by Helena Maeve
Robin didn’t honor the question with a reply. “Take a left here.”
“Can’t, it’s a one-way street—hey!”
Undeterred, Robin seized the steering wheel and yanked, forcing the Ford into a sudden forty-five degree turn. Suspensions creaked in protest. Ulysses reclaimed control of the car just in time to stop them clipping the headlights of a parked Citroën. It didn’t do much good for the Citroën—it was a neon monstrosity, badly scratched and generously festooned with bird droppings—but Ulysses was particular about the Ford. He’d read the fine print. There was a twenty percent charge if he so much as dented the bumper.
“Have you lost your bloody mind? What the fuck?”
“Look,” Robin gritted out, jerking his chin to the rear view mirror.
The sedan had pulled the same illegal turn and was closing in, too deliberate for chance.
“All right… So it’s not some random French motorist.” Ulysses sucked in a deep breath, striving for calm. He’d never been in a car chase before, but he’d seen a few in the movies. They usually involved slightly better cars, though, and slightly larger streets. “Friends of yours?”
“Doubt it.”
“It occurs to me I don’t know anything about you, darling. You could be a drug dealer.”
Robin scoffed, unraveling the paper map.
“Bank robber wanted by Interpol?”
“Nobody robs banks anymore,” he muttered under his breath. “Next right. We’re gonna lose them on the highway.”
Ulysses leaned on the accelerator out of instinct more than logic. He didn’t know what Robin was about, but he had an inkling he didn’t want to find out while they were being pursued. “Sounds exciting. And who are ‘they’, again?”
Before Robin could reply, another car slid to a tire-squealing stop at the far end of the street, blocking their exit. Ulysses slammed his foot on the brakes with all his might. The Ford slid to an abrupt stop, screeching on wet asphalt but somehow avoiding the thump of steel against steel. Momentum shoved Ulysses forward. He hit the steering wheel with his cheek, grunting.
Could be worse.
“You okay?” Ulysses bit out, pulse drumming in his ears.
Robin shot him a bleak look.
Ulysses couldn’t make sense of it. He reached to adjust his glasses just as the passenger side door swung open.
Gloved hands reached into the car to seize Robin’s shoulder.
Ulysses opened his mouth to protest, understanding sinking like a stone in his knees. Distantly, he registered the sound of his own door clicking open, the Ford rattling. A clap of thunder rang overhead.
Robin twisted, swinging with his left fist as he was wrenched from the leather seat. It was already too late.
A shout built in Ulysses’ throat. If he couldn’t break free, at least he could draw enough attention that someone in this damn town would report the kidnapping. Ulysses’ world went dark. He choked on air, stumbling over his own feet as he was pushed farther and farther from the car. Rain spattered his ankles when he stepped into a puddle.
He seized hold of a jacket sleeve, but it was a useless anchor. The next thing he knew, he was being shoved to his front into a musty back seat, a cold barrel digging into the back of his neck.
“Drive,” someone bellowed.
An engine revved. Ulysses breathed in darkness and thin cotton, his hands twisted behind him at an awkward angle. His stomach lurched into his diaphragm as he struggled to make sense of what was happening.
The only thing he could think of was that Robin had known. Or suspected. Robin had attempted to warn him. And now Robin was gone.
Chapter Three
In the same way that he was sometimes aware of light creeping in through the shutters when he wanted to sleep, or the way he’d always known that Claudia was up by the clacking of a keyboard rather than the smell of coffee, Ulysses abruptly discovered that he was no longer horizontal. He felt around with his feet, tracing his toes over ground that seemed more uneven than smooth, and discovered a grove. Then another.
It took him a moment to realize that his shoes were gone. So was his jacket. By some miracle, he still had his rain-soaked shirt on, the damp cotton sticky against his back.
“You drugged him?” someone asked, disbelief thickening a voice Ulysses only vaguely recognized.
“Spare me,” another replied. “If you did your due diligence, we wouldn’t have had to take him at all.”
It took Ulysses a long beat to blink his eyes open and realize the hood he’d been wearing was gone. The same was true of the handcuffs around his wrists. Someone had dropped him onto a sofa. Paisley upholstery flashed into view, the fabric rent in two places, possibly clawed by bored pets.
“How could I know you were coming, Jules? This isn’t your turf. The last time—”
“Heads up,” a man muttered.
He was close enough that Ulysses felt his shadow drape across the back of the couch.
“Your boy is awake.”
His cover blown, Ulysses blinked up. The speaker was bull-necked and broad-shouldered, a pair of wireless glasses perched the bridge of his nose. He put Ulysses in mind of a cartoon mammoth, some large and furry creature that would eagerly stomp those who treaded on its nerves.
“Boy?” Ulysses repeated, pinning an arm against the backrest of the couch and pushing himself upright. His mouth was dry, but it could still drip contempt.
He took in the scene with a reporter’s eye. First thing—the setting. Shabby apartment, dormer windows festooned with ugly maroon curtains. A sunken couch amid a plethora of mismatched furniture. Cat scratches on the carpet. Then he zeroed in on the cast—two men and one woman, one of whom Ulysses already knew.
“Robin?”
“Robin?” the woman repeated. “What, like Batman’s sidekick?”
The man himself ignored the quip. He crossed the narrow expanse of the room to perch on the coffee table in front of Ulysses. “It’s okay…”
He’d started to reach for him when Ulysses flinched.
Wisely, Robin aborted the attempt. “You’re okay. I know them.”
“I thought you said they weren’t your friends. What is this, then? Some sort of kidnapping plot? Because not to upset your plans, but I’m not exactly swimming in cash right now…”
“You’re not being abducted,” Robin assured him.
“No shit,” his friend scoffed. “Who’d we sell you to? Human slavery rings are so choosy these days.” He extended a hand over the back of the couch. “Manuel. And that beaming ray of sunshine over there is Jules.”
The woman flicked three fingers in a mocking wave. The other two had been severed at the last knuckle. She was short and skinny, her buzz cut giving her the allure of a sterner Demi Moore in that army movie.
“Charmed,” Ulysses drawled. His temples throbbed, dread doing little to ward off a headache. “And now that we’ve been introduced, what the fuck is this? Where am I?”
“Safe house,” said Manuel.
“None of your business,” Jules added helpfully.
They traded the kind of look that didn’t require words. Eventually, Jules sighed, threw up her hands, and stalked away. Manuel fell silent.
It didn’t escape Ulysses that Jules had positioned herself between him and the door. Getting out meant getting through her. No matter how skinny she might have been, he didn’t relish the prospect.
Robin scraped his palms together, tucking his shoulders in. “Remember how I told you to stop asking questions about the guy in the theater? I wasn’t messing with you. He was involved with some pretty dangerous people—”
“You mean he was a spy.”
If any doubt still persisted, being abducted, drugged and taken to an undisclosed location—which couldn’t be that far from Criel-sur-Mer, judging by the amber glow of the moon through grimy windows and the rain that was still pissing down in sullen streaks onto the glass—cleared them all away. When no confirmation or denial came from the trio,
Ulysses went on.
“You know I was in Rome,” he said, to Robin. “You know what I do for a living… I can only assume you’ve been keeping tabs because you know I’m on to something here. Secret agents are dropping like flies all over the continent, aren’t they?”
Silence hung thick as a blanket over the room. Then something moved in the corner. Ulysses flinched, nerves frayed, and promptly felt like an idiot. A plump orange tabby hopped onto the couch beside him, swishing its tail this way and that. It took him in with very large eyes, but kept its distance, wary.
“Who’s this?” Ulysses wondered. “The bad cop?”
“I’ll ask the landlady.”
“Jules—” Robin’s sigh fell on deaf ears.
The door creaked shut in her wake.
“Trouble in paradise?” guessed Ulysses
Robin glowered, squinting narrow eyes at Ulysses until he glanced away. “Look, you may think this is about covert ops and assassins. It’s not.”
“Suicides, then? We are a nation of depressives, it’s true. Must be all the bloody rain…”
“Survival,” Manuel corrected. He’d retreated to the far end of the room, one massive shoulder pinned against the window jamb. He nearly blotted out the view.
Ulysses tasted bile on the back of his tongue. Whatever they’d given him, it hadn’t done his stomach any favors. “Are you…are you killing them?”
“No,” Robin’s fervent denial frightened the cat, which leaped off the couch again with a sullen hiss. “No,” he repeated more softly. “Of course not.”
“But you know who is.”
Robin glanced to the window, but there was no encouragement from Manuel.
“What? If you tell me, you’ll have to kill me? Is that it?” Ulysses dragged a hand through his thinning hair. He should have gotten a haircut before he embarked on this harebrained story. He should have phoned Claudia when he had the chance, packed up his bags. Gone home. “You know I’ll go to the police the minute you release me.”
“You’re free to go now if that’s what you want,” Robin said, though they both knew it wasn’t true. “But you know the police won’t help you.”
“Do I?”
Robin nodded, very slowly, just the once. “Who was it that erased all trace of your John Doe?”
“For all I know? You and your fellow musketeers.”
“Musketeers, huh?” Manuel harrumphed. “I like that.
Robin’s gaze was mild, his smile less so. “And here I thought you were an intelligent man, Mr. Leach…”
“Oh, I think we’re on a first name basis,” said Ulysses dryly. What with you shoving you hand down my pants and all…
He yearned for some acknowledgment from Robin that their tryst wasn’t some fever dream. None came.
“All right.” Robin rested his elbows on his knees. “Let’s say John Doe was a spy. You’ve been to the playhouse. What did you see?”
Ulysses cast his mind back to yesterday’s fruitless search. The Marcel Carné theater had fallen into ruin sometime in the late seventies. With no money to refurbish or demolish the building, the locale languished on the edge of Criel-sur-Mer, festooned with cobwebs and hazardous to any who ventured inside. Ulysses had done so using his mobile as a light and emerged disappointed.
“I don’t recall,” he demurred.
“No gun, no suicide note. No footprints in the dust, right?” Robin summarized on his behalf.
“Sounds like you checked it out yourself.”
Robin was not so easily rattled. He narrowed his eyes. “Do you remember the blood spatter?”
“Yes.” Ulysses saw no reason to tell Robin that he’d snapped a few photos of the grisly stains on the half rotted boards. The brief flicker of excitement he’d felt at their discovery had faded as soon as he realized they could belong to any visitor, in any of the forty years since the closure of the theater.
The absence of footprints of any kind had been slightly more concerning.
“Blood and a dead body,” Robin surmised, “but no tracks, no bullet casing. No gun.”
“I agree that it makes for one strange suicide… That was your theory, wasn’t it?”
“The alternative is that he was killed and someone went to great pains to erase the evidence.” Robin laced his fingers. “If we’re talking about a spy, that leaves you with two options. One, a rival agency. Two, their own guys doing a little spring cleaning.”
“Could be transient,” said Manuel. “Accidents do happen.”
Ulysses hitched up his eyebrows. “You wouldn’t have dragged me all the way here if this was an accident.”
“Suppose there’s a contingent of people who have, for one reason or another, broken away from their employers. Gone rogue, you might say.”
“Do away with the euphemisms,” Ulysses groaned. “I’m still dizzy from whatever it is you gave me.” He was going to have a panic attack about that later, once he was safely far away from Robin and his merry band of nutcases.
Robin pursed his lips. “What happened to John Doe was spy against spy. That’s all. A tragedy, but an unavoidable one. It’s best if you let sleeping dogs lie.”
“And the reason I should believe you is?”
“Because I’m like him. Or I was,” Robin corrected, reaching down to pet the tomcat that couldn’t seem to keep its distance. For a moment, his expression was soft, an absentminded smile playing across his lips. Ulysses saw shades of the man he’d met in the bar in the dimpled slant of Robin’s cheeks.
Then the penny dropped.
“You’re involved.” You covered it up. “The theater is a black site.” The rumor that CIA and MI6 used secret locations around the world to torture and kill persons of interests had become something of an open secret since the Iraq war. Ulysses had never seen one with his own eyes—or at least not knowingly.
For obvious reasons, spy agencies didn’t exactly advertise their foreign workspaces.
“I was,” Robin corrected. He flicked up a glance. “Jules and Manuel—”
“Are not here to take long strolls down memory lane,” the other man said, turning to face them. “We don’t have much time. They’re still here and they know someone’s been asking questions. If they bring him in…” He fixed Robin with a stern look.
Ulysses frowned. “I still don’t understand. Who’re they?”
“My former employers,” Robin answered grimly. “And your interest in seemingly unrelated murders in Moscow and Rome has them very concerned.”
This was madness. Too many drugs, too many Hollywood movies—too much media saturation with the likes of Snowden and Manning. Ulysses held up his hands.
“I give up. You’re pulling my leg here, aren’t you? Claudia put you up to it.” He heard the tinny thread of hysteria in his voice and struggled to banish it. “If any of this were true, you wouldn’t be talking to a reporter. You’d have a gun to my head and you’d be telling me to keep my mouth shut or else.”
Car chase notwithstanding, the day was running surprisingly light on threats so far.
“That can be arranged,” Manuel offered, one corner of his mouth twitching up.
It might have been funny, if Ulysses’ patience wasn’t already in such short supply. He pushed himself up from the couch. “You can go to hell.”
“Wait—”
Robin made to catch his arm, but Ulysses wrenched free before he could snag hold of his sleeve. They stared at one another for a brief, tenuous moment. Then Robin held up his palms in a gesture of surrender.
“You should leave France. Right now.”
“And run back to London? Yes, I’m sure the SIS won’t find me there,” Ulysses scoffed.
“You’ll have less chance of disappearing over there. Your ex-wife—”
Ulysses held up a hand. “I’ve heard enough, thanks. Hope you enjoy the… What was it you called it? My little exposé?”
“Damn it, you can’t go to print with this.”
“Watch me.”
The last thing Ulysses saw before he stalked out the door and made for the stairs was Robin with his eyes closed and his shoulders slumped, the picture of defeat. He spurred his steps, just in case his new friends decided they wanted to keep him around.
Chapter Four
It was little consolation to find that he was right about the safe house not being far from Criel-sur-Mer. Robin’s buddies had driven them to the edge of town, to a remote, stone lodging house that had seen better days. What little Ulysses could see of the façade through the climbing ivy was crumbling, paint and plaster peeling in fist-size chunks.
Wind and rain battered the windows, strafing the potted azaleas that bracketed the door.
All things considered, it wasn’t the most horrible place Ulysses could’ve woken in. He didn’t stick around long enough to admire the view.
He zoomed along the coast, the Ford whining through the turns as Ulysses gunned the engine a little faster than was strictly necessary. Runoff streamed up the windshield. Puddles splashed the sides of the car whenever he rolled into a pothole. There were many along the road to Gatinau, most of them impossible to miss in such foul weather.
The heave and wobble of the car was barely noticeable after the evening he’d had.
Robin, he decided, was insane. So were his friends. This whole thing was completely mad.
And, finally, Ulysses had had enough.
He eased off the gas when the train tracks came into view. Past the station, under the overpass, speed restrictions abounded. Despite his professional disregard for authority, Ulysses had never mastered the art of turning a blind eye to the law. He kept an eye on the speedometer, just in case.
Criel-sur-Mer’s crooked lanes were replicated here on a larger scale. Gatinau had been just as meandering once, but the war had made room for much-needed urban planning. Now the streets widened enough for two cars to pass abreast, which naturally meant that the locals had blocked one half of any roadway with their parked vehicles and the other with bicycles.
Ulysses squeezed the steering wheel with both hands. He’d been content to claim Claudia was the temperamental one in their marriage, but since the divorce it wasn’t such a handy excuse. Now he traveled alone and faced disappointments all by his lonesome.