Harker Group

  As he passed the driveway he noted that the Suburban was parked under the portico of a large house. Baranov continued on, back to Washington.

  Ilya Baranov was a cautious man. He had not survived all these years by rushing to eliminate his targets. There was only one right time and place for accomplishing a successful kill. Baranov's skill lay in finding that one, perfect opportunity.

  Antipova presented a challenging assignment. For one thing, she was as proficient in the skills of delivering death as he was. She, too, had earned a nickname when she was with SVR. Those who knew what she did called her the Widow Maker. She was a predator, like him. Like him, she would have a highly developed sixth sense of potential threats in her environment. She'd already survived one attempt, made before the CIA helped her vanish.

  Some targets were easy, requiring no more than a quick pass in a crowd and the barely felt prick of a needle dosed with a lethal, fast acting poison. Others needed a different approach. Something casually added to a drink in a bar. A concealed sniper's nest, where a shot could be taken with minimal risk of capture afterward.

  Valentina Antipova was not a simple target. She required careful preparation.

  Things were further complicated because she was always in the company of others, people dangerous in their own right. True, he'd only been observing for a few days, but over time a professional got a feeling for these things. Finding her on her own and getting close to her looked more and more unlikely. Besides, getting close risked alerting her. That would lead to complications he didn't want to deal with. She was too dangerous.

  Baranov had known Anasenko, the man who had tried and failed to kill her before. Anasenko had gotten close. The fact that it had been him making that last journey to the morgue instead of her proved how dangerous she was.

  No, this assignment required something more impersonal. Kerensky wanted something that wouldn't draw undue attention to Antipova's death, but the more he thought about it, the more Baranov came to the conclusion that attention was unavoidable. There was only one best solution to the problem.

  Not up close and personal, as he usually preferred, but effective. That was all that mattered. Dead was dead, no matter how it was accomplished. The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. Plus there would be collateral benefits. Yes, he'd do it that way.

  Antipova had less than a day left.

  21

  It was morning. Nick took a bite of toast, followed it with a swallow of coffee, and looked at his watch.

  "We need to get going. You know how Harker barks at us if we're late."

  Selena called down the long hallway leading to the back of the loft and Valentina's guest suite.

  "Valentina, are you ready? It's time to go."

  "Coming, sister."

  Valentina came out of her room, carrying her backpack. She'd dressed in a dark blue blouse and black slacks. Seeing her walk down the hall, Selena thought how strange life was. If her father hadn't fallen for a KGB spy, or if Valentina's mother had decided to rid herself of the child, life would be radically different.

  Selena's parents had been dead for years, killed in a horrific car crash when she was a child. Her father had been CIA, the apparent car accident the work of the KGB. After their deaths Selena had been raised by her uncle, a man of great wealth. He'd given her a world education, taught her to appreciate fine art and music and literature, encouraged her independence. His murder by agents of a rogue Chinese general had brought her into Nick's world.

  Valentina found out about their relationship before Selena did. Even Nick had known. When Selena discovered that she had a Russian sister, it had filled a gigantic hole in her life and turned her world upside down.

  Valentina was no ordinary Russian. She'd been raised as a weapon of the state, trained as a seductress and an assassin. Their paths had crossed during a Project mission and had been intertwined ever since. Selena still wasn't quite used to the fact that Valentina was here, living in her home. After today, that would change. Today was moving day. Valentina's room was ready in Virginia.

  "Let's go," Nick said.

  Anna Montalbano, their friend and live-in nanny, was feeding the twins in the kitchen.

  "We'll be back about three, Anna," Selena said.

  "Say goodbye to mommy and daddy," Anna said.

  The twins waved their arms in the air and made happy, unintelligible noises.

  Outside the loft, the trio waited for the elevator.

  Nick said, "When do they start talking?"

  "Pretty soon. They can already say a few words."

  "They talk to each other a lot. Like they have their own language."

  "They do have their own language. Too bad we can't understand it," Selena said.

  The elevator came. They took it down to the underground parking garage and headed for Nick's Suburban. The car was parked behind a concrete support column. Halfway to the car, Nick pressed his remote and unlocked the doors.

  Click.

  Selena stopped suddenly. Nick and Valentina stopped with her.

  "Darn it," she said. "I forgot my phone. I have to go back upstairs."

  Nick looked at his watch. "We're already late. A few more minutes won't make any difference."

  Selena turned to go back to the elevator. The Suburban exploded in a roar of sound, sending a lethal blizzard of metal and glass whistling through the air. The shockwave knocked her to the floor. Overhead, a smoking wheel hurtled by and crashed into the elevator. Choking clouds of gray dust rolled through the garage.

  A dozen car alarms began shrieking. What was left of the Suburban burned brightly, giving off oily, black smoke.

  The sprinklers on the garage ceiling came on.

  Nick got to his knees, coughing. Blood dripped into his eyes from a deep gash across his forehead. He wiped at it with his sleeve, trying to catch his breath between coughs.

  "Selena..."

  Selena lay on her stomach, her clothes torn and stained from the blast. She coughed, rolled over, and sat up, resting on one hand. Water from the sprinklers poured down, drenching them.

  Valentina lay on her side, unmoving.

  22

  Elizabeth, Ronnie, and Lamont met them at the emergency room. Nick and Selena sat together on plastic chairs in the waiting area. Selena had a blanket wrapped around her. Nick had his arm around her shoulders. A white bandage covered his forehead.

  "What happened?" Elizabeth asked.

  "Somebody put a bomb under my car," Nick said. "Selena forgot her phone. If she hadn't stopped to go back for it, we'd all be dead."

  "Where's Valentina?"

  "In surgery. A piece of metal buried itself in her thigh. It narrowly missed the femoral artery. Half an inch to the side, she'd be gone. She'll be all right, but she lost a lot of blood."

  "Selena? Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine, just a mild concussion. The blast knocked me down. I hit my head on the floor."

  "We'll find out who did this," Elizabeth said. "Clarence has his forensics team on it. There's always something."

  Nick was angry.

  "We could have had the kids with us."

  "Thank God you didn't," Elizabeth said.

  "When we find out who did this..."

  A doctor emerged through the swinging doors leading into the hospital. He looked around the room and headed straight for them.

  "You're the folks who brought in the woman with the leg injury?"

  "That's right," Selena said. "She's my sister. Is she all right?"

  "It will take a while before she's back to normal, but she'll be fine. She's out of surgery and in recovery. There was considerable injury to the muscles of the upper leg and she lost a lot of blood. She'll need rehab. I'm afraid she won't be running a marathon anytime soon."

  "Thank God," Selena said.

  "What happened?" the doctor asked. "You don't see an injury like that every day."

  "There was an explosion," Nick said. "She got hit by a piece of a car."

  "Well. She's a lucky woman." He gestured at Nick's bandage. "Judging from that, so are you."

  "When can we see her?" Selena asked.

  "When she's out of recovery. We'll move her to a room in an hour or so, but she'll be sedated. You can see her then, but don't be surprised if she's not very responsive."

  A page came over the speakers.

  "They're calling me," the doctor said. "Someone will let you know when your sister is out of recovery."

  "Thanks, Doc," Nick said.

  They watched him go.

  "Whoever did this wanted all of you dead," Elizabeth said.

  "Valentina was probably the target," Selena said.

  "Maybe," Nick said. "Or it could have been aimed at us. It doesn't matter. Someone needs to stand guard outside Valentina's room until we can get her out of here. If it was Valentina, they might try again while she's vulnerable."

  "I'll take the first shift," Ronnie said. "I'll wait for them to move her from recovery, then set up outside her room."

  "I'll take the second shift," Lamont said.

  "All right," Nick said. "Selena and I will go home and get cleaned up, then I'll be back."

  "Be careful, Ronnie," Elizabeth said.

  "Always am, Director."

  An hour later, Ronnie was sitting on a folding chair outside the door to Valentina's room. He'd learned long ago how to wait and stay alert. He settled down and watched for anything unusual.

  There wasn't a lot to see. A nurse's station was positioned farther down the corridor. The hospital personnel passing by sometimes gave him a curious glance, but after a while, no one paid him any attention.

  Ilya Baranov had no trouble slipping into the hospital and stealing a white doctor's coat to throw on over his clothes. A white coat in a big hospital like this made you invisible. With a clipboard and a stethoscope, his disguise was complete. He was missing the ID badge everyone carried, but he held the clipboard in front of him in a way that would conceal a badge if he'd had one.

  It didn't take long to find out which room had been assigned to Antipova. He avoided the elevator and took the stairs to her floor. A silenced pistol was a comforting weight in his pocket.

  He stepped out into the corridor and walked toward her room with a doctor's firm stride, as if he belonged there. He turned a corner. Far down the hall, he saw one of the Americans sitting in a chair outside Antipova's room.

  So. Not today.

  Five minutes later he was back in the parking lot, walking to his car.

  There would be another opportunity. The next time she wouldn't escape.

  23

  Three days after the explosion, the team met again in Elizabeth's office. Valentina sat in a wheelchair at the end of the couch.

  "How do you like your new quarters, Valentina," Selena asked.

  "It is very nice, sister. The bed is very comfortable. I am happy to be here."

  "Let's talk about the bomb," Elizabeth said. "The forensics team recovered part of the detonator. It's Russian. The explosive was Semtex."

  "Russian?" Nick said. "They're sure?"

  "Unmistakable," Elizabeth said. "The bomb was set with a delay. It was triggered when you unlocked the car. You were supposed to be sitting inside when it blew."

  "If bomb was Russian, I was target," Valentina said. "This is Orlov's work."

  "Perhaps you should have stayed in Kansas," Elizabeth said.

  "It would not make any difference. Sooner or later, he would discover where I was living."

  "We don't know Valentina was the target," Selena said. "We've made a lot of enemies over the years. Russian detonators and Semtex aren't uncommon. There are plenty of reasons why someone might try to kill us."

  "If your car hadn't been parked behind that column, they would have succeeded," Elizabeth said. "It took the brunt of the blast. The question is, will whoever it is try again?"

  "We have to assume they will," Nick said. "But now we know someone's after us. It's going to be more difficult."

  "If it is Orlov, his assassin will not stop until he succeeds or is killed," Valentina said. "I know how these people think. Besides, it is unsafe for him to return home without completing mission."

  "Unsafe?"

  "Those who are trained to carry out these kinds of missions are expected to succeed, always. Failure is not acceptable. This I know."

  "Doesn't sound like there's a lot of job security in that line of work," Lamont said.

  "We can't let this interfere with the Egyptian mission," Elizabeth said. "It's already changing because Valentina can't go. Not with that injury."

  She tapped her pen on her desk.

  "Are you all armed? In case they try again?"

  "That was a rhetorical question, right?" Nick said.

  "Valentina as well?"

  Valentina held up a Glock .45.

  "My sister gives me this gift."

  "All right. Let's talk about Egypt. There's a complication."

  "What else is new?" Lamont said.

  "What is it this time?" Nick asked.

  "Terrorists. Specifically, a group called Allah's Justice. NSA and Langley have been keeping tabs on them. They're Isis wannabes and they've begun drawing in more recruits. DCI Hood thinks they want to establish a caliphate in North Africa."

  "Not this again," Nick said.

  "How is it a complication?" Selena asked.

  "They've established a training camp in the mountains, not far from where you're going."

  "How come the Egyptians haven't done anything about it?" Nick asked.

  "Relations with Cairo are not good at the moment. When we informed the Egyptian authorities, we were told in no uncertain terms to stop prying into Egyptian affairs and using our satellites to spy on them."

  "You'd think they'd want to know about something like that."

  "I'm sure they do know about it," Elizabeth said. "The Muslim fundamentalists have been a strong factor in Egyptian politics for a long time. Any government that wants to stay in power has to dance with them. Someone's made a deal to leave Allah's Justice alone."

  "That's like dancing with a cobra," Nick said.

  "That's not your concern. Your concern is staying away from these people when you're on the ground. They're as bad as Isis. You don't want to run into them."

  "Nobody's found this tomb in thousands of years," Ronnie said. "Doesn't seem to me there's much chance anyone will stumble across it now."

  "If Professor Freeman hadn't been murdered, I might agree with you," Elizabeth said. "His assistant was Egyptian. She knows the location of the tomb. What if she's part of a terrorist group? If the tomb is there and hasn't been looted, we can't risk them getting their hands on whatever is inside."

  "If it exists," Nick said.

  "Which brings us back to the point of the mission," Elizabeth said. "Find out if it does. If it does, find out what's in it."

  24

  Nephthys stood before the statue of Alexander. Clouds of incense drifted through the room, rising from the urns on the altar. A brazier filled with hot coals glowed in front of her, casting a fiery glow on the feet of the statue.

  The worship of Alexander as the Sun God had begun with Ptolemy I and continued after Cleopatra's death, under a succession of women who served as high priestess. Nephthys was the latest in the lineage. The cult had survived conquerors, wars, even the coming of Islam. Early on it had evolved into a mystery religion, hidden from the unworthy eyes of the world.

  Even with the most careful attention, over so many years things happened. The location of the tomb had been lost more than a thousand years before, vanished in the fog of time.

  Then the scroll had been discovered.

  Nephthys was sure the intervention of the god had caused her to send Kalima to Freeman and the museum. It was beyond coincidence. Now she needed to know what the god wished her to do next.

  Nephthys picked up a small dish of reddish gold filled with mixed herbs, a preparation that had been handed down for millennia. The same formula had been used in the ancient Temple of Delphi to lift the Oracle into an altered state. She tipped the herbs from the dish onto the coals. Thick smoke rose into the air. Nephthys breathed in the sharp, pungent smell.

  Once. Twice. Three times.

  She sat back, waiting.

  The drug seized her. The room dissolved. A blinding light appeared in front of her.

  She was in the presence of the god.

  The tomb must be protected.

  The thought filled her mind. She closed her eyes. A shuddering, sensual warmth began in her loins, coursing through her body in rippling waves, an ocean of bliss and pleasure.

  The tomb must be protected.

  Then all thoughts faded. Only the pleasure of the god's presence remained.

  When she opened her eyes again, it was dusk outside the windows of the temple room. She was lying on the floor before the altar. The red hot coals had faded to gray.

  And now she knew what she had to do.

  25

  When President Rice had been in the White House it had been easy for Elizabeth to arrange transportation, weapons, whatever the team needed. Now that she'd been cut off, things were a lot harder. Getting to an obscure point on the Gulf of Suez was a logistical challenge.

  How was she going to get the team on site without being detected? With some difficulty she could still get military support, but there weren't many good choices. Suez and the Red Sea coastline were heavily defended. If they came in and jumped from low altitude, Egyptian missile defenses would be activated. A helicopter insertion wouldn't work, for the same reason. A high-altitude, high opening jump would get them in, but how were they going to get out when the mission was complete?