The Gemini Deception (3 page)

“We need to get her first,” Marty replied. “But she’s the best candidate so far. An astonishing resemb—”

“Did I or did I not ask you to let me know as soon as you had the right woman?”

“Yes, you—”

“I don’t remember asking you to bother me until you
had
her. I am once again stressing the word
had
and not
found
. I don’t have time for useless pronouncements.”

“It’s not that simple,” Marty said. “We can’t just abduct her. Not if we want her to do what you need.”

“Of course not, you fool. You have to make an offer. One she can’t refuse.”

“She won’t bite,” he said. “Not from what we have on her so far. Goody Two-shoes. Straight as they come.”

“Everyone has a price.”

“She’s not into money. She doesn’t make much, but her bank account shows donations to all sorts of causes—animal shelters and rescue groups, mostly.”

“I’m rolling my eyes. Can you guess why?”

Marty hesitated, terrified of saying the wrong thing. Tougher men had died at the hands of the Broker for lesser reasons. “I checked her background. No relatives, grew up in an orphanage and, later, in foster homes. No ties with any of them. Single and no colleague or anyone in her life who matters enough to pressure her with. No drug abuse, no promiscuous behavior. Nothing. Not even a DUI.” He was satisfied with himself for being thorough.

“What does that leave you with?” the Broker asked, her calm tone more ominous than ever.

He needed an answer, even a remotely relevant one, but nothing came to him, and as the seconds ticked away he began to feel numbness in his brain. He tried to concentrate on a rock at his feet and found himself praying to it for an epiphany.

“Again,” she said evenly, “
everyone
has their price. Even if they don’t know it yet.”

Marty snapped his fingers. “You want me to…set her up,” he said hastily. He knew he sounded like an eager child whom the teacher had just helped find the answer, but he didn’t care. He was sure it was the right answer all the same.

“Bloody eureka.”

He wiped his sweaty forehead and kicked the rock away.

“Do you think you can manage that?” the Broker asked.

How he hated her sarcasm. If he wasn’t scared shitless of the bitch, he’d tell her to stick her fucking head in an oven and light a match. “No problem.” He tried to sound confident. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Let’s hope not,” she said. “Because the next time you call, it’d better be to tell me she’s ready to cooperate.”

“Sure, you can—” The phone disconnected. As usual, she’d hung up on him before he was done talking. Marty slammed the receiver back on its hook. “Cold bitch.”

*

Houston, Texas

TQ, known to many in the criminal underworld simply as the Broker, disconnected her call and began to pace restlessly through her lavish penthouse apartment at One Park Place in downtown Houston. Her home was an extraordinary showplace for many of the world’s rarest and most valuable antiquities and art—nearly all of them stolen—but no one aside from her two trusted servants had ever been inside the private museum she called home. And even they didn’t know about her safe room, an impenetrable fortress accessed through secret panels in her bedroom and office.

She found it both soothing and motivating to skim her hands over the myriad ancient pieces that comprised her collection, for they represented the only two things she valued: power and money. She had plenty of both but was forever plotting ways to acquire more. Her influence extended to the highest offices in countries the world over; she had blackmailed or bought presidents, prime ministers, and more than a few royals, and she was rarely denied anything she set her mind on.

Her latest illegal acquisitions had been given prime real estate in her spacious four-thousand-square-foot apartment. Rembrandt’s “Storm on the Sea of Galilee,” one of several masterpieces stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston more than a decade earlier, hung above her bed. The other recent addition, a gold burial mask more than three thousand years old and smuggled out of Luxor, Egypt, had its own crystal display case in her office.

But tonight, even those treasures failed to calm her restlessness. A looming impediment to one of her primary interests had to be dealt with, and soon. And it seemed as though the success or failure of her plans rested on the shoulders of Marty Graber. Alas, among all the men she had sent to find the match she requested, it was the low-level thug who could barely carry on a conversation who’d claimed to have found her.

But while Graber seemed incompetent at times, she knew better. He’d worked for her in the past, and although he frequently needed things spelled out for him, he always came through. Finding this woman was impressive and reason enough to allow him to continue to serve her.

She had plenty of men and women working for her, all of them available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. None had ever met her in person. Since she’d decided to disappear more than a decade ago, the only way to reach her had been through an untraceable mobile number. Even Dario hadn’t known where to find her.

TQ sighed at the memory of her brother.
Idiot
. If she’d ever come close to feeling affection for anyone, it was her only sibling. Not because they were related—because that was never reason enough for her to feel anything except contempt for her parents—but because of his dedication to her. She doubted he actually loved her. She was certain, however, that he respected her, and not out of fear like the rest, but because she took care of him.

Without her, Dario would have been lost, a whore-visiting drunk with a meager inheritance to live on: a negligible sum he would have spent on brothels and booze within months. It was all the poor idiot could come up with to compensate for his physical limitations.

TQ had built an empire with her deceased husband’s fortune and name, one that allowed her to employ her brother and make him a very rich man. Because of her, Dario could afford the best rehab clinic for his alcohol addiction, live-in help for his disability, a trio of bodyguards, private jet, and enough money to live like a king.

But that very lifestyle had been his downfall. He’d overindulged in the one addiction he never had any interest in trying to master: prostitutes. Unfortunately, the fool was stupid enough to fall in love with a common whore, one who had betrayed him and cost him his life. Even though several weeks had gone by and TQ was never one to dwell on the past, she still got infuriated at her brother’s naïveté. His hard-on for that prostitute had blinded his judgment and, worse, had brought her existence to the attention of what she suspected was a private law-enforcement or security organization.

She’d never had to deal with any such private entity before because she paid good money to those who mattered to keep that from happening, so the fact that they’d learned about her brother and his involvement in her business still bothered her.

Oh, well
, she thought. She couldn’t do anything to alter that, and after all, should these entities ever come after her, all she had to do was call her connections in either the CIA or FBI. She wouldn’t lose any sleep over the matter.

Her only lingering interest in the whole affair was that Jack woman—the bitch who’d killed her brother. Though she’d tried to track her down, Jack was as elusive as she was. The woman had no connections to anyone high up that she could influence, and though they apparently had plenty of acquaintances in common—Jack had worked for many of the powerhouses in the underworld—none knew how to reach her.

If finding that woman was the last thing she ever did, TQ would die happy. But would she torture Jack to death or into submission? Despite the fact she wanted to seek justice for her brother, she had a begrudging respect for the woman who had earned the nickname Silent Death. Her reputation was well established as a very capable and ruthless killer who respected discretion and always delivered fast results.

But other matters demanded her attention before she could concentrate further on tracking down her brother’s killer. Elizabeth Thomas posed an immediate and deeply concerning threat to the only thing that really mattered to TQ: her money. Why did vile, meddling women all of a sudden surround her? The newly elected president had vowed to shut down one of her two primary businesses: the illegal-weapons trade. TQ was also a key player in the global selling of black-market human organs, and she considered both concerns vital to the world economy, primarily her economy. She’d just invested several million on weapons destined for sale to various countries—including the U.S.—and she wasn’t about to lose out just because the new president happened to be a woman who wanted to prove herself more capable and more ethical than any male before her.

Even aside from the new president’s agenda, TQ derided the election of the first female to the Oval Office. She viewed politics as a man’s world—past, present, and future. Not because men were better at it but because they were testosterone-fueled monkeys who needed to pound their chests, claim power, and play war, regardless of how much it cost or how the wars got funded. In her mind, men weren’t concerned about children or women getting killed or whether the sons and fathers of their country died. They wanted power and they wanted to win, and the rest was merely collateral damage.

TQ understood the sentiment. She, too, valued power more than any single or collective life, and she was well positioned to exploit it. She knew power in any form was born of money, which in turn bred corruption, and the rich were divided into two inseparable categories: those who practiced their power on stage and the ones behind the scenes who helped them launder their riches. TQ was in the latter category and reveled in the knowledge that so many influential people depended on her to keep their secrets and make them look good. When it came right down to it, she was the one with true control. She was a necessary evil, and as long as she was necessary, she was God.

TQ leafed through her private phone book, containing the names of movers and shakers on both sides of the law, as well as the more obscure individuals who did her dirty work. Most were people whose numbers were impossible to find, although a few of the underworld figures practically handed out business cards because they were either too arrogant or too stupid to be careful. Russian mob boss Yuri Dratshev fell somewhere in between.

She reached for the phone. “Time to deal with the president,” she said aloud as she dialed the unlisted number to Dratshev’s Manhattan Beach, New York mansion. She’d previously avoided contact with the Russian disease of a man; he was vulgar, uneducated, and without any decorum. But though she despised him, he had much to lose as well should the president get her way, and he had some of the best warlords on his side. If they combined forces, something he’d always begged for because of TQ’s reputation, it was only a matter of time before this ridiculous weapons agenda ended up on the massive pile of unkept political promises.

“I’m looking for Yuri Dratshev,” TQ said loudly, to be heard over the blaring sound of the TV in the background. She didn’t own a set herself—they were annoying, misleading contraptions deliberately designed to numb the mind.

“This is him,” came the heavily accented reply.

TQ rolled her eyes. Second-generation immigrant and he still couldn’t speak the language correctly. “Good evening, Yuri. You haven’t had the pleasure of meeting me in person, though I know you’ve wanted to.”

“Who the shit are you?” the Russian mob boss replied. “I don’t need to meet anyone. How did you get my number?”

“Is this a secure line?” she asked.

“Yes, line is safe,” he replied dubiously. “Who is this?”

“My name is TQ.”

There was a long pause, then a clicking in the phone line and the maddening blare of the TV stopped. “Now it is a secure line,” Dratshev finally said. “What a pleasure.”

“I’m sure.”

“Finally, we meet.”

“I wouldn’t go as far as a meeting,” TQ said, “but I do have a collaboration plan in mind.”

“I would very much like business with you,” Dratshev said. “Big business, yes?”

“Big, yes.”

“I am all hears.”

“The expression is ‘ears,’” she said patiently, trying hard not to second-guess her choice. “But that aside, we have a certain problem in common.”

“You mean guns.”

“Indeed.”

“That bitch is a big problem.”

“Problems are like a cancer,” she said. “They become a big problem and spread only when they aren’t dealt with on time.”

“I like the way you think.”

“Good.”

“So you see where I’m going.”

“You have a cancer?” Dratshev asked.

TQ rubbed her eyes tiredly at his inanity. “No, I’m fine, thank you. The cancer that’s spreading and needs to be stopped is the president.”

“Ah, yes. The bitch.”

“I want you to help me stop her so we can continue with our very profitable enterprises.”

“How?”

“I’m going to need your best men to orchestrate an attempt on her life.”

“Attempt?”

“Yes, just an attempt. You are to kidnap her and keep her in your possession until I instruct you to return her to me.”

“How will my people get the president?” he asked. “She is very much guarded all the time in her white house.”

“Leave that up to me. I will tell you where and when. All you have to do is make it look like a genuine attempt on her life.”

“So the country will have no president. How does this change something for us?”

“Again, leave that up to me.”

“You have a plan.”

TQ was tempted to use an expression she never had, one completely out of character. She wanted to say,
Duh, you Russian idiot
, but refrained. “I do.”

“But you will not share.”

“It’s to both our interests I don’t, if you know what I mean.”

“Your plans stay secret and I know nothing that can implisate me.”