by Judith Leon
He still wore the sunglasses and hat, although he had shed the coat. He’d chosen plain black wool slacks, black shoes and a brown, heavy knit sweater layered over a black shirt. He would pretty much blend into any Prague crowd. He leaned into the aisle and looked forward into business class. Lindsey was also sitting in an aisle seat. God, she looked gorgeous. A pale-blue turtleneck sweater set off her long, dark-red hair. In Naples he’d tagged her as tough. For skydiving she’d seemed sporty. This was an entirely different look—soft, feminine.
Yes, he wanted something better out of life. But it couldn’t be with Lindsey Novak. She was a perfectionist, methodical, punctual. His thing was spontaneity. He’d grown up by his wits, alla giornata, hand to mouth, among the criminal elements along the canals of Venice. She was high-class with a first-rate education. They couldn’t be more unsuited for anything permanent. He was far too quick to imagine himself struck by il colpo di fulmine, the thunderbolt of love. He could maybe have a better future life, but not with K-bar’s daughter.
He’d brought a new Dan Brown novel. He pulled it from the magazine pocket in front of him, opened it, and forced his eyes to the first page of text.
Chapter 11
L indsey spent the flight to Prague prepping for her identity as a Griffin Pharmaceuticals representative with the information provided just before the flight out of Rome by someone she presumed was CIA. Boring stuff but critical to staying alive.
She had the creepy feeling of being watched, but couldn’t tell who her watcher might be. She’d glimpsed a man in the kind of black lamb hat seen all over Prague who made her nervous, but he seemed oblivious of her presence. Still, those sunglasses…
Had Cesare tipped off someone? Had her contact sent someone to follow her?
Inside the RuzyneInternationalAirport, the new portion of the North Terminal was ultramodern, shining with porcelain and marble tile. Shafts of cold winter sunlight brightened huge windows. After a casual glance, directly and in her cosmetic mirror, to make sure no one watched her, she found phones and covered her free ear to block out human babble as she dialed the number provided in the notice on Cesare’s BlackBerry.
“Speak,” a male voice said in English. Given that news of the impending sale had been in English, she wasn’t surprised. Potential buyers from many countries would be involved, and the language they would all be most likely to share was English.
“My name is Sylvia Platt. I am interested in the property for sale.”
“What is your business and what is your country?” The man’s voice was cultivated, his accent American.
“I represent a pharmaceutical company. If we meet, I’ll provide more details. I’m an American, but my company is headquartered in Milan.”
“A personal meeting is required. Where are you staying?”
“I have a reservation at the Grand Hotel Wenceslas, but I have some business before I go there.” Her watch said ten minutes after eleven local time. “I should be able to check in by one o’clock and be available afterward.”
“I shall meet you in the bar at fourteen-thirty. How will I recognize you?”
“Dark-red hair and wearing a black suit with a green stone pendant at the neck.”
They broke off, and she strode out of the terminal into a stiff, cold February wind. Gray wisps of exhaled air curled up from the cold lips of people making ground connections. Fresh snow blanketed the distant roofs and fields. She gave a taxi driver the address of the CIA safe house, located in the OldTown section, the Stare Mesto. Christine clearly had come through with the CIA.
And then, magic. The city had escaped the ravages of the SecondWorldWar and she’d expected something beautiful, but the dazzling sight of this jewel of a medieval city draped in winter white, set among pincushion hills, studded with the needle-pointed church spires, exceeded all of her expectations.
The massive gray PragueCastle and its towers surrounded the famous St. Vitus Cathedral, and together they dominated the city. Its four main spires reminded Lindsey of the sand castles of her childhood, carefully dripped into tall delicate points. What powerful kings and bishops must have ruled from here during the Middle Ages, Lindsey mused. One day, she would return to Prague for pleasure.
The taxi crossed a bridge over the VltavaRiver, which was frozen over, into OldTown. Built over hundreds of years of occupation, its architecture consisted of layers and facades, combining structures and styles.
As they swept through
Old Town Square
, across the CharlesBridge from the PragueCastle, the cabbie, clearly pleased to practice his English, said, “Buildings are Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque. You come back to see the famous clock. Astronomical. Every hour Twelve Apostles comes out.”
He let her out in front of a tobacco shop on one of the narrow, cobbled streets radiating out from the square. Once inside, surrounded by the pungent smell of raw tobacco, which she actually loved and which reminded her of K-bar, she gave the password to the vendor. He directed her to a door at the rear of the shop.
A man reading a comic book asked for ID, then directed her into an elevator that took her down. She stepped out into familiar surroundings of desks, computers, phones and maps. “Welcome,” said the thin, gray-haired man who greeted her. “My name is Bendrich. Your things are waiting.”
“How did they build an underground complex like this without attracting a lot of attention in this quaint old part of the city?” Lindsey asked.
“Very astute question,” Bendrich said, smiling for the first time. “The ground level used to be much lower when the original city was built over six hundred years ago. The VltavaRiver banks had no walls, and flooding over four hundred years left new soil. With all the invasions, looting and sacking, people just built on top of what was already there. Now everybody in Stare Mesto has Romanesque ruins in their cellars, and those original foundations had cellars, too. This building was bought because it went down twenty feet.”
Lindsey found this both charming and unsettling, like building on top of a graveyard.
He handed her another packet that she presumed would have the appropriate passport and other papers for Sylvia Platt, Assistant Director of Marketing of Griffin Pharmaceuticals. “Currency?” she asked.
“You’ll find it in the packet.”
Only one other man and a young girl were present. Both had turned and smiled as she came in. They were now back to their work.
“Will you need a weapon?”
“No.”
“I have been told to give you every assistance I can. I regret to say that, as you can see, we are a very small operation.”
She filed the information away. Since her mission was information gathering, their short staffing shouldn’t be a problem, but you never knew how an op might go.
Bendrich gave her a work area, and she combed through the information in the new packet. It turned out that Sam—Samantha St. John, a fellow Athena alum—had been responsible for assembling it, and Lindsey was directed to contact Sam on her secure phone for any needed assistance. Lindsey needed more time to do homework before the meeting, but she needed to hurry if she didn’t want to keep the man waiting. She had everything she could anticipate needing. Sam had done an excellent job. She thanked Bendrich, waved goodbye to the two others, and returned to the store level.
The Grand Hotel Wenceslas sat on a boulevard in the shopping and business heart of Prague,
Wenceslas Square
. The taxi driver pointed out the massive statue of a mounted Czech prince, St. Wenceslas. The bronze prince rode through the years, carrying his banner in the shadow of the grand Neo-RenaissanceNationalMuseum.
Her suite, a sitting room and bedroom, overlooked the street with a broad promenade down its center. She glanced out a window. Along the promenade, planters now covered in snow would, she imagined, come alive with blossoms in spring and summer. Warmly bundled shoppers and business-people hurried past, hunched against the biting chill of the wind. A sinking fe
eling settled in her gut. Lindsey was ensconced in luxury. Where was Teal? She had to be terrified. Why had the foolish girl chosen to stay with her captors? Would I, at her age, have been so brave? Or foolhardy?
Lindsey touched up her makeup for a colder look and smoothed her hair into a no-nonsense twist as she thought about the real nature of this mission. Now that genes could be easily manipulated—apparently snipped and pasted together at will—there was probably nothing that could stop the urge to tinker with humans. Bacteria could be made that secreted human insulin. Someone had created tobacco plants that glowed in the dark, able to synthesize an enzyme that nature produced only in fireflies. Genetically manipulated pigs had meat with more fish oil than pig oil—something presumed to be healthier for the human diet. Why not zap a little gene into a woman’s egg to make sure her son grew tall enough to be a pro basketball player? Or fast, like Teal was said to be? Or even able to read minds?
How could a man of science have no moral qualms about where he might be taking the human race?
She looked at herself in the mirror, armed with her appearance of cold, sophisticated competence, ready for battle.
Chapter 12
M arko slung his overnighter onto a queen-size bed in the Grand Hotel Wenceslas in a room on the same floor as Lindsey’s. Whatever she was doing, it felt like a sting. He’d followed her to a tobacco shop, into which she’d disappeared for over an hour. The place clearly could not be just a tobacco shop. Now she’d registered at this expensive hotel.
Marko had bribed the bellman who’d taken her bag and knew she’d taken a suite on the top floor, room 602. She’d tipped extremely generously. Conclusion: The sting involved looking plush with money.
He stepped to the phone and punched the number for the registration desk. “I’m joining my friend here in the bar. Lindsey Novak. Could you ring her number please?”
“Certainly, sir.” A pause followed, then “I’m sorry. We have no one registered by that name.”
“Thank you.” More confirmation that Lindsey wasn’t acting as Lindsey.
Leaving his bag, he returned to the lobby. At the airport he’d bought a copy of the London Times. Now he found an unobtrusive spot where he could watch the bank of elevators. He removed his outer coat, but still wearing his hat and sunglasses, he settled in to wait.
At 2:20 he asked a bellman for coffee. A waitress appeared promptly; the coffee was strong and excellent.
At 2:28 a stunningly transformed Lindsey stepped out of an elevator and strode directly to the bar. Instead of the comfortable black slacks and soft blue sweater she’d worn on the plane, she wore a classy black suit, its skirt showing long, slender and impressively firm legs.
She’d pulled her hair severely away from her face, the effect bringing out her full lips, large gray eyes and high cheekbones. That artsy green stone at her neck and especially the bright red lipstick gave her a very you-don’t-want-to-mess-with-me image. The words that came to his mind were rich, cold and bad.
He folded his paper, donned the heavy coat and followed her, hanging well back. Inside the bar she hesitated, presumably letting her eyes adjust to the dimmer light, then picked a booth near the back. He waited a moment, stepped inside, and slid onto a stool at the circular bar.
“Stoli, on ice,” he said to the somber bartender.
A waiter had just delivered Lindsey her drink when a man still wearing his heavy winter topcoat joined her. Forty-fiveish, brown hair, five-ten or-eleven, goatee. Lindsey gestured for him to sit. He shrugged out of his coat and then slid into the booth opposite her.
Marko had expected to follow her out of the hotel, but now he had a chance to find out what name she was using. That could be useful. He had to risk that she and the man would talk for at least ten minutes, possibly fifteen.
The man also ordered a drink. Excellent. Presumably he intended to take sufficient time to drink it. Marko stood and signaled the bartender. “I’ll be back,” he said, indicating with an open palm that the bartender wasn’t to remove the drink.
The elevator, old and slow, returned him to the sixth floor. Using the phone in his room, he reached housekeeping. “We need two more towels in room 602, right away.”
“I’ll take care of it immediately,” said the woman on the other end of the line.
“Immediately” turned out to be a wait of eight minutes. He picked an alcove from which he could watch the hallway leading to Lindsey’s door, and he passed each second, praying that Lindsey was still in the bar. Finally the maid appeared with two towels draped over her arm.
He followed her down the hall, leaving enough time for her to knock, knock again, and then enter the room just before he arrived at the door. As she crossed a sitting room and entered the bathroom, he sped inside, scanning for any papers on the desk that might have Lindsey’s name on them—nothing.
He crossed the sitting room and went into the bedroom, closing the door halfway. He waited quietly until the maid reappeared and left. It took only moments to check the luggage tags. The name on her bag was Sylvia Platt.
Back at the bar in just under twelve minutes, he sipped his drink as his heart rate dropped to normal. Lindsey was still talking to Mr. Goatee.
When her contact had introduced himself, he said she could call him James. Lindsey recognized him at once as the man in the photos of Teal getting on the plane in Colombia. James was, in fact, the infamous Jeremy Loschetter, the scientist who had worked at Lab 33 and escaped, apparently taking with him an undetermined number of Lab 33 files or copies thereof. She’d taken a nice long drink of her white wine to give her a chance to hide her excitement.
For ten minutes now she had answered extremely pointless questions about her work at Griffin, put to her as though they were somehow profoundly significant: How long had she worked there? Did she like the company? Did she like her boss? What was her boss’s name? How long had she lived in Milan? Had she been to Prague before?
Without being obvious, she checked her watch. Ten minutes of this drivel was long enough. “I’m sure your time is as valuable as mine. I’m here to learn more about a property you have for sale. Our company, of course, not only produces drugs, we produce a variety of chemical agents for the medical profession. We are specifically interested in cutting-edge work on fertility treatments and genetic modification of embryos. Particularly, as your information stated, genetic modifications of human embryos.”
Loschetter gave her a cold stare. Ice-blue eyes gave his look an added chill. She loathed the vibes coming off him. His verbosity reeked of arrogance, and she knew he had been a collaborator in the sickening plan to steal and modify Rainy’s eggs.
“I must, of course, check out your credentials, Ms. Platt. I will contact you tomorrow to let you know more details. There will be a demonstration of the sale items tomorrow evening. Attendance is required. You will be picked up.”
“Fine.” She wanted to ask specifically what he meant by sale items, but sensed the question might make him suspicious. If he wanted her to know, he would have told her.
Was Teal one of the sale items? Loschetter, with his cold blue eyes and condescending talk, felt utterly creepy, even if she hadn’t known his slimy history. Teal shouldn’t be in the clutches of such a man…no one should.
“There is something else,” he continued. “Something I will explain when I contact you later.” He leaned toward her and lowered his voice. Not to the point of whispering or actually sharing a secret, but a slight gesture that signaled that he considered the information special. Again she felt a rush of loathing for him. “Be prepared to make a rather unusual arrangement for the demonstration.”
Chapter 13
O n the edge of panic after meeting with the Platt woman, if that was her name, Jeremy Loschetter returned to his Opel sedan where Pietro waited, leaning against the hood and smoking a disgustingly sweet-smelling French cigarette. The urge to dismiss the slick-haired Italian crook from his service struck Jeremy again, but Pietro was useful and far t
oo knowledgeable now to be dismissed. The only way Jeremy would allow Pietro to leave his service was via the grave.
Furious and frustrated, he recalled the day a year ago when Pietro entered his life. Slender and an inch shorter than Jeremy’s five foot ten, Pietro confronted Jeremy about his illegal sales of stolen crucifixes and candlesticks from medieval artisans. Jeremy’s legitimate research was, unfortunately, always starved for money, thus his need to stoop to black-market dealings. And his vulnerability to Pietro.
Pietro had refused to divulge how he had come by the information he’d used to blackmail Jeremy. For Pietro’s silence he demanded a cut on the sales. Their arrangement had grown over time. At first Pietro extended their dealings to include triptychs and occasional small paintings, but now he was in on the kidnapping and knew the reason for it. Pietro had even offered to line up the men required, claiming they were absolutely trustworthy and would do whatever was necessary.
Jeremy had asked Pietro if he was up to something that might get physical, maybe involve some killing. He’d been stunned when Pietro said, “Whatever needs doing, I’m the man.” He’d said it totally without expression. Jeremy considered himself a scientist, forced by circumstances to do some unfortunate things. He was, of course, not a brute. Jeremy had, for the first time, felt a bit afraid of Pietro.
Jeremy opened the door to the passenger side and took a seat. “Take me to the laboratory.”
Taking what Jeremy felt was a glacially slow time putting out his cigarette—slow enough to be insolent—Pietro finally climbed in and started the motor. The drive to the Loschetter Laboratory would take no more than twenty minutes, traffic still being relatively light.
After a meeting with his development team for the reproductive technologies he’d dubbed Fertilizen, which should take no more than thirty minutes, Jeremy would taxi to meet the last representative for his potential buyers, a man from Hong Kong. After that, he could return, by taxi, to the chateau, an expensive but necessary cost.