Delusion in Death (39 page)

“Why would she fake her own death?” Peabody demanded.

“Let me think. Let me think. Put extra guards on Callaway. Now!”

“Menzini might have arranged it,” Teasdale considered. “He wanted her and the child back, located her, killed someone in her place so no one would look for her.”

“No. No. Women didn’t matter that much. The kid—she’s his blood, and part of the new world order, part of the new beginning. But not the mother. She did it. She went home for something, under Menzini’s orders, had to convince her husband she was contrite—or she’d been brainwashed, abused. She’s terrified, and there’s this baby. He opens the door.”

“For all those months?” Teasdale began.

“Menzini needed someone on the outside, someone who could funnel him money, supplies, information. How the hell do I know, I wasn’t there. Isn’t that how it works—moles, sleepers, double fucking agents?”

She bulled off the elevator, tore toward EDD.

“In the lab, Dallas.” Fast on his feet, McNab passed her, led the way.

She spotted Feeney through the glass, pacing, his hair in wild silver and gray wires, and Callendar, her face grim in contrast to the sassy butt wiggle she performed in front of a swipe screen.

She didn’t see Roarke until she’d pushed through the doors behind McNab. He huddled at a comp station, working manually and by voice. The muttered Irish curses she caught meant he battled the work.

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant.” Callendar broke off the work and wiggle. “If I’d been faster—”

“Forget that. Run it through.”

“Once we broke the code, I took the journal entries. I was taking my time because … we had him. The first bit was just long, rambling bullshit about how he was special, different, important. It was just full of the E and the Go, and how now he knew why he’d always known it. Then he started talking about the grandmother. She set up a meeting, posing as a client, St. Regis Hotel bar. You should read it for yourself, Dallas.”

She ordered the segment on screen.

She was beautiful for a woman of her age. A strong face with piercing blue eyes. Her jewelry was understated, but good. I could see she was a woman of means and taste. She ordered a martini, and it suited her. I admit I found her fascinating even before I knew the truth. She kept her voice, strong like her face, low and intimate. I had to lean toward her to hear
.

She asked me what I knew about my heritage. It seemed a strange question, but clients often ask strange questions, and she was picking up the tab. I told her of my grandfather—the war hero bit always impresses. How he and my grandmother had left England for America with my mother to start a new life
.

Before I could begin on my parents—I always embellish there as they’re tedious, ordinary people in reality—she told me everything I knew was a lie
.

She told me her name—Gina MacMillon—not the name she’d given me to arrange the meeting. I had some vague recollection of that name, but didn’t, right away, connect it to the woman I’d been told was my great-aunt who died in the Urbans
.

She, this woman with the compelling eyes, told me she was my true grandmother. That my grandfather had been a great man. Not the soldier who’d done no more than follow the orders of other men, but a
great
man. A visionary, a leader, and a martyr
.

I shouldn’t have believed her, but I did. It explained so much. She and this great man had worked together, fought together, had been lovers. The child they’d created, my mother, had been stolen, and she herself, taken and kept prisoner by her former husband. She’d tried to escape, many times, with the child. Eventually, her captor beat her, left her for dead. Though she tried to find her way back to the child, back to my grandfather, the world was in pieces. She learned the government had captured my grandfather, and she had no choice but to go into hiding
.

With a new name and identity, she’d struggled to survive. Eventually she’d married, and well, and used the resources gained there to try to find the child stolen from her. Years of searching led her to me. She understood now the daughter was lost to her. Women were weak—most women—but her grandson, so like the man she’d loved, was found
.

I asked what she wanted from me. Nothing, she claimed. Instead she had much to give me, to tell me, to teach me. In me she saw the potential and the power taken from her and my grandfather
.

His name was Guiseppi Menzini
.

“There’s more, Lieutenant,” Callendar told her. “A lot more.”

“I need the name she’s using, a description—where she’s living.”

“He doesn’t list any of that, at least not that I’ve found. I haven’t gotten through it all, but I did searches. He refers to her as Gina or Grandmother. I’ve got that he started the journal because she told him Menzini kept journals, and he went on a hunt for them when she told him to. She said they were his legacy, and his gateway to power. And she knew his mother kept them.”

“She spun him a bunch of lies. Menzini’s the hero, and MacMillon, who gave her forgiveness and took another man’s kid for his, the villain. And she counted on sentiment and loyalty—her half-sister’s for her, to keep her things, her papers, to believe she’d died trying to save the kid. Bitch. Peabody, get Baxter and Trueheart to the St. Regis bar, with a picture of Callaway. Maybe somebody remembers who he sat with on the date of the journal entry. It takes awhile to tell that story. Callendar, where else did they meet?”

“Her place. He doesn’t say where it is. But he talks about her sending a limo to pick him up. Makes him feel like a BFD. The way he talked about it, driving along the river, the views from her place—totally fancied-out—it sounds Upper East Side. Doorman, big lobby, private elevator. So a condo. Oh, and he liked that she had droids—no live help.”

“So she’s got money, or access to it. She sought him out. She’s got an agenda. She made him important, exactly what he wanted. She knew that. She knew which notes to play.”

“She’s been studying him,” Teasdale put in.

“It’s why the banking for the drugs, the equipment didn’t show on his financials. She’s fronting all that. She may have gotten the makings for him, may have sources there Strong couldn’t find. Out
of the country, or deep down—some of her old contacts from Red Horse.”

“Why, after all these years?”

“Menzini died a few months ago, right? Maybe that was
her
trigger. I’ll ask her when I find her. She coached him, taught him. She lit the match.” As she calculated, Eve’s eyes narrowed, flattened. “He’s sitting down there now figuring out the best way to contact her. He’s got to figure his rich grandmother will buy him top lawyers, get him off. He’ll be thinking that.”

“But she won’t,” Teasdale said.

“No, hell no. He’s caught. No more use to her. Did Menzini’s death start this?” Eve wondered. “Is this some kind of revenge on her part? Or maybe a tribute. Fuck it.” She pushed her hands through her hair.

“We did an aging program,” Feeney told her. “We’ve got what she should look like now, but—”

“She’d have changed her face,” Eve finished. “A long time ago.

She faked her own death, she can’t keep the same face. She’ll have heard we’ve got him. Will she worry he’ll give her up?”

“Why didn’t he?” Teasdale demanded, and for the first time since Eve met her, the agent looked mildly distressed. “It would have given him a bargaining chip.”

“He’s smart enough to know that, and to keep that chip in his pocket. If she doesn’t come through for him, buy his way out, he’ll roll on her.”

“She’ll poof. Not your fault,” McNab said to Callendar. “Just bad luck. But she’s got the money and resources, so she’ll blow.”

“Start running any and all private shuttles booked or alerted for flight prep since the media conference. Let’s start running high-dollar condos, Upper East, riverview, fancy lobby, doorman.”

“With a terrace,” Callendar called out. “I’ve got them having drinks on her terrace—facing east. He can see Roosevelt Island.”

“She can’t help him,” Teasdale pointed out. “If she tries, we’ll have her. If she doesn’t we still have him. HSO will certainly use all resources to locate her, but I don’t understand the urgency.”

“She’s got the formula.”

“I suspect she’s had it all along, or enough of it with this much time, and the financial backing, she certainly could have created and used it before this.”

“We’ve just given her a reason to use it.”

“For him?” Teasdale shook her head. “I don’t believe she has that much sentiment in her.”

“Menzini’s dead. The daughter’s useless to her. Nothing to her. But the grandson? He’s her legacy. He’s shown her, twice, he has Menzini in him. She can’t get to him, so she’s going to want payback. Shit, shit!” Eve yanked out her ’link. “Weaver and Vann. Maybe she’ll want to finish what he started.”

She got Weaver’s voice mail, left an urgent message, but managed to reach Vann.

“Lieutenant. We heard about Lew. I can’t believe—”

“Where are you?” she demanded.

“At home. We closed the offices, and—”

“Stay there. Don’t answer the door until my officers get there.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to. Stay inside, door secure. Where’s Weaver?”

“I’m not sure. She was upset, naturally. I assume she went home.”

“Stay inside,” she repeated, then tagged Jenkinson. “Get over to Stevenson Vann’s apartment. Keep it in lockdown until I say different. Nobody in, nobody out. Send Sanchez and Carmichael over to
Nancy Weaver’s. If she’s home, keep her there. If she’s not, I need to know. Go now.”

She went straight to Whitney when he came inside. “I need Mira and Reo secured. As well as Chief Tibble and yourself, sir. Gina MacMillon may target the people who took down her grandson.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“What do we know about her?” Eve demanded. “Attractive woman in her late seventies, early eighties. Wealthy. Patient. Jesus, she’s like a spider. A trained soldier. More, a kind of operative. Could she have made contact with Menzini while he was alive?”

“I can’t say.” Again, Teasdale looked mildly distressed. “I would doubt it.”

“Why wasn’t he executed? They still did that back then. He was a war criminal, a mass murderer, a child abductor, a rapist. Name it.”

“My guess? He was useful.”

“Making chemical and bio weapons?”

“It’s possible. His mind was twisted, but he had brilliance in certain areas.”

“Enough he’d have found a way to get word to her. To keep the fire going. The world didn’t end, but that doesn’t mean you stop trying. Or shift focus. He made his living selling chem weapons. Maybe that’s how she makes hers.”

Teasdale’s face lit. “I’ll start a search for known dealers in her age span.”

“Bugger that.” Roarke sat back, pulled the tie out of his hair. “I’ve got her.”

“How? Jesus.” Eve all but leaped on him. “Let me see.”

“There was a painting in Callaway’s office. The only piece of any taste or style in the whole place. It struck me at the time, but I
didn’t think much of it. It took me some time, but I found it. On screen.”

Eve frowned at the image of long, flower-decked steps, a fountain at their feet. They led to an old building, looked European to her.

“I don’t get it.”

“It’s the Spanish Steps, in Rome.”

“Menzini hit Rome, and was taken there.”

“So I recalled, a bit belatedly. This painting was done just prior to the war, by an Italian artist who died in Menzini’s attack.”

“Too much coincidence, and coincidence is bogus.”

“So I thought. I’ve managed to track the owner through insurance. It’s a very nice piece, and part of a collection. Owned by Gina M. Bellona. Bellona is the ancient Roman goddess of war. On screen.”

“There she is,” Eve murmured.

Attractive, yes. Strong bones, smoothly covered by olive skin, a sweep of dark hair liberally, artistically streaked with silver. It listed her as the widow of a Carlo Corelli.

“Find out what happened to Carlo Corelli,” she ordered Peabody when her partner came back in. “And do it on the move. We’ve got a fucking New York address. Upper East Side—good call there, Callendar. Teasdale, I’d like you to stay back, monitor any transmissions Callaway requests to make. And use whatever magic you have to locate any private transportation she may have, and have gearing up. If she’s trying to poof, let’s block her.”

“I’ll make sure of it. And have a biohazard team in place at her condo.”

“Set it up, but hold them back until we get there. You can freeze her accounts faster than we can. Do that.”

“Consider it done.”

“I’m ordering a SWAT team,” Whitney said. “I want that building secure.”

“Yes, sir. I’m going to pull in Baxter and Trueheart. I think that’s enough to take down one old lady.”

“You’ll have one more. I’m with you, Lieutenant,” Roarke told her.

“You earned it. Let’s move out.”

21

Eve worked as she went, her mind clicking through steps and strategies. “Peabody, keep digging on Gina Bellona. I want to know if she has any other homes, properties, and if so, we want the locals there to obtain warrants for search and seizure. I want any and all vehicles—ground, air, water. I want relatives, employment or businesses. I want the names of her frigging pets.”

She pulled out her own ’link, grateful that for once the elevator had a little breathing room. “Reo,” she began without preamble when the APA came on screen. “Are you and Mira secured?”

“Yes, we’re in the conference room. What—”

“Don’t talk, listen. I need a warrant, now, for the homes, businesses, and vehicles of Gina Bellona, aka Gina MacMillon. We’re on our way to her primary New York residence, and we’re going in with or without the warrant. Make it clean, Reo. She’s an imminent
threat to the people and properties of New York. If she gets out of the city, she will be an imminent threat globally.”

“You’ll have it.”

“Save time, use the conference room ’link. Put Mira on.”