Apocalypse Ark by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton [Pendleton, Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Thriller & Suspense
Publisher: Worldwide Library
Published: 2013-12-26T11:00:00+00:00

Custodes Foederis Headquarters, Rome

UGO TROISI USED a small brass key to unlock the lower right-hand drawer of his spacious mahogany desk. Inside the drawer, behind a rack of hanging files he’d filled with office correspondence, lay an Olympus WS-700M digital audio recorder with four gigabytes of internal memory, permitting Troisi to record more than one thousand hours of conversation. Its battery’s life was a maximum twenty-five hours, but that was actual recording time, when its remote “intelligent” microphones transmitted human voices.

From Mania Justina’s bedchamber.

Troisi had planted the tiny mikes last week, racked by guilt but compelled by suspicion. He still wasn’t sure, precisely, what had driven him to mount this audio surveillance on his lover—and the reigning Reginae Matris of Custodes Foederis. He couldn’t say her attitude toward him had changed, exactly; she was still both energetic and explosive in their couplings. But there had been something: darting glances, worried little frowns that vanished when he caught her at it and was too afraid to ask what might be preying on her mind.

This day, as usual, Troisi used an earpiece to review the night’s recordings in perfect privacy. None of his aides would dare to enter without knocking, and even if Marcellus barged in uninvited he would simply see his second in command transcribing figures from the sect’s far-flung accounts. Nothing suspicious about that.

Technology spared Troisi from dead-time hissing static. The first thing that he heard was Mania greeting someone, clearly male, who answered in a voice Troisi didn’t recognize. Who could it be? Access to Marcellus and his wife was by invitation only, strictly limited. Contributors, reporters and the like were never welcomed into private quarters—and they certainly wouldn’t have said the things that set Troisi’s cheeks aflame with jealous rage, sparking a pain that throbbed between his eyes.

The couple wasted little time on small talk, and said nothing that would help Troisi name the man. Not Marcellus, that was clear; Troisi would recognize his voice immediately. This was someone else who knew Mania intimately and was taking pains to please her, even as he taunted her with gutter language, which she didn’t seem to mind.

Sickened, Troisi switched off the recorder and removed the earpiece, shoving the equipment to the far side of his desk. He’d thought to pick up private conversations between Marcellus and Mania, maybe learn if either one of them had grown dissatisfied with him in any way, or if there was some plan afoot from which he’d been excluded. He’d expected that they might engage in sex from time to time, although he had Mania’s word that such events were few and far between.

But this! To learn that she’d betrayed Troisi and her husband with another man? The thought had never crossed his mind.

This meant that he had never truly satisfied her. Worse, he could no longer trust a single thing she’d said to him while they lay tangled in her sheets or stood beneath the warm spray of her shower. Every word out of her luscious mouth had been a filthy lie.

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