Gun Metal Heart Read online

  But before Petrovic did any of it, even before he got a chance to polish his wing tips or tie his tie, he was called upon to resolve a crisis inside his three-story Tudor home.

  His eldest daughter, Sofija, had her driver’s permit and wanted to drive to Novi Sad with her girlfriends. There were many things in Novi Sad to draw the attention of a gaggle of sixteen-year-old girls. All of them involved boys.

  This, of course, led to an apocalyptic meltdown by Ana, the middle daughter, who suffered inequities the likes of which the writers of the Old Testament never imagined. The very idea of her sister driving to Novi Sad was a calamity of national importance. Then again, the same could be said of three events each day.

  The youngest daughter, Ljubica, recently had discovered football. A ragamuffin with perpetually skinned knees and grass stains around her cherubic grin, she rarely spoke more than twenty words per day to her father. Which was fine by Dragan.

  The member of Parliament did his level best to placate daughters number one and two, without countermanding his wife, Adrijana. He considered himself a decent father; certainly better than the abusive drunk he, himself, had run away from at the age of nine. He had found a surprising level of joy in helping to raise daughters. It was like gardening: he always assumed he’d hate it until he actually tried it.

  Adrijana helped with his tie and Dragan checked the contents of his ubiquitous attaché case. He had everything he’d need for the day. His wife—lovely and lithe at forty—cast a critical eye over his suit and pronounced him acceptable for governing Serbia. As if any living soul could govern Serbia! They air-kissed at the door to their home.

  Teodore, Dragan Petrovic’s driver-bodyguard, had the armored Escalade waiting in front of the house. One of Teodore’s soldiers would ride ahead on a motorcycle, eyes peeled for trouble.

  Dragan sat in the back and read the London Times and Le Monde, translated on his iPad. Outside the smoked windows Belgrade looked dusty and dry, the citizens struggling to get started on another long, hot July day.

  The SUV swung powerfully onto the bustling Kneza Milosa, wending deftly around the slower traffic. The neighborhood leading up to the Parliament building was embassy row.

  Teodore took this route every morning. And, as every morning, Dragan Petrovic subconsciously looked up from his e-reader to observe the smashed edifice of the old Chinese Embassy as they passed by.

  The building stood tall and devastated. Half of the building lay to the north of a side street, the other half to the south. No windows remained. The Americans had bombed the embassy in 1999. The rockets had landed at night. Five JDAM missiles, fired from the U.S. 509th bomber wing. Three missiles had landed on the north side of avenue Nemanjina, two on the south side.

  The embassy was across the street from the Serbian Parliament building. The Americans had targeted a diplomatic building that was literally a stone’s throw from the heart of the people’s capitol. The affront had been unthinkable.

  The Escalade glided past and Dragan kept his eyes locked on the devastation. He had been among the lawmakers who had lobbied, long and hard, not to tear down the lifeless hulk of a building. Better to leave it standing as a testament to the evil of America. Dragan Petrovic wanted to force his fellow lawmakers to drive past the shrine of Western aggression every single morning.

  Most days, the Escalade slowed down to let the minister off in front of Parliament. But today Teodore followed orders and drove straight past the elegant building. The Kawasaki knew the new route and stayed ahead of them. First the motorcycle, then the SUV, turned into the entrance of a half-finished garage. An unmarked Crown Victoria sat in front, two men in civilian clothes and Ray-Bans, watching patiently.

  The SUV glided into the inky black interior of the unfinished structure. One other car waited inside: an unremarkable Audi sedan. Teodore parked the Escalade ten meters from the Audi, hauled on the hand brake, unclipped his seat belt, and slid out of the car. As he did, the driver’s-side door of the Audi opened. The sedan’s interior lights had been disabled.

  A woman stepped out of the sedan. She wore her hair pulled tightly back in a chignon. She had chosen a midnight-blue trench coat, finely pressed trousers, and boots with tall heels.

  She crossed to the Escalade, her heels echoing in the parking lot. Teodore held open the rear left-side door, and she climbed in to sit next to Dragan Petrovic.

  Her hair was so shockingly blond as to be nearly white. Her eyes were a silver blue, the lightest color eyes he had ever seen. And when she smiled, she seemed to light up the interior of the car.

  Dragan straightened his cuffs.

  “Minister.” He noted that she spoke Serbian with an urban, Beograd accent.

  He smiled stiffly. “Major Arcana.”

  The blonde nodded and continued to smile.

  “Some would find your nom de guerre in poor taste,” Dragan informed her. “I knew the real Arcan. I fought with him in Bosnia and Kosovo. He was a great man; a great military leader.”

  “Yes,” the tall woman nodded. Dragan had difficulty placing her age. Late twenties? Early forties? “He also was a bank robber and a car thief and a thug. But some men rise to match the times, yes?”

  Dragan ignored the dig against his long-dead friend and fellow freedom fighter. He willed himself to remain calm.

  “Can you deliver?” he abruptly asked the smiling blonde.

  She nodded. Her hair was held tightly in place; not a strand bobbed as she nodded. Her silvery eyes locked onto his.

  “You are sure?”

  Again, she nodded. And smiled.

  A small leather pouch rested on the floorboard at Dragan’s feet. He leaned forward now and retrieved the pouch. It was long and thin, twice the size of a number ten envelope. The flap was held down by a leather thong wrapped around a grommet.

  He handed it over. The blonde took it, undid the string, pulled back the flap. She did not count the euros. She did not need to.

  She resealed the bag.

  “Thank you, Minister. You will hear back from me within three days.”

  With that she opened the passenger door of the SUV and climbed out. She strode purposefully across the empty parking structure and got into her Audi.

  The car sat, windows darkened, as Minister Dragan Petrovic and his military escort left the unfinished building.

  Outside Florence, Italy

  The two Serb soldiers had a pretty good idea how long Vince Guzman would stay unconscious after being hit by the Taser. Still, they followed that up with a tranquilizer shot.

  They moved him to an abandoned warehouse in Quinto, near Aeroporto Amerigo Vespucci. It was well built and sturdy enough to keep out kids and transients. It also lay under the approach vector for the airport, so the sound of descending jets helped mask noises.

  It was dusk, and the road outside the warehouse was little used. Guzman sat in a metal chair, wrists flex-cuffed to the straight arms, ankles to the legs. His head lolled, and he’d drooled on his T-shirt. Adhesive pads were pressed against the insides of both elbows and both knees. All four pads bulged around thin tubes.

  The Serbs were called Kostic and Lazarevic. Both had seen military duty and the insides of Yugoslav prisons. Both knew their jobs exquisitely.

  Guzman moaned and came around. He raised his head and hissed painfully at the crick in his neck, which came from his head hanging loose for almost two hours.

  The senior soldier, Kostic, had brought a thick, hardback Serb–English dictionary. It wasn’t a simple tourist’s dictionary; the conversation he was anticipating needed a broader range of words.

  Kostic spoke in English. “Hallo.”

  “Hey. Hey!” Guzman jostled his beefy arms, straining against the white plastic cuffs. He peered around, teary eyes trying to focus on the warehouse, the metal chair, the brawny men in polo shirts. He really shook the chair now, putting his weight into it. The metal legs scraped on the rough cement floor, the sound echoing.

  “The fuck is this! He
y!”

  Kostic said, again, “Hallo.”

  Lazarevic said nothing.

  Guzman struggled. “Get this fucking shit off me!”

  Kostic ignored him. “You are hired. Are bodyguard. In Florence.”

  “What? Hey, I don’t know what you guys are talking about. Get me the fuck outta this and let’s talk. All right?”

  Kostic said, “We do not have much time. Time is very bad.”

  “Time is bad? My time is bad, motherfucker! Let me up!”

  Kostic said, “You enjoy American movies? Bruce Willis. Sylvester Stallone.”

  Guzman shot glares from one to the other.

  “Action,” Kostic said, then made a gun of his finger. “Bang bang.”

  “The fuck are you talking about?”

  Lazarevic, his biceps and mustache bulging equally, stood with arms crossed and said nothing. Kostic said, “The hero is running, running. Always. Bad guys fire bullets. But they don’t hit him. They hit walls, they hit street. Not Bruce Willis.”

  Lazarevic, unspeaking, uncrossed his arms and touched each of his elbows with his opposite hand.

  Guzman didn’t know the Serbian word for elbow but understood. He glanced down and noticed the square, white adhesive bandages on the insides of both elbows. Similar pads were adhered to the insides of both knees. Those plasters were adhered to his jeans, not to his skin. He blinked at the completely unfamiliar things.

  “What the hell…?”

  Kostic was leaning against a metal worktable. He twisted at the waist and picked up something that looked, from Guzman’s angle, like a multioutlet power strip. Wires and shiny silver tape dangled from it.

  “You have interrogation before, we think. You are tough guy. It goes: You don’t talk. We beat you. You don’t talk. We beat you. Tonight, tomorrow, next day. Yes? You tell us what we need to know.”

  “Look, you bastard! I don’t know—”

  Kostic rode over him. “Hero in movies. Bruce Willis? Is not dodging bullets. There are no bullets.” He waggled the long, narrow electric device in his right hand. He changed its angle. Guzman could see it was a cobbled together remote control with four toggle switches and a battery pack. “Are…”

  He frowned, turned to Lazarevic. Lazarevic picked up the hardback dictionary. They had marked a page with a nude torn out of a girlie magazine.

  The silent Lazarevic showed him the word.

  Kostic said, “Squib. Yes. Small bomb. Very small. Goes boom in movie, it looks like bullet hits wall.”

  Guzman didn’t have to act confused. “What?”

  Kostic held the remote in his right hand and casually used his thumbnail to flip one of the toggles.

  The small explosive squib adhered to Vince Guzman’s left elbow exploded.

  The small charge—the size, shape, and color of a cinnamon stick—smashed the elbow, sending bone chips up into Guzman’s arm. The explosive, plus the bone chips, combined to shred Guzman’s collateral ligaments.

  In the blink of an eye, his left elbow became a permanently crippled bag of blood and sinew and floating bone fragments. The sleeve of skin, mostly unruptured by the directed explosive, acted like a sausage casing, holding his lower arm connected to his body.

  Vince Guzman screamed. He flailed as best a bound man can, the chair shaking, metal legs beating a random tattoo on the cement. Every long muscle in his body went rigid. His head snapped backward and forward quickly, as if he were listening to a thrash-metal band.

  He screamed until he puked, then screamed some more.

  Kostic and Lazarevic watched. Kostic held the remote with the remaining three toggles. He didn’t believe he would need to flip them.

  * * *

  Six minutes later, Vince Guzman sat quietly, head down, shirt stained with vomit and sweat, his trousers soiled, his left arm a soggy, seeping bag of morbid flesh. His bloodshot eyes locked onto the unfeeling mannequin’s arm and hand flex-cuffed to the chair.

  “Diego,” he gasped, “… the job … Florence…”

  Kostic nodded, pleased not to have wasted hours on an interrogation. “Diego. Is alone?”

  A thick rope of drool and puke hung from Guzman’s lips. “In trouble, he’ll … go find Daria … always does…”

  Kostic turned to his partner and translated. Lazarevic frowned. “Daria?” He went down on his haunches, attempting to make eye contact with Vince Guzman. Guzman just stared at the plastic-looking, gray-white hand cuffed to the chair. “Is woman? Daria? Is trouble?”

  “Y-yeah … she’s all high and mighty but … yeah.” He sniveled snot. “She’s trouble.”

  “Her name?”

  “Gibron. Daria Gibron.”

  Kostic stood straight. Vince Guzman, a lifelong tough guy, spat out a sob. His eyes never left the lifeless handlike thing attached to his arm.

  Lazarevic drew a Russian-made .9 auto and waited for the next jetliner to roar overhead.

  Sandpoint, Idaho

  Todd Brevidge thought the three worst ideas of the past decade had to be: trading Jeremy Linn to the Houston Rockets, a Broadway musical based on the Spice Girls, and moving the Research and Development Division of American Citadel Technologies to Sandpoint Freaking Idaho. And not in that order.

  Brevidge guided his Ferrari F430 through the streets of the sleepy town.

  Todd Brevidge stood out, in his Hong Kong suits, seven-hundred-dollar Tom Ford shades, and his Ferrari, for which he’d paid extra to make sure the hot-hot red was the exact color of his favorite escort’s lingerie. At thirty he was considered a prime shaker and mover in the high-tech industry; in five years he’d be an elder statesman.

  And here he was. In Idaho. The Siberia of the West.

  Brevidge made nine hundred grand a year after stock options. He’d been with American Citadel since it was a three-room office suite behind an AM/PM Mini Mart in Modesto. Since before the four international buyouts. He’d been loyal from the start. For which he’d been exiled to this gulag of country music and Big Gulps and mud flaps.

  Brevidge roared into the five-space parking lot, the Ferrari purring, and climbed out.

  He understood moving research and development away from Silicon Valley, away from the prying eyes of the competition and the high-tech media and the various federal government oversight agencies. Special Projects was on the verge of some incredible breakthroughs. Not the least of which were Mercutio and Hotspur. It was time American Citadel got to sit at the grown-up table, and Todd Brevidge had been instrumental in making that happen.

  He walked into the entirely unassuming office with its entirely unassuming lobby. The only people present were the morning guard, who nodded his greeting, and the chief engineer for the Hotspur and Mercutio projects, Bryan Snow.

  Snow looked, as usual, like a guy in costume playing Buddy Holly, with black plastic frames and a maroon cardigan and—literally—blue suede shoes. He wore jeans with the cuffs rolled up, and Brevidge wondered when that trend had reappeared.

  Snow adjusted his retro glasses. “Good morning.”

  “It will be,” Brevidge said, “if engineering holds up its end of things.”

  Snow shrugged and smiled sheepishly. “We will.”

  Brevidge glanced around, then stepped to the elevator. He hit the retrieval button. Above the elevator, only three floors were marked. Brevidge checked his watch and waited. The elevator dinged open. Snow stood with his fingers sheathed in the rear pockets of his jeans.

  “You guys have no idea what’s at stake.” Brevidge appeared to be addressing the digital readout of floors on the panel over the elevator door.

  “I think we do,” Bryan Snow replied softly.

  Brevidge spat out a mirthless laugh and adjusted the Bluetooth earpiece he wore at all hours, even when he wasn’t taking calls. He stepped into the elevator and Snow followed. The controls inside included three large, round plastic buttons, beside three numbers, 1, 2, and 3. Next to the 1 was a star, which denoted the lobby. Brevidge didn’t hit any of the num
ber buttons. Instead he pressed the knuckle of his forefinger against the star. He applied pressure.

  After a second’s delay, the star depressed.

  The door slid closed and the elevator descended to a basement that was not represented on the elevator controls, on the building schematics, or in the blueprints on file at the Sandpoint Fire Department.

  “This demo is make or break, man.” Brevidge shook his head ruefully. “I mean it. Make or fucking break. No third option. Besides the buyers, do you know we’ve got brass here?”

  Snow toed the floor of the elevator, as if trying to draw a line in the sand. “Yes.”

  “You know that? You know we’ve got actual management in the building today? Really, Bryan? See, I don’t think you did know that. I don’t think you’re cleared to know that the guys who sign the paychecks are actually here in—”

  The door hissed open and revealed the gaunt and spectral form of Cyrus Acton. Of the American Citadel board of directors.

  Snow looked down at his suede bucks and cleared his throat. “Todd, you know Mr. Acton? He got here about an hour ago.”

  Cyrus Acton was pale and bald and appeared to have been manufactured by the process of stretching human skin over chicken wire. He wore a somber suit, a plain black tie on a plain white shirt. No Bluetooth for him.

  He said, “Todd.” His voice had been bled of all emotion. “Good morning.”

  “Mr. Acton.” Todd ginned up a grin. He couldn’t believe that geek Snow hadn’t warned him! Asshole! “Good to see you, sir! Your flight was okay?”

  Mr. Acton nodded. The overhead lights glinted on his liver-spotted pate.

  “Outstanding, sir. Well, we’re ready for the demonstration.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Brevidge grinned. “Oh, hell yes, sir. I was just telling Snow here, we’re absolutely gonna knock their socks off. The minute the buyers get here, have we got a show for them!”

  “They are not,” Mr. Acton intoned.

  “Ah … not … here?”

  “Buyers,” Mr. Acton said. “They are not yet buyers, Todd. They have examined the merchandise. They have weighed their options. And they have chosen not to invest in the American Citadel product. They continue to cite these utterly outrageous sanctions from the State Department.” Mr. Acton looked like the word sanctions tasted chalky.