“You know I can’t do that.”
“No, Evangeline, I mean it,” he called, reaching for her as she spun away and melted into the crowd.
He couldn’t follow her. He had a job to do. So he left, too, following Ménellier’s lackey out the main door. Once outside, the hook-nosed man gestured to a black Jaguar with thoroughly blackened windows parked at the end of the block. McCrea walked to it, but paused outside the car to check his pockets for toothpicks, fully expecting to find one. He didn’t.
But he did turn up a loose button, small, black, and plastic, that didn’t belong to him. It barely registered; he’d expected Evangeline to tag him again. If he hadn’t found something, he’d have been more concerned and wondered where she’d hidden it.
After crunching the button underfoot, he kicked it into a storm drain. Satisfied, he stepped into the sedan’s slick back compartment, unsurprised to see Ménellier already inside.
“What happened in there?” the Frenchman said, chuckling.
McCrea straightened his cuffs. “You’re late.”
Ménellier shrugged. “My contact can’t be rushed. Sounds like you didn’t have trouble passing the time, at any rate. Who was she? Did you really fight Penard for her hand? How gallant of you.”
“Do you have my answer?”
“Ah, that. Yes. He won’t talk over the phone. You must conduct your business in person.” Ménellier shook his head, surprised. “He’ll see you. I don’t know why, but he will. You’re a lucky man.”
“No such thing as luck. Give me the details.”
Ménellier spoke low. “I’ll text you directions for your meeting, along with a link to the bank account to which you can wire money for my services. This is a favor, of course, but I trust you’ll send a reasonable amount to compensate me for my trouble?”
“Of course.”
“Good. And my friend, when you visit this man, don’t bring anything he might find objectionable. He’s rather particular about who he sees.”
“I’ll be meeting with Lukas Kral? No more middlemen?”
Ménellier smiled, his perfect teeth twinkling like fairy lights in the shadowed backseat. “I cannot say. I’m sorry, but those are the rules. His rules.”
“I don’t like meeting with ghosts.”
“If I told you any more, I’d be a ghost myself before sunrise.”
McCrea departed after a handshake. He found his own driver and car waiting nearby. After directing the man to take him back to the hotel, he sat alone in the back, glad to have achieved this next level of knowledge regarding the smuggling ring, although unnerved by his dance with Evangeline. For her sake, he hoped she’d heed his advice and stay away, but he doubted she would. The CIA never gave up once it got a bone between its teeth.
Evangeline’s footfalls reverberated in the narrow street as she trotted around the factory from one of Avarice’s many back doors. She touched the rawness of the skin around her mouth from the sandpaper of McCrea’s half-day-old beard. The sensation heated her core.
It shouldn’t. But it did.
She liked him, that’s why. Pure and simple. When she was with him, she didn’t feel so alone. In all the nights she’d lain by herself in her bed, wondering if anyone would ever understand the life she led, she never imagined she’d find companionship in the arms of a criminal.
Except, he didn’t seem that criminal when he’d come running to rescue her from Penard. Had possessiveness or honor propelled him to her aid?
Did it even matter?
She reached the corner of the building and slowed to a walk. Edging around the corner, she peered down Rue Jobin, trying to spot McCrea among the scattered groups of people milling in the street.
The man was a crook, however gentlemanly his actions toward her had been. And even if he wasn’t such a terrible person, it wouldn’t matter. He was her first and best shot at taking down Lukas Kral. She could have no soft spot for anyone who stood between her and the man responsible for killing her parents.
Evangeline the Avenger, indeed. How right he’d been.
She tugged her bag off her wrist and pulled out her phone to dial Mason.
“Status?” he said.
“At Avarice. Found him. Lost him. Now I’m looking for him.” With her eyes hunting for her prey, her toes splashed into a puddle. Water soaked the leather sole of her designer shoes. “Track the button. I planted it on him.”
“He got rid of the toothpick you pinned on him last night. I retrieved it this morning from a stairwell in his hotel. He’s unlikely to be fooled twice by the same ruse from you.”
She cursed. “Last I saw, he was heading to another meeting with Ménellier. I couldn’t just run after him.”
“Inside the club?”
“No, they left out the main entrance. A man with a hooked nose retrieved him and said Ménellier had already sent him a message.” She took a wide berth around a young woman crouched on all fours in the gutter, a girlfriend holding back her hair as she heaved her insides out.
“We don’t have a line on his cell yet.” Mason paused. “And the button is no longer transmitting, which means he’s found it, and he knows you’re still after him. If his hands aren’t about to close around your throat, then I suspect he’s not who we think he is.”
She scanned the dark block behind her, but saw only drunken revelers. The street ahead was similarly populated. McCrea was gone. “You could be right. He’s not fitting the profile for a gunrunner.”
“You’re sure he’s Scottish?”
“Unless he’s faking that Glasgow accent, which I admit is a possibility. You think he’s MI6?”
“It’s a start. I have a few calls to make. We need to meet.”
“At the storehouse?”
“No. Miel. Two hours. Run a good SDR to get there.”
Running a surveillance detection route at midnight wasn’t the way she wanted to spend the gap between now and the meeting time—she’d rather park near McCrea’s hotel and see if he popped up again—but Mason was right, as usual. With as many risks as she’d already taken today, she needed to be sure nobody tailed her to Mason.
She sauntered toward her car, a cheap silver hatchback that was relentlessly common in the city and earned her no extra attention, at least as long as she kept its little secret under wraps. For although it looked like a starter car, if pressed, the hatchback’s customized turbo engine would outrun any other vehicle on these narrow, old streets. She’d bought it off a club kid when she’d first moved to town. He’d been crazy for street racing. So was she, but as far as the CIA was concerned, the turbo boost was for outrunning hostile operatives. Beating locals in souped-up Toyotas off the line was a side benefit she didn’t bother to detail in her report.
A quick beep of the remote unlocked the door, but more critically, activated two CIA-installed sensors: one that could detect the chemical signatures of nitrogen- and chlorine-potassium-based explosive chemicals commonly used to detonate cars, and another that registered any digital signals originating from the vehicle, which would indicate that a GPS tracer had been installed on her car. The process took seconds, and if the system found anything, it would relock the doors before she could open them. When she grasped the warm chrome handle, the door opened smoothly. No bombs or bugs today, then.
She slid into the driver’s seat and rubbed her bare shoulders against the smooth leather—a nice non-CIA upgrade, courtesy of that club kid. The engine snarled to life with a quick flick of her wrist. She gripped the rounded head of the gearshift and slid the transmission into first. The subcompact tore out of its parking spot and around the corner, bouncing into traffic without hesitation. Outside, a silver moon shone brightly in the clear, navy-blue sky. The car’s engine rumbled through her seat, punctuated by regular bumps from the subwoofer—another club-kid upgrade. The warehouse district was almost empty at this hour, and Evangeline whipped the little car through the vacant streets.
And then she remembered that running an SDR rou
te didn’t require speed, so she tempered her touch on the accelerator. The basic idea behind an SDR wasn’t to lose one’s surveillance but rather to reveal it, preferably without alerting the surveillance team to one’s awareness of them. Once drawn into a space with multiple points of entry and exit, like a traffic circle or a big park with many gates, surveillance has to make a choice: come closer and stay on the target, or pick one choice and risk losing the target. If she ran a well-designed route, she’d present them with more options than a team could reasonably have members. Unless a surveillance team had enough agents to cover every exit option, as the Soviets used to when they’d run surveillance on Americans in Moscow, they’d have to get closer than they’d like—close enough for her to spot them. If she did it often enough, she’d ferret out and foil most attempts to track her movements.
But she needed to make it all look natural or else they’d know she was checking for surveillance, thus proving that she had something to hide, so she needed a good cover story. Tonight, she was heading to the bustling quai du port for a second helping of dancing, but she’d be getting a little bit lost along the way. At least, that’s what she kept in her mind as she spun out of the third arrondissement and headed for the old harbor at the center of the city. She’d take a surveillance-busting route there, stash her car someplace quiet, and then head on foot to Miel.
She’d run endless SDRs during training on the Farm. Despite the high-intrigue premise, in reality, they were long, stressful, and in the beginning, rarely successful. It took months to get it right. Now, she did them so regularly that they were second nature, but that didn’t mean she could slack off. So as she slung her little turbo through the maze of Marseille, taking plenty of long, straight streets that allowed her to see behind her for several blocks at a time, she let herself enjoy one aspect of the process, at least: driving. Her favorite part of her CIA training at the Farm had been learning how to drive a car. Not like in high school, when the driving instructor had told her to find the lane of least resistance as soon as possible and stay there. At the Farm, the CIA trainer had forced her to take corners at such speeds that the car’s wheels lifted off the ground, just so she could know how to take a car to the very edge of its abilities. She’d jumped out of a moving car, practiced the best way to get into an accident, and discovered how to drive down a flight of stairs safely and quickly. Hadn’t gotten to use any of those yet, but she looked forward to the chance.
She’d loved every adrenaline-pumping second of the time she’d spent behind the wheel on the Farm. And now, as she swept the silver bullet around an exceedingly slow Honda, she didn’t entirely mind the drudgery of running an SDR through the streets of old Marseille.
A few miles away from the waterfront, she turned off a main road and rolled through a sleepy residential district. It was a shortcut of sorts, one she might reasonably take on her way to the center of town. It also held a nice little traffic circle, perfectly round, with three possible routes out.
Far behind her, a beat-up old red Renault and a silver hatchback just like hers took the same turn. A black Opel sedan followed them. As she headed into the roundabout, the Renault disappeared down a side street. The hatchback and Opel stayed with her. She took the second exit out of the circle.
So did the Opel.
Intriguing, but not evidence of a surveillance op against her. Sighting something once was a coincidence, twice was suspicious, and three was an offensive maneuver. She’d wait for two before getting her hair in a twist. But at the third, she’d take action.
She took a couple of quick turns that hooked her north around the Saint-Charles train station. The Opel faded back, out of view. She turned left onto Boulevard Charles Nedelec and from there ran straight into the big traffic circle around the Port d’Aix triumphal arch.
She cut right and accelerated into the triangular roundabout that ran counterclockwise around the park. The first exit was for the big expressway to Aix-en-Provence. She ignored it and banked left around a stand of trees to stay in the traffic circle, checking her mirrors. Both lanes of traffic were empty as she bypassed the second exit. The massive, Roman-style triumphal arch loomed on her left as she turned right down Boulevard des Dames.
Cruising slowly down the working-class retail artery of des Dames, she waited to see who would follow her out of the circle. A few seconds later, a Toyota hybrid hummed after her, followed closely by a white Ford supermini.
And then the black Opel sedan. That made two sightings. Definitely suspicious.
Her adrenaline spiked, and she eased off the pedal. If he was after her, there was no point in losing him. Not yet, at least. She wanted to know for sure that he was after her before she made any evasive moves, and while the car’s continuing presence behind her was fishy, it wasn’t conclusive.
Mason liked conclusive. So did she. She devised a plan to force the Opel’s hand.
Up on her left, a green, illuminated cross hung high over a door. With slick precision, she pulled her hatchback into a parking spot in front of the pharmacy storefront.
The Opel cruised by, and while she didn’t stare, she was able to note that the driver’s head was turned away from her. All she saw was that he had short, dark hair. One of billions. She noted the license plate and walked up to the pharmacy. At this hour, it was closed, but she pretended not to know it. When she got close enough to the door to read the hours of operation, she stomped her foot and whirled back to her car.
She resumed her progress down des Dames and saw the black Opel parked, with its lights off, fifty yards down a sidebranching alley.
She considered the very real possibility that the owner of the car lived in a flat above one of the stores. But as she approached the big intersection with Rue de la République, she decided to take no more chances. If the black Opel was following her, it was time to shake him off.
In the center of the nearly empty intersection, she spun the steering wheel hard and accelerated rapidly to turn three hundred degrees left and head south down Rue de la République. Such a turn was a little odd, for she was now traveling in nearly the opposite direction from which she’d come, but she was an American in a foreign city. She could always claim confusion.
Rue de la République was a broad commercial street with room for four lanes of traffic, but two sets of train tracks ran up the center. Waist-high black poles funneled each direction of traffic into its own narrow lane. She cruised into the restricted southbound path, her eyes on her rearview.
Seconds later, the black Opel sped by on Boulevard des Dames.
That made three sightings.
Adrenaline shot through her cells. Sure, it could still be a coincidence. But a good CIA officer didn’t believe in coincidences.
The street on which she drove was long and straight. If he’d been looking to his left as he’d crossed the intersection, he’d have seen her, clear as day. But if he wanted to follow her, there was no easy way of getting onto Rue de la République from Boulevard des Dames once he missed that crucial, crazy turn she’d taken at the last possible second.
And even if he knew a shortcut, he’d still have to catch up with her.
Good luck.
She downshifted and pressed her toes to the floor. The hatchback responded with a high-pitched buzz and she shot down the street, hurtling at breakneck speed toward the traffic circle at Sadi-Carnot. The whine of her turbo engine bounced off the elegant neoclassical buildings on both sides of the road. She braked hard twenty yards from the roundabout, saw that she had an opening, and rocketed into it.
Behind her was no trace of the Opel. She imagined the driver cursing, trying to find a route to Rue de la République, but he’d find nothing but a series of frustrating dead ends at every turn while trying to get back on her ass.
Still, she was far from home free. She took her first two rights and headed west on Rue Caisserie. Three hundred meters down the road, an odd little service station was shoehorned into the ground level of an apartment building. At
this time of night, she could hide her car deep in the station’s recesses for a few hours. It wasn’t foolproof—she wasn’t the only person who knew about the free, late-night parking spots—but it should buy her enough time to get away cleanly on foot.
At the station, she pulled into the garage, found an empty nook, and parked the car. She got out, wondering if she’d feel comfortable retrieving it. While she’d run a hundred SDRs during her time abroad, this was the first time she’d ever actually thought somebody was following her. Agency-installed sensors or not, the possibility that somebody would find the car again and plant something undetectable on it was too great for her to imagine getting back in it. She’d have to have a CIA team check it out and haul it away under the guise of a parking violation.
Damn. She’d liked that car, too.
But she left it behind as she jogged across the street. There, a break between buildings afforded a brief view to the parallel but sunken street below. The treetops of a small garden rose up out of the gap, which was barricaded by a low black-metal railing and afforded no access to the lower street level.
No direct access, at least.
Evangeline leaned over the edge of the railing. The ground below wasn’t far down, perhaps twenty feet. In a better pair of shoes, she’d only need one break point between her and the dirt. But in bare feet, she’d need two.
A quick glance down the street told her she was alone, and no one loitered in the sunken park. She slung her purse and the ankle straps of her shoes over one wrist and hopped over the railing, her bare heels landing on a shallow concrete outcropping. Without pause, she launched into the crown of the nearest tree, digging her toes into the rough bark of a sturdy limb as she caught a thick branch with her hands. Around her, leaves shimmied as if shaken by a stiff breeze. A second leap took her back in the other direction, toward the building. She landed in a crouch on the sill of a deeply recessed window, and from there jumped silently to the ground.
The whole process took a few seconds and very little effort, but she doubted that anyone following her would expect her to have done it. Fewer still would try repeating it.
An Affair of Vengeance Page 10