Inside Man

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  “Especially when your nose twitches when you’re mad, like right now.”

  He ran out of energy abruptly, like a glass of water tipped over and emptied. He sagged back on the seat and rested his head against it. “Are you loaded?” he asked, his voice weak.

  “Trunk full of nasty stuff, Remington ACR on the back seat—no, don’t twist to look at it, you’ll stretch the stitches. And of course—” She patted the Barretta she preferred, tucked up against her midriff, beneath her coat. “Look in the glove box.”

  Lochan shook his head. “Maybe later. My Sig is in there?”

  “Yours is still in evidence. It’s a Ruger. The new EC9. Happy birthday.” Her smile was sour.

  “If it was my birthday, I already got my present.” He touched her shoulder.

  “Sleep, Lochan,” she whispered.

  The astounding thing was that he could sleep. Leela was the one person in the world for whom he could let down his guard enough to let sleep take him. Where they were going, he was going to need all the sleep he could get.

  Reno disconnected the call and pushed his glasses back up his nose. “I might have something.”

  Zima turned from the window. “Yes?”

  Reno cracked his knuckles. “A routine police report. A man and a woman fitting the description of the pair from the temple were seen entering Gare de Lyon, an hour ago.”

  Ahh… His patience had been rewarded. Zima nodded. “Were they detained?”

  “The bulletin didn’t call for them to be detained, only to report in. They took a TGV to Valence.”

  Valence. Zima’s happiness grew. It was out of Paris, away from the expanding rings of concern the authorities were throwing up around the temple to snare their prey.

  “Do you know anyone at Le Bourget?” Zima asked Reno. This was Reno’s value, why he had been tapped for the team. Reno had worked in the Paris police force for twenty-five years, until injured in the line of duty. He’d been denied his pension for technical reasons which left him bitter and angry. Reno knew everyone useful in Paris. The Kobra paid the man well for his network of friends.

  Reno considered. “I know Stephen.”

  Zima didn’t care who Stephen was. “Can he get us through a back gate?” The authorities would watch the private airports, interested in anyone who wanted to leave Paris via non-commercial routes.

  “He owes me.”

  “Make your call,” Zima told him. He glanced at the Cadoux woman curled up on the bed, her mouth in a provocative bud even while asleep. “And wake her up. She can get us food to eat on the plane.”

  [11]

  Valence, Drôme, France.

  Agata suspected Warren wasn’t sleeping, although he kept his eyes closed and his body relaxed. It was rest of a kind, so she left him alone. She tapped into the few information sources she had available to her via the laptop, to build a better picture of their situation. Monitoring information sources didn’t trigger alarms, for it was a passive activity and she was behind a dark net shield, too.

  “When we get to Valence, you should brush out your hair and smile at everyone,” Warren said.

  She looked up, startled, her attention split between the news she had just spotted and Warren’s face.

  His eyes were opened only a little, the black just visible.

  “It gets in the way,” she said dismissively.

  “The first day in Paris, you were the epitome of a French woman. Everyone noticed you, only no one really saw you, even me. I was too dazzled by your loveliness.”

  Heat stole up her throat and burned in her cheeks. Agata glanced at the screen, at the text she must pay attention to, then back at Warren. She cleared her throat.

  Warren smiled. It was a nice expression. “You do not know how to take a compliment.” He sat up, fully awake.

  Agata pursed her lips. “That was a compliment?”

  “Indirectly. I was thinking that everyone who might be looking for us will look for people trying to hide in the middle of a crowd. We should do the opposite.”

  “And draw attention to ourselves?”

  “Hide in plain sight,” he amended. “Ever noticed how ostentatious the gang members are? You know when you’re looking at one.”

  “That’s what you did? Gold chains and silk shirts, and jeans around your knees?”

  Warren shook his head. “My job was to move in the shadows those guys cast. No one paid me any attention.”

  “Misdirection,” Agata murmured. “It’s an interesting idea, only I don’t have a single lipstick or brow pencil on me. And I think we have bigger concerns.” She turned the laptop around and tapped the screen.

  Warren bent forward and peered at it. With a soft click of his tongue, he pulled his reading glasses out of the interior pocket of his coat, put them on and read the screen.

  “We were noticed at Gare de Lyon,” he concluded. “It was a risk we took. Only, this is a police notice, Kelsey.”

  “The Kobra has unbelievable sources,” Agata told him. “I don’t know for sure that he has sources inside the Paris police department, but I feel better assuming he does.”

  The train braked and slowed and everyone in the carriage stirred, their energy picking up as the train approached its destination. People collected baggage, put on coats, and gathered possessions.

  “Will the police be waiting for us on the platform?” Warren murmured, frowning over the top of his glasses.

  “There’s that, too,” Agata admitted. “Normally, the police wouldn’t be an issue, not with my official passport and ID, only…”

  “You don’t know if they’re friend or foe yet,” he finished. He put his glasses away. “There must be a way to sneak off the train.”

  She packed the laptop into the duffle bag. “Let’s find out.” She pulled the shapeless black knitted cap out of the pocket on the side of the duffel bag and pulled it on. She tucked her braid inside her sweater.

  They squeezed between the passengers already lingering in the corridor, waiting to get off, moving the length of the carriage, toward the engine. There was only the one first-class car.

  Bright lights shone through the windows, as they pulled into Valence station. It was a hub station, with four major lines radiating from it across southern France and into western Europe. It was well-lit and busy, even at this hour of the night.

  Agata ducked to peer through the windows as the train slowed to a crawl. There were few people standing on the platform itself. This train would not move anywhere else tonight.

  She scanned those who watched the train pull up. No one had white hair. Some were holding placards with names written on them. They would be the private limousine drivers. More stood about with luggage trolleys.

  Agata looked at every single face, even those of the placard holders. It was a different sort of misdirection, to appear as someone who would naturally be in a location. Employees, delivery people, repairmen. Drivers. That no one looked odd or out of place, or too interested in the train, meant nothing.

  They moved up to the door at the far end of the carriage. An attendant stood with his hand on the door lever, waiting for the train to fully stop before opening it and sliding it to one side.

  The train sighed and halted.

  “Wait,” Agata said, as the attendant opened the door and Warren stepped forward.

  Warren glanced at her. “For what?”

  “Just wait,” she breathed, trying to scan everyone on the platform as passengers stepped off the train in a dozen streams. Passengers were stepping around them, using the door they half-blocked, with eye rolls and tsk’ing sounds of annoyance. Agata didn’t care. She could see everyone on the platform from here.

  “We should blend in with them,” Warren breathed.

  “Wait,” Agata repeated, her heart thudding.

  Then she spotted them. The pair looked like an ordinary French couple. Only, they were hurrying toward the platform, almost running. No one should need to run toward the train, as it wasn’t going o
n from here.

  Then the man, who wore small, round glasses, touched the front of his peacoat to stop it gaping open.

  He was hiding his gun.

  Agata jerked forward. “Now,” she warned Warren and stepped into the stream of passengers alighting. More irritated sounds followed them as they moved onto the platform.

  Agata kept her pace the same as everyone else’s, so they blended in. She turned, bringing her shoulder and the back of her head around to face the man and woman now standing at the back of the platform. She turned until she was looking at Warren. “Move up to my side.”

  Warren increased his pace. “You’ve seen something?”

  “At the corner of the far entrance to the platform. Don’t look—you’ll draw attention. Keep me between you and the side of the archway. We’re just talking as we walk. Ease over to the other archway.”

  Warren’s gaze was over her head, lining up the far archway and keeping her in front of it. She saw the steel and glass of the other archway ahead of them. Her heart beat heavily as they drew closer. What would be waiting for them on the public concourse? The white-haired man?

  They moved through the big opening. The shops and cafes and concessions were closing for the night, their steel mesh doors rolling down with heavy metallic crunches. Neon displays turned off, dimming the light in the concourse.

  “To the right,” Agata murmured. She didn’t know what was down there, although there were fewer people and the direction was away from the pair scanning the economy passengers at the other archway.

  The front wall closed in on the other side of the concession stands. These looked as though they had been closed for longer than the stands by the front doors of the station. Some of them were empty, with boards over the front. The boards carried graffiti.

  Then, blank wall. There were a pair of service doors in the wall. She tried both. They were locked.

  Warren pointed. A fire exit door was built into the front corner, which gave access to the street beyond.

  Agata bit her lip. They would be exposed, coming out the door, if the white-haired man waited on the pavement, which was what she would do. Only, the fire exit was three hundred yards from the front doors, which he would naturally monitor.

  “We’ll have to risk it.” She moved to the door and eased down the safety bar. She pulled her Glock from under her sweater and pushed the door open with her shoulder. Warren propped it open with his hand, while she peered through the five inches toward the front entrance.

  Nothing there. No one with white hair or a hat which would disguise it stood waiting at the front.

  She pushed the door open another few inches. Security for the station would be aware by now that the door had been opened. They wouldn’t come to investigate unless an alarm was tripped, too.

  Agata froze, the door opened by eight inches, her gaze rivetted by a dark Citroën with a Hertz sticker on the back window. Steam rose from the tailpipe as it idled beside the pavement across the road. It was in a good position to watch the big circular drive in front of the station, where taxis and private cars moved in a sedate arc to pick up and drop off passengers

  “The Citroën,” she whispered.

  Warren looked over her shoulder.

  “Look in the driver’s mirror,” she added.

  The Citroën had been running for a while, for the mirror was clear of fog. So was the glass in the door. She couldn’t see the driver’s eyes because he looked toward the station. His hair, though, was picked up by the pink arc lights outside the station, because it was pure white.

  Agata realized she had lifted the gun when the sight lined up on the driver’s window. She curled her finger over the trigger. Her heart screamed in her temples and dimmed her hearing, yet she still heard Warren urge her in a low voice. “Take the shot, Kelsey. He would.”

  She put another pound of pressure on the trigger. A little more would send a bullet across the road, to shatter the driver’s window and slam into the man’s temple. Her angle was good.

  “Pedestrians,” she gasped.

  “There’s no one,” Warren said. “Your line of fire is clear. Do it!”

  Agata railed at herself to finish it, to pull the trigger. Her heart hurt. Her chest was locked. Her mind shrieked.

  Her finger would not move.

  The man in the car shifted. The door opened. He got out.

  It was him, for sure. He stared at the station entrance.

  “He’s right there!” Warren ground out.

  Movement at the far corner of her eye shifted Agata’s attention to the front of the station. The man with the glasses and the woman were hurrying from the entrance, heading for the Citroën.

  Agata gasped and lowered the gun. “Damn it!”

  Warren slapped the door. “They’re leaving!”

  Agata pushed the gun into the holster and whirled to face him. Warren looked pissed, which was understandable. She shoved her hand into his pocket, found her keys and pulled them out. She sorted through the big ring, grabbed the tile and tore it from the ring. “Stay here,” she told him.

  She slipped out the door and ran as fast as she could across the snow-brushed concrete apron, the passenger drop-off road between the taxi stand shelters, and across the main road. She threaded through the parked cars onto the sidewalk on that side of the road.

  She ducked and ran bent over along the parked cars, her gaze on the Citroën ahead of her. The other two were nearly at the car. The white-haired man called out something in Russian. Normally, she would have understood it, only he was too far away and the engines of passing traffic muffled his words. Her heart beat distorted her hearing.

  They were getting in the car.

  Agata threw herself forward in a long, shallow dive along the edge of the pavement. She skated the last two feet on her elbows and knees, across rough ice and slush.

  The brake lights flashed as the gear stick ran through the gears and was put into drive. Agata rammed her fingers behind the acrylic all-in-one bumper, and yanked it out from the car far enough to drop the tile inside it.

  The car swung out from the curb, tearing the bumper from her grip.

  Agata gasped and slithered backward until the next car along hid her from the driver’s view in the mirror. She hugged her knees and turned her white face away, so all he would see, if he looked, would be a black shape hunched up against the wheel well.

  A car braked sharply as the driver spotted the convenient parking slot right in front of the station. The car nosed into the space, hiding her.

  Agata pushed to her feet and ran back to the fire exit.

  The door was closed. She rapped on it. Warren immediately opened it. She slipped inside and he shut it again.

  Agata leaned against the wall just inside the door, getting her breath back. She was trembling.

  “What was all that?” Warren demanded. “Why didn’t you just shoot him? Even a superficial wound would have complicated his life for him.”

  Agata rolled her head to the side, to look him in the eye. “How long did you compete in biathlons, Warren? Ten years?”

  “Eleven and a half. Why?”

  “Probably hundreds of shots in that time, right?”

  “Thousands,” he said.

  “And every single one of those shots…not one of them was fired at a real person.”

  She could see he’d got there ahead of her. The fury drained from his eyes. “Not a single shot in competition, no,” he said quietly.

  “Me, neither,” she whispered.

  He let out a heavy breath. “You’re an analyst,” he added, with a tone which said he was reminding himself.

  She closed her eyes. “I froze. I couldn’t do it.”

  Warren stirred. Briefly, his hand rested on her shoulder. “What was the thing with the keys?”

  “Tracking tiles.” She stood and untucked her braid from under her sweater, for her hair scratched her skin and made it itchy. “I bought ‘em on Amazon. They’re supposed to be for fin
ding stuff around the house. Your keys, mostly. I jammed one of them in the Citroën’s bumper.” She pulled out one of the burner phones. “I installed the app on a dark net server.”

  “How far can it track?”

  “As long as the tile is within reach of a satellite, I can locate it anywhere.” She swiped through screens and pulled up the tracker app. A little circle revolved for a moment or two, then a map appeared, with a red dot with a small “2” above it moving along the straight line.

  Valence TGV appeared just beneath the dot.

  “I’m impressed, Kelsey,” Warren said, lifting his head. He gave her a small smile. “What’s the plan now?”

  “Nothing changes,” Agata said. “It’s just me…and you,” she added awkwardly. “This guy is good, Warren. He has all the Kobra’s resources at his disposal, and he’s Russian. He won’t give a damn who gets mowed down when he comes at me. The plan is, we take a roundabout route to Grenoble and stay out of his way until we hook up with Dima. And I’m hoping to hell she has a small army with her, because we’ll need it.”

  [12]

  Valence, Drôme, France. Three hours later.

  The woman paused from repairing her makeup long enough to decode the message and shove the piece of paper at Zima. She pouted, for Zima had not responded to her overt sexual advances, and now she was itching for satisfaction.

  Reno would not be of use to her. He sat in the corner of the dirty room, his head back, his bare arm still propped upon his knee, his eyes closed behind the glasses. The syringe had dropped from his nerveless fingers and cluttered up the floor, which irritated Zima. Reno was not in a state to cater to Zima’s sensibilities, though.

  Zima carried the note into the other room. This was ostensibly the bedroom, although it only contained a couch which folded out into a lumpy, sprung bed. It explained why the hotel had few guests during one of the peak tourist seasons.

  He opened the paper and read the script, his heart sinking.

  The Kobra was unhappy they had missed the pair at the station. Zima could read his disappointment between the clipped text. Of course he was upset. Zima would be upset, too. It was inconceivable the pair would anticipate Zima following them to Valance. Once upon the train, they should have considered themselves free and clear and let down their guard.