He chuckled. “Do I look stupid?”
Actually, he did.
The man returned with the ice cream and Chick-fil-A Man started licking the sides. “Wow, that’s good stuff.”
As the other man withdrew, she asked, “What’s Treasury’s interest in Larks? He was forced out three months ago.”
The man’s
tongue continued to attack the cone. “He copied some documents. We want them back. We’re also looking for a guy named Anan Wayne Howell. I think you know the name?”
That she did.
“We think Larks will lead us to him, but not with your guard dog on duty.”
“Tell the secretary of Treasury he needs to take all this up with the attorney general.”
He found the cone and bit into it. “I’m not an errand boy.”
No, he wasn’t. He was a fool, which made him even lower on the pole. He finished the cone and again licked his fingers.
She averted her eyes until he finished.
He stuffed the balled napkins, the Styrofoam cup, and the foil-lined jacket for the chicken sandwich into a paper bag. Then he stood, bag in hand, and threw her a glare that was devoid of all whimsical humor. “Remember what I said. Stay away from Larks and call Malone off. We won’t warn you again.”
“We?”
“People who can cause you problems.”
She kept her cool. “I need my phone back.”
He found the unit in his pocket, dropped it to the floor, and shattered it with the heel of his shoe. With his trash in hand, he and his companion strutted away.
She watched as they left the mall.
Pleased the fish had not only nibbled the bait, but swallowed it hook, line, sinker—even the whole damn boat.
SIX
VENICE
Malone fired up the inboard motors, which sputtered then, as he readjusted the throttle, roared to life. He backed the launch out of the boathouse. The V-hull looked to be a fifteen-footer, all wood, and he could feel the engines’ powerful hum. He knew little about the lagoon except that its navigable routes were defined by lighted pilings, bicoles, there to help boats avoid the mudflats, tidal islands, and salt marshes. Merchants and men-of-war had plodded these waters for centuries, the currents fed by the ebb and flow of the sea, so treacherous that no enemy had ever taken Venice by force.
He decided to follow the lighted route and head back toward town, then round the main island for the cruise ship dock that sat on its west end. When he’d left the ship earlier, water taxis and private launches were ferrying people to and from that dock. Another one would not be noticed.
He found the lagoon and shifted the throttle from reverse to forward. Boats were no strangers to him. His late father was career navy, achieving the rank of commander. He’d matched that rise, spending nine years on active duty before being reassigned to the Magellan Billet. Back in Copenhagen he occasionally rented a sloop and enjoyed an afternoon on the choppy Øresund.
He swung the bow around.
Another boat appeared from the darkness, its profile rushing straight at him at high speed. In the dim light he saw two men, one aiming a gun his way. He dove down as pops rang out and bullets thudded into the windshield.
Where the hell had they come from?
He yanked the wheel hard right and headed away from Venice, toward the island of Murano and its glass factories, which lay just northeast of Isla de San Michele. A channel about half a mile wide separated the two locales, marked with more bicoles, their lights signaling a path north in the darkness toward Burano and Torcello. He pushed the throttle forward, and the diesels’ even roar knifed the bow across the calm water.
His assailants were behind him, but gaining, both boats scudding across the surface in clouds of noisy spray. He found the channel and stayed between the lights on either side, the path about fifty yards wide and illuminated like a fairground. He could take the two men behind him, but he needed room to maneuver—and some privacy would be good. That helicopter crash had certainly attracted attention, and the guard on San Michele had surely called the authorities by now. Police boats could come from anywhere at any time.
He turned east, then back north, heading away from Murano. The boat behind was gaining. He still toted his gun with a full magazine, but hitting anything from a pitching deck in the dark, while trying to stay in the channel, seemed unlikely. Apparently his pursuers had come to the same conclusion, as no more shots had been fired.
The second boat swept in close.
One of the men leaped across, slamming his body into Malone. He lost his grip on the wheel. They tumbled to the deck. The boat veered left. He catapulted the man off him and tried to regain control, but his assailant lunged. In the darkness he noticed Asian features, the compact frame hard as steel. He swung around, pivoting off the wheel, and kicked the man in the face, sending him reeling toward the stern. He stuffed a hand into his back pocket, found his Beretta, and shot the problem in the chest. The bullet’s recoil propelled the body over the side and into the water.
The second boat remained on him, pounding into the starboard side, trying to maneuver him out of the channel. They were racing along, still within the lights that defined out of bounds. He needed this over. Who these people were was anybody’s guess. Were they on the side of the folks who’d come to receive the $20 million? Or part of the team that stole it? Apparently somebody had worked a lot of planning for tonight. The only thing they hadn’t anticipated was a retired freelance agent screwing everything up.
He veered right, kissed the second boat, and grabbed his bearings. He was past Burano, near Torcello, in a quiet, darkened part of the lagoon. The lights of Venice burned miles to the south. He held the wheel tight and readied himself.
The hull was slammed again and recoiled.
Then another crash.
He worked the wheel and pressed his boat tight against the other, both craft racing ahead toward the right side of the channel. He kept close and did not allow the other boat any room to maneuver. The other driver’s attention seemed focused on him.
Big mistake.
He forced them more right, closer and closer to the edge. The next bicole was less than half a mile ahead and he intended to give his assailant a choice. Crash into it or go farther right, out of the channel. Left was not an option. The other man was all shadow, shaped similarly to the first one.
He continued to force the other craft over.
The piling approached.
A hundred yards.
Fifty.
Time for his attacker to choose.
Malone leaped left from his boat into the channel. He hit the water feetfirst and surfaced just as the boats crashed into the concrete tripod piling, both hulls vaulting skyward, engines whining, propellers beating only air. They careened down and splashed the water on the channel side, but did not float long, quickly sinking, their engines’ wild chaos drowned to silence.
He breaststroked to the far side of the channel and found a sandbar only a few yards beyond the defined perimeter, the water barely knee-deep. He suddenly realized how close he’d come to disaster. He searched the darkness for the man from the other boat, but saw and heard nothing. He stood in the lagoon, a good mile from the nearest shore, eyes burning, hair plastered to his skull. Only the silent islets, the faraway buildings of Venice, and the dim line of the mainland could be seen. Overhead, he caught the lights of a passenger jet homing in for a landing. He knew this water was not the cleanest in the world, nor at the moment the warmest, but he had no choice.
Swim.
He heard the growl of an engine, back toward the south, the direction he’d come from. No lights were associated with the sound, but in the darkness he caught the black outline of a boat cruising his way. He still carried his Beretta in his pocket, but doubted the gun would be of much use. Sometimes they worked after a dousing, sometimes not. He shrank down in the water, his feet now encased with a soft layer of muck.
The boat eased closer, cruising at the edge of the channel.
The nearest light was five hundred yards away at the next piling. The one that had been positioned here, nearby, had been obliterated in the crash.
The boat stopped, its engine switched off.
Another sleek V-hull.
A sole figure stood at its helm.
“Malone. You out there?”
&
nbsp; He recognized the voice. Male. Younger. Southern accent.
Luke Daniels.
He stood. “About time. I wondered where you were.”
“I didn’t expect you to go Superman on me, flying through the sky.”
He freed his feet from the muck and trudged closer.
Luke stood in the boat and stared down at him. “Seems the first time we met you were pulling me from the water in Denmark.”
He stretched an arm up for some help. “Looks like we’re now even on that one.”
SEVEN
Kim poured himself a generous splash of whiskey. His penthouse suite two decks above Larks’ was a four-room monstrosity filled with mahogany and rattan furniture. He’d been impressed by the size and grandeur, along with its amenities like rich food, ample drink, and a massive spray of fresh flowers provided each day. The in-room bar came stocked with some excellent regional wines and American brown whiskey, both of which he’d also enjoyed.
A grandfather clock with Westminster chimes announced the presence of midnight and the beginning of November 11. Pyongyang was seven hours ahead, the sun already shining there on Tuesday morning. His half brother, North Korea’s Dear Leader, would be rising for another day.
Kim hated him.
While his own mother—kind and well bred—had been his father’s lawful wife, his half brother sprang from a long-standing affair with a national opera star. Both his father and grandfather had kept many mistresses. The practice seemed perfectly acceptable, except that his mother hated infidelity and became clinically depressed at her husband’s callousness. She eventually fled the country and settled in Moscow, dying a few years back. He’d been there with her at the end, holding her hand, listening to her laments of how life had treated her so cruelly.
Which it had.
He could say the same.
He’d been educated at private international schools in Switzerland and Moscow, first earning the respected title of Small General, then Great Successor. From living overseas he acquired a taste for Western luxury, particularly designer clothes and expensive cars, again not unlike his father. Eventually he’d returned home and worked in the Department of Agitation and Propaganda, then was assigned to head the nation’s Computer Center, where North Korea waged a covert cyber-war on the world. Next he would have garnered high military appointments, moving closer and closer to the center of power. But the incident in Japan cost him everything. Now, at fifty-eight years old, he was all but nonexistent. What had been the harm? He’d just wanted to take two children to Disneyland.