“Smallpox doesn’t kill instantly,” Nick said.
“But I do,” she said. “I will kill Nick unless twenty million dollars is wired to my offshore bank account in the next ten minutes.”
Litija disconnected the call.
—
Kate and Willie heard every chilling word through their earbuds as they sped along on the A1 freeway. This was an unexpected complication they didn’t need after one too many complications already.
“How far behind them are we?” Kate asked.
“Five minutes,” Willie said.
“Make it two,” Kate said.
Willie floored the gas pedal and wove through the cars in front of them like the Millennium Falcon flying through an asteroid belt. Kate took out her phone and hit the speed-dial key for her father.
“How close are you, Dad?”
Willie leaned on her horn and drove between two lanes, shearing off the side-view mirrors. “Oops. I guess I should have taken the insurance,” she said.
“Ten minutes,” Jake said. “But we’ll make it five.”
—
“Just sit tight, Nick,” Litija said, aiming her Sig Sauer at him. “Once I have the money, I’ll leave you here. I’ll let Dragan know where to find you when I’m a safe distance away.”
“That could take hours, and I don’t have a lot of hours to spare.”
“It is what it is.”
“I have a better idea. It’s getting stuffy in here. So I’m going to unzip this suit and get some air unless you put that gun down and start driving.”
“If you touch that zipper, I’ll shoot you.”
“That would be stupid, because if you puncture this suit, you’ll be infected with smallpox.”
“There are three problems with your threat. The first is that I’ve been vaccinated against smallpox.”
“I don’t believe you,” Nick said. “So I will call that bluff.”
“The second is that I’m a dead woman anyway, because whether you live or die, Dragan will hunt me to the ends of the earth. But with twenty million, I’ll have a better chance of outrunning him or at least living very, very well until he finds me.”
“That just proves how much you want to live.”
“Which brings me to number three. You don’t want to die. You’d rather take your chances with the virus than risk a bullet in the head from me. Besides, you’ve got nothing to lose in this transaction. What do you care if I walk away with twenty million dollars? You’re going to be a billionaire.”
“Assuming Dragan pays.”
“He’ll pay,” she said. “What’s twenty million against billions?”
“You might kill me anyway just to spite Dragan.”
“Do I strike you as a spiteful person?”
“Isn’t that why you are doing this? Because you’re mad that Dragan killed Zarko?”
Litija laughed. “I don’t care about Zarko. You met him. He was a slug.”
“But you were shaking after Dragan pushed him off the cliff.”
“Because it could easily have been me if I’d been standing there,” she said. “I’m doing this for the money. I want to be rich and far away from Dragan Kovic. The man is insane, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“I noticed,” Nick said.
“But you still went into business with him. You must be crazy, too.” She picked up her phone and checked it. “The money hasn’t shown up in my account yet. You’ve got three minutes.”
There was a tap-tap on the driver’s side window and Litija went pale. It was Kate, tapping the barrel of her gun against the window.
“Put the gun down or I’ll blow your head off,” Kate shouted through the glass. She was still in her dirty sewer worker’s jumpsuit.
Litija stared at Kate in absolute disbelief. “How did you get here?”
“The same way he did,” Kate said, gesturing to the passenger side.
Litija turned. A man in his sixties stood outside the window, and he was also aiming a gun at her. He had the buzz cut, bearing, and hardened gaze of a soldier. She’d underestimated Nick and Kate. They’d had a second team of professional killers watching their backs. Her inability to anticipate this move demonstrated why she’d always been somebody’s minion. She wasn’t clever enough to lead. It proved to her that this twenty-million-dollar play was her last, best chance at changing her fate.
“You drop the gun,” Litija said. “And the old man drops his, too, or I will kill Nick right now.”
“That would be a mistake,” Kate said. “Because I’m your ticket to freedom and happiness.”
“How do you imagine that?”
“I’ll let you go and tell Dragan that I killed you,” Kate said. “You won’t have your ransom money, but at least you’ll be free and won’t have to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life. Or you can shoot Nick and die right now. Your choice.”
How did Kate know about the ransom? Was the van wired? Was Nick? The fact that she didn’t know the answers to those questions was more humiliating evidence that she was destined to a life of servitude and pocket change, never to leadership and wealth. She glanced at her phone, hoping for a $20 million reprieve from her wretched destiny.
The ten minutes were up. There was no alert from the bank that a transfer had been made, and Dragan hadn’t called arguing for more time. He didn’t pay, and she had the miserable, crushing realization that he never would. He’d rather sacrifice Nick and put off his scheme indefinitely than let her extort a dime out of him.
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.”
They 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.”