14

“There was trouble yesterday,” Damone said softly from the library doorway. “Tell me what is happening.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” Rodrigo said instead, rising to greet his brother. He’d been astonished when the guards had called to announce Damone’s arrival. The agreement was that they wouldn’t be together again until after their father’s murderer had been caught. Learning that Liliane Mansfield, alias Denise Morel, had killed Salvatore in revenge for the deaths of her friends, in no way abrogated that agreement. In fact, other than telling Damone the woman’s identity, Rodrigo hadn’t passed along any other information other than to say they were searching for her.

Damone wasn’t a weak man, but Rodrigo had always felt protective of his younger brother, first because he was younger, and second because Damone had never been in the trenches with their father the way Rodrigo had. Rodrigo knew the ways of urban and corporate warfare, while Damone knew the ways of stock markets and mutual funds.

“You have no one to help you the way you helped Papa,” Damone replied, sitting down in the chair Rodrigo had always used when Salvatore was alive. “It isn’t right that I should spend my time studying money markets and moving funds around when you’re shouldering the entire responsibility for operations.” He spread his hands. “I also receive news from both the Internet and print sources. The item I read early this morning wasn’t very informative, just a small mention of an incident at a park yesterday, of several people exchanging gunfire. None of the culprits were identified, other than two guards from a nearby laboratory who heard the shots and ran to help.” His intelligent dark eyes narrowed. “The name of the park was given.”

Rodrigo said, “But why are you here? The incident was handled.”

“Because this is the second incident at Vincenzo’s lab. Am I supposed to think that is coincidence? We are depending on the influx of profits from the influenza vaccine. There are several opportunities pending that I’ll have to let go by if the funds aren’t there. I want to know what’s going on.”

“A phone call wouldn’t have sufficed?”

“I can’t see your face over the phone,” Damone replied, and smiled. “You’re a talented liar, but I know you too well. I’ve watched you from the time we were small, looking up at Papa and denying we had done whatever thing had happened, though of course we were always guilty. If you lie to me in person, I’ll know it. So. I am capable of adding more than two digits together. There is an ongoing problem at Vincenzo’s laboratory, and in the middle of this, our father is murdered. Are the two connected?”

That was the problem with Damone, Rodrigo thought; he was too damned intelligent, and intuitive into the bargain. It annoyed Rodrigo that he’d never been able to successfully lie to his younger brother; everyone else in the world, yes, but not to Damone. And perhaps being protective of his younger brother had been good when they were seven and four, but they were both grown men now. That was a habit he should perhaps break.

“Yes,” he finally said. “They are.”

“How so?”

“The woman who killed Papa, Liliane Mansfield, was a close friend of the Joubrans, the couple who broke into the laboratory in August and destroyed a great portion of Vincenzo’s work.”

Damone rubbed his eyes as if he was tired, then pinched the bridge of his nose before lowering his hand. “So it was vengeance.”

“That part of it, yes.”

“And the other part?”

Rodrigo sighed. “I still don’t know who hired the Joubrans in the beginning. Whoever it is could well hire someone else to attack the laboratory again. We cannot afford another such delay. This woman who killed Papa wasn’t working for anyone at the time, I don’t think, but she could well be by now. My men spotted her at the park yesterday; she was surveilling the grounds of the complex. Whether she was hired or is doing this on her own, the result is the same. She will try to sabotage the vaccine.”

“Can she possibly know what the vaccine is?”

Rodrigo spread his hands. “There is always the possibility of betrayal from within, someone who works at the laboratory, in which case she would know. Supposedly mercenaries such as the Joubrans don’t work cheaply, so I’m investigating the financial circumstances of all the laboratory employees, to see if any of them had the means of hiring them.”

“What do you know about this woman?”

“She is an American, and she was a hired killer, a contract agent, for their CIA.”

Damone paled. “The Americans hired her?”

“Not to kill Papa, no. She did that on her own and, as you can imagine, they are very upset with her. They have, in fact, dispatched someone to ‘terminate the problem,’ I believe is the phrase that was used.”

“And in the meantime she is trying to devise a way to get inside the laboratory. How did she get away yesterday?”

“She has an accomplice, a man driving a Jaguar. He drove the car between her and my men, shielding her while he returned fire.”

“License plate?”

“No; the angle was wrong for my men to see it. There were witnesses, of course, but they were too busy cowering to take down a license number.”

“The most important question: Has she tried to harm you personally?”

“No.” Rodrigo blinked in surprise.

“Then it follows that I am in less danger than you. Therefore I will stay here, and you may delegate some of your duties to me. I will oversee the search for this woman, or any of your other problems if you would rather see to that yourself. Or we can work together on everything. I wish to be of help. He was my father, too.”

Rodrigo sighed, realizing he had been wrong to keep Damone away from everything; his brother was, after all, a Nervi. He must long for vengeance as deeply as did Rodrigo himself.

“There is another reason I want this matter taken care of,” Damone continued. “I am thinking of getting married.”

Astonished, Rodrigo stared at him in silence for a moment, then burst into laughter. “Married! When? You haven’t said anything about a special woman!”

Damone laughed, too, and color darkened his cheeks. “I don’t know when, because I haven’t asked her yet. But I think she will say yes. We have been seeing each other for over a year—”

“And you didn’t tell us?” Us included Salvatore, who would have been delighted that one of his sons intended to settle down and provide him with grandchildren.

“—but exclusively only in the past few months. I wanted to be certain before I said anything. She is Swiss, of a very good family; her father is a banker. Her name is Giselle.” His voice deepened when he said her name. “I have known from the very first that she is the one.”

“But she took longer, eh?” Rodrigo laughed again. “She didn’t take one look at your handsome face and decide you would make beautiful babies with her?”

“She knew that immediately, yes,” Damone said with cool confidence. “It was my ability to be a good husband that she doubted.”

“All Nervis make good husbands,” Rodrigo said, and it was true, if the wife didn’t mind the occasional mistress. Damone, though, would probably be faithful; he was just that type.

This happy news did explain why Damone was anxious to put this problem of Liliane Mansfield to rest. While it was true that wanting retribution was also part of it, he might well have been patient enough to let Rodrigo handle things had events in his personal life not spurred him to action.

Damone looked at Rodrigo’s desk and saw the photograph lying on it. Walking over, he turned the file around and studied the woman’s face. “She’s attractive,” he said. “Not pretty, but . . . attractive.”

He flipped through the rest of the file, reading rapidly. He looked up in astonishment. “This is the CIA’s file on her. How did you get it?”

“We have someone there on our payroll, of course. Also in Interpol, and Scotland Yard. It has, on occasion, been convenient to know certain things in advance.”

“The CIA calls here? You call them?”

“No, of course not; every call going in or out of there is logged and perhaps recorded. I have a private number for our Interpol contact, Georges Blanc, and he contacts the CIA or FBI through normal channels.”

“Have you thought of asking Blanc to get the mobile phone number of the person the CIA has sent to track Mansfield? The CIA doesn’t do this itself; it hires others to do the work, am I correct? I’m certain he or she would have a mobile, everyone does. Perhaps this person would be interested in making a considerable sum of money in addition to what the CIA pays, if certain information comes our way first.”

Intrigued by the idea, chagrined that he hadn’t thought of it himself, Rodrigo stared at his brother in admiration. “Fresh eyes,” he murmured to himself. And Damone was a Nervi; some things were inborn. “You have a devious mind,” he said, and laughed. “Between the two of us, this woman has no chance.”