The Devil's Triangle (A Brit in the FBI 4)

The man said, marveling, “Can you imagine, we are the ones to drain the Gobi?”

Kitsune stood silently, listening. She shook her head. Drain the Gobi Desert dry? All that sand covering Beijing? By their grandfather? What she’d heard, it was nuts, made no sense. An image of Moses raising his staff, parting the Red Sea so the Israelites could escape the Egyptian army flashed through her mind. It was a famous image, given all the paintings and movies, and there were many who believed that was exactly what happened. But not her.

Kitsune held by her side a gnarly old piece of wood the Turks had stolen when they’d plundered Egypt in 1517, audacious enough or credulous enough to proclaim it to be Moses’s staff. She didn’t care if it was real or not, it didn’t matter. Ten million euros would keep her in bikinis for a long time. She pictur

ed Moses again, only this time she saw him waving his staff to send the sands flying out of the Gobi Desert. Such a strange image.

The voices faded away.

Moments later, the door to the parlor opened and a man came in. He was short, with dark hair and flat black eyes. This one, in spite of his well-cut dark suit, his perfectly polished boots, couldn’t be the client. He looked coarse, crude, a lieutenant playing dress-up. Another thug, only this one with a bit of power, probably running the other who’d followed her. So the man and woman she’d heard talking wanted him to handle the transaction, then bring them the staff. Fine by her. All she wanted was her money.

He crossed the room to the small desk, picked up a silver lighter, and touched it to the end of a cigarette. He blew out a stream of gray smoke and said, in passable English, “I am Antonio Pazzi, and you are the Fox. You have the package?”

“Of course.” Kitsune set the tube on the desk and stepped back. Pazzi pulled a stiletto from his coat pocket, slit open the top of the cylinder, and upended it. The well-wrapped staff slid out into his waiting hand. He reverently laid it atop the desk and peeled off the packing. He looked at the staff, motionless, staring, but not touching it. Finally, he looked up at her, smiled widely, showing yellow tobacco-stained teeth. “I did not believe you would be able to steal this precious rod from the Topkapi. Your reputation is deserved. My masters will be pleased.”

She saw him press a small button on the desk, and in the next instant she heard a door close, a boat’s engine fire to life. So he’d signaled the client that she’d brought the staff? And they’d left. Pazzi handed her a long white envelope. “Five million euros. You will leave now.”

As if she wanted to stay, maybe have a drink with this oily cretin with his yellow teeth. She wanted to open the envelope, but he kept smiling, herding her toward the door, and she felt that familiar shiver down her neck and went on red alert, her body flexed and ready to spring. Were the two men outside the door, waiting for her? Pazzi gave her a small salute, and at the last moment, he slipped past her and slammed the door behind him. She heard the key turn in the lock. In the next moment, another door opened, this time behind her. Mutt and Jeff stepped through, and both held guns in their hands.

“What a lovely surprise,” she said in Italian, and, quick as a cobra, she dove at Mutt’s feet. He had been expecting her to run, and he hesitated a moment. She rolled into him and knocked him backward, his arms flailing for purchase, and he fell against a chair. She popped back to her feet—Mutt on her left, struggling to get back up, and Jeff on her right, his Beretta aimed at her chest.

Kitsune fell to her knees, whipped out her two Walther PPKs cross-armed, and pulled the triggers almost before she’d squared the sights. Jeff fired at the same time. If she’d stayed standing, she’d be dead. Now he was the one who was dead, sprawled on his back on the floor, blood blooming from his chest. She’d missed Mutt, but his gun had clattered to the floor and slid under a red velvet sofa. He sprang to his feet and came at her, fast and hard, fists up and flying, trying to knock the gun away and kill her with his bare hands. He was fast, she’d give him that, but she was faster. A heartbeat later he was on the floor with a hole in his forehead.

Kitsune had never used guns, but in the past few months, Grant had trained her in them, and trained her well. And when he was satisfied, he’d given her the two Walthers. Almost as if Grant had known she would need them. She sent him a silent thank-you as she pointed the gun in her right hand over her shoulder, toward the locked door, just in case, and walked to the opposite side of the room. She listened but didn’t hear anything. The house had gone silent. Too silent. As if someone was listening. She had to get out of there, now.

She heard voices shouting. She yanked open the door and ran down a long hallway ending in a staircase. The house itself was narrow and old, the walls cool gray stone. She had no choice but to run up the stairs.

She heard feet pounding after her, shouts growing closer. Kitsune burst through onto a rooftop terrace. Up this high, she saw that terraces littered the rooftops, and the Venetian houses were crammed cheek by jowl, separated by the small canals that crisscrossed Venice.

She didn’t look down at the murky canal below, paid no attention to the shouts from the staircase, as men ran up to the terrace. She leaped across to the neighboring terrace. She felt a bullet whiz by her ear, and she dropped and rolled, was on her feet in a second, running to the next terrace. She heard the man leap after her, moving fast, gaining on her. She raced to the end of the rooftop and leaped again, barely missed a window box overflowing with pink and red geraniums, and skidded along the pebbled roof.

He followed her, shouting, shooting. People screamed through open windows, gondoliers looked at the sight and shouted, tourists stared up in awe as light-footed Kitsune soared over them like a bird in flight. Laundry lines tumbled into the water below. She was careful to avoid the electric lines; she’d be dead and gone before she hit the water if she grabbed one of those by accident.

She looked back, saw that it was Pazzi chasing her. She hadn’t expected him to be so fast, but he was reaching his limits, and dropping back. With a yell of frustration, he took another shot. The bullet skimmed her arm, cutting the fabric of her shirt, stinging like mad. Blood began running down, turning her hand red. Not good.

She made a last desperate leap, grabbed a laundry line, swung down and smashed against the wall of a redbrick house, knocking the air out of her lungs, and dropped, hard, onto the deck of a water taxi.

The captain, gap-mouthed, stumbled back, and she pushed him overboard, roared the engine to life and took off. She heard shouts, curses behind her, but didn’t look back. She pressed her right hand against the wound in her upper arm.

The boat shot out by the San Zaccaria vaporetto station. She was free now, in the lagoon, and she gunned it.

She was breathing hard, and bleeding, but for the moment, she was upright and safe, cool water splashing her, the wind tearing through her hair. She heard sirens. The police would be after her any minute now. She had to ditch the boat. It was a thirty-minute run to the airport, but that would be suicide; she could never fly out.

Think, Kitsune.

South, she’d go south, to Rimini, dock there, and start her way home.

She checked the gas, excellent, the tank was nearly full. She left the channel and headed into the open seas, leaving behind the wails of the sirens. She remembered she’d stuffed the white envelope Pazzi had given her inside her shirt. At least she’d been paid for the job. Or had she? She ripped the envelope open and inside she saw a folded sheet of paper. She opened it and saw a rough drawing of a dead fox. She felt the tearing pain in her arm as she wadded up the paper and tossed it overboard. Five million euros was that critical to them? But why had they wanted her dead? It didn’t matter, she didn’t care. There would be hell to pay.

CHAPTER TWO

Venice, Italy

Cassandra Kohath lay back on a chaise, watching her twin brother, Ajax, stare out the window toward the lagoon. Was he thinking about the now-dead thief, carted out to the channel by Pazzi, weighted and tossed into the water? They heard the wail of sirens, rising and falling in time with the lapping of the water against the lower walls of their villa, and both snapped to. What was that all about?

Ajax’s phone buzzed. He listened, then punched off and turned to her. “That was Lilith. Two of Pazzi’s men are dead, and he couldn’t catch the Fox. Don’t worry, he has the staff and will be here soon, doubtless full of excuses why he and his men failed to kill the wretched woman.”

Cassandra said, “I hate loose ends, Ajax, and she’s a big one.”