The Coil (25 page)

They were the only people left whom she loved, and now they were gone. What did it matter what she thought of herself? Theories were worthless when lives hung on a razor's edge. She had been full of hubris, filled not with utopian ideals but with self-indulgence. When all seemed lost—knowing there was no other way to help them—she had turned into an animal, groping the body of a dead man in search of his weapon.

Grim, her eyes hot and dry, she turned and hurried back toward the warehouse. There were other corpses there. Other weapons.

Abandoned, full of violent death, the Eisner-Moulton warehouse emanated an almost unearthly chill as Liz slipped in through the open door. Behind her, the sidewalk was deserted. Few considered flying bullets a spectator sport. She stopped to dig through her bag until she found her flashlight. The high-powered beam revealed three bodies in the elevator and a fourth on the ramp. She quickly checked all, but there were no weapons.

Holding her throbbing arm, she returned to the loading area. The van's tires were shot out, but inside was a medical kit. She collapsed in the van's doorway and swallowed aspirin. A fit of violent trembling overcame her, and her teeth chattered—a delayed reaction to being shot. At last, with a final shudder, it passed, and she was able to ease out of her jacket and knit top.

She inspected the wound. The bullet had plowed across the fleshy part of her left arm, creating a lot of blood but no lasting harm. She cleaned and bandaged it and pocketed the pack of aspirin. She paused until nausea passed. Using the med kit's scissors, she cut off the sleeves of her top and put it back on. There was a man's lightweight blue jacket on the front passenger seat. Good. Hers had a bullet hole burned through the sleeve. She did not need that advertisement.

She put on the jacket and surveyed the shadowy warehouse and the corpses lying like junked toys. Her father had once told her,
Your enemies are often as afraid of you as you are of them, but most of the time they secretly think they're better and smarter. It's a weakness.
He had understood human nature and used it to his advantage. But why keep records? He had been many things, but stupid was not among them. Was it hubris? A sick desire to revisit his wet jobs? She had never seen that in him.

Maybe it was his sense of orderliness, of completion, of proper procedure; he had been meticulous, planning to the smallest detail. Perhaps it was a willingness to stand up and be judged, to face history, trying to prove those he executed had committed at least moral crimes. Or was that only what she, his daughter, would like to believe? In the end, the reason made no difference. The result was the same: He had created misery and death while alive, and now from the grave, he had triggered a new onslaught.

She shivered, thinking. The gendarmes would eventually hear about tonight's gun battle. They always did, and she could not be here when they arrived. Coated in sweat, she quickly searched the rest of the van, checking for weapons or cells or clues to the identity of the blackmailer. She found the usual junk food, cigarettes, and M&M's, but no registration, no hint of who owned or had hired the van.

The aspirin was working. She still felt like hell, but the pain was more tolerable.

She jumped out of the van and patted down the corpses. Each carried ID, but all were clearly new, which meant they were probably phony. No weapons or cash. No cells. She hurried to the ramp, hoping for better luck upstairs.

As she left the first floor, she spotted movement again against the far wall, where the two dark figures had vanished earlier. Instantly, she turned off her flashlight, but shadowy light from someplace outside illuminated enough area that she could see someone limp swiftly out through a door, slightly dragging his right foot. She remembered passing an alley on the way here. The door might open onto it. The figure wore some kind of cap. She saw no weapon. Heard no door close.

Liz shook off a chill and continued up, turning the flashlight back on. She explored each story. At the top, two more bodies lay in the hall. Again, no weapons or cells. So six men had held Sarah and Asher, while nine attacked.

She lifted her head, listening. A siren wailed in the distance, and she rushed back down, supporting her arm. She was in luck; the police had taken longer than she expected. On the other hand, this was a rough part of Paris, and either the word had been slow to reach the gendarmes or they were underenthused about responding.

As she descended to the inky loading area, she saw more movement and turned off her flashlight. A figure was gliding in through the garage door. Police? A gunman returning? Perhaps it was the man who had limped away.

Pulse pounding, Liz sank to her heels, making herself small as the figure—a man in his twenties—slid against the wall and paused. He needed time for his eyes to adjust, but she did not. He was white. A cruel raised scar ran from his ear to his throat.

She worked to stay calm. The police siren was closing in, and she was still not thinking as clearly as she would like. Feeling stupid scared the hell out of her, too.

The intruder lifted his head, listening. As a knife glinted between his fingers, he whistled. Three more men scuttled in and spread out as if they had done this many times. They had come to rob bodies, find weapons, scavenge. They had not come for her, but that would not stop them from ripping her to bits out of fear and greed.

Using their footsteps for cover, she slid through the shadows, moving toward the alley door. She was halfway there when her shoe struck something in the murk. It clattered away. She froze. Her pulse hammered in her ears.

The youths were hunched over corpses. They jerked up and peered into the dark.

The hairs on her neck seemed to stand on end. She sprinted.

Like a wolf pack, they rose and loped after. Stumbling over more trash, she reached the door. It was ajar, which explained why she had not heard it shut.

She slipped through and glanced left and right at garbage cans and litter. A dark green jacket lay on the cobblestones about ten feet distant, on the way to the closest cross street. Someone must have dropped it. Maybe there was a weapon or a cell inside.

She ran as if the dogs of hell were on her heels, paused just long enough to sweep it up, and hurtled off again as cursing and raging in gutter French followed. She crushed the jacket against her. There was a small rectangular lump. She reached into the pocket. A cell! And something else—a piece of crumpled notepaper. She jammed it back in the pocket.

Humidity hung thick, and sweat poured off her as Liz tore between a parked taxi and an old Audi and across the street and past open bar doors and clumps of people standing outside, drinking and smoking and staring. She hugged the jacket as if her life depended on it and gripped the cell like a weapon. The door to a club swung open, and heavy-metal rock blasted out. Never slacking, she ran from the jackals in the warehouse and from the sirens that screamed closer. The sky was black and far away, unreachable.

 

Liz Sansborough was far off by the time César Duchesne ran out of the alley, too, limping badly. The police had arrived, and Duchesne was moments from discovery. He had no time to unscrew the sound suppressor from his Walther, no time to look for Sansborough. He dove into his taxi and peeled away. Now he had no choice. He would have to report to Cronus.

Brussels, Belgium

Cronus left the Old Hack, a watering hole favored by English-speaking news-hounds, and turned up the well-lit boulevard Charlemagne. He was returning to his office, despite the late hour. His chin was thrust forward, and his hands were cupped behind his back, the top one patting the palm of the lower, as he grappled once more with Hyperion's murder. He shook his large head, disturbed and angry. Too much had happened over the past few days. It was mystifying. Outrageous.

Without looking to either side, he passed pubs, shops, and cafés where civil servants, politicians, diplomats, and lobbyists gathered during breaks from working with the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, NATO, and the other national and international agencies that had settled here in the Leopold district. This was his world, and he looked the part, dressed in one of his favorite Savile Row suits and club ties. His mind returned to this afternoon, when he had heard the news about Hyperion's murder on the radio. At first, he was shocked. Almost instantly, though, he realized his reaction was ridiculous. In fact, naive.

Hyperion was being blackmailed. Now Hyperion was dead. The blackmailer had struck again. Ergo, ipso facto.

As he strode along, he willed himself to put the murder from his mind. There was nothing anyone could do until the blackmailer was found. From the beginning, it had been obvious the Carnivore's files had given someone far more power than he knew how to use well, much less wisely.

As Cronus walked on, he listened to the clamor of languages, for which
cosmopolitan
was an inadequate description. He liked Brussels, felt vigorous here. Because of its central location and the international organizations it hosted, the old city thought of itself as the capital of the European Union. To Cronus, that was, at best, wishful thinking. Brussels was not yet London or Washington, D.C., or even Moscow, where the federal offices of great nations were entrenched. It would be years, if ever, before Brussels was allowed to consolidate so much power.

He approved. Europe's unification must proceed cautiously, evolving step by step, so it would endure. More important, Britain could maximize her position before the union was final. His bias was something he would admit to few. After all, as an EU commissioner, he had sworn to put the interests of the union before the interests of any individual nation. In most cases, he did. Still, there were occasions when he shaded a decision. It was human nature to want to bring home a little pork, as the Yanks called it.

Thinking about it all, feeling more settled within himself, Cronus turned onto the broad rue de la Loi, where starkly modern EU buildings rose above the streaming nighttime traffic. He pushed into the commission building.

“Good evening, Sir Anthony.” It was Jacobus, inclining his head respectfully from the security desk. He was a man with a long memory and a tiny, ferretlike face.

Shrewd, honored, even fabled, Cronus was Sir Anthony Brookshire—Britain's foremost delegate to the European Commission. A former chancellor of the Exchequer, he had inherited his wealth and title but had earned his visibility and influence by decades of loyal service to the Crown.

Sir Anthony nodded. “A bit warm, isn't it, Jacobus.” A statement, not a question.

The quiet building was cold as ice chips from a hyperactive air-conditioning system. Few people appeared to be working late tonight. But then, bureaucrats liked to go home on time. Sir Anthony took the elevator up to his office, thinking about the conversation he had just left at the Old Hack, where he had indulged a
Sunday Times
journalist with a private interview over dinner. His favorite question of the night was:
Do you think it's realistic for the EU to expect to have the world's most competitive economy by the end of the decade?

That had made him smile. “In the 1980s, no one could beat Japan. In the 1990s, the United States set the economic standard. This decade will be Europe's,” he assured her. It had been good to get his mind off Hyperion.

Shaking his head, he went into his office and walked straight to his window, which looked east toward Brussels's Grand-Place, the best-preserved medieval townscape in Europe. It was textured by city lights and deep shadows, the chiaroscuro effect reminding him of some Rembrandt painting. The regal tower of the Hôtel de Ville dominated the skyline.

He settled into his chair and put on his reading glasses. He was sixty-two years old, still married to the same woman after nearly four decades. They had two grown children. He was a man of strong convictions and the highest moral standards, or so he'd had to remind himself recently.

He sorted through his messages. He had been in Paris until midafternoon, so the pile was thick. When he heard a phone ring, he glanced at the one on the corner of his desk, but that was not it. He removed a cell from his inner pocket and answered.

“Cronus here.”

“It's Duchesne,” the American-sounding voice announced. “We have a situation.” As always, the tone radiated confidence.

“What's happened now?” Sir Anthony demanded.

Duchesne said bluntly, “Mac's been murdered.”

Sir Anthony sat back. “When?
How?
”

“He was found in Sansborough's hotel closet in Paris, a syringe in his neck.”

“No!
Rauwolfia serpentina
again?”

“It would be consistent.”

The lab report had come back earlier that day, reporting it to be the drug in the hypodermic that Mac had taken from the man outside the American Hospital. Related to common tranquilizers,
Rauwolfia serpentina
could be injected, inhaled, or sprayed onto the skin. Still a highly secret U.S. drug, it depressed the central nervous system, killed in seconds, and was almost undetectable. Sir Anthony suspected it had been the cause of Grey Mellencamp's death.

“The police received an outside tip,” Duchesne continued. “But this situation is different from when Flores was injured and we controlled events from the start. This is out of our hands, unless you want to pull strings.”

“I can't have any association with this. You know that!”

“I thought you'd say that. Mac's true identity never needs to come out. He had a secure legend—passport, credit cards, and a driver's license from New Jersey. I'm having a wife created to claim his body, and she'll tell the police he had gambling debts. Once the Paris police think the underworld's involved, there'll be little interest in looking for some other reason for his murder, not that there's anything to connect him to the Coil anyway. And of course we'll pay off his family, such as it is.”

Sir Anthony was still furious. “Who did it?”

“We believe it was a woman who'd staked out the hotel.”

“Staked out Sansborough? She should've been scratched!”

“Agreed. I've reprimanded the team. I'm reluctant to fire anyone, especially right now. We need all of our bodies.”

Sir Anthony said nothing, seething. How could what was intended to be so good have gone so bad? He had never met Mac, although Mac had been a loyal employee for years. But then, Dean Quentin and Professor Tedesco in Santa Barbara had also been loyal employees. Now they were gone, too, because Sansborough had learned they reported to Themis. Through them, Themis could have been traced, if someone looked hard enough. And that would have jeopardized the Coil.