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  Verrazzano’s head was a single pulse of trapped blood and tension. In the blurry second before he passed out, a voice whispered for him to go quietly. “Dinner at Odin’s table for you tonight, bubba.” It was Wyatt’s catchphrase, but the voice belonged to Tom Frisch.

  CHAPTER 20

  Outside the big double doors of the police station on Goethegasse, Wyatt gathered himself. He was angry. He knew he had to let that go. Feng Yi had teased him by killing the punk in the U-Bahn, to show that he commanded him and could put him at unnecessary risk. Point taken, asshole, he thought. He brought his focus back to the mission. Before he entered the ornate building, once the home of a noble family in the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Wyatt made himself look just a little flustered—he was supposed to be a distraught father, but he was also acting Austrian. He went under the high coffered ceiling, came to the desk sergeant, and gave a slight bow from the neck. “Grüss Gott.”

  The sergeant returned the greeting. Wyatt went on in the Austrian-accented German he had perfected when he was undercover across the border in the Balkans during the nineties. “My daughter is here at the station. There was an incident of some kind at the Karlsplatz station. May I see her?”

  The sergeant’s face registered shock at the mention of the death under the subway train’s wheels. “Your name, sir?”

  “Weiss, Gerhard. My daughter is Silvia Weiss.”

  “Come with me, sir.”

  Wyatt followed the sergeant’s bulky back down a corridor that had once been frequented by Mozart and Beethoven on their way to entertain princes, dukes, and other bloodthirsty crooks. It was quieter than any police station he had ever visited. Wyatt was grateful that there was no waltz playing. They reached an elaborately carved door. The sergeant showed Wyatt inside. A policewoman with black hair tied back at her neck sat across a table from the blonde girl Wyatt had seen at the subway station. Silvia Weiss held the policewoman’s hand. Her eyes were on the tabletop, glazed and staring.

  Wyatt went to her side. “Silvia, darling.” He hugged her to him. He whispered in her ear, “They are going to kill you too because you were at the protest. I believe in your cause. You must trust me.” Her face was stiff with terror. He touched her cheek softly. “I am going to look after you.”

  The policewoman stood and smiled. “I will leave you now. If there is anything at all that you need, come to the desk.”

  The police officers shut the door behind them.

  Wyatt took his chair to the door and jammed it against the handle to stop anyone entering. He returned to the girl and knelt before her. “Did you tell them anything, Silvia?”

  She shook her head.

  “They killed Bernd because of the antiglobalization demonstration.”

  “But it’s just a protest.” Her words came out slowly, shocked and terrified.

  “You don’t know how far these people will go. Their power is immense, and they have no mercy. I want to protect you, so I have to know what you have told them.”

  “I told them a man pushed Bernd under the train.”

  “Did you describe him?”

  She was suddenly eager. “I told them his name was Randy from North Korea.” She misread Wyatt’s frown. “Was that a mistake?”

  “It’s fine.” At any given moment, Wyatt’s basic mood was about 80 percent hate. He woke each day hating, before he even knew whom or what he had to hate that day. But he found an extra measure of hostility toward Feng Yi for the pointless killing at the subway station and the act he now forced on Wyatt. “You’re absolutely sure you told them nothing else?”

  “I don’t know anything else.”

  Wyatt wished he knew as little about the world as this trusting young woman. He lifted her to her feet. “Are we going?” she said.

  From low by his waist, he brought his hand quickly upward, pivoting at his hips to add force. He slammed the heel of his palm into the underside of her chin. Her head snapped back. Her neck broke. He wrenched her jaw side to side, sawing through the spinal column with the shattered vertebrae to be certain she was dead.

  He laid her on the couch under a blanket that was blue with the red stripe of the federal police force. He left the room and went down the corridor to the front desk. The policewoman looked up from her computer, smiling sympathetically.

  “She’s resting now,” Wyatt said. “I’m going to fetch her mother. I’ll be back in about an hour, though it may take me longer. Traffic is unpredictable because of the crashes.”

  “We won’t disturb her,” the policewoman said.

  Wyatt repeated his slight bow from the neck and went out into Goethegasse.

  CHAPTER 21

  Feng Yi piled his plate with scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, and chocolate pastries. He took a flute of cava and sucked it down until the bubbles burned his throat. He filled it again from the bottle in the ice bath. Champagne at seven in the morning, he thought. I love European luxury. A blonde woman brought her plate to the buffet. She glanced up from the cheese board and smiled. Feng kept his eyes on her as he sank another glass of bubbly.

  He bowled across the dining room of the Hotel Sacher, ricocheting off the tables where the trade delegates mumbled over their muesli and their little bowls of chopped watermelon. He rattled another table with his heavy hip. One of the American negotiators glanced up at him. Feng bowed low in apology. “General Feng, good morning,” the American said.

  He wasn’t listed as military in the delegation handbook. Feng Yi was supposed to be a technical adviser to the negotiations. But the Americans knew his real position. “Engineer Feng, please,” he said. “Computer technician, not soldier.” He moved away.

  “Is that guy wearing a toupee?” the American murmured to the Foggy Bottom stiff across the table from him.

  Feng raised his hand to correct the tilt in his hairpiece. He reminded himself not to bow again as he stumbled to the table by the window where Minister Ma Wei and the other Chinese delegates slurped their oatmeal. There were seven of them. Only Ma had a smile for Feng. He reached for Feng’s wrist. “We have work to do today. But first, eat your breakfast, you hungover pig. If you can keep from throwing it up, go over to the table just there near the door. I can see you won’t be able to concentrate until you’ve talked to her.”

  The minister had noticed the blonde too. She had removed her thin cardigan. She wore a floral-print dress that left her shoulders bare. The blonde woman might have been German or Austrian. But she was tall. He guessed that she was Swedish.

  Ma’s communications secretary leaned forward, low over the table, the way he would have done had he been proposing a point of policy. “There are whores available in the hotel. Could she be a whore, Minister Ma?”

  China’s chief of international trade pouted, considering the comment. “Do whores buy the fifty-dollar breakfast buffet and eat it alone?”

  The communications secretary stared at his plate, mumbling an apology for his stupidity.

  Feng Yi didn’t have to suck up to Ma—at least not the way the rest of the delegation did. The minister needed him. Feng controlled the most advanced cyberintelligence operation in the Chinese military. He didn’t just break into computer systems and scoop up data as other cyber departments did. He figured out ways to wage actual war—with complete deniability. To keep the Americans busy fighting fires, while China focused on technological innovations that would bury the US economy and make the power of the Communist Party supreme in the entire world.

  “I have been considering the plan that we dropped,” Ma said.

  Feng picked up a sausage from his plate. He chewed on it and watched the minister. He had worked almost three years to get everything ready for the operation. To develop the software. To make it undetectable. Then to train the engineers for their work at car companies across Europe and America. He had found them jobs in the auto companies. Ensured that each of them could infiltrate the code into the onboard computers, so that it would hit every new car made by the companies
that produced 70 percent of all the vehicles on two continents. Then Minister Ma had called it off, because he thought it would destroy the trade talks. The old man had lost his nerve after the Darien crash. Now he wanted to reactivate the whole thing, just like that.

  “I halted all the preparations at your order, Minister Ma,” Feng said. “The Darien crash was caused by one rogue agent.”

  “Are you so sure of the others? Perhaps they all went rogue, all at once. Is this a betrayal?”

  Feng had considered that. It was why he had ordered Wyatt to kill all the engineers as soon as his Detroit agent set off the Darien crash. Feng could still activate the big crash, if he needed to do so. He had modified the original plan. It took all-nighters of ingenious hacking in a miserable dungeon under the Chinese embassy to Austria and coding so clever it amazed even him. But he had gotten around the need for the engineers to install the crashware physically from within the car companies. He could do it remotely.

  “The agents have not betrayed us,” he said.

  “Oh, yes. I meant them too.” Ma’s eyes glimmered with malice. Feng refused to respond to the minister’s accusation. He held himself stiff.

  “We didn’t plan for the Darien crash, but we must turn it to our advantage,” Ma said. “I want to be able to use the threat of further mass crashes, now that the Americans have experienced what we can do. For the last week, the American delegates have been unhelpful in these negotiations. The European Union people too. I can’t go back to Beijing with the deal they are offering. I wish to break their newfound spine. Your operation will do the job. Can you do it?”

  “I can make it happen.”

  Ma’s tension left him now that he had what he wanted. He leered across the breakfast room at the Americans. “This morning, I will tell those bastards to give us a better deal, or we will bring their economies down. The Darien incident will show them I am not just talking.”

  “You still think that they will not take military action in revenge?”

  Ma sniggered. “You have seen them, Feng. They can’t even invade Syria to fight the Islamic State. They will find every excuse they can to avoid a military confrontation with China. I doubt that we will even have to do more than threaten them. They will collapse. Be ready.”

  Ma picked up his coffee cup in two hands and slurped. His eyes over the rim of the porcelain were like leeches. “Report to me at the end of the day.”

  If Feng activated the code, millions would perish. If not, only Feng would die. Hatred for the entire world filled him.

  The minister nodded toward the table near the door. “You look tense, Feng. The woman is getting ready to leave. Go and have some fun with her. Get it out of your system. Then make sure you do as I command.”

  The woman rose. Feng hurried back to the breakfast bar. He poured two flutes of cava and headed for the door. He intercepted her as she passed the maître d’s station.

  “Madame, would you care to drink with me?”

  She looked at him in surprise. Then she smiled. “Thank you.”

  He pressed the glass into her hand. “Skol.”

  That surprised her too. “Skol. How did you know I was Swedish?”

  “Swedish women are as beautiful as the land from which they come. And as free.”

  They went out into the lobby.

  “I am free, yes.” She spoke with her back to him, looking through the window into the gardens of the imperial palace. “But not when I am in Vienna. My husband is Austrian. He’s very jealous.”

  “Your husband?” He scanned the lobby for some giant Teuton striding over to lay him out.

  She moved toward the elevator. “He watches me almost all the time. I have a business meeting at the hotel this morning. The only opportunity I have to escape his close attention is when I go on a business trip away from Vienna.”

  They entered the elevator. The doors closed. He clinked his glass against hers. “I am an experienced world traveler. Where is your next business trip?”

  She laughed, but she didn’t answer the question. It was still just flirtation.

  “What is your floor?” he said. “Mine is six.”

  She pushed the button for the sixth floor. He leered and fumbled out his cell phone. He took a quick photo of her. Later he would clip the head off the snap and pin it onto the body of an actress from a porn shoot.

  On the sixth floor, he walked with her down the silent corridor toward his room. “I have five million dollars in banks around Europe and the Caribbean,” he said.

  “That’s quite a lot of money. What is it that you do?”

  “I work for a big organization, but I am the commander of a small and vital part of it. They can’t do without me.”

  “What organization?” She sipped her champagne.

  “Any time I want, I could disappear. The kind of work I do is not tied to a particular place, you see. I could be anywhere, with anyone.”

  Her smile wavered. He was coming on too strong. But the need to reveal his secret power was too great. “I can set up a team of hackers somewhere no one would find me: New Zealand or Namibia or—or Sweden.” He took out his key card and opened the door to his room.

  She stepped inside, glancing at her wristwatch. This was some kind of game to her. A shudder of disgust at this woman and all other women gripped Feng’s guts. He considered a punch to her face. He imagined Minister Ma’s rage at the embarrassment of an assault by one of his delegation. Each bubble in the champagne seemed to stab his innards. “I won’t suffer Minister Ma’s insults anymore.”

  “I don’t speak Chinese. What did you say?”

  He shut the door and spoke in English. “I said ‘Screw Minister Ma.’”

  “Who is Minister Ma?” She turned away and leaned over her champagne flute. He feared she was preparing to leave. When she came toward him, she held out the glass and gestured for him to take the drink.

  Feng gulped down the entire glassful. She kissed his neck and cheeks. He went for her mouth with his, but she dodged away and bit at his ear. He snorted with pleasure. The light through the window glared. It was too intense for his eyes. He wobbled on his feet and leaned against her.

  He grew to an enormous size and heard his voice as if it were a dragon bellowing before it consumed its victims in flames. “Feng Yi destroyed a man and left his servant to clean up the mess.” He couldn’t be sure if the dragon spoke aloud through him. Perhaps these words simply echoed in his head with no one to hear them except his desperate, lonely self. “Feng Yi is nuclear, he is radioactive. He is The One.” The voice of the dragon became a seismic pulse that shuddered around him and blocked out his vision. Everything he heard was the thunder within him. He tried to fly on, to power through the air with his dragon wings. Colonel Wyatt would do his job. Everything would be arranged within a matter of hours. Feng would report to Minister Ma that the car operation was ready. Then he would return to this beautiful woman and leave the minister in the company of his pathetic sycophants, say good-bye to all the politics and the boot licking for good.

  Then the room wheeled about him, and he spun downward, and his head struck something hard, and his dragon energy leaked out of him. He saw, as if through a veil, the Swedish woman kneeling beside him, cradling his head. The floor of his room was underneath him, and he was on his back. He passed out.

  When he came around, he was naked on the bed and the Swedish woman was in her underwear, putting on her dress. He felt dreamy and high. Some dark part of his mind told him she had drugged him. Then the mellow afterglow overtook him, and he wanted to be with her and do it again.

  “Tonight we will go away together,” she said.

  CHAPTER 22

  McCarthy took his silver Mercedes sedan into the parking lot beneath Findel Airport on the edge of Luxembourg City. He glanced about him as he lifted the attaché case from the passenger seat and got out. He twisted quickly toward the sound of tires. A blue Fiat turned into a space two rows behind him, driven by a man with thinning ha
ir in a navy suit jacket who was talking on a cell phone. McCarthy spoke under his breath as though cursing himself for his nervousness, locked his car, and headed for the terminal, walking fast.

  In the Fiat, Todd watched the Irish banker go. He spoke to Kinsella on the cell phone. “Reckon he’s going to fly?”

  “Do you think maybe he went to the airport because it’s got the nearest Starbucks?”

  Todd smiled. Every question was a stupid question to Kinsella. “I’ll keep you posted.”

  “If he is flying, get on the plane with him. He doesn’t know who you are. I’ll follow on the next flight.”

  McCarthy glided up the escalator to the departure hall. Todd weaved between the parked cars. “We don’t know that he’s flying somewhere connected to our case. He could be going to visit his mom.”

  “Then you’ll have a nice trip to Dublin. Just follow the guy, for Christ’s sake.”

  Todd scanned the departures board as he reached the top of the escalator. “No flights to Ireland. Maybe he’s changing planes in London.”

  Kinsella growled impatiently and hung up.

  McCarthy glanced over his shoulder and cut toward the LuxAir ticket counter. The ticket agent reached out a chubby hand for the Irishman’s credit card. Within ninety seconds, McCarthy was tucking his boarding pass into the inside pocket of his suit and walking to the security check.

  Todd showed his ICE identity card to the ticket agent. “Where’s that guy flying? Name of McCarthy.”

  The ticket agent touched the trim goatee on his fleshy chin and turned toward a rear door in the back of the office. A woman with eyes hard enough to break your glasses tapped away at a computer there. Todd preferred to deal with the pudgy man. “I’ll buy a ticket on the same flight. Or I’ll have that flight grounded, and your boss will want to know who caused the hold up.” He read the ticket agent’s ID tag. “Do you want to be that guy, Florian?”