by David Caris
More phones than passengers, Kovac thought, pleased with his plan.
Juliette closed in on an electronic board with departure times and gates, and scanned it as Kovac had instructed her to do. But it was too quick, the letters too blurred, and he didn’t get much. Making matters worse, the screen was toggling between English and German, and it only toggled to English at the last second before Juliette moved on. ‘Did you get any of that?’ he asked Megan.
‘No. I’m checking his flight now. I told him to move to it if it’s called because anything less would be suspicious.’
‘You think he’s still at the little airport post office?’
‘No, that’s done.’
‘He’s confirmed?’
‘Yes, sorry, Juliette should see him already.’
‘Nope.’ Kovac hadn’t taken his eyes off the tablet screen. He was checking every face, looking for a specific combination of traits. Nothing was a match. Nothing was even close to a match.
Juliette stopped near a couple who were sharing a phone screen to watch a video, their shoulders and temples touching. Her breathing was short and sharp and the footage became a little jerky.
“Doing great,” Kovac texted. “Almost over.”
She sent what might have been a crying emoji. Or was it sweating? Anxiety? Kovac was beginning to regret introducing emojis.
Juliette was standing at a bank of wheelchairs now, which could be borrowed for short-term use. Kovac saw the man from the parking lot, the man in the suit with the ID around his neck, but he showed no interest in Juliette and walked into a shop where he seemed to ask directions.
Kovac texted: “Man in suit with ID getting directions – let me know if he follows.”
As had happened numerous times already, Kovac heard the buzz on Juliette’s phone through his tablet. It went dark as she put it to her ear. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘but I still haven’t seen dad. He should be around here somewhere… I just wish he wouldn’t wander, you know? Then we could get home.’
“Keep looking.”
Two flight hostesses passed Juliette and Kovac heard a snippet of gossip about a pilot before they were out of earshot again. Juliette kept walking, until she hit a large tiled expanse that was mostly grey. She checked it systematically with her phone. Kovac could hear her turning on the spot and the footage spun so fast it blurred. ‘Dad,’ she said. ‘I found dad.’
Megan looked up from her phone. ‘Lincoln’s seen her. He just texted.’
A man passed Juliette at a distance and Kovac sat a little straighter in his seat. He typed as fast as his thumbs would allow. “Man who passed, show me.” It seemed to take an eternity for Juliette’s phone to buzz, and then another eternity for her to pull it up a little and spin. She zoomed in on the man but Kovac only caught a glimpse before he turned a corner and was gone.
It was enough. ‘Shit,’ he said under his breath.
Megan looked up again. ‘What?’
‘I just saw someone I know.’
‘Who?’
‘My Neanderthal, Malone.’
Chapter 38
With a flurry of texts, Kovac changed the plan.
On his instruction, Juliette closed in on the courier, Lincoln.
Lincoln walked to the giant windows overlooking the tarmac, where he had originally promised to be if things went wrong. There wasn’t any seating left in this area, so Lincoln sat down on the large window sill. He remained sitting like this until Juliette approached. Then he stood again, smiling at Juliette as she offered a hug. They were complete strangers, but they embraced as siblings might.
Kovac waited for confirmation that Lincoln had handed the fake solid-state drive over to Juliette. The camera got wobbly and inverted, ending up aimed at the floor. A moment later it righted itself and Juliette said: ‘You look tired.’
‘Confirmation,’ Kovac said.
As part of Kovac’s new plan, “you look tired” was code for an exchange.
‘What if Malone’s seen Lincoln mail the original drive and buy a new one?’ Megan asked.
‘Or seen him throw out the packaging for the new one,’ Kovac agreed, nodding. ‘We just have to hope not. Maybe they clocked him around the same time we did. But even if he saw Lincoln buy a new drive, he’s going to struggle to keep it straight, to know for sure which drive contains the domain controller. He can’t ignore this second drive entirely.’
‘You think he’ll hurt Juliette?’
‘Unlikely.’
The truth was, Kovac felt nervous for Juliette. He had dealt with Malone and knew what the man was capable of. Malone was clearly over the worst of his concussion, though Kovac suspected he was still gulping down pills for a headache.
‘This is the guy you tied to the heater, right?’
‘Right.’
‘The one who vanished from the hospital with Griffin and has done God-only-knows-what to O’Keefe?’
Kovac gave a tiny nod, still focused on the tablet screen.
‘Kovac, is this safe?’
‘It’s a calculated risk.’
Following Kovac’s new instructions, Juliette started back towards the terminal’s main entrance. ‘That’s my cue.’ Kovac got out of the Skoda and walked quickly towards the airport. Because they had managed to park in Schwechat’s short-term parking rather than the multi-story, it was a short walk. He arrived at the main entrance before Juliette did, phone to his ear. ‘She still okay?’ he asked Megan.
‘Yeah.’ Megan was now monitoring the tablet. ‘She’s almost at the door.’
‘Okay, we know if she’s being followed?’
‘She didn’t say.’
Kovac took out the pack of cigarettes and lighter he had bought on the way to the airport – purchased for this exact use. He struggled to light up in a gusting wind, then fell back against the wall, just a little away from the door. He didn’t normally smoke, but he needed some reason to loiter, something that would nullify all interest in him and render him practically invisible.
He smoked fast, hardly inhaling, but looking to convey the impression of an addict getting a hit of nicotine after a long flight. The wind whipped the smoke away instantly.
He kept the phone to his ear with his other hand, and Megan began a countdown, informing Kovac when he could expect Juliette to emerge. ‘Ten, nine, eight –’
A van pulled up, instantly putting Kovac on alert. He didn’t recognize the model, but it was black with dark windows. So dark, in fact, he couldn’t see through at all. It parked as close to the terminal’s main door as was possible, but no one got out. No one even rolled down a window. Kovac monitored it out of the corner of his eye while looking away, attempting to conceal his face. He went on smoking, but he was exposed. He didn’t like it.
Juliette exited the terminal, her back straight, her stride long and confident. She was once again tightening her flannel shirt around her waist, not looking down at it but instead searching for threats and setting course for the parking lot. All as instructed.
Malone exited right on her tail, and as soon as he did the door slid open on the van. Kovac moved to intercept Malone and protect Juliette, but the van was a problem. He hoped for a coincidence, for a family of seven with twenty bags, but no such luck.
He detected two weapons just inside the van. A pistol and a knife. The pistol was in Griffin’s hand and was aimed at him, though she didn’t look like she wanted to shoot. She didn’t look like she wanted to be in the van at all, and he realized her hands were cuffed despite the pistol. Kovac made a split decision to call her bluff and take on Malone, but the small knife brought him to a dead stop. It wasn’t the knife so much as the hand holding it. It was familiar, and looking up he locked eyes with a woman he knew all too well.
His get-out-of-jail-free-card, Bibi Dauguet.
There wasn’t any time to wonder how he’d missed it. Bibi had pulled back into shadow as soon as she recognized him, then Malone had grabbed Juliette and more pushed than dragged her into the van. She
was too stunned to protest beyond a yelp, and an instant later the door slid shut and the van was rolling forward, accelerating hard. People stared, and a few looked at Kovac. He dropped back against the wall and resumed smoking, and said into his phone: ‘You see all that?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Meet me at the exit to the short-term parking lot – one minute.’
‘Camera’s gone black,’ Megan said.
Kovac had played it cool as long as he could, letting witnesses discount his role in all this and forget him. Now he was moving. He tossed his cigarette. ‘They got the drop on me.’
‘Who did?’
‘Malone, Griffin, another woman I know. We’ll talk when we’re on their tail. Plan B still active?’
‘Yeah.’
Kovac nodded to himself. Thank God for the homemade GPS tracker in Juliette’s pants.
He slipped past a group of people who were focused on the distant van, pointing and talking in German. He crossed the road, weaved through parked vehicles and made for the short-term exit. He walked fast, but not so fast he would attract attention or linger in people’s memories.
Two people approaching the airport with suitcases asked him something in German. He gave them a wide berth, scanning for weapons or needles.
Nothing, no threat.
He pushed on without answering them. ‘Can you see me yet?’ he asked Megan, just as the Skoda pulled round a corner into view.
‘Got you.’
Kovac met Megan a moment later, slinging himself down into the passenger seat as she pulled over. ‘You want to drive?’ she asked.
‘No. Let’s go. Get us out of this parking lot.’
Kovac checked the connection to Juliette’s phone on the tablet and wasn’t surprised to find it was still dead. He grabbed Megan’s phone and checked the burner instead, which was still on and accurate to within a few feet. He didn’t bother Megan with details. She was navigating a few tight turns through concrete barriers, barriers that were stained black and chipped from past motorists who had cut it too fine. She was doing it fast, so fast Kovac had to reach out for the dash to steady himself. ‘Slow it down,’ he said, ‘we’ve got the burner. Let’s see where they take us.’
‘What about Juliette?’
He thought about Bennett. About Anna.
‘We need to try and get her back, Kovac.’
He said nothing.
‘Kovac?’
‘Not yet. Like I said, let’s see where this takes us first. There’s more at play here than I realized.’
‘Like what?’
Like Bibi Dauguet, he thought, recalling her last words to him. Kovac had been watching the construction workers pack up. He had opened the door on that phone booth and taken a look at the soccer stadium. He had asked Bibi which airport she was at. He had dialed a U.S. number, so he had taken it for granted that she was stateside. He had listed the airports closest to her, hoping for a yes. McCarran, Reno, Boulder… She had told him she was facing down the FBI. She said: “Be smart, get offline, and for God’s sake don’t come here.” She had routed his call, the FBI agent an actor…?
‘There,’ he said, pointing into the extreme distance on the freeway which now fell into place in front of them. The freeway was floodlit, as many were in Vienna. The black van was a speck, but it matched the position of the blip on Megan’s phone from Juliette’s burner.
Then the blip abruptly stopped moving.
‘Oh no,’ Megan said, over the sound of distant, crunching metal and car horns. Kovac followed her gaze and saw a pileup rapidly building in size and severity, head lights and brake lights all at bizarre angles. There was a body on the road. It had been flung to one side.
Male, female, big, small, he couldn’t tell.
He saw smoke.
He looked down at the blip again, willing it to jump forward on the screen, to recover from some unexpected lag in the data.
It didn’t.
‘The van just got clear of the pile-up,’ Megan said, ‘and we’re going to get caught in it.’
Kovac nodded. ‘I think they threw her out.’
Chapter 39
Megan had to slow to a crawl as they approached the pile-up. ‘Stop here and check on Juliette,’ Kovac said.
Megan didn’t need to be told twice. She parked, jumped out and – checking for oncoming traffic – rushed to Juliette.
There were already people gathered around her body. So many, Kovac couldn’t see her on the road. He didn’t need to. Onlookers would call emergency services and Megan, he was confident, would find some way to stay with Juliette en route to the hospital. When the time was right, Megan would contact Juliette’s parents and two sons, too. There was nothing Kovac could offer here that would improve on any of that.
He jumped out, circled the Skoda and forced the driver’s seat back. He slid in, made a few more adjustments to the seat and did the same for the mirrors. He checked his fuel gauge, which still showed close to full.
He had checked the tire pressure and oil when they were first given the car.
He hoped Juliette had survived being thrown from a van. He really did. He hoped no vehicles had struck her since. But there was no way in hell he was letting Bibi do this to Juliette without paying for it…
Juliette had been thrown out at a fork, where the road transitioned to three lanes, then divided into two new roads with two lanes each. There was a concrete divider facilitating this split, starting narrow, then widening as the two new roads diverged. The pile-up had bunched down onto the divider, but because of the extra space Kovac was able to guide the Skoda quietly through and around the wreckage. He settled on the new road veering off to the left, because signs indicated it would lead him to the city center.
He glanced back at the pile-up as soon as he cleared it. It wasn’t as bad as he first thought. There were seven cars and one truck involved, with the truck coming out of it best. Only two cars were badly damaged. One was sideways, its back end elevated by another car, its airbags deployed. Kovac saw plenty of damage to paneling on this vehicle. Some was scraped, some was smashed in, and its lights had been sheared off on the left side, one wheel jutting out. This car was the car that had been on fire. But someone had dealt with that using an extinguisher, which now sat on its hood. Kovac’s guess was the truck driver.
He couldn’t see any fatalities or anyone in distress. Everyone was out and standing, pointing and rehashing. He figured one car or maybe two had swerved for Juliette, spinning out of control, and the rest had piled up from there.
The Skoda wasn’t lacking in raw horsepower. He soon hit 65 miles per hour, then pushed beyond that to 95. At first there were no other vehicles on the road. He had both lanes to himself because of the pileup. Eventually though, he reached the cars which had never even seen Juliette. They had been far enough in front of the pileup when it occurred not to have noticed a thing. These vehicles had perhaps seen a black van rocket past them though, because they were hugging the edges of the road, driving cautiously.
At least, that’s what Kovac hoped.
If not, he was on the wrong road.
He pushed the Skoda even harder. At these speeds, even small inconsistencies in the road caused the chassis to shudder violently. He shot past a dump truck and motorcyclist and was relieved to see his two-lane freeway become three again. Some extra room to maneuver. The traffic got heavier, and he eased off just a little, but noticed a few of the vehicles had pulled over into shoulder lanes. His black van?
He passed several signs with a white “80” in a red circle, which he figured was the speed limit. If he kept this up too long, he would collect police cars like shards to a magnet. But so far so good.
He checked his rearview again, and saw he was clear.
New signs loomed up ahead, flashing white triangles cautioning him to slow down. He barely had time to take them in before they were lost to darkness too. The sound of the road changed underneath as he crossed a bridge with concrete towers and cabling
. More of a thrum, the road almost seeming to echo. He glimpsed a dark river, then the bridge was behind him and it was solid sound barriers to his right.
The traffic got worse. He wound through cars, busses and delivery trucks, getting stuck behind one with a badly serviced engine and catching exhaust through his air-con.
He muttered curses to himself until he finally found a gap, and he was soon up and running again. More bridges flicked by: all overhead now, with pedestrians who stopped and seemed to yell at him. He heard nothing over the Skoda’s engine and remained focused on the road.
It closed in, lined with sound barriers again, then suddenly opened up to what looked like lawn with newly planted trees. It was hard to see in the dark but the trees were bending in the wind, and Kovac realized why the Skoda was constantly drifting right. He was driving through a gale.
He spotted the black van just as he arrived at the edge of the city. There were tourist buses parked here. Maybe fifteen of them, one after the next. The van gave them no room, passing each with less than a foot of clearance. Kovac had to do the same, because the other lanes were full of bright red brake lights, traffic slowing for an intersection.
Shit.
The intersection was on a rise, positioned right at the crest. Kovac saw the white stripes on the road, indicating a pedestrian crossing, and a tram emerging into the intersection at a right angle to him. So fucking close he could hear its metal wheels… He saw sparks from the wires above and he was certain it would block the van.
To Kovac’s amazement, the van went for it. And won. It found a gap between the traffic on its left and the tram coming at it from the right. It ran the red with mere inches to spare.
Kovac, making the decision in an instant, hit the brakes. He didn’t come to a complete stop. Instead, he mounted the curb, navigating clumsily around the back of the tram. It was a rough ride and he prayed the airbags would stay put. They did.
He spotted pedestrians on the opposite side of the intersection and was at ten miles per hour by the time he crossed their path. C’mon, he growled, waving them clear.