Then the boy put the rabbit down, drying his wet thumb in the armpit of his pajamas. “My name is Harry. I’m on vacation with my mother and father, who are sleeping in the next compartment, so you’d better not try anything funny. My rabbit’s name is Henri. Do you like him? I do. Are we in France yet? What is France?”
Finn held her finger to her lips. “Shhhh,” she whispered and smiled at the little boy. He didn’t smile back.
“Why should I shhhhh? You’re not my father or my mother. I don’t have to do as you say.” Young Harry poked Henri in the stomach again and the bunny repeated his suggestion. Hilts leaned in over Finn’s shoulder.
“I’m not your mommy or your daddy, but if you don’t be quiet and go back to sleep I’m going to twist your stupid rabbit’s head off and cook him up in a frying pan over a red-hot fire for breakfast, okay?”
Silently the boy and Henri retreated behind the curtain, which closed with a swish. Hilts gestured toward the lower bunk directly opposite. Finn slid into the bed and Hilts came in after her. He scrunched around so that he could look back through a crack in the curtains. They could hear a faint sniffling sound coming from the other side of the compartment.
“You didn’t have to be so hard on him,” whispered Finn.
“It worked, didn’t it?” Hilts said. “Besides, the rabbit was a pervert.” Suddenly Hilts pushed himself back onto the berth, squeezing Finn against the rear wall of the compartment. He eased the curtain completely closed. It was pitch-black in the berth. Finn could feel the hard muscles of the photographer’s back against her chest and wondered if he could feel the pounding of her heart. She heard the sound of the compartment door opening. She knew if it was Harry’s mother coming to check on the boy then they were doomed. There was silence for a few seconds, and then a voice.
“Bonjour, mon ami, my name is Henri. Would you like to come fishing with me?”
Finn froze, waiting, wondering if Badir was armed. There were a few whispers and then silence again. A second or two passed and then Finn heard the compartment door open and shut again. The train began to slow. In the darkness Finn felt Hilts slip off the bunk. She followed him out into the cramped, eight-bunk compartment. Hilts opened the sliding door and peered out. In the spill of blue light Finn could see Henri staring at them from between the curtains across the aisle. Hilts turned back to Finn.
“All clear,” he whispered. “Looks like we gave him the slip.” He stepped out of the compartment. Finn patted Henri between the ears.
“You did good, rabbit,” she said and grinned. Henri was silent. Finn followed Hilts out of the room. Ahead of her he opened the door at the end of the car and motioned her forward, and she stepped into the small area between the cars.
“He’s somewhere up ahead, I think,” said Hilts.
Finn nodded and Hilts threw open the door of the train car. He jumped down to the ground without letting down the short flight of metal stairs built into the car and looked left and right. Satisfied, he gestured to Finn, and she dropped down to the concrete platform. She shivered. Even in midsummer it was cold this high in the mountains. She stifled a sneeze. Ragweed. The air was full of pollen.
“I don’t see him,” Hilts said quietly.
Finn looked up the platform. At the head of the train she could make out a small cluster of figures. The train crews changing. There was no one else on the platform. She could see the station, a long, alpine-roofed chalet-style building with a quarried stone foundation. Behind it, a hundred yards away, was a modern building about ten stories high. A hotel perhaps. Beyond were the huge dark shapes of the Haute Maurienne, the sharp-toothed chain of mountains that marked the border between France and Italy and the southern edge of what had once been the infamous Maginot Line, the hugely expensive and utterly useless chain of defenses that was supposed to protect France from her enemies prior to the savage wake-up call that had been World War Two.
“Which way?” said Finn.
“There.” Hilts pointed to the near end of the building and they ran, reaching the shadows and pausing to look up the platform again. Still no sign of Badir, or anyone else. There was a whistle shriek, then the train lurched and began to move.
“We did it,” said Finn, exultant.
As she spoke a figure appeared in the open door of the sleeping carriage, crouched, and then jumped as the train began to gather speed.
“No suck luck,” said Hilts.
“Now what?”
“Find some transportation out of here.”
They slipped around the rear of the building and found another set of tracks between them and the roadway. Finn could see a second station building and the hotel complex behind it. There was a parking lot to the right of the station with half a dozen cars. Hilts peeked around the corner of the building, then turned back to Finn.
“He’s going the other way, come on.”
They turned and ran, jumping off the concrete platform, slipping on the wet gravel of the roadbed, then hopping across the tracks. They reached the far platform and ducked behind it. Hilts waited for a long moment then checked to see if Badir was following.
“Still no sign of him. Maybe we got lucky.”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
They headed to the parking lot beside the darkened station building, ducking low. Hilts went from car to car, checking through the windows. Finn chose a vantage point and kept her eyes on the tracks and the larger station building beyond, watching for Badir. There were a few tall pole lamps, but half of them had shattered bulbs and the whole platform area was in shadow. Across the road the hotel was a brightly lit beacon by comparison. She could see the sign over the door: HOTEL OLYMPIC.
She suddenly had an aromatic vision of Jack and Benny’s, a greasy spoon near the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus. Breakfast. Perfectly cooked bacon and eggs, eggs over easy, bacon crisp, home fries, toast with strawberry jam and coffee. Her stomach rumbled. She couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten. Somewhere on the road between the old man’s villa and Milan. Hilts came back.
“What is it with this place? Every car’s got an alarm. I break in we’re going to wake up the entire neighborhood.”
Finn heard the crunch of gravel and a voice spoke out of the darkness.
“Please keep your hands where I can see them.”
She froze. A figure stepped out of the shadows. Badir, with a gun in his hand. A small, flat automatic.
“You will step back this way, out of the light.”
“And if we don’t?” Hilts said.
“Then I will shoot you.”
“Somebody will hear the shot.”
“You will be dead, however. You will not care if the sound disturbs anyone.” Badir smiled.
“Why are you doing this?” Finn asked.
“Because I am paid to do it.”
“By Adamson?” asked Hilts.
“This way.” Badir waved the gun. “Back.”
“Screw you.”
A car drove into the parking lot, its lights sweeping across the three figures. Badir dropped his hand, hiding the gun at his side. He stepped back into the shadows, invisible again. Hilts and Finn stayed where they were. The car pulled in to a parking spot. The engine died, the lights went off, and a short, pudgy figure climbed out of the car. The man made a great production out of locking the vehicle, then walked toward Finn and Hilts. From a few feet away she could hear Badir’s indrawn breath and she knew that the little man with the car was as good as dead. The little man continued forward, then casually lifted his arm, as though he was going to wave hello. Instead he pointed toward the shadows and a bright flash seemed to erupt from his outstretched hand, followed by a small popping noise, as though someone had exploded a damp paper bag. The first flash-bang was followed almost instantly by a second. Finn heard a sound like air going out of a tire and Badir fell forward into the light. There was a small round hole just above the bridge of his nose and his right eye was a gory mess. The pudgy little man u
nscrewed the suppressor from his Stechkin APS pistol and dropped the gun and silencer into the pockets of his old tweed jacket.
“Bring him round to the boot, would you?” said Arthur Simpson in a mild tone. “I’m far too old to be lugging corpses about. Plays bloody hell with my lumbago, what?” He smiled, eyes twinkling behind the thick lenses of the wire-rimmed glasses. Finn stared down at Badir. Shortsighted or not it had been amazing shooting, especially in the dark.
“I think you’d better tell us who you are first,” said Hilts.
“I think you’d better think again, young fellow. Don’t want to be found with the dead body of a Libyan thug at your feet, do you? The local gendarmerie would most likely have some rather awkward questions for a pair of fleeing terrorists already wanted for murder.”
“His name is Simpson,” said Finn. “And he’s got a point.”
“You know this guy?”
“We met in Cairo.”
“Nice friends you’ve got.”
“I seem to have rendered myself useful,” Simpson said defensively.
Hilts gave him a long look, then bent down and picked up Badir under the armpits. Finn stepped forward and grabbed the body by the heels. They lugged him across the parking lot to Simpson’s car, a nondescript nineties Mercedes 240D. Simpson opened the trunk and stepped back.
“Mind he doesn’t drip on the carpets.”
“Your car?” asked Hilts. He and Finn dropped Badir. Simpson closed the trunk.
“Stole it from the hotel,” the white-haired man said. “Just in the nick of time apparently.” He went around to the driver’s side, opened the doors, and got behind the wheel. Finn got into the front seat and Hilts climbed in the back.
“How did you know we’d be here?” Hilts asked, closing his door.
“I’ve been following you since you left Venosa,” said Simpson. He started the car, put it in reverse and turned the car around. He stopped, put the shift lever into first, then drove quietly out of the parking lot, turning left and driving right by the hotel where he’d stolen the vehicle. “I saw the fellow in the trunk shadowing you at the station in Milan and started tailing him. Thought I might be of assistance.” They were out of the lights in the valley, swallowed by the night. They drove on for a few minutes, then turned off the highway onto a narrow secondary road that led up into the looming mountains.
“Where are we going, if you don’t mind me asking?” Hilts queried.
“Up,” said Simpson. “And back.”
They drove for the next twenty minutes, the headlights of the old Mercedes revealing a narrow gravel road and a cliff on one side, a low guardrail and a dark abyss on the other. They finally reached a widening of the road like a small plateau on the mountainside, and at first Finn thought it was some kind of lookout designed for tourists.
“Now where are we?” Hilts asked sourly as they pulled off the road.
“Halfway up Les Sarrasins,” replied Simpson in an excellent French accent. “A mountain.”
The headlights washed over a strange, bulbous-looking structure seemingly built right into the side of the mountain. There was a dry stone wall on either side of the concrete bulge, and in the middle of that was a large steel door studded with huge rivets. The structure was clearly very old, the ancient cement dark and spawled, the faзade crumbled, the doorway caked with rust.
“What’s that?” Finn said.
“Technically it’s referred to as un gros ouvrage, a large fortification. An underground fort containing roughly three hundred and fifty men. This is the main entrance. If you look closely you’ll see what’s left of the narrow-gauge railway tracks that used to bring ammunition and supplies up. There are several miles of tunnels and pillboxes cut into the rock. From here they could pick off anybody coming up the valley. On the backside there’s a route the climbers call the Observatory. Well named. It was designed to be an early-warning outpost for an Italian invasion.” Simpson shook his head. “Never happened, of course. Mussolini had many qualities but bottle wasn’t one of them.”
“Bottle?” said Hilts.
“Courage,” answered Simpson. “What you Yanks generally refer to as balls.” The potbellied man in the tweed jacket pulled the Mercedes to a halt and switched off the engine. He left the headlights on, pointing directly at the rivet-pebbled iron door.
“Why dump our friend in the trunk here?” asked Hilts.
“It’s really quite difficult to dispose of a body these days,” said the elderly man. He leaned across the seat and fished a flashlight out of the glove compartment, then got out of the car. Finn and Hilts climbed out after him and went around to the trunk. “Police everywhere, closed-circuit cameras, quality-control officers in the meatpacking plants. Hard to get any kind of privacy.” Simpson opened the trunk and glanced down at Badir. “Your average forensic expert will have a field day with him once he’s discovered. Not like the old days. Bodies floating down the Seine and up the Spree and no one really took a second look.”
Together Hilts and Finn swung the body out of the car and manhandled it to the big iron door under Simpson’s direction. The door was actually slightly ajar and it was easy enough to get it open. Stepping inside, Hilts swung the flashlight around. Except for the concrete floor the entire vestibule was sheathed in the same studded iron as the door, walls, ceiling, and floor. It was like being in the belly of an old battleship.
“Down the stairs,” instructed Simpson, pointing with the flashlight. At the far end of the twenty-by-twenty-foot room was a massive cage elevator, like something out of a coal mine. Beside it was a circular staircase. Simpson went down first to light the way while Finn and Hilts followed with Badir, grunting under the deadweight.
“You really think he’s going to be found in a place like this?” Hilts panted. “I mean, who the hell even knows this place exists?”
“Oh, good Lord! Thousands of people. Bunker freaks, military types, engineers.”
“Bunker freaks?”
“Rather like people who play video games or chart the lives of serial killers on the Internet, then chat about it. Obsessive. There’s a whole raft of them who make pilgrimages to old underground installations all over the world. They organize tours.”
“How did you know about it?” Finn asked. “Are you, ah, a bunker freak by any chance?”
“I’ve been here before, actually,” Simpson answered. They reached the next level. It was a long, low-ceilinged tunnel that led off left and right. Like the room upstairs, this one was sheathed in iron plate. A set of miniature railway tracks ran down the center of the concrete floor. There was garbage everywhere, fast-food containers, beer cans, and broken bottles. Someone had made a makeshift bar in one corner and there was a rotting old mattress against the far wall. “I came here with Bernal and Solly Zuckerman before the war.”
“Bernal?” said Hilts. “Solly Zuckerman?” He and Finn swung Badir onto the mattress with a thump. Finn shuddered and wiped her hands against her jeans. The iron room was cold and drafty, a fitting tomb.
“John Bernal. He was the man who started me spying at Cambridge. He was also my physics tutor. Solly Zuckerman was an expert in primate anatomy at Oxford. Strange pair.”
“What were a primate anatomist from Oxford and a Cambridge physicist doing in an old bunker in France?” Finn asked.
“Blowing up monkeys to see what happened,” said Simpson. He slipped on a pair of thin leather gloves and started covering Badir with a layer of rubbish. “It was 1938. They were in charge of designing air-raid shelters for the War Office. I think Bernal was talking to agents from Moscow as well. Topping the local birds as well, sly old fox he was. I was their assistant. Their young red acolyte, you might say.”
“What did you do for them?” said Hilts.
“I was the one who actually blew up the monkeys,” Simpson replied, tossing an old square of cardboard over the dead man’s ruined face. “Set the charges and all of that. Messy business. Monkey brains all over everything.” He looked
down at Badir. The man was almost completely covered with litter. Simpson nodded. “He’ll keep well enough. Hopefully the rats will do some damage, delay identification for a bit.” The white-haired man glanced at his two companions. “Presumably you didn’t think to pick up your passports when you flitted from Milan.”
“No,” said Hilts. “We were in a bit of a rush.”
“Never mind, young fellow. I know a man down the road in Aix-les-Bains who can fix you up with new ones.”
24
The first person to see Aix-les-Bains for what it was worth was probably a Roman centurion on his way into Gaul from Italy to conquer the unruly barbarians. When he mustered out of the army he returned to the pretty lakeside spot, built a pool over the hot springs, called it Aquae Grantianae, and a tradition was born.
Located under the shadow of Mount Revard by the shores of Lake Bourget, the largest body of fresh water in France, the little town of Aix-les-Bains has been soothing the arthritic joints of its wealthy patrons for the last two thousand years. It came into particular favor in the 1880s after a visit from Queen Victoria of England. She decided she liked it so much Her Royal Majesty attempted to buy it from the French government. They graciously declined, then built a casino and a racetrack to further fleece the charming resort’s guests, renaming the hot springs Royale-les-Bains.
Special trains arrived from Paris full of high society who came to paddle on the plage. Steamers churned their way across the English Channel, filled with the straw hat and tennis set intent on wiling away the hot summer months in the refreshing alpine air as wives cheated on husbands, husbands on wives, and best friends on each other while Clara Butt sang “The Keys of Heaven” on the gramophone. It was La Belle Epoque and as with all Йpoques it faded away like an old soldier, the gilt in the ceilings beginning to peel, the marble floors cracking, and the pipes carrying the hot-spring water making a terrible clanking noise and sounding much like the joints of the patrons it had once serviced. The small and ancient town hidden away in the mountains was virtually forgotten, which was exactly why Mr. Liam Alexander Pyx, the document provider, lived there; that and the town’s proximity to his numbered bank accounts less than a hundred miles away in Geneva, Switzerland.
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