by Mel Comley
Her face screwed up in anger, she mumbled and aimed a fist at his arm. ‘You smug bag of shit.’
‘Ouch, what the hell was that for?’
‘Wuss! Has anyone ever told you how infuriating you can be at times, agent boy?’
‘Kinda lost count of how many people have told me that, I’ll add your name to the list, shall I?’
She didn’t bother responding.
In front of them, the outline of the chateau came into view. Her stomach churned and it felt like the knots had begun to constrict her intestines. Even at night with the moon dipped behind a low cloud, the place had an air of grandeur. A strange thought popped into her head, she wondered if it had been used as a film set in its past. Jesus, what the hell are we doing here? Why in God’s name had I let Tony talk me into this? I don’t know who’s crazier, him for suggesting this adventure, or me, for agreeing to come!
Another thing that unsettled her was the fact that they hadn’t told anyone about their mission. If anything went wrong…no, nothing would go wrong because Tony is an expert in his field.
‘You do know what you’re doing, Tony, don’t you?’
‘You worry too much, trust me. And why are you whispering?’
Now she really was worried; the last person who’d told her to trust him had been Pete. Not long after she was standing in a church reciting a eulogy at his funeral.
Obvious worry was etched on her face and Tony went on to reassure her. ‘Lorne, I mean it, trust me, will you? If I had any doubts or thought there would be any trouble I would’ve gone it alone. You’d be back at the hotel, nice and cosy tucked up in your warm bed.’ He squeezed the top of her thigh, turned off the lights and changed down a gear. They crawled along the gravelled driveway and came to halt halfway down, behind an eight foot yew hedge.
‘How will we get in?’ Lorne whispered again.
Tony reached into the inside pocket of his black jacket and pulled out a carefully folded sheet of paper, which he spread across the steering wheel in front of him before taking out a small torch from another pocket.
Her eyes widened. ‘Where the hell did you get that?’
‘While you were out with the Capitaine, I had a little snoop in his room.’
‘You mean you stole them? Jesus, Tony, what if he discovers they’re missing, have you thought about that? About the implications of what you’ve done?’
‘I’m going to say this only once, Lorne, and the choice is yours. If you want to back out and stay in the car, then by all means do it. But I’m going in.’
‘What about the men, we don’t know if they have dogs guarding the place?’
‘When we came this morning I observed their security measures and basically, there aren’t any. No dogs anyway. Mind you, his men are probably all the guard dogs he needs.’
He gave her a brief smile before returning his attention to the plans. ‘Most of the windows are small, all except these ones here.’ He pointed to a couple situated at the rear, on the ground floor. ‘Are you in or out, hon?’
Her eyes surveyed the huge chateau. She remained silent and sensed Tony getting agitated beside her.
Finally, he folded up the plan, reached for the handle and threw open the car door. ‘In or out?’ he asked over his shoulder. Lorne pushed open her own door and climbed out of the vehicle in response. ‘Good girl.’
They ducked down and to avoid the crunch of the gravel beneath their feet they ran along the damp grass on the edge of the driveway, making for the rear of the property. They stopped outside the window Tony had highlighted on the plan. He pulled out a small black case from another of his inside pockets. ‘Tools of the trade.’ Unzipping the case he extracted a pointed instrument approximately six inches in length.
Standing at full height, he secured one end of the tool to the glass with the attached suction cap and held it there with the heel of his hand, while he used the other end to cut a full circle. A high pitched scraping noise accompanied the movement, but it only took a few seconds to complete the job and then there was silence again. Tony removed the circle, placing it on the ground beside Lorne. He reached through the hole, pulled up the handle and the window opened inwards. ‘Et voila.’ He hoisted himself up onto the ledge and stuck his head in. Satisfied no-one was around he hopped back down.
‘It seems to be clear. Come on, I’ll give you a bunk up.’
She placed her foot in his flattened hand, and as she jumped he placed his other hand on her backside to steady her. ‘Oi you!’ She just managed to slap his hand away before she tumbled through the opening. She landed with a thump on the cold concrete floor. A quick brush down, then she pulled herself flat against the stone wall to wait for Tony.
‘That’s the easy part done,’ Tony said.
The smell of spices filled the air of the pantry, making her nose twitch, don’t you dare sneeze. They reached an old gnarled oak door, Tony turned the circular black cast iron handle, but the door refused to budge. ‘Shit! It’s locked.’ He crouched down and peered through the keyhole. ‘That’s a blessing, the key’s not there.’ Out popped his bag of tricks again, and he positioned yet another tool in the hole, wiggled it about until he heard a subtle click. Looking over his shoulder, he gloated, ‘I’m just too good for words.’
She dug the egotist in the ribs, gave a shudder and whispered urgently, ‘Just get on with it, Tony. Get what you need and let’s get the hell out of here. I’ve got a bad feeling about this!’
Tony’s pen-torch lit their path and guided them through the property, their footsteps a distant slap on the cold concrete slabs in the hallway. With Tony leading the way and Lorne holding onto the tail of his jacket, they made their way down the hallway and then through the door into one of the rooms on the ground floor. He switched on the light switch.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘Calm down, stop hyper-ventilating woman, it’s quite safe. I checked there were no windows in here first. Right, what have we got here?’ He walked towards the monitors lining one of the walls. ‘This appears to be his eyes to the outside world. His security den, his Operations room, if you like.’
‘Shit!’ She pointed at the far monitor, their car, which Tony had thought would be well screened was clearly visible, thanks to its obscure angle. ‘He’ll know we’ve been here.’
‘Easily sorted, Lorne, we’ll take the relevant security tape with us, when we leave.’ The level-headed agent reassured her. His inspection of the equipment soon revealed it didn’t run on tapes. Baldwin had installed state of the art surveillance which fed all the camera footage to a hard drive, instead of tapes or disc. He saw a bottle of water on the table and poured it into the front of the computer tower. ‘That should take care of that.’ He studied the monitors and picked out two possible rooms they should check out. ‘That’s where we should be heading Baldwin’s bedroom and his office.’
‘Any idea where we’re going to find them?’ she asked, her eyes flitting around the screens constantly on the lookout for any kind of movement.
Tony anticipated her question and had the plan ready. ‘It doesn’t state which room is which on here, but I think we can safely assume this one is Baldwin’s bedroom, it’s the room with the most square footage and is the only one with an en-suite. We’ll head for that one, shit, it would be located at the far end of the corridor. I can’t tell where the office is though, it’ll be a case of popping our heads into each room until we hit the jackpot.’
‘That’s ridiculous, Tony, you’re forgetting something.’ Her voice came out higher than normal, letting him know that her nerves had started to jangle.
‘What’s that?’
‘The butler. He’s got to be in here somewhere. Look on the plan again does anything say servants’ quarters, or anything similar to that?’
Tony scanned the plan and spotted a smaller room at the top of the staircase that could be the butler’s possible quarters. He tapped the room with his finger and turned to her, ‘This could be hi
s room, I say could be. To be honest, I’d forgotten all about him. We’ll have to be extra cautious mind you. The guy looked harmless enough, but who’s to say what weapons he might have hidden under his bed.’
‘Thanks for that, just what a girl wants to hear, I feel at ease now, agent boy, not.’
Tony shrugged an apology. ‘Come on, let’s get a move on.’ He switched the light off as Lorne grabbed the tail of his jacket again and followed him out into the dark hallway.
He moved swiftly and Lorne felt admiration at the way he expertly guided both of them through the hallway and up the stone stairway. A thrill crept up her spine as it dawned on her she’d never entered a house before without a search warrant in her hand. She shuddered when yet another strange thought struck her, that at this moment they were trespassing. She wondered if Tony loved his job so much because of the thrill factor involved. A year ago, when she had resigned from the force he had tried to recruit her, but she’d turned him down thinking the job wasn’t really for her, but now …
Tony stopped and Lorne, still deep in thought, piled into the back of him. ‘Shh! Do you want to wake up the butler, you idiot.’
‘Sorry.’
They tiptoed past the room they presumed to be the butler’s quarters and set off down the long narrow corridor, the tiny torch still guiding their way. Tony halted outside a door on his left, and ordered her to poke her head round the door on the opposite side of the hallway. Nothing. Their search went on.
The same routine took place at the next set of rooms and again their exploration proved to be fruitless. Their luck changed however when Tony tried the next door on his side, and they entered the room.
‘What are we supposed to be looking for, Tony?’ she whispered, squinting into the darkness of the room.
He shrugged. Then whispered, ‘Fucked if I know.’
His words made her pause and look at him, her mouth open in disbelief. ‘You’re kidding me! Some kind of clue would be helpful.’
‘If I knew what I was bloody looking for I would have come alone, I wouldn’t have involved you. I brought you along to make use of your detecting skills. So get cracking, if anything looks out of place, give me a shout.’
‘Great. Truly helpful, agent boy.’
‘Lorne.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Will you for Christ’s sake stop calling me "agent boy", I’m thirty-eight-years-old, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
She screwed one side of her mouth up at him then riffled through the papers on the mahogany, leather-inlaid desk. By the light of a spare torch Tony had produced she waded through paper after paper, they were mainly in French so she had to guess, but she was fairly sure they were utility bills. ‘Nothing, just the usual crap paperwork,’ she complained.
‘Stop moaning, Lorne, look in the filing cabinet over there.’ She looked over her shoulder and then walked towards the green cabinet. Before she opened it, he warned, ‘Make sure you open the drawers quietly.’
She scowled and gave him the finger. ‘I might be a bit rusty, agent boy, but I haven’t lost my intelligence altogether, thanks.’
He physically cringed, tutted and shook his head.
Lorne heard Tony open the drawers in the desk that had been left unlocked. ‘Bingo,’ he whispered.
She turned to see him taking photos of an open file with his mobile.
‘What’s that?’ she asked, crossing the room to stand alongside him.
‘If it’s what I think it is, these details should match up to Interpol’s stolen art database. Making it our ticket out of here. I’ll just take some copies then we’ll be off.’
The word paintings was written on the file’s tab and the sheets Tony had been photographing contained a list of numbers and names.
Through the corner of her eye, she saw something flicker, and moved over to the window.
‘Shit! We’ve got company.’ Her eyes remained fixed on the car’s headlights heading up the drive towards them.
‘Fuck, the butler was probably out all along. Two more minutes then I’m done.’
Lorne watched, swallowed down the bile rising in her throat, and her heart thumped faster as the car slowly drove up the drive. How the hell did I get myself in this mess? What if that’s Baldwin coming back? What if it’s not the butler returning home after all? So many questions and so few answers.
Tony’s camera continued to click away at the file. ‘For Pete’s sake, Tony.’ She winced, bad choice of words. Sorry, mate feel free to lend a hand though!
‘Okay, okay. That’s it.’ He slammed the file shut and returned it to the drawer. They both froze, looked at each other, eyes wide and fearful as the ominous sound of crunching gravel drifted up from the courtyard below.
Chapter Twenty
‘What the fuck do we do, now?’ Lorne asked.
Tony had joined her at the window and they watched a tall thin figure step out of the vehicle and approach the front of the chateau.
‘We wait.’
‘For what, exactly?’
He let out a heavy sigh, glared at her and placed a finger to his lips. The front door slammed shut. Tony pointed at the desk and ordered her to get under it. He wedged himself in beside her.
‘What happens now?’ Lorne asked, her back already beginning to ache in the cramped space.
‘And I wonder why I prefer to work alone,’ he mumbled, tilting his head to listen. They both heard movements coming from the kitchen below. Lorne let his sarcasm slip by.
Twenty minutes later, the cramp in her legs, likely his too, felt unbearable. They heard heavy footfalls on the stairs. Lorne listened, her heart furiously pounding, when a door closed further down the hallway. Still neither of them dared to move.
Tony whispered, ‘Give it half an hour, then we’ll make a move, all right?’
‘My legs won’t hold out that long,’ she whined, tears of frustration springing to her eyes.
‘Okay, ten more minutes. It should be safe to get out from under here then, but we’ll have to stay in the room for another twenty minutes, that way your legs will have a chance to regain some feeling.’
She nodded and tried to relax her muscles.
‘See, I’m not a bastard all the time. I do take time off, occasionally.’ He smiled, then surprised her by rubbing his hands vigorously up and down her legs to help improve her circulation.
Thirty minutes later, Tony poked his head into the hallway, he couldn’t see a light on under any of the doors. He grabbed Lorne’s hand and they pressed their backs against the wall and eased their way down the hallway again.
It seemed an eternity before they reached the bottom step. They retraced their steps through the house.
When they reached the car, a tear of relief slipped down Lorne’s cheek.
Tony shook his head. ‘Not again, woman.’
‘WHAT?’ She shouted tetchily, not caring if she was heard by anyone in the chateau.
‘Christ, the amount of tears you’ve cried lately, I’m surprised you’re not permanently dehydrated.’ His words were intended as a joke, but her sensitivity was raw. She responded by giving him the finger, and a solid glare before she wiped the tear away with her sleeve.
They arrived back at the hotel at almost four in the morning to the amusement of the night porter, and they hopped into the lift feeling embarrassed. ‘I hope discretion was on the agenda of his night porter courses,’ Tony said.
Lorne felt drained, her muscles tight from the tension thrown at them during their dangerous assignment. All she wanted to do was to curl up in her nice warm bed and catch up on some sleep.
The lift pinged when it reached their floor and the doors slid open to reveal the figure of a man standing there. His arms folded firmly across his chest, his face set like stone and his foot tapping. ‘And where the hell have you two been?’
Chapter Twenty-One
‘Would you believe us if we said we just popped out for a midnight stroll?’ Tony asked.
‘Imp
ossible. By my watch it is past four. I will ask my question one more time, and this time, Lorne, you will give me an honest answer. Where have you been?’
God what is it with these men, why do they think us women will simply roll over and tell all? Her cheeks flushed, she focused on a gold swirl in the patterned blue carpet, just in front of Michel’s feet. They might have slept together recently, but she still found it impossible to look him in the eye. The lift doors whooshed several times but Tony’s large foot prevented them from closing. An uncomfortable silence surrounded them, all that could be heard was the sound of heavy breathing.
Clearly angered, Michel sucked in his cheeks making his eyes appear to double in size. After ordering them out of the lift he turned his back and marched up the corridor towards his room, expecting Lorne and Tony to fall into step behind him. A shiver of trepidation rippled through her tired body.
Tony noticed Lorne shudder, leaning over, he whispered, ‘You all right?’
Her eyes fluttered shut for the briefest of seconds, and when she reopened them she gave him a look that said, "This is another fine mess you’ve gotten me tangled up in".
They entered the lion’s den and Michel shut the door behind them. ‘Take a seat,’ Michel ordered.
The pair sat on his messed up bed. So he had been to bed then. How and when had he realised we were missing? Had he knocked on my door, hoping for an encore and discovered me gone?
Michel’s angry voice broke into her reverie, ‘As you have refused to answer me, I will tell you where I believe you were tonight. Before I do, I must warn you, do not take me for an incompetent foreign fool. Do I make myself clear?’
Lorne remained silent her eyes cast downwards focusing on the Capitaine’s shoes. She cringed when Tony pretended to clear his throat it was obvious that the agent had found the Frenchman’s threat/warning amusing.
Before she had the chance to look at Tony, Michel had crossed the divide between them quicker than a hare out of the traps at a greyhound meeting. Grabbing Tony’s shirtfront and collar, he yanked him to his feet. Lorne gasped and watched in disbelief as the hatred rippled back and forth between the two men.
