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So. She had accomplished her mission and fled the country. She was perhaps out of his reach now, but she wasn’t out of the reach of her own countrymen. With Blanc on the job, he would be able to stay abreast of their search for her, and when they were closing in on her, he would step in and do the honors himself. With great pleasure.
11
When Rodrigo received the faxed papers, he stared for a long time at the picture of the woman who had killed his father. His machine was a color printer, so he received the full impact of the skillfulness of her disguise. Her hair was wheat blond and very straight, her eyes a piercing pale blue. She was very Nordic in looks, with a strong, lean face and high cheekbones. He was amazed at how changing her coloring to dark hair and brown eyes had softened her face; her facial structure had remained unchanged, but one’s perception of her was definitely altered. He thought she could have walked into the room and sat next to him, and it would have taken him a moment to recognize her.
He had wondered what his father had seen in her. As a brunette, she had left Rodrigo cold; his reaction to her as a blonde was very different. It wasn’t just the normal Italian reaction to blond hair, either. It was as if he was truly seeing her for the first time, seeing the intellect and strong will so evident in those pale eyes. Perhaps Salvatore had been more perceptive than he himself was, because his father had respected strength as he’d respected nothing else. This woman was strong. Once she had crossed his path, it was almost inevitable that Salvatore would have been attracted to her.
Rodrigo leafed through the other pages Blanc had sent him. He was interested in the Mansfield woman’s employment history with the American CIA; she was a hired killer, period. He wasn’t shocked that governments used such people; he would have been shocked if they didn’t. This was information he could use at a later date if he needed a particular favor from the American government, but nothing that would help him right now.
He was more interested in the information about her family: a mother and a sister. The mother, Elizabeth Mansfield, lived in Chicago; the younger sister, Diandra, lived with her husband and two children in Toledo, Ohio. If he couldn’t locate Liliane, he thought, he could use her family to flush her out of hiding. Then he read that she hadn’t been in contact with her family in years, and had to allow for the possibility that she might not care about their welfare.
The last page indicated what Blanc had told him, that his father’s murder had not been ordered by the Americans. She had acted alone, seeking vengeance for the deaths of her friends the Joubrans. The CIA had dispatched an operative to terminate the problem.
Terminate. That was a very good word, but he wanted to do the terminating himself. If possible, he would have that satisfaction. If not, he would accept with good grace that the Americans had handled the situation.
The very last paragraph made him sit up straight. The subject had fled to London using an alias, then evidently switched identities once again and returned to Paris. Search efforts were focusing there. The operative on location believed she was preparing for yet another strike against the Nervi organization.
Rodrigo felt as if he’d been electrified; every fine hair on his body lifted, and chills ran down his spine.
She had come back to Paris. She was here, within his reach. It was a bold move, and if not for M. Blanc, he would have been caught unawares. His personal security was as tight as he could humanly make it, but what about the Nervi holdings scattered around Europe? More particularly, what about the ones here in the Paris area? The security systems in place were good, yes, but where this woman was concerned, extra precautions were called for.
What was her most likely target? The answer came immediately to mind: Vincenzo’s laboratory. He knew it; the flash of intuition too strong to ignore. That was where her friends had struck, and gotten shot for their efforts. She would see it as poetic justice if she completed the job, perhaps setting a series of explosive charges and completely demolishing the laboratory complex.
Losing the projected profits from the influenza vaccine wouldn’t bankrupt him, but he was looking forward to that huge influx of cash. Money was the real power in the world, behind the kings and oil princes, the presidents and prime ministers, with each group trying to get more than the other. But even greater than the lost profits would be the insult, the loss of face. Another incident at the lab and the WHO would begin questioning the security, at best simply withdrawing the funding, at worst insisting on on-site inspections. He didn’t want anyone from the outside looking through the laboratory. Vincenzo could probably hide or disguise what he was doing, but any further delay would wreck their plans.
He couldn’t let her win. Aside from everything else, word would reach the streets that Rodrigo Nervi had been bested—and by a woman. He could perhaps keep it quiet for a time, but eventually someone would talk. Someone always talked.
This could not have happened at a worse time. He had just buried his father no more than a week before. As well as he knew what needed to be done, nevertheless he was aware that on some fronts there was still a lingering doubt th
at he could step into Salvatore’s shoes. And he himself had taken over a lot of the everyday work of Salvatore’s; he had no one in position to do the same for him.
He was in the middle of arranging a shipment of weapons-grade plutonium to Syria. There were opiates to funnel into various countries, arms deals to be made, in addition to all the legitimate work of running a multifaceted corporation. He had to attend board meetings.
But to apprehend Liliane Mansfield, he would make the time, if he had to clear his slate of everything else. By tomorrow morning, every employee of his in France would have a photograph of her. If she walked down the street, eventually someone would recognize her.
The security at the laboratory was common, at least on the outside. Fenced and gated—with one entrance in front and one in back, both manned by two guards—the lab itself was a series of connected buildings that were mostly windowless. The architecture was graceless, the buildings themselves constructed of ordinary red brick. The parking lot on the left contained about fifty vehicles.
Swain noted all of this on one drive-by. The Jaguar was kind of noticeable, so he couldn’t do an immediate repeat without the guards noticing. Instead he waited until the next day to do another drive-by, and in the meantime, he used all his contacts to locate the building specs so he could figure out how Lily was most likely to try to gain entrance. For the exterior grounds, security was pretty much what he could see: the fence, the gated entrances, the guards. At night, the grounds were patrolled by a guard with a leashed German shepherd, and the grounds were well-lit.
For obvious reasons, he thought she would try for a night entrance, despite the dog. The night lighting was good, but created shadows that provided concealment. There weren’t as many people around at night, plus people naturally got tired in the wee hours. She was an expert with a pistol, and could take out both the guard and the dog with well-placed sedation darts. Not instantaneously, true, and the guard might be able to yell or otherwise attract attention. Of course, she could also kill them; if she used a silencer, the guards at the gate wouldn’t hear a thing.
Swain didn’t like that thought. He wouldn’t bat an eyelash if she killed the guard, but it made him queasy to think about harming the dog. He was a sucker for dogs, even trained attack dogs. People were a different story; some of them just cried out for killing. He excluded most kids from that theory, lumping them in with dogs, though he’d met some kids he’d thought the world would be better off without. He was just glad his own kids hadn’t turned out to be jerks, because it would’ve been embarrassing.
He just hoped Lily didn’t shoot dogs. A lot of his natural sympathy for her would go down the drain if she did.
There was a nice little park across the street from the laboratory. On warm summer days, a lot of the employees from the nearby shops would find their way there to relax during their lunch breaks. There were a few hardy souls there even on a brisk November day, walking their dogs, reading; enough of them, in fact that one more man wouldn’t be noticeable.
The streets here were wider than in the older parts of Paris, but parking was still at a premium. Finally Swain found a parking space nearby, and walked to the park. He bought a cup of coffee and found himself a nice bench in the sun where he could watch the comings and goings at the lab, familiarize himself with the routine, maybe notice some security weakness he hadn’t already spotted. If he was lucky, Lily might choose today to do the same thing. There was no telling what garb she’d be wearing, or what color wig, so he might wander around and study the park-goers’ noses and mouths. He thought he’d recognize the shape of Lily’s mouth anywhere.
The laboratory complex looked ordinary enough; the external security was what one would expect at any manufacturing facility: a perimeter of fencing, limited access, uniformed guards at the gates. Anything more, such as twelve-foot concrete walls with barbed wire on the top, would only attract attention.
The sophisticated security, Lily thought, would be inside. Fingerprint scans or retinal scans for entry into the most restricted areas. Motion sensors. Laser beams. Sensors for broken glass, weight sensors, you name it. She needed to know exactly what was inside, and she might have to hire someone who could bypass those systems. She knew several people in the business, but she wanted to stay away from acquaintances. If the word had gone out that she was now persona non grata at the Agency, none of them would be inclined to help her. They might even actively work against her, dropping a word in interested ears about her location and intentions.
The neighborhood was an interesting mix of ethnic shops, trendy little boutiques—like there was ever any other kind—cafés, coffee shops, and cheap apartment housing. A small park gave the eye a break from the urban sprawl, though most of the trees had been denuded by approaching winter and the brisk wind made the limbs rattle like bones against each other.
She felt much better today, almost normal. Her legs had held up well on the brisk walk from the train, and she wasn’t breathless. Tomorrow, she thought, she would try a slow jog, but today she was content to walk.
She stopped in a coffee shop and bought a cup of strong black coffee, as well as a pastry with a buttery, flaky crust that almost melted in her mouth as soon as she took a bite. The park was just fifty meters distant, so she walked there and selected a bench in the sun, where she devoted herself to the sinful pastry and her coffee. When she was finished, she licked her fingers, then took a thin notebook from her tote, opened it in her lap, and bent her head over it. She pretended to be engrossed in what she was reading, but in reality her eyes were busy, her gaze moving from point to point, noting the people in the park and the placement of certain things.
