Ready for Anything, Anywhere!

by Beverly Barton

  “Mont St. Michel,” she murmured, her gaze fixed on the embroidered panel depicting mounted warriors pulling pilgrims from the treacherous waters surrounding the shrine. Mesmerized by the scene, she consulted her plastic-coated, foldaway tourist map.

  The shrine was only a little over an hour from Caen. Not on her original route, but so what? She wasn’t too jet-lagged yet. She could do another hour of driving easy. After she’d explored the ancient abbey, she’d find a nice little seaside pension and crash.

  Bad decision, Mallory thought two and a half hours later.

  Very bad.

  The countryside of Lower Normandy was pretty enough. She’d left the sea behind at Caen to cut across a broad peninsula dotted with magnificent forests and tranquil streams flowing through rich farmlands. Apple orchards lined the road and hand-painted signs pointed to tasting stands for Camembert, Livarot and Pont l’Evêque cheese. Without intending to, Mallory had stumbled onto France’s Wine and Cheese Road.

  Which would have been fine except that the fall harvest was in full swing. Tractors hauling trailers mounded with apples competed for road space with busloads of tourists come to sample fresh-squeezed cider and pungent cheese. As Mallory inched through a picturesque village behind yet another tractor, she looked in vain for an inn or a pension. She was ready to call it a day and a night.

  The tractor finally turned off at a crossroads. A tilted signpost pointed to villages with names Mallory couldn’t pronounce. Below the signpost was a blue historical sign indicating that Mont St. Michel was five kilometers away.

  “Finally!”

  Surely there would be plenty of hotels at such a touristy spot. Aiming her tiny rental car in the direction of the sea once more, she soon left the forests and orchards behind. The topography flattened to marshy fields topped by feathery grass. The tangy scent of the ocean again flavored the air.

  Then Mallory turned a bend in the road and there it was, rising out of the salt marsh. Stunned, she pulled to the side of the road and sat there, arms looped over the wheel.

  Mont St. Michel was a small island, an outcropping of solid granite thrusting up from sand flats at the mouth of St. Malo Bay. A defensive wall bristling with turrets and a fourteenth-century barbican encircled the rock at its base. Above the battlements, a village of slate-roofed buildings stair-stepped up the steep slopes. A magnificent twelfth-century abbey crowned the island, overwhelming in its size, overpowering in its grandeur. Atop the abbey’s tall spire was a gilded statue of Saint Michael that glinted in the afternoon sun.

  According to Mallory’s guidebook, the Archangel Michael had appeared on this spot in 708 AD. The glorious abbey was built to honor that visitation. All through the Middle Ages, pilgrims had risked the treacherous tides that rushed in, cutting the island off from the mainland, to worship at the site. Modern-day tourists were no less enthralled. Mesmerized by the magnificent sight, Mallory paid no attention to the tour bus that chugged by her, spewing diesel exhaust.

  The driver of the vehicle some yards behind the lumbering bus cursed as he approached the car pulled onto the side of the road. Cutter had been swallowing exhaust for twenty minutes. He’d had to, to keep some distance between him and his target. God knew there wasn’t any other cover on this stretch of flat salty marsh.

  Now he had no choice but to drive right past the woman and onto the causeway leading to the island dead ahead. The causeway was elevated above the sand flats and wide enough to accommodate dozens of parked cars and buses. Cutter could turn around easily enough if the woman he was tailing didn’t follow him onto the bridge.

  “Come on, Dawes,” he muttered, “put it in gear.”

  He kept her in the rearview mirror and was all set to make a turn when the cell phone in his pocket began to vibrate. The car behind him eased back onto the road.

  “That’s right. Come to Papa.”

  Dividing his attention between the vehicle behind and the battlements now looming before him, Cutter cruised the long bridge. The tide was out, baring the hard-packed sand below. Overflow traffic was being directed to park on the sand, but a minivan pulled out of a parking space atop the causeway as Cutter got close. Whipping into the space, he remained in his vehicle with the engine idling while his target neared the island.

  He speared a quick glance at the walls looming above him. Was this where Dawes planned to make contact with the Russian or one of his henchmen? Or would she just diddle away a few hours, as she had in Caen? Or had she tipped to the fact that she was being followed and had decided to lead her tail away from a possible rendezvous point instead of toward it?

  Cutter was ninety-nine-percent certain that wasn’t the case. With the directional signal implanted in her suitcase to guide him, he’d stayed well out of her line of sight while on the road. He’d mounted a closer surveillance in Caen, waiting, watching, his instincts on full alert. But she hadn’t removed the disk from the suitcase locked in the trunk of her rental car. He’d trailed her into the museum, keeping well back, knowing the signal device would alert him if someone else retrieved it. No one had.

  Wondering if this pile of rock would be the rendezvous point, Cutter narrowed his eyes behind his aviator sunglasses and watched as Dawes drove along the causeway. The bridge was a quarter-mile long and raised some ten or twelve feet above the sand flats. Dawes drove the length of the causeway, searching for a parking space, before nosing down a ramp to the hard-packed sand.

  When she exited her rental, Cutter held his breath. Would she unlock the trunk? Slip the disk into the wallet-type purse slung over her shoulder?

  To his intense disappointment, she did neither. Instead she joined a throng of tourists decamping from a bus and trekked up the ramp toward the barbican. Muttering a curse, Cutter pulled out his cell phone.

  “The target has exited her vehicle,” he advised Mike Callahan after the iris scan and voice data print had verified his identity. “Again.”

  “Roger that. You want to confirm the location? GPS is showing her parked about ten yards off the causeway leading to the island of Mont St. Michel, in what should be about eight feet of water.”

  “The tide’s out, Hawkeye, so it’s high and dry. She’s walking up to the island from her car, minus her suitcase.”

  “Could be intending to establish initial contact before making the drop.”

  “Could be,” Cutter agreed, shouldering open his car door. “Check the tide tables for me, will you? I want to know how long we’ve got here.”

  “Will do.”

  He could have spared Mike the trouble, Cutter realized as he trailed his target toward the massive gates guarding the entrance to the walled town. Warning signs posted at several points along the causeway warned visitors in five different languages to stick to designated walkways to avoid dangerous quicksand. The signs also advised that high tide would occur at eighteen hundred hours that evening.

  Three and a half hours, Cutter thought grimly. Plenty of time for Ms. Dawes to establish contact, return to her car and retrieve the disk.

  As he had at Caen, he stayed out of her line of sight. Not hard to do, with so many tourists thronging the narrow, cobbled streets. Then again, Dawes made for an easy tail. She wasn’t all that tall. Five-six, according to the background dossier OMEGA had hastily compiled on her. Yet her cap of shining blond hair acted like a beacon amid the shadows thrown by the tall, narrow buildings lining the streets and alleys. The navy blazer she wore with a white tank top and jeans also stood out among the postsummer throng of primarily middle-aged tourists in jogging suits and windbreakers.

  Eyeing the trim rear and slender thighs encased by those jeans, Cutter had to admire Congressman Kent’s taste, if not his morals. Ms. Dawes’s behind looked eminently gropeable. Her front looked pretty good, too. Narrow waist. Full breasts. A determined chin softened by lips he suspected might tempt a man to sin if she ever smiled. Cutter could certainly understand why the clown she’d picked up in a D.C. bar had described her to the press as a real p
iece of eye candy.

  But it was the way she moved that stirred unwelcome memories. Cutter had known a woman who walked with that same hip-swinging grace once. He still wore the scars she’d left on him.

  Which was probably why he noticed when Ms. Dawes began to move with considerably less elegance. Obviously, the climb up the winding streets and steep stairs was taking its toll. Her pace got slower and more deliberate. Her shoulders started to sag. She paused more often to study shop windows displaying fresh pastries, cheeses, handmade lace and the inevitable cheap souvenirs.

  Cutter was thirty yards behind her when she veered toward a small café carved out of the rock below the walls of the cathedral. Potted geraniums added splashes of color to the tiny patio, which contained all of three tables. Dawes dropped into a chair at the only empty table. When she shoved her sunglasses to the top of her head to study the menu, lines of exhaustion were etched into her face.

  Cutter continued his surveillance from a combination boulangerie and sandwich shop across the street. Surrounded by the seductive aroma of fresh-baked baguettes and twisted loaves of rye, he ordered a ham and Swiss and coffee. He carried both to a stand-up table in the window and had the crusty sandwich halfway to his mouth when he froze.

  Eyes narrowing to slits behind his mirrored sunglasses, Cutter assessed the heavyset male who scooted his chair around to face Dawes. Early fifties. Dressed as a tourist in no-press khaki knit pants, a blue windbreaker and a baseball cap with some kind of a logo on it. Heavy jowls, flushed cheeks and a knowing smile that lifted the hairs on the back of Cutter’s neck.

  The guy knew Dawes. He’d recognized her, perhaps had been waiting for her. Whipping out his cell phone, Cutter zoomed in on the man’s red face and took several quick shots with the instrument’s built-in, jazzed-up camera. A click of a button transmitted the photos instantly to OMEGA. Cutter followed with a terse instruction to Mike Callahan.

  “Give me an ID on this guy, and fast.”

  “Will do.”

  He needed to get closer for the sensitive receiver built into the phone to pick up the conversation between his target and the fleshy tourist. Abandoning his coffee and sandwich, Cutter exited the boulangerie and crossed the cobbles. He kept to the shadows thrown by the cathedral directly above. With each step closer, the receiver filtered out the background noise from the busy street until Dawes’s voice came through sharp and angry.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Ahhh, c’mon. We’re both ‘Mericans. Let me buy you a glass of wine. Jes’ one glass.”

  From the sound of it, the supposed tourist had already downed several glasses. Or wanted to give that impression.

  “Didn’t you hear me? I said no.”

  Dawes’s icy reply didn’t deter the man. His heavy cheeks creasing into a smirk, he hooked his arm over the back of her chair.

  “I heard you. From what Congressman Kent and those others said, though, your ‘no’ really means ‘maybe.’”

  With a sound of disgust, Dawes slipped her sunglasses back onto her nose and gathered her purse.

  “Hey! Where y’going?”

  Stumbling to his feet, the big man tossed some bills down on his table and followed her into the street. If this was an act, Cutter thought, it was a damned good one.

  Dawes kept her face averted and marched stiffly ahead, but that didn’t deter the persistent tourist.

  “The papers said you like to pick up men in bars,” he said, loud enough to turn the heads of several passersby. “I’ve got a couple hours to kill before I have to climb back onto that damned bus. Plenty of time for us to have some fun.”

  Shoulders rigid, Dawes turned into a narrow alley to escape her tormentor. The tourist followed, with Cutter some yards behind. Ingrained habit had him doing an instinctive sweep for obstacles, hostiles and possible escape routes. There didn’t appear to be many of the latter.

  Tall buildings with carved lintels and slate roofs leaned in on both sides, cutting off the sunlight and almost obscuring the flowers that decorated doorways and windowsills. A stone horse trough was set dead center in the middle of the cobbles, testimony to Mont St. Michel’s main means of transportation for centuries.

  “Wait up, sweet thing!” Dodging the watering trough, the tourist grabbed his quarry’s arm. “We kin …”

  “Let go of me!” A mass of seething fury, Dawes whirled around and yanked her arm free of his hold. “Touch me again, you obnoxious ass, and I swear I’ll …”

  “You’ll what?” He waggled his brows in an exaggerated leer. “Charge me with sexual harassment, like you did Congressman Kent?”

  “I’ll do what I should have done to Kent,” she ground out through clenched teeth, “and knee you in your nut-sized brain.”

  The threat didn’t faze her tormentor. If anything, it seemed to add spice to his sport.

  “Whoo-ee. Aren’t you a feisty one? That guy you dated in school said you liked it raunchy, even rough sometimes. That’s fine with me.”

  Cutter kept to the shadows. He’d prefer not to break cover or show himself to his target, but the situation was starting to get ugly.

  A few yards away, Mallory had come to the same conclusion. She knew damned well all she had to do was scream. They were only a few yards off a main street crowded with tourists. One panicked shriek, one piercing cry, and a dozen people would charge to her rescue.

  Then the police would arrive on the scene. She’d have to deal with their questions, their carefully blank faces when this loudmouthed fool ranted about how she’d led him on, like she had all the others back in the States.

  Better to handle the situation herself, utilizing one of the more effective moves she’d learned in the self-defense class she’d taken when she first got to D.C. Before the heel of her hand could connect with the bridge of the beefy tourist’s nose, however, he jerked backward. A startled Mallory watched him lift off his feet. A second later, he landed butt-first in the stone horse trough.

  “What the hell … ?”

  Cursing, he struggled to lever himself out of the narrow trough. The man who’d put him there planted a hand on his head, pushing him down and under.

  As her attacker gurgled and flailed his arms and legs, Mallory’s surprise gave way to fierce delight. The dunking went on a little too long, however. She was about to issue a curt order not to drown the bastard when the man holding him under relented.

  The jerk who’d accosted her came up sputtering and ready to fight. When he shook the water from his eyes and got a good look at the individual looming above him, however, he plopped back down into the water.

  “Smart move,” his chastiser said in a voice as deep as it was cool and steady. “I suggest you listen next time a lady says no.”

  “Yeah, yeah, okay.”

  When the stranger straightened and stepped out of the shadows, Mallory registered short-cropped brown hair, wide shoulders and a well-cut sports jacket paired with an open-necked shirt. Then she saw the scars puckering one side of his neck and swallowed a gulp. No wonder the loudmouthed tourist had planted his butt back into the water.

  “You okay?” the newcomer asked.

  “I’m fine.” Rattled by the incident and pissed at having the first day of her precious vacation tainted by the ugliness she’d come here to escape, Mallory’s response was somewhat less than gracious. “Thanks.”

  Her tone implied she could have handled the situation herself. She reinforced that impression by sweeping past both men. The one still standing said nothing, but the waterlogged tourist made the mistake of muttering aloud, “Bitch.”

  The vicious epithet was followed by a yelp and another splash. Mallory didn’t slow or bother to look around. For all she cared, the scarred stranger could drown the moron.

  Chapter 3

  Mallory had never climbed so many steps in her life!

  The stairs leading to the abbey were carved into the granite. In some places they climbed straight up. In others, they followed a zigzag pattern tha
t shortened the rise but doubled the distance required to travel. She stopped several times along the way to shake the kinks out of her calves and was huffing long before she reached the small terrace that faced the abbey’s magnificent vaulted doors.

  If the steep climb and the wind whipping off the Bay of St. Malo hadn’t stolen Mallory’s breath, the view would have done the trick. Waiting for her heart to stop hammering, she leaned her elbows on the terrace wall. Far below, mud-brown flats stretched all the way to the sea. A storm was forming far out on the bay. Thunderclouds had piled up, forming a dramatic vista and no doubt accounting for the wind that whipped Mallory’s hair.

  She was surprised to see people walking across the flats. Signs posted all around Mont St. Michel warned about the dangers of quicksand. They also posted the time of the incoming tide.

  Frowning, Mallory glanced at her watch. She’d wasted too much time in the village. She’d have to hurry her tour of the abbey to get back down to the parking lot before the water nipped at the rental’s tires.

  Adjusting her sunglasses, she eased into the stream of tourists entering the cathedral. She’d already decided not to join one of the guided tours that took visitors through the adjacent Benedictine monastery. After the nasty incident in the village, she was in no mood for the company of others. Instead, she slipped through the cathedral’s massive doors and was immediately swallowed by the vastness of its nave.

  Like most European churches, this one was laid out in the shape of a cross. The long main transept ended in a curved apse that faced to the east and the rising sun that symbolized Christ. The shorter, north-south transept bisected the main vestibule at the choir and led to richly decorated chapels.

  Three tiers of soaring granite arches, all intricately carved and decorated, supported the vaulted ceiling high above Mallory’s head. Unlike so many other European cathedrals, however, this one was filled with light. Gloriously white and shimmering, it poured in through the tiered windows and added a luminescent sheen to the gray granite walls.