Author: James R. Hannibal
Category: Thriller
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Talia began moving her clothes from the suitcase to a dresser beside the door, but stopped when she noticed the framed picture resting on top. She let out a quiet laugh. The photo, with two signatures at the bottom, showed Luciano and his son, posing between a pair of Formula One race cars.
Chapter
thirty
CHATEAU TICINO
CAMPIONE D’ITALIA, SWITZERLAND
TALIA AWOKE LATE IN THE MORNING to the scent of bacon and waffles.
Conrad.
She knew how to read people—more from her years in the foster care system than from her Farm training. A young girl had to anticipate the need to hide from an older foster sister or recognize the signs of an alcoholic. She had to know when to hunker down or make a run for it the moment the lights went out. Whatever Talia thought of Tyler, she liked Conrad.
He made her feel safe.
She found him in the kitchen, drizzling maple syrup over a pan of bacon, wearing a tweed waistcoat and slacks and an apron with lips on it that said Kiss the cook.
“Tyler gave you that apron, didn’t he?”
Conrad pulled the bacon off the stove and slid the strips out of the pan onto a clay platter. He shot a look at Tyler, who was seated at the counter, already working on an egg white omelet. “You see? No one believes I would wear this voluntarily.” He pulled out a stool for Talia. “I only put it on because the man who bought it writes my paychecks.”
The heated buffet on the counter held a spread from Talia’s innermost culinary desires—waffles, maple bacon, scrambled eggs with a sprinkling of Swiss cheese. A silver carafe of coffee at the end was surrounded by cream, brown sugar, nutmeg, and white chocolate shavings.
Talia had outrun the famous freshman fifteen well past her senior year. But if she stayed in that chateau too long, those pounds would finally catch up. She ignored the warnings in her head and dropped two spoonfuls of shavings into a mug. “Where’s Eddie? The smell of bacon alone should have brought him down.”
“He isn’t coming.” Tyler set his fork down, omelet finished. “He asked if you’d bring him a tray.”
Talia’s spoon hovered over her coffee. “Eddie wants me to bring him breakfast in bed?”
“Not to his bedroom.” Conrad took the liberty of sliding a pair of waffles onto Talia’s plate. “To the chateau’s media room. He’s been in there since before sunup, and I do believe wild horses could not drag him out again.” He pointed his spatula at a small porcelain pitcher. “Try the blueberry syrup. I made it from scratch.”
“I love blueberry syrup.”
“Really?” Conrad rounded the end of the island on his way to the sink, collecting Tyler’s plate as he passed. “What a surprise.”
The media room, as Conrad called it, took up half the fourth floor. Talia had pictured a few comfortable seats and a projector. What she found was a high-tech operations center that blended gadgetry and processing power with the chateau’s alpine decor.
“I’m home,” Eddie said as Talia and Tyler came through the door. He sat on a stool at a counter-height conference table glowing with internal monitors and scattered with keyboards and devices. “I’m calling it Mission Control.” He nodded at a giant parabolic screen dominating the far wall. “How big is that thing, Mr. Tyler? A hundred and eighty inches?”
“Two-ten.” Tyler set a tray of waffles, eggs, and bacon on the table. “Anything less than one-ninety-five and the holographic mode won’t look right.”
“It has a holographic mode?” Eddie blindly stabbed at a waffle and missed, clicking the fork against the plate. “I’m never leaving this house.”
“Sorry,” Tyler said. “You can’t afford the rent.”
“Then adopt me.”
“O-kay . . .” Talia snatched up a piece of bacon from the breakfast tray Tyler had brought up for Eddie. “Back to the mission.”
She walked over to the main screen. A wire-frame diagram of the Gryphon swiveled between top-down and profile views with blue lines running to rolling data points. Beside it were cutouts of the interior and a blueprint of the Avantec compound. “You’ve been busy.”
“Actually”—Eddie gave her a wink—“I’ve been a little naughty. I used the access codes we gained during the security assessment to bypass Avantec’s firewalls. We were right. Gryphon is alive and kicking, and now I know her secrets.”
Tyler slipped his hands into his pockets, resting his back against a timber pillar. “If you’re inside the system, can you access the airship’s data vault?”
“Negative.”
“What about the location of the prototype?” Talia asked.
“Also negative. I think that information is on Gryphon’s servers, which currently cannot be accessed from the ground.” Eddie zoomed in on the compound blueprint. “Dr. Ivanov kept a single direct-access terminal with biometric locks here, in his residence—which Lukon blew up.”
Tyler left his pillar to join the others. “So my thieves will have to breach the airship itself.”
Talia didn’t like his phrasing. “You mean our thieves.”
“My thieves.” Command darkened his tone. “I have to become Lukon. Speak as Lukon. Buy into that now, or put a bullet between my eyes, because that’s exactly what the thieves will do if they sense a double cross. Got it?”
She stared at him, mouth slightly open. Talia had been liberal with harsh tones, but Tyler had never returned them, not until that moment. “Yeah. I’ve got it.” She turned around, hips falling against the conference table, red rushing into her cheeks.
“Eddie,” Tyler said. Talia could feel him staring at the back of her head. “Tell us what else you’ve learned.”
“I’ve learned this heist is impossible.” Eddie rotated the blueprints of the Avantec compound, shifting the view from Ivanov’s residence to the airfield. “For starters, only one aircraft in existence is capable of docking with Gryphon—her maintenance and tow vehicle.”
Talia recognized the hangar under his cursor. “You mean the Mark Seven.”
“Bingo. This is two jobs in one. First, we have to steal the Mark Seven—”
“And then fly it up to Gryphon to steal the plans,” Tyler said, finishing the thought.
“Oh, it’s nowhere near that simple.” Eddie pointed a stick of bacon at him and then bit off a piece, chewing as he explained. “Ivanov is bringing the Mark Seven with him to the Milan aerospace expo.”
“That’s good,” Talia said.
“Is it? Assuming our hypothetical team of elite criminals can break in, sneak past all those pesky defense contractors, and steal it, they’ll still have to fly this one-of-a-kind hybrid rocket-jet well enough to navigate a hostile environment worthy of a sci-fi horror flick.” Eddie tapped a key and the blueprints faded, allowing Gryphon’s to fill the screen. “Then they’ll have to execute a docking procedure none of us knows, bypass a ten-digit cypher lock on the high-pressure seal, and access an on-site terminal using—”
“Ivanov’s biometrics,” Talia said, “like the remote terminal Lukon destroyed.”
Eddie zoomed in on Gryphon’s flight deck, where the outline of a control panel started flashing. “To be specific, a voiceprint ID. We get two tries. Use the wrong phrase or wrong voice more than twice and Gryphon will delete all her data. No weapon plans. No prototype location.”
During the final portion of Eddie’s doom-and-gloom explanation, Tyler had gone silent. Talia watched him in the reflection on the screen and saw him jotting down a list on a notepad. He ripped off the page and handed it to Eddie.
“What’s this?”
“Think of those as job listings—for which you just listed the requirements. Tap into the Dark Web and identify the experts we need before the real Lukon finds them.”
Eddie examined the scribblings. “Chemist, hacker, wheelman, cat burglar.” He held up the sheet and pointed. “What about this last one? Valkyrie. What’s that?”
“Not what. Who. Valkyrie is a specialist whom I believe Lukon will tr
y to hire for this job.”
“So hire Valkyrie first.” Talia tried to regain some feeling of control over the operation. “You know, speak as Lukon.” She gave Tyler a flat look. “Like you said.”
“Can’t. The two of us have a mutual acquaintance.”
“Valkyrie knows you?”
“You could say that.”
Eddie looked from one to the other, as if waiting for the exchange to continue. He lost patience. “So bring this specialist of yours in on the plan. Use your connection.”
“It’s a little more complicated.” Tyler started for the door.
Talia walked to the end of the table and stopped. She could sense he didn’t want to be followed. “Where are you going?
“To set up a meeting.”
Chapter
thirty-
one
CHATEAU TICINO
CAMPIONE D’ITALIA, SWITZERLAND
TYLER’S TESLA MODEL X peeled off down the ridge before Talia even managed to locate the garage. She vowed he would never slip away from her again and used the next hour or so to familiarize herself with the chateau’s layout—five floors, ten bedrooms, every one of them a suite.
The Eastern Orthodox iconography she had noticed the night before made up the bulk of his art collection, along with a few scriptures. Talia had little trouble translating one faded tapestry inscribed with calligraphic Cyrillic. Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. She almost laughed. Talia planned to do some seeking of her own, into Tyler’s past. And what would she find? Nothing holy, she was sure.
Tyler returned shortly after noon, but said nothing. Talia left him alone while she and Eddie worked on their list of thieves. Their options were narrow—a wheelman who could fly a hybrid rocket-jet, a cat burglar, and a chemist with the knowledge and experience necessary to work on the edge of space. When she could no longer stomach the images floating through the Dark Web, she went downstairs. The scent of rosemary and juniper drew her into the kitchen.
“Mr. Tyler was in here ten minutes ago.” Conrad held a copper pot over the flames of the stove. Talia hadn’t asked the question, but it had been on the tip of her tongue. Conrad dialed back the heat and let the pot simmer. “He asked me to save him a plate for a late supper. I haven’t heard from him since.”
“He didn’t mention a meeting of some kind?”
“I am afraid not, miss.”
Talia dropped her arms. “Right. Why would he talk to either of us about a key step in our life-and-death mission? That would be silly.”
“You’ll have to forgive him, miss. Mr. Tyler makes a good show of things, but he spent a large portion of his life alone. There are times when the nuances of person-to-person interactions elude him.”
Talia could relate, but Conrad’s choice of words struck her. “I’ll have to forgive him?”
“Well you should.” Raising an eyebrow, Conrad gestured with a wooden spoon toward a painting on the wall behind her, one of Tyler’s scriptures. She recognized the text as the Lord’s Prayer, but it did not end with the bit about forgiving debts. There were two more verses.
FOR IF YOU FORGIVE OTHERS WHEN THEY SIN AGAINST YOU, YOUR HEAVENLY FATHER WILL ALSO FORGIVE YOU.
BUT IF YOU DO NOT FORGIVE OTHERS THEIR SINS, YOUR FATHER WILL NOT FORGIVE YOURS.
Talia had never known that such sentiments followed the famous prayer. She frowned, reading the last verse out loud. “Sounds a little harsh for your loving God,” she said, turning back to Conrad. “What happened to all the grace?”
“Oh, grace abounds.” Conrad shifted his pot again, stirring with a deliberate hand as if the wooden spoon were his brush and the sauce his masterpiece. “But I think those verses remind us that clinging to unforgiveness is the same as clinging to any other habitual sin.”
Unforgiveness? As Talia opened her mouth to respond, she heard the garage door opening. “Tyler,” she said to herself. She had told herself she wouldn’t let him slip away again. “Save me some dinner, Conrad. I have to go.”
“I thought you might. I’ll set a plate aside for both of you. Because nothing adds to the full flavor of a homemade cacciatore like the radiological bombardment only a microwave can provide.”
“Thanks.” She pecked his cheek on her way to the back stair.
“Take the Alfa,” he called after her. “Seeing you arrive in it will annoy him to no end. Keys are on the wall behind the door!”
None of the specialized vehicles Talia had encountered during her time at the Farm compared to the Alfa in terms of sheer brute power. She nearly drove it off a cliff thirty seconds after she left the garage. With the lightest touch of the gas pedal, the thing lurched like a bulldog at the end of its leash. But thanks to that power, she caught up to the Tesla in short order. Talia killed her lights and let Tyler lead her around the lake. He parked a short way down a grassy hill from San Pietro, the village church.
Talia watched as he made his way up the hill, coasted the Alfa in behind the Tesla, and then got out and followed.
The spotlights illuminating the church steeple did little for the graveyard behind, where she was certain Tyler had gone. He and his mystery date might have easily hidden behind any of the statues and weathered monuments—mere silhouettes in the night—but that did not strike Talia as Tyler’s style. And as she explored, she found a stone path that brought her through the graves to a little round structure set into the rear wall. An iron gate barred the entrance. She gave it a tug. Locked.
In a moment of uncertainty, Talia wondered if she had gone the wrong way, but a faint orange glow illuminating a spiral staircase beyond the gate told her different. She dropped to a knee and pulled a flat pouch from the rear pocket of her slacks. Lock-picking had been a mandatory class at the Farm. She hadn’t been the best in her class. But she had been close.
The lock clicked. With a quiet creak of the gate, Talia slipped through, hunching under the uncomfortable gaze of a chipped and scarred Virgin Mary.
No one challenged her in the stairwell. And she found no guards waiting in the narrow passage at the bottom—only a single lantern and jumbled bones crammed into niches too small for any full-grown human. Groundwater seeped in, falling with an echoing drip drip into scattered puddles on the floor. Twenty meters to her right, a few of these reflected the light of another lantern hanging in an intersecting passage. She pulled her Glock and kept moving.
One by one, like bread crumbs, the lanterns led her deeper into the labyrinth. The passages branched and split at random, filled to capacity with the dead. Around one corner she might find a row of crumbling stone coffins, lids broken as if the occupants were trying to escape; around the next, a shiny new granite monolith adorned with fresh flowers. At each turn, though, another flicker led her onward.
At any moment, Talia expected to hear Tyler’s voice or footfalls. But the minutes passed in silence. She rested her back against the wall to think. Something cold and wet had pressed into her shoulder. Talia lurched away from it and spun, only to see human heads pushing out of the stone, faces contorted in pain. Red rivulets ran down their cheeks like tears of blood.
It took all her self-control not to scream.
“Stone,” she whispered to herself. “They’re made of stone.” The groundwater, tinted by minerals as it passed through the hill, dripped onto the faces, bringing them to life. The pounding of Talia’s heartbeat settled, and she turned to put her eyes on the passage where they belonged. What would drive anyone to leave such terrifying markers? Sixteenth-century Catholics were messed up.
She had hardly finished the thought when a shadow flitted through her peripheral vision, sending her heart rate up again. Something had run across the passage at the next intersection, and she couldn’t write it off as macabre artwork. Sculptures didn’t move.
Following that ghost would lead her away from the nearest lantern.
Glasses, a voice that seemed set apart from her own subconscious told her.
She felt for her pocket and found them. Without a connection to Eddie, the Faux-kleys had no guidance arrows or video, but the enhanced optics still worked. The blue lenses did not banish the shadows entirely, but they pushed them back, giving her an edge, confidence.
She hurried to the corner where she had seen the figure and listened, and was rewarded with the gentle splash of a sole touching down in a puddle.
Talia rushed after the sound, and at the next turn, she caught a glimpse of a black suit. She was catching up. She risked a whispered call. “Tyler!”
Her quarry abandoned stealth and ducked into a branching passage.
Talia ran after him, barely keeping him in sight, even with the glasses.
The light in the passage dimmed to near black and then grew again, rapidly. Seconds later both raced out into an underground cathedral with a domed ceiling. Lanterns hung from carved pillars at one end, illuminating a crucifix bounded by weeping cherubs. A broken sarcophagus lay at the foot of the cross. The man ahead of her broke into a sprint, making a bid for one of the many tunnels leading away.
She couldn’t let him return to the maze. “Tyler, stop!”
The man jogged to a halt and turned.
Talia stopped too, several meters away, and raised her Glock. “You’re . . . not Tyler.”
He was young, much younger than Tyler—almost a boy. The boy raised his hands, but he did not look scared, nor even concerned. He smiled and said something in Italian, tilting his head to Talia’s right. At the same time, she heard the ratcheting click of a handgun being cocked.
Another young man in a matching black suit emerged from one of the tunnels, leveling a Beretta. A third came in from her left, also armed. And slow, deliberate footsteps at her back told Talia a fourth had entered from the same tunnel she had run through moments before.
The voice of the fourth, however, was not that of a young man. “Lower your weapon, signorina,” he said in a heavy Italian accent, “before someone gets hurt.”
Chapter