Kate walked back to her hotel. She needed some sleep to clear her head. She needed to make sure that whatever the plan, her dad wouldn’t end up in a Belgian jail too.
She went to her room, found her iPhone, and left her boss, Carl Jessup, a voicemail that said only “What was in the vault?”
Kate flopped facedown on the bed fully clothed and fell asleep almost instantly. It felt like she’d closed her eyes for only a second when she was awakened by the electronic trill of her iPhone. The time on the clock radio, next to her phone, was 3 P.M., and the caller ID on her phone read “Jessup.”
Kate grabbed the phone. “O’Hare,” she said.
“How much of the story that you told the Belgian police is true?” her boss asked. His Kentucky drawl was disarmingly low-key. It was as if he was casually asking about the weather, or the price of turnips, and not about an international incident that was likely to end Kate’s career with the FBI.
“Ninety percent,” she said. “What I left out was that Nick was kidnapped by the Road Runners to pull off the heist and that I came here to rescue him.”
“Then you did the right thing going to Antwerp without telling me,” Jessup said. “You gave us plausible deniability.”
“That was the idea.”
“I sincerely doubt that.”
“How much trouble am I in?” she asked.
“That depends on if you get caught,” Jessup said.
“I think they bought my story.”
“I’m not talking about that,” Jessup said. “I’m talking about you breaking Nicolas Fox out of jail.”
“Excuse me?” Kate could feel beads of panicked sweat appearing on her upper lip. How did Jessup know she was planning a jailbreak?
“I’m expecting the Belgians to throw you out of the country within forty-eight hours, so you don’t have much time to free Nick, and you need to do it without hurting anyone. If you get caught, we’ll say it was a desperate act by a crazy FBI agent who fell in love with the man she was chasing.”
It wasn’t that far from the truth, but even if Jessup knew it he wouldn’t sanction a jailbreak for it. There had to be another reason.
“I can’t believe you’re asking me to do this, sir. I expected you to tear my head off and order me to forget about Nick.”
“I would have, and I’d still like to, but we believe one of the safe-deposit boxes in that vault contained a vial of smallpox,” Jessup said. “Now the Road Runners have it. The smallpox was probably their target all along.”
“How is that possible? Smallpox was eradicated decades ago, and the only samples that exist are at the CDC in Atlanta and a lab in Russia.”
“Yes, that’s been the general assumption.”
“ ‘Assumption’?”
“Well, it’s not like somebody went around to every lab in the world and verified that each smallpox sample ever collected was destroyed. However, since nobody has been infected in forty years, the accepted belief is that the virus was wiped out and the only samples of the virus are secured.”
“You’re telling me that isn’t true.”
“In the early 1990s, a Soviet defector revealed to MI5 that the Russians were secretly developing a super-virulent strain of smallpox, in blatant violation of international agreements, through a civilian drug company called Biopreparat. After that came out, the U.S. and NATO threatened an all-out bioweapons arms race, so the Soviets caved, ended the program, and destroyed the smallpox.”
“But not all of it,” Kate said.
“They were in the midst of complying with international demands when the Soviet Union collapsed and descended into chaos. One of the bioweapons scientists, Sergei Andropov, fled Moscow with a vial of smallpox in his pocket to sell to the highest bidder. Sergei settled in Antwerp, where his cousin Yuri Baskin was a diamond merchant. But before Sergei could make a deal with anyone, he was killed in a car accident. The vial was never found.”
“But you think Sergei gave it to Yuri,” Kate said, “who stashed it in his safe-deposit box in the Executive Merchants Building vault and was afraid to touch it after his cousin’s suspicious death.”
“It was only a theory before, but now we’re certain that’s what happened,” Jessup said. “The Belgian police found some of Sergei’s research notes from Biopreparat on the floor of the vault along with a cigar-sized metal container that could be used to store a vial.”
“How could the smallpox virus still be alive after all these years?” Kate asked, though she wasn’t sure alive was the right word.
“The temperature in the vault was kept at a constant sixty degrees,” Jessup said. “Even if the temperature wasn’t controlled, we know the virus could still survive. A forty-five-year-old vial of smallpox was found two years ago in Washington, D.C., by a custodian. It was in a cardboard box in an unlocked closet at the National Institutes of Health. Testing of the sample at the CDC revealed it was still viable.”
Kate was wide awake now. “That’s frightening.”
“Not as much as Dragan Kovic selling smallpox to ISIS or some rogue nation and what they might do with it. Smallpox is the deadliest virus humanity has ever known. It killed three hundred million people in the twentieth century alone. All you have to do is inhale one microscopic particle and you’re infected. You become a walking chemical weapon that infects everyone within a ten-foot radius.”
“Nobody is vaccinated for smallpox anymore,” Kate said. “Most of the population has no immunity. The virus could spread at light-speed through a major city.”
“That’s the nightmare scenario,” Jessup said. “You need to break Nick out of custody. Then the two of you have to retrieve that vial, find out what it was going to be used for, and stop the plot, whatever the hell it is.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And stop threatening to kill Cosmo.”
Kate disconnected and set her iPhone on the bedside table. She reached down to her purse on the floor, dug around for the new disposable phone that her father had given her in the church, and hit the preprogrammed key that dialed his cell. He answered on the first ring.
“Jake O’Hare, Man of Action.”
“I’m ready,” Kate said.
Early Sunday morning, Kate put on her sweats and jogged into Stadspark, which had once been the site of a Spanish fort. She dashed across the footbridge, over a duck pond that had been part of the fort’s moat, and then followed a paved trail as it snaked into a canopy of trees and bushes. She stopped at a stack of stones that appeared to have once been a man-made waterfall but that was dry and weedy now.
She made sure she was alone before retrieving blasting caps and a small brick of C4 plastic explosive that had been hidden there the night before by her father’s buddy the arms dealer. She stuffed the goodies into her hidden running belt, jogged out of the park, and went shopping for duct tape, a razor blade, paper clips, and another disposable phone. The Meir, Antwerp’s main shopping street, was lined with renovated medieval buildings shoulder to shoulder with modern re-creations. Every two feet there seemed be another Leonidas chocolate café, the Starbucks of Belgium. The Leonidas cafés were inescapable, so she surrendered and got herself a hot chocolate.
Kate was halfway across her hotel lobby when she was stopped by a paunchy forty-something man in a rumpled business suit. He had the bloated belly and pained expression of a man who’d been constipated for days, perhaps even months.
“Miss O’Hare?” the man asked, sizing Kate up from a computer-generated picture of her that he held in his hand.
Career bureaucrat, Kate thought, smiling politely. American. No doubt clogged up with schnitzel.
“Conrad Plitt,” he said. “I’m attached to the U.S. embassy in Brussels.”
“I was expecting to see an FBI legat,” Kate said, referring to the FBI legal attachés at U.S. embassies who worked with local law enforcement agencies on cases involving American interests.
“Sorry to dash your hopes, but sending an FBI agent here to deal with this muck-up would only worsen an already terrible situation,” Plitt said. “It would imply to the Belgians that the FBI had prior knowledge of your actions or that they tacitly approve of your conduct. We can’t have that. Besides, the FBI has notoriously poor diplomatic skills, which you’ve profoundly demonstrated already.”
She might have been offended by his comment if it hadn’t been totally true. Not to mention she was standing there holding the makings of a bomb in a grocery bag.
“What happens now?” she asked.
“My job is to convince the Belgians that despite your unorthodox and inappropriate conduct you’re a hero and that the apprehension of Nicolas Fox is a win for everybody. If I can do that, I deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. The first step is for you to offer the Belgian authorities your total and unconditional cooperation with their investigation.”
“I’d be glad to do that, but they’ve made it clear they don’t want me involved.”
“They still don’t,” Plitt said. “But Nicolas Fox does. He refuses to talk to anybody but you.”
“He’s playing with us,” Chief Inspector Amelie Janssen said, clearly not pleased with the way things were proceeding.
“Of course he is,” Kate said. “What did you expect?”
Kate was standing in an observation room, looking out at Nicolas Fox. He was sitting at an interrogation table, and he was wearing an orange jumpsuit, his wrists in handcuffs and his ankles in chains. And yet, he not only appeared relaxed and content, but somehow managed with his posture to make the hard, stiff chair seem incredibly comfortable. There was a time when his cool attitude would have irritated Kate as much as it obviously irked Janssen. Now Kate found it reassuring to see him in control of himself and his environment.
She hoped she appeared equally in control. If she did appear equally in control she thought it would be an acting miracle because she didn’t feel in control. What she felt was sick. Not exactly on the verge of throwing up but moving in that direction. She was making a maximum effort to put up a hard-ass front. She’d decided on a role. She’d rehearsed her lines. She’d put some Imodium in her purse just in case.
Jeez Louise, she thought. This isn’t my thing. I’m good at enforcing the law, not breaking the law. How did I get into this mess? She narrowed her eyes at Fox. It’s him, she thought. It’s my stupid obsession with Nicolas Fox.
“Are you okay?” Janssen asked Kate. “Your face is flushed.”
“I’m fine,” Kate said. “I’m just angry. I hate this guy.”
Not far from the truth. She hated him. She liked him. She hated him. She liked him. And she especially hated him because he looked so damn good in his jumpsuit. It was just wrong, wrong, wrong.
Kate flipped through several pages of inventory itemizing everything that was stolen from the vault, with the notable exception of the vial of smallpox.
“He’s a con man,” Kate said. “Manipulating people is what he does for fun and profit.”
“That’s why it was a huge mistake for my bosses to give in to his demand that we bring you in. I warned them not to do it, but although they have badges, they are politicians, not police.”
“Were you getting anywhere with him?”
“No, but now that you’re here, it completely undercuts my authority in the interrogation. He’ll think that he’s the one in charge now. It won’t be easy getting back the upper hand.”
Kate put a paper clip on the papers. “If you want him to give you information, you’re going to have to play his game.”
Kate walked out of the observation room and into the hallway, where a uniformed guard stood outside the interrogation room door. Janssen nodded her approval at the officer, and he opened the door for Kate.
She strode into the interrogation room, sat down at the table, slipped the paper clip off the papers, and made a show of examining them. Everything Kate and Nick were about to say and do was for Janssen’s benefit. But Kate also had a message to convey to Nick and a delivery to make.
“You’re looking good,” Kate said.
“Orange is my color.”
“I’m referring to the handcuffs,” Kate said. “You were born to wear them.”
“They’re a bit snug.”
She looked up from her papers. “You’re facing a long prison stretch, and once you get out there are a dozen countries lined up to lock you away again.”
“I’ve always been a popular guy.”
“It seems you weren’t that popular with the Road Runners. They double-crossed you and got away with hundreds of millions in diamonds. That’s got to hurt.”
“I pulled off the biggest heist in Belgian history,” Nick said. “Making history is not a bad way to end a career.”
“You can thank your so-called friends for your grand finale. Tell me where they are and what they’re doing with the diamonds. Maybe you can do a little less time. Where do we find Dragan Kovic?”
“Haven’t you heard about honor among thieves?”
“They betrayed you.”
Nick shrugged. “Not all thieves have honor.”
Kate leaned forward. “I’m offering you your only chance for vengeance against the people who put you here.”
“You put me here. Not talking is how I get my revenge.” Nick leaned forward too. “Your screwups led to the success of the biggest diamond heist in Belgian history. You’ll probably lose your badge.”
Kate gathered up her papers, leaned back in her seat, and shook her head in disappointment.
“My job is done anyway. I vowed that I’d never let you get away, and I meant it.” She got up and went to the door, pausing for a moment to take one more look at him before leaving. “Remember that on Monday morning when you’re on your way to prison.”
She walked out, satisfied that she’d delivered her message to Nick and more. Now Nick knew that she’d be making her move on Monday morning and, while they were nearly nose to nose over the table, he’d taken the paper clip she’d brought for him.
Janssen met Kate in the hall. “That was a waste of time.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I got him talking.”
“But he didn’t say anything,” Janssen said.
“The man loves to hear his own voice. He’ll give me something next time, and then something more after that, just to keep the conversation going. Before it’s over, he’ll give up the gang.”
“There won’t be another meeting.” Janssen held out a plane ticket. “You’re on the eleven A.M. flight Monday to Heathrow with a connecting flight to Los Angeles.”
Kate didn’t take the ticket. “I’m the only one he’ll talk to and the only one with a shot at breaking him.”
“While you are somewhere over the Atlantic, there will be a press conference here announcing the arrest by Belgian police of international fugitive Nicolas Fox, the mastermind behind the vault robbery. We’ll thank the FBI for providing crucial resources, and that will be the end of U.S. involvement in our ongoing investigation and manhunt.”
Plitt had done his job with surprising speed, Kate thought. Maybe he deserved a Nobel Prize after all. She took the ticket from Janssen.
“This is a mistake.”
“Bon voyage, Agent O’Hare,” Janssen said. “A police officer will be waiting at your hotel at nine A.M. to escort you to the airport.”
With those words, Amelie Janssen officially set the timer ticking on Nicolas Fox’s escape.