The Pursuit

  “That’s right,” Dragan said.

  Nick let out a slow whistle of admiration. “You’ll make billions.”

  “We will.” Dragan stood up, excited, practically evangelizing now. “It will be the greatest score of our lives, perhaps the greatest in the history of crime. The riches we will reap almost defy imagination.”

  But that financial windfall would be earned on the deaths of thousands of people, Kate thought. Nobody in the United States is vaccinated for smallpox anymore and, as a result, there weren’t tens of millions of vaccines on hand to inoculate the population of a major city. The epidemic would rage a lot longer, and claim more lives, than it had in Yugoslavia more than forty years ago. It would be a catastrophe of epic proportions.

  She was tempted to shoot Dragan right now, or at the very least arrest him, and bring the plot to an end before it could get started. But that wouldn’t get the smallpox sample back or prevent others in his organization from moving forward with his plans without him.

  “It’s a brilliant scheme,” Nick said. “But I still don’t see why you need me.”

  “As it turns out, the smallpox sample we acquired from Antwerp is small. My scientists are working with it even as we speak but it will take time to get the quantity I need. If I had a second sample the process would go much more quickly.”

  “I have no idea where to find that,” Nick said.

  “I do,” Dragan said. “Everyone thinks that only two samples exist, one in America and one in Russia. The truth is, there are many unrecorded samples that were collected back when smallpox was widespread. Those samples are secretly stored and studied in government, institutional, and private high-security biolabs located in several countries. One of them happens to be a mile from this apartment.”

  “You want me to steal it for you,” Nick said.

  “Or I’ll kill you.”

  Dragan made it sound like a joke, but they all knew that it wasn’t. He appeared to be alone but there were almost certainly armed men inside and outside the building awaiting his word on whether to let Nick and Kate leave alive.

  “Well, that makes it an easy decision,” Nick said. “I’ll steal the smallpox, but I want forty percent of the profits from the stock market gamble.”

  Dragan laughed. “You’re a very amusing man. I’ll give you your share of the Antwerp and Paris heists and you can bet that against the market yourself. You’ll do extremely well.”

  “I’ll definitely be doing that,” Nick said. “In addition to my forty percent.”

  “You’re being ridiculous. You don’t deserve forty percent.”

  “I deserve more, but I’m being generous. Without me, you won’t have the smallpox you need to make the investment pay off. This isn’t a heist you can accomplish with one of your glorified smash-and-grabs.”

  “So I’ll kill you and find someone else with the expertise to steal the smallpox for me.”

  Kate’s grip tightened on her gun, and she steeled herself for action. Dragan didn’t appear to be armed. Nick didn’t look worried at all.

  “You wouldn’t have kidnapped me for the Antwerp job if there was somebody else,” Nick said. “But let’s say that there is someone out there. How many years will it take to find him? And what if you’re wrong, and he’s not another Nicolas Fox? You could lose the millions you’ve sunk into the scheme already. Are you really willing to take that gamble?”

  Dragan pondered his cigar for a moment, took a long drag, savoring it, then blew out the smoke. “What makes you so sure that you’ll be able to break into the lab and steal the smallpox?”

  “Because I’m the best,” Nick said. “We both know it.”

  “Fine,” Dragan said. “You can have ten percent.”

  “Forty,” Nick said.

  “Fifteen.”

  “Forty.”

  “Fifteen,” Dragan said. “And that’s my final offer.”

  “If I am going to do this, we’re going to be partners.”

  “If you don’t do this, you’re going to be dead.”

  Nick waved off the comment as if it was meaningless and not the genuine threat that Kate knew it was.

  “I’m showing you my respect, and acknowledging the considerable investment you’ve already made, by giving you sixty percent instead of insisting on fifty-fifty,” Nick said. “I get forty percent. Or you can execute us now.”

  Kate raised her gun and pointed it at Dragan’s head. “He can try.”

  That’s when she noticed the red dot of a sniper’s targeting laser on Nick’s forehead and another on her chest. There were snipers on the building across the street. Nick was aware of the targeting dots, too, but he ignored them.

  “Make up your mind,” Nick said. “I’m hungry. Robbing jewelry stores gives me an appetite.”

  Dragan sat down, perhaps to give his snipers a clean shot, or to rest while he considered the offer. After a minute that felt to Kate like forever, he finally smiled, leaned forward, and offered his hand to Nick.

  “Sixty-forty,” Dragan said.

  “You have yourself a deal,” Nick said and they shook hands.

  “The lab is within the sprawling Institut National pour la Recherche sur les Maladies Infectieuses complex on rue Denfert-Rochereau,” Dragan said. “Walking distance from this apartment, which you will be using as your base of operations. The challenge isn’t just breaking into the lab, but safely acquiring the sample and transporting it,” Dragan said. “One mistake and lots of people will die.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re worried about the loss of human life,” Kate said.

  “Of course not. I’m worried about it occurring before I place my bets on the table,” Dragan said. “Not only wouldn’t I profit from the accident, but a smallpox epidemic in Paris would put authorities worldwide on heightened alert. It might even prompt mass vaccinations, which would severely dilute the impact of a future attack.”

  “I value my life and my future earning potential too highly to allow that to happen,” Nick said. “We’ll take all of the necessary precautions.”

  “I’ll give you all of the manpower, cash, and resources that you need to do this right,” Dragan said. “Just give me a shopping list.”

  “I’ll do that,” Nick said. “But I’ll also have to bring in people of my own who have specialized skills and who I can depend upon.”

  “Can you trust them not to talk?” Dragan said.

  “As much as you trust your people,” Nick said. “But they’ll be freelancers and they won’t know the big picture, only the immediate objective, so you won’t have to kill them afterward.”

  “You’re beginning to understand me,” Dragan said.

  “I know you can play the long game, but I’ll say this anyway so there’s no misunderstanding,” Nick said. “You need to be patient. It’s going to take me some time to case the institute, come up with a plan, recruit my people, and set the stage for the robbery.”

  “Are we talking weeks or months?”

  “I won’t know until I have a plan,” Nick said. “But I get bored easily, so figure on weeks.”

  “Litija will move you into the apartment tonight.” Dragan passed a card to Nick. “You can reach her at this number. She can reach me.”

  Once again, Kate noted, Dragan was keeping a safe distance from the operation. Nick pocketed the card and stood up.

  “Send my share of the two robberies to my Cayman Island account,” Nick said. “I’ll give you the number. I won’t do anything for you until I see those dollars in my account.”

  “Where are you going?” Dragan asked.

  “I thought I’d take a stroll to place Denfert-Rochereau,” Nick said. “And see the lay of the land.”

  “I’ll send your money, but don’t think about running out on me,” Dragan said. “Or I’ll torture and kill both of you.”

  Nick shook his head. “You can’t go ten minutes without making a threat, can you?”

  “It’s called leadership,” Dragan said.
“Stay in touch.”

  Nick and Kate walked back across avenue du Maine and along rue Brézin. Kate didn’t speak until they were heading up toward the Mouton-Duvernet metro station.

  “What possessed you to tell Dragan that you knew about the smallpox?” Kate asked.

  “I wanted to hurry things along.”

  “You could have hurried us into graves.”

  “It worked, didn’t it? He told us his whole, twisted plan.”

  “I wanted to shoot him in the head.”

  “Has anyone ever talked with you about anger management?”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s why I didn’t shoot him. But he still has to be stopped.”

  “He will be,” Nick said.

  “I could alert Jessup right now so he can organize a multi-agency raid on Dragan’s place in Sorrento.”

  “Wouldn’t do us any good,” Nick said. “We don’t know where he’s going from here. Even if he does go back to Sorrento, you don’t know if his lab is there, and his sources in Italian law enforcement will tip him off about the raid. He’ll escape, you’ll confiscate a bunch of lemons, and lose your best chance to stop his scheme.”

  “So what do you suggest we do?”

  “We steal the smallpox for him,” Nick said. “Or at least make him believe that we have.”

  “I get it,” she said. “You’re going to switch the real smallpox with a harmless vial of something else.”

  “I don’t know what I am going to do. But you’ve heard the phrase Follow the money, right?”

  “It’s a tried-and-true method of investigation. It almost always leads to the heart of any criminal conspiracy.”

  “We’re going to use the same approach. Only we’re going to ‘Follow the pox’ to find his lab and the virus that he’s already got.”

  They walked past the Mouton-Duvernet station and up to place Denfert-Rochereau. Here seven streets converged in a plaza around a bronze sculpture of a proud lion the size of a bus.

  “That’s the Lion of Belfort, a bronze replica by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi of his monumental sandstone sculpture in the hills above Belfort, a village near the German border,” Nick said. “Bartholdi is perhaps best known for the Statue of Liberty. The lion honors French Colonel Denfert-Rochereau, who defended Belfort ‘like a lion’ against a Prussian siege for a hundred days in 1870 even though he was vastly outnumbered.”

  “Why do you know so much about some random sculpture?”

  “I’ve thought about stealing it,” Nick said.

  “Why would you want to do that?” Kate said. “It’s huge, it weighs tons, and it’s right in the middle of a busy intersection. It’s impossible to steal.”

  “That’s why I want to,” Nick said. “Maybe we can do it at the same time that we steal the smallpox.”

  “Steal the lion another day,” Kate said. “Let’s keep this simple. Relatively speaking.”

  Nick’s cellphone chirped. He took it out of his pocket and glanced at it. “Our millions have arrived. Dragan may be a homicidal lunatic, but he pays his bills promptly.”

  “That’s his one virtue,” Kate said.

  “He also produces an excellent limoncello.”

  They crossed the plaza, where avenue du Général Leclerc became the tree-lined place Denfert-Rochereau, and continued walking up the west side of the street.

  There was a florist on the corner, and then a nail salon, a furniture store, and an empty storefront, boarded up and available for rent. Beyond that was a block of beautifully renovated four-story buildings. It took a moment for Kate to realize they weren’t individual buildings nor were they old. It was actually a recently constructed, single structure more than a half block long with multiple old-style façades that gave the impression of being several different buildings. But even that view was deceptive. It was actually a long wall with offices on top. The windows on the ground floor were barred and there were no doors to the street, just a guard-gated archway midway down the block leading to a motor court and more buildings beyond. There was a plaque written in French on the wall. Nick read it and gave Kate a translated summary.

  “This was the site of the Saint Vincent de Paul Hospital for Children, the Home for Young Blind Girls, and other medical institutions. The original chapel is still here, but the rest has become the National Research Institute for Infectious Diseases.” Nick stepped back from the wall and gave it, and the gate, a quick once-over. “It can’t be any harder to break into than the Antwerp diamond vault.”

  “Perhaps,” Kate said. “But diamonds can’t kill you.”

  —

  Nick and Kate took the metro from the place Denfert-Rochereau to Gare de Lyon train station, and from there they took a commuter train for the half-hour journey to Bois-le-Roi. They walked the two miles from the train station to Nick’s house in silence, lost in their own thoughts.

  Kate trudged through the door, slumped against the wall, and closed her eyes. “Stick a fork in me.”

  Nick leaned into her. His hands were at her hips and his lips skimmed across hers. “I’m feeling romantic.”

  “Ommigod,” Kate said, more groan than spoken word. “What are you, Superman? How can you possibly be feeling romantic? I’m so tired I can’t feel my fingertips.”

  “No problem. I’ll help you get to the bedroom, and then all you have to do is lay there.”

  “Fine,” Kate said. “Don’t wake me when it’s over.”

  “Okay, but you’ll be sorry if you sleep through this. I have some new moves.”

  “Maybe I just need coffee.”

  “Good idea,” Nick said. “You get comfortable and I’ll whip up a double espresso.”

  —

  Kate opened her eyes and stretched. She was alone. A shaft of light peeked from between the drapes and spotlighted the pillow where Nick should have been. She touched his side of the bed. It was cold. He hadn’t been in bed for hours…if at all. She checked her iPhone on the nightstand for the time. It was a little after 6 A.M. Kate slipped out from under the heavy comforter and padded barefoot into the living room.

  Nick was working at his laptop and making notes by hand on a yellow legal pad. There was an open Paris map, a half-empty pot of coffee, and a crinkled-up Toblerone wrapper beside the laptop.

  “What are you doing?” Kate asked.

  “Plotting a crime.”

  “You never came to bed.”

  “No. You instantly fell asleep so I drank the coffee and came in here to work. I couldn’t stop thinking about stealing the smallpox. There was too much I didn’t know. So I started doing some research. The institute comprises half a dozen buildings. They are patrolled 24/7 by armed security guards and covered by hundreds of cameras, inside and out. Every door is locked, and they require a card key to open, even the broom closets and bathrooms.”

  “That’s not surprising.” Kate went into the kitchen to make fresh coffee. The kitchen had a cast-iron stove, a farmhouse sink, butcher-block countertops, and a coffee maker so elaborate that Kate thought it might be capable of cold fusion. It was too daunting to even think about using it. What was the point of having a rustic old kitchen if he was going to put that appliance on the counter?

  “There’s more,” Nick said. “To get to the biocontainment labs, you not only need a card key, but you have to pass a fingerprint scan and retina scan at every stage. There are at least eight doors to pass through before you finally get to a seat in front of a microscope.”

  “Do you have any instant coffee?” Kate asked.

  “I have rat poison,” he said. “It’s probably tastier. I’ll make you an espresso in a minute.”

  Kate opened the refrigerator and surveyed the contents while Nick continued his briefing.

  “The labs are also under constant video surveillance and are protected by an array of high-tech gizmos, including motion detectors and infrared sensors,” Nick said. “I was wrong. A biocontainment lab is even better protected than a diamond vault.”

 
“You like a challenge,” Kate said.

  The refrigerator was filled with various cheeses, several paper-wrapped packages of butcher-sliced meat, a packet of smoked salmon, and some eggs. There were grapes, mushrooms, carrots, asparagus, and green peppers in the drawers. It all looked like too much work for breakfast. She’d have traded it all for Folgers crystals and Cocoa Krispies.

  “But I’ve got some good news,” Nick said.

  She closed the refrigerator and looked back at him. “You have Cap’n Crunch?”

  “The labs have independent air flow and exhaust systems separate from the rest of the building to keep any viruses from escaping. As an extra precaution, the labs are all underground and practically encased in concrete.”

  She gave up on food and drink, took a seat in a chair beside him. “Why is that good news?”

  “Because the metro, the sewer, the city aqueduct, and the catacombs all run under the place Denfert-Rochereau.”

  “The ‘catacombs’?”

  “Abandoned limestone quarries under the city that are filled with the bones of millions of dead Parisians that were unearthed from cemeteries over the centuries,” Nick said. “Part of it is a popular tourist attraction.”

  “My God.”

  “They used to give boat tours of the sewers, too.”

  “Makes me wonder what Paris Disneyland is like.”

  “The point is, the ground underneath the institute is a maze of tunnels. We can dig our way into the lab.”

  “Do you know where to find the lab and the smallpox?”

  “Nope, that’s top secret. The institute isn’t supposed to have smallpox. We’ll never find out where it is.”

  “I’m sure you’ll come up with a way to find it,” Kate said. “In the meantime, I’ll run into town and get us some Pop-Tarts.”

  “They don’t have Pop-Tarts here,” Nick said. “They have fresh croissants and baguettes.”

  “You really are out in the boonies. It’s a good thing Paris is only a thirty-minute train ride away.”