She walked past a tall blond man wearing a Società Sportiva Lazio jersey, one of the football clubs in Rome. He was reading yesterday’s issue of La Gazzetta dello Sport and listening to something through Apple earbuds. He did not glance at her, nor she at him.
And so she never noticed that the man stood at an angle where he could watch the nervous businessman with the big dog.
* * *
Michael Augustus Stafford had no idea who Peggy Gondek was or that one of Mr. Church’s top surveillance operatives had walked within three feet of him. His focus was entirely on Joe Ledger.
He was impressed with Ledger’s disguise and the small personal tics he’d adopted. He filed them away for his own future use. And the dye job on Ghost was subtle and convincing. Stafford had never used a dog as part of a disguise, and he thought it might be fun. He liked dogs and had a mastiff at home that was roughly the size of a stegosaurus. Might be too imposing and noticeable. Maybe something smaller and disposable. Something the cabin attendants would ooh and aah over, giving him a chance to get an email address or phone number.
The challenge was that Stafford did not have a ticket for this flight. He’d followed Ledger here from the hotel, where one of his agents had spotted him. All the intelligence Stafford had gathered indicated that Ledger was following a trail of information that would almost certainly take him to Rome, and from there to one of three possible targets: Tuscany, Sardinia, or Bologna. Kuga had his money on the latter, though Santoro thought Ledger might go back to Tuscany because there was a warehouse near Florence filled to the rafters with components for exosuits that were about to be flown to Canada. Sardinia was the least likely target, mostly because so few people knew about it and it was in a heavily fortified compound.
Stafford’s ticket was for a later flight, and he had to change it.
He turned away and made a call to one of the three people stationed here in the airport. When the call was answered, Stafford told the man to get him a ticket for first class if possible. First on, first off. Each of his agents had the right fake credentials to purchase the ticket, but no photo ID was needed to actually board, so Stafford could remain where he was. Then he called Dingo and requested passenger manifests for every plane leaving in the next two hours, especially the ones getting ready to board for Italy.
Once that was done, he turned back.
And Joe Ledger was gone.
INTERLUDE 14
THE PAVILION
BLUE DIAMOND ELITE TRAINING CENTER
STEVENS COUNTY, WASHINGTON
ONE MONTH AGO
Eve stood in the corner, her back squeezed into the cleft of two walls, fists knotted and held to her mouth.
The room was awash in blood.
Two of the Fixers—not her precious Righteous, but highly trained agents nonetheless—lay on the bed. And off it. And across the room. How could all those pieces ever have come from just the two of them?
She was naked, her thighs and breasts streaked with red. None of it hers.
The intensity was gone now, vanishing even faster that it had come on.
How long ago was it all different? She wasn’t sure.
At first, it was nice. Beautiful. Two of them—ripped, chiseled, hard, huge. Fucking her. Fucking each other. Doing whatever she told them to do even though neither was gay or even bi. They were hers, and she was Santoro’s, and no one said no.
She’d picked them because they were so straight. That was a game. Make the straight ones do what she wanted. Kissing, sucking, stroking, fucking. Coming inside each other. That had been an old game. One she used to play with Adam. Find the straight ones, male and female, and try to reshape them. Open them up, liberate their thinking. Expand their minds.
Some—more than a few—liked it.
These men did not, but what choice did they have? If they rebelled, if they walked out on her, Daddy would punish them. No one wanted that. Tougher men than these had broken down crying at the thought. One Fixer had hanged himself because he thought that Daddy was going to punish him in some special way.
Her sessions with them had grown beyond sex games, though. It was during her second or third week at the Pavilion that she’d started with the handcuffs and the riding crop. A week later, it was a bullwhip. Oversize sex toys, including studded dildos never designed for safe anal play.
And on and on.
Things that satisfied her needs one day were pedestrian and pointless the following night. HK let her play, because she, too, was afraid of Santoro.
As for Daddy? He never said a word. Not to her. Not to anyone with authority to stop her.
And now this.
Eve could barely remember taking the filleting knives and the cleaver from the kitchen or the wood rasp from the shop. All she knew was that she had them.
Used them.
All of that, though, seemed to be part of a dream.
All of that happened within fits of a red cloud of lust and hate. A red darkness.
The two Fixers did not look even remotely human anymore. Eve did not want to look in a mirror because she knew that the red darkness was still there, waiting behind her eyes.
Even she, of all people, was afraid of it.
CHAPTER 82
ROTTERDAM THE HAGUE AIRPORT
SOUTH HOLLAND, THE NETHERLANDS
I settled into my seat and made sure Ghost was comfortable.
The jet was a middle-aged Airbus A350–900. Comfortable enough for the flight from Rotterdam to Berlin. I buckled up for safety, opened a bottle of water I’d purchased in the terminal, took a sip, then removed a collapsible rubber dish and poured some for Ghost. He drank noisily while eyeing the pocket into which I had tucked a bag of beef jerky.
“Du musst warten,” I told him.
Ghost, who did not like waiting even one little bit, gave me a long, withering look of complete disdain. He and I both knew that we weren’t even going to be off the tarmac before I caved and gave him some treats.
I wondered how Toys was. Yeah, not a joke. I’d been a real dick doing that to him. But, on the other hand, I hadn’t asked him to be my wingman, my father confessor, or my plucky sidekick. Besides, he hadn’t liked me to begin with, so I doubted it was going to derail a budding bromance.
Even so.
I’d shot him. And I knew the effects Sandman had. The nightmares. Toys had a lot of skeletons in his closet, and most likely he was going to meet every single one of them.
As I had when I’d been darted by the earlier generation known as Horsey. The original developer, Dr. William Hu, always claimed that shooting me had been an accident, a pistol malfunction.
Bullshit, of course.
Hu was gone now. A victim of one of Harcourt Bolton’s master plans. One of many, many victims of the man behind the Kuga mask.
I settled back and waited for the jet to begin rolling.
Before we even got up to ground speed, Ghost was chewing on a piece of jerky.
CHAPTER 83
ROTTERDAM THE HAGUE AIRPORT
SOUTH HOLLAND, THE NETHERLANDS
Stafford stood and listened to the massive silence on the other end of the cell call.
He did not dare break it or ask if the man on the other end of the line was still there.
Finally, Kuga spoke. His voice was much calmer than Stafford had expected.
“You earned a lot of brownie points with the Java thing,” said Kuga. “You banked a lot of goodwill currency, but I have to tell you, son, you’re burning through it pretty fast. You let Ledger slip away? Jesus H. Christ, esquire.”
Stafford said nothing. Apologies were useless and even dangerous with Kuga. Ditto for Santoro, who was probably listening in.
“Where is he going?”
“Best guess? Berlin.”
“Why?” asked Kuga.
“Again … just a guess … but Casanova.”
Another silence. “Shit. How soon?”
“Not sure,” said Stafford. “If he’s going after the p
rocessing plant, there are only two ways to get in. Either he needs to get Church to work some kind of magic to get permissions, or he’s got to try to break in.”
“Alone? That’s impossible.”
“Maybe we should stop trying to decide what’s impossible for this son of a bitch. Much as it actually hurts to say it, boss, he’s impressing the hell out of me.”
“Hooray,” Kuga said icily. “So, sure, we don’t underestimate Ledger. Lesson learned. What are you going to do about it?”
“First, I need to catch him, and if I wait for the next commercial flight with an available seat, I’ll be here for seven hours. Even with Ledger needing to find the right equipment for a break-in, he’ll be ahead of me.”
“No,” said Kuga, “that’s not soon enough. He’ll slip your punch. Again.” There was a pause. “Let me make a call. Stay at the airport and be ready.”
The line went dead.
CHAPTER 84
THE PLAYROOM
UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
NEAR VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA
Rafael Santoro looked up from his desk as Eve limped into the room. She was dressed in regular clothes—no camo, no low-slung gun belt.
“Eve,” he said, smiling, “thank you for coming so quickly.”
“Anything for you, Daddy,” said the woman as she made her way across the expensive Turkish rug.
Santoro watched her eyes, looking for the flicker of pain with each step. He wondered how much of that pain was physical and how much was emotional. Maybe a twenty-eighty split, he judged. The part of him who was exactly who he was, enjoyed that 80 percent. The part that was the mentor and only surviving friend of the woman felt true empathy for the remaining percentage. It was an interesting mix, and one nearly unique in his personal experience.
“Have a seat, my dear,” he said, waving her to one of the two richly upholstered leather guest chairs opposite the desk. “Coffee? No? Tell me how you are feeling today.”
“You know how I’m feeling,” she said bluntly.
“Hurt, angry, and anxious to put Joe Ledger’s head on a pike?” he suggested.
“Yeah, sure, but not in that order.”
“And the knee?”
She shrugged. A total knee replacement had been performed a month ago, but there had been some complications, and the doctors were trying to decide if they needed to go back in. The poor function of the new knee required that she go back to wearing the knee brace.
They sat with that for a moment while hidden speakers played the opera Atlàntida, a cantata escénica based on a Catalan poem by Jacint Verdaguer. It was moody and superb. Two full minutes of it played before Eve spoke again.
“Knee or no knee, I’m telling you right now, Daddy, that if I don’t get out there and do something, I’m going to go totally apeshit.”
Santoro nodded. “I understand, my sweet, but we cannot act rashly.”
“Is that some kind of dig because of what happened at the Pavilion?”
He smiled and shook his head. “My angel, what does it matter to me if you vented some of your pressure by indulging your appetites?”
“HK fucking freaked.”
“Hers is a more orderly mind.”
“More sane, you mean,” said Eve, cutting him a suspicious glance.
“No. Are any of us truly sane? We could not be who we are if we were that mundane. No, my daughter, you are allowed to play.” She started to speak, but he stopped her with a raised finger. “As long as you do not include the Righteous and the Elites in your fun and games, yes?”
She said nothing.
“Please show me the respect of an answer, Eve,” he said, and there was that subtle edge. He never clubbed her, but he did make small cuts.
“Yes, Daddy.”
“There’s my angel,” he said, smiling warmly. Then he changed the subject. “HK has kept me up to date with the training, and our development team has assured me that the equipment we have is more than adequate to our needs.”
“Even with Joe fucking Ledger cutting throats all over the place? Seems to me that he’s on to us.”
“And what if he is?” asked Santoro, raising his eyebrows.
“Isn’t the shit he’s done going to derail us?”
“Oh no, Eve, it’s far too late for his shenanigans to stop what’s coming. At best, he’ll find us just in time for your Righteous to tear him apart. Tell me, do you know what it means to draw and quarter someone?”
“Sure.” She brightened. “Oh, sweet! I can have four of my guys do that.”
“Yes,” he said, “you can and you should. So … if he is on his way, then let him come.”
“He’ll bring that whole goon squad with him.”
“I dearly hope he does,” said Santoro. “Even with whatever information Ledger has managed to steal or coerce from our various laboratories … he will never be able to stop what’s about to happen.” He leaned forward. “America will burn, my daughter.”
Eve got to her feet, leaned across the desk, took Santoro by the face with both hands, and pulled him to her for a kiss. Not a sexual one—he was her father, after all—but it was full of a certain kind of passion. And Rafael Santoro, who loved his daughter more than anything left alive on earth, allowed it.
Then he pushed her gently back.
“Now listen to me,” he said softly. “I have a special mission for you.”
She grinned. “Berlin?”
“Yes,” he said, “Berlin.”
CHAPTER 85
ROTTERDAM MARRIOTT HOTEL
ROTTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS
Toys woke up with a groan. Sickness washed through him, and he crawled across the floor and into the bathroom, then threw up the excellent food and wine.
It took monumental effort to turn on the shower, strip off his clothes, and collapse into the bottom of the stall. The water pounded on him. He hadn’t gotten the water mix right, and the blast was icy.
“You … bastard…,” he gasped.
The Sandman had conjured inescapable nightmares for Toys, and his worst dreams were always about the innocent people he’d killed before Church had lured him away from that life. Toys had long ago memorized each name, knew details of their lives. They haunted him at the best of times, but in the drug-induced nightmares, they tore him apart endlessly.
Later.
Much later …
He took a proper shower, though his legs were still shaky. Then he ordered more food and when it arrived sat staring at it as if it were a plate of steaming offal.
It wasn’t until he staggered back from his fourth bathroom trip that he saw the briefcase. It was on a chair across the suite. It was a very expensive case, a Webster X Charles Simon Graphite Mackenzie Aluminum one. The same kind Sebastian Gault used. Very durable, hard to open. Stylish, which Toys took to mean that Ledger had stolen it. The barbarian had no personal style.
The case was unlocked.
He opened it to find file folders crammed with data stolen from the people Ledger had killed. And several external hard drives.
On top of those, though, was a handwritten note.
DON’T COME LOOKING FOR ME AGAIN.
NEXT TIME, I’LL USE A DIFFERENT GUN.
Toys took the case over to the bed and rifled through the contents.
“Jesus Christ,” he murmured and scrambled to find his cell phone. However, before he could even dial a call, there was a knock on the door. He frowned, fetched his pistol, and peered out through the peephole. And grunted in surprise. Two people stood in the hall. A short, dumpy young man who looked like Matt Damon—if the actor broke training, lost IQ points, and forgot how to dress; and a tall, fit, elegant, and very beautiful woman with dark hair and darker eyes.
Toys ran fingers through his hair, tucked the gun into his waistband, and opened the door.
The woman gave him a slow up-and-down appraisal.
“Toys,” said Violin, “you look awful.”
“Yeah, man,” said Har
ry Bolt, “you really look like shit.”
Toys stepped back to let them in. “Well, you can both kiss my arse. But … come on in anyway. Did Church send you?”
“No,” said Violin as she breezed past. “My mother did.”
“Looking for Ledger, I assume,” he said, closing the door behind them. “Well, you just missed that rotten son of a bitch. He’s probably out of the effing country by now.”
“Yes,” said Violin, “and he’s on his way to Germany. Get dressed and packed. I have a plane waiting for us at the airport.”
“What?”
“Arklight has had people looking for Joe ever since he went gonzo,” said Harry. He was a former CIA agent, and according to everyone who ever worked with him, a truly awful one. He’d only gotten fast-tracked through the academy and into the field because of who his father was. If Harry was the worst, then his father, Harcourt Bolton Sr., was arguably the best the agency ever had. The irony was that the senior Bolton, the most decorated agent in the company’s history, had also been the worst traitor. While Harry, however inept at tradecraft, had proved himself to have unbreakable integrity. Violin had taken him under her wing and was teaching him—a task that proved to everyone who knew them both that she had the patience of a living saint.
Toys nodded. “Have a seat. There’s still some wine left. And beer, though it’s lukewarm by now.”
“Works for me,” said Harry, taking a bottle. He offered it to Violin, who shook her head. So he twisted off the top and took a long drink.
“What happened here?” asked Violin.
Toys glared at her. “Ledger is a shit-eating arsehole.”
Harry snorted beer through his nose.
“Tell me about it while you pack,” said Violin, settling back in a chair.
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