She had the fleeting thought that if Tina had told her about the job they were taking, if it had been something important enough to bring them out of retirement, she might well have joined them. She might have made the difference between success and failure-or she herself might be dead alongside them.
But they hadn’t mentioned a thing, even though she’d had dinner with them not a week before their murders. She had been going out of town on a job that would take a few days or a little longer, yes, but she’d told them when she expected to be back. Had they already known then, or had this job offer come out of the blue and needed doing immediately? Averill and Tina didn’t operate that way. Neither did she. Anything involving the Nervi organization required study and preparation, because the layers of security were so dense.
None of this was anything she hadn’t mentally gone over and over during many sleepless nights since they had been killed. Sometimes, when Zia’s cheerful little face formed in her mind’s eye, she wept with a violence that frightened her. In her grief she’d needed to strike back immediately, to cut off the head of the snake. She’d done that, focusing on nothing else for three months, and now she would concentrate on the rest of it.
First, she needed to find out who had hired Averill and Tina. A private hire meant someone with money… or maybe not. Maybe the need had been the motivating factor. Maybe this person had come to them with proof of something particularly nasty in which Salvatore was involved. With Salvatore, that could be anything; she couldn’t imagine anything so low and dirty that he would balk at it His only requirement had been that he make money.
But Averill and Tina had both retained an idealistic core, and she could see them being so alarmed at something that they were moved to action, even though in their former occupations they’d seen so much that it was difficult to shock them. What could that have been?
Zia. Something that threatened Zia. To protect her, they would have fought tigers bare-handed. Anything involving her would explain both their urgency and their motivation.
Lily sat up, blinking. Of course. Why hadn’t she seen it before? If it wasn’t money that drew them back in, then what else had been important to them? Their marriage, their love for each other, Lily herself… but most of all, Zia.
She had no proof. She didn’t need it. She had known her friends, known how much they loved their daughter, known what was important in their lives. This conclusion was an intuitive leap, but it felt right. Nothing else had.
This gave her a direction. Among the Nervi holdings were several labs, engaged in all sorts of medical, chemical, and biological research. Since Averill and Tina had evidently felt this was something that had to be taken care of immediately, whatever it was had been imminent. But even though they’d failed, nothing unusual that had happened since then came to mind; no catastrophes locally. She couldn’t think of anything other than the usual terrorist bombings, which seemed to need no reason.
But maybe they hadn’t failed. Maybe they had succeeded in their mission, but Salvatore had discovered who they were and had them killed, to teach others not to interfere with the Nervis.
The target might not have been one of the laboratories, though they seemed the most likely targets. Salvatore had many properties, scattered all over Europe. She needed to search the back issues of some newspapers, to see if any incidents involving a Nervi property had been reported during the week between when she’d last seen her friends alive and their deaths. Salvatore had been powerful enough to keep media attention to a minimum, even black it out completely if he saw the need, but there might still be a small mention of… something.
Her friends hadn’t taken any trips immediately prior to their deaths. She had talked to their neighbors; Averill and Tina had been at home, Zia had been in school. So whatever was involved was local, or at least close by.
She would go to an Internet cafe tomorrow and do a search. She could do it now, but common sense told her to rest after such a long day. She was relatively safe here, even from the Agency. No one knew about Claudia Weber, and she wasn’t doing anything to attract attention. She’d had the foresight to grab something to eat at the airport, knowing she was in for a long session with the hairdresser, and she’d also bought a few snacks for tonight, plus enough coffee for tomorrow. She was set for right now. Tomorrow she’d need to shop for food, something best done early in the morning before all the best choices were taken. After that, she’d hit an Internet cafe and get started.
The Internet was a wonderful thing, Rodrigo thought. If one knew the right people-and he did-almost nothing on it was safe from scrutiny.
First his people had created a list of the rogue chemists available for hire who had the skill to create such a lethal poison. That last requirement had shrunk the list from several hundred down to nine, which was a much more manageable number.
From there it had simply been a matter of investigating finances. Someone would have received a large amount of money recently. Perhaps the person in question would be intelligent enough to put the money in a numbered account, but perhaps not. Even so, there would be evidence of an influx of cash.
He found that evidence with Dr. Walter Speer, a German national who lived in Amsterdam. Dr. Speer had been fired from a reputable company in Berlin, then from another in Hamburg. He had then relocated to Amsterdam, where he had been getting by but not making a fortune. Dr. Speer, however, had recently purchased a silver Porsche, and paid for it in full. It was child’s play to discover where Dr. Speer banked, and not much more difficult than that for the experts on Rodrigo’s staff to get into the bank’s computer system. A little more than a month ago, Dr. Speer had deposited a million American dollars. The conversion rate had made him a very happy man.