situation more carefully before committing to another frontal assault.
* * *
• • •
Zoya Zakharova entered the drawing room where her father was being held, followed by Chris Travers, who immediately grabbed her. Before he could pull her back out, she shouted, “What’s going on, Papa?”
General Zakharov turned to see her, and he grimaced. “Zoyushka. I truly wish you weren’t here among your friends from across the pond right now.”
Brewer motioned to Travers to let Anthem go.
Zoya turned to Brewer. “What has he said?”
“Nothing. He’s been stalling, waiting for whatever’s going on to kick off.”
The gunfire continued and seemed to grow closer. Court had moved to Zoya, ready to stop her if she made any moves towards her father. Hightower kept his gun pointed at the former GRU director, and Travers went out to cover the hall with Jason.
Zoya yelled at her father. “You think you can just shoot everyone here?”
“Heavens, no. That’s not our game at all.”
She thought a moment. “The bioweapon. You brought the bioweapon.”
“We lost that in the airplane crash this morning. Now we wish to only make a—”
Zoya stepped forward and shoved his head to the side, exposing his neck. Just like Travers, Court wasn’t fast enough to stop her.
She said, “Stress hives. He’s lying.”
Zakharov was unmoved. “The discoloration doesn’t mean one is lying, only that one is under some stress. I should think everyone in this building, myself included, has reason to feel a bit of anxiety at present, don’t you?”
She looked up to Brewer. “I don’t believe him. He told me at the church that he had a plan that Won didn’t know about. He said that before the crop duster went down.
“I don’t think the plague was on that aircraft at all.”
Brewer just stared back. “Oh shit.”
Matt Hanley raced into the parlor now, tailed by Jenner. Zakharov turned his head to look at the new arrivals, but Hightower twisted it back around forward.
Brewer said, “There is a chance the attackers brought Dr. Won’s plague with them.”
Zakharov said, “No. We only wish to—”
“Shut the fuck up!” Zoya screamed.
Hanley had never met Zoya Zakharova, his third Poison Apple asset, but now was hardly the time for introductions. He simply addressed her. “What do you think?”
“I don’t think. I know he’s lying. He will infect everyone here somehow. He’s banking on the fact that we don’t figure that out.”
“Why on earth would I come myself if I had any intention of releasing the spores?”
Zoya did not even address her father. She spoke to Hanley. “He needs to hold everyone hostage until the effects can’t be reversed. He has to do this without anyone knowing they have been infected, so they aren’t quarantined, but instead return to their home nations and infect others.”
“Good lord, Zoya. The plot you just concocted is much more diabolical than anything I could possibly come up with.” Zakharov followed with a snorted laugh.
Just then, a voice called out from up the hallway, audible because the parlor door was open to the library. “I am looking for David Mars! I request you release him now. Downstairs we have nearly four hundred hostages in the great hall, which we have barricaded and wired with explosives. Other explosives have been set around the castle. We will grant you a two-minute grace period, and then, if Mars is not released, we will begin shooting a hostage every minute. The first hostage will be from the United States. The clock begins now.”
Gentry raced out into the library, where Jason and Travers now knelt, guns facing the doorway. Whoever was shouting the commands was down the hall to the left, out of view, but the two Americans held their weapons up at the doorway in case anyone tried to enter.
In the parlor Zakharov said, “My men will do exactly as they threaten. You can save a lot of lives by releasing me. In turn, I won’t demand you come with me, Deputy Director Hanley, or you, Ms. Brewer. Or even your security people here. They can stay.” He turned to his daughter. “I will, however, demand that Zoya come along.”
“Not happening,” Hanley said.
Zakharov replied, “You are hardly in a position of power. The directors of all five English-speaking intelligence agencies have been taken hostage, and will be shot, one by one, if I am not allowed to walk out this door . . . with my daughter. Now.”
Zoya said, “I’ll go with him.” To Hanley she said, “Sir, if you test his mettle, someone downstairs will be murdered. My