by C. M. Palov
‘After I install the device, then what?’
‘As soon as you attach the device, return to the stairwell on the double-quick. Then we pray to Bob Almighty that Ivo follows the script and goes for a ride.’ Finn glanced at the concrete block walls that enclosed the stairwell. ‘This place is like a fortress. If I’m gonna abduct the bastard, I need him in the open, away from his stronghold.’
Since Ivo Uhlemann had rendered the Dark Angel ‘non-negotiable’, Finn intended to up the ante by abducting the head of the Seven Research Foundation. To secure Dr Uhlemann’s safe return, the Seven would have to give Finn custody of the Dark Angel. He’d demanded the cease-fire in order to lull Uhlemann into a false sense of security.
Steadfastly holding her gaze, Finn took hold of Kate’s left hand and gently squeezed it. ‘Hey, Katie, I know that you’re scared. If it wasn’t for the security cameras, I’d go out there and install the device. But I’m confident that you can pull this off.’
Faking a brave front, she mustered a smile. ‘Roger Wilco, Sergeant McGuire.’
‘Um, you’re not supposed to say “Roger” and “Wilco” at the same time,’ Finn corrected, a teasing glint in his brown eyes.
‘Are you sure about that? I’m certain that I’ve heard people in the movies say “Roger Wilco”.’
‘ “Roger” and “Wilco” mean the same thing. It’s one or the other.’
Conceding the point, Kate rolled her eyes. ‘I make a lousy commando, don’t I?’
‘Yeah, ’fraid so,’ Finn agreed. Then, one side of his mouth quirking upward, ‘But damned cute.’
Kate glanced at their two wedded hands, having long since got over the shock of Finn’s missing finger. The first time she’d set eyes on Master Sergeant Finnegan McGuire at the Pentagon, she’d dismissed him as a stereotypical warrior. A Rambo. Only recently had she begun to realize that the fierce façade masked a deeper complexity. Not only was Finn brave, considerate and loyal to a fault, he was sweetly demonstrative.
She kept envisioning a younger version of Finn, tears rolling down his face, holding a newborn infant in his hands. He probably didn’t realize it, but she’d found the story deeply moving. Four days ago, she didn’t want to know anything about this rough, tough Alpha male. But something had changed. The situation was different now. For some unfathomable reason, she felt emotionally attached. And not just because she was dependent on him to keep her alive.
Given that Finn wasn’t her type, she wondered if the heart didn’t contrarily follow its own rules.
Finn waved a hand in front of her face. ‘Earth to Kate. Let’s get this bad boy installed, okay?’ Stepping over to the door, he shoved the lock bar, swinging the door wide open. ‘Ready?’
‘Set, go,’ she said in a chipper tone as she stepped through the doorway. Hit with a blast of musty air laced with car oil, she wrinkled her nose.
Hoping she didn’t appear as nervous as she felt, Kate headed for the reserved section of the car park. Each car was in a designated spot with the name of a person or corporate entity printed on a placard attached to the concrete wall in front of the vehicle. From the dossier that Cædmon had given to them yesterday, Kate knew that Dr Uhlemann owned a Mercedes Benz S-class sedan with licence plate 610-NGH-75.
Reaching the section reserved for the Seven Research Foundation, Kate spared a quick glance around the deserted parking garage. Not only was the stairwell nearly a hundred feet away, she couldn’t even see it from her current position, elevating the fear factor several notches.
A few moments later, catching sight of a graphite-grey Mercedes parked next to the elevator door, Kate ducked behind a large concrete pier. Fingers trembling, she opened her new tote bag. Very carefully, she removed the magnetic-mount vehicle tracking device. Although heavy, it easily fitted into the palm of her very sweaty hand.
Stomach churning, she approached the big four-door Mercedes Benz.
Just then, the elevator bell pinged. One time. The signal that the doors would momentarily open. Kate gasped, her hand tightening around the tracking device.
Hurriedly going down on bended knee, she crouched next to the Mercedes’ rear tyre well. Placing her left hand on the concrete floor to keep from tipping over, she reached under the tyre well and –
– stuck the tracking device on to the metal underbelly of the vehicle, the powerful magnet holding it in place.
She lurched to her feet just as the elevator doors slid apart.
At least half a dozen people rushed forth. Frozen in place, Kate stood by the Mercedes and watched the mass exodus, the last person to exit the elevator a tall, bald-headed man in a dark suit. A Goliath with a hideously swollen nose.
The gunman from the Jardin du Carrousel!
Head cocked to one side, the brute glared at her as he approached the Mercedes.
Kate stood motionless. Uncertain what to do. She wasn’t a courageous Joan of Arc type or a glib-tongued Mata Hari. She was a scared ninny who –
‘Fifi! Yoo-hoo!’ Bending at the waist, she peered under the grey Mercedes sedan. Never a good actress, she hoped that she resembled a woman who’d just lost her dog. ‘Where are you, sweetie?’
A shadow fell over her, the brute standing directly behind her.
‘Qu’est-ce que vous faites?’ the monster rasped, demanding to know what she was doing.
Barely able to draw breath, Kate straightened her spine and slowly turned to face the man who, only the day before, had tried very hard to kill her. Up close, he was truly menacing, with a blotchy face disfigured by an engorged, off-kilter nose, thin lips and a deeply cleft square jaw.
For one horror-filled instant, Kate imagined him wearing a Nazi uniform.
‘I’m s-searching for my l-lost d-dog.’
‘Vat does it look like?’ he asked in a thick German accent.
‘It’s a little, um –’ Her mind went totally blank. ‘Oh, yes! A Yorkshire terrier! With long brown hair and a black –’ she inanely swished her hand in front of her mouth to indicate a muzzle, the word eluding her.
Eyes narrowing, the monster scrutinized her intently. ‘You are an American, aren’t you?’
Too late, Kate realized she’d spoken in English rather than French. Stupid, stupid mistake.
‘Actually, I’m a, um … Canadian,’ she stammered. ‘You know what? I’d better call my husband.’ Opening her tote bag, she grabbed the disposable cell phone that Finn had purchased for her.
Without warning, the monster snatched hold of her wrist, preventing her from opening the cell phone. ‘You can’t make that call.’
Terror-stricken, she glanced at his hand. It was huge. If he grabbed her by the neck, he could easily crush her windpipe with one mighty squeeze. Barely able to swallow, let alone scream, she frantically glanced from side-to-side; everyone who’d been in the elevator had dispersed, no one in sight. In the near distance, she heard the roar of several car engines.
‘W-why not?’ Kate warbled, certain that he intended to kill her on the spot.
‘Because of the concrete walls, there’s no reception in the garage.’
Relieved, she visibly sagged. ‘Right. Silly me.’
‘Hey, Bridget! Where are you?’
At hearing Finn’s loud holler, both she and the bald-headed monster turned their heads in the direction of the stairwell.
‘Are you Bridget?’ the monster enquired gruffly.
‘Oh, yes … yes, I am Bridget and that’s my husband calling me.’ Kate gestured towards the stairwell. ‘He’s on the, um, other side of the parking lot searching for Fifi.’
The monster let go of her wrist. ‘Go. Your husband has summoned you. A woman must always obey her man.’
54
Mont de la Lune, The Languedoc
1415 hours
Down the rabbit hole Sir Prancelot merrily traipsed.
‘Although the bastard should have been more wary than merry,’ Cædmon grumbled, accidentally bashing the crown of his head against the low-slung ston
e ceiling. Holding his rucksack in one hand and the torch in the other, he compressed his tall frame in an uncomfortable stoop-shouldered twist, the constrictive corridor designed for a knight of shorter stature.
He’d trekked approximately one hundred and fifty feet when the corridor abruptly switched directions, veering ninety degrees to the left. At which point the passageway gradually sloped downward. When he was a doctoral candidate at Oxford, he’d tramped through catacombs and medieval crypts, but he’d never navigated anything as strangely surreal as this. Whether by design or accident, the passageway put him in mind of a hewn birth canal.
Which, in turn, incited an existential unease, Cædmon’s heart beating noticeably faster.
He estimated that he’d traversed another hundred feet when the passageway unexpectedly ended. Bewildered, he awkwardly turned around, aiming his torch in the opposite direction. The golden beam struck an aperture, approximately two feet in diameter, near the ceiling.
Committed to following the trail to its terminus, he peered inside the hole which opened into a long tunnel. Satisfied that the shaft was wide enough for him to engineer through, he shoved his rucksack and torch into the hole. Hefting himself into the chute, he proceeded by slithering centipede-like, pushing with his feet as he dragged his body forward with his hands.
Nearly twenty minutes had lapsed at a maddeningly sluggish pace when Cædmon belatedly realized that there was no room to turn around. If the tunnel didn’t expand sufficiently further down the line, he’d have to make a backward egress. A tortuous prospect.
‘Although that might be a moot point,’ he muttered as the balls of his shoulders scraped against the rough stone, the tunnel suddenly tapering.
Unable to move – either forward or backward – he drew in a ragged breath.
I’m plugged tight as a cork in a bottle.
Biting back a yelp of pain, he pulled his elbows together, squeezing his shoulders towards his chest. Awkwardly contorted, he shimmied through the narrow orifice, relieved when it widened to its former diameter.
In dire need of a drink, he opened his rucksack and retrieved a water bottle. Having begun the day with three full bottles, he was down to his last litre. Gracelessly tipping his head – and banging it against the top of the shaft – he took a measured sip. As he returned the bottle to the rucksack, the beam on his torch flickered twice. The only warning he had before the light went out, plunging the tunnel into a stultifying darkness.
Unable to see anything, he swiped his hand from side to side, searching for the malfunctioning torch. Snatching hold of it, he pushed the ON switch. When that produced no result, he banged the torch against the palm of his hand.
‘Shite!’
Discouraged by the latest setback, he conceded that the venture was proving a mental and physical challenge; the thought of squirming backward, in the dark, was too daunting to contemplate at the moment.
Exhausted, he squirmed on to his back, pulling the rucksack under his head. A makeshift pillow. The phrase ‘silent as the grave’ took on a whole new meaning as Cædmon folded his arms across his chest and closed his eyes.
I’m interred in a damned stone coffin in a remote mountain. And no one knows that I am even here.
‘Not to worry. “The maid is not dead, but sleepeth”,’ he whispered, envisioning his red-haired mother eternally resting in a satin-lined casket. ‘ “Brightness falls from the air; Queens have died young and fair; Dust hath closed Helen’s eye.” ’
The same dust that closed Juliana Howe’s eyes two years ago.
Christ.
Because his mother died in childbirth, grief had never been part of that equation. Which might be why he was so ill-equipped to handle the emotional tumult that erupted in the wake of Juliana’s death. It was as though his chest cavity had been pried open, his heart flayed and the organ left to hang in long bloody strips.
In the months that followed, the raw grief mutated into a numbed apathy. An improvement, some might claim. Cædmon wasn’t so sure. At least with the former, you knew that you had a heart. Never quite certain with the latter.
So many milestones, so many mistakes, he thought, unable to shut off the memories that flashed in frantic succession: Holding a white lily at his mother’s grave. ‘Say a prayer, Cædmon. The poor woman martyred herself to bring you into the world.’ No prayers for Juliana. What was the point? And no lilies. Hate lilies. Long-stemmed white roses instead. Damn. Pricked my thumb. And now I’ve stained my shirt. Jules would be amused. She loved to laugh. Or was that sweet Kate? Such a lovely sight perched in an oriel window seat at Queen’s College. ‘There wasn’t anything quite as beautiful as when the setting sun tinted your centuries-old window a rich shade of tangerine.’ Yes, yes, quite true. The sun never sets on the British Empire. Or the Kingdom of Heaven, for that matter. Since ‘I cannot bend Heaven, I shall move Hell.’ Oh, sod Virgil. Time spent with the devil takes its toll. And now Lucifer wants his bloody stone back!
Chilled to the bone, Cædmon shivered. A heavy weight suddenly pressed against his chest, as though the granite shaft was cinching around him. In fact, his heart muscle was so painfully constricted, he wondered if he might be on the verge of a full-blown heart attack.
Suppose this is the close of business, eh?
For the last two years he’d heard the rapacious lion panting at his backside. Only a matter of time before the beast caught up with him.
‘You had it coming, old boy.’
Did I? Maybe so. In that case, now I lay me down to sleep …
… forever and a day.
55
Hotel des Saints-Pères, Paris
1936 hours
Horny as hell, Finn stared at the painting of naked nymphs cavorting in a woodland glen.
Although he’d seen similar works of art yesterday at the Louvre, the fact that this painting hung over the hotel bed seemed blatantly erotic. Like an ornately framed striptease. And an expensive one at that, the luxury accommodation costing a jaw-dropping five hundred euros. A far cry from the hundred and thirty euros he’d spent the previous night.
However, this hotel, located on Rue des Saints-Pères, was directly across the street from Ivo Uhlemann’s eighteenth-century apartment building. Not only that, he’d scored a room with a view; from the expansive window, he could peer right into Uhlemann’s study. Which was the reason why he was willing to overlook the price, the painting and the girly décor. As in, pink upholstered armchairs, floral curtains with silk tassels and a delicate antique bureau.
‘I’m starving. What’s on the menu?’ Kate enquired cheerfully as she stepped out of the bathroom. Dressed in a white terrycloth robe, wet hair combed back from her face, she glowed with a womanly sheen. A lot like the woodland nymphs.
Realizing that he still had two plastic shopping bags looped around his wrist, Finn deposited them on the bedside table. Trying his damnedest to ignore the fact that Kate looked good, smelled good and probably tasted good, he unloaded the groceries. ‘I bought a loaf of bread at the bakery, a wheel of Camembert at the cheese shop and smoked salmon at some little hole-in-the-wall market around the corner.’
Kate reached for a bottle of water. ‘Are those apples?’ she asked, pointing to the second shopping bag that was in the process of rolling off the table.
‘Apples and oranges,’ he said, making a grab for the runaway bag. ‘I didn’t know which you preferred, so I got a coupla each.’ Feast laid out, he unsnapped the small leather sheath hooked on the side of his waistband and removed his penknife. Extracting a blade, he sliced the cheese and smoked salmon.
Sidling next to him, Kate tore a hunk of bread from the loaf, the terrycloth robe gaping slightly. Transfixed, Finn stared at the upper curve of her breast.
Jaysus.
Aware that he was acting like a perv at a peep show, he averted his gaze. Uncomfortable as hell, he picked up a slice of salmon and popped into his mouth.
‘Delicious, isn’t it?’
‘Uh-huh,’ he
grunted inanely around a mouthful of fish.
Loading her meal on to a piece of white butcher-block paper, Kate carried it over to the bed. ‘Bon appétit,’ she trilled as she sat cross-legged on the middle of the mattress. Right under the painting of naked nymphs.
Finn nearly choked on his salmon.
Given the close quarters, his attraction to Kate Bauer was to be expected. Hell, that was the reason why women weren’t allowed to fight alongside men in combat. Put a man and a woman together in a foxhole, they’re going to start thinking about getting it on. And even though he knew sex wasn’t a pill that you popped when you were having a bad day, he couldn’t stop thinking about the two of them engaged in a good old-fashioned life-affirming fuck.
Uncertain how to deal with his pent-up sexual tension, Finn strode over to the window. Grabbing the Bushnell binoculars off the bureau, he aimed them at the window directly opposite. A grey-haired woman, probably Uhlemann’s maid, lackadaisically pushed a vacuum cleaner across the oriental carpet.
‘I trust that the coast is clear.’
‘Uh-huh,’ he grunted again, setting the binoculars back on the bureau.
The foxhole getting smaller by the second, Finn ripped open the Velcro flap on his cargo pants and retrieved his new palm pilot. He’d purchased it yesterday because he needed to log on to a secure website in order to track Uhlemann’s vehicle. Using a stylus to navigate through the menus, he pulled up the real-time map and checked the vehicle location.
‘What’s the status report?’ Kate asked as she dabbed at her upper lip with a paper napkin.
‘The Benz is still parked at the Grande Arche.’
Hoping that Uhlemann would hurry up and leave his marble fortress, Finn set the palm pilot next to his binoculars. Jaw clamped tight, he leaned against the side of the bureau and moodily stared out of the window. The late-evening sun shone through the glass, casting a golden sheen on to the striped wallpaper.
