“I will tell you in truth why I am here,” she said. “And I expect truth from you in return.”
“I’m as truthful as they come.”
“Artur Rostislawitch works in a sensitive area regarding bacteria that can be used as weapons.”
“Against international law?”
“There is nothing preventing his research, as you very well know,” said Kiska. “Your scientists work on similar projects. He has had access to very sensitive materials. His career — he has suffered professional setbacks which are none of my concern. Politics. In any event, it is conceivable that he is disgruntled, which I believe you know.”
“Doesn’t look like the happiest guy in the world,” said Ferguson, shooting him a glance.
Someone had just told a joke and Rostislawitch was laughing.
“Then again, you never know,” said Ferguson.
“Some days ago — just before he came to Bologna in fact — one of the safety indicators at a lab where he worked was tampered with. There are some who believe he took material, a culture of bacteria that might be used as a weapon.”
“There’s a question about it?” said Ferguson.
“There are many questions. Nothing may have been taken; he may not have been the one.” Kiska paused. She did not like the ambiguity herself. “The material was something that he worked on himself. It is an old culture, from a program that is no longer sanctioned. He comes here, and you are watching him. Why, I wonder. Has my friend switched from tracking down nuclear material for his government to recruiting Russian scientists? Usually that is a job for an academic, or perhaps a lower-level officer. But then there is a bomb, and though my friend is near it when it explodes, I am blamed. So what is going on, I wonder. What is going on, Bobby?”
“If you keep talking loud enough, Rostislawitch will hear you and you can ask him yourself.”
“I intend to. Why are you in Italy?”
“I’m trying to catch the person who wants to kill Rostislawitch.”
Kiska could not entirely cover her surprise. “Who is it?”
“Some people think it’s you.”
“I told you, no games.”
“I’m being honest.”
The waiter started to approach, but one glance from Kiska sent him scurrying back to the kitchen.
“Why would I kill him?”
“Maybe to keep whatever it is he took from coming to me,” said Ferguson. “Except I wasn’t the one buying it.”
Needing a moment to process everything he had said, Kiska changed the subject.
“The girl you have cozying up to him — she wouldn’t have taken it?”
“She doesn’t look like the double-crossing type, does she?”
Kiska leaned back in her seat. “If you are not buying the material from Rostislawitch, who is?”
Ferguson shrugged. “I haven’t heard that anything is for sale.”
“Why would someone want to kill him? It must be related to material, or his research.”
“You know better than me. I’d love to find a motive. Then I’d find out who it was. I don’t really care about the scientist.” Ferguson leaned ever so slightly over the table. “I care about the murderer.”
“Why?”
“He killed one of my people.”
Kiska’s anger had dissipated. There was something about Ferguson that made him difficult to stay mad at. More likely it was her own flaw, some hard-to-map chink in her personality that wanted to forgive handsome men their sins.
A deadly flaw, she thought.
“And you don’t know who the murderer is?” Kiska asked.
Ferguson shook his head.
“Waiter, we’re ready,” Kiska said, using English as she raised her hand to summon him.
“I don’t have a menu,” said Ferguson.
“Have the lamb omelet,” she told him. “It’s very good.”
“Lamb omelet?”
“It’s very good.”
Kiska ordered for both of them. Ferguson, meanwhile, tried to decide if what Kiska was telling him was actually true. It was certainly alarming, but the FSB wasn’t known for volunteering information like that. Even in their earlier encounter, Kiska had never been this forthcoming.
But what possible angle could she be playing? Get him to do something that would lead her to the scientist?
Maybe Rostislawitch wasn’t her target at all — maybe the First Team and its infrastructure was: give them a lead and see how they reacted.
Was he overthinking it?
“So you know that someone is trying to kill him, but you do not know who,” said Kiska. “Where did you get such information?”
“It’s complicated,” said Ferguson.
“Then you may have the wrong target.”
“I may.” Ferguson took a tiny sip of wine. “So tell me about the material that’s missing. What was it?”
“It’s a bacteria, a type of E. coli. That’s all I know.”
“E. coli is the stuff in our stomachs.”
“Some is. There are many, many varieties. Some harm us; some don’t.”
“And this one does. Why?”
“I honestly don’t know. That is not my specialty.” She waved her hand. “I’m told that the material may have been the subject of a weapons program at one time in the distant past, but that it was decided to be too… inappropriate. Difficult to use.”
“Why?”
“Bobby, you look for answers that even I do not have access to. You haven’t changed.”
“Who would he sell to?” asked Ferguson.
“If not you?”
“If not me.”
“I see someone from Bundesnachrichtendienst, covered as a commerce attache. Clumsy, for the Germans.”
“BND is so unimaginative,” said Ferguson.
Bundesnachrichtendienst — BND — was the German intelligence service.
“I assume there are others,” said Kiska, who had put her assistant in Moscow to work vetting the names of the scientists enrolled at the conference. “I don’t get out of Moscow that much.”
“A shame.”
Kiska looked over in the scientist’s direction. She couldn’t see him from where she was sitting, but she imagined that he would be smiling, happy — perhaps he had already completed the deal and was on his way to becoming rich.
Or maybe not. She had been on cases where a string of circumstances led to great suspicions, all of which later proved unfounded.
But Ferguson’s presence told her there was something real. How much of what he said was a lie she couldn’t tell. In the past, Ferguson had not so much lied as left things out. He was certainly doing that here, but what details was he omitting besides the information on how they had tracked the killer? Did he actually know who it was? Was Rostislawitch even the target?
“We’re watching the scientist’s accounts,” Kiska said.
“Probably he has one you don’t know about.”
“It’s possible.”
“We could compare notes.”
“Give me the list that you have and I will tell you if it’s correct,” said Kiska.
