Both the mercenaries immediately pulled a fragmentation grenade.

“Destroy that room. The deputy director of the CIA is in there with friends. Let’s unburden him with the task I have for the others. Then follow me down to the hostages.”

Pins were pulled, grenades were lobbed, and just as Zoya started to scream a warning, Jon Hines smothered her entire face with the palm of his hand.

Zakharov began heading down the corridor for the main staircase, followed by all the others.

* * *

• • •

Jenner was first into the corridor, and he saw a man down the hall throw something towards the entrance to the library behind a muffled scream. He spun, raced back into the room, and turned Hanley away.

“Grenade!” he shouted, and Court grabbed Brewer with his one good hand and yanked her, heaving them both backwards in the air over the side of a large leather-and-wood sofa. They crashed on the ground and Court rolled on top of the woman.

Jason turned to run away, and Travers put himself right behind Jenner, adding more protection to Hanley, as they ran back towards the little parlor used as an interrogation room.

The first grenade went off; shrapnel fired in all directions, hitting Jason in the back and Travers in the upper right leg, just below his butt cheek. Both men went down.

The second grenade wasn’t thrown as well as the first; it bounced against the doorway and detonated just in front of it in the hall. Travers took a nick to the back of his head from this blast, then climbed up and trained his weapon on the entrance to the drawing room.

No more grenades came, and soon Jenner, Court, Hanley, and Brewer were standing in the cloud of dust.

“Travers?” Court found him down on the floor, grabbing his upper thigh. There was blood on his leg, on his hands, but he wasn’t hemorrhaging. Still, he was obviously in a lot of pain.

Hanley himself checked Jason. “The kid’s dead. Son of a bitch.”

CHAPTER 63

   Feodor Zakharov finished tying his tie as he walked up the main corridor towards the great hall. At his side were Fox, Hines, and two men who had been trained by his wife fifteen years earlier to blend in perfectly in the UK.

Behind them all Zoya Zakharova walked, trailed by two mercenaries holding PP-2000s, 9-millimeter machine pistols with thirty-round magazines. The men knew what they were doing, Zoya realized, because they stayed far enough back from her so there was no way she’d be able to disarm them before they poured bullets into her body.

When Zakharov got to the lobby in front of the great hall, he turned and looked at his daughter. “I would send you out the front door to safety right now if I weren’t convinced you’d just find some way to get back in and come up behind me with a stiletto. No, I want to know where you are at all times.” He paused. “You might not like what is happening, but you loved your mother and your brother. This is all for them.”

Zoya shook her head. “You don’t get to use their deaths to justify your madness.”

“Zoyushka, I love you, but the one thing I believe in more than you is my cause. I should have killed you when I first found out you’d been flipped by the Americans. But I was weak, and now you are the one person who can threaten my entire plan. You need to watch yourself very carefully now. Spend the rest of your life hating me, pursuing me, I’ll let you do this.” He darkened as he said, “But don’t you fuck with me right now, or I will kill you myself.”

* * *

• • •

The former general turned and opened the door. Stepping in, he walked directly to the stage, aware of hundreds of terrified eyes tracking him as he did so. After thirty seconds he’d moved through all the tables, and he stepped up to the lectern microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for the interruption. Unfortunately I am going to have to keep you right where you are for a short time, before my colleagues and I leave you in peace.”

He’d seen several bodies on the floor along the walls of the room, and he knew these men and women wouldn’t buy the line about peace, but he wanted them as compliant as possible.

He said, “I am going to speak with the military forces arrayed outside, men and women who are most certainly even now preparing to attack this building. I will explain the folly of that decision to them, but perhaps I could have Director Capshaw of the CIA and Director Rutherford of MI6 come with me outside to confirm the hopelessness of the situation.

“After that, we will make a series of statements publicly over the next several hours. Crimes committed by the Five Eyes nations against the innocent and unfortunate of the Third World. Within a few hours my colleagues and I will leave, and you all may resume with your conference.” He smiled. “Perhaps with better moral clarity about your mission.”

As Zakharov spoke, one of the suited Russian mercenaries stepped behind one of the small service bars that had been placed on the edges of the room and slipped off his backpack. He unzipped it a few inches and put a hand inside.

Closing it around the knob of the tank full of specially modified Yersinia pestis spores, held in aerosol, he took a few quick breaths. He’d already injected his antibiotics, he would take more in three hours, and he would have a full IV infusion going into him as soon as they left this place and made it back to the freighter waiting for them off the east coast of Scotland. Still, he knew what he was doing, and he didn’t like the fact that he’d have to breathe this shit at all.

Two more mercs did the same thing simultaneously behind other bars.

As the former general spoke, the mercenaries turned the knobs, and a barely audible hiss could just be made out.

Then the men stood back up.

The one who called himself Fox watched them all, making sure they did as they had been instructed. He turned away when he saw all three men guard over their bioweapons as they sprayed invisible death into the air.

* * *

• • •

Zoya stood in the back of the room, with Hines’s big hand on her shoulder. She watched her father, listened to his words, and paid attention to his every movement.

This wasn’t about a statement.

He was stalling for time. She just knew it.

She looked around the room, wondering if the aerosol had already been released into the air. She wondered if she was breathing pneumonic plague spores even now. Just thinking this had the effect of tightening her lungs, shallowing her breathing, making her eyes itch.

Assuming they believed her father’s promises, all the men and women around her in the great hall thought they would be free in hours. But these people didn’t have hours; they had to get out of here so they could get treatment to stave off the plague.