The Cassandra Compact c-2 Page 6

  “Exactly. Mercenaries. We have long suspected that they were responsible for the shooting of a federal prosecutor in Palermo and a judge in Rome.”

  “How expensive were they?”

  “Very. Why do you ask?”

  “Because only someone with both money and connections would have hired men like them. These are professionals. They do not need to advertise.”

  “But why kill a Ukrainian peasant ― if in fact he was that?”

  “I don't know,” Howell replied truthfully. “But I need to find out. Do you have any idea where they were based?”

  “Palermo. Their birthplace.”

  Howell nodded. “What about the explosives?”

  Dionetti returned to the computer.

  “Yes… the preliminary report from the forensics laboratory indicates that it was C-twelve, about half a kilo's worth.”

  Howell looked at him sharply. “C-twelve? You're sure?”

  Dionetti shrugged. “You may recall that our laboratory has very high standards, Pietro. I would accept their conclusion at face value.”

  “So would I,” Howell replied thoughtfully.

  But how had the killer of the two Sicilians gotten hold of the U.S. Army's latest explosives?

  * * *

  Marco Dionetti's home was a sixteenth-century, four-story limestone palazzo that fronted the Grand Canal a stone's throw away from the Accademia. In the grand dining room, dominated by a fireplace sculpted by Moretta, the stern faces of Dionetti's ancestors gazed down from portraits painted by Renaissance masters.

  Peter Howell finished his last bite of seppioline and sat back as an elderly servant removed his plate.

  “My compliments to Maria. The cuttlefish was excellent ― just as I remembered it.”

  “I'll be sure to tell her,” Dionetti replied as a tray of bussolai was presented. He picked up one of the cinnamon-flavored biscuits and nibbled thoughtfully.

  “Pietro, I understand your need for discretion. But I too have masters I must answer to. Is there nothing you can tell me about the Ukrainian?”

  “My job was simply to cover the contact,” Howell replied. “There was no indication that there would be bloodshed.”

  Dionetti steepled his fingers. “I suppose I could make a case that the Rocca brothers had a contract and carried it out on the wrong individual, that the man seen fleeing from the piazza was the intended victim.”

  “That may not explain why the Roccas were blown up,” Howell pointed out.

  Dionetti dismissed the possibility with a wave of his fingers. “The brothers had many enemies. Who's to say whether one of them finally managed to settle a score?”

  Howell finished his coffee. “If you can put that spin on it, Pietro, I would. Now, I don't want to seem the ungracious guest but I must make that flight to Palermo.”

  “My launch is at your disposal,” Dionetti said, accompanying Howell down the center hall. “I will contact you if there are any further developments. Promise me that when your business is finished you will stop by on your way home. We will go to La Fenice.”

  Howell smiled. “I would enjoy that very much. Thank you for all your help, Marco.”

  Dionetti watched the Englishman step over the gunwale and raised his hand as the launch slipped into the Grand Canal. Only when he was absolutely certain that Howell couldn't see him did his friendly expression dissolve.

  “You should have told me more, old friend,” he said softly. “Maybe I could have kept you alive.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Eight thousand miles to the west, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, Pearl Harbor lay placid under the hot, tropical sun. Overlooking the harbor were the navy's administrative buildings and the command-and-control headquarters. This morning, the Nimitz Building was off-limits to everyone except authorized personnel. Armed Shore Patrol units were stationed both inside and out, in the long, cool corridors and in front of the closed doors to the briefing room.

  The briefing room was the size of a gymnasium and could easily accommodate three hundred people. Today there were only thirty, all seated in the first few rows before the podium. The need for heavy security was reflected in the medals and ribbons that decorated the uniforms of those in attendance. Representing every branch of the armed services, they were the senior officers of the Pacific theater, responsible for perceiving and eliminating any threat from the shores of San Diego to the Strait of Taiwan in Southeast Asia. Each was a battle-tested combat veteran who had seen more than his share of conflict. None had any patience with politicians or theorists, which is to say they did not suffer fools gladly. They relied on their own expertise and instincts and respected only those who had proven themselves in the field. That was why all eyes were riveted on the figure at the podium, General Frank Richardson, veteran of Vietnam and the Gulf War, and a dozen other sorties that the American people had all but forgotten about. But not these men. To them, Richardson, as the army representative on the joint chiefs of staff, was a true warrior. When he had something to say, everyone listened.

  Richardson gripped the lectern with both hands. A tall, well-fleshed man, he was as solid now as he had been during his gridiron days at West Point. With his iron-gray hair cut en brosse, cold, green eyes, and firm jaw, he was a public relation's man's dream pitchman. Except that Richardson detested virtually everyone who hadn't bled for his country.

  “Gentlemen, let's summarize,” Richardson said, gazing over his audience. “It's not the Russians who worry me. Most time it's hard to know who's running that damned country ― the politicians or the mafiya. You can't tell the players without a scorecard.”

  Richardson paused to savor the laughter brought on by his little joke.

  “But while Mother Russia is in the toilet,” he continued, "the same can't be said about the Chinese. Past administrations were so eager to get into bed with them that they never saw through to Beijing's true intentions. We sold them our most advanced computer and satellite technology without realizing that they had already infiltrated our major nuclear development and production facilities. Los Alamos was a one-stop Wal-Mart for those guys.

  “I keep telling this administration ― as I did the previous one ― that China cannot be contained by nuclear force alone.”

  Richardson shifted his gaze to the back of the room. A sandy-haired man in his early forties, dressed in civilian attire, was leaning against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. The general caught the civilian's almost imperceptible nod and changed gears on the fly.

  "But neither can the Chinese hope to challenge us by playing the nuclear card. The nut is that they have an option: chemical-biological warfare. Slide a bug into one of our major population centers and into our command-and-control systems and presto! ― instant chaos. With complete plausible deniability on their part.

  “Therefore, it is imperative, gentlemen, that in your patrols, your oversight and intelligence sorties, you gather as much information as possible on China's bioweapons program. The battles of the next war will not be won or lost in the field or on the seas ― at least at first. They will be waged in the laboratories, where the enemy is measured in the trillions of battalions and can be mounted on the head of a pin. Only when we know where those battalions are created, nourished, sustained, and deployed from can you dispatch your resources to eliminate them.”

  Richardson paused. “I thank you for your time and attention, gentlemen.”

  The man in the back did not participate in the outpouring of applause. He did not stir when others in the audience surrounded the general, congratulating him, peppering him with questions. Anthony Price, deputy director of the National Security Agency, always reserved his comments for the private moment.

  As the officers dispersed, Richardson made his way to Price, who was thinking just how much the general resembled a preening rooster.

  “God, I love these guys! You can smell the stink of war on them.”

  “What I smell is that you almost blew it, Frank,” Price repl
ied dryly. “If I hadn't caught your attention, you would have laid it out for them chapter and verse.”

  Richardson shot him a withering look. “Give me some credit, will you?” He pushed open the door. “Come on. We're running late.”

  They stepped out into the peerless blue day and walked swiftly along the gravel path that curved around the auditorium.

  “One day, Tony, the politicians will have to get it,” Richardson said grimly. “Running this country through public opinion polls is killing us. Mention that you want to stockpile anthrax or Ebola and watch your numbers sink. That's bullshit!”

  “Old news, Frank,” Price replied. “You might recall that our biggest problem is verification. Both we and the Russians agreed to have our biochem stockpiles monitored by international inspectors. Our labs, research and manufacturing facilities, the delivery systems ― everything was out in the open. So the politicians don't have to `get' anything. As far as they're concerned, bioweapons are a dead issue.”

  “Except when they come back to bite them on the ass,” Richardson said caustically. “Then they'll be screaming, `Where are ours?' ”

  “And you'll be able to tell them, won't you?” Price replied. “With a little help from the good doctor Bauer.”

  “Thank Christ for guys like him,” Richardson said through clenched teeth.

  Behind the auditorium was a small, circular landing pad. A commercial Jet Ranger helicopter with civilian markings sat waiting, the rotors spinning lazily. When the pilot saw his passengers, he began to warm up the turbos.

  Price was about to duck into the passenger compartment when Richardson stopped him.

  “This business in Venice,” he said over the growing whine of the engines. “Did we take it on the chin?”

  Price shook his head. “The hit came down as arranged. But there was an unexpected development. I'm expecting an update shortly.”

  Richardson grunted and followed Price into the cabin, strapping himself into his seat. As much as he respected Bauer and Price, they were still civilians. Only a soldier knew that there were always unexpected developments.

  * * *

  The sight of the Big Island from two thousand feet never failed to stir Richardson. In the distance was the lush Kona Coast, with its grand hotels moored like great ocean liners along the seaside. Farther inland were the black plains of hardened lava, as foreboding as the lunar landscape. In the center of what appeared to be sheer desolation was the fountainhead of life: the Kilauea volcano, its crater glowing red from the magma seething deep within the earth's core. The volcano was quiet now, but Richardson had seen it during eruptions. Creation, the formation of the newest place on the planet, was a sight that he had never forgotten.

  As the helicopter swung along the edge of the lava field, what had once been Fort Howard came into view. Occupying several thousand acres between the lava field and the ocean, it had been the army's premier medical research facility, specializing in cures for tropical diseases, including leprosy. Several years ago, Richardson had set the wheels in motion to have the base decommissioned. He had found himself an opportunistic senator from Hawaii and, with a little behind-the-scenes help, had gotten the politician's pork-barrel project through Congress: a brand-new medical facility on Oahu. As a quid pro quo, the senator, who was on the Armed Forces Appropriations Committee, had rubber-stamped Richardson's request that Fort Howard be mothballed and sold off to private enterprise.

  Richardson had already had a buyer waiting in the wings: the biochemical firm Bauer-Zermatt A.G., headquartered in Zurich. After two hundred thousand shares of company stock had been deposited into the senator's safe-deposit box, the politician saw to it that no other bids for the base were acceptable to his committee.

  Richardson spoke to the pilot over the headset: “Swing over the compound.”

  The helicopter banked, giving the general a panoramic view of the area below. Even from this height, he could tell that the perimeter fence was new and strong ― a ten-foot-tall Cyclone fence topped with razor wire. What looked like military personnel manned the four guard posts. The Humvees parked at each post heightened the effect.

  The compound itself was startlingly empty. The Quonset supply huts, barracks, and warehouses stood baking under the tropical sun, with no activity around them. Only the old command building, repainted, with a few Jeeps parked nearby, looked as though it was being used. The overall effect was perfect: a mothballed military installation, still off-limits to everyone except a few locals who serviced the skeleton staff working there.

  The effect was extremely deceptive. In truth, what had once been Fort Howard now lay three stories beneath the earth.

  “We're cleared to land, General,” the pilot informed him.

  Richardson took a last glance out the window and saw a toylike figure tracking the helicopter's flight.

  “Take us down,” he replied.

  * * *

  He was a short, muscular man in his early sixties, with swept-back silver hair and a carefully trimmed goatee. He stood with his feet apart, his back ramrod straight, hands clasped at the small of his back ― an officer of wars past.

  Dr. Karl Bauer watched the helicopter drift down, flutter above the grassy landing area, then settle. He knew that his visitors would have hard questions for him. As the rotors wound down, he carefully reviewed just how much he would tell them. Herr Doktor did not take kindly to having to provide explanations or apologies.

  For over a hundred years, the company founded by Bauer's great-grandfather had been at the forefront of chemical and biological technology. Bauer-Zermatt A.G. held a myriad of patents that, to this day, were a revenue-producing stream. Its scientists and researchers had developed pills and potions that remained household staples; at the same time they had brought to market esoteric drugs that had won the company international humanitarian awards.

  But for all the medicines and vaccines it distributed to health-care workers in the Third World, Bauer-Zermatt had a dark side that its well-paid spinmeisters and glossy brochures never alluded to. During World War I, the company had developed a particularly noxious form of mustard gas that was responsible for the slow deaths of thousands of Allied soldiers. A quarter century later, it supplied German companies with certain chemicals that were then combined to subsequently create the gas used in the death chambers throughout Eastern Europe. The firm had also closely monitored the ungodly experiments of Dr. Josef Mengele and other Nazi physicians. At the end of the war, while other perpetrators and accomplices were rounded and hanged, Bauer-Zermatt retreated behind the Swiss cloak of anonymity while quietly extrapolating on Nazi medical research. As for Bauer-Zermatt's owners and principal officers, they disclaimed any knowledge of what might have been done with the corporation's products once they'd left the alpine borders.

  In the second half of the twentieth century, Dr. Karl Bauer had not only kept the family firm in the forefront of legitimate pharmaceutical research, but had also broadened its secret program of developing biochemical weapons. Like a locust, Bauer went where the fields were most fertile: Gadhafi's Libya, Hussein's Iraq, the tribal dictatorships of Africa, and the nepotism-infested regimes of Southeast Asia. He brought with him the best scientists and the most modern equipment; in return, he was showered with largesse that was transferred by computer keystroke into the vaults beneath Zurich.

  At the same time, Bauer maintained and upgraded his contacts with the military in both the United States and Russia. A prescient student of the global political condition, he had foreseen the breakup of the Soviet Union and the inevitable decline of the new Russia struggling to adopt democracy. Where the twin streams of Russian desperation and American ascendancy met, Bauer fished.

  Bauer stepped forward to greet his visitors. “Gentlemen.”

  The three men shook hands, then fell in step to the two-story, Colonial-style command building. On both sides of the gracious, wood-paneled lobby were the offices of Bauer's hand-picked staff, who looked after the administra
tive duties of the facility. Farther along were the cubbyholes where the scientists' assistants toiled, inputting data from the laboratory experiments. At the very back were two elevators. One was hidden behind a door that could be opened only with a key card. Built by Hitachi, it was a high-speed unit that linked the subterranean labs with the command building. The second elevator was a beautiful brass birdcage. The three men got in, and in a few seconds were in Bauer's private office, which occupied the entire second floor.

  The office might have belonged to a colonial governor from the nineteenth century. Antique Oriental rugs graced polished hardwood floors; mahogany bookcases and South Pacific art filled the walls. Bauer's massive partner's desk stood in front of floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the entire compound and the ocean below the cliffs, straight across to the black lava fields in the distance.'

  “You've made a few improvements since the last time I was here,” Richardson commented dryly.

  “Later, I will take you to the staff and quarters and recreation area,” Bauer replied. “Life here is not unlike on an oil rig: my people have leave only once a month, and then only for three days. The amenities I provide are well worth the expenditure.”

  “These furloughs,” Richardson said. “Do you let your people go off by themselves?”

  Bauer laughed softly. “Not likely, general. We book them into an exclusive resort. The security is there, but they're never aware of it.”

  “From one gilded cage to another,” Price remarked.

  Bauer shrugged. “I've had no complaints.”

  “Given what you pay them, I'm not surprised,” Price said.

  Bauer stepped over to a well-stocked liquor cart. “Can I offer you a drink?”

  Both Richardson and Price chose the fresh pineapple juice over ice and crushed fruit. Bauer stayed with his usual mineral water.

  After the others were seated, Bauer took his place behind his desk.