by Fritz Galt
But for the moment, he needed her to act.
“I have a hunch,” she said at last. “He’s probably heading back to Le Bourget.”
“The airport?”
“Exactly. Plenty of planes there, and security is light.” She was already rushing outside into traffic.
“Go safely,” he advised.
“We will,” she said, and hung up.
We? Who was she taking with her? Earl Skitowsky?
Chapter 28
Brad knew that he and May couldn’t cower in the pews of Notre Dame forever. They had to find out what the police were doing. Was the manhunt still on?
Up to that point, no police had entered the cathedral. Was it because of the separation of church and state? Perhaps like Esmeralda in the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the church granted him legal sanctuary.
Naw, that was fiction. This was reality.
However, thinking of the Hunchback gave him an idea. “Let’s climb up the bell tower for a better look.”
She nodded glumly. After all, how could they find her father while they were evading the police?
He had a choice of two bell towers and selected the closest one. To boost her spirits he began sprinting up the steps. The 800-year-old staircase turned into four hundred increasingly narrower steps. The priests must have been quite fit in the 12th Century.
The tower provided a magnificent view of the river. There was a small square and garden in front of the cathedral, then a street. A white stretch limousine decorated with flowers waited at the curb. Bridges ran from the Left Bank on the left of the island to the Right Bank.
Just beyond the tip of the Île de la Cité, on which Notre Dame sat, police were positioning what looked like a floating derrick, to lift the delivery truck out of the river. Further downstream, he made out a police boat searching for survivors.
“They think we are dead,” she said.
He shook his head. “Maybe not.” He indicated the policemen ringing the base of the cathedral.
Now that he had a moment, he could reach his dad. Maybe the embassy could pull some strings and get rid of the police.
“Do you have your cell phone?”
She handed him her phone, and he clicked through her electronic phonebook. The list was surprisingly short. That fit with her character. He knew her to be inner motivated, not the social sort. “I can’t find my father’s number.”
“I do not have your father,” she explained.
“Oh.” He wracked his brains. Maybe it was the pressure of the moment, but he couldn’t recall even the first digit of his father’s cell phone number. “Guess I’ll check with Earl.”
That number he knew. A moment later, he heard the phone pick up on the other end. The first sound was a man cursing in French and wind whipping through the open window of a car.
“Earl? You okay?” he whispered, in case his friend had already been taken hostage.
“Buddo, we’re zipping out to Le Bourget. Where are you?”
“May and I are holed up like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid here at the Notre Dame Cathedral.”
“Are they firing at you?”
“Not yet.”
“I see.” Earl seemed unimpressed.
“Man, I tell you. If it isn’t Liang lurking around, it’s the police.”
“By the way,” Earl said. “Congratulations. You’ve got a Red Notice.”
“A what?”
“Sometimes I wonder how you survive in today’s world. A Red Notice is a warrant put out by Interpol for your arrest.”
“Oh.” He glanced around wildly. “So not only are they trying to track us down in France, but we’re wanted abroad, too?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
Brad hoped May wasn’t getting much out of the conversation. They were in a far bigger mess than he had thought. They had to forget about finding Yu for the moment and save their own hides. Images flashed through his mind of the Italian police handcuffing them on the canals of Venice. Spanish authorities attaching them to the rack in Madrid. British MI5 detaining them at Heathrow. “So all we’ve got to do is leave Europe.”
“Leave Europe? Boy, are you stuck in the past. Interpol has gone global, buddy. It’s got as many countries as the United Nations. Every nation from East Timor to Western Samoa is a member now.”
Earl was well informed, but could be a jerk.
“How about China?”
“They’re in it, too. Good luck crossing any border anywhere in the human world.”
Brad slumped back against the cold, hard stone. “So you’re telling me that nobody will take us?”
“I’m not sure I would either. What the heck did you do? Kill the pope?”
“We witnessed a murder.”
“Ergo international fugitives?”
“The police think it was us. They seem to take murder very seriously around here,” Brad said as sirens swirled around the city. “We’ll just keep our heads down.”
“As for me and Jade, we have got a real villain to catch.” And with that, he clicked off.
“Gee, thanks for the sympathy, Mr. Red Notice.” He glanced over at May, who scrutinized his face. “Everything is fine.”
“How about Jade?”
“She’s okay, too. They’re heading out to Le Bourget to stop Liang.”
“And what about us?”
“Basically, we’re dead.”
Chapter 29
The cab neared Le Bourget Airport, and Earl could see that it was a markedly different place from two days before. Gone were the conventioneers, the military, the aviation fans, even the tight security.
Jade’s VIP platinum card still worked with the plain-clothed guard stationed at the gate. They pulled onto the tarmac. The few planes that remained were tiny, but one.
“That’s a Citation Ten,” she said.
Earl could figure out the rest from the Chinese flag painted on the T-shaped tail. Liang had chartered the fastest business jet in the world for his escape, just like one might hail a cab.
Speaking of cabs, the young Arab taxi driver didn’t know where to head.
“We have to stop that plane,” Jade told the man, French failing her at the moment.
“Arrêtez l’avion,” Earl helped translate. Stop the plane.
The cabbie gave him a funny look, and hit the brakes rather than stepping on the accelerator.
Earl made out a bubble-shaped Renault driving across the field toward the jet, whose engines were already powering up.
Desperate, Jade hopped out of the cab and ran around to the driver’s door. With quick reflexes, the driver locked the door and reached for his glove compartment. Earl waited for him to lean away from the door, then unlocked it for Jade.
“I didn’t do it.”
The guy pulled out a small pistol. Perhaps he thought it was a carjacking.
Earl reached over the seat and whacked the guy on the wrist. The pistol fell into the foot well.
“It wasn’t me.”
Meanwhile, Jade opened the door and began hauling the cabbie out by his collar, apologizing in Chinese all the way.
“She’s got a black belt,” Earl said.
The guy gave him a vengeful stare.
“But your belt is nice, too.”
Soon she had him sitting on the tarmac, and he threw his hands up in futility.
She scooted behind the wheel. Sprawled over the front seat, Earl tried to reach the pistol on the floor. The car took off and he fell into the back seat, gun in hand.
They approached the Renault at top speed. Its driver turned and saw them. Rather than increase speed and try to outrace them to the plane, he swerved into Jade’s path.
“Holy crap,” Earl exclaimed. “They’re trying to hit us.”
“Shoot his wheels,” she instructed.
Wheels? With his marksmanship and their tremendous speed on the bumpy ground, he couldn’t hit an elephant.
“Give me the gun.” She reached back for the p
istol.
He was glad to get rid of it. In seconds, she had her window down and the gun pointed at the car that bore down on them.
Someone pulled a weapon on them from the oncoming car. He resisted the impulse to duck.
What was preferable: death by gunfire or a head-on collision?
Jade steered straight ahead and fired with her free hand.
He saw no effect.
She cursed and lined up another shot, her target much closer.
But suddenly she swerved. Then Earl saw why. A gunshot erupted from the other car. The two vehicles converged at top speed.
Earl closed his eyes.
A shrieking scrape later, he opened his eyes. The plane lay directly ahead, and the Renault aimed for the exit.
“Bao-zi,” Jade cried in anger.
He wrestled with the translation. All he could come up with was “stuffed buns.” He decided not to pursue it.
Just shy of the jet at the end of the runway, she wheeled the car around and headed back after the Renault.
He glanced up at the cockpit and saw the pilot, a Chinese guy, give them a worried look.
Soon that was all behind them as Jade chased the fleeing car. The taxi driver was complaining to the guard at the gate.
The Renault made it through the gate, which started closing in their path. Unable to fit into the rapidly narrowing gap, Jade hit the brakes and spun the wheel. They slid sideways amid an ear-piercing squeal of rubber on pavement.
They slammed into the metal gate with an agonizing crunch. Both he and Jade were thrown against the shattering glass. Sharp fragments stabbed his hands and forearms. He righted himself to take a look at his fiancée in the front seat. The gearbox had prevented her from bashing against the passenger’s window. But she moaned and clutched her right leg.
“Is anything broken?” He was afraid to hear the answer.
“They got away,” was all she said. She threw the door open and advanced on the cab driver. Her ensuing tongue-lashing was not for Chinese ears.
The lone security guard didn’t seem keen on interfering.
Earl crawled out of the damaged cab and approached his girl to calm her down. But she had already speed-dialed her cell phone and waved him off.
“Get me Igor Sullivan.” She waited, then nodded. “We just ran across Liang at Le Bourget. He was trying to escape on a Chinese Government-registered jet. We stopped the plane, but he got away in a small white Renault.”
Sullivan replied in even tones, though Earl couldn’t make out the words. She nodded and closed the phone.
“What did he say?”
“He will report Liang’s escape attempt to the police. He’s sure they will respond.”
“How? There must be a million white Renaults in the city.”
“They will put the airports on high alert.”
That made sense. He was in the presence of some smart cookies who were used to thinking on their feet.
“I’m more worried about Brad and May,” she said.
That shattered his reverie.
“Do you know where they are?” she asked.
“Brad said the police have them cornered at Notre Dame.” Blood streamed down both his arms and dripped on his sneakers. “Do you think you could do something here?”
“Oh, my poor oil stick.”
He scratched his head. That was another term he shouldn’t try to translate.
Chapter 30
Liang Jiaxi redirected the Renault to Charles de Gaulle International Airport. Things were going downhill, fast.
His exit strategy had gone smoothly until a taxicab had intercepted him on the tarmac.
Earlier, things at the symposium had worked to perfection. He had overheard the German revealing that Shangri-la did exist. Then Dr. Yu had read out information that detailed who could go there and how. It was exactly what he was looking for.
Except that Liang would be unable to find Shangri-la on his own. It appeared that only Yu could interpret the directions in the document.
So he had resorted to kidnapping Yu.
He glanced across the back seat at the old guy, who had complied with him so far. Funny how a man worried more about his daughter’s safety than his own. Dr. Yu would march across the Himalayas on a promise that Liang wouldn’t harm his daughter.
How ironic. If Liang ever found May, he would kill her and grind her ashes into the ground with his heel. She was the worst kind of Chinese slut. Worse than the kind he picked up in hotel lobbies.
He had given her ample opportunity to demonstrate her love for him, and she had chosen instead to be the concubine of an American. She was an uptight, craven product of Western influence.
She had not only sacrificed her purity, but she had betrayed her nation.
Strangely, it was his own safety that concerned him at the moment. Who drove that demonic taxicab that had attacked them on the runway? Who had anticipated his escape? When he had more time, he would find out who could seemingly read his mind.
So he had changed his plan on the spot. He liked the new plan for its sheer brazenness. He and Yu would catch a commercial flight to Shanghai. Maybe he had offended a taxi driver, but the police weren’t after him. Remembering back when he had seen Brad and May fall behind on the bridge, the police had stopped following him. As he had intended, the police followed the scent of the last to leave the scene of the crime, namely Brad and May.
He spotted a sign for the airport and pointed it out to his driver, a Corsican bodyguard hired by the Paris branch of his banking group.
“Oui, signore,” the man responded in the mixed tongue of his native land.
They took an off-ramp and approached the airport.
There was no visible police presence. In fact, the movement of passengers into the terminal seemed perfectly natural.
“Thank you, Claude,” he told the driver, who pulled up to the curb. He pushed Yu out the door, and soon they were walking through the terminal.
The airport was showing its age. Not so much in upkeep, which was abysmal, but in its clunky design. What passed for futuristic in the 1970s had long been surpassed by new construction materials and more fanciful designs. Take any airport built in China since 1990, and de Gaulle suffered in comparison.
The airport also hadn’t kept up with the rising number of travelers. In no time, he and Yu were crammed into a tight space waiting to purchase Air France tickets to Shanghai. Immersed in a crowd of Chinese, they were less likely to be picked out by French police.
It was the computers that worried him most. If authorities were double-checking passenger information, the computer would easily flag him. He examined the woman at the check-in counter. She seemed poised, with nobody looking over her shoulder.
He had been traveling under his own identity recently. Once certain that his grandfather would not arrest him, he no longer needed to hide his identity. He reveled in traveling the globe as Liang Jiaxi. The only country he avoided was America, which would surely capture and prosecute him for past crimes.
“Do you have your passport?” he asked the anthropologist.
Yu nodded grimly. Perhaps he hadn’t thought of throwing it away.
They were minutes from reaching the counter when it happened.
At first he heard a cry, as if a woman were highly offended. Then footsteps rushed toward them.
He took the passports and tucked them under his belt.
Like a pack of ravenous dogs, a handful of policemen rushed the line of passengers. People reacted angrily to being pushed out of the way.
Liang grabbed Yu by the arm and pulled him to the floor. Others fell over him trying to avoid the stampede. From under the stack of arms and legs, he watched the blue uniforms draw nearer.
Yu was waving his hand.
“Put your hand down.”
He held Yu in the shifting mass of limbs. The old guy was almost torn from his grasp, but he gritted his teeth and held on.
A young Frenchman screamed in his nativ
e tongue, and a woman shouted defensively in Chinese, “What do you want with us?”
Suddenly the mob stopped running and trampling over them.
He listened to the sound of scuffling shoes receding across the terminal floor.
“What have we done?” she went on while being hauled away. “He is my boyfriend.”
The tide of bodies ebbed in the other direction.
Liang sprang to his feet in time to see the police haul the mixed race couple out the door. “Ha!”
Cops were still after Brad and May, not trying to track him down. It wouldn’t take long before the authorities realized that they had detained the wrong couple. They would be back, ready to pounce on the next couple they spotted. Talk of racial profiling.
He took advantage of the chaos to scoot Yu to the front of the line. There, they purchased seats on the next flight to China. It was headed to Shanghai via the Emirates and due to depart within minutes.
A brisk walk to security and immigration and soon they were on their way to the gate. The building was a lesson in avant-garde architecture gone wrong. The escalator traveled through a plastic tube with other crisscrossing tubes inside a glassed-in bubble. Passengers seemed to float toward their planes like objects in space. Unfortunately, the Plexiglas was scratched and cloudy, which gave the opposite effect. They seemed to be part of a plumbing system.
He didn’t have much time, as their flight had finished boarding. He waved the boarding passes to get the gate attendant’s attention. She reopened the door and began to process them. Dr. Yu gasped for breath, having run through the obstacle course of seats.
“Come along, venerable one,” Liang said for the attendant’s benefit, and prodded the old man onto the ramp.
The attendant turned back to an approaching official. A lively exchange ensued. Too bad French wasn’t one of his languages. But there was urgency in the official’s voice, tinged with frustration at having previously gotten something wrong. The attendant stood her ground.
