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“How are you going to do that?” Swain asked.
“I have arranged for you to be hired by the younger Nervi, Damone, who has arrived from Switzerland to aid
his brother. Have you ever met him, mademoiselle?” he asked Lily.
She shook her head. “No, he was always in Switzerland. I gather he’s something of a financial wizard. But why would he need to hire anyone for anything? wouldn’t Rodrigo do that, anyway?”
“As I said, he is here to shoulder some of the administrative burden. He wishes to have an outside firm look at the security measures and make certain they are as impregnable as it is possible to make them. Because this is for the protection of the laboratory, Rodrigo agrees.”
“Rodrigo knows what I look like,” Lily pointed out. “All of his employees do.”
“But he does not know Monsieur Swain, does he?” Blanc said. “That is fortuitous. And I believe you are somewhat skilled at disguise?”
“To some degree,” Lily said, surprised that he knew anything about that.
“So this Damone is going to hire us, sight unseen?” Swain asked doubtfully.
Blanc gave a slight smile. “I have been given the task of locating someone for him. He trusts me, and will not question my judgment. Damone Nervi himself will take you through security, into the laboratory.” He spread his hands. “What could be better?”
29
“This isn’t a simple job,” Swain said. For the sake of privacy, the three had repaired to a small café, where they sat at the most isolated table with their coffee and went over the briefcase’s contents. They were using both French and English, having discovered this worked well for them. Blanc could express himself better in French, but Swain could understand it, and vice versa. Without appearing to think about it, Lily used both depending on whom she was speaking to. “It’ll take at least a week to complete my shopping list,” he continued.
To Swain’s annoyance, Blanc immediately looked at Lily as if for confirmation. She shrugged and said, “I know nothing about explosives and demolition. Swain is the expert.”
He hadn’t told her he was an expert, but he appreciated the vote of confidence. As it happened, he did know his way around a detonator.
“The cover story you set up for Damone is good,” he explained, “but now we have to back it up. From what you’ve said this Damone isn’t stupid—”
“No,” Blanc murmured. “Far from it.”
“—and you can bet Rodrigo will at least be curious enough to check our credentials.”
“At the least,” Lily said wryly. “If he has time, he’ll do a full-scale investigation.”
“We’ll have to make sure he doesn’t have that time. We’ll have to plant the explosives the first time we’re in, because there might not be a second chance. Does Damone trust you enough that he’ll take us into the laboratory before Rodrigo has a chance to investigate us?”
“He does,” Blanc replied without hesitation. “I will tell him I did a thorough investigation myself.”
Swain started to ask if Damone didn’t know Interpol did no investigations, but swallowed the words because there was no way in hell he could explain to Lily how he knew Blanc was Interpol. Blanc wasn’t the only one who had to tread lightly in these conversational waters.
“We’ll need a panel truck or van, business cards, stationery, coveralls—all the outer requirements of a business. The van can carry everything we need; at least these blueprints of the complex give me an idea of the area we might have to cover. I don’t suppose you know exactly where the lab in question is in the complex?”
Blanc shook his head. “Nor do I know if everything pertinent is in one area. Records may be scattered throughout the complex, though that would be shoddy record-keeping, wouldn’t it?”
“Or smart, if there are now built-in redundancies, so if one set of records is destroyed there are backups. That’s something we’ll have to find out while we’re there. Can Damone have Dr. Giordano himself give us a tour? Since it involves security for his own work, he would likely show us any redundancies so we could make certain they’re properly protected,” Lily said.
They were working with a lot of uncertainties here, but Swain remembered that Lily had a reputation for being able to read people. That was why, except for one thing, he’d been totally himself with her. He hadn’t wanted her to detect any phoniness about him. Lily had met Dr. Giordano, gotten a sense of the man. He was proud of his work, she said; professionally it was sheer genius. So, yeah, he might well show them all of the safety measures in place for his research material. It had already been destroyed once; he wouldn’t want that to happen again.
A worried expression grew in Blanc’s eyes. “Will you set off the explosives with so many people around, or wait until night when there are fewer present?”
“We can’t take the chance that someone will spot the packages if we leave them until night. They’ll have to be detonated as soon as possible after placement.”
“We could have a mock bomb-threat drill,” Lily suggested. “Announce it immediately that at some undisclosed time during the day, the alarm will sound and they will be required to make a fast, orderly exit. If anyone sees something suspicious, they’ll probably think it’s part of the drill. In fact, we can make that part of the exercise: tell them that mock explosives are being planted throughout the building, and the test will be if all of them are spotted while the workers are going about their normal routine. They’re not to conduct searches, just be alert, that sort of thing. A bonus to anyone who spots an explosive device. They’re not to touch them, just report the location.”
“Make the workers part of the plot?” Swain half-closed his eyes as he considered it. That would take a lot of uncertainty out of the plan, because then he and Lily would be expected to skulk around planting ominous-looking packages. Dr. Giordano might even show them some good hiding places for the explosives. The plan was so sneaky and brash that no one would be on guard against it. The biggest challenge would probably be disguising Lily well enough that Dr. Giordano didn’t recognize her. “That’s diabolical. I like it. We’d even have an excuse for taking in the explosives, if it’s detected; we could show the workers exactly what Semtex or C-4 looks like, so they can recognize it in the future.”
“You will use plastique?” Blanc asked.
