“Shukraan,” she said, with a bow.
Flynn and Gorski both returned the bow.
Monsiuer Betesh said, “She says, thank you. For all this.” He waved the fork in his hand over the meat.
Flynn didn’t bother to let him or the woman know that both he and Gorski knew Arabic. Flynn often found the most useful information was given up when people thought he didn’t understand.
They ate under the stars despite the cold. The Syrians all seemed happy to escape their enclosure for a while, and everyone enjoyed the food. Monsiuer Betesh had created a seasoning combination for the meat that was a little French and a little Israeli and a little North African, and clearly all Syrian. Flynn noted the allspice and sumac. It was delicious.
As Flynn enjoyed the company of the Syrians, his mind drifted from thoughts of Jean Loup to the plight of the men and women fleeing the war that had destroyed their home. He glanced at Elyse on the other side of the table, lamplight making the edge of her cheeks glow. She was watching him, her wine glass resting in her long fingers. Gorski poured himself some, and then a little more for Monsiuer Betesh.
As dinner wound down Flynn stepped away from the table to watch the gathering from the periphery. He had seen similar groups eat similar meals all over the planet. American grill outs in Belgium and Australian barbies in Darwin, to grilled lamb in Turkey and fish in Baghdad. North Africa, South East Asia, South America. Almost every nation he had served or been stationed in, as a military brat and as a Legionnaire, had some similar kind of ritual. Cooking outdoors with family and friends. Gathering under the stars or a bright blue sky and sharing smiles and drinks and good times. Even for the group he was watching, far from a home that had been turned to rubble and which they may never see again, this meal had brought out a happiness that Flynn feared they may have lost.
Elyse stood from the table and wandered over to him.
“They don’t deserve what’s happening to them,” she said.
“No. No one does.”
“We can help them.”
“Why do you want to do that? Just because of your story?”
“I don’t want to write about them to publish a story, I want to publish a story to make their plight known. They’re just people. Like you and me. They had lives and schools and families, and all that was taken from them through no fault of their own. We have to help them.”
“Why?”
She looked at him. He didn’t reciprocate but he felt her gaze.
“Because we can. Isn’t that enough?”
Flynn heard his father’s voice, and he nodded gently. “Yes, it is.”
They watched the children growing tired in their mother’s arms, and then Flynn spoke again.
“Where will these people go?”
“There is a Syrian community in the Netherlands. They know people there.”
“Shouldn’t be too hard.”
“They are fearful of using the train, of being asked for identification because they look Middle Eastern.”
“We could hire a bus.”
“Could we? Can you drive a bus?”
“I can. But not this week. They must stay hidden this week.”
“Why?”
“Because of the others. The ones in the camp. Tell me about them.”
“I don’t know much. Like I told you, I can’t get in to even check on them.”
“How do they get here?”
“They come from a UN camp outside of Thessaloniki in Greece.”
“But how do they get here from there?”
“By bus.”
“Why don’t they fly? Greece is not that close.”
“I imagine they don’t want the refugees out in public.”
“The UN has aircraft. They don’t have to fly commercial.”
“Maybe it’s cheaper?”
“D’accord. What kind of bus is it? Have you seen it?”
“Yes, I’ve seen it. Them.”
“Them?”
“There are two busses. One is like a big coach like tourists travel on. The other is a smaller van.”
“Like a minibus?”
“Like a minivan. One of those seven or eight-seaters.”
“And when do they come, these buses and vans.”
“Not often. I don’t know how many the center will hold, but people are not coming out very quickly, if at all.”
“Have you spoken to anyone who has been given asylum?”
“No. The official reports say that people have been settled but for their safety their locations are redacted. I don’t believe it.”
“Why the different vehicles? Do they have different sized intakes? Can you see anyone inside?”
“No, the windows are always tinted in vehicles like that. And I don’t know why the two sizes, because every time before, they have arrived on the same day.”
“Perhaps too many to fit in one coach?”
“Maybe. But they are a couple of hours apart. And the minivan is always second.”
“Do you have any clue of what route they take from Greece?”
“No. But I can find out. Why?”
“You know someone at the Greek end?”
“A colleague. He works on stories about the conditions at the camp. And he tries to trace who is getting on the busses to come here. But even in the UN camp, people are not always helpful, and sometimes they don’t know.”
“Can you get hold of your colleague.”
“I can try. You still didn’t tell me why.”
“Because another shipment of refugees is coming. Probably tomorrow or the following day, given the activity in the village today.” Flynn paused on the word shipment, as if the people were cattle being transported to market. Which made him think of transporting things, and of favors.
“So? How does that help us?”
“I want to know if I’m right. And if I am, I want to know when the bus leaves the camp in Greece. And most importantly, what route it takes. Can your colleague find that out?”
“I suppose he could follow them. But he can’t drive all the way here. It’s more than twenty hours of drive time.”
“He won’t need to drive all the way.”
Elyse stepped away to call her Greek colleague. Within minutes she was back.
“He says he has heard rumors that a new bus of people is leaving tomorrow, but he says he hears that every day.”
“Did you tell him they were preparing for an arrival here?”
“I did. He says he will go into the camp tomorrow. He will call when he learns something.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The following morning came heavy with cloud and the scent of rain on the air. Flynn asked Elyse to take her car into Ambérieu-en-Bugey and fill the tank. Then he and Gorski marched into Saint-Suliac as they had the previous day. They stopped at the same cafe and got the same surly service and drank the same coffee. They didn’t ask for food. The baker was still baking and the butcher was still butchering, and the smell of stew still wafted from the restaurant that was closed for business. But unlike Sunday, there was no congregation making their way to and from church, and no boys in the park playing football. The workers were at the factory and the refugee center, and the kids were at school. The village had resumed its laconic mood.
On the walk back Gorski used a special number and called his mother to confirm all was well. The hired had not returned.
Flynn and Gorski were sitting out front of the barn when Elyse arrived back. She got out of the car and walked over to them.
"I got a call from Greece,” she said.
“And?”
“He confirmed there’s a bus preparing to leave. He can’t yet confirm that it’s coming here.”
“But he’ll call when he knows,” said Flynn.
“He will.”
Flynn nodded. “Then we wait.”
Elyse wasn’t a good waiter. She paced across the driveway like a caged panther. Then she went inside and drank tea with Monsieur P
epard. Flynn and Gorski lay down on their cots and snoozed. Flynn had a feeling that the night would be a long one and he was a believer in getting his sleep in before he needed it. Plus it was the best way to turn a long wait into a shorter one.
Flynn stirred when Elyse walked into the barn. He opened one eye but didn’t get up. The light coming in suggested it was late afternoon.
“I just got a call. He said the bus just left. A United Nations contact confirmed that its destination is here. You were right.”
Flynn took a deep breath. “Does he know the route?”
“No. His contact didn’t know.”
“Is he following?”
“Oui. He said they are heading north out of town but that’s as much as he could say.”
Flynn opened his other eye. “North?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Huh.”
“Why? What does that mean?”
“It means they aren’t taking the ferry across the Adriatic Sea.”
“So?”
“So they’re not going via southern Italy.”
“So?”
“So they’re not staying inside the EU.”
“They’re the UN. Their paperwork is pretty solid everywhere.”
“But this is an EU camp, that’s what you said. These refugees are on EU soil right now. Once they leave the EU, there’s no guarantees that the EU member state they try to get back into will let them in.”
“Maybe they don’t know that.”
“I’d say that’s a given.”
“So what do we do?”
Flynn closed his eyes. “We wait.”
They waited until just after five. Elyse strode into the barn again. This time Flynn opened both eyes.
“He says they crossed into Macedonia about twenty minutes ago.”
“Twenty minutes?”
“There was a wait at the border crossing. The bus got waved straight through. It took him a while to catch up.”
“And he got the right bus?” asked Gorski.
“He’s a journalist. He wrote the license plate down. He says they’re on E-75 headed toward—”
“Skopje,” said Flynn. He swiveled off the cot and dropped his feet to the dusty floor. Then he stood.
“What does that mean?” asked Elyse.
“It means we’re leaving.”
“You’re leaving again?”
“We’re all leaving.”
“Oh. Where are we going?”
“First stop? Italy.”
“Italy? You mean you’re planning on meeting the bus in Italy?”
“Not exactly. Let’s go. Bring your passport. Elyse, you’re driving first shift.”
Flynn and Gorski grabbed their packs and strode out to the car. Elyse watched them leave.
“What does he mean, first shift?”
The first two hours were on small rural roads, often a single lane for both directions of traffic, so the going was slow. Flynn wanted Elyse to drive first shift because he figured she would grow tired quickest. She hadn’t napped at all during the day, and had been like a cat on a hot tin roof, expending energy on nothing. At the two hour mark, Flynn directed her to pull over and he took the wheel for the drive through the tunnels that cut through the Alps. Elyse was asleep when they reached Italy.
Gorski took the wheel shortly after Turin, and they picked up time. The autostrade were fast Italian motorways and Gorski liked to drive hard. After another two hours he handed back to Elyse who was refreshed from a few hours sleep, and she took them to beyond Venice, so Flynn was at the wheel as they crossed into Slovenia.
Elyse called her Greek colleague at regular intervals to check the bus’s heading, and to make sure he was still awake. He reported that the bus had stopped every two hours but no passengers had alighted. Two men got off, smoked a cigarette each, and then got back on.
As planned Gorski was at the wheel when they reached the border between Slovenia and Croatia. It was a hard border, insofar as it was the line between the European Union and a non-member state. But Gorski simply handed over two French and one German passport, and was waved on without the books even being opened.
Flynn wasn’t concerned that the border personnel might have checked the vehicle registration. It was an each way bet. Some would, some wouldn’t. Some were bothered about stolen vehicles leaving the EU to never be seen again, and some just wanted their shift to end. Either way, he was confident. Because it had been hours since he had realized that nothing was going to happen until at least Slovenia. So if they were turned back, if they were refused entry, so be it. But they weren’t, and so they motored onward toward the oncoming bus.
The reason Flynn bothered crossing the border at all was simple. Elyse’s contact, the Greek journalist, was one guy by himself. He had no co-driver and no chance to rest without losing the bus. The bus had made its periodic stops because it had at least two drivers. Flynn was sure there was an EU law or UN regulation that covered that. So the further they went, the closer they got to Elyse’s guy, and the less driving he would have to do. Flynn didn’t want him driving off the road and into Flynn’s already crowded dreams.
They caught up with the journalist just south of Zagreb. He called Elyse to give his position and they checked it, and then Gorski took the next exit off the autostrade and turned around, and then got back on the motorway, where he pulled to the side of the road. It was early morning, still dark, but they could see that the land all around was flat farm land as far as they could see.
The UN bus shot by them ten minutes later. Flynn was back at the wheel, and he let the bus continue on for about a kilometer before he pulled out into very light traffic and headed after it. Elyse called her Greek colleague to say they were coming up behind him, and he dropped back in the next lane and waved to her from his little car. Then he slipped off the motorway to find somewhere to sleep after more than ten hours of night driving.
They lost the bus at the border back into Slovenia, as the morning traffic built up quicker than the staffing at the border crossing. But again they were waved through—EU passports returning to the EU. The Slovenian border personnel were on the lookout for refugees and asylum seekers, not passport holders returning home.
Flynn caught up to the bus well before Ljubljana, and then followed it back into Italy on the autostrade just north of Trieste.
“You want to swap?” Gorski asked. “I’ll catch it up.”
“Thanks, but they’ll stop soon.”
They did. About halfway between Trieste and Venice the bus indicated that it was getting off the autostrade. In the predawn light Flynn dropped back and followed the bus off the main motorway and onto a small farm road. Either side of them was flat land, for rice or corn in the summer, but dark and barren now. Flynn flicked off his lights and followed the bus about a kilometer off the motorway, before he saw the bus’s brake lights illuminate. Flynn rolled to a stop and then applied the handbrake.
In the headlights of the bus they saw a smaller van, dark in color. Possibly blue or even burgundy.
“Why are they stopping?” asked Elyse.
“Horse trading,” said Flynn.
“What?”
Flynn glanced at Gorski, who nodded. Flynn hit the switch to ensure the interior light didn’t come on and Gorski slipped out of the car.
“Where is he going?”
“Do you recognize the smaller van?” Flynn asked.
“You mean from the refugee center? I don’t know,” said Elyse. “I can’t tell from here.”
They watched as a man in a military-style uniform with a coat and an officer’s hat, stepped from the smaller van and approached the bus. The door gave a hydraulic whoosh and opened, and the man got on board. To the right of them the sunrise pierced the sky. They waited until the man reappeared with a young woman. He was looking at some papers and he directed her to the smaller van. She wasn’t keen to go. Her body language was tense and fearful. Even a refugee from a war knows getting pulled
from a bus in the middle of open farm land is never a step in the right direction.
The door to the bus closed and the engine started. Flynn didn’t wait. Masked by the noise of the bus, he started the car and backed up fast, zooming toward the autostrade in reverse.
“What are you doing!” cried Elyse.
Flynn didn’t answer. He looked over his shoulder and kept the car in the middle of the tight rural road, until he was a good two hundred meters away. The bus pulled a long, laborious K-turn, while Flynn performed a U-turn in one smooth movement, wide out to one side of the road and then hard around so they ended up on the other side, now facing the motorway.
Flynn sped onto the autostrade and headed west toward Venice. He drove fast but not too fast. It was about five minutes before the bus came roaring by him and he pulled in behind.
The minivan driver watched the taillights on the bus bounce down the old farm road. His partner always played the part of the policeman, even though the uniform was actually old Russian army surplus. His partner pulled the door open on the minivan, and told the young girl to get in. She hesitated, and the driver could see his partner was of a mind to slap her and push her inside. But he had marked the merchandise before and had worn a split lip from his boss as a result. So he smiled instead, and said it would all be okay, even though they both knew the girl couldn’t understand a word. She glanced around, the first light playing across the open fields. There was nowhere to run and no point in trying. Perhaps she had seen worse. The driver didn’t care. She got in and his partner slid the door closed.
The driver turned the key and the engine started with a bang that the driver had never heard before. He needed to get the engine checked. The van did a lot of runs along this motorway. He glanced in the rear view mirror and looked at the girl. She was young, this one, but very pretty in that middle eastern way. He knew instantly the buyer would take her. She would be worth plenty. He would not have to wait long for the decision, and then they would be on the road again.
He glanced up the road and his mind drifted back onto the job at hand, and he suddenly wondered where his partner was. It was only a half step from the rear sliding door to the front of the van. Perhaps he had decided to take a pee. It was not good timing. The driver leaned over and looked through the passenger window. Where was he?
One for One (John Flynn Thrillers Book 3) Page 18