“You here often?”
“Most days. I work at the airport.”
“You know Jean Loup’s aircraft?” Flynn asked.
“The Dassault?”
“I guess. I heard it was a nice.”
Nice, you heard?” The guy chuckled to himself. “Sure, the Dassault Falcon 8X is nice.”
“Falcon 8X?”
“Oui. Fine aircraft.”
“Will it fly to Chicago?”
The guy nodded. This was clearly his wheelhouse. “Sure. And back, just about.”
“It must be something.”
“You hold on a few minutes and you’ll find out.”
“Really? It’s coming in today?”
“Leaving. Pretty much every Friday around 4:45.”
“Really?”
“Oui. Sometimes midweek, I suppose when he has a meeting or something, somewhere. But always on a Friday.”
The guy looked at his watch and climbed out of his car like a doctor who had been roused from bed to attend a birth. He pulled out of pair of binoculars and clambered a few meters up the berm. He looked at the airfield through the glasses and then gestured for Flynn to join him. Flynn clambered up the grass and checked that the woman on top could not see him. Then he took the binoculars.
“See there, gray with the black markings,” said the guy.
“Looks almost military.”
“Too nice for military. They say it has a queen-sized bed on board.”
“That right?” Flynn watched the sleek aircraft moving away from him. It was moving along beside the hangars, toward the end of the runway.
“Every Friday you say?”
“Oui. Back on Sunday night. Monsieur Loup takes it out to his estate near Lyon.”
“How do you know that?” Flynn asked, dropping his eye from the glasses.
“Flight records.”
“You have access to flight records?”
“Of course, this is public information, monsieur.”
Flynn put the binoculars back to his eyes and saw the Dassault aircraft looking back at him like a viper. At first it did nothing, and then the sound built and Flynn realized that the aircraft was coming straight at him. Then the fuselage got bigger and the sound got louder and nose rose up well before the end of the runway, and the bird was flying high before it screamed over their heads, all faces to the sky.
Then the noise died and the sounds of the city returned and Flynn watched the gray aircraft rocket off as it banked east, and then it was gone. He handed the binoculars back to the man with the walrus mustache, and together they clambered down the berm and the man got in his car.
“Are most of the guy up there regulars?”
“Mostly, yes.”
“What about the woman?”
The man grunted. “Une fille belle,” he said. “No, her I do not know.”
Flynn thanked the man and then he and Gorski strode away along the airport road.
“Hungry?” asked Gorski.
“No. But if she’s not a regular at that spot, then she’s probably not distant security for Jean Loup. And regardless of what she is, if his plane is gone and she’s watching him, she’s probably going to leave as well. So let’s where she goes.”
Chapter Ten
They reached the scooter, still spluttering away in neutral, and jumped on. The road beside them was divided in the middle by a grass meridian with a low stone retaining wall, so any of the cars parked at the base of the berm would have to come past them in order to go anywhere.
The guy with the walrus mustache was first. Then a blue Peugeot driven by a young man with a distinctive long neck. Then a small red thing of undeterminable make.
“That’s her,” said Flynn, but Gorski was already pulling onto the road.
The night descended and the woman in the red car put her lights on. Gorski didn’t immediately copy, despite the roads around the airport being dark. They followed her in traffic that had become rush hour. She didn’t take any autoroutes, sticking to surface streets around Georges-Valbon State Park and into Aubervilles, just north of the Boulevard Périphérique, the ring road that circled the capital, and more or less defined its municipal boundaries.
The little red car pulled into a slot on a local street beside a low-budget clothing store that was closed for the day. The woman got out of the car and threw a courier bag over her shoulder, and then she wandered away along the street. Five cars back, Gorski stopped the scooter with a splutter. He and Flynn slipped off and followed. The woman crossed a five-way intersection and headed into a restaurant. It was a typically local place, as much restaurant as cafe, as much cafe as bar. Plastic weave chairs and small tables lined the sidewalk on the corner, a burgundy awning shielded the windows. The woman didn’t break stride going through the door.
Flynn and Gorski cut two ways as they crossed the road. Gorski headed for the front door but didn’t get there. He slipped into a seat under the outdoor awning near the door. Flynn strode down the side street and found a secondary entrance that led into the kitchen. He slipped in fast. He had walked through a lot of rear doors in a lot of restaurants in a lot of places a hell of a lot worse than the Parisian suburbs, and he knew the secret was doing it like you meant it. It wasn’t the same as if you were meant to be there. That was a whole different swagger. This was about the eyes. Making contact, not avoiding it. It was inevitable that whoever was inside would wonder who the hell he was, what the hell he was doing there. But the eyes could tell them to hold their tongue lest it get cut off. At least for a moment.
Flynn didn’t have to open the door. Even in winter, kitchens were hot places to be. He stepped in and made his assessment. Two cooks, two waiters, another guy—maybe front of house. The waiters paid no attention to him. People walked in, people walked out. C’est la vie. One cook had burned his hand and was grimacing, trying not to make a sound. Cooks were like football players like that. Acting brave was part of their schtick.
But the second waiter watched Flynn walk in, and Flynn knew that being as territorial as a pack of wild dogs was another part of their schtick. Their kitchens were their domains. Flynn stared right at the cook as he moved across the space. He didn’t stop and he didn’t break eye contact. There can only be one alpha dog. While the cook was trying to process the who, what and why the hell? Flynn was across the room.
He pointed at the front of house guy. Hard, as far as a pointed finger goes. The guy’s eyes widening in a who me? look and as Flynn reached the door to the dining room, he curled the finger to say come here. The guy didn’t move but that wasn’t the point. Hesitation, that was the point.
Flynn looked through the porthole in the kitchen door into the restaurant. The place was about half full, most people having a post-work drink or early dinner. The woman from the red car was by the window, on a bench seat facing the room. She had her cell phone on the table and was pulling something from a bag. A laptop.
Flynn pulled his burner phone out and dialed the only number in it.
“We need a bump and run.”
“The girl?” asked Gorski.
“Woman, she’s a woman.”
“Are we having this conversation now.”
“She’s got a phone and laptop. You divert, I’ll grab one or the other or both. D’accord?”
“Let’s go.”
Flynn watched Gorski come in through the front door. His eyes swept the room. It was easier and faster than doing it in a cave in Afghanistan, and Gorski had been the best in the business at that. He saw the woman from the red car before he was fully in through the door and did a full sweep anyway. There were few surprises to be had in a restaurant in suburban Paris, but there were always few surprises until the one that got you.
“Excuse me,” said the front of house guy.
Flynn put his finger up to tell the guy to wait, and he put his other hand against the door and pressed. Gorski stepped toward the woman. He wouldn’t make contact. That wasn’t his role. He would find a way
to distract her, maybe a fall, maybe push a waiter into her table. He would find something, and he would find it in seconds. As Flynn recalled his father saying, this wasn’t his first rodeo.
The woman was at a table by the window. Gorski saw her, and a half full room, and one bartender making cocktails, and no other waitstaff in the front of house. He took a step toward the woman’s side of the room but kept looking elsewhere, as if he knew the restaurant layout like the back of his hand. A man in a black beret was using a table to lever himself up out of a chair, about three meters away from the woman from the red car. There was a three-quarter full glass of water on the man’s table. Gorski calculated the angles, made a plan. And then the woman looked at him. And she mouthed the word.
“You.”
Chapter Eleven
Gorski had positioned himself with an arm around the man getting up from the table, but his weight was going the other, so when he knocked the water flying off the man’s table and into the woman’s lap, he would be a meter away and everyone would believe it to have been the man’s mistake.
But then the woman had clearly recognized him. There was a reasonable chance she was mistaken, but in that moment the word you changed everything. Gorski slipped his hand under the man’s elbow and helped him up from the table as if that had been his intention all along, and the man gave him a thankful nod. Gorski returned the gesture and then looked back toward the woman to confirm what he thought he had seen.
“I know you,” she said, this time out loud.
Gorski frowned. “No, mademoiselle, I do not think I have had the pleasure.”
“You haven’t,” she said, instinctively putting her hand on her laptop. “But I’ve seen you.
“I have never been here before.” He tried his disarming smile, but he knew he was no movie idol. Women didn’t swoon. Nobody swooned. Gorski had a thin face and a beak for a nose. The best he hoped for was looking harmless.
“You were at Stade Jean-Bouin last night.”
He raised an eyebrow. She had a good memory. Or had she taken his photograph as well, and studied them all day long? Either way, he didn’t panic. Lots of people went to sports stadia and then wandered into bars.
“Oui, mademoiselle, I was. Were you in the corporate box? I apologize, I do not recall you.”
“No, we didn’t meet. But you were there. And you were at La Defense yesterday. You wore a scarf.”
Gorski was impressed. She really did have a good memory. But he hoped Flynn wasn’t going to come barging in thinking everything was going to plan. Because the plan was going to hell. Gorski smiled. The plan always went to hell. His old adjudant knew that better than anyone.
“Mademoiselle, all of that is true. But you have me at a disadvantage. I do not know your name.”
The woman didn’t give Gorski her name. She swept her laptop back into her satchel and snatched up her phone, then she squirmed out from the bench seat around the opposite side of the table from Gorski. But he was between her and the door, so she pulled her bag to her chest and marched ahead.
“Leave me alone,” she said as she stormed past him.
“But mademoiselle,” said Gorski, a look of confusion on his face. Some of the other patrons looked at him a shrugged. Young love, or some variation on it. Gorski waited until she was out the door before following.
The woman cut through traffic in the intersection to the sound of horns and catcalls. Gorski didn’t chase her. He didn’t want her to get herself killed. It was interesting to him that she remembered him so well. It certainly supported Flynn’s notion that she was some kind of security for Loup. Good security people had good memories, especially for faces. The light changed and Gorski strode across the street.
The woman was halfway down walking on the road. She had stopped a car length from her own vehicle. She was clutching her bag even tighter to her chest and looking at her car.
John Flynn was resting against the front fender of the little red car.
The woman turned and saw Gorski approach. He slowed, like a cattle dog rounding sheep.
“You come any closer, I yell rape,” she said.
“No one’s coming closer,” said Flynn. “And no one’s getting raped.”
This didn’t placate the woman.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
“We keep being in the same places,” said Flynn. “Have you noticed?”
“I know you were at the rugby. I know you were at La Defense. I know you were at Le Bourget earlier.”
“You do have a good memory.”
“Yes, I do. And it’s all backed up. So if you hurt me, my memory lives on.”
“That sounds Matrix creepy,” said Flynn. “So we won’t be going there. I just wondered why we keep ending up in the same places.”
“Because you followed me.”
“From Le Bourget, yes, that is true. But not the other times. So who are you.”
“I’m telling you nothing. Now if you don’t get off my car, I will start screaming.”
“Okay.” Flynn folded his arms and leaned back.
“I’m not kidding.”
“I don’t really care. You see, if you start screaming, people will come. I’m not touching you so they’ll wonder what the hell is going on. Perhaps a lovers’ spat. They’ll either ignore it, which is very French, or they’ll call the gendarme, at which point you’ll have to identify yourself. Either way I’ll find out who you are.”
“You’ll have to identify yourself, too.”
Flynn shrugged like he didn’t care.
The woman glanced at Gorski to see if he was coming closer, but he had not moved.
“Who are you?” she said.
“My name is John.”
“And who do you work for?”
“No one.”
“That’s not true.”
“I’m self employed,” he said. “What about you.”
“I’m self employed. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t working for someone. Who? Le Monde? Mediapart?”
“You’re a journalist,” said Flynn.
“No,” she replied, but it wasn’t convincing.
“Freelance,” said Flynn.
“You’re not?” the woman asked. “Who do you work for?”
“Why are you so interested in Jean Loup?” asked Flynn.
The woman’s face dropped. “You work for Loup?”
“No.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“That is not my concern.”
Again she glanced at Gorski and then back to Flynn. “You were at Stade Jean-Bouin. You were at La Defense. You were at Le Bourget. But you were not with Jean Loup in any of those places.”
“Exactement.”
“So you are watching him. Which means you must be a journalist. You are writing a story for a paper.”
“No. What I do, mademoiselle, does not make it into the newspaper.”
She frowned. “You work for a competitor of Loup’s.”
“Not exactly. Mademoiselle, why don’t you let us buy you a cup of coffee. In a public place. We can talk, and we can decide if we are perhaps working in the same general direction.”
The woman hesitated.
“You choose the place,” he said.
“D’Accord. About a mile, near the Périphérique. There is a café.” She gave Flynn a name and said she would drive and meet them there.
Flynn nodded and pushed off her vehicle and stepped to the sidewalk. The woman got in her little car, looked at both men, and then pulled out and drove away.
“We’ll never see her again,” said Gorski.
“We will,” replied Flynn. “She’s a journalist. She’s working on something about Loup. But she’s on the outside. She’ll want to know what we know.”
Gorski shrugged and looked at the scooter. “I don’t think it will start any time soon.”
“It’s a mile, let’s walk.”
They took off toward the south.
“And when we get
to the café, let’s call the police and report the scooter found.”
Chapter Twelve
The cafe was like a smaller version of the restaurant they had come from, only it wasn’t on a corner and it’s awning was yellow. But there were chairs out front that a waiter was collecting and taking in for the night, and dim lighting inside.
Flynn had seen it a hundred times before. A bar on one side that made espresso in the morning and pastis in the afternoon, a handful of tables in the middle and a long bench that ran the length of the wall opposite, with a mirror above to create a sense of space.
The woman was sitting in the far corner with her back to the wall. It was a good position. Flynn and Gorski weaved between the tables and pulled up chairs opposite. She had her hands wrapped around a glass of water. Her messenger satchel was nowhere to be seen.
“Do you want a coffee?” Flynn asked. “On me.”
“No,” she said.
Gorski leaned back and gestured to the bar.
“Deux café,” he said.
“You have an accent,” the woman said to Gorski.
He nodded. “Czech. And yours is?”
She said nothing.
“German,” said Flynn. “But your French is immaculate.”
“Merci.”
The coffees came, thick in short cups. Flynn enjoyed the aroma before the taste.
The woman said, “So, you were telling me about your relationship with Jean Loup.”
Flynn smiled. “No, I wasn’t. But that’s only because I don’t have a relationship with Jean Loup. And if I did, I wouldn’t discuss it with someone who’s name I don’t even know.”
The woman eyed both of them. “My name is Elyse. Elyse Huber.”
“As I said, I’m John.”
“Alex,” said Gorski.
“So, what we know is that you are a journalist, working on a story that involves Jean Loup, but you don’t have inside access.”
“Maybe I don’t need it.”
“If you didn’t need it you wouldn’t be here,” said Flynn. “You’re hoping that we are on the inside.”
One for One (John Flynn Thrillers Book 3) Page 9