The Venetian Betrayal (Cotton Malone #3)

The Venetian Betrayal (Cotton Malone #3) Page 12

THIRTY-THREE

VOZROZHDENIYA ISLAND

CENTRAL ASIAN FEDERATION

1:00 P.M.

ZOVASTINA WAS THRILLED WITH THE CROWD. HER STAFF HAD promised five thousand would appear. Instead, her traveling secretary told her on the helicopter flight, northwest from Samarkand, that over twenty thousand were awaiting her arrival. More proof, she was told, of her popularity. Now, seeing the bedlam of goodwill, perfect for the television cameras focused on the dais, she could not help but be pleased.

"Look around you," she said into the microphone, "at what we can accomplish when both our minds and our hearts work in unison." She hesitated a moment for effect, then motioned outward. "Kantubek reborn."

The crowd, thick as ants, cheered their approval with an enthusiasm she'd grown accustomed to hearing.

Vozrozhdeniya Island sat in the central Aral Sea, a remote wilderness that once housed the Soviet Union's Microbiological Warfare Group, and also provided a tragic example of Asia 's exploitation by its former masters. Here was where anthrax spores and plague bacilli were both developed and stored. After the fall of the communist government, in 1991, the laboratory staff abandoned the island and the containers holding the deadly spores, which, over the ensuing decade, developed leaks. The potential biological disaster was compounded by the receding Aral Sea. Fed by the ample Amu Darya, the wondrous lake had once been shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. But when the Soviets changed the Darya's course and diverted the river's flow into a twelve-hundred-kilometer-long canal-water used to grow cotton for Soviet mills-the inland sea, once one of the world's largest freshwater bodies, began to vanish, replaced by a desert incapable of supporting life.

But she'd changed all that. The canal was now gone, the river restored. Most of her counterparts had seemed doomed to mimic their conquerors, but her brain had never atrophied from vodka. She'd always kept her eye on the prize, and learned how to both seize and hold power.

"Two hundred tons of communist anthrax was neutralized here," she told the crowd. "Every bit of their poison is gone. And we made the Soviets pay for it."

The crowd roared their approval.

"Let me tell you something. Once we were free, away from Moscow 's choke hold, they had the audacity to say we owed them money." Her arms rose into the air. "Can you imagine? They rape our land. Destroy our sea. Poison the soil with their germs. And we owe them money?" She saw thousands of heads shake. "That's exactly what I said, too. No."

She scanned the faces staring back at her, each bathed in bright midday sunshine.

"So we made the Soviets pay to clean up their own mess. And we closed their canal, which was sucking the life from our ancient sea."

Never did she use the singular "I." Always "we."

"Many of you I'm sure, as I do, remember the tigers, wild boar, and waterfowl that thrived in the Amu Darya delta. The millions of fish that filled the Aral Sea. Our scientists know that one hundred and seventy-eight species once lived here. Now, only thirty-eight remain. Soviet progress." She shook her head. "The virtues of communism." She smirked. "Criminals. That's what they were. Plain, ordinary criminals."

The canal had been a failure not only environmentally but also structurally. Seepage and flooding had been common. Like the Soviets themselves, who cared little for efficiency, the canal lost more water than it ever delivered. As the Aral Sea dried to nothing, Vozrozhdeniya Island eventually became a peninsula, connected to the shore, and the fear rose that land mammals and reptiles would carry off the deadly biological toxins. Not anymore. The land was clean. Declared so by a United Nations inspection team, which labeled the effort "masterful."

She raised her fist to the air. "And we told those Soviet criminals that if we could, we'd sentence each one of them to our prisons."

The people roared more approval.

"This town of Kantubek, where we stand, here in its central plaza, has risen from the ashes. The Soviets reduced it to rubble. Now free Federation citizens will live here, in peace and harmony, on an island that is also reborn. The Aral itself is returning, its water levels rising each year, man-made desert once again becoming seabed. This is an example of what we can achieve. Our land. Our water." She hesitated. "Our heritage."

The crowd erupted.

Her gaze raked the faces, soaking in the anticipation her message seemed to generate. She loved being among the people. And they loved her. Acquiring power was one thing. Keeping it, quite another.

And she planned to keep it.

"My fellow citizens, know that we can do anything if we set our minds to it. How many across the globe declared we could not consolidate? How many said we'd split thanks to civil war? How many claimed we were incapable of governing ourselves? Twice we've conducted national elections. Free and open, with many candidates. No one can say that either contest was not fair." She paused. "We have a constitution that guarantees human rights, along with personal, political, and intellectual freedom."

She was enjoying this moment. The reopening of Vozrozhdeniya Island was certainly an event that demanded her presence. Federation television, along with three new independent broadcasting channels that she'd licensed to Venetian League members, were spreading her message nationwide. Those new station owners had privately promised control over what they produced, all part of the camaraderie League membership offered to fellow members, and she was glad for their presence. Hard to argue that she controlled the media when, from all outward appearances, she did not.

She stared out at the rebuilt town, its brick and stone buildings erected in the style of a century ago. Kantubek would once again be populated. Her Interior ministry had reported that ten thousand had applied for land grants on the island, another indication of the confidence the people placed in her since so many were willing to live where only twenty years ago nothing would have survived.

"Stability is the basis of everything," she roared.

Her catchphrase, used repeatedly over the past fifteen years.

"Today, we christen this island in the name of the people of the Central Asian Federation. May our union last forever."

She stepped from the podium as the crowd applauded.

Three of her guardsmen quickly closed ranks and escorted her off the dais. Her helicopter was waiting, as was a plane that would take her west, to Venice, where the answers to so many questions awaited.

THIRTY-FOUR

VENICE

2:15 P.M.

MALONE STOOD BESIDE CASSIOPEIA AS SHE PILOTED THE MOTORBOAT out into the lagoon. They'd flown from Copenhagen on a direct flight, landing at Aeroporto Marco Polo an hour ago. He'd visited Venice many times in years past on assignments with the Magellan Billet. It was familiar territory, expansive and isolated, but its heart remained compact, about two miles long and a mile wide-and had wisely managed for centuries to keep the world at bay.

The boat's bow was pointed northeast, away from the center, leading them past the glass-making center of Murano, straight for Torcello, one of the many squats of land that dotted the Venetian lagoon.

They'd rented the launch near the airport, a sleek wooden craft with enclosed cabins fore and aft. Frisky outboards skimmed the low-riding hull across the choppy swells, churning the green water behind them into a lime foam.

Over breakfast, Cassiopeia had told him about the final elephant medallion. She and Thorvaldsen had charted the thefts across Europe, noticing early on that the decadrachms in Venice and Samarkand seemed to be ignored. That was why they'd been reasonably sure the Copenhagen medallion would be next. After the fourth was stolen from a private collector in France three weeks ago, she and Thorvaldsen had waited patiently.

"They held the Venice medallion last for a reason," Cassiopeia said to him over the engines. One of the city water buses chugged past, heading in the opposite direction. "I guess you'd like to know why?"

"The thought did occur to me."

"Ely believed Alexander the Great may be inside St. Mark's tomb."

Interesting idea. Different. Nuts.

"Long story," she said, "but he may be right. The body in St. Mark's basilica is supposedly of a two-thousand-year-old mummy. St. Mark was mummified in Alexandria, after he died in the first century CE. Alexander is three hundred years older and was mummified, too. But in the fourth century, when Alexander disappeared from his tomb, Mark's remains suddenly appeared in Alexandria."

"I assume you have more evidence than that?"

"Irina Zovastina is obsessed with Alexander the Great. Ely told me all about it. She has a private collection of Greek art, an expansive library, and fashions herself an expert on Homer and the Iliad. Now she's sending guardsmen out to collect elephant medallions and leave no trail. And the coin in Samarkand goes completely untouched." She shook her head. "They waited for this theft to be last, so they could be near St. Mark's."

"I've been inside that basilica," he said. "The saint's sarcophagus is under the main altar, which weighs tons. You'd need hydraulic lifts and lots of time to get inside it. That's impossible considering the basilica is the city's number one tourist attraction."

"I don't know how she intends to do it, but I'm convinced she's going to make a try for that tomb."

But first, he thought, they apparently needed the seventh medallion.

He retreated from the helm down three steps into the forward cabin adorned with tasseled curtains, embroidered seats, and polished mahogany. Ornate for a rental. He'd bought a Venetian guidebook at the airport and decided to learn what he could about Torcello.

Romans first inhabited the tiny island in the fifth and sixth centuries. Then, in the eighth century, frightened mainlanders fled invading Lombards and Huns and reoccupied it. By the 1500s twenty thousand people lived in a thriving colony among churches, convents, palaces, markets, and an active shipping center. The merchants who stole the body of St. Mark from Alexandria in 828 were citizens of Torcello. The guidebook noted it as a place where " Rome first met Byzantium." A watershed. To the west lay the Houses of Parliament. To the east the Taj Mahal. Then, pestilent fever, malaria, and silt clogging its canals brought a decline. Its most vigorous citizens moved to central Venice. The merchant houses folded. All of the palaces became forgotten. Builders from other islands eventually scrabbled among its rubble for the right stone or sculptured cornice, and everything gradually disappeared. Marshland reclaimed high ground and now fewer than sixty people lived there in only a handful of houses.

He stared out the forward windows and spotted a single redbrick tower-old, proud, and lonely-stretching skyward. A photograph in the guidebook matched the outline. He read and learned the bell tower stood beside Torcello's remaining claim to fame. The Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta, built in the seventh century, Venice 's oldest house of worship. Beside it, according to the guidebook, sat a squat of a church in the shape of a Greek cross, erected six hundred years later. Santa Fosca.

The engines dimmed as Cassiopeia throttled down and the boat settled into the water. He climbed back to where she stood at the helm. Ahead he spotted thin streaks of ochre-colored sandbank cloaked in reeds, rushes, and gnarly cypresses. The boat slowed to a crawl and they entered a muddy canal, its bulwarks flanked on one side by overgrown fields and on the other by a paved lane. To their left, one of the city's water buses was taking on passengers at the island's only public transportation terminal.

"Torcello," she said. "Let's hope we got here first."

VIKTOR STEPPED OFF THE VAPORETTO WITH RAFAEL FOLLOWING.

The water bus had delivered them from San Marco to Torcello in a laborious chug across the Venetian lagoon. He'd chosen public transportation as the most inconspicuous way to reconnoiter tonight's target.

They followed a crowd of camera-clad tourists making their way toward the island's two famed churches, a sidewalklike street flanking a languid canal. The path ended near a low huddle of stone buildings that accommodated a couple of restaurants, a few tourist vendors, and an inn. He'd already studied the island's layout and knew that Torcello was a minuscule strip of land that supported artichoke farms and a few opulent residences. Two ancient churches and a restaurant were its claims to fame.

They'd flown from Hamburg, with a stop in Munich. After here, they would head back to the Federation and home, their European foray completed. Per the Supreme Minister's orders, Viktor needed to obtain the seventh medallion before midnight, as he was due at the basilica in San Marco by one A.M.

Zovastina's coming to Venice was highly unusual.

Whatever she'd been anticipating had apparently started.

But at least this theft should be easy.

MALONE STARED DOWN AT THE ARCHITECTURAL ELEGANCE OF the island's bell tower, a mass of brick and marble ingeniously held together by pilasters and arches. A hundred and fifty feet tall, like a talisman in the waste, the path to the top, on ramps that wound upward along the exterior walls, had reminded him of the Round Tower in Copenhagen. They'd paid the six euros admission and made the climb to study the island from its highest point.

He stood at a chest-high wall and stared out open arches, noting how the land and water seemed to pursue each other in a tight embrace. White herons soared skyward from a grassy marsh. Orchards and artichoke fields loomed quiet. The somber scene seemed like a ghost town from the American West.

Below, the basilica stood, nothing warm or welcoming to it, a makeshift barnlike feel to its design, as if uncompleted. Malone had read in the guidebook that it was built in a hurry by men who thought the world would end in the year 1000.

"It's a great allegory," he said to Cassiopeia. "A Byzantine cathedral right beside a Greek church. East and West, side by side. Just like Venice."

In front of the two churches stretched a grass-infested piazzetta. Once the center of city life, now no more than a village green. Dusty paths stretched outward, a couple leading to a second canal, more winding toward distant farmhouses. Two other stone buildings fronted the piazzetta, both small, maybe forty by twenty feet, two-storied, with gabled roofs. Together they comprised the Museo di Torcello. The guidebook noted they were once palazzos, occupied centuries ago by wealthy merchants, but were now owned by the state.

Cassiopeia pointed at the building on the left. "The medallion is in there, on the second floor. Not much of a museum. Mosaic fragments, capitals, a few paintings, some books, and coins. Greek, Roman, and Egyptian artifacts."

He faced her. She continued to stare out over the island. To the south loomed the outline of Venice central, its campaniles reaching for a darkening sky, the hint of a storm rising. "What are we doing here?"

She did not immediately answer. He reached over and touched her arm. She shuddered at the contact, but did not resist. Her eyes watered and he wondered if Torcello's sad atmosphere had reminded her of memories better left forgotten.

"This place is all gone," she muttered.

They were alone at the top of the tower, the lazy silence disturbed only by footfalls, voices, and laughter from others, below, making the climb.

"So is Ely," he said.

"I miss him." She bit her lip.

He wondered if her burst of sincerity implied a growing trust. "There's nothing you can do."

"I wouldn't say that."

He did not like the sound of her words. "What do you have in mind?"

She did not answer and he did not press. Instead, he stared with her across the church rooftops. A few stalls selling lace, glassware, and souvenirs flanked a short lane leading from the village to the grassy piazzetta. A group of visitors were making their way toward the churches. Among them, Malone spotted a familiar face.

Viktor.

"I see him, too," Cassiopeia said.

People arrived at the top, in the bell chamber.

"The man beside him is the one who slashed the car tires," she said.

They watched as the two men headed straight for the museum.

"We need to get down from here," he said. "They might decide to check the high ground, too. Remember they think we're dead."

"Like this whole place," she muttered.

THIRTY-FIVE

VENICE

3:20 P.M.

STEPHANIE HOPPED FROM THE WATER TAXI AND MADE HER WAY through the tight warren of close-quartered streets. She'd asked directions at her hotel and was following them the best she could, but Venice was a vast labyrinth. She was deep into the Dorsoduro district, a quiet, picturesque neighborhood long associated with wealth, following busy, alleylike thoroughfares lined with bustling commerce.

Ahead, she spotted the villa. Rigidly symmetrical, casting an air of lost distinction, its beauty sprang from a pleasing contrast of redbrick walls veined with emerald vines, highlighted with marble trim.

She stepped through a wrought-iron gate and announced her presence with a knock on the front door. An older woman with an airy face, dressed in a servant's uniform, answered.

"I'm here to see Mr. Vincenti," Stephanie said. "Tell him I bring greetings from President Danny Daniels."

The woman appraised her with a curious look and she wondered if the name of the president of the United States struck a chord. So, to be sure, she handed the attendant a folded slip of paper. "Give this to him."

The woman hesitated, then closed the door.

Stephanie waited.

Two minutes later the door reopened.

Wider this time.

And she was invited in.

"Fascinating introduction," Vincenti said to her.

They sat in a rectangular room beneath a gilded ceiling, the room's elegance highlighted by the dull gleam of lacquer that had surely coated the furniture for centuries. She sniffed the dank fragrance and thought she detected the odor of cats mixed with a scent of lemon polish.

Her host held up the note. "'The President of the United States sent me.' Quite a statement." He seemed pleased at his perceived importance.

"You're an interesting man, Mr. Vincenti. Born in upstate New York. A U.S. citizen. August Rothman." She shook her head. "Enrico Vincenti? You changed the name. I'm curious, why?"

He shrugged. "It's all about image."

"It does sound more," she hesitated, "continental."

"Actually, a lot of thought was given to that name. Enrico came from Enrico Dandolo, thirty-ninth doge of Venice, in the late twelfth century. He led the Fourth Crusade that conquered Constantinople and ended the Byzantine Empire. Quite a man. Legendary, you might say.

"Vincenti I took from another twelfth-century Venetian. A Benedictine monk and nobleman. When his entire family was wiped out in the Aegean Sea, he applied for and got permission to dispense with his monastic vows. He married and founded five new lines of his family from his children. Quite resourceful. I admired his flexibility."

"So you became Enrico Vincenti. Venetian aristocracy."

He nodded. "Sounds great, no?"

"Want me to continue on what I know?"

He motioned his assent.

"You're sixty years old. Bachelor of science from the University of North Carolina, in biology. Master's degree from Duke University. A doctorate in virology from the University of East Anglia, the John Innes Centre, in England. Recruited there by a Pakistani pharmaceutical firm with ties to the Iraqi government. You worked for the Iraqis early on, with their initial biological weapons program, just after Saddam assumed power in 1979. At Salman Pak, north of Baghdad, operated by the Technical Research Center, which oversaw their germ search. Though Iraq signed the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972, Saddam never ratified it. You stayed with them until 1990, just before the first Gulf War went to shit in a handbasket for the Iraqis. That's when they shut everything down and you hauled ass."

"All correct, Ms. Nelle, or do I get to call you Stephanie?"

"Whatever you prefer."

"Okay, Stephanie, why am I so interesting to the president of the United States?"

"I wasn't finished."

He motioned again for her to continue.

"Anthrax, botulinum, cholera, plague, ricin, salmonella, even smallpox-you and your colleagues dabbled with them all."

"Didn't your people in Washington finally figure out that was all fiction?"

"May have been in 2003 when Bush invaded, but it sure as hell wasn't in 1990. Then, it was real. I particularly liked camel pox. You assholes thought it the perfect weapon. Safer than smallpox to handle in the lab, but a great ethnic weapon since Iraqis were generally immune thanks to all of the camels they've handled through the centuries. But for Westerners and Israelis, another matter entirely. Quite a deadly zoonosis."

"More fiction," Vincenti said, and she wondered how many times he'd voiced the same lie with similar conviction.

"Too many documents, photos, and witnesses to make that cover story stick," she said. "That's why you disappeared from Iraq, after 1990."

"Get real, Stephanie, nobody in the eighties thought biological warfare was even a weapon of mass destruction. Washington could not have cared less. Saddam, at least, saw its potential."

"We know better now. It's quite a threat. In fact, many believe that the first biological war won't be a cataclysmic exchange. It'll be a low-intensity, regional conflict. A rogue state versus its neighbor. No global consensual morality will apply. Just local hatred and indiscriminate killing. Similar to the Iran/Iraq War of the nineteen-eighties where some of your bugs were actually used on people."

"Interesting theory, but isn't that your president's problem? Why do I care?"

She decided to change tack. "Your company, Philogen Pharmaceutique, is quite a success story. You personally own two point four million shares of its stock, representing about forty-two percent of the company, the single largest shareholder. An impressive conglomerate. Assets at just under ten billion euros, which includes wholly owned subsidiaries that manufacture cosmetics, toiletries, soap, frozen foods, and a chain of European department stores. You bought the company fifteen years ago for practically nothing-"

"I'm sure your research showed it was nearly bankrupt at the time."

"Which begs the question-how and why did you manage to both buy and save it?"

"Ever hear of public offerings? People invested."

"Not really. You funneled most of the start-up capital into it. About forty million dollars, by our estimate. Quite a nest egg you amassed from working for a rogue government."

"The Iraqis were generous. They also had a superb health plan and a wonderful retirement system."

"Many of you profited. We monitored a lot of key microbiologists back then. You included."

He seemed to catch the edge in her voice. "Is there a point to this visit?"

"You're quite the businessman. From all accounts, an excellent entrepreneur. But your corporation is overextended. Your debt service is straining every resource you possess, yet you continue onward."

Edwin Davis had briefed her well.

"Daniels looking to invest? What's left, three years on his term? Tell him I could find a place on my board of directors for him."

She reached into her pocket and tossed him the jacketed elephant medallion. He caught the offering with a surprising quickness.

"You know what that is?"

He studied the decadrachm. "Looks like a man fighting an elephant. Then a man standing, holding a spear. I'm afraid history is not my strong point."

"Germs are your specialty."

He appraised her with a look of conviction.

"When the UN weapons inspectors questioned you, after the first Gulf War, about Iraq 's biological weapons program, you told them nothing had been developed. Lots of research, but the whole venture was underfunded and poorly managed."

"All those toxins you mentioned? They're bulky, difficult to store, cumbersome, and nearly impossible to control. Not practical weapons. I was right."

"Smart guys like you can conquer those problems."

"I'm not that good."

"That's what I said, too. But others disagree."

"You shouldn't listen to them."

She ignored his challenge. "Within three years after you left Iraq, Philogen Pharmaceutique was up and running and you were a member of the Venetian League." She watched to see if her words spurred a reaction. "That membership comes with a price. Quite an expensive one, I'm told."

"I don't believe it's illegal for men and women to enjoy one another's company."

"You're not the Rotary Club."

"We have a purpose, quality members, and a dedication to our mission. Sounds like any service club I know of."

"You still never answered my question," she pointed out. "Ever seen one of those coins before?"

He tossed it back to her. "Never."

She tried to read this man of commanding girth whose face was as deceptive as his voice. From everything she'd been told, he was a mediocre virologist with an ordinary education who had a knack for business. But he may also have been responsible for the death of Naomi Johns.

Time to find out.

"You're not half as smart as you think you are."

Vincenti smoothed back a rebellious lock of his thin hair. "This is becoming tiresome."

"If she's dead, so are you."

She watched again for a reaction and he seemed to be weighing the minimum truth he could voice against a lie she'd never tolerate.

"Are we finished?" he asked, still with a warm cloak of politeness.

She stood. "Actually, we're just getting started." She held up the medallion. "On the face of this coin, hidden within the folds of the warrior's cloak, are microletters. Amazing that ancient people could engrave like that. But I checked with experts and they could. The letters were like watermarks. Security devices. This one has two. ZH. Zeta. Eta. Mean anything to you?"

"Not a thing."

But she caught a moment when his eyes flickered with interest. Or was it surprise? Perhaps even a nanosecond of shock.

"I asked some experts on Old Greek. They said ZH means 'life.' Interesting, wouldn't you say, that someone went to the trouble of engraving tiny letters with such a message, when so few at the time could have read them. Lenses were practically unknown in those days."

He shrugged. "Doesn't concern me."

VINCENTI WAITED A FULL FIVE MINUTES AFTER THE PALAZZO'S front door closed. He sat in the salon and allowed the quiet to ease his anxiety. Only a rustle of caged wings and the clicking of his canaries' beaks disturbed the stillness. The palazzo had once been owned by a bon viveur of intellectual tastes who, centuries ago, made it a central location for Venetian literary society. Another owner took advantage of the Grand Canal and accommodated the many funeral processions, utilizing the room where he sat as a theater for autopsies and a holding place for corpses. Later, smugglers chose the house as a mart for contraband, deliberately surrounding its walls with ominous legends to keep the curious away.

He longed for those days.

Stephanie Nelle, employed with the U. S. Justice Department, sent supposedly by the president of the United States, had rattled him.

But not because of anything the Americans knew about his past-that would soon become irrelevant. And not because of what may have happened to their agent sent to spy on him-she was dead and buried, never to be found. No. His stomach ached because of the letters on the coin.

ZH.

Zeta. Eta.

Life.

"You can come in now," he called out.

Peter O'Conner strolled into the room, having listened to the entire conversation from the adjacent parlor. One of Vincenti's many house cats scampered into the main parlor, too.

"What do you think?" Vincenti asked.

"She's a messenger who chose her words with care."

"That medallion she showed me is exactly what Zovastina is after. It matches the description I read yesterday in the materials you gave me at the hotel." But he still did not know why the coins were so important.

"There's something new. Zovastina is coming to Venice. Today."

"On a state visit? I've heard nothing of that."

"Not official. In and out tonight. Private plane. Special arrangement, by the Vatican, with Italian customs. A source called and told me."

Now he knew. Something was definitely happening and Zovastina was several steps ahead of him. "We need to know when she arrives and where she goes."

"I'm already on it. We'll be ready."

Time for him to move, as well. "Are we ready in Samarkand?"

"Just say the word."

He decided to take advantage of his enemy's absence. No sense waiting till the weekend. "Have the jet ready. We'll leave within the hour. But while we're gone, make sure we know exactly what the Supreme Minister is doing here."

O'Conner nodded his understanding.

Now for what really troubled him. "One more thing. I need to send a message to Washington. One that will be perfectly understood. Have Stephanie Nelle killed. And get that medallion."