White Heat (18 page)

Christ, was it something he could have prevented?

“Seduced four,” Max rubbed a hand across his jaw. “Put two in the hospital. Now we have her on an op in—” His smile wasn’t meant to be pleasant.
“Portland.
Seven-person team. There’ll be no seductions, and no bodily injuries. They’ve been well briefed.

“Just because the dead man had a Black Rose insignia on him doesn’t mean he was at Emily’s place under their command,” Max pointed out reasonably. “He could’ve been Black Rose and killing Emily was just a side job.” One thing he knew about bad guys is they rarely turned down opportunities to make some extra cash.

Navarro’s expression was half hidden by his shades, but his mouth tightened. “Treason?”

“You got it.” A T-FLAC operative who turned rogue was even worse than the scum they hunted. There was no wiggle room for a traitor. Catherine Seymour was like a loaded weapon in the hands of a psychotic drunk. She was beautiful, lethal, and used her Mensa mentality to outsmart and outwit the men and women with whom she was supposed to work to keep the world safe.

“Their job is to sit on her without her knowing she’s having her every move watched and recorded.”

Daklin made a rude noise. “Unless St. John gets to her ass first.”

Savage had tried to kill Hunt St. John’s lady, Taylor Kincaid, in the clever trap set by
Mano del Dios
a few months ago in South Africa. It had been close. Damn close. Hunt was out for Savages blood. And if they didn’t close the net around her soon, Max was inclined to let his friend have her.

“Haven’t heard any whispers about Black Rose in this neck of the European woods lately, have either of you?”

“We haven’t heard anything about them since the South African op. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a sub-cell waiting in the wings to go active.”

“Think this bombing is Black Rose?” Daklin leaned forward.

“I don’t know;” Navarro said. “What about the lilies left at the two other sites? Do we know if we were left the same floral clue
here, too?”

“I’ll check when we get inside. Could be someone else. Could be Black Rose.” Although Max thought that would be just too coincidental. Problem was, he didn’t believe in coincidence. Still, the leap from art restoration to the bombing of a Catholic church was pretty big.

There were any number of religious zealots out there. They couldn’t discount that the bombing had been a hate crime.

“Why hasn’t anyone jumped on taking the credit by now?”

“No one has come forward on the others yet, either.” Max pointed out. “On the subject of Black Rose and the dead guy …”

He quickly filled the other two men in on the situation with Emily and his father.

“Neither situation sounds like Black Rose’s MO, does it?” Navarro murmured, turning into the south parking lot of the cathedral.
“This,
however,
does.”
He indicated, unnecessarily, the giant gaping hole in the centuries-old wall.

“Or Oslukivati.” Max offered up another tango group. “Or any one of a
hundred
tango cells that could blow up something of this magnitude in the name of their god.”

He opened his door, and waited until the others climbed out. “Always makes the job more interesting to have multiple choices.”

“Ever think of chucking all this and retiring to a deserted island somewhere with a blond, a brunette, and a redhead?” Daklin asked pensively as they strode toward the smoldering remnants of the building.

The thought of spending a few weeks with a certain brunette appealed to Max a great deal. It shouldn’t. It never had in the past. Well, that wasn’t
exactly
true. After those days and nights with Emily last year, Max had considered the possibility of continuing the relationship. Considered and dismissed. His job and its lifestyle didn’t exactly lend itself to a relationship. A reality that suited him just fine. Until Emily.

He wasn’t just having great sex with an incredible woman, this was screwing with his brain. New and dangerous territory.

“No, thanks. One lady at a time works for me, and the idea of being stuck on some barren island with the same woman
indefinitely
is markedly unappeali—” His phone vibrated in his pocket as they skipped going through the massive, highly decorated door, and opted instead to go in through the new and not improved entrance. It was one mother of a hole.

“Aries.”

His second call was from Control.

Darius informed him that a woman named Jacoba Brill, a restoration artist in Holland, had died in the early hours of the morning.

“Was a small glass vial found anywhere near the body?” Max asked, the hair on the back of his neck rising. He’d bet his custom Glock that the woman’s death and Emily’s break-in were related. “No? Well, look again.”

The body was being autopsied now. Max knew the woman’s death was no coincidence, even if the exam indicated natural causes. They could call it a heart attack from now until the earth changed orbits, but he wasn’t buying it
.
Not when there were about a hundred different poisons and toxins that could mock the symptoms of a heart attack without leaving a trace in the body. Further, more sophisticated testing might reveal the underlying cause of death. Darius was already on it.

Max shoved the phone back in his pocket. “When we’re done here,” he told the others, “I’m taking Emily, with Cooper, Zampieri, and Niigata, to a safe house.”

Max didn’t say
which
safe house. He trusted these two men with his life. But he didn’t trust them with Emily’s.

“Then I’m going to Holland to check this out. I’ll connect with you when we decide the next step.”

“With Emily’s thing, or the bombings?”

“Both,” Max told him shortly.

Ten

‘‘CONFIRMED HUNDRED AND TWENTY-THREE TOURISTS AND TWO priests dead,” Max said, joining Navarro and Daklin. They’d split up, each to do what they did best. Max to ask
questions. Daklin and Navarro combing the Capilla Villaviciosa, the small chapel that had been the central point for the explosion. There was little left of centuries of priceless artwork, painting, statues, and tapestries. Not to mention the pile of rubble that now represented what had once been a highly regarded example of thirteenth—century architecture.

“What do we think?” he asked the others. “Same signature as the Madrid train bombing in ‘04?” He didn’t think so, but he wasn’t leaving any stone unturned.

“Spanish judiciary,” Daklin murmured. “Loose group of Moroccan, Syrian, and Algerian Muslims inspired by al-Qaeda and two Guardia Civil and Spanish police informants. Still doing their time.”

Navarro considered it. “Ahmed was extradited from Italy. There’s your connection.”

Max rubbed the back of his neck. “Doesn’t feel right.”

“To me either,” Daklin admitted. Navarro nodded.

“Hell. Back to square one.”

While the answers he’d gotten might let them form a more complete picture of the hours and days before, during, and directly after the explosion, it was the bits and pieces they’d collected that would give them the complete picture. Even in the midst of nearly complete obliteration, Max knew T-FLAC’s bomb techs would find enough pieces to reconstruct the important components.

Find the bomb’s signature, find the bomb’s builder. The trick was getting to the source before another fatal explosion shook the world’s religious communities.

Absently, Max ran a hand around the back of his neck as he stared at the remains of the small chapel inside the enormous building. He knew two things: One, whoever blew up the building knew what they were doing and two, he’d made sure there was a body count to go along with the structural damage. The building was only open to the public from nine to six. The son of a bitch who’d done this had intentionally detonated when the place was teeming with tourists.

The three men stood in the mihrab, the central prayer hail, and just outside what was basically a large hole in the mosaic floor. Bits of the small chapel’s stalactite ceiling and chunks of plaster lacework had been flung across the floor for yards.

Where the hell was Emily? Max glanced down the length of the enormous hall. Thick, oily black smoke hung in the still air inside the vast building, almost blocking the view of the geometric white-and-rust-red double horseshoe arches, and what was probably a magnificent ceiling. A forest of a thousand black marble pillars supported the arches, the stone polished at hand height to a shiny black gloss from countless hands running over them for centuries.

He had a theory, Christ it was a wild theory but until they could send in samples from the bomb site and get some definitive answers, it was all they had.

“Five vehicles melted to the ground, and fifty plus people injured in the parking lot. The explosion was localized, and this area,” Max paused, pointing toward the starburst-shaped point of origin, “was destroyed.” Steam rose off some of the smoking rubble. “Sprinklers activated?”

Daklin nodded. “Just for a few minutes in response to the heat. As soon as they cleared the building of survivors, they started moving the art into other areas of the building to prevent further damage. According to the curator, several paintings were ripped, torn, blackened by smoke or soaked by water.”

“We’ll want to take a look at the paintings they moved to storage.”

Daklin took out a black square of linen and wiped his equally blackened hands. “Besides Black Rose, we have a smorgasbord of bad guys to pin this on.” His half smile was mocking. T-FLAC was unlikely to be out of work any millennium soon. His specialty was toxic chemicals, but he dressed like a fricking model for a perfume ad.

A smart man would be wise not to believe the suave façade. Max remembered how the man had once single-handedly taken on a dozen hyped-up druggies in a dockside bar.

Daklin had walked away without one sun-streaked hair out of place. The man was a machine.

“No, but this stinks of Black Rose,” Max said, giving voice to what they were all thinking. This was a well thought out, meticulous strike. Contained. Controlled.

He caught the eye of a man approaching them at a fast clip. “Hang on, that’s the chief of police. Let’s see if he has anything.” He walked off to intercept him halfway.

“There
were
lilies at this site,” Max informed the others when he returned to them a few minutes later. “A dozen, left out in a protected courtyard. No one connected their significance, until I asked, and it was only after the chief questioned those in charge that he found out someone had seen them, and taken them home to his girlfriend. They’re bringing the guy in for questioning.”

Daklin smiled. “And wrestling the flowers away from the girlfriend, I presume?”

A message.

A message they had to interpret fast.
Before
the tangos struck again.

“Definitely one of the larger groups responsible for this.” Dakun offered, digging his hands into his elegant black slacks. “I managed to get a good enough sample of the Semtex used to send it in for analysis. As soon as we piece together the trigger, we can pinpoint where it originated, then see where it leads. It’s not going to surprise me if this slit stemmed from the Bosnian jihadist support network. Same as the synagogue and other church.”

“No doubt about the derivation of the explosion, however.” Max held up the large chunk of ornate, gilded picture frame he was holding.

“None,” Daklin assured him. “The explosive device was in the frame. Slick, sophisticated. Interesting housing.” His eyes gleamed. “Haven’t seen anything like this before. I’ll know more when I check it out in the lab.”

Max let his gaze drift down the length of the hail again. It was completely empty “I’m hoping Emily can tell us something about the painting.”
And hoping like hell she can’t.
Because if she
could,
it meant that somehow she was linked, however tenuously, to these latest three bombings. And as far-fetched as that sounded to him, Max couldn’t shake the certainty that Daniel, Emily, and the bombings were in some way connected.

Connected by the now dead Black Rose asset in Emily’s palazzo. Connected to him? Jesus. He didn’t know.

Navarro shrugged. “We got what we needed from Father Antonio. It was called
The Holy Family,
and was done by Raphael in the sixteenth century. We have photographs of the piece, and all the necessary documentation and provenance in here.” He tapped the thick file in his other hand.

“And out of all the paintings and other artwork,” Daklin indicated the space filled with a plethora of priceless antiquities and art objects,
“this
is what the tangos chose to blow up?”

“They got a twofer,” Max pointed out. “An Islamic mosque and Roman Catholic cathedral in one big boom. My vote is for a religious hate crime. Let’s start there.”

Navarro leaned against a pillar, crossing one ankle over the other. “Lisa Maki was thought to be head of the Black Rose and worked out of Barcelona.”

Savage had killed the woman in South Africa three months ago. “Even though some of her work had religious undertones, we know she’s not setting bombs from the grave. And her preferred kill was large groups, and more up close and personal:’ Max reminded them. “Like that student uprising, or the embassy bombing on the night of a gala event. Even if she were alive, this doesn’t feel like Maki.”

Max had that familiar itch at the base of his neck as a chill pervaded his body. They’d believed that the angelic-looking blonde had been head of the Black Rose. But they were now learning they’d been wrong. Maki had been in charge of one cell of the tango group, but she had
not
been the principal. They were hoping that Savage would lead them to the guy at the top. The only reason she was still at liberty and not locked up for treason.

Before Maki could be interrogated, she’d been killed by Savage in
Mano del Dios’s
underground bunker. St. John’s jewel thief lady friend had sworn to it
,
and Max and the others had believed her.

“Let’s invite Savage to join the party;” Daklin said with relish. “We can keep the bitch close until we know what the hell is going on.”