SANTA MARIA DELLE GRAZIE CONVENT
MILAN, ITALY
A SPACE OF SILENCE followed the crash on the comms. Darcy spoke first. “This sound. It is bad, yes?”
Both Tyler and Val answered at the same time. “Yes.”
“I knocked a vase off the mantel,” Val said, then added, “a vase filled with flowers. And water.”
Either due to her insanity, or simply to poke the bear, Darcy followed up with another question. “I see. And why would you do this?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I was shocked to hear our precious point girl Talia betraying us to the mark.”
Talia could not respond to the accusation. Ivanov seemed ready to answer her pointed question about Gryphon, then suddenly closed his mouth and quickstepped to the sedan, opening the rear door. “I am sorry. I must return to the expo to deal with an incident.” To Talia’s surprise, he stepped aside and motioned for her to get in. “If I could impose on you for a few minutes more, I would like to discuss this further. Please. Ride with me to the hotel.”
“Disengage,” Tyler said. “Walk away.”
Talia agreed. The whole op was going downhill fast. Her affection for Ivanov was beginning to fail. What if he was as dirty as Tyler claimed? She had just told him she knew too much. Getting into that sedan would be like jumping into the back of a windowless van with a man who offered her candy. She backed away. “Oh no. You seem very busy and I have a flight to catch.”
A phone rang in the car. Bazin answered, covered the receiver, and spoke urgently to Ivanov. Ivanov barked back at him in Romanian, shutting him up. The CEO turned to Talia, jaw tense. “I see. Well, I am . . . disappointed.”
He looked upset, but there was nothing sinister in the way he said disappointed. Talia held her distance and asked the question she could feel he wanted her to ask. “How so?”
“I told myself you had concocted a reason to see me again.” Ivanov curled one side of his mouth into a sheepish smile. “I thought perhaps in truth you had tracked me down because of our connection.”
“You mean our shared background—that we were both orphans.”
“Yes, but also . . . our chemistry.”
“Ooh,” Darcy said. “Chemistry. There are sparks here, no?”
Great. There was nothing like holding an intimate relationship conversation with a potential arms dealer while a pack of thieves and Talia’s best friend were listening over a SATCOM link.
Val was probably loving this.
Talia waited for the inevitable sarcastic comment from the grifter. Instead, Val muttered into the comms, “He’s an orphan. That’s it.” She raised her voice. “Talia, ride with him. Get in the car.”
Tyler immediately countered the command. “Negative. I told you to disengage.”
“Trust me,” Val said. “Ivanov is an orphan. I should have seen it before. The key we need is not in his room. He’s carrying it on his person.”
Ivanov was waiting, holding open the door. “Please, Talia. Indulge me.”
“Um. Let me check the boarding time on that flight, okay?” She opened a travel application on her phone, taking her time with the menus.
Val pushed her assertion about the key. “Former orphans spend their lives recapturing the control they lost as a child. They focus their resentment of that loss into an object, like a talisman.”
“Talia?” Ivanov asked.
She held up a finger. “One sec.”
“For men,” Val continued, taking her time, “the talisman shifts—pocketknives, power tools, the keys to a luxury condo or car. Women carry the same talisman their whole lives. Talia, you know what I’m talking about. You know I’m right.”
No I don’t, Talia wanted to say, but her hand moved unconsciously from her phone to her father’s dog tag, hidden beneath her blouse.
“I’m telling you, Talia. The Gryphon key is Ivanov’s latest talisman. He’ll keep it close, probably in his breast pocket. You have to steal it.”
Tyler attempted to regain command. “Disengage. We’ll go after the key another day.”
They wouldn’t get another day. She put the phone away and gave Ivanov a thin smile. “Plenty of time. Of course I’ll go with you.” She let him help her into the car.
There was a bang on the link, the sound of Tyler pounding his fist against the side of the van. “I guess we’re doing things Valkyrie’s way now.”
There were three more bangs, a sigh, and then Tyler’s professionalism returned. “Okay, team. Listen up. The mark is now en route to the hotel with Talia in tow. If he sees his room has been searched, Talia’s part in this will be obvious. Oh, and did I mention his bodyguard is an unforgiving former Spetsnaz operator that carries a hand-cannon under his jacket?”
“ETA?” Val asked.
“We have Talia’s GPS track. Eddie estimates three minutes to the hotel and another two for Ivanov to reach the room.”
A blow-dryer kicked on in the background. “Not enough time. I can pick up the glass, but the carpet is soaked. I need eight minutes, give or take.”
“Fine. Execute the contingency plan.”
The contingency plan. In the sedan, watching Bazin grumble and growl as he waited for an opening in the traffic, Talia cringed. Tyler had unleashed the mad bomber.
And the mad bomber was overjoyed. “Merveilleux, mon patron! I thought you would never ask.”
Once he had found an opening and pulled into traffic, Bazin reached back between the seats, waving a phone. “Dr. Ivanov, you must call director of conference. He is waiting.”
Ivanov accepted the phone and laid it on the leather between himself and Talia, expression darkening. “I am afraid both the director and our chemistry must wait. There are more pressing matters. What can you tell me about Lukon and Gryphon?”
“Try not to give away the rest of the plan,” Val said.
Too late. Talia had already started down a path of truth. Veering off now would raise Ivanov’s suspicions. She took a gamble. “We believe Lukon will go after the Mark Seven during the expo and use it to reach Gryphon.”
“Aaannd CIA girl gives up the goods,” Val said, blow-dryer still running. “Well done, Ta—”
“No.” Tyler cut the grifter off. “She made a good call. When forced to surrender information to maintain a cover, give the enemy a morsel easily deduced from the data they already have, thus building trust.”
He had quoted a Farm manual, word for word. Talia knew because she had seen the same quote in her eidetic mind before she made the gamble. Tyler was letting his Agency background show.
It worked. Ivanov picked up the phone, tapping it on his knee. “You may be right. We caught a nano-drone spying on our preparations for Friday’s aerial demonstration. The operator destroyed the device before my men could grab it. Thanks to the explosion, the conference director is treating this as a terrorist act, but I believe it was Lukon.” He let out a breath, dialing. “Anything else—some bread crumb I can offer the director?”
Talia shook her head. “I’m sorry. And don’t tell the conference director anything. Let him run with the terrorist idea. Bringing up Lukon will only complicate things for you.”
“Thatta girl,” Tyler interjected. “Good damage control. Way to coach the mark.”
As he finished dialing, Ivanov gave Talia a grim smile that said the two of them were in sync. He raised the phone to his ear. “Ah, Portia. Questo è il Dottor Ivanov di Avantec. Direttore della conferenza, per favore.”
“Speaking of le dommage,” Darcy said. “The curtain is rising. Let the show begin!”
Bazin turned the sedan onto a roundabout near the center of Milan. Two cars ahead, a pillar of steam shot up with a tremendous boom, jettisoning a manhole cover high into the air. The Russian stomped on the brakes and shouted out the window.
“Keep your voice down.” Ivanov covered the phone. “Deal with this. Find a new route. I must get back to the hotel.”
The impending jam left Bazin no choice but to leave the roundabout. He made the first available turn.
Darcy’s voice on the link was positively diabolical. “Yes. Now he takes Via Dante. Très approprié, no?”
Talia still had to lift the key. Val gave her instructions. “Now is the time. Start by looking with your eyes, not your hands. Look for signs of the key in his breast pocket—the tiniest bulge in his jacket or a wrinkle running opposite the others.”
Talia saw it, an odd wrinkle on his left side. Bazin made a lane change, and Talia used the sway of the car to make a play for the key. She couldn’t do it.
She retreated, pretending to look out the passenger window, and whispered through her teeth. “The shoulder restraint is holding his jacket too close to his chest. I can’t reach inside.”
“Not a problem,” Darcy said. “I am here to help. Look to the left and loosen your shoulder strap. Prepare to steal the key on my count.”
Talia loosened the strap and bent forward to look out through Ivanov’s window. A round object came flipping down between the rooftops—the manhole cover from the roundabout. How quickly Talia had forgotten it. What had Darcy been up to?
The cover smashed through the overhanging wires of a trolley system. Pedestrians screamed and jumped out of the way as it clanged to the ground. The central trolley wire, laden with ceramic coils, collapsed onto the tracks and sent up a fountain of sparks. With a pop-pop-pop-pop, small explosive charges flashed beneath all four wheels. The trolley rolled from its place, picking up speed as it coasted downhill to meet the sedan at the next intersection.
“De toute beauté.” Darcy clapped loud enough to be heard over the link. “Now make your lift in three, two, one . . .”
Bazin swerved to dodge the cable car, running up onto the sidewalk and smashing through an empty café table. The move sent Talia flying across the rear passenger bench into Ivanov, who dropped his phone and caught her.
By the time Bazin had settled the sedan onto Via Dante once more, Talia was back on her side, fixing her hair with one hand and stuffing the key into her purse with the other. Ivanov searched the floorboard for his phone, and she used the moment to give a report to the others. She covered her mouth and lowered her chin to her shoulder as if coughing. “I’ve got it. But Darcy missed. We’re still heading for the hotel.”
“I missed nothing,” the chemist said. “Look to your right.”
Talia glanced out her window and saw Darcy on a rooftop one street over. The chemist waved both hands side to side and wiggled her hips. She pointed at the street below. Through the gaps between the buildings, Talia saw the trolley, still rolling.
Via Dante ended at a grand piazza—a thousand square meters of centuries-old stone, ending at the steps of an alabaster cathedral with more Gothic spires than Talia cared to count. Bazin had nowhere to go. He hopped the curb, plowing through a steady eruption of pigeons.
“I take shortcut,” he said in his butchered English. “I have you hotel in no time.” He turned the wheel and set a course for the narrow street south of the cathedral.
Glancing back, Talia saw the trolley emerge from its own street, hop the curb as well, and crash into an ancient lamppost, crushing the attached electrical box. The four lights at the top brightened and exploded. The trolley had stopped, but that was not the end of it. The destruction of the electrical box set off a chain reaction.
The lights of all the lampposts in that row brightened and burst, one after the other, rippling past the sedan like two hot rods in a drag race. The last lamp went off moments before Bazin crossed in front of it on his way to the side street. The post dropped like a felled tree and smashed down into the hood, bringing the sedan to a screeching halt.
“What have you done?” Ivanov punched the back of Bazin’s seat.
The Russian tried to answer, but the airbag—a little delayed—went off in his face.
On the comms, Darcy made a popping sound with her lips. “Voilà. Très magnifique! That, my friends, is art.”