by Jon Land
Also according to plan.
Climbing back upon the Big Whale, Sterling found himself exhausted and craved no more than a scotch followed by a long, restful sleep next to the green-eyed beauty, his final link to Black Scorpion. He’d have to get rid of her, unfortunately, a small price to pay given the rewards he was reaping.
Too tired to notice his guards were nowhere in evidence, Sterling entered his stateroom to find the girl sitting up on the bed to which he’d left her tied when he departed that morning. But she was no longer bound to the headboard and someone had placed his father’s wheelchair at the foot of the bed. The old man’s eyes were fixed emptily forward as always—not aimed at him, Sterling thought, aimed … somewhere else, toward a darkened corner of the stateroom toward which Sterling turned as well.
“Nice to finally meet you, Aldridge,” greeted Michael Tiranno.
* * *
Sterling twisted around to look for his guards.
“Don’t bother. They’re currently unavailable,” Michael told him.
Sterling saw the pistol Michael was holding by his side. “You come here to kill me?”
“That depends on whether you’re in a cooperative move or not,” he said, raising the gun. “This is just to keep you from doing something else stupid. I’m here to get your signature on a piece of paper,” Michael continued, removing it from his pocket and flipping the page open. “To officially transfer all Tyrant Global’s bonds held by Sterling Capital Partners to an entity in the Caymans called Legion Seven Investments. We created paper that justifies the transfer as payment of debt your company had off the books. I’m sure this won’t pose any problem, given the thousands of offshore accounts you control and that rogue client list you maintain worldwide.”
“Have you lost your fucking mind?” Sterling said, stopping just short of a laugh at Michael’s demands. “Because you’re asking me to give you seven hundred and fifty million dollars.”
“A great deal, if it keeps you alive.”
Michael walked over and extended the document to Sterling, who snatched it from his grasp angrily.
“And what if I don’t sign?”
“You will.”
“What, you think I’m a wimp, that I’m gonna let the first asshole with a gun steal money I worked my ass off to make? Thing is, you don’t scare me the way you scare everybody else. Fucking tyrant,” Sterling added, shaking his head with disdain. “You think I’m another Max Price? He was small-time, just like you.”
“I have a secret to share with you, Aldridge.”
“Hey, if you want to threaten me with exposure, go ahead. You won’t find a paper trail linking me to a single illicit dealing, not a one.”
“Well, the United States government officials behind the takedown of Black Scorpion’s cells across the world might beg to differ. I think they’d be very interested to hear all about your connection to the organization, how the richest man in America truly built his fortune. But this particular secret concerns someone else,” Michael said, aiming his gaze at the wheelchair-bound form of Harold Sterling. Then he looked toward the girl he’d untied on the bed. “Alexander’s waiting for you on deck.”
Terrified, she covered her naked form with a sheet and shuffled past him from the stateroom.
“There’s something you need to see,” Michael resumed to Sterling once she was gone, extracting a photograph from his pocket.
Sterling snatched it from his grasp, regarding it diffidently. “A picture of my father from twenty years ago, the day he retired from the United States Senate. So what?”
“Actually, it’s not.”
“Not what?”
“Harold Sterling. It’s a picture of another man, the man your father really is. A man named Hans Wolff, one of the most notorious Nazis ever.”
* * *
“Flip it over,” Michael instructed, and Sterling did to find a black-and-white photograph on the back. “That’s Wolff as a young man when he was a captain in the SS. My people had it aged to see what might have become of him after he disappeared. Imagine my surprise.”
The picture Naomi had received during the Gaming Control Board Hearing slipped from Sterling’s hand and fluttered to the stateroom floor. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words emerged, so Michael moved to the inert figure of his father and crouched to look the old man in the eyes.
“I have something for you, too,” Michael said to Harold Sterling, sliding the SS ring he’d also recovered from his father’s footlocker onto the old man’s finger. “For old times’ sake.”
The ring flopped in place, just skeletal bone remaining where there had once been thick flesh.
“Want to hear a story, Aldridge?” Michael continued. “My father and yours had their own run-in back in the late fifties in Romania. My father was there in the guise of a Jew named Davide Schapira, was in the business of making assholes pay then…” Michael stopped, eyes boring into Sterling. “… just like I am now.”
Sterling swallowed hard, his gaze drifting toward the man in the wheelchair again.
“Your father stole the identity of one of the many Jews he murdered in the camps he operated for the SS. The fortune he brought with him to America came from money and jewelry those Jews tried to buy their lives with. He was a monster, just like you and Dracu, only a different kind. And he still has the scar my father noted in his journal,” Michael said, pointing to the small, jagged piece of mottled flesh just to the right of the old man’s chin.
Aldridge Sterling remained silent, staring at his father as if seeing him for the first time.
“Either you sign that document,” Michael continued, as he stood back upright, “or the world finds out the truth about your father and family name. I imagine Jewish and German authorities will take whatever measures they need to freeze your assets until an investigation as to their original source is conducted.”
“My father disowned me, Tiranno,” Sterling blurted out. “That’s public knowledge.”
“Then I’m sure you’ll be able to prove it. Last investigation like this took six years to complete. And what do you think the Israelis might do? They believe in fruit of the poisoned tree, Aldridge. That means they take you down, too, and they’re not nearly as pleasant to deal with as I am.”
Sterling stood there, seeming to study him. “Vladimir Dracu was right about you. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you were the one who finally took Black Scorpion down. I tried to tell him to give it up, to let his obsession with you and that relic of yours go.”
“You mean this?” Michael said, reaching under his shirt to pry the medallion free of the harness Scarlett had given him and holding it up for Sterling to see. “I guess you could say more of Vladimir Dracu got bitten off than he could chew.”
In that moment, Harold Sterling’s empty eyes sprang suddenly to life at the sight of the relic. His mouth opened in a gasp, a trembling hand reaching out for it.
“What?” Sterling drawled from across the room, his voice barely audible, shocked by his father showing any life at all, never mind this much.
Michael looked down at the old man groping for his relic with still widening eyes and felt a chill slide up his spine. Remembering tales of how Hans Wolff had been searching for mystical artifacts in Romania, remembering tales of a powerful American who hired modern-day pirates to retrieve the same relic from his father years later.
Hans Wolff … Harold Sterling …
“It was you,” Michael said, in shock out loud to the father, shaking his head through the chill that had overtaken him. “You’re the one, you got my family killed. It all makes sense now.…” Then, to the son as his shock slowly ebbed, “Your father wanted my relic, first as Hans Wolff and later as Harold Sterling. But he didn’t get it either of those times and he’s not going to get it now.”
Sterling opened his mouth to speak but no words emerged from him either.
Michael looked back down at his father. “You never realized Davide Schapira and Vito Nunziat
o were the same man, did you?” He replaced the relic over his heart and raised his pistol again. “Sign the document, Aldridge, or I may forget I’m just an entrepreneur.”
Sterling moved behind his desk, reading the page quickly before scrawling his signature at the bottom and tossing it into the air. It fluttered briefly, then settled on the floor between them. Michael scooped it up and stuck it back in his pocket.
“You wanted to invest in my companies, Aldridge. Well, at least you got your wish. And you got off cheap,” Michael said, looking from son to father. “Just like him.”
“You call that cheap?”
“Until he gets to hell, you bet I do. This ends here, as far as you and I are concerned.”
Michael started for the door, wishing Sterling would pull a gun, a knife—anything.
Instead he resumed speaking. “How do I know that? How do I know I can trust you?”
“We both know the answer to that,” Michael told him. “I’m sure Vladimir Dracu told you the truth about me, too. We both have our secrets to bare, secrets that can destroy us. But I’m out of debt, thanks to you, and you’ve got all of Black Scorpion’s money, thanks to me.” Now it was Michael who smiled. “Not a bad deal, all things considered.”
* * *
Michael stepped off the launch back onto a dock at Porto Cervo. He walked before Alexander up toward the pier where music emanated from a dockside bar filled with a smattering of high-end patrons that included a young woman and older man seated next to each other at the bar, hardly an unusual sight.
He never looked toward Raven Khan nor Ismael Saltuk, just kept walking when the huge blast sounded a half-mile offshore. Patrons lurched to their feet in disbelief, drenched briefly in the orange glow of a yacht exploding, as Michael continued on.
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEEN
VADJA, ROMANIA
Michael led the girl along the dirt road from the spot where he’d parked his rented Land Rover. It was late afternoon and, thanks to Raven Khan, children played about nearby and in the distance without fear. Halfway to the police post that was manned again, a couple with two younger children in tow rushed out to greet the missing daughter they’d feared was gone forever when she didn’t return with the rest.
“What if they come back?” the girl’s mother asked him, fear lacing her voice and her eyes.
“They won’t be coming back, none of them. Ever.”
He left the family to themselves and started back toward Alexander and the Land Rover, when the girl caught up and hugged him tightly.
“Thank you,” she sobbed, in English. “Thank you for everything.”
“I never asked you your name,” Michael said, realizing, as he eased her away.
“It’s Stefania,” she said.
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEEN
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
Naomi stood across from Michael’s desk in his bubble glass office at the bottom of the Daring Sea, pocketing her phone.
“Our chief financial officer has confirmed that as of today forty-five percent of the Seven Sins bond debt is now officially held by Legion Seven Investments. Aldridge Sterling’s contribution, finally, has been properly allocated.”
His and his father’s deaths at sea was the subject of a huge investigation by Italian authorities. Initial reports blamed the explosion on a propane leak, but that hardly dissuaded investigators given the number of enemies Sterling had made over the years who had reason to want him dead. Robert Kern, meanwhile, had resigned as chairman of the Gaming Control Board and was the subject of an investigation himself by the Nevada Commission on Ethics, the watchdog of public employees. The manuscript Scarlett had found, and Alexander recovered from Black Scorpion’s fortress, meanwhile, was stored in its sealed container inside Michael’s personal safe. Eventually, he’d bring someone in who could finish the job she’d started by completing the translation, to find the remaining secrets of his relic’s origins. Michael touched his chest, reassured by its presence over his heart.
“What about Vlad?” he asked Naomi.
“He’s still in a coma, not expected to recover.”
“Don’t be so sure about that,” Michael warned.
His assistant buzzed him from upstairs. “There’s someone here to see you, Mr. Tiranno. He won’t give his name, but says he has information you need to hear immediately.”
Michael looked toward Alexander. “If he won’t give his name…”
“He says he’s here about Scarlett Swan.”
“Send him down,” Michael said.
Alexander positioned himself strategically before the elevator leading down from the offices located just off the lobby, jacket unbuttoned to allow for easy draw of his pistol.
“What now?” Naomi muttered, shaking her head.
Michael rose from behind his desk, watching the glass elevator open moments later to reveal a small man with a bad comb-over wearing a rumpled suit. All that was missing was the Mont Blanc pen Michael recalled him twirling on both occasions he’d spotted him in the rear of the Gaming Control Board chamber and then again in Peccato Bar Lounge, just before the explosions set by Black Scorpion had gone off on the Strip.
The man emerged from the elevator with his hands in the air, passing through the reception area and entering Michael’s private office.
“Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Tiranno,” he greeted, nodding toward Alexander.
“Who the fuck are you?” Michael demanded.
“You’ll find my identification in my inside jacket pocket. Please excuse me for not wanting to make any sudden moves by reaching for it on my own.”
Alexander slid toward the little man and extracted the ID wallet from his pocket. His eyes widened as he regarded it and then passed it across the desk to Michael.
Michael’s eyes widened, too. “Is this some kind of joke?”
“Not at all, far from it.”
“You said you were here about Scarlett.”
“And I am. To help ensure that she didn’t die in vain.” The man slid his ID back into his pocket. “We’ve been watching you since your escapades…” Here the man’s voice tailed off as his gaze hardened slightly. “… and your crimes … captured our attention, along with that mysterious relic of yours.”
“What do you think you know?”
“We know everything. You see, we’ve been following you for quite a while, but decided to wait until the proper time to make contact. That time, I’m afraid, has come.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
JON LAND is the acclaimed author of thirty-six novels, including the bestselling series featuring Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong: Strong Enough to Die, Strong Justice, Strong at the Break, Strong Vengeance, Strong Rain Falling, and Strong Darkness, which won the 2014 USA Best Books Award for Thrillers. In addition, Land is the coauthor of the nonfiction bestseller Betrayal. Jon Land lives in Providence, Rhode Island, and can be found at www.jonlandbooks.com, or sign up for email updates here.
FABRIZIO BOCCARDI is an entrepreneur, investor, creator, producer, and CEO and chairman of the board of directors of King Midas World Entertainment, Inc. Boccardi is the creator and owner of the multimedia brand and franchise the Tyrant. In addition, he controls numerous investments in the United States and abroad.
OTHER BOOKS BY JON LAND
The Alpha Deception
*Betrayal (nonfiction)
*Blood Diamonds
*The Blue Widows
The Council of Ten
*Day of the Delphi
*Dead Simple
*Dolphin Key
The Doomsday Spiral
The Eighth Trumpet
*The Fires of Midnight
The Gamma Option
*Hope Mountain
*Keepers of the Gate
*Kingdom of the Seven
Labyrinth
The Last Prophecy
The Lucifer Directive
The Ninth Dominion
The Omega Command
The Omicron Legion
Pandora
’s Temple
*The Pillars of Solomon
*The Seven Sins: The Tyrant Ascending
*Strong at the Break
*Strong Darkness
*Strong Enough to Die
*Strong Justice
*Strong Rain Falling
*Strong Vengeance
The Tenth Circle
The Valhalla Testament
The Vengeance of the Tau
Vortex
*A Walk in the Darkness
*The Walls of Jericho
*Published by Forge Books
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Part One: Before
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Part Two: Now
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Illustration: View from Las Vegas Boulevard
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Illustration: Grand Underwater Suite
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17