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FBI Headquarters
26 Federal Plaza
22nd Floor, Home of Covert Eyes
New York, New York
Nicholas grabbed Mike’s arm, mouthed Kitsune, and the two of them stopped, leaving Ben, Louisa, Gray, and Lia to their merriment as they set up their stations, argued over space, plugged in their computers, and settled in. He pressed Speaker.
“Kitsune, we didn’t expect to hear from you again. What sort of help could you possibly need from us?”
There was no teasing soft Scottish burr, no smart mouth, only a whoosh of breath, then her frantic voice. “I’m in real trouble, and my husband—they kidnapped Grant to get me back to Venice, to kill me.”
Mike met Nicholas’s eyes. “Kitsune, it’s Mike. Tell us why your husband was kidnapped. Who wants to kill you?”
Nicholas said, “You stole something, didn’t you? And pissed off your client, right? And here I thought marriage to a straight-up Beefeater would turn you legit. Tell me right now, Kitsune, what did you steal?”
“The line isn’t secure. No, don’t hang up on me, Nicholas. Grant’s not a Beefeater anymore.” A pause, then her voice came back again, more under control. “No, I did everything just as I usually do. There’s something more, something really big and scary. Quickly, turn on the television.”
Mike said, “We’re setting up our new offices, it will take a moment. This better be good, Kitsune, or I’ll kick your butt if I ever see you again.”
Kitsune said, “You could indeed try, Michaela. Hurry, turn on the television.”
They went into the conference room just as Louisa plugged in the huge wall television and turned to CNN. What they saw made their jaws drop. It was beyond scary, it was surreal, like a special effect in a movie. They watched as miles of whipped-up sand hurtled madly into Beijing. Everyone was too shocked to speak.
Mike said quietly to the team, “It’s Kitsune on Nicholas’s cell. Please listen and take notes.” Everyone nodded, not looking away from the terrifying real-time mountain of sand, miles wide.
“Okay, Kitsune,” Nicholas said, “we’re watching the Gobi Desert whip a bloody big sandstorm into Beijing.”
“It’s not just a bad sandstorm, Nicholas. People are dying, they can’t breathe. It doesn’t matter if the people are indoors, the sand is forcing itself into their buildings. It’s been going on for hours, it came on with no warning. Beijing is being wiped out.”
“Kitsune,” Mike said, “there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s a horrible natural disaster—”
Kitsune interrupted her. “That’s the thing. I don’t believe it is a natural disaster, and that’s why you have to come to Venice. You have to figure out how this happened and why. It’s not only for Grant and me, you see that, don’t you?” She was talking fast, her words tumbling over each other. She was very upset and very frightened. Nicholas raised an eyebrow at Mike. This was not the Kitsune they remembered: no fear, lightning fast reflexes, and a powerful brain.
Mike said, “You said there were no warnings? That hardly seems likely.”
Gray Wharton was now on his laptop, one eye on his screen, the other on the television. He rolled his wrist toward Nicholas in a keep her talking motion. He was trying to trace her call. Good luck, Nicholas thought. He’d bet the bank she was using a burner.
Kitsune said, “You see the extensive satellite imagery, right? You see that the loss of life will be in the thousands. It came o
n too fast for anyone to escape. People are lost on the roads, dying in their cars.”
Nicholas said, “Yes, we are seeing all that. But how can it not be a natural disaster?”
“Because it’s an engineered storm.”
That brought everyone in the room to a standstill. Brows raised, mouths opened to ask questions, but Nicholas raised his hand. “They have sandstorms in Beijing all the time. Granted, this one seems terrible, but it happens from time to time, right?”
“This one’s on a much bigger scale than anything anyone’s ever seen before. Eleven provinces in the north are unreachable. They’ve issued a red-alert warning, but it’s come much too late.”
Mike said, “But who could engineer a sandstorm? It can’t be done.”
Nicholas grabbed his tablet and tapped into NASA’s Aqua satellite, pushed the content on his tablet to the large screen in front of them, so everyone could see the satellite imagery. The images made Mike’s heart go to her throat. The satellite images were more horrific than the ground footage. Walls of sand, hundreds of feet high, battered the edges of the skyscrapers, filled the spaces between buildings, covered the roads and streets twenty feet deep; it was a monstrous, massive tidal wave of sand.
She couldn’t imagine being in that storm and prayed for those who were. When Kitsune spoke again, Mike realized she truly was scared, very scared.
“Here’s the deal. The delivery I was making to the client wasn’t a run-of-the-mill thing. It was an artifact. A historical object.”
