but his face returned to its usual stoic stare. “Daria?”
“Come on, then. I was joking. I won’t jump you randomly until we’re clear of this farce.”
“Daria…”
“Now, he wants to talk. Fine then—”
Belhadj pointed at her.
“What?”
“Your nose is bleeding.”
Daria wondered if this was his idea of a joke. It was hard to tell with Belhadj. She reached up and touched her upper lip.
Her fingertip came away with a pink smear.
A million thoughts ricocheted off the inside of her skull. She touched her nose again. It seemed to have stopped.
“It’s nothing. It’s the altitude change.”
“Altitude change? How many times have you flown before?”
She shot him a look, her black pupils flashing. “Come on. We’re going to have to drive like hell to—”
“How many times? Helicopters, single-engine, multiple-engine. How many?”
“Shut up and drive.”
Belhadj slammed his open palm against the side panel of the VW.
Daria snapped, “A thousand! Okay? A thousand-thousand! I piloted gunships during the second intifada!” She swiped hair away from her face. “I never had a license but Israeli intelligence wasn’t too picky about—”
“Damn it! How many times did your nose bleed!”
“Never, goddamn you! Okay? My nose bleeds when I get punched! Care to take a swing?”
“You have—”
“Don’t you fucking say it!” She raised one finger in warning, took a step closer into his space, boots apart, weight distributed on both legs, ready to fight. “I’m serious. Get in the van, get us to Milan. Now! Do it!”
They stood, toe to toe, four hands transformed into fists, eyes shooting cannon balls at each other.
“Khalid,” she whispered, backing up half a step. “We’re the only ones who know what’s going on and we’ve been blacklisted by every agency on Earth. There is no one else.”
Still he didn’t move.
“It’s Asher. He can’t win. He can’t,” Daria pleaded, for maybe only the third time in her entire life. “Please.”
Belhadj stood with teeth clenched. They faced off for several seconds. Then the Syrian turned, scooped up his messenger bag, and marched around the aging bus, ripping open the door and hurling his bag into the backseat.
Daria flinched, but none of his stolen ordinance blew up or fired off a round. When she was sure the messenger bag wouldn’t go nuclear, she opened the passenger door and climbed in.
“We’ll deal with it when we’re done,” she promised.
Belhadj ground gears and the bus jolted into action.
* * *
From a hundred yards away, the smuggler and the shepherd shared a reefer and watched the commotion.
The French pilot inhaled, held it, and wheezed, “Lovers.”
The Italian took a hit and shrugged. “What else?”
Milan
John Broom awoke during the descent into Malpensa International Airport. He rubbed his face with the heels of his hand, then slipped a breath mint into his mouth.
“How’s the honeymoon so far, dear?”
But Theo James wasn’t listening. While John slept, Theo had unpacked a legal pad and a pencil. He scribbled madly, some notes in English, some in advanced mathematics. He squinted, his jaw set.
“Doc?”
Theo glanced over. He looked intense.
The 747 touched down gently.
“What?”
“France,” Theo said. “You asked about the RNA sequencer in that factory fight? My French counterparts were able to reconstruct it. The last thing it sequenced was a virus that may have a specific target.”
The reverse thrusters kicked in and both men lurched forward. “I’m not following.”
Theo rifled back and forth through his scribbled notes. “It’s a flu that can target specific people. I don’t know who. Say, black people. Or Asians.”
John started to smile. “You’re kidding. It can’t … they can’t … Come on, Doc, seriously. No one can…”
But Theo James looked up from his notes and whisked off his cheaters. John saw true terror in the man’s eyes.
“I don’t know, John,” he whispered. “I think, maybe, they can.”
Twenty-eight
Asher and his people had set up shop in an abandoned apartment on the west side of Milan.
Asher asked that Will Halliday and Eli Schullman take the remaining mercenaries and reconnoiter Milan’s Piazza del Duomo. While Halliday was in the toilet, Asher cleaned the lenses of his glasses and said, “Go over the plan, please.”
The massive Schullman scowled down at his academic friend. “The plan is the plan. The plan hasn’t changed since the beginning. Renaissance masters could have painted a fucking mural of the plan.”
Asher smiled, nodded, and even patted Schullman’s shoulder in acknowledgment. All of which—to anyone who knew Asher—meant: Go over the plan, please.
Eli Schullman said, “We kill Halliday in the plaza. We kill the old man in the plaza. We make sure the rogue American agent goes down in history for stealing and selling the virus, and that his perfidy is known to God and CNN alike.”
Asher blinked up at the big man. “Perfidy?”
“It’s a perfectly good word.”
Will Halliday rounded the corner.
* * *
Schullman and Halliday took the three surviving mercenaries in an Escalade to conduct the initial reconnaissance of Milan’s Piazza del Duomo. They found parking. Schullman deferred to the American, instilling him with confidence. “How do you want to handle this?”
Halliday checked his watch. “We’ve got two hours. See that café over there? That’s the meet. Everybody split up. Walk to the edges of your sight lines. Get some elevation if you can. We meet back here in thirty minutes. Go.”
The men trotted off in different directions. Schullman, too.
Will Halliday stuffed his gloved hands into the pockets of his long tan duster and walked to the very center of the expansive plaza. It was the latter part of November and not too cold—maybe thirty-five degrees, he guessed, maybe a bit less—and the plaza was bustling. Businessmen in fitted overcoats and polished shoes strode carefully, watching for patches of ice amid the geometric patterns of the stone pavers. Schoolchildren on group excursions flitted about, laughing or flirting. Milanese young women, flawless and thin, strutted past him in gleaming riding boots, fur hats and collars, gaily colored gloves, and coats that floated behind them like superheroines’ capes.
Will grinned. A guy could fall in love with Milanese women.
In the dead center of the plaza, he stood and turned slowly, smiling, drinking it all in. Nannies from the Far East pushed prams. Tourists carted wheeled luggage. He saw a couple dozen bicycles. More than half of the people walking through the plaza paid no attention to the art or history; they were texting.
The cathedral itself was fantastically huge and as spiky as a cactus, with its gothic pointed arches, its marble saints, and hideous gargoyles. It looked like an alien spaceship ready to launch. The monument had taken centuries to build, at a time when a man’s life could run forty to fifty years.
Who puts a lifetime of work into something his great-great-grandson won’t see completed?
Will wondered. He was from California, where a building from the 1960s can be considered historic.
He turned and took in the façade of the Galleria Vittoria Emanuele, which looked like it could have been government or high church offices, back in the day, but now was a glorified shopping mall. He spun on, slowly, watching the automobile traffic flow along via Torino and via Mazzini to the south, via Orifici to the west, via Meravigli to the north.
Lots of police cars, he noted. Mostly Fiats, some in black, some in white. He couldn’t read Italian but could tell that more than one agency handled day-to-day security for the shrine.
He turned, watched the pedestrian patterns. He noted the difference in speed and direction between the tourists and the Milanese.
He looked up at the sky. It was nice, even overcast, the clouds pearl gray. Good. Snipers prefer a steady overcast to direct sunlight—less change of squinting at a back-lit target or having the target alerted by lens flare from the telescopic sight.
The men regathered at the Escalade.
“Whacha think?” Will asked.
Each man made a report, detailing the best spots to put shooters, the interferences, the wind and weather.
Will leaned against the SUV and winked at Eli Schullman. “You know these badass mofos better than I do. How should we deploy?”
Schullman blew on his ungloved hands. He pointed to his men. “These two are our best snipers. Set them up to the north and west.”
Will nodded. “Classic cross fire.”
The hulking man with the cranial ridge pointed to the third mercenary, a buzz-cut blond, the battle-hardened Croat he had used in New York. “Tuck this man in close, at another table at the café, behind the bitch. He’s an able street fighter, good with knives.”
“Cool.”
“You and me in the piazza. Close but not too close. Daria’s exit strategy will be to run that way”—he pointed north—“to lose us in the Galleria, or into the restaurant, to lose us in the kitchen or upstairs in the businesses.”
“So we cut off those exits.”
Schullman nodded.
“Solid. And she meets the Commie at one of the outside tables. He gets here first, so we can determine which way she faces.”
Schullman shook his head. “
Commie?
The Russians are better capitalists than you guys, these days.”
“Hey, I’m old-school. Will she bring the Syrian fucker?”
“No. She’ll hold him in reserve; not sure where. Our snipers will have to find him.”
The two gun hands nodded. Everyone had been given photos of Daria and Belhadj.
Will said, “Okay, fellas. No point in freezing to death. Go get warm somewhere. We meet back here in thirty minutes to set up. Smoke ’em if you got ’em. Eat, if you want. Get laid, if that’s your pregame ritual. But we meet back here at three sharp.”
The men dispersed.
* * *
Two blocks north, near Teatro alla Scala, a short, brown bus with tinted windows backed into an alley. Its backing up warning beeper had been disabled.
Standing next to the driver, Owen Cain Thorson held binoculars up to his eyes and scanned the Piazza del Duomo. Collier, the grizzled Oklahoman with a coarse mustache and SEAL tattoos on both shoulders, stepped up next to Thorson.
“Lotta collaterals.”
“Yeah.” Thorson was none too happy about the glut of pedestrians walking the plaza. “That’s the café, there.”
Collier leaned forward, following the boss’s finger. “Exposed.”
“Put your guys in civvies. Have them walk the perimeter of the plaza. Get some altitude if they can. I want a sit rep in twenty.”
Collier stuck a wad of chew in his cheek. “Sure.” It came out
shore.
Thorson turned to Agent Maldonado, who would be handling their communications. “Will we have audio?”
“Out there?” Maldonado rolled her eyes. “No way. Everyone walking and talking. All those cell phones and Bluetooths, spiking the frequencies. Stone pavers to bounce audio off of. It’d be like aiming a shotgun mic in the stands during the Super Bowl.”
Thorson absorbed that. “Any word from the Italians?”
Maldonado glanced around to see who on the team was listening in. “They have taken our request for weapons-hot status under advisement and reminded us not to proceed unilaterally.”
Thorson smirked.
Collier got his shooters off the bus and began their reconnoiter of the plaza.
Thorson considered his request for the use of lethal force on Italian soil. Gibron had infiltrated U.S. domestic intelligence. She had badly embarrassed Thorson—the kind of embarrassment from which a CIA career does not recover. Indeed, she had turned the CIA itself into a laughingstock. She had conspired first to kill the president, then targeted the leadership of the Western world.
Thorson had not
requested
permission to use lethal force. He had politely informed the Italians that they were going to need body bags.
* * *
A communications techie in the Shark Tank doffed his headset and handed it to Nanette Sylvestri. “John Broom.”
Sylvestri held one of the two earpieces up against her head, the voice wand near her lips. “John?”
“Hey! We’re on the ground, heading into—”
“Do you have my personal cell number?”
“Um, yeah.”
“Wait ten minutes, then call me.”
She disconnected, turned to the man watching a live satellite feed on one of the flat-screens. “Is that the Pentagon bird?”
He nodded without looking away. “They retasked it from over Fallujah, after plenty of kicking and screaming.”
“Okay. You have the room.”
She grabbed her coat off the rack, left and took the elevator up to the ground floor. She wound her way through the corridors of Langley until she came to the little-used VIP entrance, with parking large enough for the presidential motorcade. Security signed her out.
Sylvestri stood just outside the reinforced doors and thought about cigarettes until her phone, already in her hand, rang.
“John?”
“Yeah.”
“Policy expressly forbids analysts from being deployed into an active, tactical operation.”