The Fifth Doctrine: The Guardian Series Book 3

by Karen Robards

  Park reached the newsstand and went for the rack of international newspapers against the back wall. She could feel adrenaline surge through her veins as she watched him pick up a copy of the New York Times.

  “It’s a go,” she said into the ring. Giving Lynette’s black-framed glasses a one-fingered push up the bridge of her nose, she headed across the street. Instead of using a crosswalk as anyone on the watch for her might be expecting her to do, she navigated her way through the flow of traffic, weaving between the cars.

  “I’ve got you.” Colin’s steady tones were those of the consummate professional she now needed him to be. Knowing that he was watching, that he had her covered, made her feel safer.

  Until it didn’t.

  Even as she reached the sidewalk, even as Park saw her and approached, New York Times tucked under his arm and bodyguards in tow, she felt that horrifyingly familiar cold tingle between her shoulder blades.

  Without taking her eyes off Park, without looking around, without altering her Lynette body language by so much as the stiffening of her shoulders, she went on instant red alert. As surely as she knew that the sun rose in the morning, she knew that whoever had been stalking her just before she’d ducked into Le Chien Rouge was out there on the Rue de Rivoli right at that very moment, and he had her in his sights again.

  24

  “You have that which you promised me?” Park greeted her as she fell into step beside him. Blending in with the steady flow of pedestrians on the sidewalk, they walked away from the newsstand. A pronounced crease between his eyebrows was the only visible sign of discomposure Bianca could see on his round, placid face. He wore the same overcoat as before, but today’s scarf was a Burberry plaid. His bodyguards kept just far enough behind so that their conversation could not be overheard.

  “I do. Do you have the money?” It was hard to stay completely focused on what she was doing when her Spidey-sense was going haywire. In front of, behind, above, beside—she could not pinpoint the source of the danger. But the sensation was acute enough that she felt it on what was almost a cellular level. Using her peripheral vision and every reflective surface available to her, she scanned the sidewalks, the shops, the cars, the square.

  Dozens of people streamed in both directions, heading to and from the metro, filling the cafés, milling around the square, window-shopping, stopping to take photos. Vehicles clogged the street. Windows, balconies, roofs, even the Saint-Jacques Tower itself, overlooked her position. She wanted to alert Colin, have him search the crowd for—what? Something, someone wrong. As Lynette, with Park so close, she could not. To contact Colin would risk blowing the operation.

  Abort. Abort. Abort. That’s what her mind screamed. But the mission was too important, and too close to being completed. And besides, since she had no idea where the source of the danger was, which way would she go to escape? She might walk right into it.

  Park said, “Fifty million is too much. I will give you twenty.”

  Bianca’s head swiveled toward him like something out of The Exorcist. Her eyes met his with such ferocity that his widened. Are you kidding me? hovered on the tip of her tongue, but she remembered her Lynette-ness in time.

  “This is not a subject for negotiation,” she said. A family of chattering Germans spilled out of a café just ahead of them. Taking Park’s elbow, Bianca sped up to shelter among them. More bodies equaled a more difficult target.

  “Twenty million is a great deal of money.” Frowning, Park lowered his voice in deference to the proximity of what he almost certainly didn’t realize was their human shield. “And it is all I am authorized to pay.”

  If she’d been conducting the sale as herself, that was the moment when she would have turned and walked away. But given that Lynette was inexperienced and frightened and on the run, and she herself could practically feel the hot breath of whoever was hunting her tickling the back of her neck, she was at a real disadvantage. She needed to get this done and get gone.

  Traffic had stopped to permit pedestrians to cross to the square via a crosswalk. Leaving the Germans to go on their way, Bianca steered Park into the crosswalk, where a large number of people were, to judge from their conversation, on their way to help set up the art festival.

  Zig when they expect you to zag.

  She pulled the phone Colin had given her out of her pocket. “Make the transfer.” As she agreed to the lower price, it was all she could do not to talk through her teeth.

  He pulled out his phone and turned it on, thereby, she gathered, indicating his willingness to follow her instruction. Then he hesitated. “First you show me what I am buying.”

  If she showed Park the ChapStick, there was little she as Lynette could do to prevent him, or his bodyguards, from wresting it from her. On the other hand—oh, happy thought!—she could make a huge outcry that would attract all kinds of attention, and that was something he would do much to avoid.

  The pedestrian signal flashed a warning. Traffic started to edge into the crosswalk. Slowing down to avoid a hot-pink couturier’s van, which totally jumped the still-red light to roll in front of them, she said, “Here,” and allowed him a glimpse of the ChapStick, which, because she was Lynette, she kept loose in her coat pocket.

  Staring down into her pocket at the ChapStick, which was the only thing in it, he frowned and said, “Twenty million for a—”

  Boom!

  The square exploded in front of them in a huge blast of heat and fire and sound.

  The force of it slammed into Bianca like a freight train, picking her up, hurling her backward. She screamed as, wreathed in a tsunami of flame, the pink van flew toward her—and then everything went black.

  The carnage would have done a slaughterhouse proud. Dozens of dead and wounded littered the ground. Blood was everywhere. Body parts and bits of clothing and miscellaneous items like menus and hangers and automobile tires hung from balconies and awnings and the small, ornamental trees. Overturned vehicles blocked streets and sidewalks. Emergency workers ran to and fro, triaging the injured, shuttling victims on gurneys, providing first aid. The truck that was the source of the explosion still burned furiously. Shouting firefighters wielding gushing hoses battled the blaze. Thick gray smoke billowed toward the lightening sky. The acrid smell stung noses, made eyes water. The shriek of arriving and departing ambulances echoed through the canyon of scorched buildings, making it necessary for the reporter from BFM TV, France’s number one news channel, to shout into her mic to be heard.

  “… un attentat terroriste,” (a terrorist attack) she said to the camera. “Personne ne prend la responsabilité.” (No one is taking responsibility.)

  There was more, but Colin, striding past the TV crew to search inside yet one more small shop that had had its front window blown in, tuned it out. He was cold with fear as he checked out an obviously dead woman impaled by window shards. She was the right shape and size, with brown hair—his heart thumped, his mouth went dry, his breathing stopped. A glimpse of the woman’s face allowed him to breathe again: not her.

  A paramedic crouched beside a second woman, blocking her face from his view even as he did a lightning-fast scan of the premises. That the second woman’s face was hidden didn’t matter. It had taken him no more than a glance to ascertain that neither of the other two female victims in what, as it turned out, was a boulangerie was Bianca.

  So far he’d found no trace of her. Or Park. Or the bodyguards.

  Terror clawed at his insides, fighting to be released. It was all he could do to keep it in check. Losing his head would do no one any good, least of all her.

  At this point, all that was known for certain was that one of three trucks supposedly from L’école des Beaux-Arts had not been. Loaded with explosives, it was a ringer sent to park behind the two that were legitimately from the school. It had blown up just as Bianca, with Park and the bodyguards, had been crossing the street toward it. At that precise moment, his view of her had been blocked by traffic. Through his rifle
scope, he’d been scanning the area immediately behind her for possible danger. The wall of flame had blasted into his field of vision a split second before the force of the explosion had knocked him on his ass. It was strong enough to shatter the partially open window he’d been set up behind, to shake the building, the block. He’d rushed to the scene, arriving within minutes. The chaos had been so complete that even now, some forty minutes after the blast, he still had no idea whether or not she was alive.

  All he knew was that he couldn’t find her. And he was sick with dread.

  Was she trapped beneath an overturned vehicle? Had she been blown into a building where she was even now lying injured? Had she already been whisked away to a hospital by a first responder?

  Or was she dead?

  That was the thought he couldn’t stomach.

  If she was conscious, she would have contacted him. Unless, of course, there was a problem with communications, which was always possible depending on where she was and in what condition.

  If she was alive, wherever she was, she was in danger from more than any injuries she might have suffered. Disguised as Lynette, with Lynette’s papers, injured and possibly unconscious, she was a sitting duck for the many and varied entities that wanted her dead.

  Was she the target of the blast? It was possible that she wasn’t, but his first, instinctive thought was, There’s no such thing as coincidence.

  What were the chances of there being a terrorist attack at the exact moment when an on-the-run young woman wanted by what seemed like half the world walked past?

  “Major.” Hailing Colin by the rank he’d held when he’d served under him, Angus Wilson strode toward him.

  A tall, sturdy, thirtysomething Scot, Wilson was one of his men, part of the Cambridge Solutions team he’d had in place in Paris to hunt for Thayer. In the aftermath of the explosion, as finding Bianca had turned into the most urgent thing in his existence and, for her, a matter of life or death, he’d summoned them to assist. Telling them she was an associate of Thayer’s, he’d shown them her picture as Lynette and set them to searching.

  Instantly on the move, Colin had just reached him when Wilson added, quietly so as not to be overheard, “We’ve got something.”

  His heart lurched. He didn’t want to reveal how personal this was, not to his men, not under the circumstances when supposedly the woman he was looking for was nothing more to him than a job, but as he walked with Wilson across the ravaged square he found that he was sweating. Their goal was a tight group composed of three more of his men—and a van that had clearly, from the damage to its side, just been set back up on its four wheels.

  A hot-pink van. The color was impossible to mistake. He clearly remembered that it was one of the vehicles that, seconds before the explosion, had blocked Bianca from his view.

  Recognizing it, he felt his gut twist. His heart pounded like he’d been running for miles. Gritting his teeth, he braced himself for whatever was getting ready to come his way.

  Another of his men—Nester Davis—was crouched beside a figure sprawled on the pavement, partially covered by a blue rescue blanket.

  Colin heard a roaring in his ears.

  Davis pulled the blanket back.

  Colin blinked at the inert body of a man in gray cords and a tweed jacket. His first thought was, Not Bianca, accompanied by a composure-shattering upsurge of relief. Then Davis grabbed the bushy white beard that covered the lower half of the man’s blood-smeared face and yanked it off.

  “What the—” Colin stopped, stared.

  “We found Thayer.” Fake beard in hand, Davis confirmed what Colin had just realized. “And he’s alive.”

  “It wasn’t us.” Hanes’s voice was tight with strain. His fingers clenched around the secure phone he held to his ear. It was just after 7:00 a.m. Paris time, and as he cast his eyes skyward in a silent request for divine intervention, he found himself, ironically enough, looking at the steeple of Saint-Germain-des-Prés church rising majestically against the dull gray of the early morning sky. Rushing in his rented VW Polo from his hotel room to the scene of what the TV stations were all screaming was Paris’s latest terrorist attack, he’d been caught in traffic on the Rue Dauphine in the 6th arrondissement. The vehicles around him had ground to a complete and total halt just about the time Wafford had called, demanding to know what the hell Hanes had done.

  “Thayer’s in the middle of it.” Wafford’s growl underscored how supremely unhappy NCS’s deputy director was with the turn events had taken. It was somewhere around 1:00 a.m. in Virginia, where Wafford’s home as well as his office was located. It seemed probable that he’d been at home, in bed, when the bomb had gone off. It also seemed probable that he was aware of what was happening because he’d had someone continually monitoring Thayer’s whereabouts, just as Hanes himself had been continually monitoring Thayer’s whereabouts. Monitoring that was made possible by the grain-of-rice-sized tracking device that Hanes had forced Thayer to have injected between his left thumb and forefinger before he was released to find and kill Nomad 44.

  Because you didn’t pull the trigger on a Hellfire missile without some means of tracing its flight.

  Maintaining tight self-control, Hanes said, “I’m aware. I repeat, it wasn’t us.”

  “Was it Thayer?”

  “No, sir.” He prayed that that was true. He was at least 95 percent sure it was—but with Thayer, one never knew.

  “Then who the hell was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was Nomad 44 the target?”

  Hanes hated what he had to say next. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you know?” It was a snarl.

  “That there was a bombing, that according to Thayer’s tracking device he was at the scene when it happened and is still at the scene, and that his last report, which came in at 23 hundred hours last night, was that he was zeroing in on Nomad 44. That the news reports are saying it’s a terrorist attack, although that has not been confirmed. That I’m heading for the scene right now, as are the men I have with me in Paris.”

  “Was Nomad 44 at the scene?”

  “I’d say it’s probable.”

  “Another thing you don’t know.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, find out.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Hanes. There can be no autopsy on Nomad 44.”

  “I understand.”

  “Then get your ass in gear and clean up this goddamned fucking mess,” Wafford roared, and disconnected.

  Hanes said a few choice words under his breath, shoved the phone back in his jacket pocket and applied the heel of his palm to the horn.

  “… a bloody cock-up.” Bowling’s voice lost none of its plumminess when employed at full volume, Colin discovered as the director of GCHQ bellowed at him over the phone he pulled a little away from his ear. “Where the hell is she?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.” Colin’s voice was carefully even. He was watching his men bundle Thayer into an ambulance as he spoke. Not that he’d told, or meant to tell, Bowling that. Not until he’d gotten a better grip on what had happened. He wouldn’t have answered Bowling’s call at all if he hadn’t hoped against hope that somehow Bowling, who had eyes and ears everywhere, had had word of Bianca’s whereabouts. Which, as it turned out, had not been the case. Although Bowling’s sources had come through for him with the information that Five Eyes’ newest asset was missing in the explosion that was already the lead news story around the world, prompting his call.

  “I don’t need to remind you that this job is vital.” The faint crackling sound that accompanied that was, Colin felt sure, Bowling chomping on one of his ubiquitous cigars. “I don’t like the feel of this.” There was the slightest of pauses. “A report from Big Bird’s nest said MH1 is dead.”

  Big Bird was Edward Mulhaney, head of the American NCS, Big Bird’s nest was Mulhaney’s office, where Bowling apparently had a mole, and MH1 was the code na
me assigned to Lynette Holbrook. The real Lynette Holbrook. Colin’s blood ran cold.

  “Confirmed?”

  “I trust the information.” Another faint crackling sound.

  “What happened?”

  “She was considered a liability.”

  That said it all: Lynette Holbrook, having obtained the information that made Operation Fifth Doctrine possible, had been killed to keep her from compromising it. He knew how it worked: as an asset, she was disposable once she was no longer useful. Didn’t stop him from feeling sick at his stomach about what had been done to her. His anxiety over Bianca, already through the roof, catapulted into the stratosphere.

  Bowling said, “How much do you trust MH2?”

  MH2 being Bianca. He knew what Bowling was asking: Could she be missing because she’d sold out to another player?

  “One hundred percent,” Colin replied.

  “Your arse,” Bowling warned, meaning that if Colin was wrong he could expect a nasty rebound. Then he added, “Keep me informed,” and ended the call.

  25

  The well-equipped unit was as much a jail as a medical facility. A clandestine treatment center designed to provide care for top secret military prisoners, it was run out of the officially closed former Val-de-Grâce hospital. Colin’s history with the people who ran the place went all the way back to his MI6 days. It was there that he’d had his men rush Thayer, rather than handing him over to paramedics on the scene and, later, the gendarmerie, who would hold him until whatever agency won custody could arrive to pick him up. So far, no one outside Colin and his men on the scene, which meant no one in officialdom, knew that the legendary Traveler had been captured at last.

  Not even Durand. Not until Colin had decided that Thayer was of no use to him.

  At that moment, some seventeen hours after the bombing, Colin stood beside Thayer’s hospital bed looking down at the man he’d pursued for months, the man Durand had spent a full two decades hunting. Besides being shackled wrist and ankle to the titanium bed frame, which was, in turn, bolted to the floor, Thayer was encumbered by an IV, a catheter and so many gauges attached to so many monitors that the preeminent sound in the room was their beeping.