by Gregg Loomis
The men blocking the road had given the matter some thought. They had chosen a place the highway narrowed slightly just before a bridge over some nameless creek. There was no chance Gurt could pull around them without hitting the bridge abutment or going into the water itself.
She gave the latter possibility an instant’s thought. The big Hummer’s high ground clearance and four-wheel drive just might be enough to get it across the water. She dismissed the idea. She had no means of knowing how deep the water was but it was a certainty winter rains and any ice melt had not diminished its flow.
Instead, she kept her foot on the gas despite frantically waving flashlights and the echo-tinged shouting of a bullhorn.
Two questions occupied her mind as she bore down on the blockade: where was the weakest spot and did the government want her badly enough to use deadly force?
The second was answered by a burst of automatic rifle fire well over the Hummer’s roof, warning shots only. The staccato blast brought Manfred wide-awake with a yelp of fear. She had only a fraction of a second to take a hand from the wheel, reach behind the front seat and make sure he was secure in his child’s seat.
“Mommy!” he shouted in terror.
There was no time for him to say anything else.
Gurt was aware of figures scattering like a covey of frightened birds as she aimed the Hummer at the narrow space between sheriff’s cruiser and the unmarked car. Now she would find out if the massive Hummer’s superior weight would push through the lighter vehicles. With a sound of shrieking sheet metal, the Hummer split the two apart like an ax cleaving a log. The impact tried to snatch the wheel from her hand.
Then her world went white as the air bag exploded into her chest, driving her back against her seat and blinding her forward vision. Using the edge of the road she could see through the side window, she kept on the pavement as she used one hand to tug the balloonlike air bag aside. Ahead, she could see into multiprismed fractions as the windshield had become a spiderweb of refracted light.
She could feel something dragging against the right front wheel. A fender, she guessed. Manfred was howling with fear but otherwise seemed fine. A thin trail of steam was jetting from a radiator even the big grill had not been able to completely protect. A quick glance at the gauges showed engine heat creeping toward the red as oil pressure fell off. She must have ruptured a line or holed the oil pan.
She next checked the mirrors. It was too dark to see exactly what damage she had caused but it was apparently enough to prevent pursuit for the moment. She needed to put as much distance between her and the people at the bridge as possible before the engine seized.
She took the first dirt road she could see by her one remaining headlight. Cresting a small rise, she saw another, smaller unpaved path, actually no more than parallel tracks leading toward a shedlike structure.
She turned in, the scraping sound against the right front wheel louder. She stopped in front of a ramshackle wooden building, shifted into park, put on the brake and got out. She left the engine running for fear it would not restart. In the beam of the single light, she saw a tractor and an aged pickup truck. She had arrived at some farmer’s machine shed.
Shifting her attention to the Hummer, Gurt could now see the grill had been pushed back into the radiator where the spume of steam was hissing. A fender had indeed been crushed against the right front tire.
None of this interested her as much as what she could not see.
Crossing in front of the car, she opened the passenger door.
Forcing herself to ignore Manfred’s pleas to be freed from his car seat, she removed a flashlight from the glove box, knelt and began to examine the underside of the SUV.
It took her less than a minute to find a soap-bar-sized box just under the driver’s door. She recognized it as one of a number of commercially available wireless devices with GPS capabilities, the kind used by long-haul trucking companies for both security and driver location. It could be tracked by anyone with Internet access and a password. The following car Jake had spotted was only closing the rear door of a preset trap once she had entered a section of the highway with no turnoffs. Like chasing fish into the net.
But hadn’t Jake swept for just such a homing device a few hours ago? A closer look showed a wire from the contraption running forward. Although she could not see from where she was, she would bet it was connected to the Hummer’s starter, activated only by turning on the ignition. With the switch off, there was nothing to be found by the kind of sweep as Jake had performed.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the thumping of rotor blades. Her pursuers might have been disabled on the ground but they had managed to get a helicopter airborne and this locator beacon was going to lead them straight to her.
From the rate at which the sound was growing, they would be here in minutes.
Place de l’Opéra, Paris
The Honfleur oysters had been as good as promised but gastronomy had hardly been on Lang’s mind. He had hardly savored the fruits de mer, a whole lobster, crab, shrimp, mussels, clam and whelk with tart shallot-vinegar sauce, warm loaf of rye bread and dairy-fresh butter.
“Only a single glass of Muscadet?” Patrick asked. “It is a marvelous vintage.”
Lang looked around the ornate, rococo dining room complete with mural on the ceiling. Most of the patrons were men in business suits. Several had much younger women with them. Lang would have bet this was not the French version of National Administrative Professionals Week.
He would have liked nothing more than to get a little tipsy on the sweet wine and retire for a nap. “Regrettably, I have a busy afternoon, what with seeing professor”—he reached into a pocket to remove the card—“Henri D’Tasse.”
Patrick had shamelessly helped himself to the last of the Muscadet, shaking the bottle slightly to make certain not a drop remained. He gave a reproachful look that reminded Lang that at table, the French do not favor discussions of anything not pertaining to the food, the wine or the cheeses. Comparisons with other dishes or meals, the last time that particular vintage had been enjoyed, which establishment did the best version. Lang had actually witnessed a couple screaming threats of divorce sit down to dinner. The conversation immediately switched to a calm debate of the relative merits of Livarot versus Pont l’Évêque cheese.
“A pity,” Patrick said. “Perhaps I might interest you in a second bottle . . .”
Lang held up hands of surrender. “We Americans don’t function as well as you French do after a heavy meal and several bottles of wine.”
The Frenchman shook his head. “It is because you are weaned on McDonald’s and hot dogs.”
Lang grinned, shaking his head as he pushed back from the table and signaled for the check. He reached for his wallet. “We can argue American junk foods later. I appreciate your taking my suitcase home with you.”
“No need for you to carry it about when you are staying with us anyway.”
Patrick motioned the waiter to decline Lang’s money, tendering a credit card in its place. “It is a government card. Let the people of France thank you for the valuable intelligence you have brought with you. Shall I call a taxi?”
Lang shook his head. “No thanks. I need to walk this meal off before I go to sleep.”
Patrick lowered his voice. “And to make sure you are not followed. Do you have . . . ?”
Lang put his fist to his mouth to stifle a burp and touched his back in the place he could feel the Browning in its holster. “I have.”
Forty minutes later, Lang sat in a small Left Bank bistro on the quai d’Orsay at its intersection with boulevard Saint-Germain. The sole entrée seemed to be pizza for a few American tourists. Through the moisture-streaked window, he could see a fountain with a statue of Saint Michel, and behind it, follow the pewter-colored Seine to the misty ghost of Notre Dame, its gleeful Gothic spires stabbing the belly of low gray clouds.
He was not here for the postcard scenery.
He nursed the cup of coffee that would give him license to remain here as long as he liked. He was watching, making sure he had not been followed. The use of his own passport and credit card had been an unfortunate necessity, one the Chinese would discover sooner or later. Then they would come looking for him. Happily, Paris was a very large city.
He was reluctant to give up the dry warmth of the bistro, even though a lined Burberry purchased just minutes ago promised some degree of comfort against the cold drizzle that characterizes Paris’s winters. Slipping a euro beneath his cup’s saucer, he tightened the belt of his Burberry, got up and went outside to begin the uphill trek to the Sorbonne. He passed the fifteenth-century mansion of the Abbot of Cluny, built over Roman ruins and now a museum housing the world-famous unicorn tapestries. The Luxembourg Gardens, its normally lush grounds in winter drab, abutted the Luxembourg Palace. Headquarters for the German Luftwaffe in France during World War II, it was now home to the French senate. The architecture, more Italian than French, had been dictated by Marie de’ Medici, widow of Henry IV, to remind her of her native Florence.
At the top of the hill, Lang faced the Pantheon, designed originally to be a church dedicated to Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, by Louis XV in gratitude for his recovery from an illness. Unfinished by the time of the revolution and the rebellion against anything of a religious nature, the building’s facade was converted to a copy of a Roman temple and dedicated to France’s heroes.
Lang took out the professor’s card, reminding himself of the address, and began a slight descent along the left side of the building. This area had been the seat of the University of Paris since its founding as a place for sixteen poor students to study theology in the 11th century. In 1969 the university had been divided into thirteen different departments and disbursed throughout the city. Some lectures were still held in the building at 47 rue des Écoles. From the card he held in his hand, Lang supposed history was one of them.
The street still had the slightly shabby, down-at-the-heels atmosphere common to neighborhoods where students congregate, with discount stores and bistros advertising low prices. Number 47 was a two-story brick building with little to distinguish it other than a pair of huge wooden doors. Lang entered a stone-floored foyer whose only feature was a spiral staircase. The stone steps were worn from centuries of student feet. Upstairs was a single corridor lined with doors with opaque glass above unvarnished wood.
Lang read the names in chipped black letters until he found the one marked D’TASSE. He knocked gently.
“Entrez!” came from within.
Had Lang asked a film company to create an office for an absentminded professor, they might have produced something very much like what he saw. A wooden desk was stacked high with a jumble of papers, single sheets, periodicals and notebooks. Behind it, a floor-to-ceiling bookcase sagged with the weight of dusty volumes, magazines and more papers. In the corner, an electric heater hummed in a futile effort to dispel the room’s clammy cold. At the desk was a man in a black turtleneck sweater. A sharply pointed Vandyke beard did little to minimize the chubbiness of the face. He peered at Lang though narrow slits of glasses.
“Professor D’Tasse?”
The man stood to a height that could not have greatly exceeded five feet. He extended a hand the size of a child’s. “You are Mr. Reilly, the American my good friend Patrick Louvere called me about?” he asked in accented English.
Not exactly how Patrick described the relationship.
Lang shook the hand. “Yes. He said you could help me.”
The professor sat back down. “Any friend of Patrick’s is, as you Americans say, a friend of mine.”
Lang looked over to where a straight wooden chair served as the depository for a stack of books. D’Tasse nodded and Lang moved them to the floor to take a seat after slipping out of his new coat.
“You have recently edited a diary of, I believe, Napoleon’s personal secretary?”
Behind the glasses, D’Tasse’s eyes narrowed. “What is your interest? I already have a publisher, and a number of American universities are interested. In fact, it has been previewed . . . is that the correct word, previewed? Yes, previewed in American University & College Review.” He held up a pack of printed pages. “I have had made an English-language translation to send them.”
Lang cleared his throat, giving him an added second to come up with a plausible story. He couldn’t. “Let us say I have a very practical interest in Napoleon, one I am not at liberty to divulge.”
“Ah, a secretive friend of the ever-so-secretive Patrick!” He put the papers down and leaned across the desk, resting on his elbows. “See here, Mr. Reilly, I must guard my work. It should be available to all at no cost. Protecting scholarly research from capitalistic exploitation is a duty of the academic community.”
More like academic penis envy.
D’Tasse continued. “I can tell you story after story of colleagues of mine who shared their work, only to see it for sale in some commercial publication.”
How many copies of People Magazine would the diary of Napoleon’s secretary sell?
Lang tried not to show his annoyance. Patrick knew a pompous ass when he saw one. “I can assure you, professor—”
The sentence was never finished.
The door slammed open. Lang swivelled his neck to see two men standing on the threshold, overcoat collars tuned up, caps pulled low. Lang’s first guess was that they were students, students very pissed off. Perhaps about a grade.
Then he saw the guns in their hands.
Somewhere in middle Georgia
The previous evening
The helicopter was approaching. Already Gurt could see a cone of light sweeping an adjacent field as it flew circular patterns, the standard search procedure. She guessed she had less than two minutes to do something.
She stood to reach inside the Hummer, turning off the remaining headlight. She then hurried to the rear passenger door and fumbled with the buckles on Manfred’s child seat. Whoever had designed the thing did not have a speedy exit in mind.
“Mommy, the copter’s coming,” he chortled gleefully, his fear now forgotten. “I want to see it!”
His hand in hers, she unlatched the rear compartment, letting Grumps out. He sniffed at the frozen grass, undecided where to leave his next pee mail.
Gurt pointed. “Manfred, take Grumps to that shed over there and stay inside.”
“But I want to see . . .”
“MACH SCHNELL!”
His mother rarely raised her voice to him but when she did, particularly in her native tongue, Manfred knew there would be no subsequent conversation.
Taking a second to make sure she was being obeyed, Gurt watched the little boy, followed by the dog, trot inside the rickety structure. Boards were missing and, she was certain, so was part of the roof but it should shelter both from the probing skyborne eye.
She started to bend down and disconnect the tracking device. No, no good. The chopper was close enough to find her without it. Better to use their own weapon against them.
Climbing back into the Hummer, she snatched off the brake and shifted into drive while watching the helicopter’s pool of light skim ever closer. Thankful the cold weather had delayed the engine’s seizing, she stepped on the gas, easing the bulky vehicle back onto the dirt road. Once there, she shifted again into park. Using her seat belt, she lashed the steering wheel to hold the car straight in the road before slipping the gearshift again to drive. She grabbed her purse by the shoulder strap and jumped free as the Hummer lumbered forward.
With a little luck, the Hummer and its tracking device would be a mile or so down the road before loss of oil and coolant brought it to a stop.
By that time, she intended to be gone.
Where and how, she was not sure.
She made it back to the shed just before the light from the helicopter swept overhead, the aircraft’s twin-turbine engines roaring malevolently. She watched as the
pool of light moved away before going outside to the pickup truck. Rusty hinges complained bitterly as she opened the door and felt for the ignition switch. She was grateful the truck was an older model without the complicated antitheft mechanisms. She was fairly certain she remembered Agency training for how to direct-wire the ignition, bypassing the switch itself. What was it Lang called the procedure? Hot-wiring, that was it. Now if only the battery in this dilapidated scrap heap was working.
There was something else in the training for doing this . . .
Oh! Her instructor had mentioned the surprisingly high percentage of drivers who left the keys in their cars. Perhaps the same was true of pickup trucks.
A quick search found a key on the driver’s sun visor. The owner had taken for granted his vehicle would be safe at a remote spot on his own property.
Gurt leaned over to search the sky, saw nothing and inserted the key in the ignition. Her fears swam to her mind’s surface when the engine whined as it turned over. She took her foot off the gas, fearful of flooding the fuel system.
On the next try, the engine gave a wet cough, whined again and caught.
Gurt reached for the lights and caught herself just in time. Instead, she felt out the manual transmission and eased it into first gear, inching toward the shed.
In less than a minute, Manfred was beside her, Grumps on the floor at his feet.
“You forgot the car seat, Mommy!” the little boy giggled, glad to be free of the restraint. “Vati will be mad if he finds out.”
That’s a bridge I’ll jump off of when I come to it.
“Why aren’t we in the Hummer? Whose truck is this? Did you ask if you could take it? What about our clothes and stuff?”
Gurt searched the night sky. Wherever the chopper had gone, it was out of sight.
“When will we get to the farm?”
Gurt was thinking about the cars she had smashed into. Surely there were others available. But there were a number of crossing highways shortly past where she had taken the dirt road. Did they have enough men and vehicles to cover all possibilities?
