by Tom Savage
“Listen to me, Ben. We have to get down to the road to help Julie. I assume you know who she is, and what we’re doing here. We have to help her, okay?”
He stared blankly at her a moment, then nodded.
“Good,” Nora said. She took his shaking hand and began the descent. “Don’t think about it now. Tell me how you found us.”
“What? Oh, yeah. That was easy—I just followed Amanda. She told me to put those trackers in your purses, but it never occurred to her that I might do the same thing to her. I’m sorry I didn’t meet you the other day; by then I knew it was better for both of us if I went totally off the grid. I also bugged Amanda’s phone, so I heard everything she and Mr. Cole were planning. I was on the train from Paris with her and Luc, and I rented a car in Lucerne and followed that van they rented this morning.”
“So you really are CIA,” Nora said. “I thought so. But how did you get involved in this phony op?”
He made a grunting sound that Nora interpreted as self-disgust. “By being stupid and naïve, that’s how. I was fresh out of training, in my first week at Langley, and I hadn’t been given an assignment yet. Mr. Cole called me into his office and said he needed someone for a secret op in Paris, locating an agent who’d gone rogue over here. He offered me a bonus—crazy money!—if I’d help out with it. I thought it was a great opportunity, a supersecret mission for one of the top execs. So Cole became my official handler, and I came to Paris in January.
“I was told not to go near the Paris station, so I didn’t. It was all so hush-hush and romantic, you know? They said we were going to catch this Chris Waverly woman and turn her over to the Company. I didn’t figure out just how phony the op was until you arrived, when instead of arresting you Amanda was taking you out to dinner and the theater. I thought that was weird, until I overheard some calls Amanda made to Cole. That’s when I found out you weren’t really Chris Waverly, that they were using you to find the real Chris Waverly and kill her, and the Company didn’t know anything about it. I finally realized that I was here only because I’m a big, dumb lummox with good driving skills who speaks French and follows orders. I’m such an idiot!”
Nora didn’t know what to say to that. She peered ahead through the trees. They were nearly to the road now, and she was frantically worried about Julie, but she kept him talking. “That’s a terrific disguise. I didn’t recognize you.”
He managed to smile at that. “Thanks. I got some hair dye and clothes and sunglasses at a department store in Lucerne. Your disguise was better than mine. I saw you twice today—I even passed right by you on the bridge—but I didn’t recognize you until I saw you having dinner with Julie Campbell tonight. We all thought you’d gone back to New York, but I guess you only sent the trackers there. How did you do that?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Nora said. They arrived at the bottom of the hill. Before she stepped out from the trees into the road, she turned to him. “Do you have a gun?”
“No,” Ben said. “I left it in Paris—I couldn’t take a chance with it at the border. And I don’t know anyone in Switzerland, so I didn’t know how to get one here.”
“That’s okay,” Nora said. “You did the right thing. You’re not an idiot, Ben—you’re a good agent. Wait here a sec while I see what’s going on over there.”
She crouched down and stepped slowly out of the forest. The entrance to the clinic was about twenty yards to her left on the other side of the road, the light mounted above the brass sign beside the gates. Nora peered through the rainy darkness, looking for the headlights of the Audi, but the car was no longer there. The road was empty, as far as she could—
No. Not empty. Nora squinted, straining her eyes to see in the downpour. A body was lying in the road where the car had been. She stood up straight and began to run.
“Come on,” she called back to Ben, and he burst out of the trees behind her. They ran down the road toward the slumped figure as headlights and a flashing red light appeared from the tunnel and a car approached them, swerving to avoid the other body that lay in its path at the entrance. Nora sank to her knees, staring. A blond woman in dark clothing and boots lay facedown on the asphalt, and Nora saw that she was hog-tied, her hands and feet bent up behind her and bound together with clear plastic strips.
Nora held her breath as she gently turned the woman on her side. The police car had pulled to a stop beside her, the headlights illuminating the woman’s face and the strip of silver tape across her mouth. Nora exhaled in relief. It was Amanda Morris, bound and gagged, and she was unconscious.
But where’s Julie? Nora thought. And where is the Audi? She tried to figure this out as Hall Kleiss and Lars Weber emerged from the police car and knelt beside her. Ben stood on her other side, staring down.
“Zum Teufel, was soll das?” Hall muttered.
Nora looked over at the police chief. “Where did you come from?”
Hall left off his inspection of the prisoner and grinned at her. “We were parked across the road at the other end of the tunnel, blocking the entrance there, just as you told us to do. You said we were to stop any van trying to get away down the mountain, remember? We waited there until you called us, just a couple of minutes ago. You told us to come get one prisoner and one dead man, so here we are. Good work, Mrs. Baron!” He grinned some more, and then he winked.
Nora stared at the man, then rose slowly to her feet. Mrs. Baron. She looked at the two men kneeling beside the unconscious woman, then up at Ben Dysart standing over them. She turned her head and looked down the road at the tunnel entrance thirty yards away, at the broken body lying there. She looked over at the spot where the Audi had been idling before it vanished. Finally, she turned and looked at the iron gates of the Brandt Clinic. She walked over to them, pelted by the steady rain, putting it all together in her mind.
Amanda Morris has one weakness, and I know what it is.
One weakness. Yes, and now Nora had discovered that weakness, too: Amanda Morris was a coward. Julie Campbell had known that already, and she’d used it to her advantage tonight. The plan had been perfect in its simplicity, and in its effectiveness. She’d instructed her security guard to disable the van by slashing all four tires. Then she’d left her own car here, in plain sight from the ranger station up the hill, idling. Julie hadn’t marched up the hill to confront the enemy—she’d marched right into the trees over there and stopped, waiting for the enemy to come to her.
Nora had climbed up behind the station and set off the smoke bombs, which terrified Amanda. She’d abandoned her accomplice and made a beeline for the van. When she’d found it disabled, she’d raced down the road to Julie’s idling car—her only chance to get off this mountain. And Julie had been waiting there for her.
Nora remembered her brief glimpse of the struggle by the car from the cliff above, imagining Julie Campbell leaping from her hiding place and throwing herself on Amanda. She’d even had plastic restraints and a roll of duct tape with her, and she’d used them. Poor Amanda had never had a chance. The flaw in Julie’s plan—the wild card—was the man with Amanda, a man Julie had never met. She couldn’t have known that he wouldn’t simply accompany his boss to the getaway car, that he would go after Nora and nearly kill her.
And she certainly hadn’t known about Ben Dysart. If it hadn’t been for Ben, Nora would be dead now. He’d turned on his own handlers when he discovered they were criminals. He’d fooled Nora with his disguise. He’d even fooled Julie Campbell, who prided herself on always being aware of everything around her, into thinking he was a marathoner-in-training.
Hall Kleiss had apparently been instructed to say that it was Nora, not Julie, who had arranged tonight’s little event, and Nora knew why:
I decided it was time for Rose to retire. I know the importance of the work I did, but I’ve lost my taste for it. I can no longer be Chris Waverly.
So, Chris Waverly was never here tonight. In fact, Chris Waverly didn’t exist, and she never had. The capture of A
manda Morris and the killing of her henchman would be credited entirely to rookie CIA operative Benjamin Dysart, lately of Yale and Warrenton Training Center. Ben was definitely on his way up the ladder at Langley.
The Audi had vanished, and there was only one place it could have gone. Nora reached up to grasp the cold, wet iron bars in her hands, gazing down the long driveway at the Brandt Clinic. The wide nighttime panorama of valleys and cities and mountain ranges beyond the cliff was barely visible through the downpour. The compound was in darkness, waiting for the return of most of its patients and staff from Bingo Nacht, but the glass-front entrance was ablaze with light. Nora looked closer, peering through the rain at the lone figure who stood just inside the sliding glass doors, gazing out. She wore a classic European head nurse’s uniform: a midi-length navy blue dress under a full white apron with a white cap, collar, stockings, and shoes. Her air of authority left no doubt as to her identity.
As Nora watched, Oberschwester Julie Wäldchen raised her right arm and waved to her. Nora waved back. Then she turned from the gates and went over to sit in the backseat of the police car, out of the rain, waiting for the men to finish their business and take her back to Alpenberg.
Chapter 47
The rain stopped just before midnight. Nora sat in the beautiful lobby of Gasthof Kleiss, talking to her husband on the phone. Hall Kleiss and Ben Dysart sat across from her; everyone else had gone to bed. The body had been removed from the road and placed in the basement under the police station, where Amanda Morris was spending the night in its only cell, guarded by Lars Weber. The patients and staff had returned to the clinic. Trina Kleiss had brought them a big pot of tea and a plate piled high with Frau Gund’s homemade chocolate spice cookies, then she had joined the rest of the population of Alpenberg in sleep.
Jeff sounded funny to Nora, and she wasn’t sure why. He was relieved, of course, but when she told him the whole story of her five days in France and Switzerland, he became more and more silent at the other end of the phone. Then he asked to speak with the two men. Hall Kleiss talked to him first—in German, no less—and then Ben Dysart did a lot of listening, saying “Yes, sir” over and over. Then they handed the phone back to Nora.
It didn’t occur to her until much later that the three men may have been planning a murder.
Fanny arrived in her Mercedes the next morning to take Nora and Ben Dysart down from the mountain. She wore a bright red kimono over the black leggings and boots with red yarn bootlaces to match the kimono, and she had a sassy new hairstyle that made her look like a plus-size Audrey Hepburn. She dropped Ben at the train station in Lucerne, then drove Nora to Geneva.
Jeff’s boss, Hamilton Green, had arranged for an American diplomat to meet her at the airport in Geneva and walk her onto the noon flight to New York. Having no passport or official identification with her now, Nora wouldn’t have been able to get home any other way.
Ben returned to Paris to assist the police investigation into the murder of Daniel Fenwick. He sent them to Amanda’s apartment, where they found all the paraphernalia used to drug Fenwick into talking before they killed him. Amanda Morris was extradited to Paris, where she was officially charged and incarcerated, awaiting trial. Charles O’Rourke, already in police custody in Lucerne, was returned to Paris to face the same charges. The American government wisely stayed out of it and left them to their fate.
Marianne Lanier’s wig and identification were returned to her by special messenger, with Nora’s love and eternal thanks. A few days later, Marianne and her husband received a generously large check from the accounting department of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia, refunding all expenses and then some, with a warm note from Hamilton Green, Director of New York Operations. They used some of the money to take Michel and Michelle Brisson out to dinner at Chez Felicia.
Nora arrived at her apartment in Greenwich Village in plenty of time to get ready for the big Friday night dinner meeting with Patch Sullivan’s parents. She joined Dana and the Sullivans at the restaurant at seven o’clock, then spent nearly an hour stalling them with cocktails, waiting for Jeff to arrive. He finally slipped into his seat beside Nora at seven-fifty, apologizing for being delayed. He’d been out of town on business, and Friday evening traffic in New York was notorious. The Sullivans didn’t mind at all; they were lovely people, and Nora later told her husband she wouldn’t mind if Dana and Patch decided to marry. Jeff agreed.
It wasn’t until the following morning, Saturday, that Nora’s adventure in Europe made the news, but not in any way she might have predicted. An anonymous tip was leaked to the press that a high-ranking CIA executive, Edgar Cole, had been connected to a human trafficking operation that had been going on for years. His associate and girlfriend, Amanda Morris, was currently being held by French authorities on suspicion of murder related to the trafficking. When the world press tried to reach Mr. Cole for comment, there was no reply. He was found later that day by a housekeeper, floating facedown in the infinity pool at his home in Bethesda, Maryland.
The coroner said he’d been dead for at least twenty-four hours. The eventual ruling was suicide, but Nora wondered. She’d told Jeff all about Edgar Cole’s scheme at midnight Thursday, Swiss time, which was six in the evening in New York. Twenty-six hours later, he’d arrived late for dinner with a story about an out-of-town meeting.
Hall Kleiss and Ben Dysart had held back the press leak for one full day—on Jeff’s instructions. In other words, Edgar Cole allegedly committed suicide a full day before he could possibly have learned that he’d been exposed. Nora would always wonder exactly what had occurred in those twenty-four hours, but she never asked her husband about it.
Dana was graduated in June, and Nora’s Big Five-O finally arrived on July 21. On that day, she received a crystal vase of red roses at her home on Long Island Sound. The enclosed card was a birth announcement. That very morning, Nora Rose Wäldchen had been born in Alpenberg, Switzerland. Mother and daughter—and father—were doing fine.
For Ann Romeo (again)
Congratulations!
Acknowledgments
Nora Baron is always going to interesting places. This time she’s in Paris and Lucerne, which I hope I’ve described accurately from my vivid memories of them. The Bateaux Parisiens, the Palais-Royal, and the Comédie-Française are among France’s enduring treasures, but don’t go looking for Hotel Lisette, Ma Maison, Chez Felicia, and a club called Réve in Paris, or Hotel Toler in Lucerne, because you won’t find them. The village of Alpenberg is patterned after several actual villages I saw in the Swiss Alps, and there’s a town called Alpenberg elsewhere in Europe, but my Swiss village and the Brandt Clinic are entirely fictitious. And I can state with 99 percent certainty that there is no CIA safe house near the intersection of Christopher, Waverly, and Grove in New York City.
I’m grateful for my editor, Junessa Viloria, and her team at Penguin Random House/Alibi. This is my second title with Junessa, and I appreciate her guidance. I’m also grateful for Tom Cherwin’s brilliant copy editing and Caroline Johnson’s splendid cover art.
As ever, I thank my agent, Robin Rue, and her associates at Writers House, especially Beth Miller and Daniel Berkowitz.
Beth Tindall of Cincinnati Media has kept my website/blog up and running for several years now, for which this total Luddite is thankful.
My writing group colleagues, Betsy Harding and S. J. Rozan, are my first readers (and listeners). Their constant good advice is essential to my writing process, and I can only hope that I help them as much as they help me. Thanks, ladies!
Last and most, my love to my sister, Marcia McDevitt, my family, and my friends, especially the Friday Night Club.
BY TOM SAVAGE
The Nora Baron Series
Mrs. John Doe
The Woman Who Knew Too Much
The Spy Who Never Was
The Joe Wilder Mysteries
Dance of the Mongoose
Woman in the Dark
<
br /> Other Novels
A Penny for the Hangman
Scavenger
The Inheritance
Valentine
Precipice
Collected Stories
Jumbie Tea and Other Things: 8 Tales of Mystery and Suspense
About the Author
TOM SAVAGE is the USA Today bestselling author of A Penny for the Hangman, the Nora Baron series, and many other novels and short stories. His books have been published in fifteen countries, and his novel Valentine was made into a Warner Bros. film. Raised in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, he now lives in New York City, where he worked for many years at Murder Ink®, the world’s first mystery bookstore.
tomsavagebooks.com
Facebook.com/Tom-Savage
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