by Davis Bunn
“And you will never know. It is not your business to know. And that is not the issue here. I am wondering how to punish you. How to ensure you realize just how close you are to death.” He studied her. “Rhana Mandana, you stand there with your fine jewelry and your poise. Do you not feel the cold breath upon your neck?”
She met his gaze and did not speak. She knew he expected her to beg. And that was her first inclination. The plea took shape in her frantically beating heart and rushed up her throat, a silent scream for mercy. But Rhana clenched her jaw and held it trapped inside. She would not give him the pleasure of even a glimpse of her terror.
Something in her gaze caused him to concede, “No, not this night. You still have a role to play. Perhaps. If indeed you are to be trusted. But you must be made to see just how close death has come to you. How there can be no further mistakes.”
“I have made none.”
“No mistakes,” he repeated. “All missions must lead to success. Even the ones you know nothing about. There are no innocents in this world.” He smiled at some passing patron behind Rhana, probably a woman who had given him the eye. His voice was almost musical. Killers often took this tone, she knew, when the blade was about to be inserted. “I am taking your commission from the sale of these articles. The entire fifty million dollars is now mine.”
She dared take a half step toward him. “I have earned—”
“I am taking all of it, Rhana. Every cent. Take what consolation you can from the knowledge that much of it will go to the families of those who took part in the debacle at the spa.” He smiled. “And the young woman who accompanied you tonight, she will be placed on the altar in your stead.”
“Ridiculous! It risks everything—”
“Turn and relish the spectacle of her death.” He tracked an unseen ally with his gaze, then lifted his chin, indicating Kitra. “And if I experience any further failure of any kind, I will come looking for another sacrifice.”
They were already in the Ferrari and leaving Remy’s hospital parking area when Kitra’s panicked call came. From his position behind the wheel, Bernard ordered Marc to phone Remy and request backup. Now they raced down the highway that rimmed the lake’s southern edge, the engine roaring in their ears. The Ferrari was made for this, pushing beyond the limits of normal cars. They started off alone, then a pair of patrol cars slipped in via an autoroute entrance. Bernard slowed enough to allow the supercharged Renaults to box him in, but when they attempted to temper his speed, Bernard shouted something Marc did not need to understand, swerved around them, and blasted on alone.
At this point, Bernard’s phone rang. He slipped it from his pocket and tossed it over. Marc answered, listened to the tirade in French, and replied, “Whatever you have to say, it needs to be in English.”
The policeman’s accent was atrocious. “We are instructing you to slow down!”
“Check with your superiors.” Marc cut the connection and told Bernard, “Wrong number.”
Bernard shouted another phone number to Marc. He called and reported his findings to a woman who felt no need to identify herself. When he was done, the woman had responded with, “We will alert the Geneva Police.”
“Negative! No cops! Repeat, no police! If the enemy sees them, my friend is dead. Tell the police trailing us to cut their sirens and play by our rules.”
It was far from the clearest summary Marc had ever given a superior, but it had apparently worked, for the woman simply said, “Stand by.”
Ten seconds later, the Renaults both cut their sirens. One moved in close to Bernard’s rear, the second soon vanished. The Ferrari’s speedometer held steady at 230 kilometers per hour, which Marc did not even bother to convert. Fast enough to scare him silly. Even though he wished they could go faster still.
The woman on the phone said, “Tell Monsieur Behlet that detectives in unmarked vehicles will be standing by, awaiting his orders. Good hunting.”
Marc cut the connection and said, “I need a boss like that.”
“You need to alert Rhana’s ally, is what you need.”
“Roger that.” Marc phoned the number Amin had slipped him. The Persian was definitely not pleased to hear from Marc. “That number was for dire emergencies only.”
“My friend, Kitra Korban, just phoned. She is with Rhana—”
“At the gallery opening. I know all this. Rhana’s bodyguard is one of us.”
“Kitra says Rhana told her to call. She said death was there.”
The man’s tone shifted to full-on alarm. “From where?”
“That was all she said. I’m assuming Kitra was being watched when she called. Give me the gallery address.”
Amin fed it to Marc, who passed it on to Bernard. The agent told Marc, “I know it. Tell him, no alarm and no movement until we arrive. We handle the police.”
Marc repeated the instructions, then added, “If your man calls for backup or does anything else out of the ordinary, it will alert the enemy.”
“Where are you now?”
“Autoroute, outskirts of Geneva.”
Bernard said, “Six minutes and closing.”
“I will alert my man. He will find you.”
“Red Ferrari.” When Marc cut the connection, Bernard fed him the police number. Marc asked, “They speak English?”
“Probably, and badly.”
Marc gripped the dash and the door handle as they left the autoroute in a swooping maneuver that left burned rubber and squealing tires and a hundred blaring horns in their wake. He passed on the information to the cops, then cut off just as Bernard took a corner at an impossible speed and hammered a lamppost. The police car lost control entirely and slammed into a parked van. Bernard downshifted and burned rubber around the wreck. “Tell the police we are four blocks out.”
“Slow it down. Where that crowd is, is that the gallery? All right, stop now. Block that alley.” Marc was up and moving before the car halted. He raced forward, saw a man with a fighter’s bulk beneath a dark suit, and said, “You’re with the good guys?”
“As God wills.”
“Okay. Follow my lead.” He heard footsteps rushing to catch up and said, “This is another friend.”
“I have no weapons.”
“Yeah, I know how that feels.” Marc arrived at the door. “You two find Rhana. I’ll cover Kitra.”
The entrance was guarded by a slender young man who demanded something in French. Marc shot past him, ignoring the protest and Bernard’s retort. Because he spotted Kitra then, beautiful in her midnight-blue evening dress. And then he saw the killer, and knew he was too late.
Chapter Seventeen
The assassin stood out like he was being tracked with Klieg lights. He did not belong in this crowd, nor in this elegant and refined world. He wore his expensive tailored suit like he would the furs of a captured enemy. His shoulders were hunched, his jaw tight, his gaze fixed upon Kitra. His target.
Marc moved through the guests as though they did not exist. As though only three people stood in this place, and the space itself was nothing more than a kill zone. He did not actually run. He moved like a river flowing into the sea. Doing what he did best. Heading straight for peril.
The attacker could have taken her. Marc was still half the chamber’s width away. But the killer made a mistake. He wanted her to see him. He gave himself time enough to be spotted, for Kitra to look into his face and see her end.
Marc leaped and roared all at the same time. “Down!”
Kitra did not fall; she wilted. Her body went boneless and she dropped.
The gunner gaped at the empty space where his target had once stood. Mistake two. It was only an instant, half a heartbeat of indecision. But long enough for Marc to strike.
There was no subtlety to his assault. He rammed the attacker with all the force he had in him. Knowing the man carried a knife. Possibly a gun. Not having any idea where the weapons were, as the attacker’s right side had been blocked from Marc’s view. S
o he did what he could, the only thing that occurred to him. Slammed into him and found a grip with his feet and just kept shoving, ramming the attacker into the wall. Into the painting, actually, which folded around them like a smelly shroud.
“Kitra, get away! Move, move!”
Marc reached up and flattened the smashed painting around the attacker’s face. The enemy snarled and flung outward with both hands, using the dark carbon blade to clear away any threat. He shouted in a foreign tongue that sounded both savage and melodious.
Something about the way the man kept shouting told Marc he had not come alone. Marc yelled, “There’s a second attacker! Bernard!”
But the Swiss agent’s approach was slowed by the screaming horde of well-heeled clients now streaming up, down, anywhere but near the fray. The second attacker was squat and agile and far closer. He too carried a knife, and he headed straight for Marc.
Bernard shouted, “Federal police! Halt!”
Marc feinted left, then used his superior height to leap up and strike heel-first, down upon the second attacker’s head. The man was swift and managed to jerk away, but still caught the strike on his blade arm. The knife clattered to the stone flooring.
Marc landed and kept falling, covering the blade with his body. The first enemy ripped the painting off his face and struck with his nearside boot. Marc scrambled away just in time, leaving the knife behind and coming up empty-handed.
As the squat attacker turned to face Bernard, the original foe swiped at Marc. The blade hummed a song of black death, the man’s reach great enough for Marc to feel the wind across his chest. He began backing away but was blocked by some great mass of screaming, writhing people. Marc saw Bernard grip Kitra’s arm and fling her back toward safety. He felt his focus tightening now, released from fear for the woman he loved.
Yes, loved.
The squat attacker punched at Bernard, but the Swiss agent proved as swift as he was agile. Bernard countered with a savage kick to the man’s ribs. He spun away, recovered, and reached into his pocket.
“Gun! Gun!”
Kitra scurried into a side alcove Marc had not noticed until that very moment. A terrified Rhana gripped her and drew her into safety. The stubby gunman tracked her out of sight, which was long enough for Marc to duck a second wild swing from the taller foe, then leap in and hammer the gunman twice, once to the neck and then to the temple. It was far from his best work, but the man wobbled slightly before turning and firing through the gallery’s plate-glass window.
The window shattered in a blast of falling glass. The gunman shouted again, then leaped through the opening. The tall man moved incredibly fast for his size. They were followed by a third man that Marc had not noticed until then. The trio vanished into the night while sirens roared at them from all sides.
Chapter Eighteen
Marc was back in the Geneva police station. Same bullpen as his first night in Switzerland. He was just as tired as during the last visit. But the authorities’ previous hostility and the suspicion were gone. In their place was a palpable respect, a desire to jump up and do whatever he requested. Which was not much, really. Give him a secure line and a private space and a coffee. Then he recalled how bad the food had been the last time, and amended that last request, asking someone to hoof it across the street and bring back a hot beverage and a sandwich from someplace that understood the word fresh.
The reason for the change in atmosphere had come in the form of a senior police officer who had arrived as Marc was coming in with Bernard and Kitra, basically offering Marc anything and everything he required. The officer had not needed gold braid or a fancy dress uniform to get his message across. The way the other police had watched, all standing at full alert, had said that this was a man whose words carried true power.
They set him up once more in Inspector Reynard’s office, which Marc found good enough irony for a weary smile. Kitra was the only other person in the office. Bernard was on the phone next door, reporting to his own superiors. Marc ate his sandwich and drank his coffee. Kitra had declined repeated offers of both. She was seated in one of the station’s hardback chairs, pushed over tight against the side wall, beside the inspector’s three filing cabinets. She watched him with a hollow gaze. “What are we waiting for?”
“I need to report in. But I want Bernard to hear what I say.” He bundled up his sandwich wrapping and dropped it in the waste basket. “You can go back to the hotel anytime you like.”
“I’m not going anywhere without you.”
When he put down the cup, he said, “I need to tell you something, Kitra.”
She braced herself as much as her weary state allowed. “You want me to go home.”
“If you want to stay, I want you to stay. If you want to go . . .”
“I don’t know what I want.”
He nodded, not in agreement, but acknowledging that now was a time for truth, however raw. “When my wife passed away, I made a decision. But to understand what that decision was, I have to back up. About two weeks earlier, I finally accepted that she was going to die and there was nothing I could do about it. I had hoped my prayers would be enough to save her. I had felt God very close to me at times when I prayed. I thought that meant she was going to make it. That we would see a miracle. And sometimes she was better, for a little while. Then she went into a serious decline, and even though I didn’t want to accept it, I saw it in the faces of the doctors and the nurses at the hospital. She was never coming home again.”
He was so involved in the memories, he did not even notice Kitra was crying until she wiped her cheeks with both hands, the wetness now all over her face. “What was your decision?” she asked, her words no more than breaths.
“That I would not let this come between me and my God. It was so tempting to leave my faith behind. Bury it with my wife and walk away. The temptation was a burning in my gut, a hunger, a . . .” He stared at his hands, flat on the desk in front of him.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because my faith was all I had left.” He met her gaze, glad he could keep his voice steady. “Just like now.”
He waited for her to object, to come back with some sort of deflection. And he wasn’t sure he’d have the strength to keep them on target. Even though this truth needed to come out. Tonight.
Instead, all Kitra said was, “I understand.”
“I realized tonight that by letting myself turn so cold and distant, becoming cold to you, shutting you out, it has left me unable to pray.”
She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it and nodded. The motion released another trickle of tears. These she did not bother to wipe away.
“I feel like we’ve been going at this all wrong, Kitra. We can’t deny how we feel, any more than we can deny the obstacles that stand in our way. We love each other and yet our destinies lie on different paths. It’s hard. I know.”
“So very, very hard,” she whispered.
“But it’s also very real. And after the attack, when it came down to how close I had been to losing you, I knew this wasn’t right.”
“No,” she said. “No. It’s not. But—”
“But you don’t know what to do. And neither do I.”
She took on the thousand-yard stare he had seen so often in shell-shocked victims who could no longer find the strength to bring reality into focus. She opened her mouth and framed a single word, but could not give it volume. What.
“I think we should pray. Together.”
It took her a long moment. But he waited it out with her. Until she could look over and really see him.
“Morning and night,” he went on. “We come together and we ask for clarity. Vision. Purpose. Wisdom. Healing. Peace. For each other and for the two of us.”
She said, “You don’t know how hard that is.”
“I think I do.”
“No, you can’t . . .” She stopped at a knock on the inspector’s door.
Bernard opened the door. A single glance wa
s enough for the agent to take in Kitra’s tears, the distance between them. “I am interrupting.”
“Five minutes,” Marc said.
“I am just outside.”
When the door shut again, Kitra went on, “I am my father’s child.”
Marc nodded like that made sense, glad at some level beyond logic that she was being open with him at all. Not closing him out. Not making a mockery of his suggestion.
“I have been raised to fight. To do. To challenge the status quo and bend the will of an entire nation. To force people who stand against us to accept us and give us a place. To claim what is ours by right. I would have gained none of this if I had submitted.”
It was his turn to say, “I understand.”
“But this is what you’re asking me to do, isn’t it? Submit?”
“No, Kitra. It’s not about me asking you to do anything at all. Except pray.”
“But don’t you see?” Her face creased with pain. “What if God tells me to do that? Bend to a will that’s not my own? Do something other than what I’ve spent my life building? The kibbutz is my life.”
“Kitra, think about what I’m saying.” There was no argument now. Which was beyond good. Marc had no energy for a quarrel. This was all about laying it all on the table. Even when it hurt. Even when they disagreed. He felt the rightness resonate in his weary bones. “This isn’t about giving up on anything. This is about taking a new direction. Together. As believers who care deeply for one another. This is about us and God. Okay, we know our paths. They have seemed totally separate, but they’ve crossed here. In Geneva. So what comes now? We need to pray for direction, for a way ahead. Why shouldn’t we pray for each other? There’s no one on earth I feel closer to than you.”
“Oh, Marc.”
“It’s true. So let’s meet and pray. No agenda. No aim beyond seeking God’s will. For each other. As friends.” He waited. “What do you think?”