“I could still fly it.”
“I think we can find our own pilot,” said Rankin.
“Hey, I can find you pilots. I can get you lots of pilots.”
“Yeah?” said Guns, thinking one might know Ahmed. Paul didn’t seem like the most reliable source.
“Lots of pilots, man,” said Paul. “Say, you got something to drink? Stronger than water, I mean.”
3
The day his wife died, Rostislawitch had walked through town in a state of shock, his body numb with disbelief. He did this even though he had known for a while it was coming — his need for her was so strong that he had denied the reality of her passing until the sheet was drawn over her head. At that moment, confusion was drawn over him, and his soul was plunged into despair, from which he’d only just down awoken.
He felt that way again, sitting in the abandoned factory building several blocks from the train station. He couldn’t believe what the girl, Thera, was telling him.
He could believe some of it, but not all of it, not the part about her being an American spy, a CIA officer, even though the FSB she-wolf had said it, even though he had quizzed Thera surreptitiously about it. She seemed too young, too innocent, to be so deceptive.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Thera told him. “But someone had to get close to you to protect you.”
Rostislawitch thought this might all be an elaborate trick, an operation they would call it, to get him to come over to their side. Maybe things were still the way they were during the Cold War, when Russians and the West were locked in a battle of spy versus spy They’d get medals for bringing him in, and he would get a small flat in Texas didn’t somewhere, never heard of again until the she-wolf Kiska Babev hunted him down and took his carcass back for her own medal.
“Someone is trying to kill you. This is twice Ferg has saved you,” Thera told him.
“When was the first?” Rostislawitch asked.
“In Bologna. The car bomb.”
“That was a terrorist.”
“No, that was an assassin. He likes bombs, and he likes to make his hits look as if they’re the work of other people.”
“No one saved me,” said Rostislawitch, remembering. “Someone flew into me as the bomb exploded.”
Ferguson interrupted, walking over from his lookout post near the door.
“The person that’s trying to kill you is good. Very good,” he said. “He — or she — killed a CIA officer two years ago. That’s why we went to Bologna. Not because of whatever it was you stole, or because we want you to defect or anything like that. Because you’re the target of someone we want. We want to catch him. Or her.”
“Him or her?” asked Rostislawitch.
“We thought it was a he,” Ferguson said. “We seem to have been wrong about that.”
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“We’re pretty sure it’s Kiska Babev,” said Thera. “The Russian FSB agent who interviewed you.”
Rostislawitch remembered their meeting, the look in her eyes. She was definitely a killer, heartless.
“But now that we’re here,” continued Ferguson, “we can’t help but be interested in what you gave the Iranians.”
“I didn’t give them anything.”
“You weren’t paid?”
“They stole it from my locker. You saw me. You were there. In your disguise.”
Ferguson caught Thera’s eye and signaled with his head for her to go back by the door and keep lookout. He’d posted video bugs, but it would take considerably more than that to make him feel comfortable now.
“Tell me about what they took,” Ferguson asked the scientist in Russian. “How dangerous is it?”
Rostislawitch took a deep breath. He couldn’t decide what to do, whether to trust the Americans or not. He watched Thera walking to the door. He longed to trust her, but how could he, when she had so obviously lied?
“If I drank what they took, would I die?” Ferguson asked.
“You wouldn’t drink it,” said Rostislawitch. “The taste.” He shook his head. “You would never drink it. Or eat it. Not in that form.”
“So how is it spread?”
“If I talk to you, my friends in Russia — they’ll never be left alone.”
“If the material is used by the Iranians, hundreds of people may die,” said Ferguson.
“You’re wrong,” said Rostislawitch. “It could be thousands, even millions. Maybe millions if they know their business.”
“Then talk to me. You don’t want their deaths on your soul.”
Rostislawitch stared at Thera, silent.
“Help us,” she said, looking back into the room. “You’re not a murderer, Artur. Help us.”
Sobbing, Rostislawitch began to explain the different ways the bacteria could be used.
4
This is what came of improvisation.
Hamilton folded his arms, watching as the firemen played their hose on the burned-out building. Augusto Leterri, one of the Naples police lieutenants in charge of the investigation, stood beside him, talking on his cell phone to a superior.
Ferguson was one lucky son of a bitch, Hamilton thought. Always somehow at the right spot at the right time, riding the right twist of fate.
He kicked at a brick from the building, which had partially collapsed about twenty minutes after the explosion. The problem was, there hadn’t been enough time for the gas to fill the basement space. Another half hour, and the explosion would have claimed the entire block. That was the way he liked it: complete and utter obliteration, destruction on a grand scale. One could use a gun — certainly he had — or even a knife or poison, but where was the art in that? Where was the statement of annihilation? Where was the assurance of success?
No, the gas explosion, with the extra diversion of the hired gunner — that was the way it should have happened. And it would have, had they walked down one of the three other blocks where the trap had been set. This just happened to be the last, happened to have a geography that favored luck.
Luck. Always the deciding factor when you improvised.
“I’m sorry for the interruption,” said the detective. “That was my boss. As I was saying, I doubt this was the work of terrorists.”
“Why?” asked Hamilton.
“The inspector has already found part of the gas pipe broken,” said the detective. “If there were a bomb, there would be more residue. We will look more carefully, because you never know. But from the way the witnesses described it,
He made the sound of a fire, raising his hands up from his belly to illustrate.
“But we will look into your theory of terrorists,” added the policeman.
“I would,” said the MI6 agent. There was nothing like an intelligent man, Hamilton thought; he could be so easily fooled.
Of course, it was possible that when they discovered that the gas pipes had been broken in buildings along three other nearby streets, in effect surrounding the train station, they would conclude that it was too much of a coincidence to be accidental. Then they would think of Hamilton’s theory. Or maybe they would find a witness who
