Day of Atonement

by Alex Archer

  She checked the mirror.

  There was nothing back there.

  It wasn’t the possibility that they were watching her, but the fact that she had no idea of who they were that bugged her. She didn’t like not knowing.

  Annja was barely half a mile outside the town when she caught the glint of sunlight on silver behind her.

  She smiled to herself, and muttered, “Come out, come out, whoever you are.”

  Even without being able to see the shape clearly, she knew it was the silver Mercedes, and with no other cars on the narrow road it caught up with her quickly. She slowed, imperceptibly at first, gradually allowing the Mercedes to close the gap and invite it to pass her. But that wasn’t the intention of the Mercedes’s driver, and she knew that. Annja would have felt more in control if she were behind the other car, if she was the hunter rather than the hunted in this game of cat-and-mouse. But beggars couldn’t be choosers.

  She eased her foot off the accelerator, but kept clear of the brake. She didn’t want the flare of the brake lights to betray the fact she knew they were back there until it was obvious.

  As they drew closer, they slowed, too, tucking in fifty yards behind her, matching her speed, a sure sign they were indeed following her and this wasn’t just the most ridiculous case of the universe having fun at her expense.

  The road ahead was straight as far as the eye could see, the pavement shimmering with frost haze where the sun reflected off the surface.

  Her hands felt slick on the wheel. Her heart beating just that little bit faster, the thrill of the extra adrenaline pumping through her veins.

  She pulled over to the side of the road, put the car into Neutral and released her seat belt. She didn’t kill the engine, letting it idle.

  She wasn’t going anywhere until she knew what was going on.

  If the Mercedes raced by, she’d just follow it. Simple as that.

  The other car reduced its speed, no more than ten miles an hour, as it drove by. The passenger, the giant brute of a man, held her gaze without blinking as the driver pulled up in front of her car.

  The passenger door opened and the big man climbed out.

  Police? It was possible, but it was a nice car for an unmarked gendarmerie vehicle, which made it unlikely it was local law enforcement. She had come across enough of them all over the world to know when it was the law keeping an eye on her. It was a sixth sense now.

  The man reached down for her door handle before she thought to lock it from inside. She reached for the button just as he tugged hard at the handle, as though brute force would be enough to beat her and the lock. When the door didn’t open, he banged against the window with the side of his fist.

  Annja took a breath. It was that moment, the single point between fight and flight. She inched the window down a crack.

  “What do you want?”

  “Miss Creed,” the man said in a gruff voice, taking a step away from the car.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Get out of the car.”

  “No,” she said, not making an argument of it, but simply stating that there was a line she wasn’t stupid enough to cross just because he said so. “Not until you say please.” She used humor to show she wasn’t frightened, no matter how physically intimidating the giant was. And towering over the roof of the car, he was like a mountain more than a mere mortal.

  “Please,” he said, laboring over the word, like it was something unfamiliar to his lips. Annja saw by the way he clenched and unclenched his fists that he was pumping himself up for an explosive confrontation. She almost felt sorry for him. It wasn’t as though he could know what he was letting himself in for. She was ready.

  He used one ham hock of a hand to pull back the edge of his leather jacket to reveal the butt of a pistol tucked into the waistband of his jeans, removing all doubt as to his motivation. So much for the hope he was an overzealous autograph hunter. The odds of a peaceful outcome whittled down to zero as the driver opened his door, emerging from the Mercedes to join his hulking companion.

  She needed to act quickly.

  Dealing with them one at a time was preferable to taking them on together. It was simple mathematics. She had seconds to make the parity count. Annja moved fast, unlocking her door and slamming it open, far harder than she needed to, forcing the mountain to stumble back a couple of paces. He actually moved pretty well for such a big man, which was disappointing. She slid out from behind the wheel, climbing out of the car just as he reached for his gun. In a fair fight he would have drawn down on Annja before she was halfway out of the car, but this wasn’t a fair fight. Annja was fast. Even if he knew who she was, he had no idea just how fast she was.

  Before he could raise the muzzle in her direction, she had reached into the otherwhere, her fingers curling around the familiar grip of her sword. Her entire body thrilled to the touch of the ancient blade, her blood resonating with the weapon on some primal level as she pulled it free of its resting place. Sunlight glinted from the keen steel edge that never dulled. She brought it down hard, slashing through the air in a savage arc that drove the mountain back two more steps, stunned by the impossibility of what had just happened.

  It didn’t matter how big he was, or how many bullets he had in his magazine, he was afraid. She had seen that look often enough in the past. The sword had a way of making big men shrink down to size.

  She moved the blade through a kata, whipping her wrist about to control the vicious dance of steel.

  The man released the first shot.

  Annja was barely three steps away from him, but it was all the room she needed to bring the ancient sword to bear, deflecting the bullet off the flat blade and sending it whistling away harmlessly in a shower of sparks. The sound of the ricochet rang through the air, echoing over the fields on either side of them.

  The second shot nicked the blade, lodging itself in the body of the rental car behind her. He didn’t have time for a third. Annja slashed the tip of the sword close to the mountain’s great barrel of a chest, slicing through the leather jacket and parting the cotton T-shirt beneath without breaking his skin.

  “See how easy it would be for me to gut you?” Annja said, completely matter-of-factly, her breathing deep, calm, controlled.

  He stumbled back, stubbornly trying to fire again.

  Annja shook her head. The blade, moving faster than the eye could possibly follow as more than a silver shimmer in the air, slapped against his gun hand, springing his fingers apart in a cry of pain.

  The gun went flying, another shot drilling harmlessly into the ground.

  She looked down at it, then up at the mountain, knowing he was nursing a couple of broken fingers. He wouldn’t be firing a gun again in a hurry. At least, not with his right hand. He followed the direction of her gaze, looking down between his legs in time to see Annja’s foot come up. He buckled as she made contact, doubling him up. It didn’t matter how big a man was, how many steroids he pumped into his veins or how many reps he did in the gym. He couldn’t strengthen that one very frail human weakness no matter how hard he tried. Her adversary fell to his knees howling with pain. Annja launched herself into a vicious roundhouse that connected with the side of his head and stepped back to watch as the mountain’s face plowed into the dirt at her feet.

  He was out cold.

  “Stay right there,” the driver said. He looked ruefully at his unconscious comrade, obviously glad he wasn’t in his shoes. He had his own gun aimed squarely at the center of Annja’s mass, but wasn’t in a hurry to fire. He’d just seen what she was capable of. Why would he think his bullets had a better chance of finding their mark than the mountain’s?

  Annja held her sword in front of her, balanced lightly in her grasp, moving forward onto her toes. He was close enough she could hurl the blade at him, cleaving his head from his shoulders before he could get down behind the safety of the car. But killing him wouldn’t give her any answers. And it wasn’t her style.

  �
��There was no need for that,” he said, doing his best to sound reasonable. “We just want to talk to you.”

  “Of course you do,” she said. “People always come up to me wanting to have a nice little chat with a gun in their hands.”

  “Look, I’m sorry. It wasn’t meant to go down like this. If you’d just come with us, we could have done everything nice and calmly.”

  “And why on earth would I want to go with you? I think you better start talking fast.”

  “Why? Because we were asking nicely.”

  She shook her head. “You didn’t ask at all. Your brute tried to strong-arm me. I’d hate to see what you call nasty. So, what do you want to talk to me about? I’m sure you’ve noticed that you have my undivided attention right now.”

  “Not me. I was only asked to pick you up.”

  “I’m already fed up with the way you answer questions. Who asked you to pick me up?”

  “It doesn’t matter who.” He shrugged. “Not to me. I’m just doing my job.”

  “Ah, the good old staple. ‘I’m just following orders,’ is that it? I think I’ve heard that before somewhere.”

  “Look, there’s no need to get hostile about this. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt, especially me, okay? So why don’t you just drop that thing and get into the car. We can just do what we’ve got to do and everyone can be happy.”

  “Happy? You seriously think I’m about to get into a car with you? What kind of happy pills have you been popping? Give me some answers and I’ll consider following you in my car,” she said, with no intention of following him. But if he believed her, maybe she’d get a few details.

  The man on the ground started to groan. He didn’t sound happy with life. She probably had a minute or two at most before she’d have to put him down again or things might get a little feisty. At least his gun was out of easy reach.

  She started to walk toward the driver, inclining her head in invitation for the man to talk.

  The only words that came out of his mouth were, “Drop the sword,” and they were followed by the sound of his thumb fumbling with the safety on his gun.

  “Seriously? You’re thinking of trying that? I’m disappointed.”

  She took another step, but it was a mistake.

  The man squeezed the trigger and the gun ripped out a roar that shattered the silence.

  The world moved in slow motion for an instant.

  A bird rose from the field behind him, giving out a cry of warning that had barely left its beak when the bullet hit her sword. Sparks flew as it rang off the metal, ricocheting into the car and sinking into the bodywork. There was another sound, a deep pop that made her think it had hit the engine block, which was a pain, but it hadn’t hit her.

  The man shook his head, not believing his eyes. She realized that he hadn’t trusted the mountain to get a shot on target but, knowing his own should have buried itself in her heart, didn’t know what to do next. She liked beating people’s expectations.

  “What can I say? I guess I got lucky. Want to try again?” Annja asked, taking another step closer.

  The man had nowhere to go without leaving the safety of the car.

  He was nervous and that made him dangerous. Annja wasn’t about to drop her guard, even for an instant, no matter how quick her reactions. It didn’t take a lot to squeeze a trigger, and the fact he was willing to take her life made him as dangerous as any killer she’d faced. She knew the second and third shots were coming. She could see it in his eyes. Dropping to one knee, Annja blocked a shot on the cross brace of the sword and another on the tip, sending it back the way it had come. The bullet shattered the glass of the window inches from where the driver stood, completely undermining any notion of safety he harbored.

  “Next time I won’t miss,” Annja said, “so how about telling me who you are working for?”

  There was no hiding his fear now.

  He was far more afraid than she was.

  “Or maybe you want to wait here for the police to arrive. I’m assuming they will, even somewhere this remote. When people hear gunshots, they call the police.”

  She completely ignored the fact that he was the one holding the gun.

  She was in control here. They both knew it.

  She watched the black eye of the muzzle waver as the gun trembled in his hand. Even if he tried to fire again, there was no way he’d hit her. As if on cue, she heard the sound of the siren in the distance.

  “I assume you don’t want to spend the rest of the day trying to explain to the police what’s happened here, so if you won’t tell me who you are working for, I think we’re done.”

  The man nodded and placed the gun on the roof of the car, holding up his hands, palms out, where she could see them.

  He stepped away from the car without taking his eyes off her.

  She gave one last glance at the man still lying on the ground. Given more time she might have had more success with them, but such was life.

  “Can I make a suggestion?” The man said nothing. “If I were you, I’d quit,” she said. “You’re really not cut out for this line of work. Two grown men beaten up by a girl.” She shook her head and smiled.

  She kept walking toward the Mercedes, making the man back up a couple of steps, before she sliced the tip of the sword into the black rubber of both front tires one after the other, deflating them with a hiss that had ended before she climbed back into her rental car.

  Now she was relying on a little bit of luck when she turned the ignition, hoping the bullet hadn’t done anything terminal when it had embedded itself under the hood.

  The engine coughed, and died.

  She tried it again.

  It rumbled a second longer before it died.

  Third time was the charm.

  She checked on the driver in the side mirror. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  That was something at least.

  But it didn’t answer the one question she really wanted answered: Who had sent them after her?

  13

  The house was silent.

  It was huge, with only Henshaw who lived on-site, but he had his quarters away from the guest rooms and the master suites. The main problem was alarms and security, but more often than not the old man didn’t activate the internal sensors, at least for parts of the house. Though Garin was almost positive there were silent alarms in place around core areas of the house, including Roux’s study.

  Garin had retreated to his room, certain that many famous people had once visited here. Roux moved in many circles. Garin couldn’t help but wonder who had lain on this bed before him, listening to the sounds of winter in the distance. It was close enough to Paris that the likes of Louis-Auguste, dauphin of France, and his young bride, Marie Antoinette, had very likely summered with the old man before the dark days of the revolution.

  He didn’t sleep.

  He listened to the building, lying on the bed fully dressed. He heard the occasional groan and sigh of the old building moaning to itself, and old ghosts whispering away along its splendid corridors. Finally, he pushed himself off the bed. It was time—if not safe—to make his play.

  Roux was a light sleeper, a habit he’d picked up from years of metaphorically dozing with one eye open, but Garin was light on his feet, and barring something stupid, like sending a priceless Ming dynasty vase tumbling, he wouldn’t wake the old man.

  Floorboards creaked with almost every step he took, no matter where he placed his feet. He carried his shoes in one hand, his laptop case in the other.

  Each time he made even the slightest sound he paused, waiting in case there was any sign of an echoing call from somewhere else within the house, even though he knew that it was the erratic nature of a disturbance that was more likely to rouse a sleeper than the steady sound of footsteps on old boards. A red light pulsed slowly and regularly at the far end of the passage—the alarm’s motion sensor. With no siren blaring, it seemed safe to assume it wasn’t set. He crept onward, keep
ing his breathing slow, steady, aiming for a Zen-like state of calm that put him at one with the hallway. But he was excited. He couldn’t help himself. There was a thrill that went with this kind of thing, snooping around in the old man’s secrets. That was just the way he was. Garin carried on down the hallway, keeping his footsteps to the edge of the treads as he reached the stairs, and descended.

  It was all he could do not to give a slight sigh of relief when he reached the bottom without an alarm betraying his nocturnal perambulations. Now all he had to do was to enter the vault, get Manchon’s papers and get back to bed before Roux roused himself.

  Easy.

  He placed his shoes carefully on a chair in the hallway and made his way back into the study, pausing to listen at the door before he eased it slowly open.

  The last embers of the fire had burned down to an amber glow that still clung to the crumbling coals. Moonlight shone in through the French windows, casting abstract shadows over the room.

  Garin placed his bag on the desk, easing it open, and retrieved the laptop. He opened the lid. The machine had been in sleep mode rather than turned off, so there was no chime of the operating system starting up. He quickly dimmed the screen so the glare didn’t show through the window, giving him away to any security the old man had prowling the grounds. The heavy oak would be enough to muffle almost any sound he made in the room, but that didn’t stop him from taking exaggerated care as he prepared himself. He didn’t have an excuse for being in the study. If Roux walked in, the best he could manage was that he couldn’t sleep so he’d come down to do some work. It was unlikely the old man would fall for it.

  Best not to get caught then, he thought, examining the spot on the back wall that would reveal the vault.

  He fished a cable out of his bag and slid one end of it into the microcoupling on the laptop, before placing the sensitive electromagnetic reader on the other end onto the wall itself.

  Once he had done that, he ran the hack from the terminal and sat back waiting for the machine to do its thing.

  Digits cycled through the boxes on the screen, at first faster than the eye could possibly see, each change indicating the sending and receiving of an electrical pulse between the computer and the safe as it raced through the dizzying permutations eight digits offered, searching out the slightest difference that would indicate it had found the correct number in the sequence.