Chapter 446: I Am Going To Steal It

"Steal it."

"Yes."

"From your father."

"From a man who made a leash out of a girl and called it a safeguard." His voice was flat. "I won’t pay for what he already owes her."

Eve was quiet for a moment. Then she nodded once.

"Good," she said. "Then we figure out how."

...

Armani came to the appointment alone, at noon, and looked like a man who had forgotten how to breathe.

The consultation room was in a private clinic on the north side of the city, small and windowless, with a desk, two chairs and a framed anatomical chart on the wall. Marco’s doctor had arranged it in a single phone call. A professional consult, he’d said, about a difficult patient. Armani had agreed at once. It was the first reason in a week that anyone had given him to leave his office.

Dimitri sat in the chair behind the desk with his hands folded. Marco stood by the door.

The doctor stopped three steps into the room.

"Signor Valentino," he said.

"Sit down, Doctor."

"I thought....." Armani’s voice cracked. "I was told a colleague...."

"He is one. He’s also in my employ. Sit."

Armani sat. He was a small man with thinning hair and a gray face, and his hands wouldn’t stay still on his knees. He had lost weight. His collar was too large.

"They watch me," he said, before Dimitri could speak. "Two men in a car outside my building. They’re there when I go for bread. They are there when I come home. They did not follow me today, because your man’s driver took me through the garage, but they will know." He swallowed. "I have not slept since the morning you took the cartons. I do not know what to do."

"You told my father nothing."

"Nothing, Signor. I swear it. I said everything was in order." His eyes filled. "But he knows. Of course he knows. He has known since the safe, and he has said nothing, and that is worse."

"Worse than what?"

"Than if he had shouted." Armani wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I have worked for your father for eleven years. I know how he is when he is angry. This is not that. This is a man waiting, and I do not know what he is waiting for."

"And me?"

"You?" Armani gave a short, awful laugh. "You look at me as if you are deciding how, Signor. Your father’s men look at me as though I am already in the ground. And you look at me as though you are choosing the method." He pressed his palms together. "I am afraid of both of you. I do not know which of you will make it worse."

Dimitri let the silence stand for a moment. He didn’t soften his face. He had learned long ago that pity, offered to a frightened man, made him less useful, not more.

"I need something from you," he said.

"I’ve told you everything."

"Not this." Dimitri leaned forward. "There is a counter-compound. It was made to reverse the one Isabella has been taking. It sits at Prometheus. I need to know what it looks like."

Armani went very still.

"I don’t know anything about that."

"You do."

"Signor, I swear...."

"Doctor." Dimitri’s voice did not rise. "You supplied that girl for eight years. You wrote her prescriptions and signed her charts. Do you really believe you were never told what it would take to undo it?"

Armani stared at him. His lips moved, but nothing came out.

"Think," Dimitri said. "Not what you were told. What you saw."

For a long time the room was silent. Marco did not move from the door. On the wall, the anatomical chart showed a human figure with its skin removed, every organ labeled in neat Latin.

"There was a mistake," Armani said at last, very quietly. "Four years ago. A delivery came to my office by error, a case that was meant for the depot. I was meant to send it back."

"What was in it?"

"It was a gray hard case. Aluminum. There was a green band across the lid, and a code stamped on the side." He closed his eyes. "P-seven-R. I remember the letter, because I wondered what the R stood for."

"Reversal."

"I thought so. I did not open it." His hands twisted together. "It was cold. The case was cold even through the lid. There was a seal. I put it in my refrigerator for an hour, and a man collected it. I never saw it again."

"How cold?"

"Four degrees. The seal said four."

"How many ampoules to a case?"

"I do not know. The case was heavy, but I do not know."

"What was the label on the lid?"

"Only the band, and the code. No name. No company." Armani opened his eyes. They were red. "That is everything, Signor. On my life."

Dimitri looked at him for a moment. Then he turned to Marco.

"Did you get all that?"

"Every word."

"Good." Dimitri turned back. "Doctor, you will say nothing of this meeting to anyone. When you go home, you will do exactly what you have done every day. Buy your bread. Close your office. Lock your door."

"And afterward?"

"After what?"

"After this is finished." Armani’s voice shook. "I will still be here. Your father will still be here. One of you will remember what I said and what I did."

"Yes."

"Then what happens to me?"

Dimitri considered the question honestly.

"If this goes as I intend," he said, "you disappear. A new name, enough money for a quiet life. Lisbon, perhaps. You will practice medicine in a place where no one knows you, and you will treat people properly." He paused. "That’s the offer. It does not come again."

Armani was silent. A tear ran slowly down his cheek, and he didn’t wipe it away.

"I would like that," he said.

"Then be useful a little longer."