He located the cell phone, glanced at the display, and answered, his stomach clenching into a familiar knot.
“Viktor,” Zovastina said. “I’m glad I found you. There’s a problem.”
He listened as she told him about an incident in Amsterdam, where two Sacred Band members had been killed while trying to obtain a medallion. “The Americans have made official inquires. They want to know why my people were shooting at Secret Service agents. Which is a good question.”
He wanted to say it was probably because they were terrified of disappointing her, so their better judgment had been overridden by recklessness. But he knew better and only noted, “I would have preferred to handle the matter there myself.”
“All right, Viktor. Tonight, I’m conceding this one. You were opposed to the second team and I overruled you.”
He knew better than to acknowledge that concession. Incredible enough she’d offered it. “But you, Minister, want to know why the Americans just happened to be there?”
“That did occur to me.”
“It could be that we’ve been exposed.”
“I doubt they care what we do. I’m more concerned with our Venetian League friends. Especially the fat one.”
“Still, the Americans were there,” he said.
“Could have been chance.”
“What do they say?”
“Their representatives refused to give any details.”
“Minister,” he said in a hushed tone, “have we finally learned what we’re actually after?”
“I’ve been working on that. It’s been slow, but I now know that the key to deciphering Ptolemy’s riddle is finding the body that once occupied the Soma in Alexandria. I’m convinced the remains of St. Mark, in the Basilica di San Marco in Venice, are what we’re after.”
He’d not heard this before.
“That’s why I’m going to Venice. Tomorrow night.”
Even more shocking. “Is that wise?”
“It’s necessary. I’ll want you with me, at the basilica. You’ll need to acquire the other medallion and be at the church by one A.M. ”
He knew the proper response. “Yes, Minister.”
“And you never said, Viktor. Do we have the one from Denmark?”
“We do.”
“We’ll have to do without the one in Holland.”
He noticed she wasn’t angry. Odd considering the failure.
“Viktor, I ordered that the Venetian medallion be last for a reason.”
And now he knew why. The basilica. And the body of St. Mark. But he was still concerned about the Americans. Luckily, he’d contained the Denmark situation. All three of the problems who’d tried to best him were dead and Zovastina need never know.
“I’ve planned this for some time,” she was saying. “There are supplies waiting for you in Venice, so don’t drive, fly. Here’s their location.” She provided a warehouse address and an access code for an electronic lock. “What happened in Amsterdam is unimportant. What occurs in Venice…that’s vital. I want that last medallion.”
Malone 3 - The Venetian Betrayal
THIRTY-ONE
THE HAGUE
1:10 A.M.
STEPHANIE LISTENED WITH GREAT INTEREST AS EDWIN DAVIS AND President Daniels explained what was happening.
“What do you know about zoonosis?” Davis asked her.
“A disease that can be transmitted from animals to humans.”
“It’s even more specific,” Daniels said. “A disease that normally exists harmlessly in animals but can infect humans with devastating results. Anthrax, bubonic plague, ebola, rabies, bird flu, even common ringworm are some of the best-known examples.”
“I didn’t realize biology was your strong point.”
Daniels laughed. “I don’t know crap about science. But I know a lot of people who do. Tell her, Edwin.”
“There are about fifteen hundred known zoonotic pathogens. Half sit quietly in animals, living off the host, never infecting. But when transmitted to another animal, one for which the pathogen doesn’t harbor any paternal instincts, they go wild. That’s exactly how bubonic plague began. Rats carried the disease, fleas fed on the rats, then the fleas transmitted the disease to humans, where it ran rampant—”
“Until,” Daniels said, “we developed an immunity to the damn thing. Unfortunately, in the fourteenth century, that took a few decades and, in the meantime, a third of Europedied.”
“The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was a zoonosis, wasn’t it?” she asked.
Davis nodded. “Jumped from birds to humans, then mutated so it could pass from human to human. And did it ever. Twenty percent of the world actually suffered from the disease. Around five percent of the entire world’s population died. Twenty-five million people in the first six months. To put that in perspective, AIDS killed twenty-five million in its first twenty-five years.”
“And those 1918 numbers are shaky,” Daniels noted. “China and the rest of Asiasuffered horribly with no accurate fatality count. Some historians believe that as many as a hundred million may have died worldwide.”
“A zoonotic pathogen is the perfect biological weapon,” Davis said. “All you have to do is find one, whether it be a virus, bacteria, a protozoa, or a parasite. Isolate it, then it can infect at will. If you’re clever, two versions could be created. One that only moves from animal to human, so you’d have to directly infect the victim. Another, mutated, that moves from human to human. The first could be used for limited strikes at specific targets, a minimal danger of the thing passing beyond the person infected. The other would be a weapon of mass destruction. Infect a few and the dying never stops.”
She realized what Edwin Davis said was all too real.
“Stopping these things is possible,” Daniels said. “But it takes time to isolate, study, and develop countermeasures. Luckily, most of the known zoonoses have antiagents, a few even have vaccines that prevent wholesale infection. But those take time to develop, and a lot of people would be killed in the meantime.”