Masquerade: Her Billionaire - Venice Read online

  And he knew exactly who’d put it in his pocket. The fucking CIA in the person of Ash Fucking Morris.

  Who was a dead man walking.

  Anya’s phone rang. The Stones’ You can’t always get what you want.

  “Cal,” Farris’s deep voice came on. “’Sup? Whose phone are you on?”

  “Mystery woman’s.” Cal had once gotten very very drunk with Farris as one more affair ended in tears and recriminations on the part of the woman, and all because the woman hadn’t been Anya. He’d told Farris a little bit about the love of his life without naming names. Ever since then Farris talked about Mystery Woman.

  There was no exclamation of startled surprise. Farris had been a Navy SEAL and had had the surprise beaten out of him a long time ago. As usual, Farris went right to the heart of the matter.

  “So, are you in trouble?” Because why else would Cal be calling, from the phone of the one who got away?

  “Yeah. I reconnected with her, a woman named Anya Voronova.”

  “Jesus. Deputy Director of Peace and Jobs?”

  “Fuck. How do you know that?”

  “It’s my job to keep track of all the players, boss. Your job is to provide people with water so they can live.”

  Cal clenched his fist with the little tracker. It bit into the palm of his hand. He wanted to crush it like he wanted to crush the head of Ash Morris.

  “They took her,” he said simply. The words hurt his throat, as if knives were cutting him from inside out. “I think that fucker Ash Morris is behind it.”

  “Dr. Voronova? She’s been kidnapped?”

  Cal nodded, then realized Farris couldn’t see him. He hadn’t activated the video function. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely.

  “Are you at the reception at Palazzo Maltese?”

  God. Cal pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. He’d been knocked out, but he was also freaking at the idea of Anya in kidnappers’ hands. He wasn’t thinking straight, hadn’t even reported where he was. Thank God Farris was thinking straight.

  “Yeah. We were in a private room on the mezzanine when four or five men broke in. I took two of them down but I was sprayed with a knockout gas. Chloroform, I think. That was —” He checked his watch. “I was out for over a quarter of an hour. She could be anywhere by now.”

  “Does she have your phone?”

  Cal looked around. His phone was gone. “She must. We both —” he swallowed heavily. “We both have the same model phone and the same case.”

  “With the Klingon word for peace?”

  “Yeah. So she probably grabbed my phone.”

  “Then you know how to find her,” Farris said simply.

  Cal blanked. His brain simply turned off, overloaded with stress and fear for Anya. He clutched Anya’s cell with one hand and the tracker with the other. Some strangled sound must have escaped his throat.

  “Our app. The SecureFind app,” Farris said patiently.

  “Oh fuck,” Cal breathed. “I forgot all about it.”

  His entire team in the field had an app that allowed everyone to know everyone else’s whereabouts. They worked in rough and dangerous places and the app was always on in the field. They all turned it off when they went out to play.

  “Is yours on?”

  Cal thought frantically. Was his on? Had he turned it off? No, he’d forgotten to turn it off. “Yeah. But I don’t have the program on this phone.”

  He could hear the sounds of an engine revving. “I’m sending you the app. Load it onto that phone and I’m sending you your code, because it sounds like fear has turned you stupid.”

  Cal had no answer to that.

  “Don’t worry, big guy. We’ll get her back. I should be in the center of town in about forty to fifty minutes. Coming as fast as I can.”

  A beep, the incoming program. Cal feverishly loaded it, loaded his personal code and dear sweet God, there it was! A blue teardrop shape laid over the map of Venice. Venice was anything but a grid, small winding streets haphazardly interspaced with bridges. Dense and confusing, a bewildering maze.

  She was in a small street behind St. Mark’s Square, a calle. Calle Venusio. The teardrop was moving. They wouldn’t hurt her on the streets would they? Surely as long as they were moving, she was safe.

  God only knew.

  Cal made for the door at a run.

  Anya stumbled repeatedly and would have fallen several times if not for the hard arm holding her up.

  It was fake. She had excellent balance, but she wanted to delay the moment when they arrived wherever it was they were going.

  Presumably the men would have taken off their balaclavas out on the streets. True, it was Mardi Gras — Carnevale — but people wore fancy costumes, not black fatigues with ski masks. Were they wearing other types of masks? She couldn’t see them but she was starting to sort them out.

  Outside the Palazzo, they’d been joined by the man who’d walked into the room in Palazzo Maltese. The American with an eastern seaboard upper class drawl. The man who’d been dressed in costume as a musketeer. Though she couldn’t see him, she recognized the voice.

  The three soldiers were Chinese who spoke decent English with the American. Between themselves they spoke Chinese — standard Mandarin, with no regional accents. The American was coordinating something on his cell, speaking quietly. She could barely hear his words, catching one word in ten. Something about a journalist and the signing of the Accords tomorrow.

  They appeared to be walking along side streets, narrow ones, so narrow that sounds echoed off the walls. The further they got from St. Mark’s Square, the fewer people there were.

  For a while she was escorted by two men, one on each side, but at a corner, one fell away. The one who remained kept the gun pressed to her right side. She put out her left hand and felt a wall. A calle so narrow more than two people had difficulty walking side by side.

  They were close to the action, though. The sounds of thousands and thousands of revelers was close by, footsteps clanging on the cobblestones and voices raised in merriment. It was so hard not to call out for help. But a gun pressed to her rib cage was a great deterrent.

  Her hand dropped to her side and she tore another black bead off the skirt and surreptitiously let it drop close to the wall where she hoped it wouldn’t be kicked away. She’d been pulling beads off and dropping them all along the way, like the breadcrumbs dropped by Hansel and Gretel. Hoping it would lead Cal to her.

  Another bead.

  Such a flimsy hope. Hopes. Hope that he’d wake up soon from the chloroform. That no one had stayed behind to hurt him so badly he couldn’t get up or — she shuddered at the thought — to shoot him with a suppressed gun. The gun stuck in her side had an extra long slim barrel — it was suppressed.

  If they shot her, no one would hear.

  And now they were headed into very narrow side streets that were deserted. The Mardi Gras revelers wanted to see and be seen. The streets they were walking on were all but empty.

  Anya was very aware that her life hung by a thread, a series of improbable things having to happen if she were to be rescued. It all depended on Cal. On his coming to consciousness soon. On his being able to take action. On him finding the beads and following the breadcrumbs to where she was. On being able to deal with an armed man, or armed men, if and when the miracle occurred and he was able to find her.

  So very unlikely.

  But then this was Cal, who’d always confounded expectations and always always did better than anyone could hope. He’d come from a terrible family background — mother gone, alcoholic father. But he’d always been so very smart and so very strong and had triumphed, always.

  And … he loved her.

  Loved her still.

  If he could come, he would.

  She just had to stay alive long enough.

  A hard hand jerked her to a halt and she purposefully stumbled into the man in front of her. He cursed in Chinese, using a couple of words she’d nev
er heard before as the gunman’s hand tightened painfully.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” the American said. “I’ll coordinate as soon as you get the intel.”

  “Shi.”

  “Shi.”

  Yes.

  Oh God. Two brand new men answered. There were now four men, she thought, at least one of them armed. She swayed for a moment and it wasn’t fake.

  She tore off and dropped two beads.

  It was oddly quiet here. They must have been in a cul de sac because the sounds of Mardi Gras revelry were faint and far away, barely audible. She heard hinges squeaking, a door opening. She was turned and pushed hard. The inside of the building was chillier than outside, a blast of musty frigid air forming almost a barrier between the outside world and the inside of the building.

  Anya was dragged over the threshold and this time her stumbles were real. The man holding her cursed, his fingers digging into the flesh of her arm to keep her upright.

  She was marched across a large empty space, noise echoing in the void, to a door across the room. The inside of that room seemed large and empty too. She was marched across it and into another room until she banged her shin painfully against something wooden. A chair. Anya reached out and touched it. Large, solid, more a throne than a chair.

  The man who held her arm pushed her unexpectedly and she collapsed into the large chair. A ripping sound and she could feel her ankles being taped together. So — this was going to be an interrogation and not a rape.

  The area at the edge of her mask lit up. There was a bright light in the room.

  “Take off your mask,” one of the men said.

  She reached behind her head to untie the satin ribbons, immediately raising her hand against the light as the mask fell. Some kind of spotlight was shining in her face, so bright it hurt. It was impossible to make out any faces behind the light, which was the purpose, she imagined.

  “There must be some mistake,” she said, glad that her voice was cool. Twice she’d been in a room facilitating negotiations where violence was threatened. She knew how to mask her feelings.

  “No mistake,” a deep male baritone answered. “You’re here for a reason.” She tried hard to analyze the voice. Educated, cultivated. Detached, even faintly amused. Slight foreign accent.

  She’d never heard that voice before.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “Of course,” the voice answered. “Anya Voronova. Deputy Director of Peace and Jobs.”

  Yes. They wanted her, Anya Voronova. But for what? Anya’s job was not highly classified. She hadn’t been privy to the top levels of negotiation. Peace and Jobs dealt with humdrum matters like educational curricula, equal pay for equal work, access to health care, job safety. It was possible that people at levels much higher than hers had secrets that someone could want, but she definitely didn’t.

  She used the only weapon she had at her disposal, one that had worked before, though not always. Reason.

  “If you’re looking for a ransom, you’re out of luck. Peace and Jobs operates on a shoestring. And we’re going to downsize considerably after the Accords are signed. Trust me when I tell you that no one has any money to pay for me.”

  A sigh. “Oh, we’re not after money, Dr. Voronova.”

  Anya’s blood chilled. He’d done his research, used her academic title. Anya never used her title in the field. She could too easily be mistaken for a medical doctor.

  These men, whoever they were, were not after money. To her surprise, money was the most innocent of all the barriers to peace she’d encountered. Money was easy. But eliminate money and you had hatred and resentment and vengeance.

  It had to be asked. “What are you after, then?”

  He sighed and stepped forward. Not enough that she could see his face, but enough that she could make out his form. He was holding some kind of long stick. Was he going to beat her with it? You could break bones with sticks, she knew. Break bones, break skin, concuss. A lot of bad things could be done with a stick.

  Then he reached out to her and touched her arm with one end and it wasn’t a stick. It was an electric prod.

  Pain. Pain. Pain.

  Pain that filled the world, filled her whole body, from head to toe.

  Shocked, she arched back in the chair, head back, and screamed with the pain. Her entire body was on fire, nerve endings aflame, the pain crackling, alive. She drew her breath in to scream again and …

  It stopped. Suddenly. She slumped back into her seat. The only sign anything had happened was her heart beating triple time, trying to beat its way out of her chest.

  She looked down at herself, at her arms, hands. They were perfectly normal. Instinctively, she checked her skin, expecting it to be blackened and blistered. But no, she was unblemished. All she had to show for the period of excruciating pain was a little soreness in her muscles.

  The man spoke in a calm, unhurried tone. “That was just a little teaser, Dr Voronova. The shock lasted twenty seconds though I have no doubt that for you it was a very long twenty seconds. I also have no doubt that the pain was severe. This is a new…device. Weapon, really. Designed for close combat and extreme crowd control. It has a little dial on the side. The setting right now is the lowest possible. So what you just felt is the very best of what you’re going to feel. Did I make myself clear?”

  He was going to torture her and there would be no marks whatsoever. She nodded.

  “Was I clear, Dr Voronova?” he repeated, voice a little sharper.

  “Yes.” Her voice was weak, strained. Showing this much strain at the first show of what he could do put her in a very weak position. She cleared her throat, made her voice as strong as she could. “Yes, that was very clear.”

  She could make out his head, bowing. “Excellent. You have spirit. But then I would expect nothing less of the deputy director of Peace and Jobs. So.” He clapped his hands together. “We’re off to an excellent start.”

  Oh God. Anya tried to gather as much information as she could. The more she understood her situation, the better she could resist. But there was almost nothing to understand.

  She’d completely lost track while being walked through the streets of Venice essentially blinded. She knew Venice well but it was more a maze than anything else. Even Venetians could get lost if they didn’t have visual markers. They’d walked along St. Mark’s Square for about three minutes and she’d heard revelers but then they’d turned a corner and entered the labyrinth of Venice’s small backstreets.

  She hadn’t stood a chance.

  The people she’d heard in their trek to where they were now had been Italians, but also Germans, Swedes and a few French. Venice’s population doubled during Carnevale, and there were also the people who’d come to celebrate the signing of the Accords.

  Everyone was in a happy, celebratory mood. Even if she’d managed to break away or catch their attention, surely they’d have taken it as a joke.

  She remembered a saying a Venetian friend had taught her. A Carnevale ogni scherzo vale. Anything goes during Mardi Gras.

  She was sure they were in the maze of small back alleys close to the Grand Canal. The brackish smell of sea water had permeated the air but most of Venice smelled of the sea. She listened hard for the sound of waves lapping to know if they fronted one of the side canals but it was quiet. The moldy ancient walls were made of stone. No sounds penetrated. And her screams wouldn’t be heard.

  They’d chosen this place well.

  Besides her tormentor, she could count two men behind the blinding light — shadowy figures. No chance of identifying them, which is what the light was about. Plus the two voices who were probably standing guard. Not many men, just five of them. Cal could probably dispatch them easily, if they didn’t gas him. He’d taken care of two back at Palazzo Maltese before being put under.

  Well, she sure wasn’t going to fight her way out of this. Though she’d taken self defense classes because her work took her to dangerous places, ther
e was no way she could overwhelm five men. And certainly not hobbled as she was.

  Plus at least one man was armed. There was a good chance all of them were now, if this was their headquarters.

  So that was her situation. She didn’t know where she was and she didn’t know who her kidnappers were and she didn’t know what they wanted from her.

  “So, Dr Voronova, bearing in mind that I can increase the voltage to ten times what I administered, when was the last time you spoke with your friend June Chen.”

  What? Anya blanked. “June Chen? I don’t remember —”

  Searing pain.

  Unbelievable hot, spiky, rending pain that went on and on, like someone dragging barbed wire over her skin.

  When it stopped, tears were streaming down her face. Her throat felt raw. She must have screamed though she had no memory of it. She had no memory of anything but the pain.

  “Wrong answer,” the man answered mildly. Then — “Let’s try this once again. When was the last time you heard from your friend June Chen?”

  Anya’s mind was sluggish. She could barely remember five minutes ago let alone a period in the past. The man pushed the rod toward her and she shouted, “Stop!”

  It stopped, half a foot from her arm. It waited there, like something alive. Like a snake ready to strike.

  Anya rubbed her forehead. “June Chen? Wait. We had lunch in Istanbul. A couple of months ago, end of November. She’d just won a big journalism prize for her article on the Bedouin.”

  She and June had been friends for a long time, ever since June had interviewed her early in the negotiations for the Accords and tried to get Anya to bad-mouth the Chinese government. At the time, the official line of the Central Committee had been hostility to the Accords. A month later, a new President had been overwhelmingly voted into power, Hu Lin. Hu was a modernizer and very much in favor of the Accords. But back then, the government line was that the Accords were a Western conspiracy to sabotage Chinese economic growth.

  June had tried to get Anya to criticize the Chinese government.