Plague Ship

“How long before they take effect?”

“Ten, maybe fifteen, minutes.”

“You’re sure he won’t taste them?”

Hux rolled her eyes. They had already gone over this three times. “Completely undetectable.” She also showed him she had her passport. Because native Monegasques aren’t allowed into the casino, identification is verified at the entrance.

“Everybody have phones?” Juan asked. Rather than draw attention to themselves with earbud radios and lapel microphones, they would use the walkie-talkie mode of their cell phones for communication. When everyone nodded, he said, “All right, then, let’s get ashore and do this.” DESIGNED BY CHARLES GARNIER, the architect of the fabled Paris Opera House, the Casino de Monte Carlo is nothing less than a cathedral dedicated to gambling. It was built in the sumptuous Napoleon III style that Garnier created, with beautiful fountains at its entrance, two distinctive towers, and an aged copper roof. The elegant atrium was lined with twenty-eight onyx columns, and marble and stained glass abounded in every room. When Juan arrived, there were three Ferraris and a pair of Bentleys lined up under the porte cochere. The clientele streaming inside were the crème of society. The men were uniformly dressed in tuxedos, while the women looked like jewels in their gowns and dresses.

He shot his cuff to check the time. Kerikov and al-Asim never arrived before ten, so he was a half hour early. More than enough time to find an unobtrusive place to pass the time. It wouldn’t do for al-Asim to meet his doppelgänger across the roulette wheel.

His phone chirped.

“Chairman, Ski and I are in position,” Mike Trono reported.

“Any problems?”

“Dressed like janitors, we’re practically invisible.”

“Where are you now?”

“Just off the loading dock. We’re keeping ourselves busy cleaning up a few jugs of cooking oil that Ski accidentally spilled on purpose.”

“Okay, hang tight, and wait for my signal.”

Cabrillo flashed his passport and paid his entrance fee. The crowds were all moving to the right, toward the elegant gaming rooms, so Juan followed the throng. He ambled his way upstairs to a bar, got himself a martini he had no intention of drinking but thought appropriate considering his surroundings, and found a dark corner to wait.

Hux called in moments later to a

While he waited, Juan put his mind to how he was going to rescue Max before they leveled Eos Island with the Orbital Ballistic Projectile. There was no question in his mind that he would follow through with the island’s destruction if they couldn’t get Max. The stakes were too high, and even Max would agree.

He wished there was a way to communicate back to Hanley using the ELF equipment, but it was a transmitter, not a receiver. Juan went through a dozen ideas, worked them in his mind, and ultimately rejected every one as being ill-conceived.

“They’re here,” Julia said over the phone, after he’d been at the bar for twenty minutes. “They’re heading for a chemin de fer table.”

“Let them get settled and have a few drinks first.”

Down in the casino, Julia Huxley divided her attention between the roulette wheel and their target. Her pile of chips ebbed and flowed as time wore on, while, across the room, Ibn al-Asim was on his third drink.

She thought it ironic that he was willing to finance arms for fundamentalist Muslim terror groups and yet flout one of the best-known Muslim laws by drinking alcohol. She suspected he thought of himself as a takfir, a true believer in Islam who ignored its tenets in order to infiltrate Western society. Of course, he accomplished this merely by eschewing traditional robes and not sporting a heavy beard. The drinking and the womanizing weren’t necessary. They were simply activities he obviously enjoyed.

“I think it’s time, Juan,” she said into her phone, pretending to check a text message.

“Okay. Do it. Mike, get ready for Operation V.”

Julia waited until the roulette ball dropped into the number six slot and the dealer raked the losing chips, hers included, from the table before tossing him a tip and collecting her remaining stack. She pulled the two pills from her purse and started across the room. A few men eyed her as she passed, but most everybody was concentrating on his or her game.

There were no empty seats at the table where Kerikov and al-Asim were playing, so Julia hung back, waiting for her opportunity. When the Russian won a particularly large hand, Julia leaned close to him and whispered “Congratulations” in his ear. He was startled at first, then smiled when he saw how Hux looked.

She did it again when another player hit it big, and, suddenly, her presence here wasn’t that of a stranger but part of the gaming circle. She then placed a small wager on top of this second player’s stack, so that if he won so would she.

When he didn’t win, he apologized, but Julia only shrugged, as if to say it was no big deal.

She then gestured to al-Asim, wordlessly asking permission to place chips with him. He nodded, and, when she reached across the table, she set her hand next to his drink to balance herself. When she straightened, she almost knocked the glass over. She grabbed it just before it spilled, dropped the two pills in it, and set it back on its coaster.

The pills were a homeopathic compound that addicts on probation use to flush their bodies of drugs prior to testing, as a way of avoiding more jail time. Julia had studied the compounds and found they didn’t really work, but they had a side effect of making a person need to urinate. Doping al-Asim with it was their way of getting him to the casino’s restroom on their schedule rather than on his.

Al-Asim didn’t suspect a thing. He played his hand and won, gri

“Merci, monsieur,” she said. She played one more time with a different player, lost, and drifted away from the table. When she stepped out of the gambling hall and back into the towering atrium, she called Cabrillo to tell him it was done.

“Okay, find a place to watch him, and let us know when he’s headed for the bathroom and then get yourself back to the marina,” Juan ordered as he headed down to the lavatory closest to the Salon de l’Europe. “Mike, you and Ski move into position.”

“On our way.”

There was a doorway a short distance from the restroom that led to the building’s service corridors, so the guests didn’t need to be bothered with seeing things like the janitors or the waitstaff who fetched patrons’ drinks. Juan loitered next to the door for just a moment before it opened slightly and Mike handed him the bottle of fake vomit. Juan let a few more minutes trickle by, to give the drug time to work, before entering the restroom.

Like everything else about the casino, the restroom was all marble and gilt. There was a man washing his hands when Cabrillo entered, but he left before Juan could even reach the stalls. With no one to hear his performance, he didn’t have to act out being ill. He just poured the noisome concoction on the floor and retreated to a stall.

It took only one patron entering the bathroom for a casino employee to be summoned. Juan didn’t understand much French, but the attendant’s assuring tone meant that the janitorial staff would be notified immediately. He could picture the attendant making for the nearest service entrance to notify housekeeping only to discover two janitors in the hallway already, as if they had been told of the mess.

The bathroom door opened again, and Juan heard the big trash barrel’s wheel squeaking as they pushed it in.

“Howdy, boys,” he said, and stepped from the stall.

“Why do we always get the glamor jobs?” Mike asked with heavy sarcasm.