Kiss Me While I sleep (15 page)

What was her most likely target? The answer came immediately to mind: Vincenzo’s laboratory. He
knew
it; the flash of intuition too strong to ignore. That was where her friends had struck, and gotten shot for their efforts. She would see it as poetic justice if she completed the job, perhaps setting a series of explosive charges and completely demolishing the laboratory complex.

Losing the projected profits from the influenza vaccine wouldn’t bankrupt him, but he was looking forward to that huge influx of cash. Money was the real power in the world, behind the kings and oil princes, the presidents and prime ministers, with each group trying to get more than the other. But even greater than the lost profits would be the insult, the loss of face. Another incident at the lab and the WHO would begin questioning the security, at best simply withdrawing the funding, at worst insisting on on-site inspections. He didn’t want anyone from the outside looking through the laboratory. Vincenzo could probably hide or disguise what he was doing, but any further delay would wreck their plans.

He couldn’t let her win. Aside from everything else, word would reach the streets that Rodrigo Nervi had been bested-and by a woman. He could perhaps keep it quiet for a time, but eventually someone would talk. Someone always talked.

This could not have happened at a worse time. He had just buried his father no more than a week before. As well as he knew what needed to be done, nevertheless he was aware that on some fronts there was still a lingering doubt that he could step into Salvatore’s shoes. And he himself had taken over a lot of the everyday work of Salvatore’s; he had no one in position to do the same for him.

He was in the middle of arranging a shipment of weapons-grade plutonium to Syria. There were opiates to funnel into various countries, arms deals to be made, in addition to all the legitimate work of running a multifaceted corporation. He had to attend board meetings.

But to apprehend Liliane Mansfield, he would make the time, if he had to clear his slate of everything else. By tomorrow morning, every employee of his in France would have a photograph of her. If she walked down the street, eventually someone would recognize her.

The security at the laboratory was common, at least on the outside. Fenced and gated-with one entrance in front and one in back, both manned by two guards-the lab itself was a series of connected buildings that were mostly windowless. The architecture was graceless, the buildings themselves constructed of ordinary red brick. The parking lot on the left contained about fifty vehicles.

Swain noted all of this on one drive-by. The Jaguar was kind of noticeable, so he couldn’t do an immediate repeat without the guards noticing. Instead he waited until the next day to do another drive-by, and in the meantime, he used all his contacts to locate the building specs so he could figure out how Lily was most likely to try to gain entrance. For the exterior grounds, security was pretty much what he could see: the fence, the gated entrances, the guards. At night, the grounds were patrolled by a guard with a leashed German shepherd, and the grounds were well-lit.

For obvious reasons, he thought she would try for a night entrance, despite the dog. The night lighting was good, but created shadows that provided concealment There weren’t as many people around at night, plus people naturally got tired in the wee hours. She was an expert with a pistol, and could take out both the guard and the dog with well-placed sedation darts. Not instantaneously, true, and the guard might be able to yell or otherwise attract attention. Of course, she could also kill them; if she used a silencer, the guards at the gate wouldn’t hear a thing.

Swain didn’t like that thought. He wouldn’t bat an eyelash if she killed the guard, but it made him queasy to think about harming the dog. He was a sucker for dogs, even trained attack dogs. People were a different story; some of them just cried out for killing. He excluded most kids from that theory, lumping them in with dogs, though he’d met some kids he’d thought the world would be better off without. He was just glad his own kids hadn’t turned out to be jerks, because it would’ve been embarrassing.

He just hoped Lily didn’t shoot dogs. A lot of his natural sympathy for her would go down the drain if she did.

There was a nice little park across the street from the laboratory. On warm summer days, a lot of the employees from the nearby shops would find their way there to relax during their lunch breaks. There were a few hardy souls there even on a brisk November day, walking their dogs, reading; enough of them, in fact that one more man wouldn’t be noticeable.

The streets here were wider than in the older parts of Paris, but parking was still at a premium. Finally Swain found a parking space nearby, and walked to the park. He bought a cup of coffee and found himself a nice bench in the sun where he could watch the comings and goings at the lab, familiarize himself with the routine, maybe notice some security weakness he hadn’t already spotted. If he was lucky, Lily might choose today to do the same thing. There was no telling what garb she’d be wearing, or what color wig, so he might wander around and study the park-goers’ noses and mouths. He thought he’d recognize the shape of Lily’s mouth anywhere.

The laboratory complex looked ordinary enough; the external security was what one would expect at any manufacturing facility: a perimeter of fencing, limited access, uniformed guards at the gates. Anything more, such as twelve-foot concrete walls “With barbed wire on the top, would only attract attention.

The sophisticated security, Lily thought, would be inside.

Fingerprint scans or retinal scans for entry into the most restricted areas. Motion sensors. Laser beams. Sensors for broken glass, weight sensors, you name it She needed to know exactly what was inside, and she might have to hire someone who could bypass those systems. She knew several people in the business, but she wanted to stay away from acquaintances. If the word had gone out that she was now persona non-grata at the Agency, none of them would be inclined to help her. They might even actively work against her, dropping a word in interested ears about her location and intentions.

The neighborhood was an interesting mix of ethnic shops, trendy little boutiques-like there was ever any other kind-cafes, coffee shops, and cheap apartment housing. A small park gave the eye a break from the urban sprawl, though most of the trees had been denuded by approaching winter and the brisk wind made the limbs rattle like bones against each other.

She felt much better today, almost normal. Her legs had held up well on the brisk walk from the train, and she wasn’t breathless. Tomorrow, she thought, she would try a slow jog, but today she was content to walk.

She stopped in a coffee shop and bought a cup of strong black coffee, as well as a pastry with a buttery, flaky crust that almost melted in her mouth as soon as she took a bite. The park was just fifty meters distant, so she walked there and selected a bench in the sun, where she devoted herself to the sinful pastry and her coffee. When she was finished, she licked her fingers, then took a thin notebook from her tote, opened it in her lap, and bent her head over it. She pretended to be engrossed in what she was reading, but in reality her eyes were busy, her gaze moving from point to point, noting the people in the park and the placement of certain things.

There was a score of people in the little park; a young mother with an energetic toddler, an elderly man walking an elderly dog. Another man sat alone, sipping a cup of coffee and looking at his wrist watch several times, as if he was waiting, none too patiently, for someone to join him. Others walked among the trees: a young couple holding hands, two young men kicking a soccer ball back and forth as they went, people enjoying the sunny day.

Lily took a pen from her tote and drew a rough diagram of the park, marking the locations of benches, trees, shrubbery, the concrete trash receptacles, the small fountain in the middle. Then she flipped a page and did the same with the laboratory complex, marking where the doors were in relation to the gate, the windows. She would need to do the same for all four sides of the complex. This afternoon she would rent a motorbike and wait for Dr. Giordano to leave the complex, assuming he was even there, of course-she had no idea what hours he kept She didn’t even know what model and make of car he drove. She was betting, however, that he would keep fairly regular hours, close to the national average. When he left, she would follow him home. Simple. His phone number might not be published, but old-fashioned methods still worked.

Again, she knew nothing about the man’s family life, or if he even had family here in Paris. He was her ace in the hole. He knew about the complex’s security and, as director, would have access to every part of it; what wasn’t certain was how easily he would divulge that information. She preferred not to use him, however, because once she grabbed him, she would have to move quickly, before anyone noticed he was missing. She would try to find out about the internal security methods by other means, try to pet in without using Dr. Giordano. But she wanted to know where he lived sooner rather than later, just in case.

Lily was sharply aware of her shortcomings in this area. She’d never dealt with anything more than the most basic security systems. She wasn’t an expert in anything, except reading her target and getting close enough to execute the mission. The more she thought about this undertaking, the more she realized how uneven the odds were, but that didn’t lessen her determination. There was no perfect security system in the world; there was always someone who knew how to bypass it. She would find that someone, or she would learn how to do it herself.

The two young men were no longer kicking the soccer ball. Instead they were talking on a mobile phone as they looked at a sheet of paper, then at her.

Alarm skittered through her. She slid the notebook and pen back into her tote, then pretended to accidentally knock the tote to the ground beside her right leg. She bent down and, using the tote to hide her movements, slid her hand inside the top of her boot and pulled out her weapon.

She used the tote to keep the weapon concealed as she got to her feet, moving at an angle away from the two men. Her heart was thumping in her chest. She was accustomed to being the hunter, but this time she was the prey.

Lily sprinted, her sudden burst of speed catching them by surprise. She heard a shout, and instinctively dived to the ground a split second before the sharp, deep crack of a large-caliber pistol shattered the drone of everyday business. She rolled behind one of the concrete trash receptacles and came up on one knee.

She wasn’t fool enough to stick her head up, though most people weren’t all that accurate with a pistol. Instead she took a quick peek around the side and squeezed off a shot of her own. At that distance, some thirty or thirty-five meters, she wasn’t all that accurate herself; her bullet went into the ground just in front of the two men, kicking up a spray of dirt and sending both of them diving for cover.

She heard tires squealing, people screaming as they realized the sharp sounds were those of gunfire. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the young mother swoop down on her toddler and snatch him up as if he were a football, holding him under her arm as she scrambled for safety. The little boy squealed with joy, thinking it was a game. The old man stumbled and fell, losing his hold on the leash. The old dog, however, was long past making a dash for freedom, and it sat down on the grass.

Quickly she looked around for any threat coming at her from the rear, but all she saw was people running away, not toward her. Safe from that quarter, at least for right now, she looked around the other side of the receptacle and saw two uniformed guards running from the complex gate, weapons in their hands.

She squeezed off a shot at the guards and made them dive for the pavement, though again they were too far away for accuracy. She used a modified Beretta model 87, shooting .22-caliber long rifle bullets, with a ten-round clip. She had just used two rounds, and she hadn’t brought any extra ammo with her, because she hadn’t been expecting to use it
Fool!
she berated herself. She didn’t know if these two guys were Agency or some of Rodrigo’s men, but she was betting on Agency, for them to have found her so fast. She should have been better prepared, instead of underestimating them and perhaps overestimating herself.

She snapped her attention back to the two soccer players. They both had weapons, and when she peeked around again, both fired off shots; one shot missed completely, and she heard glass shatter behind her, followed by more screams and the sudden shocked cries of someone who had been wounded. The other bullet struck the trash receptacle, sending a chunk of concrete into the air and peppering her face with stinging shards. She fired a shot
herself-three-and
checked the guards. They had both found cover, one behind a tree and the other behind a trash receptacle like the one she crouched behind.

They weren’t changing their position, so she turned back to the soccer players. The one to her left had moved even further to her left, hampering her aim at him, since she was right-handed and the concrete that protected her was to some extent also protecting him.

This was
not
good. There were four weapons to her one, therefore theoretically at least four times as much ammunition as she had. They could keep her pinned here until she ran out of ammo, or until the French police arrived-which should be any minute now, because even with the ringing in her ears from the gunfire, she could hear the sirens-and took care of her themselves.