Black Rose (19 page)

"But I didn't, did I? Get hurt or killed."

"Not this time. Try to hear what I'm saying. You showed a lot of courage back there and I respect that. Hell, if we were in the service you'd get a medal. But most of the heroes I know are dead. I don't want you to be one of them."

Selena heard something in his voice that made her listen. At first she'd been angry because he'd seemed to criticize her. In hindsight, she saw it wasn't like that.

He's angry because he cares for me. He was afraid for me. That's different. Besides, maybe he's right.

She really didn't know why she'd jumped up and gone after those people like that. She hadn't thought about it. She'd just done it.

"It wasn't something I planned," she said.

Nick sighed. "I know, and that's what scares me. Acting without thinking can save your life but you have to watch out for believing you're invincible."

"I hear you. I'll think about it."

"That's good enough for me. Let's go find Lamont."

Lamont had gotten himself to the door. He was propped against a table, holding his rifle like a crutch and standing on his good leg. Blood stained the bandage Ronnie had wrapped around the wound.

"Figured it was cool when the shooting stopped," Lamont said.

His voice was strained. His coffee colored skin was pale.

"Take his good side," Nick said.

Selena took Lamont's MP-5 and slung it, then draped his right arm around her shoulders. Nick took Lamont's left. They moved out of the wine building toward the front of the villa. Selena heard the van coming up the gravel drive. In a moment Ronnie drove into the front yard.

Ronnie and Nick helped Lamont into the back of the van and laid him down.

"Ahh, watch the leg."

"We have to get out of our gear and back into civvies," Nick said. "Ronnie, let's get Lamont fixed up. We can't be seen like this."

In a few minutes they were changed into street clothes.

"Lamont, you want that morphine now?" Ronnie asked.

"Yeah. Send me to cloud land."

Ronnie took a morphine syrette from the first aid pack.

"Selena, you drive," Nick said.

"Where are we going?"

"Back to the plane."

"What about Lamont? He needs a hospital."

"We can't go to a hospital. How are we going to explain that wound? We have to get him back home. The bleeding is under control. We've got plasma on the plane and antibiotics. We'll splint his leg for now. Once we're in the air, it's only five or six hours. He'll be okay for that long. I'll call Harker and tell her to have an ambulance waiting."

"He's right, Selena," Lamont said. His voice was weak. "I'll be fine. Get us out of here."

An hour later they reached the airport. Nick had called ahead for the pilot to get the plane ready. A bored customs official took a casual look at their diplomatic papers and waved them through the gate to the private terminal where the Gulfstream waited.

Ten minutes later, they were in the air.

CHAPTER 50

Elizabeth looked up as Stephanie came into the room.

"Steph, what's the matter? You look like you just found a worm at the bottom of your coffee cup."

"I did find a worm, but it wasn't in my coffee. I got into the old KGB files, looking for more information about Vysotsky."

"And?"

"And, I discovered what he was doing back in the 80s."

"Something tells me I'm not going to like what you found," Elizabeth said.

"He was an assassin. Moscow used him for wet work abroad. He was one of the few agents trusted to work in the West."

"In America?"

"Yes. He was here in nineteen eighty-seven."

The date clicked in Elizabeth's head.

"You don't mean..."

"I do. Vysotsky is the one who killed Selena's family. He planted a device that released acid onto the brake lines on her father's car. The acid ate through the line, the brake fluid drained out and the next time her father hit the brakes it was all over. The car went through a guard rail and fell more than four hundred feet."

"How did he know when and where they were going?"

"Someone told him. The report refers to him as
Kolokol
. It means "bell" in Russian."

"That was the KGB code name for Aldrich Ames," Elizabeth said. "He set her father up to be killed."

Elizabeth opened a drawer at her desk and took out her aspirin bottle. She shook three into her hand and swallowed them with coffee.

"They should have shot him," Stephanie said.

"Ames? Yes, they should have. But we don't do that here. At least he'll never be a free man again."

"I don't think Selena will be satisfied with that."

"I'm not sure we should tell her," Elizabeth said. "It's bad enough that she found out her father had an affair with a Russian agent."

"Not to mention that she has a half-sister who's a Russian assassin."

"What a mess," Elizabeth said. "I'm not inclined to pile anything else on her."

"What about Vysotsky?"

"I wish I'd known this before. How come it didn't turn up in the past?"

"I found this on the SVR computers in Moscow. It was misfiled. Sometimes I wonder how the Russians ever get anything done, considering the size of their bureaucracy and the mistakes they make."

"That's excellent work, Steph."

"What about Vysotsky? It changes our relationship with him."

"It does," Elizabeth said, "but I can't say it surprises me. No one gets to his position of power in SVR without getting his hands dirty."

"Sometimes I wonder about our hands," Stephanie said. "Look at what we do. I tell myself  we hold the boundaries, that there are things we won't do and that makes it all right. It helps me sleep at night."

"We make mistakes, Steph. It bothers me but the boundaries aren't set in stone. It's not a game. People who think civilized rules should always apply haven't a clue what it's like out there, where Nick and the others are. There aren't any neat moral and ethical lines."

"Sometimes I think there are only two kinds of people," Stephanie said. "The sheep and the shepherds. I guess we're shepherds."

"There are three kinds," Elizabeth said.

"What's the third?"

"The wolves. You forgot the wolves."

"It's hard to think of them as people."

"Speaking of wolves, Nick found a lair in France and took it out."

"What happened?"

"It was a trap. Nick said there were a dozen men waiting for them, hiding inside the house. Lamont was hit."

"How bad?" Stephanie asked.

"Bad enough. His leg's broken, he lost some blood. He's out of action."

"There's no way Gutenberg could have known we were coming."

"Then why were his men waiting for us?"

Stephanie looked thoughtful. "They might not have been waiting for us, exactly. He must have discovered the trace on his laptop. He'd want to know who was watching. Sending that email about the meeting in France was bait. It makes sense that whoever read it might go after him, and that's just what we did. All Gutenberg had to do was have his men in place and wait and see who showed up."

"The Russians didn't show up," Elizabeth said.

"That's curious, isn't it?"

"It makes me wonder how the Russian trace got on his computer in the first place. How easy would it be to tap in when he's online?"

"Not easy at all," Stephanie said. "Gutenberg isn't using some standard firewall to keep out hackers. He has one of the most sophisticated security protocols I've ever seen. It would take someone with my level of skill to get into it. I only discovered that trace by accident. It's possible someone else got past his encryption but I think it was planted directly onto his computer."

"Who would be able to do that? A man like Gutenberg isn't going to leave his computer lying around where anyone can get to it."

"He's been spending a lot of time in Paris," Stephanie said. "He stays at the George V every time he goes there. Maybe someone we don't know about is staying there with him."

"Does the hotel have CCTV cameras?"

"They must," Stephanie said. "Everyone does these days. I could get into them through the hotel computer. "

"Take a look and see if anyone looks interesting," Elizabeth said.

"It could be anyone he's with."

"My guess is that the person we're looking for will show up more than once."

Stephanie glanced at the clock. "It's getting late and I have a dinner engagement with Lucas. I'd like to tackle it tomorrow if that's okay with you."

"Tomorrow is soon enough," Elizabeth said.

CHAPTER 51

Gutenberg was on the phone with Jaques de Guillame, the French Foreign Minister, one of his allies on the board of AEON. Krivi, Thorvaldson and Kamarov were the others. He hadn't heard from Kamarov in days and he seemed to have vanished. In Russia that meant only one thing.

Gutenberg could feel the reins of power shifting. First the laboratory had been destroyed in Zürich. Then Valentina had betrayed him. And now his carefully planned trap had turned into a disaster. The failures were giving Senator Mitchell the opportunity he sought to ease Gutenberg from the leadership position. Mitchell didn't understand what Gutenberg would do to prevent that.

"Who was it? I want to know who it was," Gutenberg said.

"There is no positive identification," de Guillame replied. "However, I believe it was the Americans. A group of four Americans with diplomatic passports landed at Caen on the afternoon of the day your house was attacked. They left quite early the next morning. The customs official on-duty said one of the men appeared injured. The others had to help him onto the plane. The van they rented shows mileage consistent with a trip from the airport to your vineyard."

"Which Americans?"

"Who knows?" Gutenberg could almost feel the Frenchman shrug over the phone. "CIA, perhaps."

"Too risky for them," Gutenberg said. "You're sure it wasn't someone else? The Russians, for example?"

"Definitely not the Russians," de Guillame said.

"That is what I needed to know. Perhaps the American president's covert unit."

"I know about them. But it seems unlikely Rice would risk the embarrassment of failure."

"He would simply deny knowledge."

"What are you going to do, Johannes?"

"We continue with the plan but with a change in priority. Washington is more of a threat to us than the Chinese. I want to target America first. There's always time for Beijing."

"Mitchell isn't going to like that. You know he wants to hit the Chinese first."

"By the time he realizes what's happened, it will be too late. The disease will be well established and out of control."

"I thought we'd left these internal struggles behind. You know how destructive they've been in the past."

"It doesn't have to be that way this time," Gutenberg said. "It's up to Mitchell. He shouldn't have tried to undermine my leadership."

"You have my support. Just keep that damn stuff away from France," de Guillame said.

"Don't worry, Jaques. I see no advantage in targeting Europe. Some places have to be preserved. Besides, we live here. Krivi has already produced a large stockpile of vaccine. If by some mischance the disease reaches the continent, you will be well prepared and in position to use the situation to your advantage."

De Guillame chuckled. "You really should have been a politician, Johannes. You would have done quite well."

"I prefer the shadows," Gutenberg said. "I'll leave it to you to claim the spotlight."

"Please keep me informed," de Guillame said.

"Of course."

"Goodbye, Johannes."

In France, de Guillame set his phone down and thought about the conversation he'd just had. Johannes had sounded strained over the phone. Things had not gone well in the past weeks. Perhaps it was time to consider shifting his allegiance. A confrontation between Johannes and Mitchell was coming soon, he was sure of it. In the past, these struggles for power within the organization had caused many deaths and great disruption. It was important that he picked the right side.

He looked out the windows of his study at the verdant gardens and lawns surrounding his château. It was coming on dark, the light rapidly fading. Soft lights showed in the careful landscaping.

De Guillame's mansion was in the Paris suburb of Versailles. He'd inherited the estate from his father, but if that had not been the case he would have chosen to live here anyway. Versailles had always been a seat of power in France. It was fitting that he lived there.

The Versailles Palace was not far away and De Guillame was fond of visiting the magnificent building. He looked out the study windows at his garden and let himself imagine what it must have been like to be king, before the revolution. He would have enjoyed being king.

Absorbed in his fantasy, de Guillame failed to notice a dark figure slip into the study. It wasn't until the thin wire of a garrotte slipped over his head and bit into his throat that he realized anyone else was there.

He choked and gasped and scrabbled with his fingers at the wire, trying to reach the hands that were killing him. Blood ran down under the collar of his tailored blue shirt.

"Dos'vedanya,"
a soft voice whispered in his ear.

Valentina waited until de Guillame's feet stopped kicking. She unwrapped the wire from his neck, wiped it clean on his jacket sleeve and replaced the garrotte in a pouch at her belt. She went to the doors leading into the garden and slipped away into the dark.