overlying the spices he smelled an acrid tang… smoke, smoldering plastic. He looked around, curious and quiet. The dim apartment seemed to be holding its breath.
They walked carefully across the spacious living room, sniffing, searching for the source of the odor. Moving in tandem, they turned right, following the acrid smell down a short hallway, past a bathroom and a musty guest room, then to Dumenco’s small bedroom.
His computer had suffered a violent internal meltdown. The plastic slumped in on itself. Curls of brown-orange smoke oozed from the interior. His entire box of diskettes had likewise been slagged. Blackened and bubbly, melted polymers oozed across the desk, steaming on the surface.
Craig ran forward, waving his hands to clear the pungent smell from the air. “That’s acid. I remember that stink from chemistry class,” he said, covering his nose. It was already too late to prevent further damage. “Whoever sabotaged this wasn’t taking any chances.” The FBI had ways to find ghost phrasings from even the most carefully erased disk drives; but to Craig, it looked beyond hope.
“This was very recent,” Jackson said quietly. He suddenly stood up straight, listening. With his other hand he flapped his fingers together in a gesture for Craig to continue talking.
The tall dark agent crept out of the room, following the noise he had heard. Feigning nonchalance, Craig spoke out loud as if Jackson were still beside him, “I’ll check out the dresser. Dumenco could have hidden secret notes in the underwear drawer. Here, you take those over there.”
Pulling out his weapon, Jackson remained outside the door, poised and ready to spring.
Craig opened the drawers, ruffling around in the clothes to provide a diversion for Jackson. Someone with very unorthodox methods had been here in the past hour, and they might not have finished their job.
Jackson inched down the hall, past the small bath and guest room. Still buying time for his partner, Craig opened another drawer and looked down into it. Under a spare set of bed sheets he found a framed photograph.
Curious, Craig pulled out a small, old snapshot of a young woman in her late twenties and two young children, both girls. Another photo showed a young man with the aquiline nose and facial features of Dumenco himself but subtly different-a son, perhaps?
Craig pocketed the photos, sure they might give him some lead to Dumenco’s mysterious past. Jackson inched further down the hall. Craig slammed another dresser drawer. “Nothing in that one.” Without another word, he trailed after Jackson.
Now he also heard a stealthy movement from the kitchen. Reaching into his pancake holster, Craig withdrew his handgun, wishing he still had his smaller caliber Beretta for these close quarters. They moved forward together in silence.
Sliding around the corner, he bumped one of the low pictures of an onion-domed cathedral. The frame smashed to the floor with a loud noise.
Knowing they had blown their ploy, he and Jackson sprinted for the kitchen. “FBI!” he shouted. “Remain where you are.”
Instead, they heard a loud splashing noise, something dumped into a bucket of water, then breaking glass in the kitchen window.
Both agents burst into the room, handguns drawn and looking for targets. “Don’t move!” Jackson shouted.
Craig saw a figure duck through the smashed open window and land with a loud clang on the fire escape. “There he goes!” Craig said.
But before he could turn, they encountered a thick, billowing wall of greenish-yellow smoke gushing into the small room. Noxious fumes belched from a bucket on the kitchen floor like deadly exhaust.
Without thinking, Craig gasped a deep breath and inhaled the gas. It felt as if someone had exploded firecrackers in his lungs. His eyes were on fire; his nostrils burned. He choked, staggering back. “ Jackson, get-” He coughed and spluttered.
Enveloped by the greenish-yellow smoke, Jackson fell to his knees. Craig knew it was homemade chlorine gas, the kind used against American troops in World War I. Any first-year chemistry student knew how to make such a weapon from household chemicals. In the confined kitchen area, the gas was strong enough to overwhelm both men instantly.
Unable to breathe, Craig dropped to the floor himself, seeking cleaner air. Jackson collapsed beside him, wheezing. Like a distant hallucination he heard footsteps clanging down the fire escape and running away.
Desperately, Craig dragged himself toward the broken window and fresh air. He gulped in gasps that still reeked of chlorine but at least caused no further damage to his seared lungs.
The gas clouds clustered at the ceiling, making the paint blister.
Jackson wasn’t moving, though, and so Craig turned back, grabbing his partner’s collar, dragging him by the arms toward the air. Reaching out with one spasming hand, Craig fumbled with the back door, trying to turn the deadbolt. Finally, he succeeded in cracking open the porch door, which led out onto the wrought-iron balcony.
Craig and Jackson huddled by the door, trying to draw in deep breaths, but each gasp burned. Craig’s lungs were ablaze, as if he had breathed in the acid that had been used to destroy Dumenco’s computer. Jackson retched and coughed beside him, incapacitated. Craig raised his head to the window, took another huge gulp of fresh air.
On the other side of the building, he heard a car start, then drive off. Their attacker had escaped, but Craig couldn’t continue the pursuit. He slumped back, struggling just to remain conscious.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Wednesday, 4:33 p.m.
Bangalore, India
Nicholas Bretti did not loosen his grip on his airline seat until the small plane had landed safely at the Bangalore airport. He wondered if he ever relax again, ever sleep without nightmares, would ever stop jumping and twitching at every little unexpected sound.
It wasn’t likely to happen any time soon.
Exactly two hours after leaving Mr. Ambalal and the Liberty for All party in New Delhi-fifteen hours after taking off from O’Hare in Chicago, and less than a day after shooting an FBI agent-Bretti was sober and ready to meet the people who had paid his bills over the past year. He had to make this good, or else they would never help him out of this mess. What other choice did he have?
He worried that his reception in Bangalore would be no different from what he had experienced in New Delhi. Despite the $25,000 he had already pocketed, he was beginning to wonder if Chandrawalia would make good on his promise to come through with the rest of the money.
Twenty-five grand-a year’s salary. Was that enough for the hell he had gotten himself into? Shit, no. Now it was up to the Indian government to salvage the situation, but he had no idea if they would be sympathetic.
Exiting the jet ramp into the terminal, Bretti was mobbed by a dozen children. They swarmed around him, plunging their hands into his pockets, searching for coins and jabbering the only English phrases they knew, “Please give, sir! Please give!”
Scents of incense and curry mixed with the pungent odor of unwashed bodies. Unprotected by the buffer of a customs area this time, Bretti fought his way through an ever-shifting mob toward the airport exit.
The terminal building bustled with people, some wearing sarongs, others, like the children around him, in shorts and dirty white T-shirts. He saw men, women, boys… but there were no little girls in sight. Maybe the families kept them locked up somewhere.
A cackling chicken flew into the air as a family tried to stuff it back into a cage at the check-in counter. A dark-robed old woman with a small gold stud through her nose and a red mark on her forehead, clutched a baby goat to her breast.
Fifty feet away by the outside door, a man wearing a black-and-yellow splotched shirt held up a sign, Bretti. Bretti made eye contact with the man, who waved for him to follow. “Here, sir!”
