The Venetian Betrayal

FORTY

SAMARKAND

TUESDAY, APRIL 21

1:40 A.M.

VINCENTI CAREFULLY DESCENDED THE STAIRWAY FROM THE PRIVATE jet. The trip east from Venice to the Central Asian Federation had taken nearly six hours, but he’d made the journey many times and had learned to enjoy the jet’s luxury and rest during the long flight. Peter O’Conner followed him into a balmy night.

“I love Venice,” Vincenti said, “but I’ll enjoy when I finally live here. I won’t miss all that rain.”

A car waited on the tarmac and he headed straight for it, stretching his stiff legs, working his tired muscles. A driver emerged and opened the rear door. Vincenti climbed inside as O’Conner sat in the front passenger’s seat. A Plexiglass partition assured the rear compartment privacy.

Already sitting in the back was a black-haired, olive-skinned man with eyes that always, even in the face of adversity, seemed to find life comic. A heavy stubble coated a square jaw and thin neck, the youthful features, even at this late hour, quick and observant.

Kamil Karimovich Revin served as the Federation’s foreign minister. Barely forty, with few or no credentials, he was generally regarded as the Supreme Minister’s lapdog, doing exactly what she commanded. Several years ago, though, Vincenti had noticed something else.

“Welcome back,” Kamil said to him. “It’s been a few months.”

“Lots to do, my friend. The League consumes much of my time.”

“I’ve been dealing with your members. Many are beginning to select home sites.”

One of the arrangements made with Zovastina had been for League members to relocate to the Federation. A good move for both sides. Their new business utopia would free them all from burdensome taxation. But the influx of their capital into the economy, in the form of goods, services, and direct investment, would more than compensate the Federation for any taxes that could be imposed. Even better, an entire upper class would be instantly established, with no trickle-down effect that Western democracies loved to impose, where-quite unfairly, Vincenti had always thought-the few paid for the many.

League members had been encouraged to purchase tracts and many had, including himself, paying the government as most Federation land, thanks to the Soviets, lay in public hands. Vincenti had actually been part of the committee that negotiated this aspect of the League’s deal with Zovastina, and had been one of the first to buy, acquiring two hundred acres of valley and mountain in what was once eastern Tajikistan.

“How many have closed deals?” he asked.

“One hundred and ten so far. Lots of varied tastes in locations, but in and around Samarkand has been the most popular.”

“Near the source of power. That town and Tashkent will soon become world financial centers.”

The car left the air terminal and began the four-kilometer trek into town. Another improvement would be a new airport. Three League members had already drawn plans for a more modern facility.

“Why are you here?” Kamil asked. “Mr. O’Conner was not all that forthcoming when I spoke to him earlier.”

“We appreciate the information on Zovastina’s trip. Any idea why she’s in Venice?”

“She left no word, saying only she would return shortly.”

“So she’s in Venice doing who knows what.”

“And if she discovers you’re here plotting,” Kamil said, “we’re all dead. Remember, her little germs cannot be defended against.”

The foreign minister was one of a new breed of politicians that had risen with the Federation. And though Zovastina was the first to become Supreme Minister, she would not be the last.

“I can counter her bugs.”

A smile came to the Asian’s face. “Can you kill her and be done with it?”

He appreciated raw ambition. “That would be foolish.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Something better.”

“Will the League stand with you?”

“The Council of Ten has authorized everything I’m doing.”

Kamil grinned. “Not everything, my friend. I know better. That attempt on her life. That was you. I could tell. And you bargained that assassin away. How else would she have been ready?” He paused. “I wonder. Will I be bargained away, too?”

“Do you want to succeed her?”

“I prefer to live.”

He glanced out the window at flat roofs, blue domes, and spindly minarets. Samarkand lay in a natural bowl, surrounded by mountains. Night camouflaged a hazy smog that perpetually blanketed the ancient earth. In the distance, factory lights cast a fuzzy halo. What once supplied the Soviet Union with manufactured goods now churned out Federation gross national product. The League had already invested billions for modernization. More was coming. So he needed to know, “How much do you want to be Supreme Minister?”

“It all depends. Can your League make that happen?”

“Her germs don’t scare me. They shouldn’t scare you, either.”

“Oh, my stout friend, I’ve seen too many enemies die suddenly. It’s amazing that no one has ever noticed. But her diseases work well. Just a cold or a flu that turns bad.”

Though Federation bureaucrats, including Zovastina, detested anything Soviet, they’d learned well from their corrupt predecessors. That was why Vincenti was always careful with his words but generous with promises. “Nothing can be gained without risk.”

Revin shrugged. “True. But sometimes the risks are too great.”

Vincenti gazed out at Samarkand. Such an old place, dating from the fifth century before Christ. The City of Shadows, Garden of the Soul, Jewel of Islam, Capital of the World. A Christian see before Islam and the Russians conquered. Thanks to the Soviets, Tashkent, two hundred kilometers to the northeast, had grown far larger and more prosperous. But Samarkand remained the region’s soul.

He stared across at Kamil Revin. “I’m personally about to take a dangerous step. My time as head of the Council of Ten ends soon. If we’re going to do this, we have to do it now. Time for you, as we say where I come from, to shit or get off the pot. You in or out?”

“I doubt I would live to see tomorrow if I said out. I’m in.”

“Glad we understand each other.”

“And what is it you’re about to do?” the foreign minister asked.

He gazed back out at the city. On one of the hundreds of mosques that dominated the landscape, in brilliantly illuminated Arabic calligraphy, letters at least a meter high proclaimed “God Is Immortal.” For all its elaborate history, Samarkand still cast a bland institutional solemnity, derived from a culture that had long ago lost all imagination. Zovastina seemed intent on changing that malady. Her vision was grand and clear. He had lied when he told Stephanie Nelle that history was not his strong point. In reality, it was his goal. But he hoped he wasn’t making a mistake breathing life into the past.

No matter. Too late to turn back now.

So he stared across at his coconspirator and answered the question honestly.

“Change the world.”

FORTY-ONE

TORCELLO

VIKTOR’S MIND RACED. THE TURTLE CONTINUED ITS PROGRAMMED assault of the museum’s ground floor, leaving a stinking trail of Greek fire. He thought about trying to force the double doors with Rafael, but he knew the wood’s breadth and the bar outside would make any effort foolish.

The windows seemed the only way out.

“Get one of the vacuum packs,” he said to Rafael, as his eyes raked the room and he decided on the set of windows to his left.

Rafael retrieved one of the clear plastic bags from the floor.

The Greek fire should weaken the aged wrought iron, along with the bolts that held the bars to the exterior wall, enough that they could force them. He drew one of the guns they’d obtained in the warehouse and was just about to shoot out the panes when, from the far side of the room, glass shattered.

Someone had shot out the window from outside.

He ducked for cover, as did Rafael, waiting to see what would happen next. The turtle continued its rhythmic crawl, stopping and starting as it encountered obstacles. He had no idea how many people were outside and whether or not he and Rafael were vulnerable from the three other sets of windows.

He felt the edge of danger on which they were balancing. One thing was clear. The turtle needed to be stopped. That would buy them some time.

But still.

They knew nothing.

CASSIOPEIA STUFFED THE GUN BACK AGAINST HER SPINE AND gripped the fiberglass bow she’d removed from the cloth bag. Thorvaldsen had not questioned why she needed a bow and high-velocity arrows, and she’d not really known if the weapon would prove useful.

But now it certainly would.

She was standing thirty meters from the museum, dry under the basilica’s porch. On her way from the other side of the island, she had stopped in the village and retrieved one of the oil lamps that illuminated the quayside near the restaurant. She’d noticed the lanterns earlier when she and Malone first arrived, which was another reason why she’d asked Thorvaldsen for the bow. She’d then found some rags in a trash bin near a vendor stall. While the thieves tended to their mission inside the museum, she’d prepared four arrows, wrapping strips of cloth around the metal tips and soaking them with lamp oil.

Matches were obtained during dinner with Malone-a few books retrieved from a tray in the restroom.

She lit the flammable rags on two of the arrows, then carefully loaded the first flaming projectile onto the bow. Her aim was for the ground-floor windows that she’d just shattered with bullets. If Viktor wanted a fire, then that was precisely what he was going to get.

She’d learned archery as a child. Never had she hunted, she detested the thought, but she regularly enjoyed target practice at her French estate. She was good, especially at distances, so thirty meters to the window across the piazzetta was no problem. And the bars themselves should not be a deterrent. Far more air than iron.

She stretched the string.

“For Ely,” she whispered.

VIKTOR SAW FLAMES STREAK THROUGH THE OPEN WINDOW AND crash into a tall sheet of glass that backed one of the ground-floor exhibits. Whatever propelled the flames had pierced the glass, the sheet smashing to the hardwood and taking the fire down with it. The turtle had already made a pass of that part of the museum, which was confirmed by a roar, as Greek fire sprang to life.

Orange and yellow instantly evolved into a scorching blue and the floor consumed itself.

But the vacuum packs.

He saw that Rafael had realized the same thing. Four lay scattered. Two atop display cases, two on the floor, one of which announced its presence in a cascade of mushrooming flames.

Viktor dove under one of the remaining display cases, seeking shelter from the heat.

“Get back here,” he yelled to Rafael.

His partner retreated toward him. Half the ground floor was now ablaze. Floor, walls, ceilings, and fixtures all burned. Where he’d taken refuge had yet to catch, thanks to a lack of the potion, but he knew that would only last another precious few moments. The stairway leading up began to his right, the path toward it clear. But the top floor would provide little refuge considering the fire would shortly obliterate it from beneath.

Rafael came close. “The turtle. You see it?”

He realized the problem. The device was heat sensitive, programmed to explode when temperatures reached a predetermined level. “How high is it set?”

“Low. I wanted this place to burn fast.”

His eyes searched the flames. Then he spotted the turtle, still cruising across the blazing floor, each exhale from its funnel roaring like a fire-breathing dragon.

More glass shattered from the opposite side of the room.

Hard to tell if heat or bullets had been the culprit.

The turtle rolled straight for them, emerging from the fire and finding a part of the floor that had yet to catch. Rafael stood and, before Viktor could stop him, rushed toward the device. Deactivating it was the only way to shut off its program.

A flaming arrow pierced Rafael’s chest.

His clothes caught fire.

Viktor came to his feet and was about to dart to his partner’s aid when he saw the turtle’s funnel retract and the unit halt its advance.

He knew what was about to happen.

He dove for the stairway, lunging forward through the open doorway and scampering up the metal runners.

On hands and knees he climbed in a desperate retreat.

The turtle ignited.

CASSIOPEIA HAD NOT PLANNED ON SHOOTING ONE OF THE thieves, but the man had appeared just as she released the string. She watched as the flaming arrow slammed into his chest and his clothing ignited. Then a huge ball of flame consumed the museum’s interior, heat surging out the open window and exploding the remaining panes.

She leaped to the wet ground.

Fire licked the night through the shattered openings.

She’d left the basilica’s porch and assumed a position opposite the museum’s bell tower. At least one of the men was dead. Hard to tell which one, but it didn’t matter.

She came to her feet and shifted to the front of the building, watching the prison she’d fashioned burn.

One more flaming arrow ready to fire.

FORTY-TWO

VENICE

ZOVASTINA STOOD BESIDE THE PAPAL NUNCIO. SHE’D LANDED AN hour ago, Monsignor Michener waiting for her on the tarmac. She, Michener, and two of her guardsmen had traveled to central downtown from the airport via a private water taxi. They’d been unable to use the basilica’s north entrance, off the Piazzetta dei Leoncini, as first arranged. A sizable portion of San Marco had been cordoned off, some sort of shooting, the nuncio had told her. So they’d detoured down a side street, behind the basilica, and entered the church from the diocese offices.

The papal nuncio looked different from yesterday, his black robes and priest’s collar replaced with street clothes. The pope was apparently making good on his pledge that the visit be nondescript.

She now stood within the cavernous church, its ceiling and walls ablaze with golden mosaics. Clearly a Byzantine concoction, as if it had been erected in Constantinople instead of Italy. Five hemispherical cupolas vaulted overhead. The Domes of Pentecost, St. John, St. Leonard, the Prophets, and the one she was standing beneath, the Ascension. Thanks to a warm glow from strategically placed incandescent lights, she silently agreed that the church had earned its well-known label as the Golden Basilica.

“Quite a place,” Michener said. “Isn’t it?”

“It’s what religion and commercial might can do when joined together. Venetian merchants were the scavengers of the world. Here’s the best evidence of their pilfering.”

“Are you always so cynical?”

“The Soviets taught me that the world is a tough place.”

“And to your gods, do you ever offer any thanks?”

She grinned. This American had studied her. Never in their previous conversations had they talked of her beliefs. “My gods are as faithful to me as yours is to you.”

“We’re hoping you might reconsider your paganism.”

She bristled at the label. The word itself implied that somehow the belief in many gods was inferior to the belief in one. She didn’t view it that way. Throughout history, many of the world’s cultures had agreed with her, which she made clear. “My beliefs have served me well.”

“I didn’t mean to imply they were wrong. It’s only that we may be able to offer some new possibilities.”

After tonight, she would have little use for the Catholic Church. She’d allow a limited amount of contact within the Federation, enough to keep the radical Muslims off balance, but never would an organization capable of preserving all that now surrounded her be allowed a foothold in her domain.

She motioned toward the high altar, beyond an ornate multicolored rood screen that looked suspiciously like an iconostasis. She could hear activity from its brightly lit far side.

“They’re preparing to open the sarcophagus. We’ve decided to return a hand, arm, or some other significant relic that can be easily extracted.”

She couldn’t resist. “You don’t see the ridiculousness in that?”

Michener shrugged. “If it’ll please the Egyptians, what does it hurt?”

“What about sanctity of the dead? Your religion preaches that constantly. Yet there’s apparently nothing wrong with disturbing a man’s tomb, removing part of his remains, and giving them away.”

“It’s an unfortunate thing, but necessary.”

She despised his bland innocence. “That’s the thing I like about your church. Flexible when necessary.”

She stared around at the deserted nave, most of the chapels, altars, and niches cast in deep shadows. Her two guardsmen stood only a few meters away. She studied the marble floor, every bit as exquisite as the mosaic walls. Lots of colorful geometrical, animal, and flower motifs, along with unmistakable undulations-intentional, some said, to mimic the sea, but more likely the effect of a weak foundation.

She thought of Ptolemy’s words. And you, adventurer, for my immortal voice, though far off, fills your ears, hear my words. Sail onto the capital founded by Alexander’s father, where sages stand guard.

Though Ptolemy certainly believed himself clever, time had solved that part of the riddle. Nectanebo ruled Egypt, as pharaoh, during the era of Alexander the Great. While Alexander was a teenager, Nectanebo was driven into exile by invading Persians. Egyptians at the time firmly believed Nectanebo would one day return and expel the Persians. And nearly ten years after his defeat, this idea proved more or less true, when Alexander arrived and the Persians promptly surrendered and left. To elevate their liberator and make his presence more palatable, Egyptians told stories of how, early in his rule, Nectanebo had traveled to Macedonia, disguised as a magician, and coupled with Olympias, Alexander’s mother, which would make Nectanebo, not Philip, Alexander’s father. The story was utter nonsense but prevalent enough that five hundred years later it found its way into the Alexander Romance, a piece of fanciful historical fiction that many historians, she knew, erroneously cited as authority. During his reign as the last Egyptian pharaoh, history notes that Nectanebo established Memphis as his capital, which solved sail onto the capital founded by Alexander’s father.

The next part, where sages stand guard, reinforced that conclusion.

At the temple of Nectanebo, in Memphis, stood a semicircle of eleven limestone statues depicting Greek sages and poets. Homer, whom Alexander worshipped, was a central figure. Plato, who taught Aristotle, and Aristotle himself, who taught Alexander, were there, too, along with other renowned Greeks to whom Alexander possessed a close connection. Only fragments of those sculptures remained, but enough to know they once existed.

Ptolemy had entombed the body he believed to be Alexander at the temple of Nectanebo. There it stayed until after Ptolemy’s death, when his son moved the body north to Alexandria.

Sail onto the capital founded by Alexander’s father, where sages stand guard.

Go south to Memphis and the temple of Nectanebo.

She thought of the next line of the riddle.

Touch the innermost being of the golden illusion.

And smiled.

FORTY-THREE

TORCELLO

VIKTOR FLATTENED HIMSELF ONTO THE STAIRWAY, RAISING AN arm and shielding his face from the overwhelming heat that surged upward through the ground-floor doorway. The turtle had reacted to the rising temperatures, automatically disintegrating, doing what it was created to do. No way Rafael had survived. Greek fire’s initial temperatures were enormous, enough to soften metal and burn stone, but its secondary heat was even more powerful. Human flesh was no match. As with what should have happened to the man in Copenhagen, Rafael would soon be ash.

He turned back.

Fire raged ten feet away.

The heat was becoming unbearable.

He hustled to the top.

The old building was erected at a time when the first-floor ceiling doubled as the second story’s flooring. The ceiling below was, by now, totally ablaze. One of the purposes of having the turtle explode was to force the destruction outward. Creaks and moans from the second-story floorboards confirmed their rapid devastation. The weight of the three display cases and the other bulky exhibits wasn’t helping. Though the second story had not yet ignited, he realized that crossing the floor could be foolish. Thankfully, the stairwell where he stood was fashioned from stone.

A set of double windows broke the wall a few feet away, facing the piazzetta. He decided to risk it and stepped lightly, hugging the outer perimeter, glancing through the panes, down below.

CASSIOPEIA SAW THE FACE IN THE WINDOW. SHE INSTANTLY dropped the bow, gripped her gun, and fired two shots.

VIKTOR LEAPED BACK INTO THE STAIRWELL AS THE WINDOW SHATTERED. He gripped his gun and prepared to return fire. He’d seen enough to know that his attacker was a woman, clear from her silhouetted shape. She’d been holding a bow, but had quickly replaced that weapon with a gun.

Before he could take advantage of his higher ground, a flaming arrow bypassed the wrought-iron bars and pierced the open window, embedding into the plaster on the opposite side of the room. Thankfully, no turtle had saturated things here. Only the two packs he’d left earlier, one on the floor, the other inside the pilfered display case, were potential problems.

He needed to do something.

So he took a cue from his attacker and shot out the double windows that opened to the rear of the building.

CASSIOPEIA HEARD VOICES TO HER LEFT, TOWARD WHERE THE restaurant and inn stood. The shots had surely attracted attention from the inn guests. She spotted darkened figures heading down the path from the village and quickly abandoned her position in the piazzetta, retreating to the basilica’s porch. She’d fired the last flaming arrow hoping the second floor would ignite, too. In the fire’s glow she’d clearly recognized Viktor’s face in the window.

People appeared. One man held a cell phone to his ear. No police occupied the island, which should give her time, and she doubted Viktor would enlist the help of any onlookers. Too many questions about the corpse on the ground floor.

So she decided to leave.

VIKTOR STARED ACROSS THE HARDWOOD PLANKS AT THE PACK OF Greek fire lying on the floor. He decided a quick assault was best, so he stepped lightly, grabbed the bag, and hopped straight toward the window he’d just shot out.

The floorboards held.

He laid the pack outside across the C-shaped wrought-iron bars.

The flooring in the center of the room moaned.

He recalled crossbeams below, but they were surely weakening by the second. A few more steps toward the arrow stuck into the wall and he yanked it free. Rags wrapped around its tip still burned. He rushed across to the stairway, then, with an underhanded toss, lobbed the arrow into the open window frame. It landed on top of the pack, the flames flickering a few inches away from the plastic wrap. He knew it would only take a few moments for the bag to melt.

He sought refuge inside the stairwell.

A woosh and another firestorm raged.

He glanced around the doorway and saw that the wrought iron was burning. Luckily, most of the firepower had stayed outside. The window frame had not joined the conflagration.

The second floor collapsed, swallowing the case with the other fuel pack downward. The remaining bag ignited, a cloud of heat floating upward. The Museo di Torcello would not stand much longer.

He hopped to the open windows.

He gripped the cornice that ran across the top of the frame and searched for a fingerhold, his body straining, feet powered outward, slamming into the burning bars.

Nothing moved.

Another chin-up and he kicked again, adrenaline powering each thrust as the heat began to affect his breathing.

The bars started to give.

More kicks and one corner broke free of its bolt to the exterior wall.

Two more slams and the entire assembly flew outward.

More flooring collapsed.

Another display case and pieces of a column crashed to the ground floor, churning in the fire like bits in a stew.

He stared out the window.

The drop down was three or four meters. Flames spat out the ground-floor windows.

He leaped.

MALONE KEPT THE BOAT ON A NORTHEAST HEADING, SPEEDING AS fast as the churning water would allow toward Torcello. He spotted a glow on the horizon flickering with regularity.

Fire.

Billows of smoke gushed upward, the moist air dissolving it into gray wisps. They were a good ten to fifteen minutes away.

“Looks like we’re late,” he said to Stephanie.

VIKTOR KEPT TO THE MUSEUM’S REAR. HE COULD HEAR SHOUTS and voices from beyond the hedge that separated the yard from the garden and orchard that lay between here and the canal, where his boat waited.

He plowed his way through the hedge and entered the garden.

Luckily, early springtime meant not much vegetation. He was able to find a path and weave his way straight toward the concrete dock.

There, he leaped into the boat.

He untied the mooring lines and pushed off from the dock. No one had seen or followed him. The boat drifted out into the riverlike waterway and the current drove it past where the basilica and museum stood, back toward the north entrance to the lagoon. He waited until he was well beyond the dock before cranking the engine. He kept the power low and brought the bow around, slowly cruising with no lights.

The shore on either side was a good fifty meters apart, mainly mud banks, shallows, and reeds. He checked his watch-11:20 P.M.

At the mouth of the canal he revved the engines and maneuvered out into turbulent water. He finally switched on the boat’s running lights and set a course around Torcello for the main channel that would lead to Venice and San Marco.

He heard a noise and turned.

Stepping from the aft cabin was a woman.

Gun in hand.

FORTY-FOUR

SAMARKAND

2:30 A.M.

VINCENTI SCOOTED THE CHAIR CLOSER TO THE TABLE AS THE waiter positioned his food before him. Most of the city’s hotels were bleak tombs, where little or nothing worked. The Intercontinental was different, offering five-star European-quality services with what the establishment advertised as Asian hospitality. After the long flight from Italy he was hungry, so he’d ordered a meal brought to the room for both himself and a guest.

“Tell Ormand,” he said to the waiter, “that I don’t appreciate it taking thirty minutes to prepare these entrées, especially after I called ahead. Better yet, have Ormand come up here after we’re finished and I’ll tell him myself.”

The waiter nodded his assent and retreated.

Arthur Benoit, sitting across from him, spread a cloth napkin onto his lap. “Do you have to be so hard on him?”

“It’s your hotel. Why weren’t you on his ass?”

“Because I wasn’t upset. They prepared the food as fast as they could.”

He could not care less. Shit was happening and he was testy. O’Conner had gone ahead to make sure things were ready. He’d decided to eat, rest a bit, and accomplish some business over a middle-of-the-night meal.

Benoit gripped a fork. “I assume the invitation to join you was not because you wanted the pleasure of my company. Why don’t we cut through the garbage, Enrico. What do you want?”

He started to eat. “I need money, Arthur. Or should I say, Philogen Pharmaceutique needs money.”

Benoit tabled the fork and sipped his wine. “Before my stomach becomes upset, how much do you need?”

“A billion euros. Maybe a billion and a half.”

“Is that all?”

He smiled at the sarcasm. Benoit made his fortune in banks, which he still controlled across Europe and Asia. He was a billionaire several times over and a longtime Venetian League member. Hotels were a hobby and he’d recently built the Intercontinental to cater to the influx of League members and other expected luxury travelers. He’d also relocated to the Federation, one of the first League members to do so. Through the years, Benoit had several times provided money to fund Philogen’s meteoric rise.

“I assume you’ll want the loan below international prime.”

“Nothing less.” He crammed a forkful of stuffed pheasant into his mouth, savoring the tang.

“How much below?”

He heard the skepticism. “Two points.”

“Why don’t I just give it to you.”

“Arthur, I’ve borrowed millions from you, every dime repaid on time, with interest. So yes, I expect preferential treatment.”

“At present, as I understand it, you have several outstanding loans with my banks. Quite sizable.”

“Every one of which is current.”

He saw that the banker knew that to be true.

“What would be the benefit of such an arrangement?”

Now they were getting somewhere. “How much Philogen stock do you own?”

“A hundred thousand shares. Bought on your recommendation.”

He speared another chunk of steaming bird. “You check yesterday’s quote?”

“Never bother.”

“Sixty-one and a quarter, up a half. It’s really a sound investment. I bought nearly five hundred thousand new shares last week myself.” He swirled pheasant into some smoked mozzarella stuffing. “In secret, of course.”

Benoit’s expression signaled that he got the message. “Something big?”

His fellow League member may have been a hotel dabbler, but he still liked to make money. So he shook his head and feigned, “Now, Arthur, insider trading laws forbid me from giving that kind of information. I’m ashamed you’d even ask.”

Benoit smiled at the rebuke. “There are no insider trading laws here. Remember, we’re writing the laws. So tell me what you’re planning.”

“Not going to happen.” And he stood on his refusal, waiting to see if greed, as usual, would overtake better judgment.

“When would you need the billion-or billion and a half?”

He washed down a mouthful with a swallow of wine. “Sixty days, at the latest.”

Benoit seemed to consider the request. “And the length of the loan? Assuming, of course, it’s even possible.”

“Twenty-four months.”

“A billion dollars, with interest, repaid in two years?”

He said nothing. Just chewed, letting the revelation simmer.

“Like I said, your corporation is heavily in debt. This loan would not be viewed favorably by my approval committees.”

He finally voiced what the man wanted to hear. “You’ll succeed me on the Council of Ten.”

Surprise came to Benoit’s face. “How would you know that? It’s a random selection from the membership.”

“You’ll come to learn, Arthur, that nothing is random. My time is about up. Your two years will begin shortly.”

He knew Benoit desperately wanted to serve on the Council. And he needed friends there. Friends who owed him. So far, four of the five members who would not cycle off were friends. Now he’d just bought one more.

“Okay,” Benoit said. “But I’ll need a few days to broker out the risk among several of my banks.”

He grinned and continued to eat. “You do that. But trust me, Arthur, don’t forget to call your broker.”

FORTY-FIVE

ZOVASTINA CHECKED HER LOUIS VUITTON WATCH, A GIFT FROM the Swedish foreign minister during a state visit a few years back. He’d been a charming man who’d actually flirted with her. She’d returned the attention even though little about the diplomat had been stimulating. The same was true of papal nuncio Colin Michener, who seemed to delight in irritating her. For the past few minutes she and the monsignor had wandered the basilica’s nave-waiting, she assumed, for the altar preparations to be completed.

“What brings you to work for the pope?” she asked. “Once the papal secretary to the last pope, now a mere nuncio.”

“The Holy Father likes to call on me for special projects.”

“Like me?”

He nodded. “You’re quite special.”

“And why is that?”

“You’re a head of state. Why else?”

This man was good, like that Swedish diplomat and his French watch, quick with thoughts and words, but lacking in answers. She pointed at one of the massive marble pillars, its base wrapped with a stone bench and roped off to prevent anyone from sitting. “What are the black smears?” She’d noticed them on all of the columns.

“I asked that once myself.” Michener pointed. “Centuries of the faithful sitting on the benches, leaning their heads onto the marble. Hair grease absorbed into the stone. Imagine how many millions of heads it took to leave those impressions.”

She envied the West such historical nuances. Unfortunately, her homeland had been tormented by invaders who’d each made a point of eliminating all vestiges of what came before them. First Persians, then Greeks, Mongols, Turks, and finally, worst of all, Russians. Here and there a building remained, but nothing like this golden edifice.

They were standing to the left of the high altar, outside the iconostasis, her two guardsmen within shouting distance. Michener pointed down at the mosaic floor. “See the heart-shaped stone?”

She did. Small, unobtrusive, trying to blend with the exuberant designs that swirled around it.

“Nobody knew what that was. Then, about fifty years ago, during a restoration of the floor, the stone was lifted and beneath they found a small box containing a shriveled human heart. It belonged to Doge Francesco Erizzo who died in 1646. I’m told his body lies in the church of San Martino, but he willed his innermost being to be buried close to the patron saint of Venetians.” Michener motioned toward the high altar. “St. Mark.”

“You know of the innermost being?”

“The human heart? Who doesn’t? The ancients saw the heart as the seat of wisdom, intelligence, the essence of the person.”

Which was precisely why, she reasoned, Ptolemy had used that description. Touch the innermost being of the golden illusion.

“Let me show you one other thing,” Michener said.

They crossed before the elaborate rood screen rich with squares, rhomboids, and quadrilobes formed in colored marble. Behind the divider, men were on their knees, working beneath the altar table, where a stone sarcophagus sat bathed in light. An iron grating that protected its front, about two meters long and a meter high, was being removed.

Michener noticed her interest and stopped. “In 1835 the altar table was hollowed out and a prominent place made for the saint. There, he’s rested. Tonight will be the first time the sarcophagus has been opened since then.” The nuncio checked his watch. “Nearly one A.M. They’ll be ready for us shortly.”

She continued to follow the irritating man to the other side of the basilica, into the dim south transept. Michener stopped before another of the towering marble columns.

“The basilica was destroyed by fire in 976,” he said, “then rebuilt and dedicated in 1094. As you mentioned when I was in Samarkand, during those one hundred and eighteen years the whereabouts of St. Mark’s corpse became forgotten. Then, during a mass to dedicate the new basilica, on June 26, 1094, a crumbling noise came from this pillar. A flaking of stone. A shaking. First a hand, an arm, then the entire saintly body was revealed. Priests and people crowded around, even the doge himself, and it was widely believed that, with St. Mark’s reappearance, all was right with the world again.”

She was more amused than impressed. “I’ve heard that tale. Amazing how the body suddenly reappeared just when the new church, and the doge, needed political and financial support from the Venetians. Their patron saint revealed by a miracle. Quite a show that must have been. I imagine the doge, or some clever minister, stage-managed that entire scene. A brilliant political stunt. It’s still being talked about nine hundred years later.”

Michener shook his head in amusement. “Such little faith.”

“I focus on what’s real.”

He pointed. “Like Alexander the Great, lying in that tomb?”

His lack of belief bothered her. “And how do you know that it’s not? The church has no idea whose body those Venetian merchants stole from Alexandria, over a thousand years ago.”

“So tell me, Minister, what makes you so sure.”

She stared at the marble pillar supporting the grand ceiling overhead and could not resist caressing its sides, wondering if the tale of the saintly body emerging from it was true.

She liked such stories.

So she told the nuncio one of her own.

Eumenes faced a formidable task. As Alexander’s personal secretary, he had been entrusted to make sure that the king was entombed beside Hephaestion. Three months had elapsed since the king’s death and the mummified body still lay in the palace. Most of the other Companions had long since left Babylon, venturing out to take control of their portion of the empire. Finding a suitable corpse to switch proved a challenge, but a man of Alexander’s size, shape, and age was located outside the city, in a village not far away. Eumenes poisoned the man and one of the Egyptian embalmers, who had stayed on the promise of a huge payment, mummified the imposter. Afterward, the Egyptian left the city, but one of Eumenes’ two accomplices killed him. The exchange of corpses happened during a summer storm that battered the city with heavy rains. Once wrapped in the golden cartonnage, dressed in golden robes, wearing a crown, no one could distinguish the two bodies. Eumenes kept Alexander hidden for several months, until after the royal funeral cortege left Babylon, headed for Greece with the imposter. The city then slipped into a lethargy from which it never emerged. Eumenes and his two helpers managed to leave without incident, taking Alexander north, fulfilling the king’s final wish.

Michener said, “So the body here may not be Alexander after all?”

“I don’t recall that I promised to explain myself.”

He smiled. “No, Minister. You didn’t. Let me just say that I enjoyed your story.”

“As entertaining as your fable of the pillar.”

He nodded. “They probably both rank together in credibility.”

But she disagreed. Her story had come from a molecular manuscript discovered through X-ray analysis, images that had lingered for centuries beyond the view of a human eye. Only modern technology had managed to reveal them. Hers was not a fable. Alexander the Great was never entombed in Egypt. He was taken somewhere else, a place Ptolemy, the first Greek pharaoh, ultimately discovered. A place to which the mummy in the tomb ten meters away might lead her.

A man appeared at the iconostasis and said to Michener, “We’re ready.”

The nuncio nodded, then motioned for her to lead the way. “Seems, Minister, it’s time to see whose fable is true.”

FORTY-SIX

VIKTOR WATCHED AS THE WOMAN CLIMBED THE STEPS TO THE boat’s center deck and kept her gun trained on him.

“How’d you like the fire?” she asked.

He threw the throttle into neutral and moved toward her. “You stupid bitch, I’ll show you-”

She raised the pistol. “Do it. Go ahead.”

The eyes that glared back at him were full of hate. “You murder with ease.”

“So do you.”

“And who did I kill?”

“Maybe it was you. Maybe someone else from your Sacred Band. Two months ago. In Samarkand. Ely Lund. His house burned to the ground, thanks to your Greek fire.”

He recalled the task. One he’d personally handled for Zovastina. “You’re the woman from Copenhagen. I saw you at the museum, then at the house.”

“When you tried to kill us.”

“Seems you and your two friends invited that challenge.”

“What do you know about Ely’s death? You’re the head of Zovastina’s Sacred Band.”

“How do you know that?” Then it occurred to him. “The coin I examined in that house. Fingerprints.”

“Smart guy.”

Her mind seemed to be struggling with some painful conviction, so he decided to stoke her emotional furnace. “Ely was murdered.”

“Your doing?”

He noticed a bow and a zippered quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder. She’d shown how cold her heart beat when she barred the museum doors and used the arrows to ignite the building. So he decided not to push her too far.

“I was there.”

“Why did Zovastina want him dead?”

The boat rocked in the unseen swells and he could feel them drifting with the wind. The only illumination came from the faint glow of the instrument panel.

“You, your friends, the man Ely, all of you are involved with things that don’t concern you.”

“I’d say you’re the one who needs to be concerned. I came to kill you both. One down. One to go.”

“And what will you gain?”

“The pleasure of seeing you die.”

Her gun came level.

And fired.

MALONE BROUGHT THE THROTTLE TO NEUTRAL. “YOU HEAR that?”

Stephanie, too, was alert. “Sounded like a gunshot. Nearby.”

He stuck his head beyond the windscreen and noted that the fire on Torcello, about a mile away, burned with new vigor. The mist had lifted, weather here apparently came in quick waves, the visibility now relatively reasonable. Boat lights crisscrossed paths in all directions.

His ears searched for sound.

Nothing.

He powered up the engines.

CASSIOPEIA AIMED AT THE BULKHEAD, SENDING THE BULLET within inches of Viktor’s leg. “Ely never hurt a soul. Why did she have to kill him?” She kept the gun trained on him. “Tell me. Why?” The question came out one word at a time, through clenched teeth, more pleading than angry.

“Zovastina is a woman on a mission. Your Ely interfered.”

“He was a historian. How could he have been a threat?” She hated herself for referring to him in the past tense.

Water lapped against the low-riding hull and the wind continued to batter the boat.

“You’d be surprised how easily she kills people.”

His avoidance of her questions only compounded her rage. “Man the damn wheel.” She watched him from the opposite side of the helm. “Move us ahead, nice and slow.”

“Where to?”

“San Marco.”

He turned and engaged the throttle, then suddenly spun the boat hard left, twisting the deck beneath her feet. In the moment of surprise where maintaining her balance overrode her desire to shoot, he lunged toward her.

VIKTOR KNEW HE HAD TO KILL THIS WOMAN. SHE REPRESENTED failure on a multitude of levels-enough that, if she was discovered, Zovastina would lose all confidence in him.

Not to mention what happened to Rafael.

His left hand gripped the top of the rear cabin door and he used the wooden panel to swing his body off the twisting deck, crashing his boots into the woman’s arms.

She deflected his blow and fell forward.

The cockpit was a couple of meters square. Two openings on either side provided access off the boat. Engines whined as the boat, without a pilot, fought the swells. Spray crashed over the windscreen. The woman still held the gun, but was having trouble regaining her balance.

He jabbed and caught her on the jaw with the heel of his open palm. Her neck whipped back, banging her head into something. He used the moment of her confusion to spin the wheel again and decrease power. He was concerned about the shifting shoals and clinging grasses. Torcello loomed to his left, the burning museum illuminating the night. The boat twirled in the rough water and the woman grabbed for her skull.

He decided to let nature handle things.

And kicked her into the sea.

FORTY-SEVEN

ZOVASTINA STEPPED THROUGH THE ICONOSTASIS INTO THE PRESBYTERY and stared at the basilica’s magnificent baldachin. Four alabaster columns, each adorned with elaborate reliefs, supported a massive block of verde green marble carved into intersecting vaults. Behind, framed by the baldachin, glittered the famous Pala d’Oro, the screen rich with gold, precious stones, and enamel.

Beneath the altar, she studied the two distinct parts of the stone sarcophagus. The misshapen top was more a slab-the bottom carved smooth into a rectangle upon which was etched CORPVS DIVI MARCI EVANGELISTAE. Her Latin was enough for a rough translation. Body of the divine St. Mark. Two heavy iron rings protruded from the top, which apparently was how the massive stones had been initially lowered into place. Now, thick iron bars pierced the rings, bolted at each end to four hydraulic jacks.

“This is a real challenge,” Michener said. “Not much space beneath the altar. Of course, with heavy equipment we could easily get inside, but we don’t have the time or privacy for that.”

She noticed the men preparing the jacks. “Priests?”

He nodded. “Assigned here. We thought it best to keep this among us.”

“Do you know what’s inside?” she asked.

“What you’re really asking is whether the remains are mummified.” Michener shrugged. “It’s been over one hundred and seventy years since this tomb was opened. No one really knows what’s in there.”

She resented his smugness. Ptolemy had taken advantage of Eumenes’ switch, and used what the world believed to be Alexander’s corpse to its fullest political potential. She had no way of knowing if what she was about to see would provide any answers, but it was imperative she find out.

Michener motioned to one of the priests and the hydraulic jacks were cranked. The iron rings atop the tomb stretched vertically, then, ever so slowly, a millimeter at a time, the jacks lifted the weighty lid.

“Powerful mechanisms,” Michener said. “Small, but they can lift a house from underneath.”

The lid was now two centimeters skyward, but the interior of the sarcophagus remained in shadow. She stared high above the baldachin, into the apse’s brightly lit semidome, at a golden mosaic of Christ.

The four men stopped working the jacks.

The sarcophagus lid hung suspended about four centimeters above the bottom, the iron bars now flush with the underside of the altar top.

No more room to climb.

Michener gestured for them to retreat toward the iconostasis, away from the altar, where he whispered, “The Holy Father is trying to accommodate your request with the hope that you’ll reciprocate his. But let’s be real. You’re not going to honor your promise.”

“I’m not accustomed to being insulted.”

“And the Holy Father is not accustomed to being lied to.”

All pretense seemed to have left this diplomat. “You’ll be given access to the Federation, as I assured.”

“We want more.”

Now she realized. He’d waited until the lid was off. She hated herself, but because of Karyn, and Alexander the Great, and what may be out there, somewhere, to find, she had no choice.

“What do you want?”

He reached beneath his jacket and removed a folded sheaf of papers. “We’ve prepared a concordat between the Federation and the Church. Written assurances that we’ll be given access. Per your request of yesterday, we’ve reserved the right to the Federation on approval of any church construction.”

She unfolded the papers and saw the text had even been prepared in Kazakh.

“We thought it easier to have it in your language.”

“You thought it would be easier to disseminate in my language. My signature is your insurance. No way I could deny you then.”

She glanced through the concordat. The language detailed a cooperative effort between the Roman Church and the Central Asia Federation to “jointly promote and encourage the free exercise of religion through unrestricted allowance of missionary work.” The paragraphs went on to assure that violence against the Church would not be tolerated and offenders would be punished. More provisions guaranteed that visas would be liberally granted to Church personnel and no reprisals would be tolerated against any converts.

She stared back at the altar. The lower half of the sarcophagus remained in shadow. Even from ten meters away she could see nothing inside.

“You’d be a good one to have on my team,” she said.

“I like serving the Church.”

She glanced at her watch-12:50 A.M. Viktor should already be here. He was never late. So dependable. She stared out into the nave, back toward the upper portions of the west atrium where only the golden ceilings were illuminated. Lots of dark places to hide. She wondered, when one A.M. came and she was granted her thirty minutes, if she’d really be alone.

“If signing the concordat is a problem,” Michener said, “we could just forget the whole thing.”

Her words from yesterday when she’d challenged him.

She called his bluff.

“You have a pen?”

FORTY-EIGHT

MALONE SPOTTED A PAIR OF RED RUNNING LIGHTS A QUARTER mile away, flitting erratically across the black water, as if the boat was without a pilot.

“You see that out there?” he asked Stephanie, pointing.

She stood on the other side of the helm. “It’s beyond the marked channel.”

He’d thought the same thing. He kept the boat churning forward. They were closer now to the drifting craft, maybe a couple hundred yards off. No question, the other boat, about the same shape and size as his, was near the shallows. Then, in the ambient glow from its helm, he saw someone plunge into the water.

Another figure appeared and three shots banged in the night.

“Cotton,” Stephanie said.

“Already on it.”

He whirled the wheel left and headed straight for the lights. The other boat seemed to spring to life and motored away. He cut a swath through the water and sent swells heading toward the other low-riding craft. Water slashed into the hull. Malone was still fifty feet away, the other craft passing them now. The shadowy outline of its pilot appeared at the helm, a gun at the end of an outstretched arm.

“Down,” he screamed to Stephanie.

She’d apparently spotted the danger, too, and was already leaping to the wet deck. He dove with her as two bullets whizzed past, one shattering a window in the aft cabin.

He sprang to his feet and regained control of the helm. The other boat was speeding away toward Venice. He needed to pursue, but now wondered about the person in the water.

“Find a flashlight,” he said, as he slowed the boat and maneuvered toward the spot where they’d initially seen the other vessel.

Stephanie scampered into the forward cabin and he heard her rummaging through the compartments. She reappeared with a light in hand.

He shifted the throttle to idle.

Stephanie raked the water with the flashlight’s beam. He heard sirens in the distance and spotted three boats with flashing emergency lights rounding the shore of one of the islands, heading for Torcello.

Busy night for the Italian police.

“See anything?” he asked. “Somebody hit the water.”

And he had to be careful not to plow over them, but that was going to be difficult in the pitch darkness.

“There,” Stephanie hollered.

He rushed to her side and spotted a figure struggling. Only a second was needed for him to know that it was Cassiopeia. Before he could react, Stephanie tossed the flashlight aside and leaped into the water.

He bolted back to the helm and maneuvered the boat.

He returned to the other side of the deck just as Stephanie and Cassiopeia waded close. He reached down and grabbed hold of Cassiopeia, yanking her out of the water.

He laid her limp body on the deck.

She was unconscious.

A stringed bow and arrow quiver was strapped to her shoulder. Certainly a story unto itself, he thought. He rolled Cassiopeia onto her side. “Cough it all out.”

She seemed to ignore him.

He popped her on the back. “Cough.”

She started to spit out water, gagging on each exhale, but at least she was breathing.

Stephanie climbed out of the lagoon.

“She’s woozy. But she wasn’t hit by any bullets.”

“Tough shot in the dark from a wobbly deck.”

He kept lightly pounding her spine and more water sprayed from her lungs. She seemed to be coming around.

“You all right?” he asked.

Her eyes seemed to reacquire their focus. He knew the look. She’d been popped on the head.

“Cotton?” she asked.

“I guess it would be pointless to ask why you have a bow and arrows?”

She rubbed her head. “That piece of-”

“Who was he?” Stephanie asked.

“Stephanie? What are you doing here?” Cassiopeia reached out and touched Stephanie’s wet clothes. “You pulled me out?”

“I owed you that one.”

Malone had only been told some of what had happened last fall in Washington while he was under siege in the Sinai, but apparently these two had bonded. At the moment, though, he needed to know, “How many are dead inside the Museo di Torcello?”

Cassiopeia ignored him and reached back, searching for something. Her hand reappeared with a Glock. She shook the water from it, drying the barrel. Great selling point about Glocks, which he knew from firsthand experience-the damn things were nearly waterproof.

She rose to her feet. “We need to go.”

“Was that Viktor in the boat with you?” he asked, irritation now in his voice.

But Cassiopeia had recovered her wits and he saw anger again in her eyes. “I told you earlier this doesn’t concern you. Not your fight.”

“Yeah, right. There’s all kinds of crap swirling here that you don’t know a thing about.”

“I know the bastards in Asia killed Ely, on orders of Irina Zovastina.”

“Who’s Ely?” Stephanie asked.

“Long story,” he said. “One that’s causing us a lot of problems at the moment.”

Cassiopeia continued to shake the fog from her brain and water from her gun. “We need to go.”

“You kill anybody?” he asked.

“Roasted one of them like a marshmallow.”

“You’ll regret that later.”

“Thanks for the counseling. Let’s go.”

He decided to delay her and tried, “Where was Viktor headed?”

She swung the bow off her shoulder.

“Henrik sent you that thing?” he asked, recalling the cloth bag from the restaurant.

“Like I said, Cotton, this isn’t your affair.”

Stephanie stepped forward. “Cassiopeia. I don’t know half of what’s happening here, but I know enough to see that you’re not thinking. Like you told me last fall, use your head. Let us help. What happened?”

“You, too, Stephanie. Back off. I’ve been waiting for these men for months. Finally, tonight, I had them in my sights. I got one. I want the other. And yes, it’s Viktor. He was there when Ely died. They burned him to death. For what?” Her voice had steadily risen. “I want to know why he died.”

“Then let’s find out,” Malone said.

Cassiopeia paced with an unsteady gait. At the moment she was trapped, nowhere to go, and she was apparently smart enough to know that neither of them was going to back off. She rested the palms of her hands on the deck rail and gathered her breath. Finally, she said, “Okay. Okay. You’re right.”

He wondered if they were being placated.

Cassiopeia stood still. “This one’s personal. More than either of you realize.” She hesitated. “It’s more than Ely.”

That was the second time she’d insinuated as much. “How about you tell us what’s at stake?”

“How about I don’t.”

He wanted desperately to help her and arguing seemed pointless. So he glanced at Stephanie, who knew what his eyes were asking.

She nodded her approval.

He stepped toward the helm and powered up the engines. More police cruisers passed, heading for Torcello. He aimed the boat for Venice and the distant lights of Viktor’s retreating craft.

“Don’t worry about a corpse,” Cassiopeia said. “There’ll be nothing left of the body or that museum.”

He wanted to know something. “Stephanie, any word on Naomi?”

“Nothing since yesterday. That’s why I came.”

“Who’s Naomi?” Cassiopeia asked.

“That’s my business,” he said.

Cassiopeia did not challenge him. Instead she said, “Where are we going?”

He glanced at his watch. The luminous dial read 12:45 A.M. “Like I told you. Lots going on here, and we know exactly where Viktor’s headed.”

FORTY-NINE

SAMARKAND

4:50 A.M.

VINCENTI’S SPINE TINGLED. TRUE, HE’D ORDERED PEOPLE KILLED, one just yesterday, but this was different. He was about to embark on a bold path. One that would not only make him the wealthiest person on the planet, but also secure him a place in history.

Dawn lay a little over an hour away. He sat in the rear of the car while O’Conner and two other men approached a house shielded behind a thicket of blooming chestnut trees and a tall iron fence, everything owned by Irina Zovastina.

O’Conner drew near to the car and Vincenti lowered the window.

“The two guards are dead. We took them out with no trouble.”

“Any other security?”

“That’s it. Zovastina had this place on a loose leash.”

Because she thought no one cared. “Are we ready?”

“Only the woman who watches over her is inside.”

“Then let’s see how agreeable they are.”

Vincenti entered through the front door. The two other men they’d hired for tonight held Karyn Walde’s nurse, an older woman with a stern face, wearing a bathrobe and slippers. A frightened look filled her Asian features.

“I understand,” he said to her, “that you care for Ms. Walde.”

The woman nodded.

“And that you resent how the Supreme Minister treats her.”

“She’s terrible to her.”

He was pleased their intelligence had been accurate. “I understand that Karyn is suffering. Her illness is progressing.”

“And the minister won’t let her rest.”

He signaled and the two men released their hold. He stepped close and said, “I’m here to relieve her suffering. But I need your help.”

Her gaze carried suspicion. “Where are the guards?”

“Dead. Wait here while I go see her.” He motioned. “Down the hall?”

She nodded again.

He switched on one of the bedside lamps and gazed at the pathetic sight lying prone beneath a pale pink comforter.

Karyn Walde breathed with the help of bottled oxygen and a respirator. An intravenous bag fed one arm. He removed a hypodermic, inserted the needle into one of its IV ports, and let it dangle.

The woman’s eyes opened.

“You need to wake up,” he said.

She blinked a few times, trying to register what was happening. She then pushed herself up from the pillow. “Who are you?”

“I know they’ve been in short supply lately, but I’m a friend.”

“Do I know you?”

He shook his head. “No reason why you would. But I know you. Tell me, what was it like to love Irina Zovastina?”

Surely an odd question from a stranger in the middle of the night, but she only shrugged. “Why would you care?”

“I’ve dealt with her many years. Never once have I ever felt any affection either from or toward her. How did you?”

“It’s a question I’ve asked myself many times.”

He glanced around at the room’s decor. Elegant and expensive, like the rest of the house. “You live well.”

“Small comfort.”

“Yet when you became ill, knew you were HIV positive, you returned to her. Came back after several years of estrangement.”

“You know a lot about me.”

“To come back you must have felt something for her.”

She laid herself back on the pillow. “In some ways, she’s foolish.”

He listened closely.

“She fashions herself Achilles to my Patroclus. Or worse, she’s Alexander and thinks of me as Hephaestion. I’ve listened to those stories many times. You know the Iliad?”

He shook his head.

“Achilles felt responsible for Patroclus’ death. He allowed his lover to lead men into battle, pretending to be him. Alexander the Great felt great guilt over Hephaestion dying.”

“You know your literature and history.”

“I don’t know a thing. I’ve just listened to her ramble.”

“How is she foolish?”

“She wants to save me, yet can’t bring herself to say it. She comes, stares at me, chastises me, even attacks me, but always she’s trying to save me. When it came to me I knew she was weak, so I returned to where I knew I’d be looked after.”

“Yet you obviously hate her.”

“I assure you, whoever you are, that someone in my shoes has little choice.”

“You speak freely to a stranger.”

“I have nothing to hide or fear. My life’s about over.”

“You’ve given up?”

“Like I have a choice.”

He decided to see what else he could learn. “Zovastina is in Venice. Right now. Searching for something. Are you aware of that?”

“It doesn’t surprise me. She’s the great hero, on the great hero’s quest. I’m the weak lover. We’re not to ask or challenge the hero, just accept what’s offered.”

“You have listened to a lot of nonsense.”

She shrugged. “She imagines herself my savior, so I allow it. Why not? Besides, tormenting her is my only pleasure. Life’s choices and all that bullshit.”

“Sometimes life is fickle.”

He could see that she was intrigued.

“Where are the guards?”

“Dead.”

“And my nurse?”

“She’s fine. I believe she actually cares for you.”

A slight nod. “She does.”

In her prime this woman would have been formidable-able to seduce both men and women-easy to see how Zovastina would have been attracted to her. But it was also easy to see how the two women would have clashed. Both alpha-females. Both accustomed to having their way.

“I’ve been watching you for some time,” he told her.

“There’s not much to see.”

“Tell me, if you could have anything in this world, what would it be?”

The gravely ill soul lying before him seemed to seriously consider his inquiry. He saw the words as they formed in her mind. He’d seen the same resolution before, in others long ago, facing similar dire consequences, clinging to little or no hope since neither science nor religion could save them.

Only a miracle.

So when she drew a breath and mouthed her answer, he was not disappointed.

“To live.”

FIFTY

VENICE

VIKTOR HUSTLED PAST THE BASILICA’S BRIGHTLY LIT WESTERN FACADE. High above, St. Mark himself stood guard in the black night above a golden lion with outstretched wings. The heart of the piazza spanned to his left, cordoned off, a multitude of police swarming the broad pavement. A crowd had gathered and he’d overheard from snippets of conversation that a shooting had occurred. He skirted the spectacle and headed for the church’s north entrance, the one Zovastina had told him to use.

He was unnerved by the appearance of the woman with the bow. She should have been dead in Denmark. And if she wasn’t dead, the other two problems were surely also still breathing. Things were gyrating out of control. He should have stayed and made sure she drowned in the lagoon, but Zovastina was waiting and he could not be late.

He kept seeing Rafael die.

Zovastina would not care beyond wanting to know if the death raised any suspicion. But how could it? There’d be no body to find. Just bone fragments and ashes.

Like when Ely Lund’s house burned.

“You’re going to kill me?” Ely asked. “What have I done?” The intruder brandished a gun. “How can I be a threat to anyone?”

Viktor stood out of sight, in an adjacent room, and listened.

“Why don’t you answer me?” Ely asked, his voice rising.

“I’m not here to talk,” the man said.

“Just here to shoot me?”

“I do as I’m ordered.”

“And you have no idea why?”

“I don’t care.”

Silence filled the room.

“I wish I could have done a few more things,” Ely finally said. The tone was melancholy, full of resignation, surprisingly calm. “I always thought my illness would kill me.”

Viktor listened with a renewed interest.

“You are infected?” the stranger asked, some suspicion in his voice. “You don’t look sick.”

“No reason I should. But it’s still there.”

Viktor heard the distinctive click of a gun slide.

He’d stood outside and watched the house burn. Samarkand ’s meager fire department had done little. Eventually, the walls collapsed onto themselves and Greek fire consumed everything.

Now he knew something else.

The woman from Copenhagen had cared enough for Ely Lund to avenge his death.

He rounded the basilica and spotted the north portal. A man waited inside the open bronze doors.

Viktor grabbed his composure.

The Supreme Minister would want him focused and controlled.

ZOVASTINA HANDED THE SIGNED CONCORDAT BACK TO MICHENER. “Now leave me be for my thirty minutes.”

The papal nuncio motioned and all the priests withdrew from the presbytery.

“You’ll regret pressuring me,” she made clear.

“You might find the Holy Father tough to challenge.”

“How many armies does your pope have?”

“Many have asked that question. But armies weren’t needed to bring communism to its knees. John Paul II did just fine, all by himself.”

“And your pope is equally astute?”

“Cross him and you’ll find out.”

Michener walked away, passing through the iconostasis into the nave, disappearing toward the basilica’s main entrance. “I’ll be back in a half hour,” he called out through the darkness.

She saw Viktor advancing through the dimness. He passed Michener, who acknowledged him with a nod. Her two other guardsmen stood off to the side.

Viktor entered the presbytery. His clothes were damp and dingy, his face smoke-streaked.

All she wanted to know was, “Do you have it?”

He handed her an elephant medallion.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“Looks authentic, but I haven’t had a chance to test it.”

She pocketed the coin. Later.

The open sarcophagus waited ten meters away.

That’s what mattered now.

MALONE WAS THE LAST TO HOP FROM THE BOAT ONTO THE CONCRETE quay. They were back downtown, in San Marco, where the famous square ended at the lagoon. Ripples slapped moving poles and jostled gondolas tied to the docks. Still lots of police around and a multitude more spectators than an hour ago.

Stephanie motioned toward Cassiopeia, who was already shouldering through a crowded row of street vendors, toward the basilica, the bow and quiver still draped across her shoulder. “Pocahontas there needs a leash.”

“Mr. Malone.”

Through the crowd, he spotted a man in his late forties dressed in chinos, a long-sleeve shirt, and a cotton jacket walking their way. Cassiopeia seemed to have heard the greeting, too, as she’d stopped her advance and was headed toward where Malone and Stephanie stood.

“I’m Monsignor Colin Michener,” the man said as he approached.

“You don’t look like a priest.”

“Not tonight. But I was told to expect you, and I must say the description they gave was dead on. Tall, light-haired, with another, older woman in tow.”

“Excuse me,” Stephanie said.

Michener grinned. “I was told you’re sensitive about your age.”

“And who told you that?” Malone wanted to know.

“Edwin Davis,” Stephanie said. “He mentioned he had an impeccable source. You, I assume?”

“I’ve known Edwin a long time.”

Cassiopeia pointed at the church. “Did another man go inside that basilica? Short, stocky, dressed in jeans?”

The priest nodded. “He’s there. With Minister Zovastina. His name is Viktor Tomas, the head of Zovastina’s personal guard.”

“You’re well-informed,” Malone said.

“I’d say Edwin is the one in the know. But he couldn’t tell me one thing. How did you get that name? Cotton.”

“Long story. Right now we need to get inside the basilica. And I’m sure you know why.”

Michener motioned and they retreated behind one of the street vendors, out of the pedestrian flow. “Yesterday we came across some information on Minister Zovastina that we passed on to Washington. She wanted a peek inside St. Mark’s tomb, so the Holy Father thought America might like a look at the same time.”

“Can we go?” Cassiopeia asked.

“You’re a nervous one, aren’t you?” Michener said.

“I just want to go.”

“You’re carrying a bow and arrows.”

“Can’t fool you.”

Michener ignored her quip and faced Malone. “Is this going to get out of hand?”

“No more than it already has.”

Michener motioned off toward the square. “Like the man killed here earlier.”

“And there’s a museum burning on Torcello,” Malone added, as he felt his cell phone vibrate.

He fished the unit from his pocket, checked the display-Henrik, again-and answered. “Sending her a bow and arrows was not smart.”

“I had no choice,” Thorvaldsen said through the phone. “I must speak with her. Is she with you?”

“Oh, yes.”

He handed the phone to Cassiopeia and she walked away.

CASSIOPEIA HELD THE PHONE CLOSE, HER HAND TREMBLING.

“Listen well,” Thorvaldsen said in her ear. “There are things you must know.”

“THIS IS CHAOS,” MALONE SAID TO STEPHANIE.

“And getting worse by the moment.”

He watched Cassiopeia, her back to them, phone held close.

“She’s messed up,” he made clear.

“A state, I believe, we’ve all experienced.”

He smiled at that truth.

Cassiopeia ended the call and walked back, handing him the phone.

“You have your marching orders?” he asked.

“Something like that.”

He faced Michener. “You can see what I have to work with, so I hope you’re going to tell me something productive.”

“Zovastina and Viktor are in the basilica’s presbytery.”

“Works for me.”

“But I need to speak with you privately,” Michener said to Stephanie. “Information Edwin asked me to pass along.”

“I’d rather go with them.”

“He said it was critical.”

“Do it,” Malone said. “We’ll handle things inside.”

ZOVASTINA APPROACHED THE ALTAR TABLE AND BENT DOWN.

One of the priests had left a light bar on the floor. She motioned for Viktor to kneel beside her. “Send the other two out into the church. Tell them to wander, especially upstairs. I want to make sure we have no watching eyes.”

Viktor dispatched the guards, then returned.

She lifted the light bar and, with breath held, illuminated the interior of the stone sarcophagus. She’d imagined this moment ever since Ely Lund had first told her of the possibility. Was this the imposter? Could Ptolemy have left a clue that would lead to where Alexander the Great rested? That place far away, in the mountains, where the Scythians taught Alexander about life. Life in the form of the draught. She recalled what Alexander’s court historian had written in one of the manuscripts Ely discovered. The man’s neck had swollen with lumps so bad he could hardly swallow, as if pebbles filled his throat, and fluid spewed forth from his mouth with each exhale. Lesions covered his body. No strength remained within any of his muscles. Each breath was a labor. Yet in one day the draught cured him. The scientists at her biological lab believed the symptoms were viral. Was it possible that nature, which created so many assailants, had also spawned a way to stop them?

But no mummified remains lay within the stone coffin.

Instead, she saw a thin wooden box, half a meter square, richly decorated, with two brass handles. Disappointment squeezed her stomach. She instantly masked that emotion and ordered, “Remove it.”

Viktor reached beneath the dangling stone lid, lifted out the ornate receptacle, and laid it on the marble pavement.

What had she expected? Any mummy would have been at least two thousand years old. True, Egyptian embalmers knew their craft and mummies that old and older had survived intact. But those had sat undisturbed in their tombs for centuries, not indiscriminately carted across the globe, disappearing for hundreds of years at a time. Ely Lund had been convinced that Ptolemy’s riddle was authentic. He’d been equally convinced that the Venetians, in 828, left Alexandria not with St. Mark, but with the remains of another, perhaps even the body that had rested in the Soma for six hundred years, revered and worshipped by all as Alexander the Great.

“Open it.”

Viktor released the hasps and removed the lid. The inside was lined with faded red velvet. More of the brittle cloth lay puffed within. She carefully removed it and spied teeth, a shoulder blade, a thigh bone, part of a skull, and ash.

She closed her eyes.

“What did you expect?” a new voice asked.

FIFTY-ONE

SAMARKAND

VINCENTI CONSIDERED KARYN WALDE’S ANSWER TO HIS QUESTION and asked, “What would you be willing to do to have your life?”

“There’s little I can do. Look at me. And I don’t even know your name.”

This woman had spent a lifetime manipulating and, even now, she was still capable.

“Enrico Vincenti.”

“Italian? You don’t look it.”

“I liked the name.”

She grinned. “I have a feeling, Enrico Vincenti, that you and I are a lot alike.”

He agreed. He was a man of two names, many interests, but one ambition. “What do you know about HIV?”

“Only that it’s killing me.”

“Did you know it has existed for millions of years? Which is incredible, considering it’s not even alive. Just ribonucleic acid-RNA-surrounded by a protective protein coat.”

“You’re some kind of scientist?”

“As a matter of fact, I am. Did you know HIV has no cell structure? It can’t produce a single speck of energy. The only characteristic of a living organism it ever displays is the ability to reproduce. But even that requires genetic material from a host.”

“Like me?”

“I’m afraid so. There are roughly a thousand viruses we know of. New ones, though, are found every day. Roughly half dwell in plants, the rest in animals. HIV is an animal dweller, but superbly unique.”

He saw the puzzled look on her wizened face. “Don’t you want to know what’s killing you?”

“Does it matter?”

“Actually, it could matter a great deal.”

“Then, my new friend, who’s here for who knows what, please continue.”

He appreciated her attitude. “HIV is special because it can replace another cell’s genetic makeup with its own. That’s why it’s called a retrovirus. It latches onto the cell and changes it into a duplicate of itself. It’s a burglar that robs another cell of its identity.” He paused and let the metaphor take hold. “Two hundred thousand HIV cells clumped together would scarcely be visible to the naked eye. It’s super resilient, almost indestructible, but it needs a precise mixture of protein, salts, sugars, and, most critical, the exact pH to live. Too much of one, too little of another and”-he snapped his fingers-“it dies.”

“I assume that’s where I come in?”

“Oh, yes. Warm-blooded mammals. Their bodies are perfect for HIV. Brain tissue, cerebrospinal fluid, bone marrow, breast milk, cervical cells, seminal fluid, mucous membranes, vaginal secretions-they can all harbor it. Blood and lymph, though, are its favorite haunts. Like you, Ms. Walde”-he pointed-“the virus simply wants to survive.”

He glanced at the clock on the bedside table. O’Conner and the other two men were standing guard outside. He’d chosen to have his talk here since no one would bother them. Kamil Revin had told him that the guards on the house changed by the week. None of the Sacred Band enjoyed the duty, so, unless it was their turn, no one paid the location much attention. Just another of Zovastina’s many obsessions.

“Here’s the interesting thing,” he said. “HIV shouldn’t even be able to live inside you. Too many infection-fighting cells roaming in your blood. But it adopted a refined form of microscopic guerrilla warfare, playing hide-and-seek with your white blood cells. It learned to secrete itself away in a place where they would never even consider looking.”

He let the moment dangle, then said, “Lymph nodes. Pea-size nodules scattered throughout the body. They act as filters, trapping unsuspecting intruders so the white cells can destroy them. The nodes are the lion’s den of your immune system, the last place a retrovirus should use as a hiding place, but they proved the perfect location. Quite amazing, really. HIV learned to duplicate the protein coating the immune system naturally produces within the lymph nodes. So, undetected, right under the nose of the immune system, it patiently lives, converting lymph nodes’ cells from infection-fighting enemies to duplicates of itself. For years it does this, until the nodes swell, then deteriorate, and the bloodstream is flooded with HIV. Which explains why it takes such a long time from actual infection to know the virus is in your blood.”

His mind flashed with the analytical thinking of the scientist he was for many years. Now, though, he was a global entrepreneur, a manipulator, much like Karyn Walde, about to perform the greatest manipulation of all.

“And do you know what’s even more amazing?” he asked. “Each replication of a cell by HIV is individual. So when the lymph nodes collapse, instead of one invader, there are billions of different invaders, an army of variant retrovirus strains, running unchecked through your blood. Your immune system reacts, like it’s supposed to, but it’s forced to generate new and different white cells to battle each strain. Which is impossible. And to make matters worse, all of the variant strains of the retrovirus can destroy any of the white cells. The odds are billions against one, the results all but inevitable-of which you are living proof.”

“Surely, you came for more than a science lesson.”

“I came to see if you wanted to live.”

“Unless you’re an angel or God himself, that’s impossible.”

“Now, you see, that’s the thing. HIV can’t kill anybody. But it does render you defenseless when another virus, bacteria, fungus, or parasite enters your bloodstream in search of a home. Not enough white blood cells to cleanse the stream. So the only question is which infection will be the cause of your death?”

“How about you screw off and leave me to die.”

Karyn Walde was indeed a bitter woman, but talking to her had stirred his dreams. He imagined himself addressing the press, reporters hanging on his every word, becoming, overnight, a worldwide recognized authority. He envisioned book deals, movie rights, television specials, speaking engagements, awards. Certainly the Albert Lasker Prize. The National Medal for Science. Perhaps even a Nobel Prize. Why not?

But all that hinged on the decision he was about to make.

He stared down at the shell of a human being. Only her eyes seemed alive.

He reached for the hypodermic protruding from the IV port.

“What is that?” she asked, noting the clear liquid the syringe contained.

He did not answer her.

“What are you doing?”

He gripped the plunger and emptied the contents into the IV stream.

She tried to lift herself, but the effort proved futile. She collapsed back to the bed, her pupils wild. He watched as her eyelids acquired weight, then her breathing slowed. She went limp. Her eyes closed.

And did not open.

FIFTY-TWO

VENICE

ZOVASTINA ROSE AND FACED THE INTRUDER. HE WAS SHORT, WITH a crooked spine, bushy hair and eyebrows, and spoke in a brittle voice of maturity. His crinkly features, gaunt cheeks, coarsened hair, and veined hands all belonged to age.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Henrik Thorvaldsen.”

She knew the name. One of the wealthiest men in Europe. A Dane. But what was he doing here?

Viktor instantly reacted to the visitor, pointing his weapon. She reached over and restrained him, her eyes saying, Let’s see what he wants.

“I know of you.”

“And I of you. Risen from Soviet bureaucrat to a forger of nations. Quite an achievement.”

She wasn’t in the mood for compliments. “What are you doing here?”

The older man shuffled close to the wooden box. “Did you really think Alexander the Great was in there?”

This man knew her business.

“And you, adventurer, for my immortal voice, though far off, fills your ears, hear my words. Sail onto the capital founded by Alexander’s father, where sages stand guard. Touch the innermost being of the golden illusion. Divide the phoenix. Life provides the measure of the grave. Be wary, for there is but one chance of success.”

She fought to conceal her shock at Thorvaldsen’s recitation.

This man truly did know her business.

“Do you think you’re the only one who knows?” he asked. “How pompous are you?”

She grabbed Viktor’s gun and leveled the barrel at Thorvaldsen. “Enough to shoot you.”

MALONE WAS CONCERNED. HE AND CASSIOPEIA WERE FIFTY FEET up and three quarters of a football field away from where Thorvaldsen was challenging Irina Zovastina while Viktor watched. Michener had brought them into the basilica via the west atrium and led them to a steep stairway. At its top, the walls, arches, and domes reflected the architecture below, but instead of a stunning marble facade and glinting mosaics, the basilica’s upper-story museum and gift shop were encased only by brick walls.

“What the hell is he doing here?” Malone muttered. “He just called you outside.”

They were huddled behind a stone balustrade, beyond which was a panoramic view of the towering vaulted domes, each resting on massive marble pillars. Golden ceiling mosaics shimmered from incandescent lamps-the marble floor and unlit side chapels cast in varying shades of black and gray. The presbytery, at the far end, where Thorvaldsen stood, loomed like a bright stage in a dark theater.

“You’re not going to answer me?”

Cassiopeia stayed silent.

“You two are about to piss me off.”

“I told you to go home.”

“Henrik may have bit off more than he can chew.”

“She’s not going to shoot him. At least not until she knows why he’s here.”

“And why is he here?”

More silence.

They needed to shift position. “How about we move over there.” He pointed left to the north transept and another gallery that overlooked the presbytery. “This museum winds around that way. We’ll be closer and can hear.”

She motioned right. “I’ll go that way. There’s surely an opening to the upper south transept from here. That way we’ll be on either side.”

VIKTOR’S HEART RACED. FIRST THE WOMAN, NOW THE SUPPOSED museum owner. Surely the second man was also alive. And probably nearby. Yet he noticed Thorvaldsen paid him no mind.

Not a hint of recognition.

ZOVASTINA STARED DOWN THE GUN’S SIGHTS AT THORVALDSEN.

“I realize you’re a pagan,” the Dane calmly said. “But would you shoot me, here, on the altar of a Christian church?”

“How do you know Ptolemy’s riddle?”

“Ely told me.”

She lowered the weapon and appraised her intruder. “How did you know him?”

“He and my son were close. Ever since they were children.”

“Why are you here?”

“Why is it important to find the tomb of Alexander the Great?”

“Is there any reason I would discuss that with you?”

“Let’s see if I can provide you with some. At present you possess nearly thirty zoonoses that you’ve harvested from a variety of exotic animals, many of which you stole from zoos and other private collections. You have at least two biological weapons laboratories at your disposal, one operated by your government, the other by Philogen Pharmaceutique, a corporation controlled by a man named Enrico Vincenti. Both of you are also members of the Venetian League. Am I making any progress?”

“You’re still breathing, aren’t you?”

Thorvaldsen smiled in seeming satisfaction. “For which I’m grateful. You also have a formidable military. Nearly a million troops. One hundred and thirty fighter jets. Various transports and support aircraft, adequate bases, an excellent communications network-everything an ambitious despot would need.”

She didn’t like that Viktor was listening, but she desperately needed to hear more, so she turned to him and said, “Find out what the other two guards are doing, and make sure we’re alone.”

THE OTHER TWO?

Malone heard the words as he assumed a position behind another stone railing, this one high above the presbytery, less than a hundred fifty feet above Thorvaldsen and Zovastina. Cassiopeia was fifty yards across the nave, in the south transept, with an equally high perch.

He couldn’t see her, but he hoped she’d heard.

ZOVASTINA WAITED UNTIL VIKTOR LEFT, THEN GLARED AT THORVALDSEN. “Is there a problem with wanting to defend my nation?”

“Beware the toils of war. Soon they’ll raze your sturdy citadel to the roots.”

“What Sarpedon said to Hector in the Iliad. You have studied me. Let me offer a quotation. Nor do I think you’ll find us short on courage, long as our strength will last.”

“You’re not planning on defending anything. You’re preparing an attack. Those zoonoses are offensive. Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India. Only one man ever conquered them. Alexander the Great. And he could only hold the land for just a handful of years. Ever since, conquerors have tried and failed. Even the Americans attempted with Iraq. But you, Supreme Minister, you intend to best them all.”

She possessed a leak-a massive one. She needed to return home and resolve that problem.

“You want to do what Alexander did, only in reverse. Not the West conquering the East. This time the East will dominate. You intend to acquire all of your neighbors. And you actually believe the West will allow you the luxury, thinking you’ll be their friend. But you don’t plan to stop there, do you? The Middle East and Arabia, you want those, too. You have oil. The old Kazakhstan is rich with it. But you sell most of that to Russia and Europe cheap. So you want a new source, one that would give you even greater world power. Your zoonoses might just make all that possible. You could devastate a nation in a matter of days. Bring it to its knees. None of your potential victim-states are particularly adept at war in the first place, and when your germs finish, they’ll be defenseless.”

She still held the gun. “The West should welcome that change.”

“We prefer the devils we know. And contrary to all those Arab states’ varied beliefs, the West isn’t their enemy.”

He pointed straight at her.

“You are.”

MALONE LISTENED CAREFULLY. THORVALDSEN WAS NO FOOL, SO HE was challenging Zovastina for a reason. The Dane even being here was highly unusual. The last trip the man took was to Austria last fall. Yet here he was, inside an Italian basilica in the middle of the night, poking sticks into the spokes of an armed despot.

He’d watched as Viktor left the presbytery and turned into the south transept, below Cassiopeia’s position. Malone’s immediate concern was an open stairway twenty feet away that led down to the nave. If there was a portal on this side, in the north transept, surely another opened in the south since medieval builders, if nothing else, loved symmetry.

He was surrounded by more undressed masonry walls along with art, tapestries, lace, and paintings, most displayed in glass cases or on tables.

A shadow appeared in the lighted stairway and danced across the marble walls, growing in size.

One of Zovastina’s guards.

Climbing to the second floor.

Straight for him.

FIFTY-THREE

STEPHANIE FOLLOWED MONSIGNOR MICHENER DOWN THE HALLS of the diocese offices, into a nondescript cubicle, where Edwin Davis sat beneath a framed portrait of the pope.

“Still want to kick my ass?” Davis asked.

She was too tired to fight. “What are you doing here?”

“Trying to stop a war.”

She didn’t want to hear it. “You realize there could be trouble inside that church.”

“Which is why you’re not in there.”

Realization dawned. “Malone and Cassiopeia can be denied.”

“Something like that. We have no idea what Zovastina may do, but I didn’t want the head of the Magellan Billet involved.”

She turned to leave.

“I’d stay here if I were you,” Davis said.

“Screw off, Edwin.”

Michener blocked her way in the doorway.

“Are you part of this insanity?” she asked.

“As I said outside, we came across something and passed it on to a place we thought might be interested. Irina Zovastina is a threat to the world.”

“She’s planning a war,” Davis said. “Millions will die, and she’s just about ready to start.”

She turned back. “So she took the time to risk a trip to Venice and look at a two-thousand-year-old body? What is she doing here?”

“Probably getting angry,” Michener said.

She saw a twinkle in his eye. “You set her up?”

The priest shook his head. “She did that all by herself.”

“Somebody’s going to get shot in there. Cassiopeia is way beyond the end of her rope. You don’t think gunfire is going to attract the attention of all those police out in the square?”

“The basilica’s walls are several feet thick,” Michener said. “Totally soundproof. No one will disturb them.”

“Stephanie,” Davis said, “we’re not sure why Zovastina took the chance coming here. But it’s obviously important. We thought since she was so intent on coming, we’d accommodate her.”

“I get the point. Out of her sandbox and into ours. But you have no right to place Malone and Cassiopeia in jeopardy.”

“Come now. I didn’t do that. Cassiopeia was already involved, with Henrik Thorvaldsen-who, by the way, involved you. And Malone? He’s a big boy and can do what he wants. He’s here because he wants to be here.”

“You’re fishing for information. Hoping to learn something.”

“And using the only bait we have. She’s the one who wanted a look inside that tomb.”

Stephanie was puzzled. “You seem to know her overall plan. What are you waiting for? Move on her. Bomb her installations. Shut her down. Bring political pressures on her.”

“It’s not that simple. Our information is sketchy. And we have no concrete proof. Certainly not anything she can’t simply deny. You can’t bomb biologicals. And, unfortunately, we don’t know it all. That’s what we need Malone and the others to zero in on for us.”

“Edwin, you don’t know Cotton. He doesn’t like to be played.”

“We know Naomi Johns is dead.”

He’d held that one for the right moment, and the words pounded her gut.

“She was stuffed into a coffin with another man, a small-time hood from Florence. Her neck was broken and he had a bullet to the head.”

“Vincenti?” she asked.

Davis nodded. “Who’s also on the move. He left earlier for the Central Asian Federation. An unscheduled visit.”

She could see he knew even more.

“He just kidnapped a woman that Irina Zovastina has been caring for since last year, a woman that she was once romantically involved with.”

“Zovastina’s a lesbian?”

“Wouldn’t that be a shocker to her People’s Assembly? She and this woman were involved for a long time. But her former lover is dying of AIDS, and Vincenti apparently has a use for her.”

“And there’s a reason you’re allowing Vincenti to do whatever it is he’s doing?”

“He’s up to something, too. And it’s more than just supplying Zovastina with germs and antiagents. It’s more than providing the Venetian League with a safe haven for all their business activities. We want to know what that is.”

She needed to leave.

Another priest appeared in the office doorway and said, “We just heard a shot, from inside the basilica.”

MALONE DOVE BEHIND ONE OF THE DISPLAY CASES AS THE GUARDSMAN fired. He’d tried to hide before the man topped the stairs, but apparently a fleeting glance of his retreat was enough to generate an attack.

The bullet thudded into one of the tables that displayed medieval textiles. The laminated wood deflected the round and allowed Malone the instant he needed to scurry farther into the shadows. The gunshot echoed through the basilica and had surely attracted everyone’s attention.

He scrambled across slick hardwood, taking refuge behind a long exhibit of panel paintings and illuminated manuscript pages.

His gun was ready.

He needed to draw the man farther in.

Which didn’t seem a problem.

Footsteps were coming his way.

ZOVASTINA HEARD THE SHOT FROM THE UPPER NORTH TRANSEPT. She spotted movement to her right, beyond the stone railing, and saw the head of one of her guards.

“I didn’t come alone,” Thorvaldsen said.

She kept her gun aimed at the Dane.

“San Marco is littered with police. Going to be tough for you to leave. You’re a head of state, in a foreign country. Are you really going to shoot me?” He paused. “What would Alexander do?”

She couldn’t decide if he was being serious or patronizing, but she knew the answer. “He’d kill you.”

Thorvaldsen shifted his position, easing to her left. “I disagree. He was a great tactician. And clever. The Gordian knot, for example.”

She called out, “What’s happening up there?”

Her guardsman did not answer.

“In the village of Gordium,” Thorvaldsen was saying, “that complicated knot attached to a wagon. Nobody could untie the thing. A challenge Alexander solved by simply cutting the rope with his sword, then untying it. A simple solution to a complex problem.”

“You talk too much.”

“Alexander did not allow confusion to affect his thinking.”

“Viktor,” she called out.

“Of course,” Thorvaldsen said, “there are many tales to that knot’s story. One says Alexander withdrew a pole connected to the wagon yoke, found the rope ends, and untied it. So who knows?”

She was tiring of this man’s rambles.

Head of state or not.

She pulled the trigger.

FIFTY-FOUR

SAMARKAND

Vincenti remembered the first indication of a problem. Initially, the malady possessed all the characteristics of a cold, then he thought it the flu, but soon the full effects of a viral invasion became apparent.

Contamination.

“Am I going to die?” Charlie Easton screamed from the cot. “I want to know, dammit. Tell me.”

He dabbed Easton ’s sopping brow with a damp rag, like he’d done for the past hour, and quietly said, “You need to calm down.”

“Don’t bullshit me. It’s over, isn’t it?”

Three years they’d worked side by side. No sense hedging. “There’s nothing I can do.”

“Shit. I knew it. You’ve got to get some help.”

“You know I can’t.”

The station’s remote location had been selected by the Iraqis, and the Soviets, with great care. Secrecy was paramount. And the price of that secrecy was fatal when a mistake occurred, and a mistake was exactly what happened.

Easton jerked the cot with his restrained arms and legs. “Cut these damn ropes. Let me out of here.”

He’d tied the idiot down knowing their options were limited. “We can’t leave.”

“Screw policy. Screw you. Cut these damn ropes.”

Easton stiffened, his breath grew labored, then he succumbed to the fever and relaxed into unconsciousness.

Finally.

Vincenti turned from the cot and grabbed a notebook that he’d started three weeks back, the first page labeled with his partner’s name. Inside, he’d noted a progressive shift in skin color. Normal, to jaundiced, to such ashiness that the man now appeared dead. There’d been an incredible weight loss, forty pounds all told, ten over one two-day period alone, the intestinal intake dwindling to an occasional gulp of warm water and a few sips of liquor.

And the fever.

A raging torrent of a constant one hundred and three, sometimes peaking higher, moisture escaping faster than it was being replaced, the body literally evaporating before his eyes. For years they’d used animals in their research, Baghdad providing an endless supply of gibbons, baboons, green monkeys, rodents, and reptiles. But here, for the first time, the effects on a human being could be accurately gauged.

He stared down at his partner. Easton’s chest heaved with more labored breaths, mucus rattling deep in the throat, sweat beading off the skin like rain. He noted every observation in the journal, then pocketed the pen.

He stood from the cot and tried to work some feeling into his rubbery legs. He lumbered outside into a crisp night. He wondered how much more Easton ’s ravaged tissues could take.

Which raised the problem of what to do with the body.

No protocol existed for handling this type of emergency, so he’d have to improvise. Luckily, the station’s builders had thoughtfully provided an incinerator for disposing of the animal carcasses used in experimentation. But making the oven work on something as large as a human body was going to take ingenuity.

“I see angels. They’re here. All around,” Easton cried from the cot.

Vincenti walked back inside.

Easton was now blind. He wasn’t sure if the fever or a secondary infection had destroyed the retina.

“God’s here. I see him.”

“Of course, Charlie. I’m sure you do.”

He took a pulse. Blood snapped through the carotid artery. He listened to the heart, which pounded like a drum. He checked blood pressure. On the verge of bottoming. The body temperature was a steady one hundred and three.

“What do I tell God?” Easton asked.

He stared down at his partner. “Say hello.”

He pulled a chair close and watched death take hold. The end came twenty minutes later and seemed neither violent nor painful. Just a final breath. Deep. Long. No exhale.

He noted the date and time in the journal, then extracted a blood and tissue sample. He then rolled the thin mattress and filthy sheets around the body and carried the stinking bundle out of the building into an adjacent shed. A scalpel was already there, sharpened to the degree of broken glass, along with a surgeon’s saw. He slipped on a pair of thick rubber gloves and sawed the legs from the torso. The emaciated flesh cut soft and loose, the bone brittle, the intervening muscle offering the resistance of a boiled chicken. He amputated both arms and stuffed all four limbs into the incinerator, watching with no emotion as the flames consumed them. Without extremities, the torso and head fit easily through the iron door. He then cut the bloodied mattress into quarters and quickly stuffed it, the sheets, and gloves into the fire.

He slammed the portal shut and staggered outside.

Over. Finally.

He fell to the rocky ground and stared up at the night. Against the indigo backdrop of a mountain sky, silhouetted as an even darker shadow, the incinerator’s brick flue reached skyward. Smoke escaped, carrying with it the stench of human flesh.

He lay back and welcomed sleep.

Vincenti recalled that sleep from over twenty-five years ago. And Iraq. What hell. Hot and miserable. A lonely, desolate spot. What had the UN Commission concluded after the first Gulf War? Given their mission, the facilities were wholly archaic, but within the frantic atmosphere of the time they were thought state of the art. Right. Those inspectors weren’t there. He was. Young and skinny with a head full of hair and brains. A hotshot virologist. He and Easton had eventually been detailed to a remote lab in Tajikistan, working in conjunction with the Soviets who controlled the region, at a station hidden away in the Pamir foothills.

How many viruses and bacteria had they searched for? Natural organisms that could be used as biological weapons. Something that eliminated an enemy yet preserved a culture’s infrastructure. No need to bomb the population, waste bullets, risk nuclear contamination, or put troops in jeopardy. A microscopic organism could do all of the heavy lifting-simple biology the catalyst for certain defeat.

The working criteria for whatever they found had been simple. Fast-acting. Biologically identifiable. Containable. And, most important, curable. Hundreds of strains were discarded simply because no practical way could be found to stop them. What good would infecting an enemy be if you couldn’t protect your own population? All four criteria had to be satisfied before a specimen was cataloged. Nearly twenty had made the grade.

He’d never accepted what the press reported after the Biological Toxin Weapons Convention of 1972-that the United States quit the germ-warfare business and destroyed all of its arsenals. The military wouldn’t discard decades of research simply because a few politicians unilaterally decided it was the thing to do. At least a few of those organisms, he believed, were hidden in cold storage at some nondescript military institution.

He personally found six pathogens that met all of the criteria.

But sample 65-G failed on every count.

He first discovered it in 1979, within the bloodstream of the green monkeys that had been shipped for experimentation. Conventional science then would never have noticed, but thanks to his unique virology training, and special equipment the Iraqis provided, he found it. A strange-looking thing-spherical-filled with RNA and enzymes. Expose it to air and it evaporated. In water, the cell wall collapsed. Instead, it craved warm plasma and seemed prevalent throughout all of the green monkeys that came his way.

Yet none of the animals seemed affected.

Charlie Easton, though, had been another matter. Damn fool. He’d been bitten two years prior by one of the monkeys, but told no one until three weeks before he died, when the first symptoms appeared. A blood sample confirmed 65-G roamed through him. He’d eventually used Easton ’s infection to study the viral effects on humans, concluding the organism was not an efficient biological weapon. Too unpredictable, sporadic, and far too slow to be an effective offensive agent.

He shook his head.

Amazing how ignorant he’d been.

A miracle he’d survived.

He was back in his hotel room at the Intercontinental, dawn coming slowly to Samarkand. He needed to rest, but was still energized from his encounter with Karyn Walde.

He thought again about the old healer.

Was it 1980? Or ’81?

In the Pamirs, about two weeks before Easton died. He’d visited the village several times before, trying to learn what he could. The old man was surely dead by now. Even then he was well up in age.

But still.

The old man scampered barefoot up the liver-colored slope with the agility of a cat, on feet with soles like leather. Vincenti followed and, even through heavy boots, his ankles and toes ached. Nothing was flat. Rocks arched everywhere like speed breakers, sharp, unforgiving. The village lay a mile back, nearly a thousand feet above sea level, their current journey taking them even higher.

The man was a traditional healer, a combination family practitioner, priest, fortune teller, and sorcerer. He knew little English but could speak passable Chinese and Turkish. He was a near-dwarf with European features and a forked Mongol beard. He wore a gold-threaded quilt and a bright skullcap. Back in the village, Vincenti had watched while the man treated the villagers with a concoction of roots and plants, meticulously administered with an intelligence born from decades of trial and error.

“Where are we going?” he finally asked.

“To answer your question and find what will stop the fever in your friend.”

Around him, a stadium of white peaks formed a gallery of untouched heights. Thunder clouds steamed from the highest summits. Streaks of silvers and autumnal reds and dense groves of walnut trees added color to the otherwise mummified scene. A rush of water could be heard somewhere far off.

They came to a ledge and he followed the old man through a purple vein in the rock. He knew from his studies that the mountains around him were still alive, slowly pushing upward about two and a half inches a year.

They exited into an oval-shaped arena, walled in by more stone. Not much light inside, so he found the flashlight the old man had encouraged him to bring.

Two pools dotted the rock floor, each about ten feet in diameter, one bubbling with the froth of thermal energy. He brought the light close and noticed their contrasting color. The active one was a russet brown, its calm companion a sea foam green.

“The fever you describe is not new,” the old man said. “Many generations have known that animals deliver it.”

To learn more about the yaks, the sheep, and the huge bears that populated the region was one of the reasons he’d been sent. “How do you know that?”

“We watch. But only sometimes do they pass the fever. If your friend has the fever, this will help.” He pointed to the green pool, its still surface marred only by an array of floating plants. They looked like water lilies, only bushier, the center flower straining through the shade for precious drops of sunlight. “The leaves will save him. He must chew them.”

He dabbed the water and brought two moist fingers to his mouth. No taste. He half expected the hint of carbonate found in other springs of the region.

The man knelt and gulped a cupped handful. “It is good,” he said, smiling.

He drank, too. Warm, like a cup of tea, and fresh. So he slurped more.

“The leaves will cure him.”

He needed to know. “Is this plant common?”

The old man nodded. “Only ones from this pool work.”

“Why is that?”

“I do not know. Perhaps divine will.”

He doubted that. “Is this known to other villages? Other healers?”

“I am the only one who uses it.”

He reached down and pulled one of the floating pods closer, assessing its biology. It was a tracheophyta, the leaves peltate with the stalk and filled with an elaborate vascular system. Eight thick, pulpous stipules surrounded the base and formed a floating platform. The epidermal tissue was a dark green, the leaf walls full of glucose. A short stem projected from the center and probably acted as a photosynthetic surface because of the limited leaf space. The flower’s soft white petals were arranged in a whorl and emitted no fragrance.

He glanced underneath. A raccoon tail of stringy, brown roots extended out in the water, searching for nutrients. From all appearances, it seemed a well-adapted species.

“How did you learn that it worked?”

“My father taught me.”

He lifted the plant from the water and cradled the pod. Warm water seeped through his fingers.

“The leaves must be chewed completely, the juice swallowed.”

He broke off a clump and brought it to his mouth. He looked at the old man-rapier eyes staring back quiet and confident. He stuffed the leaf in his mouth and chewed. The taste was bitter, sharp, like alum-and terrible, like tobacco.

He extracted the juice and swallowed, almost gagging.

FIFTY-FIVE

VENICE

CASSIOPEIA’S ATTENTION WAS DRAWN FIRST ACROSS THE NAVE TO the north transept where somebody was shooting at Malone. Beyond the waist-high railing she’d seen the head and chest of one of the guards, but not Malone. Then she’d watched as Zovastina fired her weapon, the bullet careening off the marble floor inches from Thorvaldsen. The Dane had stood his ground, never moving.

Movement to her right drew her attention. A man appeared in the stairway arch, gun in hand. He spotted her and raised his weapon, but never gained the chance to fire.

She shot him in the chest.

He was thrown back, arms flailing. She finished the kill with one more well-placed shot. Across the nave, forty meters away, she saw the other guardsman advancing deeper into the museum’s exhibits. She unshouldered the bow and found an arrow, but kept a position back from the railing so as not to give Zovastina a chance at her.

She was concerned. Just before the attacker appeared, Viktor had disappeared below into the lower transept. Where had he gone?

She mated the arrow’s nock to the bowstring and gripped the bow’s handle.

She retracted the string.

The guard winked in and out through the dim light of the opposite transept.

MALONE WAITED. HIS GUN WAS DRAWN, ALL HE NEEDED WAS FOR the guardsman to advance a few feet closer. He’d managed to retreat to the end cap of one of the exhibits, using the shadows for protection, his steps light on the wood flooring, three gunshots from out in the nave masking his movements. Impossible to say where they’d originated since the resounding echoes camouflaged any sense of direction. He really didn’t want to shoot the guard.

Booksellers, generally, did not kill people.

But he doubted there was going to be much choice.

He drew a breath and made his move.

ZOVASTINA STARED AT HENRIK THORVALDSEN AS MORE GUNSHOTS erupted above. Her thirty minutes alone in the basilica had turned into a crowded mélange.

Thorvaldsen motioned to the wooden box on the floor. “Not what you expected, was it?”

She decided to be honest. “Worth a try.”

“Ptolemy’s riddle could be a hoax. People have searched for Alexander the Great’s remains for fifteen hundred years with no success.”

“And does anyone actually believe St. Mark was in that box?”

He shrugged. “An awful lot of Venetians certainly do.”

She needed to leave, so she called out, “Viktor.”

“Is there a problem, Minister?” a new voice asked.

Michener.

The priest stepped into the lighted presbytery.

She pointed her gun at him. “You lied to me.”

MALONE CREPT LEFT AS THE GUARDSMAN KEPT TO THE RAILING and moved right. He sidestepped a wooden lion attached to a carved ducal throne and crouched behind a waist-high exhibit of tapestries that separated him from his pursuer.

He scampered ahead, intent on doubling around before the man had a chance to react.

He found the end of the exhibit, turned, and prepared to move.

An arrow pierced the guardsman’s chest, sucking the breath away. He saw a shocked look sweep over the man’s face as he groped for the implanted shaft. Life left him as his body collapsed to the floor.

Malone’s head whirled left.

Across the nave Cassiopeia stood, bow in hand, her face frozen, bearing no emotion. Behind her, high in the outer wall loomed a darkened rose window. Below the window, Viktor emerged from the shadows and moved toward Cassiopeia, a gun coming shoulder high.

ZOVASTINA WAS ANGRY. “YOU KNEW THERE WAS NOTHING IN THAT tomb,” she said to Michener.

“How could I know that? It hasn’t been opened in over a hundred and seventy years.”

“You can tell your pope the Church will not be allowed within the Federation, concordat or no.”

“I’ll pass the message along.”

She faced Thorvaldsen. “You never said. What’s your interest in all this?”

“To stop you.”

“You’ll find that difficult.”

“I don’t know. You have to leave this basilica and the airport is a long boat ride away.”

She’d come to realize that they’d chosen their trap with care. Or, more accurately, they’d allowed her to choose it. Venice. Surrounded by water. No cars. Buses. Trains. Lots of slow-moving boats. Leaving could well pose a problem. What was it? An hour’s ride to the airport?

And the confident glare of the two staring at her from five meters away was no comfort.

VIKTOR APPROACHED THE WOMAN WITH THE BOW. RAFAEL’S killer. The woman who’d just speared another of his guardsmen in the opposite transept. She needed to die, but he realized that was foolish. He’d listened to Zovastina and knew that things were not going well. To leave, they’d need insurance. So he pressed the barrel of his gun into the nape of her neck.

The woman did not move.

“I should shoot you,” he spit out.

“What sport would that be?”

“Enough to even the score.”

“I’d say we’re even. Ely, for your partner.”

He fought a rising anger and forced his mind to think. Then an idea dawned. A way to bring the situation back under control. “Move to the railing. Slowly.”

She strode three steps forward.

“Minister,” he called out over the balustrade.

He glanced past his captive and saw Zovastina looking up, her gun still pointed at the two men.

“This one,” he said to her, “will be our pass out of here. A hostage.”

“Excellent idea, Viktor.”

“She doesn’t know what a mess you’ve made, does she?” the woman whispered to him.

“You’ll die before uttering the first word.”

“Not to worry. I won’t tell her.”

MALONE SAW CASSIOPEIA’S PREDICAMENT. HE SPRANG TO THE railing and aimed his gun across the nave.

“Toss it down,” Viktor called out.

He ignored the command.

“I’d do as he says,” Zovastina said from below. Her gun was still trained on Michener and Thorvaldsen. “Or I will shoot these two.”

“Supreme Minister of the Central Asian Federation committing murder in Italy? I doubt it.”

“True,” Zovastina said. “But Viktor can easily kill the woman, which should not be a problem for me.”

“Toss it,” Cassiopeia said to him.

He realized that to comply was foolish. Just retreat into the shadows and remain a threat.

“Cotton,” Thorvaldsen said from below, “do as Cassiopeia says.”

He had to trust that both his friends knew what they were doing. Wrong? Probably. But he’d done stupid things before.

He allowed the pistol to drop over the railing.

“BRING HER DOWN,” ZOVASTINA CALLED OUT TO VIKTOR. “YOU,” she said to the other man who’d just tossed away his gun. “Come here.”

He did not move from his perch.

“Please, Cotton,” Thorvaldsen said. “Do as she says.”

A hesitation and the man disappeared from the railing.

“You control him?” she asked.

“No one does.”

Viktor and his female captive entered the presbytery. The other man, the one Thorvaldsen commanded, followed them a moment later.

“Who are you?” she asked him. “Thorvaldsen called you Cotton.”

“Name’s Malone.”

“And you?” she said, staring at the woman with the archer’s bow.

“A friend of Ely Lund.”

What was happening? She desperately needed to know, so she thought fast and motioned at Viktor’s female captive. “That one is coming with me. To ensure safe passage.”

“Minister,” Viktor said. “I think it would be better if she stays here, with me. I can hold her until you’re away.”

She shook her head and pointed at Thorvaldsen. “Take him with you. Somewhere safe. Once I’m in the air, I’ll call and you can let him go. Any problems, kill him and make sure the body is never found.”

“Minister,” Michener said, “since I’m the cause of all this chaos, how about me as a hostage and let’s leave this gentleman out of it.”

“And how about taking me with you instead of her?” Malone asked. “Never been to the Central Asian Federation.”

She appraised the American. Tall and confident. Probably an agent. But she wanted to know more of the woman’s connection to Ely Lund. Anyone who knew Lund closely enough to risk her life to avenge him bore further investigation. But Michener. She could only hope Viktor was allowed the opportunity to kill the lying scum. “All right, priest, you go with Viktor. As for you, Mr. Malone, perhaps another time.”

FIFTY-SIX

SAMARKAND

VINCENTI AWOKE.

He was reclined in the helicopter’s comfortable leather seat. Flying east, away from the city.

The phone lying in his lap was vibrating.

He read the LCD screen. Grant Lyndsey. Chief scientist at the China lab. He stuffed a fob into his ear and pushed “Phone.”

“We’re done,” his employee said to him. “Zovastina has all of the organisms and the lab is converted. Clean and complete.”

With what Zovastina had planned, he had no intention of the West, or the Chinese government, raiding his facility and linking him to anything. Only eight scientists had worked on the project, Lyndsey their head. All vestiges of their work were now gone.

“Pay everyone and send them on their way. O’Conner will visit them and provide for their retirement.” He heard the silence from the other end of the phone. “Not to worry, Grant. Gather the computer data and head to my house over the border. We’ll have to wait and see what the Supreme Minister actually does with her arsenal before we act.”

“I’ll leave immediately.”

That’s what he wanted to hear. “I’ll be seeing you before the day is out. We have work to do. Get moving.”

He clicked off the phone and lay back in the seat.

He thought again about the old dwarf in the Pamir mountains. Back then Tajikistan had been primitive and hostile. Little medical research had ever been done there. Few strangers visited. That was why the Iraqis thought the region a promising place to investigate for unknown zoonoses.

Two pools high in the mountains.

One green, the other brown.

And the plant whose leaves he’d chewed.

He recalled the water. Warm and clear. But when he’d pointed his flashlight into their shallow depths, he recalled an even stranger sight.

Two carved letters. One in each pool.

Z and H.

Chiseled from blocks of stone, lying on the bottom.

He thought of the medallion Stephanie Nelle had made a point to show him. One of the several Irina Zovastina seemed intent on acquiring.

And the microletters supposedly on its face.

ZH .

Coincidence? He doubted it. He knew what the letters meant since he’d sought out scholars who told him that in Old Greek they represented the concept of life. He’d thought his idea of labeling any future cure for HIV with that ancient designation clever. Now he wasn’t so sure. He felt like his world was collapsing and the anonymity that he’d once enjoyed was quickly evaporating. The Americans were after him. Zovastina was after him. The Venetian League itself might well be after him.

But he’d cast his die.

No going back.

MALONE’S GAZE ALTERNATED BETWEEN THORVALDSEN AND CASSIOPEIA. Neither of his friends showed the slightest concern with their predicament. Between him and Cassiopeia, they could take Zovastina and Viktor. He tried to voice that intent with his eyes, but no one seemed to be listening.

“Your pope doesn’t scare me,” Zovastina said to Michener.

“It’s not our intent to scare anyone.”

“You’re a sanctimonious hypocrite.”

Michener said nothing.

“Not much to say?” she asked.

“I’ll pray for you, Minister.”

She spit at his feet. “I don’t need your prayers, priest.” She motioned toward Cassiopeia. “Time to go. Leave the bow and arrows. You won’t be needing them.”

Cassiopeia dropped both to the floor.

“Here’s her gun,” Viktor said, and he handed over the weapon.

“Once we’re away, I’ll call. If you don’t hear from me in three hours, kill the priest. And Viktor,” she paused, “make sure he suffers.”

Viktor and Michener left the presbytery and walked through the darkened nave.

“Shall we?” Zovastina said to Cassiopeia. “I assume you’ll behave yourself?”

“Like I have a choice.”

“The priest will appreciate it.”

They left the presbytery.

Malone turned to Thorvaldsen. “And they’re just going to leave, with no response from us?”

“It had to be done,” Stephanie said, as she and another man stepped from the shadows of the south transept. She introduced the lean man as Edwin Davis, deputy national security adviser, the voice from the phone earlier. Everything about him was neat and restrained, from the pressed slacks and stiff cotton shirt, to his shiny, narrow calf-leather shoes. Malone ignored Davis and asked Stephanie, “Why did it have to be done?”

Thorvaldsen answered. “We weren’t sure what was going to happen. We were just trying to make something happen.”

“You wanted Cassiopeia to be taken?”

Thorvaldsen shook his head. “I didn’t. But Cassiopeia apparently did. I could see it in her eyes, so I seized the moment and accommodated her. That’s why I asked you to drop your weapon.”

“Are you nuts?”

Thorvaldsen stepped closer. “Cotton, three years ago I introduced Ely and Cassiopeia.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“When Ely was young, he foolishly experimented with drugs. He wasn’t careful with needles and, sadly, contracted HIV. He managed the disease well, taking various cocktail combinations, but the odds were not in his favor. Most of those infected eventually contract AIDS and die. He was lucky.”

He waited for more.

“Cassiopeia shares his illness.”

Had he heard right?

“A blood transfusion, ten years ago. She takes the symptomatic drugs and manages her disease, as well.”

He was shocked, but a lot of her comments now made sense. “How’s that possible? She’s so active. Strong.”

“Take the drugs every day and you can be, provided the virus cooperates.”

He stared at Stephanie. “You knew?”

“Edwin told me before we came out here. Henrik told him. He and Henrik have been waiting for us to arrive. That’s why Michener took me aside.”

“So what were me and Cassiopeia? Expendables? With deniability?” he asked Davis.

“Something like that. We had no idea what Zovastina would do.”

“You sorry son of a bitch.” He moved toward Davis.

“Cotton,” Thorvaldsen said, “I approved it. Be mad at me.”

He stopped and stared at his friend. “What gave you that right?”

“When you and Cassiopeia left Copenhagen, President Daniels called. He told me what happened to Stephanie in Amsterdam and asked what we knew. I told him. He suggested I could be useful here.”

“Along with me? That why you lied to me about Stephanie being in trouble?”

Thorvaldsen cast a glance toward Davis. “Actually, I’m a bit perturbed about that, too. I only told you what they told me. It seems the president wanted all of us involved.”

He looked at Davis. “I don’t like the way you do business.”

“Fair enough. But I have to do what I have to do.”

“Cotton,” Thorvaldsen said, “there was little time to think this through. I was improvising as it happened.”

“You think?”

“But I didn’t believe Zovastina would do anything foolish here in the basilica. She couldn’t. And she’d be caught totally off guard. That’s why I agreed to challenge her. Of course, Cassiopeia was another matter. She killed two people.”

“And one more on Torcello.” He cautioned himself to stay focused. “What is all this about?”

“One part,” Stephanie said, “is to stop Zovastina. She’s planning a dirty war and has the resources to make it a costly one.”

“She contacted the Church and they tipped us off,” Davis said. “That’s why we’re here.”

“You could have told us all that,” he said to Davis.

“No, Mr. Malone, we couldn’t. I’ve read your service record. You were a superb agent. A long list of successful missions and commendations. You don’t strike me as naive. You, of all people, should understand how the game is played.”

“That’s just it,” he said. “I don’t play anymore.”

He paced about and allowed himself a moment to calm down. Then he approached the wooden box lying open on the floor. “Zovastina risked everything just to look at these bones?”

“That’s the other part to all of this,” Thorvaldsen said. “The more complicated portion. You read some of the manuscript pages Ely found about Alexander the Great and his draught. Ely came to believe, perhaps foolishly, that from the symptoms described, the draught might have some effect on viral pathogens.”

“Like HIV?” he asked.

Thorvaldsen nodded. “We know there are substances found in nature-tree bark, leafy plants, roots-that can combat bacteria and viruses, maybe even some cancers. He was hoping this might be one of those.”

His mind recalled the manuscript. Overcome by remorse and sensing that Ptolemy was sincere, Eumenes revealed the resting place, far away, in the mountains, where the Scythians taught Alexander about life. “The Scythians are the ones who showed Alexander the draught. Eumenes said Alexander was buried where the Scythians taught him about life.”

Something occurred to him. He said to Stephanie, “You have one of the medallions, don’t you?”

Stephanie handed him the coin. “From Amsterdam. We recovered it after Zovastina’s men tried to take it. We’re told it’s authentic.”

He held the decadrachm high in the light.

“Concealed within the warrior are tiny letters. ZH,” Stephanie said. “Old Greek for life.”

More of the History of Hieronymus of Cardia. Ptolemy then handed me a silver medallion that showed Alexander when he fought against elephants. He told me that, in honor of those battles, he’d minted the coins. He also told me to come back when I solved his riddle. But a month later Ptolemy lay dead.

Now he knew. “The coins and the riddle go together.”

“No question,” Thorvaldsen answered. “But how?”

He wasn’t ready to explain. “None of you ever answered me. Why did you just let them leave here?”

“Cassiopeia clearly wanted to go,” Thorvaldsen said. “Between her and me, we dangled enough information about Ely to intrigue Zovastina.”

“Is that why you called her outside on the phone?”

Thorvaldsen nodded. “She needed information. I had no idea what she would do. You have to understand, Cotton, Cassiopeia wants to know what happened to Ely and the answers are in Asia.”

That obsession bothered Malone. Why? He wasn’t sure. But it clearly did. As did her pain. And her illness. Too much to keep track of. Too many emotions for a man who worked hard at ignoring them. “What is she going to do when she gets to the Federation?”

Thorvaldsen shrugged. “I have no idea. Zovastina knows that I’m wise to her overall plan. I made that clear. She knows Cassiopeia is associated with me. She’ll use the opportunity we gave her to try and learn from Cassiopeia what she can-”

“Before she kills her.”

“Cotton,” Stephanie said, “that’s a chance Cassiopeia freely accepted. No one told her to go.”

More of his melancholy arose. “No. We just let her go. Is that priest involved?”

“He has a job to do,” Davis said. “That’s why he volunteered.”

“But there’s more,” Thorvaldsen said. “What Ely found, Ptolemy’s riddle, it’s real. And we now have all the pieces to discover its solution.”

He pointed to the box. “There’s nothing there. It’s a dead end.”

Thorvaldsen shook his head. “Not true. Those bones lay beneath us, in the crypt, for centuries, before they were moved up here.” Thorvaldsen motioned toward the open sarcophagus. “When they were first removed, in 1835, something else was found with them. Only a few know.” Thorvaldsen pointed toward the darkened south transept. “It’s in the treasury and has been for a long time.”

“And you needed Zovastina gone before taking a look?”

“Something like that.” The Dane held up a key. “Our ticket to see.”

“You realize Cassiopeia may have bitten off more than she can ever chew.”

Thorvaldsen nodded heavily. “Fully.”

He had to think, so he gazed toward the south transept and asked, “Do you know what to do with whatever is in there?”

Thorvaldsen shook his head. “Not me. But we have someone who might.”

He was puzzled.

“Henrik believes,” Stephanie said, “and Edwin seems to agree-”

“It’s Ely,” Thorvaldsen said. “We think he’s still alive.”