“Did you overpower that other guy?” asked Joe.
“Yup,” said Frank. “But we don’t have time to stand around congratulating ourselves.” “Yeah, we have to save Denise,” said Joe. But they were stopped before they could take a step. Facing them, five feet away, was Maurice Reynard, his gun leveled. “Drop your gun,” Maurice ordered Frank, and Frank had to obey.
“You two were clever, but not clever enough. Now back off from the boat, in case you have any idea of diving for cover.”
Frank and Joe exchanged helpless glances. They had no choice but to obey.
Smiling, Maurice stood between them and the boat. “That is the end of your bag of tricks. Uncle Paul said that he preferred that we bring you back to be tortured so that you would reveal your secrets. But he said we could kill you if necessary. I have decided - “
At that moment, Maurice’s gun fell from his hand as the blade of an oar smashed across the back of his head. Then his body collapsed in the sand, covering the gun. Denise dropped the oar she had swung and was on her hands and knees instantly, rolling Maurice over to get her hands on the gun.
Before the Hardys’ startled eyes, she had emerged from under the boat with the oar in her hands. It had been all they could do to keep their faces straight. “Good job,” Frank congratulated her. “As you Americans say, no sweat.” Denise got to her feet with the gun.
“No sweat?” said Joe, looking at her soaked clothing.
“Oh, that,” replied Denise. “I merely took a little swim. I jumped into the sea, swam underwater, and while the Reynards were looking in the area where they’d seen me go under, I rode the breakers in farther down the beach. I saw this boat lying here and crawled under it.”
“Undercover work is definitely your specialty,” said Joe, grinning.
“I do my best.” Denise smiled. “And you two don’t do so badly either.”
“Three down, one to go,” said Frank. “Let’s take the helicopter back to the chateau before Paul Reynard starts worrying that something has gone wrong.” “And his nephews?” asked Joe.
“Denise can alert the police to pick them up anytime,” replied Frank. “But Paul Reynard will be harder to handle if he makes a rim for it.”
Frank picked up the gun he had dropped. Joe went back to the dune and found Yves’s gun.
Then they headed toward the helicopter, which was parked on the beach.
“I can’t wait to see the expression on old Uncle Paul’s face when he sees us,” said Joe as they reached the helicopter and Joe’s hand reached out to open the door. But the door flew open before he touched it. Paul Reynard stood there with a gun in his hand, an evil look of triumph on his face.
“You have had your fun,” he said, waving Joe back with his gun. Then he climbed out of the helicopter. “But now your fun is over. Now it is my turn. As you Americans say, he who laughs last, laughs best.”
“You actually thought you could outsmart me,” he went on. “You should have known that I would be thinking one step ahead of every move you made. Now at last your luck has run out. March-to your deaths.”
Chapter 17
REYNARD GESTURED WITH his gun for Denise, Frank, and Joe to march ahead of him down the beach. Silently they obeyed. As they walked along, Paul Reynard spoke boastfully to them, enjoying his triumph to the fullest.
“I could, of course, kill you this very second with three quick bullets,” he said. “I assure you, that is all it would take. I am an excellent shot, and I have the pistol championship medals to prove it. I would have no trouble putting a bullet in each of your brains at this short distance.
“But that would end our game far too quickly. Such a short, sweet death would not be punishment enough for the trouble you have caused me. It would rob me of the pleasure of seeing you tremble with terror and sweat with fear. It would be like making a meal of fast food, instead of dining properly, as a good Frenchman should, savoring each well-prepared morsel of the feast. Now march up this trail.”
Again the three of them had to obey. They hiked up a trail that led from the beach to a patch of high ground directly overlooking the sea. Frank noticed another old German gun emplacement, but before he could make a move toward it, Paul Reynard said, “Do not even think of ducking into that shelter. You would die before you took two steps. Just continue walking until I tell you to stop.”
Their march became a climb as the cliff top rose higher, then higher still. Soon they stood looking down at the moonlit sea far below. “You may turn to face me,” said Paul Reynard. They did so, and saw him standing ten feet away, his gun leveled at them.
“Observe how elegant your execution will be,” he said. “My bullets will hit you and you will drop off the edge of the cliff into the sea below. Perhaps the tides will wash you out so that you will never be found. It doesn’t matter, though. There will be nothing in the world to link me with your deaths.”
Joe could stand it no longer. “Look, do me a favor and just blow me away, instead of boring me to death with your speeches,” he said angrily.
“You Reynards seem better at shooting off your mouths than your guns.” Anger shadowed Paul Reynard’s face as well.
“So you find me boring,” he snarled. “Before you go to sleep, let me wake you up by showing you what this gun will soon do to you-and what kind of terror you should feel.”
Rage gleaming in his eyes, Paul Reynard pointed his gun at the ground to demonstrate its deadly power. He pulled the trigger. There was a deafening report as the gun went off.
And then there was an even louder explosion, an explosion that hurled Paul Reynard backward, his gun hand instinctively shielding his face.
Denise, Frank, and Joe didn’t have to look at each other to know what to do. Instantly they attacked.
Frank hit Reynard high, Joe hit him low, and Denise snatched up his gun from where it had fallen.
She trained it on him as he sat on the ground, still half-stunned, shaking his head in bewilderment. “What happened?” he asked hoarsely.
Denise read a large sign that was posted on the area where they stood: “Warning: Unexploded shells and mines. Do not enter upon penalty of the law.” Frank grinned at Reynard. “This was a bad place to go shooting off your gun,” Frank said. “Now you see what happens when you break the law.”
His joke wasn’t very good, but that didn’t stop the three of them from laughing at it.
Two days later, flight bookings and customs and passport clearances had been arranged for the Hardy brothers. With the Reynards finished and the Hardys out of danger, the Network was only too willing to help.
“Good thing you remembered the Gray Man’s temporary number,” Joe had said to Frank.
“Elementary, my good man,” Frank had replied, smiling. “At least the Gray Man was happy to see us,” Joe said.
“I think he was happier to see that hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Frank replied. The smiles that the Hardys exchanged with Denise were somewhat rueful, more notably Joe’s.
“I’d really like to see you again,” he told Denise as they stood saying goodbye at the departure gate of the airport. “Especially without my brother hanging around. You know what they say about two being company.”
“Come on, Joe,” said Frank. “Denise has already told you she’s really twenty-five. That’s why the Surete gave her the assignment he’s so young looking.”
“I have nothing against older women,” replied Joe. “In fact, for a man of the world like me, girls my own age are, well, just girls.”
“I’m sure the girls back in Bayport will be interested in hearing that,” said Frank. “You’ll tell them, of course.”
“I would, except I don’t want to blow my cover. But Denise, you know the real me: I’m a man of action, much older than my years. Maybe we can work together again sometime.”
“I hope so,” said Denise with a smile. “And now, I have to say goodbye to you. There’s still so much work to be done, tying up the loose ends of Reyn
ard and Company, arresting all the people they used. It will keep me busy for months. But after that, who knows what the future may hold?”
With that, she said goodbye to both Hardys in the French style, placing warm kisses on their cheeks.
“So tell me, Joe,” Frank said, grinning. “Do you think French women are something special?”
“I don’t care what country she comes from. That woman is special,” Joe said, gazing after Denise as she walked briskly through the crowd at the air terminal. “Come on, we have a plane to catch,” said Frank. “It’s time to go back to the real world.”
“You know, the more we operate in the Network’s world, the more trouble I have knowing which is real-the nice safe world we live in most of the time, or the one the Network shows us,” remarked Joe, as they walked through the departure gate.
“It is pretty weird sometimes,” agreed Frank. “Makes me feel like I’m a split personality.”
“But you have to admit, it keeps things from getting dull,” added Joe.
“I won’t argue with that. But all I want now is a nice dull trip home. And before that, I want to have my old dull clothes and my old dull hair back again.” That wasn’t so easy, though. At least, the hair wasn’t easy.
After the Hardys arrived in New York, they immediately returned to the punk hairdresser who had given them their haircuts and dye jobs. When she examined their hair, she shook her rainbow-colored head.
“This isn’t my work:’ she said indignantly.” We, er, had to have a few changes made,” said Frank.
“Well, you should have come back to me,” the young woman said.
“Believe me, if we could have, we would have,” said Joe with his most winning smile.
“Well, you’ll have to wait a long time for your natural hair to grow in,” she said.
“What do you mean?” asked Frank.
“I mean that the dye job I gave you could be washed out when you were finished with it,” said the hairdresser. “But whoever did this job did it for keeps.”
“Ouch,” said Frank, wincing. “This is just the way to come back from a New York vacation. Dad may have a few questions, though.”
“I think my dating prospects for the year have just turned to zero,” said Joe.
“Wait a minute,” Frank said. “Couldn’t you dye our hair back to its original color? He’s blond, and I have brown hair.”
“Well, I’ve never tried anything like that before, I mean using ordinary colors like blond and brown. But it would be a challenge.”
Two hours later, after the hairdresser finished her work, the Hardys were enormously grateful.
“You’re welcome, I’m sure,” she said. “But I must say, I feel as if I’ve betrayed my art. Blond and brown, I mean, that’s simply not where it’s at.”
“But that’s where we’re going to,” said Joe. “Home, to ordinary Bayport.”
As they climbed into the taxi that would take them to Grand Central Station, Frank glanced at himself and his brother in the rear-view mirror. “She did a good job,” he said. “But it does feel funny, disguising ourselves as ourselves.”
“Yeah, it makes me wonder who we really are,” said Joe. “Two ordinary young Americans or a high-risk international crime-fighting team.” “I guess we’re both,” replied Frank.
“And I guess I like that combination just fine,” said Joe, already looking forward to the future and their next adventure.
∗ ∗ ∗
The End.
Evil, Inc. Page 10
