by Seeley James
Chapter 11
* * *
Lyon, France
21-May, Noon
Pia strolled along one side of the Gare de Saint-Exupéry train station, while Jonelle observed passersby from the coffee shop. Marty emerged from the lower decks, having scoured the platforms. He shrugged—nothing.
Pia kept her voice down as she spoke to her agents through her Bluetooth earbud. All three were linked through a com-call on their satellite phones. They checked the connector walkway to the airport, the escalators to the boarding platforms, the bathrooms, the shops. They checked cafés and bookstores. They checked positions along the concourse. According to their timing, if the killers came this way from Geneva, they were at least half an hour ahead of them.
They discussed the options again. Geneva’s police had turned up their noses at the Lyon theory, though they admitted it made sense. They chose to deploy their limited resources on the obvious routes: by car to Berne or Brussels, by rail to Paris or Zurich. The Canton police checked every person going anywhere except the two back roads to Lyon. They admitted it was an imperfect plan, but it was all they could do. When Pia again offered her company’s services, they reminded her that she wasn’t completely in the clear herself and declined. Which left Pia, Jonelle, and Marty hunting killers in France with no official cooperation.
Slightly bored, Pia said, “Anyone want a Gini?”
“A what?” Marty asked.
“Gini. French lemon soda. I’ll grab some.” Pia trotted into a gift shop to find only three bottles of Gini left. She took them, turned around in the narrow aisle, and nearly fell over a wheelchair. It carried a young boy with deformed hands on the ends of short arms, his tangled legs beneath a blanket. She apologized and smiled at the father pushing him.
As she paid at the register, she saw the boy struggling to point at the refrigerator case. His arm reached in the vague direction of the empty shelf of Gini, and she heard sounds of exasperation. The father consoled him with a hand on his shoulder. The cashier handed back Pia’s credit card. Pia slipped it away, picked up one of the Ginis, and whistled at the father.
When the man looked up, she tossed the drink in a slow underhand arc. While it was still in midair, she grabbed the other two drinks, turned, and walked out. She gave one to Marty and the other to Jonelle.
The three of them resumed watching the thin crowds streaming to and from the train platforms. With four escalators, they took turns wandering the concourse before returning to a static vantage point. Marty was on the airport side, Jonelle in the middle, Pia farthest away at the bookstore.
She wandered past a rack of tourist brochures, picked up one that described the station’s wild architecture and flipped through it. The roof that soared overhead was designed to represent a bird in flight, its steel wings arched over a central corridor to represent rounded wings in mid-flap. The station ran perpendicular to the tracks below. Four regular train tracks and platforms five hundred meters long flanked two high-speed tracks—an arrangement that allowed the Paris-Marseille train to pass at three hundred kilometers per hour, or 174 mph. Over the top of her brochure, she spotted a familiar face.
Katyonak Yeschenko, third wife of Mikhail Yeschenko and one of the guests at last night’s tragic party, approached from the airport crosswalk. Seeing her reminded Pia that she could ask Mikhail about the Zorka Moscoq. But why was Katyonak traveling commercial flights? Even for the plaything of a Russian oil baron, that was wrong. She eyed Katyonak and spotted a bruise on her arm and another on her neck. She winced.
“Katyonak?” Pia said as she approached. “What are you doing here?”
Katyonak stopped and paled. She clicked her fingers and pointed at Pia.
A short, over-muscled man stepped around her. He planted himself between them. Pia recognized the man for what he was: an overbuilt weightlifter with no fighting experience. Fighters, like farmers and steelworkers, have layered muscles—hundreds of small support muscles defined with chiseled clarity. Gym rats have overgrown power muscles, impressive but nowhere near as useful. She leaned around the broad man and locked eyes with Katyonak.
“I like your shoes, Manolos?” Pia said. Her words were met with a cold look. “Are you OK? What happened to your arm?”
Katyonak pouted and turned in profile.
“I need to speak to Mikhail,” Pia said. “Can you give me his number, please?”
Katyonak didn’t speak, didn’t move.
“You go now.” The muscleman stepped within striking distance.
Pia’s eyes moved to him for a moment, then back to Katyonak.
“I need to speak to Mikhail about his ship, the Zorka Moscoq. I know how to find the pirates who stole it.”
Katyonak uttered something petulant in Russian.
Muscleman growled at Pia. “You go now, or I beat on you.”
“I beat on you?” Pia’s brows rose as she considered him. She moved her left foot forward, bent her knees slightly, and cocked her head to the side. “I don’t have a problem with you. I’m trying to help Mr. Yeschenko find a ship. OK?”
She saw his hands and thought they were about the same size as Katyonak’s bruises. Not conclusive evidence by any means, but an alarming coincidence. When she lifted her eyes back to his, his eyes flared. He pulled his fist back like an amateur. Pia watched him. His fist came forward with all the power he could put behind it. His upper body never moved. She bent her knees and dropped four inches. His fist grazed the top of her shoulder. His momentum carried his center of gravity over his front foot. Pia rose, twisted her torso, and banged her shoulder against his. Off balance, he staggered sideways to the wall. He steadied himself with one hand and looked back.
“Hey, no need for violence,” she said. She held her hands up, palms open. “I just want to talk to Mikhail about his ship.”
Muscleman threw another left with all his might. Pia slipped her left shoulder to the right. His fist skimmed across her back. She unwound her core with a right cross, landing the heel of her hand in his temple. He staggered back, his skull banging off the wall with a thud.
“Call him off, Katyonak. I don’t want to hurt him.”
The Russian woman’s hands flew to cover her horrified face. She said something in Russian. Muscleman’s eyes glazed over. He leaned back against the wall. Bystanders gathered around, wanting to offer assistance but unsure who to help.
Pia said, “Katyonak, if anyone sees what a lousy bodyguard you have, you’ll be in danger. Tell everyone to back off, then call your husband. I need to talk to him.”
Katyonak did as she was told, handing her phone to Pia after the bystanders left.
“Mikhail, this is Pia Sabel. We met at the Chelsea-Arsenal game last fall. I’m calling about a ship of yours, the Zorka Moscoq.”
Mikhail Yeschenko said, “How could I forget? You are an amazing player. You must try out for my Moscow team. I think you could be a starter there. Someone has to show those boys how game is played.” He laughed. “I do not know shipping details, but I will have someone look into it and get back to you. The Zorka Moscoq?”
“Yes. Thank you. By the way, you need to hire Sabel Security. I just put down one of your men without breaking a sweat.”
Laughter rolled through the airwaves. Pia pulled the phone an inch from her ear.
“He is not her bodyguard. Give your father my regards.”
Pia squeezed her eyes shut for a beat. Her lips formed an “Ooo” that she didn’t voice. She clicked off the phone and handed it back to Katyonak.
“What is it?” Katyonak said.
“Um. He knows about…” Pia slid her gaze to indicate Katyonak’s companion.
Katyonak paled and swallowed hard.
“You’re in a tough spot,” Pia said. “Mikhail is going to dump you, and this guy is violent. You probably think you can still make it all work out. When it falls apart, call me. I’ll help you.” She pulled a business card from her purse and pressed it into the young woman’s hand. “I�
��m serious. I’ll help.”
Pia turned to muscleman, “If you ever hurt my friend again, I’ll find you and then—I beat on you.”
Katyonak gave her the Russian double-cheek kiss and walked away. Muscleman gathered what little dignity he could and followed her.
Through her earbud, Jonelle said, “You sure jumped to a lot of conclusions. Maybe Yeschenko is behind this. Just because he’s a friend of your father doesn’t make him clean.”
“No way.”
“Why?”
“Russian money is all pirated money, but they bank that inside Russia. Banque Marot would be his safe money.”
“Pia, you can’t—”
Behind her, Pia heard yelling. Through her earbud she heard Marty in a heated discussion with someone. She looked up the concourse in time to see him cuffed by two gendarmes. Jonelle rose and crossed to him as two more gendarmes stepped in front of her, spun her around and cuffed her.
Marty’s stream of French broke into English for Pia’s benefit.
“I have no bombs. You can search me. Your caller was playing a prank.”
Pia’s heart rate picked up fast. She took measured strides to the bathroom beyond the bookstore and listened to their discussions on the com-call. Jonelle provided a calm, reasoned response in English. An anonymous caller had identified Pia’s team as terrorists with bombs. Jonelle gave them permission to search her but ignored questions about Pia’s whereabouts, saying only that Pia often worried about her jet’s refueling.
Apparently the killers were there and had spotted her first, maybe while she was distracted with Katyonak. Marty and Jonelle, concerned for Pia’s safety, would have watched her instead of the concourse. That didn’t seem likely. They were too professional. But they were half-distracted. Which meant the killers were disguised and close enough to identify all three of them.
The gendarmes had sidelined her team, leaving them center-concourse with their hands cuffed. If the killers wanted to start shooting, they’d never get a clearer shot. Unlikely they would kill anyone in police custody, but these two had killed in public before. She had to find them.
Pia leaned her head around the bathroom entrance and saw her people escorted down the concourse toward the airport terminal. She felt eyes watching her and looked left to see the tall accomplice staring at her. His hair, dyed black, was still spiked, but his thin goatee was gone. Instead he wore a cheap prosthesis on his chin. Twenty yards to her left, a group of three adults with two children and a stroller passed between them. Spiky-hair used them as a shield to approach Pia.
Which meant the other killer, al-Jabal, must be behind her.
She turned and found him, disguised as an old man complete with hunched posture and a cane. The eyes, piercing and cold, gave him away. He was thirty yards to the right. The tip of a knife protruded from the long sleeve of his raincoat.
Her chances were best with spiky-hair. He might underestimate her.
Might.
She slipped the gun from her purse and charged forward at a dead run, screaming for help as she ran. She pointed her gun at Spiky-hair only to succeed in scaring the family into a state of frozen panic. Spiky-hair stepped wide of them, putting her directly between him and al-Jabal like a runner caught between bases. She aimed at him. He pulled a gun from his sleeve and took aim. She fired. The dart caught his coat. If she stayed for a second shot, he might get one off first. If he missed, the family would be in danger.
She ran.
The only way out was down the empty escalator in front of her. She flew down it three steps at a time, with a long way to go. Boots clumped on the stairs above and behind her. He’d have time to aim before she reached the bottom.
She vaulted onto the chromed center rail that separated up from down, took three running steps on it and jumped. Landing on her butt, she began a long fast slide.
Sparks flew off the metal near her hand.
A bang reverberated through the platform area.
She rolled left then back right as she slid, and jumped the last three feet. Staggering a few steps, she fought to get her balance while putting as much distance between her and Spiky-hair as she could. Then she remembered—the brochure said the platform was five hundred meters long. She’d started at the middle, taken a long escalator, and was now looking at the last two hundred meters of covered train station. A long distance for a runner. Not for a bullet. Beyond the station, she could see miles of beautiful French countryside, flat as a pancake with nowhere to hide.
To her right lay two train tracks in a lowered bed and a concrete wall that ended fifty meters away. She looked left—nothing. Ahead—nothing. She looked back. Spiky-hair was coming into view on the escalator. She kept running, but no hiding place appeared. Her only chance was to cross the rail bed, get behind the concrete wall, and shoot back.
Another bang rattled the building, scaring the daylights out of her. Bystanders screamed.
She jumped off the platform and into the track bed. Steel rails were bolted to concrete railroad ties. She jumped a rail, lost her balance, stumbled the next four steps before hopping the next rail. A puff of dust preceded another bang by an instant. His third shot, five left if it was a Sig Sauer. She swerved left, back right, then turned on the afterburners in a straight line. The timer in her head calculated how long it would take him to line up his fourth shot. She jerked right three feet. Another bang. Four left.
Shrieking police whistles erupted from the concourse above them. The gendarmes were on their way. She needed only thirty seconds or so to escape Spiky-hair. He needed only half a second to line up another shot.
She faked another swerve right and crossed the rail back to her left. With another antelope leap, she darted back right. The wall ended another ten meters ahead. She ran straight for three strides, knowing he would start shooting faster under pressure. She ducked left and right, but the next shot didn’t come. She stole a glance over her shoulder.
Spiky-hair had followed her into the track bed but landed with less grace and was picking himself off the ground. She was going to make it to the wall.
In two strides she cleared the corner, put on the brakes, and planted her body against six inches of concrete. She moved into position and peeked around the edge. Spiky-hair was up and running, fire in his eyes. Her aim was fair, not great, her weapon less accurate than his and with a lot less range. She would wait.
Her feet felt the rumbling first. The ground shook beneath her toes, vibrations tingling from her shins to her knees, rising to her quads.
The northbound Marseille-Paris was coming in.
She glanced left. She was standing on the TGV’s high-speed pass through track. Four hundred tons of France’s finest engineering was headed her way at three hundred kilometers per hour. It entered the tunnel at the far end. She did the math: five hundred meters at three hundred km/h meant six seconds before she would join the grasshoppers on the TGV’s aerodynamic nose.
She poked her head back around the wall. Spiky-hair was less than six seconds away. At speed, the train would pass in half a second, providing no cover. She had to keep running and hope Spiky-hair gave up, or stand her ground and pray for a miracle.
Pia opted for both.
She stepped out from behind the wall, aimed, fired, and missed. Spiky-hair looked up. Stopped and aimed. Pia ducked back as a chunk of concrete turned to powder. The train was bearing down. She could make out the engineer driving it. Time to run. She reached around the wall, exposing only her hand, and fired blindly to slow her pursuer. Then turned and ran.
The track bed used raised concrete ties to absorb some of the vibration and spare the track bed excess wear. Spikes and bolts held the rails to the ties. The design left a gap of three inches between the rails and the bed. Pia’s foot caught the gap and she fell face first into the track bed. Her knee hit hard. Her chest hit the far rail. One hand jammed into the gap under the other rail. Instant panic flooded through her.
The noise grew to an alarming pitch
as the train approached. The air pressure rose fast. The ground shook harder.
She could not tell the source of her problem for one whole second. Enough time for the train to travel eighty-three meters. Most of a football field. Pain shot from her knee to her brain. She tried to spin in place, but her foot held fast. Realizing the problem, she backed up an inch and tugged her foot. Not enough room. She backed up another inch and tried again. This time her foot came free.
She flipped onto her back and looked at the oncoming train. Close enough to see the engineer’s eyes wide open, along with his mouth. The train’s horn blasted a shockwave of sound. She buckled in the middle, did a power sit-up, and flipped up into a standing position. A common maneuver on the soccer field. She leapt backwards four feet. Just outside the rail. With a second leap, she was clear of the track. Her head came up. Spiky-hair was rounding the corner at full speed. His eyes, filled with rage, locked on hers.
The train passed in front of her, nothing but a blur of steel for a quarter of a second. Then it was gone. Spikey-hair was gone too.
In the next instant, her eyes were full of the blowing dust and grit that swirled in the currents behind the train. She coughed and spit and blinked and blinked and blinked. As her vision cleared, the sound of shrieking steel assaulted her ears. The Marseille-Paris TGV screeched in a desperate attempt to stop. Given the weight and speed, she estimated it would take at least one kilometer.
Pia turned and ran for the far platform. As she reached the edge of the tunnel, she checked the gathered travelers for al-Jabal before crossing the tracks. Not there. Everyone faced the train and the shower of sparks flying out from under it. She placed her hands on the platform, swung herself up and walked to the escalator. No one looked her way.
At the top of the escalator, a gendarme waited. Far down the concourse, three others emerged from the other platform’s escalators. Pia presented her wrists to the officer.
