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22
Lily smiled when her cell phone rang the next morning. Expecting another half-humorous half-serious obscene call from Swain, she didn’t check the number of the incoming call before she answered. Just to jerk his chain, she changed her voice to a deep, almost masculine tone, and barked an impatient, “Hello!” into the phone.
“Mademoiselle Mansfield?” The voice she heard wasn’t Swain’s; it was one that had been electronically altered so the voice was distorted, and the words sounded as if they were coming out of a drum.
Lily went cold with shock and without thinking she started to disconnect the call, but calm reason reasserted itself. Just because someone had her cell phone number didn’t mean he knew where to locate her. The phone was registered in her real name; the apartment and everything connected to it was in Claudia Weber’s name. It was, in fact, reassuring that the caller had referred to her as “Mansfield”; her Claudia persona was still secure.
Who had access to this phone number? It was her private cell phone, one she used only for personal business. Tina and Averill had had the number, of course, and Zia; Swain had it. Who else? Once she’d had a large circle of acquaintances, but that had practically been precell phone; since the day she’d found Zia, the circle had grown smaller and smaller as she devoted herself to the baby, and smaller still after the debacle with Dmitri. She couldn’t think of anyone now who had this number other than Swain.
“Mademoiselle Mansfield?” the distorted voice asked again.
“Yes?” Lily replied, forcing herself to sound calm. “How did you get this number?”
He didn’t answer, instead saying in French, “You do not know me, but I knew your friends, the Joubrans.”
The words sounded strange, above and beyond the distortion that disguised the voice, as if the speaker had difficulty talking. She tensed even more at the mention of her friends. “Who are you?”
“Forgive me, but that must remain private.”
“Why?”
“It is safer.”
“Safer for whom?” she asked drily.
“Both of us.”
Okay, she could go with that. “Why did you call?”
“It is I who hired your friends to destroy the laboratory. I never intended for what happened, to happen. No one was supposed to die.”
Shocked once more, Lily groped behind her for a chair, sank down onto it. She had wanted answers, and without warning they were dropping into her lap. The phrase “never look a gift horse in the mouth” warred with “beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” So which was the caller, figuratively, a horse or a Greek?
“Why did you hire them?” she finally asked. “More to the point, why are you calling me?”
“Your friends succeeded in their mission—temporarily. Unfortunately, research has resumed, and it must be stopped. You have reason to want to succeed: revenge. That is why you killed Salvatore Nervi. Therefore, I would like to hire you to complete the mission.”
A cold sweat trickled down her spine. How did he know she’d killed Salvatore? She licked suddenly dry lips, but didn’t explore that avenue. Instead she focused on the rest of his statement. This man wanted to hire her to do what she planned to do anyway. The irony of it almost made her laugh, except she felt more bitter than amused. “What exactly is this mission?”
“There is a virus, an avian influenza virus. Dr. Giordano has altered it so it may be passed from human to human, to create a pandemic and therefore a huge demand for the vaccine he has also developed. People do not have a resistance to this virus; mankind has not encountered it before. To create even greater panic, Dr. Giordano has somehow specifically engineered this virus to cause the greatest harm to children, who do not have immune systems as fully developed as adults. Millions will die, mademoiselle. It will be a pandemic greater than the one in 1918, which is believed to have killed between twenty and fifty million people.“
. . . Cause the greatest harm to children. Zia. Lily felt sick that she had been right, that it was something concerning Zia that had spurred Averill and Tina to the act that had eventually resulted in their deaths. In trying to protect Zia, they had caused her death. She wanted to scream at the unfairness of it, at the ultimate irony. She clenched her fist, fighting for control, fighting to contain the fury and pain that rose into her throat like lava.
“The virus has been perfected. As soon as the vaccine is ready, packages will be delivered worldwide to the largest cities in the world, where human contact is greatest. The influenza will spread rapidly. By the time there is worldwide panic, thousands, perhaps millions, will have died. Then Dr. Giordano will announce that he has developed a vaccine for avian influenza, and the Nervi organization will be able to name its price for it. They will make an enormous fortune.”
Yes, they would. It was classic. Control the supply, then create a demand for it. De Beers did it with diamonds; by carefully limiting the diamonds available on the market, they kept the price artificially high. Diamonds weren’t rare at all, but the supply was controlled. It was roughly the same situation with crude oil and OPEC, except in the case of oil, the world had created its own demand.
“How do you know all this?” she asked angrily. “Why haven’t you told the authorities?”
There was a pause; then the distorted voice said, “Salvatore Nervi had many political connections, people in high positions who owed him many favors. This same laboratory is developing the vaccine against the virus, so the virus’s existence there is explained. There is no proof that would outweigh his influence. That is why I was forced to hire professionals.”
Unfortunately, that was true; there were many influential politicians who had set up housekeeping in Salvatore’s pocket, making him all but untouchable.
It was also true that she had no idea whom she was talking to, if he was on the level, or if Rodrigo had found her cell phone number and was using this as a ruse to draw her out. She would have to be a fool to take everything this man said at face value.
“Will you do it?” he asked.
“How can I say yes when I don’t know who you are? How can I possibly trust you?”
