Dario Sava did most of his business at home these days. Located five miles outside of Parbo—the local abbreviation of the Suriname capital city of Parimaribo—the sweeping estate had once belonged to a governor, appointed when the Dutch reclaimed the trading post from the British in the late seventeenth century. The original home had been rebuilt after a devastating fire, but the current, and relatively young, 150-year-old structure still bore the Old World elegance of the original. Dutch seamen had nicknamed the estate Vuurtoren, Lighthouse. The property did still have a working lighthouse, but the name was a reference to the hilltop home itself, the bright white walls and red tile roof visible for quite a distance out to sea.
The home was comprised of a central structure with two massive wings extending back on either side. The center was the living space where Dario ate, occasionally entertained, and often sat at night listening to the surf and the breeze and the fading echoes of Tala’s footsteps. She had died in this house ten years ago. The official cause of death was respiratory failure due to complications... blah blah blah. That wasn’t what killed her. Dario knew this because the same thing had killed him years before Tala had succumbed. They were poisoned. Poisoned by the toxic mix of rage and grief and powerlessness and need. Strange to have so much in life yet feel so... void.
Originally, Dario had planned to take the American child. He was going to tell Tala that her parents had been killed in a car accident and the child had no family. He worried about having trouble embracing the child of Jack Webster, the man who had injured them so gravely, but Tala would be oblivious and regardless have had no such compunction. The girl would join them when they arrived at their new home in Parbo. Her light skin and hair could be easily explained—a genetic contribution from Tala’s American mother—if anyone was foolish enough to seek an explanation at all. Dario had no interest in adoption, but this was different in his reasoning. At the time, the plan had seemed positively poetic. He would give his Tala her heart’s desire, the one thing he had been unable to give her, and simultaneously bestow on Jack Webster a lifelong gnawing ache of never knowing what had happened to his child. Karmic justice dealt by an almighty hand.
But Dario had been young and had failed to plan for contingencies. Their move from Qatar to Suriname had been delayed by the sudden unexpected illness of Dario’s uncle. It had stalled them for months. By the time that was resolved, and they were ready to proceed, the child had been rescued.
Jack and Emily Webster had disappeared. Well, Emily had at any rate. Jack would have been easy enough to find. He had almost no online presence, but some boots on the ground and some patience would have paid off eventually. What was the point? Dario had shown his hand. The opportunity to pluck the child from the hands of an enterprising nanny would not present itself again. So, Dario waited. Hoping, as Rigo promised, that this desire, no, this need for cosmic balance would resolve itself in other ways. It hadn’t. And now with the clock ticking on his own life, the situation demanded resolution.
He would sell the Japanese instrument of destruction discovered by the Manchurian workers, kill the daughter of the man who had killed his, and live out his days with a sense of completion, with some notion of solace.
If there were anything for which to be grateful from the whole debacle, Dario thought, it was the invaluable lesson learned: always have a backup plan. Dario had not been left standing flat-footed since. As he became more adept at his craft, he’d even thrown in a few twists. Five years ago, when he’d discovered a CIA informant in his midst, he hadn’t simply flayed the man. Rather, he’d let him discover some very explosive intel that had left a U.S. black ops team standing in front of an empty cave in Afghanistan rechecking GPS coordinates like a father who had missed a highway exit on a family trip. Meanwhile, Dario had personally delivered the FIM-92 Stinger to a Somali warlord, staying for a meal of tsebhi and injera bread before returning to his home without incident. Then he had flayed the informant.
Dario had discovered, to his delight, that the best way to stay off the radar of international law enforcement was not to hide below it, but rather to fly above it. Dario was smart, and he was brazen—a combination of qualities that had yet to fail him.
Dario allowed his lips to lift at the memory—the ruse, not the flaying, which required patience and commitment and had been tedious—as he walked across the lush lawn to the outbuilding that housed the lab. He entered without knocking to find his scientist, Fyodor, sitting in a recliner, watching a game show, eating a plate of pancakes doused in syrup, and drinking a Coke Lite. He rose, using the recliner’s throttle to assist in propelling him from his seat.
“Good evening, sir.”
“You have what I asked for.”
“Of course. My sister-in-law ordered most of it from Amazon,” Fyodor chuckled.
Dario joined him. “Very well.”
Fyodor bent down and scooped up a silver case that looked like a small, hard-sided suitcase. He flipped the clasps and opened it to reveal a hard foam interior with a cutout in the center. Dario nodded his approval and walked to a standing safe with the heavy door slightly ajar. He pulled it open fully and scanned the shelves. He retrieved the sealed test tube from a rack, along with the metal containment canister, and returned to Fyodor’s side. He held the test tube up to the light and tilted it, watching the brown viscous liquid climb the sides. He glanced at the items scattered on the lab table and raised a brow to Fyodor, who shrugged in response.
“Sometimes the simplest solution is the correct one.”
“Indeed,” Dario concurred as he slid the test tube into the protective canister and nestled it into the foam. He clicked the case shut and spun the small cogs of the combination lock at the center.
“Rigo will be by for it shortly.”
Fyodor nodded and returned to his recliner meal. On the television, a woman spun a giant wheel and jumped up and down. Dario turned back as he reached the door.
“Fyodor.”
The scientist looked up, plate in one hand, remote in the other.
“Next time something a bit more challenging, I think.”
Fyodor smiled at his boss. “That would be wonderful, sir.”
Dario nodded and left.
Jack Webster glanced at the weekly email report on his phone as he strolled through Amagansett. He hated this time of year when New Yorkers flocked to the chic beach village; suddenly, there was no parking, and his favorite lobster salad was eighty dollars a pound. The calmer times of year more than made up for it, though. So, Jack tolerated the hedge fund robber barons and the college students crammed ten to a rental house and the sticky, sandy children and waited for the storm to pass. He continued to scroll through the report JT had sent. He wasn’t upset by Nathan Bishop’s sudden reappearance in his daughter’s life; if anything, he was pleased. Perhaps it was inevitable. The ember of the romantic in him still glowed, he supposed. What concerned him was how to handle it. Nathan was a trained intelligence gatherer with a team around him that rivaled the NSA. Jack needed to get everyone on the same page before false assumptions and miscommunication created a problem for his daughter. He was looking for a controlled detonation rather than an all-out explosion.
Jack texted his driver and arranged for the unscheduled visit to Manhattan. Perhaps he would take the girls out for dinner. He was so preoccupied with his mental to-do list when his driver pulled up to the curb, he failed to notice the paunchy man in the nylon Mets jacket slip into the innocuous blue sedan and follow him.