I filled my body with oxygen, heaving in slow, deep, saturating breaths. I pushed my fear of the water deep back into my brain.

Then I went down. The dark water was cold and clutching. It felt like death grasping at me. I stayed close to the roof of the cave that met the end of the shaft; it was smooth stone, worn by the ceaseless knife of the water. The current shoved me forward. I brushed hard against the rocks that scraped my back and my head. Agony lanced my ribs.

Ten seconds in the deep.

No pain. No fear. I pressed on. Trying not to panic, trying to stay streamlined like a torpedo to move me along faster. The blackness was complete, like nothing I had ever experienced. I kicked, kept my hands out in front of me to try to protect myself from any hidden obstruction in the pitch black, told myself I had all the time in the world.

Fifty seconds. So I guessed. My lungs began to burn. Panic tugged at the edges of my mind. A little tug and then tearing.

I saw a blossom of dim light to my left and hurled myself toward it. The light grew brighter. I kicked, I swam, trying to cut through the current to the unexpected glow. I saw a stone circle, dimly outlined from the light above, just like the shaft I’d fled. I kicked upward, fighting the urge to let the stale air—precious gold—out of my lungs. The shaft here was narrower. I went up.

And exploded into air.

I took long, huffing breaths. A grate lay two feet above my head, brown with rust. I breathed like I’d never breathed before. I tried to push open the grate. It was locked into place, with heavy iron bolts. I couldn’t get up the shaft to the rest of the complex.

But the sound of the water was loud, and this must have been the rush of current I’d heard heading from the stables into the complex. I tried to pull the grate from the stone, and I realized I was getting nowhere and losing precious strength.

I wanted to remain in this pocket of light and air, but I couldn’t. My kid needed me. Mila needed me. Had Edward killed her? I thought not; he wanted to know who she worked for.

I had to go back into the darkness.

I took the long, low, heavy breaths, looking up through the stone shaft like a baby glimpsing a distant world at the end of the birth canal. I filled my body with air and kicked back into the blackness.

The cold river swept me away. I could feel a sudden shift downward in the angle of the ceiling. Going down, further from the ground, from the surface and the sacred air. Don’t panic. Whatever you do, do not panic.

I fought the urge to turn back to the last shaft. Then I felt the stone not only above me but below me. The tunnel had narrowed into a grave. I tried to turn back, panicking now, the bubbles exploding from me in a rush, and the water swept me forward between the stone jaws.

Narrow, black stone scraping both sides of me. My mother, my father. My brother, staring into a camera, silently pleading for his life. I would be with Danny again. My child. Lucy. I didn’t want my last thought to be of Lucy. I thought of my brother, imagined I felt his strong hand taking mine.

Then no stone pressed against me. Above me, no rock. Light, a thousand miles above me. I kicked. Weakly. My muscles trying their last. Then my head burst above the water into the sweetness. I gasped, wheezed, turned into the water and vomited. I was in the river, bright with sunlight, alive.

I heard a buzz. A plane. I remembered the private runway on the map. And lying in the cold, gray wash of the river I looked up and saw Zaid’s Learjet.

Edward was gone.

90

I LAY ON THE BANK until I found strength enough to get to my feet. I walked to the stables. The guards were gone, either to the hospital or to the main house, I guessed. I headed back into the complex.

I checked all the computers; all the hard drives were gone, all the backup drives, the strange drives for the chips. The chips were gone as well.

I checked my shoe. The chip I’d taken was still there.

Edward had put a chip in the gun before he’d shot Yasmin. So the chips somehow worked with the guns. The bizarre gun that shot Yasmin when it was directly aimed at me. The gun that shared a strange metal grid with the bomb that had killed the Money Czar back in Amsterdam.

I got into the delivery truck and drove to the empty plane hangar. No sign of Mila.

He’d taken Mila, because he wanted to know who was after him.

I drove down to the canal. I drove past where I’d climbed out from it and about another half mile I found Yasmin’s body. I waded into the water and I pulled her free from a thickness of rushes. I picked up Yasmin’s body and carried her to the truck. I wasn’t exactly crazy about the idea of driving back to London, with no license in my name, in a stolen delivery truck, with a corpse in the back. But I couldn’t leave her body.

The gun that had killed Yasmin had not been like anything I’d ever seen before. I wanted to see the bullets.

91

ADRENALINE THRUMMED WITH MUSIC, guitars battling under androgynous singing. Most of the crowd was in the building’s courtyard listening to an impossibly trendy band play. I parked the truck behind the bar in the reserved owner’s space and used the private back entrance, carrying Yasmin’s body on my shoulder, keying in the code Mila had given me to open the door. No one saw me. Lucy was still locked inside her windowless room. I left her there; right now if I looked at her I might kill her. I had to stay focused. I locked the doors behind me. The room had been soundproofed but I could still feel the distant beat of the music.

There was medical equipment in a closet, just as in Amsterdam. I found a scalpel. I spread plastic sheeting on the floor and carefully cut into Yasmin’s bullet wounds. I couldn’t shake either the image of the treasured daughter she had been in her father’s eyes, or that of the empty shell she’d become.

I found one of the bullets and carefully pulled it out. I wiped it clean and took it to the table.

The bullet was longer and slimmer than usual. Malformed slightly from the impact on entering Yasmin’s body, it carried a grid on its nose that matched the grid I’d seen on the bomb shrapnel and the gun. I pulled apart the bullet. Inside lay a complex web of miniaturized technology.

I took photos of the dismantled bullet and loaded them onto the computer on the desk.

Then I took one of the phones from the shelf, checked it, and called a number in New York City.

It rang three times. “Howell.”

“It’s Sam Capra.”

“Sam.”

“I have my wife.”

“You what?”

“I have captured my wife.”

A long shocked silence.

“You were right, Howell. She betrayed me, the Company. I have proof.”

“Slow down.”

“Have you intercepted that cigarette shipment?”

“No. The customs people in Rotterdam haven’t tracked it.”

“Listen. Lucy’s connected to a group—your Novem Soles—that has stolen a prototype for some kind of high-tech gun. I want to send you photos of a bullet. I need it analyzed.”

“No, you need to come in, Sam. Do this right.”

“No. I will send you the photos. I think that maybe they’re targeting kids with these guns.”

“Kids?”

“I saw a list of fifty people that I think may be targeted. Mostly kids, a few men and women. Give me an e-mail to send this information to you.”

“Bring in the evidence. Now, Sam.” Howell lowered his voice. “All could be forgiven if you really have Lucy.”