THIRTY-FIVE

VENICE

3:20 P.M.

STEPHANIE HOPPED FROM THE WATER TAXI AND MADE HER WAY through the tight warren of close-quartered streets. She’d asked directions at her hotel and was following them the best she could, but Venice was a vast labyrinth. She was deep into the Dorsoduro district, a quiet, picturesque neighborhood long associated with wealth, following busy, alleylike thoroughfares lined with bustling commerce.

Ahead, she spotted the villa. Rigidly symmetrical, casting an air of lost distinction, its beauty sprang from a pleasing contrast of redbrick walls veined with emerald vines, highlighted with marble trim.

She stepped through a wrought-iron gate and announced her presence with a knock on the front door. An older woman with an airy face, dressed in a servant’s uniform, answered.

“I’m here to see Mr. Vincenti,” Stephanie said. “Tell him I bring greetings from President Danny Daniels.”

The woman appraised her with a curious look and she wondered if the name of the president of the United States struck a chord. So, to be sure, she handed the attendant a folded slip of paper. “Give this to him.”

The woman hesitated, then closed the door.

Stephanie waited.

Two minutes later the door reopened.

Wider this time.

And she was invited in.

“Fascinating introduction,” Vincenti said to her.

They sat in a rectangular room beneath a gilded ceiling, the room’s elegance highlighted by the dull gleam of lacquer that had surely coated the furniture for centuries. She sniffed the dank fragrance and thought she detected the odor of cats mixed with a scent of lemon polish.

Her host held up the note. “‘The President of the United States sent me.’ Quite a statement.” He seemed pleased at his perceived importance.

“You’re an interesting man, Mr. Vincenti. Born in upstate New York. A U.S. citizen. August Rothman.” She shook her head. “Enrico Vincenti? You changed the name. I’m curious, why?”

He shrugged. “It’s all about image.”

“It does sound more,” she hesitated, “continental.”

“Actually, a lot of thought was given to that name. Enrico came from Enrico Dandolo, thirty-ninth doge of Venice, in the late twelfth century. He led the Fourth Crusade that conquered Constantinople and ended the Byzantine Empire. Quite a man. Legendary, you might say.

“Vincenti I took from another twelfth-century Venetian. A Benedictine monk and nobleman. When his entire family was wiped out in the Aegean Sea, he applied for and got permission to dispense with his monastic vows. He married and founded five new lines of his family from his children. Quite resourceful. I admired his flexibility.”

“So you became Enrico Vincenti. Venetian aristocracy.”

He nodded. “Sounds great, no?”

“Want me to continue on what I know?”

He motioned his assent.

“You’re sixty years old. Bachelor of science from the University of North Carolina, in biology. Master’s degree from Duke University. A doctorate in virology from the University of East Anglia, the John Innes Centre, in England. Recruited there by a Pakistani pharmaceutical firm with ties to the Iraqi government. You worked for the Iraqis early on, with their initial biological weapons program, just after Saddam assumed power in 1979. At Salman Pak, north of Baghdad, operated by the Technical Research Center, which oversaw their germ search. Though Iraq signed the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972, Saddam never ratified it. You stayed with them until 1990, just before the first Gulf War went to shit in a handbasket for the Iraqis. That’s when they shut everything down and you hauled ass.”

“All correct, Ms. Nelle, or do I get to call you Stephanie?”

“Whatever you prefer.”

“Okay, Stephanie, why am I so interesting to the president of the United States?”

“I wasn’t finished.”

He motioned again for her to continue.

“Anthrax, botulinum, cholera, plague, ricin, salmonella, even smallpox-you and your colleagues dabbled with them all.”

“Didn’t your people in Washington finally figure out that was all fiction?”

“May have been in 2003 when Bush invaded, but it sure as hell wasn’t in 1990. Then, it was real. I particularly liked camel pox. You assholes thought it the perfect weapon. Safer than smallpox to handle in the lab, but a great ethnic weapon since Iraqis were generally immune thanks to all of the camels they’ve handled through the centuries. But for Westerners and Israelis, another matter entirely. Quite a deadly zoonosis.”

“More fiction,” Vincenti said, and she wondered how many times he’d voiced the same lie with similar conviction.

“Too many documents, photos, and witnesses to make that cover story stick,” she said. “That’s why you disappeared from Iraq, after 1990.”

“Get real, Stephanie, nobody in the eighties thought biological warfare was even a weapon of mass destruction. Washington could not have cared less. Saddam, at least, saw its potential.”

“We know better now. It’s quite a threat. In fact, many believe that the first biological war won’t be a cataclysmic exchange. It’ll be a low-intensity, regional conflict. A rogue state versus its neighbor. No global consensual morality will apply. Just local hatred and indiscriminate killing. Similar to the Iran/Iraq War of the nineteen-eighties where some of your bugs were actually used on people.”

“Interesting theory, but isn’t that your president’s problem? Why do I care?”

She decided to change tack. “Your company, Philogen Pharmaceutique, is quite a success story. You personally own two point four million shares of its stock, representing about forty-two percent of the company, the single largest shareholder. An impressive conglomerate. Assets at just under ten billion euros, which includes wholly owned subsidiaries that manufacture cosmetics, toiletries, soap, frozen foods, and a chain of European department stores. You bought the company fifteen years ago for practically nothing-”

“I’m sure your research showed it was nearly bankrupt at the time.”

“Which begs the question-how and why did you manage to both buy and save it?”

“Ever hear of public offerings? People invested.”

“Not really. You funneled most of the start-up capital into it. About forty million dollars, by our estimate. Quite a nest egg you amassed from working for a rogue government.”

“The Iraqis were generous. They also had a superb health plan and a wonderful retirement system.”

“Many of you profited. We monitored a lot of key microbiologists back then. You included.”

He seemed to catch the edge in her voice. “Is there a point to this visit?”

“You’re quite the businessman. From all accounts, an excellent entrepreneur. But your corporation is overextended. Your debt service is straining every resource you possess, yet you continue onward.”

Edwin Davis had briefed her well.

“Daniels looking to invest? What’s left, three years on his term? Tell him I could find a place on my board of directors for him.”

She reached into her pocket and tossed him the jacketed elephant medallion. He caught the offering with a surprising quickness.

“You know what that is?”

He studied the decadrachm. “Looks like a man fighting an elephant. Then a man standing, holding a spear. I’m afraid history is not my strong point.”

“Germs are your specialty.”

He appraised her with a look of conviction.

“When the UN weapons inspectors questioned you, after the first Gulf War, about Iraq ’s biological weapons program, you told them nothing had been developed. Lots of research, but the whole venture was underfunded and poorly managed.”

“All those toxins you mentioned? They’re bulky, difficult to store, cumbersome, and nearly impossible to control. Not practical weapons. I was right.”