Chapter 23

“They know you’re in Paris,” Martin Beaudin said from the second-floor library of his secluded house deep in the heart of the Pyrenees. He was on his third glass of a 2016 Chateau Canon St. Emilion, and savoring the aroma of a Hoyo de Monterrey le Hoyo du Maire imported from Cuba. “The Americans and Israelis both captured your biometrics as you got off the bus yesterday at the Porte Maillot terminal.”

Phythian was neither surprised nor particularly worried. After the downfall of the Greenwich Global Group he’d expected the viral spread of rumors that he was still alive, and an increasing number of algorithms had started running his touchpoints through their facial recognition databases.

“An inevitable fact of life,” Phythian replied with a sigh. “Is there reason for immediate concern?”

He was strolling up Rue Henry Monnier at a leisurely pace, his jacket collar tucked up against his neck to ward off the evening chill. One hand was in his pocket, the other holding the phone against his ear as he stopped in front of the window of a darkened shop. During the day it sold empanadas, but at this hour—a little before midnight —the display shelves were empty and the patisserie was dark.

“Let’s just say it might be a good idea to take extra care the next few days,” Beaudin cautioned him. “According to Equinox, there’s a steep price on your head.”

Equinox was the central server that gathered, sorted, and stored multiple terabytes of data previously amassed by the now-defunct Greenwich Global Group. Even after the organization’s demise two years ago, it remained linked to highly classified intelligence databases within various acronym agencies in almost a dozen countries, most of them represented by the nations gathering this week at the G20 in Rome.

“How steep?” Phythian asked, getting back to what Beaudin had just relayed to him.

“Five million Euros. Cash or crypto, contractor’s choice.”

“Duly noted.” He turned away from the window, continued on his way up the sidewalk toward the next corner. “Did you check to see if Equinox mentions anything about this tarot card thing?”

“I did, and whatever is there is anecdotal at best,” Beaudin said. As the G3’s longtime data master, he’d had unfettered access to its mainframe and knew his way around the system. He literally knew where the bones were buried, and how they got there. “According to the original charter established after the war, all technicians were strictly prohibited from leaving behind any kind of identifying signature that might lead to their capture or death, or could be traced back to management. That meant no cards, no feathers, no coins. No hint of perfume or cigarettes, not even a note. Nothing. The rules were very explicit about this, under penalty of death.”

“That doesn’t mean that whoever killed Gabrielle Lamoines wasn’t one of theirs,” Phythian replied.

“Don’t confuse me with your English double negatives,” the Frenchman said. Phythian waited while Beaudin took a long sip of wine, then let out a gentle sigh as he swallowed. “In any event, if you look at that list of victims you sent me—those whose death scenes included one of those tarot cards drawn by Dali—you’ll see that those hits occurred after you took control of the G3.”

“With them out of the business, it was inevitable that other groups would emerge to fill the void,” Phythian said.

“Same thing with all their former contractors,” Beaudin replied. “My guess is, Gabrielle’s killer has been around for years, and there’s a high likelihood that he worked for the G3 before becoming a free agent.”

“Any idea what the significance of the tarot cards might be?”

“Nothing definitive. Just one of those anecdotes I mentioned, a brief entry in a file in a folder I found in an old personnel database. I ran a search and it came up.”

“Are you going to tell me, or do I have to pull it out of your head?”

“Well, sir,” the old locksmith said, hesitating a moment to collect his thoughts. “It’s just a throwaway reference, really, but it might mean something to you. It reads, ‘When his mother wasn’t tending to her small garden of yellow roses, she was reading tarot cards for neighbors.’”

Damn, he thought. What he said was, “Seriously?”

“That’s what it says,” Beaudin confirmed.

Phythian instantly flashed back to that cold February afternoon at The Farm, the day this entire odyssey began more than twenty years ago. He had been a green recruit at the time, recently discharged from the Marines, almost broke, and contemplating where life would take him next. Rumors of his raw abilities had quickly preceded him to the MINDGAZE facilities in western Virginia, and the G3 doctors were almost foaming at the mouth at the prospect of working with him, anxious to see if the reports about his uncanny skills possibly could be true. A lot of money and more than a few careers were riding on exploring—and then exploiting—his extra-sensory competencies.

He’d arrived at the equestrian facility in horse country by limousine and was introduced to Dr. Andrews, the senior-level shrink on loan from the Pentagon who’d been brought in under the guise of a Defense Department research program to assess his rumored skillset. Within minutes, Phythian had become engaged in an alpha-male battle with his bunkmate, a British Army major with severe anger management issues that had brought him close to a court martial. The guy’s name was Thompson, and Phythian had been cajoled into performing a deep data dive into his brain—one that caused the apoplectic officer to hurl himself off a balcony. Phythian had never seen the Neanderthal again, but later heard he’d been reassigned to a different part of the program to ensure they never encountered each other again.

During that brief mental probe, Phythian had discovered many things about the life and times of Major Thompson—including the fact that his mother fastidiously tended a yellow rose garden, dead-heading the buds and pruning the stalks every morning. It was beneath this patch of blooms that her son had hidden the body of his dead stepfather who, after a time, was thought to have run off in the middle of the night.

One other thing he’d learned that day was that the man’s mother also dabbled in the occult, reading palms, tea leaves, and tarot cards for her neighbors. She did this for a small fee, which subsidized her fondness for a bottomless glass of sherry every evening.

“Major Richard Thompson, with the British Army,” Phythian recalled. “A bit of a loose cannon, as I recall.”

“Intermittent explosive disorder, is what it says here,” Beaudin agreed. “It appears he was training at The Farm in Virginia the same time you were there, and the two of you had a rather contentious interaction.”

“Your personnel report is correct,” Phythian said. “I never knew what happened to him.”

“In the end he was stripped of his military rank and title, and left Her Majesty’s service under a stain for reasons that remain redacted,” Beaudin explained. “He worked for several non-government contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq after that, and eventually—during a long drought of suitable candidates—the G3 relaxed its rules and he was deemed employable.”

“You’re suggesting this Major Thompson with the anger management issues was the hired gun who shot Gabrielle Lamoines?” Phythian asked.

“I’m saying a lot of the dots are there,” Beaudin assured him. “I’m sure if they connect, you’ll find a way to do it.”

Georgy Sokolov couldn’t sleep and hadn’t slept well for a long time, unable to shake the gnawing anxiety stemming from his crumbling oil empire and all the financial chaos that came with it. He was counting on the arrival of Nataliya to alleviate the disquiet that sometimes bordered on panic, and for an hour or so she had, a beautiful and pleasurable diversion, but one that dissipated as soon as the little blue pill wore off.

After climbing out of the spa, she had invited him to accompany her to bed, the promise of a full-body massage tempting him, but in the end he told her to go ahead without him. “I still have some things to take care of,” he’d told her.

His words were not a lie. He retreated to his library, a spacious room furnished with some of the finest antiques from the Far East, and a collection of artwork no one else must ever be allowed to see. He checked emails (nothing of interest), reviewed his financial holdings (big mistake), even watched a little porn (no reaction at all). In the end he closed his laptop and pushed his way out onto the sprawling pool patio, gazed up at the same stars under which he and Nataliya had made love just an hour ago—stars that seemed so infinite, the breadth and depth of the universe making him feel so small. So insignificant.

Well, all that was about to change. Tomorrow was going to be a big day, for any number of reasons, and there was no room for even one of them to get fucked up. He’d been anticipating this confluence of events for years, ever since that treklyatyy American president had started squeezing his financial resources after the Crimean thing.

Well, tomorrow would teach them all. The leaders of the world’s democracies would be in one place at one time, shaking hands and babbling about climate change and nuclear proliferation, fighting each other for photo ops. For them it would all be over so fast, so much blood in the streets and smoke in the air that they would never know what hit them.

Violentiam. Valeo. Diripio.

ViValDi.

Thirty yards away, far from the stars and the darkened horizon and the luxury of contemplating anything positive about her future, Abby Evans lay on her bed in her concrete dungeon. She, too, could not sleep. Her worries were focused on concerns of a more immediate and fatalistic nature, and no pondering the wonders and curiosities of the heavens would possibly help her.

The overhead light set into the masonry ceiling had no on-off switch, at least not on this side of the door. A few hours ago, a guard had brought her a tray with some kind of tasteless dish made from tomatoes and rice, which she ate. She remembered what her biology teacher had said about animals in the wild: they eat whatever they can, whenever they can, because they never know when they’ll eat again. Same thing here.

The guard had checked in every hour on the hour, or so it seemed. At some point a new sentry took over, his dark, leering eyes gazing hungrily at her, his skin giving off the odor of stale sweat and dead fish. He wore loose trousers, dirty army-drab T-shirt, gun tucked into his waistband, and as he left, he made a suggestive gesture to her. She figured he must have been under some sort of order not to touch her, because he didn’t.

The woman from the plane looked in on her, as well. She no longer was wearing the white pantsuit; instead, she was draped in what looked like a silk kimono decorated with peacocks that looked far too large on her…a man’s robe, she realized.

“Have you eaten?” she’d asked from just inside the doorway, in that same strange accent.

Abby didn’t reply, simply stared at her with a sullen look.

“Do you need to use the facilities?”

She gave no response.

“Well, then…sleep well,” the woman said with a devilish smile. As she stepped out and closed the door, a heavy lock jolted into place, and the room was engulfed with a ghastly silence.

The light stayed on, however. Abby lay on the bed a few moments after that, her fingers absently toying with the steel tether connected to her collar. She played with it, pulling a length out from the wall-mounted mechanism. She wrapped the steel leash around her hand a time or two, felt the tension as the spring-driven apparatus tried to reel it back in.

That’s when the idea struck her. At some point the new guard would return—the vulgar one with the lecherous eyes and rancid smell—which meant she had to work quickly. She climbed up on top of the mattress, kneeled in the center as close to the wall as she could, and pulled out a length of cable. She looped it around her throat: once, twice, three times, just so there could be no mistaken intent. When she released it, she felt the spring-wound cord tighten against her windpipe, almost choking her.

She unwound it, then did it again, this time inserting her fingers between the tether and her raw skin, relieving the tension just enough to be able to breathe. She had no idea how long she would have to hold this position until she heard the sound of the lock again, signaling her hourly check-in, or whatever time frame was the routine here. Sooner or later, she knew, someone would come through that door, and when he—or she—did, Abby would release the cable and let gravity and physics take care of the rest.