The Pursuit (21 page)

The bastard.

“You gambled that Dragan's greed was larger than his ego,” Nick said. “I could have told you that was a losing bet.”

Litija put her gun down on the passenger seat and placed her hands on the steering wheel in surrender.

“You can't blame a girl for trying,” she said.

Kate stuck her gun in her jumpsuit and opened the driver's side door. “Come on out.”

As Litija stepped out, a jaunty little Alfa Romeo convertible sped into the building and came to a stop behind Kate. The man at the wheel was as jaunty as his car. He had a big smile and wore a herringbone wool driving cap, a red cravat, and a tweed jacket. He was so British he might as well have draped himself in the Union Jack.

“Hello, luv,” Robin Mannering said. “Going my way?”

Litija looked at Kate. “Where's he taking me?”

“Out of France,” Kate said. “He'll set you up with a passport, credit cards, and some cash, and you're on your way.”

“But we'll find a decent cup of tea first,” Robin said.

The truth was that he would take her straight to the British Embassy, where she'd be placed under arrest. Her faked death would make Litija the perfect secret informant against the Road Runners and law enforcement's best hope of tracking down the stolen diamonds.

“Why aren't you killing me?” Litija said.

“Because I work for Nicolas Fox and he insists that I only kill in self-defense, never in cold blood,” Kate said. “It's a character flaw that will probably cost him his life one day.”

“That day will come very soon unless you break that rule with Dragan.” Litija got into the car with Robin and they drove off.

Kate climbed into the driver's seat of the van and looked back at Nick, who'd unzipped his hood and pulled it off his head.

“Did you see Litija's double-cross coming?” she asked.

“Nope. I must be losing my touch.”

Jake got into the passenger seat and reached over to shake Nick's hand. “Good to see you.”

“Likewise,” Nick said.

“Your crew is long gone, and Antoine and Walter have cleaned up the mess on the street,” Jake said. “The three bodies will never be found.”

“Vinko, Borko, and Dusko?” Nick said.

“Walter and Antoine took them out and saved our lives,” Kate said. “Your instincts were right.”

“What about Dragan's two snipers?” Nick asked.

“They couldn't see what happened from where they were,” Jake said. “They were watching avenue Denfert-Rochereau and I was watching them. They left their positions as soon as they saw Litija drive off in this van. They probably assumed the mission was accomplished and are now on their way out of the country.”

“We should be, too.” Kate picked up the cellphone, hit the speed dial, and waited. Dragan answered on the first ring.

“Have you come to your senses?” he asked.

“That's hard to do when your brains are splattered on a wall,” Kate said. “Litija is dead.”

“Well done,” Dragan said. “How is Nick?”

Nick spoke up. “Eager to get to you as fast as possible.”

“How much time do you have left on your battery, Nick?”

“Maybe five hours,” Nick said.

“No worries,” Dragan said. “We'll have everything ready for you when you arrive.”

Dragan gave Kate directions to the terminal and hung up.

“Wherever Dragan's lab is, we'll be there five hours from now,” Kate said to her father. “You'll strike two hours later.”

“You mean I'll come and get you,” Jake said.

“I mean blow the place up,” Kate said. “Reduce it to ash. Make sure Dragan and his virus do not get out.”

“That was the old plan,” Jake said. “But things have changed now that you two are going to be inside.”

“Not the way I see it,” Kate said. “Do you have a set of our earbuds?”

“I do, but I hate wearing them,” Jake said. “They are too much like hearing aids. They make me feel old.”

“When you're within striking distance, the three of us should be able to communicate with one another,” she said.

“See you in seven hours,” Jake said, kissed Kate on the cheek, and got out.

Kate drove the van out of the warehouse, past Willie in her BMW and the Renault that Jake had driven, and headed for Charles de Gaulle Airport. Willie and Jake would be close behind them, bound for the private plane that they also had on standby.

“We're in this together again,” Nick said.

“We are always in it together, even when we're apart.”

“Not to be overly unmanly, but the moment I escaped from you that first time in L.A.,” Nick said, “I regretted it two minutes later and was tempted to let you catch me just so we could be together.”

She looked at him in the rearview mirror. “Really?”

“Really.”

Kate was pretty sure she believed him. “I had no clue.”

“Would you have done anything differently if you knew I was enamored with you?”

“No,” Kate said. “Zip up your hood, we're almost there.”

Damn! He was enamored with her way back then, she thought. It was enough to get her doing a happy dance. She wouldn't, of course, because she was the job. Still, she could happy dance in her mind.

Nick secured himself in the suit again as they reached the general aviation area of the airport and the private terminal. She drove through the gates, escorted by a security officer on a golf cart, onto the tarmac beside the black private jet. She backed up so the rear of the sewer van was as close as possible to the open hatch at the front of the plane. Kate didn't want Nick in his biohazard suit to be visible for long. Fortunately it was dawn on a Sunday and the odds of anybody being around to see him were slim.

Daca and Stefan appeared in the plane's open hatch. She recognized them as the same two men who'd followed them in Sorrento and later took them by boat to Dragan's villa. She got out, held her Glock down at her side, and walked to the back of the van.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” she said. “I'd appreciate it if you'd open the van and help Nick into the plane.”

“We'd rather that you do it,” Daca said.

She shook her head and aimed her gun at them. “I want to see that you're unarmed and I want you out of the plane so I can check it out.”

“You can trust us,” Stefan said. “We're on the same side.”

“Is that why your three buddies just tried to kill me?”

Daca nodded acknowledgment. The two men got out of the plane, and Kate stepped aboard. She quickly checked out the cabin and then watched from the hatch as the men opened the van, helped Nick out, and guided him to a seat on the plane. Kate took a seat near the cockpit, and Daca secured the hatch. They had only about four hours left on Nick's battery.

“Let's go,” she said to the pilot. “The clock is ticking.”

Kate didn't lower her gun until they'd taken off. She didn't think Daca and Stefan were dumb enough to start a shoot-out in the confines of a pressurized airplane. But she didn't turn her back to them, either.

Daca and Stefan stayed as far away from Nick as they could get, not that it would protect them from infection if he decided to open his suit or if he tore it somehow.

“Could somebody flag down the flight attendant?” Nick asked. “I'd like some peanuts and a Bloody Mary.”

T
hey landed in Frankfurt, Germany, an hour and fifteen minutes later. The pilots didn't announce their arrival, but Nick recognized the skyline the instant he saw the Trianon, a forty-seven-story office building with an enormous glass diamond that was suspended between three pinnacles at the top.

“I once cracked a safe in that building in broad daylight in front of a room full of executives. I pretended to be an expert hired by the corporate bosses in Berlin to evaluate the company's security measures,” Nick said. “I scoffed at the lax security in the Frankfurt office and took the diamond-studded Egyptian antiquities that were in the safe with me to a place where they'd be better protected.”

“Your living room?” Kate asked.

“A museum in Egypt,” Nick said. “I would have kept them, but they clashed with my recliner.”

The plane taxied to a stop a few yards away from a black helicopter.

“You're taking the helicopter the rest of the way,” Daca said.

Kate aimed her gun at them. “I want you both to go in the bathroom and shut the door. Don't leave until we're gone.”

“Why?” Stefan asked. “Are you afraid we're going to shoot you in the back?”

“Yes,” Kate said. “Now get inside. No peeking, or the last thing you'll see is the bullet in your eye.”

“I bet you aren't half as tough as you think you are,” Daca said.

“How ironic,” Kate said. “Vinko expressed the same sentiment to me. Now he's dead.”

Stefan and Daca squeezed into the bathroom and closed the door. Nick and Kate got out of the plane and walked quickly to the helicopter.

The only person inside the helicopter was the pilot, who acknowledged them with a nod. Kate helped Nick get up into the chopper, then she climbed in and slid the door shut.

“The other guys won't be joining us,” Kate yelled so the pilot could hear her over the sound of the rotor blades. “They got airsick.”

The pilot gave them a thumbs-up and they lifted off. They headed southeast across the Main River toward the wooded mountains in the distance. They passed over several picturesque, storybook villages of half-timbered buildings and Gothic towers, and finally over a dense forest.

“That's the Spessart forest down there, home of
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,
” Nick said.

Kate wouldn't have heard him over the sound of the rotors if it wasn't for the earbuds in their ears.

They came to a valley where a clearing had been cut into the woods. In the center of the clearing was an immaculate lawn and a medieval stone castle surrounded by a moat full of dark water. A gravel road ran alongside the edge of the clearing to a crushed gravel lot where two black Range Rovers were parked.

The castle walls were topped with battlements and so was the circular tower that rose high above the tree line. As the helicopter came in low over the castle, Kate could see four men armed with rifles patrolling the battlements and another man atop the tower scanning the forest with binoculars.

The helicopter landed in the grass in front of the drawbridge, where Dragan Kovic stood to welcome them. Nick and Kate got out of the chopper and walked up to Dragan.

“Welcome to Schloss Gesundheit,” Dragan said.

“ ‘Castle Good Health' is a strange name for the place where you're producing smallpox,” Nick said.

“We inherited the name,” Dragan said as he led them onto the drawbridge. “The castle was built in the 1400s and was a ruin by the 1880s, inhabited by nomads and bandits. That's when it was rebuilt as a sanitarium for people with horrible diseases. It was the ideal place to exile the poor souls, presumably for their health and well-being, because it was remote and the walls were thick. They even sent lepers here. Schloss Gesundheit closed in the 1950s and was abandoned until I came along. Nobody wanted to get near it.”

“I can't imagine why,” Kate said.

“The same qualities that made it an attractive sanitarium made it perfect for our needs,” Dragan said. “It seemed right to keep the name.”

They reached the iron lattice gate that sealed the passageway into the castle. Dragan stopped and held his hand out, palm up, to Kate.

“I'd like to have your gun before we go inside,” Dragan said.

“I'm sure you would,” Kate said. “But it's not happening.”

“We're on the same side.”

“That's what your people keep saying,” Kate said. “It would be easier to believe if Vinko and your men hadn't tried to execute me and the rest of our crew after Litija drove off with Nick.”

“I'm certain that I would have faced the same firing squad if things had gone as planned and I hadn't been infected,” Nick said.

“I had nothing to do with it,” Dragan said. “This news comes as a complete shock to me.”

Dragan wasn't very convincing, but Kate figured he didn't have to try very hard. He knew Nick wasn't going anywhere.

“That's twice you've double-crossed me after a robbery,” Nick said. “I should kill you, but self-preservation and extraordinary wealth mean more to me than revenge.”

“Vinko, Dusko, and Borko were obviously in league with Litija,” Dragan said. “She tried to double-cross us both.”

“If what you say is true,” Nick said to Dragan, “then your employees aren't very trustworthy. So I'm sure you can understand why I insist that Kate remain armed. She can protect us both.”

“Well, when you put it that way, how can I argue?” Dragan said. “I'm glad to have someone of Kate's proven skills protecting us from further treachery.”

Dragan nodded to a camera mounted by the entrance and the gate rose, creaking with age. He led them into a passageway leading to a courtyard with a wishing well in the middle.

Nick pointed up at the arched ceiling of the passageway. “I see you kept the
meurtrières.
”

Dragan smiled. “I love charming architectural details like those. Every home should have them.”

Kate looked up and saw sunlight spilling through six large holes in the stonework. “What are they for?” she asked.

“They're commonly known as murder holes,” Nick said. “They're for pouring cauldrons of boiling water or hot tar on invaders.”

“I prefer cauldrons of lye,” Dragan said. “It makes cleanup so easy. You just hose what's left of your unwanted guests into the moat.”

“Have you had the opportunity?” Kate asked.

“Not yet,” he replied. “But you never know when unexpected guests might show up.”

Kate did. They'd be coming in four hours, and she'd be sure to warn them not to come in through the front door.

They crossed the courtyard and entered the foyer of the castle. A burly Serbian with a gun in a shoulder holster sat at a console similar to those found in office building lobbies. He had a phone and several screens showing security camera views.

There were three doors off the foyer, and one of them was an air lock. Dragan went to the air lock, held a card key up to the reader on the wall, and they heard the lock open.

“After you, Nick,” Dragan said.

Nick stepped into the air lock. After a moment, the door on the opposite side opened and he stepped into a corridor.

Dragan gestured to the door. “Proceed.”

“We'll go in together,” Kate said, worried that he could lock her inside and have all the air sucked out. She wasn't sure that was even possible, but she didn't want to find out the hard way.

“It will be a tight fit,” Dragan said.

“We'll manage.”

“As you wish.”

She held the door open for him and, once he was inside, she stepped in behind him. He opened the next door and they joined Nick in the corridor. It was almost identical to the corridors inside the Institut National pour la Recherche sur les Maladies Infectieuses that Kate had seen on the security videos. Same walls, same floor, same hospital ambiance.

There were two air locks, one on each side of the corridor, and three large observation windows that looked in on the labs. Another burly armed guard was also waiting in the corridor, presumably to prevent Kate from taking Dragan hostage and demanding the vaccine for Nick.

She'd toyed with a similar scenario, except that she'd demand the smallpox sample instead of the vaccine. The problem was that she had no idea where the smallpox was or if it had already been used to create new supplies of the pathogen. Even if she did, one of the snipers would probably shoot her and Nick before they could leave the castle. Kate couldn't take any action until she knew where every last microbe of the virus was in the facility and her dad had arrived to back her up.

Dragan gestured to the air lock on their left. “Go through there, Nick. It's laid out just like the institute. Go straight through the locker room, the dressing room, and the suit room, where we have the positive pressure suits. You'll see three air locks, each with a number on them. Take the air lock marked number one. That's the lab that we've had repurposed as your quarters. Remove your suit and all of your clothing. Leave everything on the floor. You'll find new clothes waiting for you.”

Nick peered through the window into the lab. Amid the workstations, dangling air hoses, and other equipment, he saw a cot with a set of surgical scrubs, slippers, and a towel laid out on the blanket.

“It's a good thing I'm not bashful,” Nick said.

“You can draw the blinds if you want privacy,” Dragan said and passed his card key over the reader, opening the air lock.

Nick stepped into the air lock and into the next room. A few moments later, Dragan and Kate saw him come through one of the two air locks in the back of the lab. He unzipped the suit and got out of it, stripped off his T-shirt and briefs, and put on the scrubs. He left the suit and clothes piled on the floor.

The other air lock in the lab opened and two technicians entered in positive pressure suits just like the ones Boyd, Willie, and the others had worn, and attached themselves to the air hoses hanging from the ceiling. They each carried large bags and stuffed his suit and clothes into them, sealed them with zip ties, and carried them out again.

“Everything he wore is going into the incinerators in the basement,” Dragan said. “The microbiologists who came in will step into a disinfectant shower in their positive pressure suits, then once they've removed the suits and their undergarments, they will shower themselves. We're very serious about safety protocols here.”

Nick walked up to the window, faced them, and pressed the intercom button on the wall. His voice came out over a speaker in the corridor. “What happens now?”

Dragan pressed an intercom button on his side. “Make yourself comfortable and get some rest. If you need anything at all, just press the intercom button here, by the air locks, or at any of the lab stations and a technician will handle it.”

“What if I need to use the bathroom?”

“There's a bucket, wet wipes, and a roll of toilet paper under your cot,” Dragan said. “Call for service and the bucket will be taken away.”

“Not exactly the Four Seasons, is it?”

Before Dragan could answer, Nick shut the blinds. Dragan released the intercom and frowned.

“Moody, isn't he?”

“He gets that way when he goes without sleep for twenty-four hours, spends twelve hours digging a hole in a sewer, and then gets infected with a virus that will make him spew blood from every orifice.”

“Nobody said that becoming a billionaire is easy,” Dragan said. “Let me show you to your room. I'm sure you'd like to change and freshen up.”

“I'd like a tour first,” Kate said. “I won't feel comfortable until I get the lay of the land.”

“Your uniform is filthy and you smell like the sewer. Clean up, then we'll have brunch and I'll show you around.”

He led her out of the air lock, back to the foyer, past the guard, and through one of the other two heavy wooden doors. This led to another corridor that, unlike the lab area, felt like a castle should. It was entirely stone, rough-hewn on the walls and polished smooth under her feet. All that was missing to complete the authentic ambiance were torches to light their way instead of a series of LEDs in the ceiling. Dragan stopped at one of the doors.