The Venetian Betrayal

He saw that she did not require a reminder, but also she did not react with her usual arrogance. “Then we’ll just have to be careful.”

“It’s not us I’m worried about.”

CASSIOPEIA WAS ANXIOUS. ELY WAS SOMEWHERE IN THIS HOUSE, probably trapped, with Greek fire everywhere. She’d seen its destructive force.

The layout was a problem. The ground floor wound around itself like a labyrinth. She heard voices. Straight ahead, beyond another parlor dotted with gilt-framed art.

Malone led the way.

She admired his courage. For someone who complained all the time about not wanting to play the game, he was a damn good player.

Into another room oozing baroque charm, Malone crouched behind a high-backed chair and motioned for her to head left. Beyond a wide archway, ten meters away, she saw shadows dance across the walls.

More voices, in a language she did not know.

“I need a diversion,” Malone whispered.

She understood. He had bullets. She didn’t.

“Just don’t shoot me,” she mouthed back as she assumed a position adjacent to the doorway.

Malone shifted quickly behind another chair that offered a clear view. She drew a breath, counted to three, and told her pounding heart to stay calm. This was foolish, but she should have a second or two of advantage. She leveled the rifle, swung around and planted her feet in the archway. Finger on the trigger, she let loose a volley of blank rounds. Two soldiers stood on the other side of the foyer, their guns pointed toward the second-floor railing, but her shots produced the desired effect.

Startled faces stared back at her.

She stopped firing and dropped to the ground.

Then came two new bangs, as Malone shot both men.

STEPHANIE HEARD THE PISTOL ROUNDS. SOMETHING NEW. HENRIK was crouched beside her, his finger ready on the rifle trigger.

Two more of the soldiers appeared on the second floor, beyond where their comrade lay dead.

Thorvaldsen instantly shot them both.

She was begi

The soldiers’ bodies flew back as high-powered rounds ripped through flesh.

She saw the robot and heard the pings at the same time.

One of the machines had turned the corner, behind the two dying soldiers.

Bullets had pierced its casing. The motor stuttered and jerked, like a wounded animal. Its fu

Then the whole thing erupted in flames.

NINETY-ONE

MALONE HEARD SHOTS FROM ABOVE, THEN A SWOOSH, FOLLOWED by an intense rush of u

He realized what had happened and fled from behind the chair, darting to the archway as Cassiopeia sprang to her feet.

He glanced around.

Flames poured from the second floor, engulfing the marble railing and consuming the walls. Glass in the tall outer windows shattered from the fiery assault.

The floor ignited.

STEPHANIE SHIELDED HERSELF FROM THE WAVES OF HEAT THAT rushed past. The robot did not actually explode, more vaporized in an atomiclike flash. She lowered her arm to see fire stretching in all directions, like a tsunami-walls, ceiling, even the floor succumbing.

Fifty feet away and closing.

“Come on,” she said.

They fled the approaching maelstrom, ru

She glanced over her shoulder.

Ten feet away and closing.

The door to the bedchamber where they’d first exited the hidden passage was open just ahead. Lyndsey found it first. Ely next.

She and Thorvaldsen made it inside just as danger arrived.

“HE’S UP THERE,” CASSIOPEIA SAID TO THE SCENE OF THE SECOND floor burning, then she yelled, “Ely.”

Malone wrapped his arm around her neck and clamped her mouth shut.

“We’re not alone,” he whispered in her ear. “Think. More soldiers. And Zovastina and Viktor. They’re here. You can count on it.”

He released his hand.

“I’m going after him,” she made clear. “Those guards had to be shooting at them. Who else?”

“We have no way of knowing anything.”

“So where are they?” she asked the fire.

He motioned and they retreated into the parlor. He heard furniture crashing and more glass shattering from above. Luckily, none of the flames had descended the stairway, as in the Greco-Roman museum. But one of the priming mechanisms, as if sensing the heat, appeared across the foyer, which raised a concern.

If one exploded, more could, too.

ZOVASTINA HEARD SOMEONE CALL OUT ELY’S NAME, BUT SHE’D also felt the heat from the robot’s disintegration and smelled burning Greek fire.

“Fools,” she whispered to her troops, somewhere in the house.

“That was Vitt who shouted,” Viktor said.

“Find our men. I’ll find her and Malone.”

STEPHANIE SPOTTED THE CONCEALED DOOR, STILL OPEN, AND LED the way inside, quickly closing it behind them.

“Thank God,” Lyndsey said.

No smoke had yet accumulated in the hidden passage, but she heard fire trying to find its way through the walls.

They retreated to the stairway and scampered down to ground level.

She kept an eye out for the first available exit and saw an open door just ahead. Thorvaldsen saw it, too, and they exited into the mansion’s dining hall.

MALONE COULD NOT ANSWER CASSIOPEIA’S QUESTION ABOUT THE whereabouts of Stephanie, Henrik, and Ely, and he, too, was concerned.

“It’s time you back off,” Cassiopeia said to him.

That surliness from Copenhagen had returned. He thought a dose of reality might help. “We only have three bullets.”

“No, we don’t.”

She brushed past him, retrieved the assault rifles from the two dead guards, and checked the clips. “Plenty of rounds.” She handed him one. “Thanks, Cotton, for getting me here. But I have to do this.” She paused. “On my own.”

He saw that arguing with her was fruitless.

“There’s certainly another way up there,” she said. “I’ll find it.”

He was about to resign himself to follow her when movement to his left set off an alarm and he whirled, gun ready.

Viktor appeared in the doorway.

Malone fired a burst from the AK-74 and instantly sought cover in the foyer. He could not see if he hit the man but, looking around, one thing he knew for certain.

Cassiopeia was gone.

STEPHANIE HEARD SHOTS FROM SOMEWHERE ON THE GROUND floor. The dining hall spread out before her in an elaborate rectangle with towering walls, a vaulted ceiling, and leaded glass windows. A long table with a dozen chairs down each side dominated.

“We need to leave,” Thorvaldsen said.

Lyndsey bolted away, but Ely cut him off and slammed the scientist to the tabletop, jostling some of the chairs. “I told you we were going to the lab.”