by Mark Levin
Maddy let her mother take her into her arms.
Benji rolled his eyes. “Now it’s my turn to puke.”
For once Maddy ignored him. It felt too good to be held. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her father smiling.
“Don’t be pissed at Dad,” she said. “He tried to stop me, but I jumped down to the balcony.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Rebecca said. “I should’ve let you go.”
When mother and daughter finally broke apart, both their cheeks were streaked with tears.
“Is the love fest over?” Benji asked. “Can we get back to business?” He looked at Maddy. “How do you know the Vadims are going to move to Argentina?”
Wiping the tears from her cheeks, Maddy was ready to change the subject to something less emotionally intense.
“Easy,” she said.
“Easy?” Rebecca said.
Maddy smiled. “Je deteste l’Argentine et . . . et je n’y irai jamais. That’s what she said. Which means ‘I hate Argentina and I’m never going there.’ You know what? I think they just sprang it on her and she’s pissed.”
“Could be,” Roger said.
“And they’re moving demain soir—tomorrow night.”
“Hold on,” Benji said. “You heard all of that?”
Maddy nodded. “Yep. And there’s more. The exchange of the vial hasn’t happened yet.”
“Whoa!” Roger said. “Hold on here! You heard that, too?”
Maddy nodded proudly. “I heard the word ‘exchange,’ anyway. They were talking fast, but I could tell a lot by the inflection in their voices.”
By that point Rebecca’s eyes were brimming with tears.
“Madeleine Hitchcock!”
For a moment Maddy thought her mother was angry all over again, ready to read her the riot act for sneaking after her father into the Vadims’ room.
“What?” Maddy said.
“I just knew it,” Rebecca said.
“Knew what?”
Rebecca dabbed her eyes with a tissue. “That you could be good at French!”
As the Hitchcocks huddled in their hotel room, back across the globe in their own home the tall, elegant Frenchman they now knew as the “Chicago Vadim” but whose name was actually Antoine Truffaut wandered into the kitchen and scrolled to a name on his cell phone: Xavier Vadim. A moment later Xavier answered.
“Hallo?”
Antoine paced the kitchen.
“What the hell is going on, Xavier? I knew this plan was too crazy to work.”
“What happened?”
“How would anyone believe that I was you and that my kids were your kids? Even an idiot like Roger Hitchcock has figured it out.”
Xavier’s voice crackled through the line. “Hitchcock has figured it out?”
“Maybe not everything. But he called here—from Sofia! For all I know, he’s staying in your same hotel!”
At the other end of the line, Xavier Vadim felt his throat go dry. Roger Hitchcock was in Sofia?
“But what’s he doing here? How did he get here?”
“How should I know?”
“Well, did he say anything?”
“No, no. He just ranted that he wanted us out of his house. Of course, I pretended that I didn’t know what he was talking about.”
“This could be serious,” Xavier said. “We have to take care of this Roger Hitchcock.”
“Wait a second.”
“What?”
In the darkness of the Hitchcock kitchen, Antoine heard a noise. Were they footsteps? Or was his imagination getting the better of him?
“Hallo,” Xavier said. “Are you there?”
“Yes, yes. I am here.” There they were again. The footsteps. “I think my son is awake. Stay by the phone. I’ll call back.”
Antoine clicked off and crossed through the kitchen into the dark living room.
“Hello?” he said. “Marcel? Is that you?”
It happened quickly. A flashlight shone in his face, blinding him. Three figures emerged from the curtains, guns drawn. Antoine tried to run but was easily tackled, then handcuffed.
“Je suis innocent!”
“Yeah? Tell me about it!”
If Benji had been there, he would have recognized Jules Camus, the famed Elevator Man, immediately. On a tip from Interpol, he had flown to America to follow a lead.
“Monsieur Antoine Truffaut?” he asked.
“Non, non. Je m’appelle Xavier Vadim.”
Jules wasn’t buying it. “Do not lie to me, Monsieur Truffaut. I know that you have been best friends with Xavier Vadim for years. I also know that you agreed to use your family as a decoy and come to Chicago posing as the Vadims to throw the authorities off the trail.”
“You’re crazy!”
The Elevator Man smiled. “Am I? We also know that Monsieur Vadim stole the MGF from his laboratory and is trying to sell it on the open market. So now tell me, Monsieur Truffaut. Where is the MGF?”
The following morning, Roger and Rebecca stood across the street from the Bulgarian National Bank, a solid stone building a block away from their hotel. Dressed in a dignified business suit, hair carefully combed, Roger looked at the front door.
“Whatever we’re not supposed to know . . . it’s inside that bank.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rebecca smiling. “What?”
Rebecca shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “You have this look in your eye I haven’t seen in a while. Determination. It’s sweet.”
Roger smiled, then looked nervously back at the door. Then he put on his best French accent. “Je m’appelle Xavier Vadim.” He turned to Rebecca. “How do I sound?”
She straightened his lapel. “Just keep the talking to a minimum, OK?”
“OK,” Roger said. Another nervous glance at the door. “Well, wish me luck.”
Roger got something even better. Rebecca kissed him on the lips. “Go get ’em, Monsieur Vadim.”
Roger smiled again, then turned to the bank. Watching him go, Rebecca took out her cell phone and called the hotel room.
Upstairs, Benji answered on the first ring.
“Sonny H. here.”
“Is everything all right back there?” his mother asked.
“Fine,” Benji replied. “Except we’re dying of starvation here, Mom. Room service still hasn’t come.”
“Still?” Rebecca replied. “That’s strange. Well, stay where you are. Your father just went into the bank. As soon as he’s out, we’ll all eat together.”
She clicked off. Benji turned to his sister.
“Dad’s inside?” she asked.
Benji nodded. “I hope he does OK.”
“Me, too,” Maddy said. “But right now I’m focused on my stomach.”
“I know, right?” Benji said. “I’m so starving.”
“That room service is so not coming,” Maddy said. “Come on. I saw a Starbucks downstairs.”
Benji blinked. Even with two days of international espionage under his belt, he still didn’t feel comfortable disobeying his parents. “But we promised to stay here.”
Maddy frowned—just as he knew she would. “Don’t be a wimp, Benji. We run down, get what we want, and come back up. A quick surgical strike.”
As his children made their way to the Starbucks, Roger Hitchcock walked down the quiet halls of Bulgaria’s largest bank, willing himself to stay calm. A few days earlier he was an underemployed commodities trader. Now he was about to try something he had only seen successfully executed on television shows: steal from a bank safe-deposit box. By this point Roger did have one thing on his side. Two days of intrigue had made him much better at acting calm under pressure. Though his heart was pounding, he grinned amiably at a guard, then approached a clerk.
“Bonjour,” he began in his best French accent. “Je suis ici pour . . . mon safe-deposit box. . . . N’est-ce pas?”
The clerk looked at him blankly.
“I’m Xavier Vadim,” Roger said in Englis
h. “I need my safe-deposit box.”
“Ah, yes,” the clerk said. “Your passport, please.”
Roger reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out Xavier Vadim’s passport. What had Maddy said? Xavier Vadim was the handsome French version of him? That morning Roger had combed his hair, shaved carefully, and even dabbed on some cologne. Though he didn’t look exactly like Xavier Vadim, he hoped that his appearance was elegant enough to pass a quick inspection.
To Roger’s relief, the clerk only gave the picture in the passport a quick glance, then stamped something in his entry log.
“Welcome, Monsieur Vadim. If you will follow me, please?”
Roger bowed his head slightly. “Ah, merci.”
Maddy and Benji pushed open the Starbucks door and got on line.
“Hey, check it out,” Maddy said. “A Frappuccino is the same word in Bulgarian as in English.”
Benji was suddenly too nervous to respond—at least not right away. A block away, inside the bank, their father was posing as Xavier Vadim.
“You think this’ll work?” Benji asked.
“Maybe,” Maddy said.
“Dad has Xavier Vadim’s passport, right?”
Maddy nodded. “Right. We found it in his coat pocket.”
“So the rest should be easy,” Benji said, thinking out loud. “He gets to the safe-deposit room. And bang! We have the MGF.”
“Something like that.”
The two children reached the front of the line, where Maddy ordered their drinks and two muffins. Then she and Benji walked to the pickup area. A moment later their food was ready.
“That was fast,” Benji said.
“Faster than room service, anyway,” Maddy said. “I wonder if they’ve even showed up yet.”
Just then the front door swung open again and a couple walked out. As the door closed, a man in a tan suit caught it at the last second. Though Maddy only saw him out of the corner of her eye, she knew exactly who it was: Xavier Vadim. Behind him was his entire family. Without saying a word, she grabbed Benji’s hand and pulled him to the back of the seating area.
“What’s going on?”
“Just follow me and keep your head down!”
The guard ushered Roger through a gate, then past a row of offices. Then the guard turned to his left, led him down a flight of stairs, and stopped by a steel door. Roger swallowed hard. Somehow this seemed almost too easy. The guard unlocked the door and led Roger into a room lined with shelves. Soon the guard removed a safe-deposit box from a shelf and laid it on a table.
“Here it is, Monsieur Vadim.”
“Merci,” Roger said again.
The guard nodded and left the room. For a moment Roger couldn’t believe his good luck. The entire escapade had been effortless! Maybe the Hitchcocks’ luck was finally turning?
Sitting down, Roger took his Bluetooth from his pocket and placed it on his ear.
“Hello, Momma H.?”
“Here, Poppa H.”
Even Rebecca was getting into the spy business. “I’m inside,” Roger said.
“Good news,” Rebecca said.
Roger pulled open the lid of the safe-deposit box. Suddenly what had seemed effortless appeared impossible. For tucked inside the safe-deposit box there was another box— one with a ten-digit combination lock.
“Oh, crap,” he said.
“What?” Rebecca said.
Then Roger remembered something. The note that Benji had discovered with the word “Sofia” on it . . . wasn’t there also a code?
“Patch me through to Benji.”
At that point Benji and Maddy were still in the Starbucks, hiding in the back, both working on their drinks. Benji felt his phone vibrate. He saw his father’s ID.
“Sonny H. here.”
“ . . . enji . . . ofia number from Par . . . Have it?”
“What’s he saying?” Maddy whispered.
She hadn’t taken her eyes off the Vadims since they had arrived. Unfortunately, they had taken their drinks and muffins to a table directly in front of the door. The only thing to do was to lay low until they left.
“I can’t understand him,” Benji whispered back. “Dad,” he said into the receiver. “You’re breaking up.”
“ . . . our Sofia num . . . ,” Roger said. “Paprik . . . ”
“Paprik?” Benji said. “Do you mean paprika, Dad?”
“What about paprika?” Maddy asked.
“He wants paprika,” Benji said.
“No, I want the code!”
Benji finally got it. He feverishly fished the scrap from his pocket and read the number.
07-08-124-977.
“Zero, seven, zero, eight, one, two . . .”
“What?” Roger said.
“One, two, four, nine, seven, seven. . . . Hello, Dad?”
“Yes, I’m . . . ere.”
“Did you get it?”
“ . . . peat the last . . . num . . . ”
“What?” Benji said. “The last one? Is seven. Hello, Dad? Hello?”
“Did he get it?” Maddy whispered.
Benji took the phone from his ear. “Don’t know. The line went dead.”
Little did Benji know why: In his eagerness to plug in the combination, his father had hung up. With trembling fingers, Roger moved the final sprocket to “seven.”
And just like that, it happened.
With a light click the latch flipped open. There it was: a glowing, light-blue liquid in a sealed test tube.
The vial!
La fiole!
The MGF!
Roger pumped his fist, then slipped the test tube into his jacket and closed the box. Now he had one goal: to get out of the bank as quickly as he could. He called for the guard.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” the guard asked.
Roger nodded, doing his best to suppress a smile.
“Yes, I did.”
“Very good, sir.”
He hurried down the long hallway to the bank’s lobby.
“Thank you, Monsieur Vadim,” the guard said.
“Of course,” Roger replied.
And then, just like that, he was outside. He had done it. Pulled off the impossible. Not bad for a nebbish from Chicago. He looked across the street for Rebecca, eager to show off the grand prize, but to his surprise she was nowhere in sight.
Probably at the Starbucks, he thought, and headed down the block, so happy it was all he could do to keep from skipping. Still, he made sure to walk—best not to look suspicious. There would be plenty of time to celebrate later.
And then his phone rang. It was Benji’s caller ID. He couldn’t wait to tell him the good news.
“Hey there, sport!” Roger all but shouted into the receiver. “I did it. I got the vial!”
At that precise moment Roger’s celebration officially ended. The voice at the other end chilled him.
“And I have your children, Roger Hitchcock.”
Roger stopped, heart thumping. “Who . . . who is this?”
Vadim laughed. “The man you traded lives with.”
“Xavier Vadim?”
“I found your children in the Starbucks. Imagine my surprise when I was drinking a latte and I overheard someone shouting the combination to the vault inside the safe-deposit box. Now, you have something that belongs to me.”
“Please,” Roger said. “Don’t hurt my kids.”
It was then that Roger heard a click. He glanced at his phone. Call-waiting. The name on the ID: Rebecca. Did he dare take the call?
“Hurt your kids?” Vadim said. “Give me the MGF and I won’t have to.”
“Hey, listen,” Roger said. “This is awkward, but, well, just hold on a second.”
Roger switched lines.
“Now listen, Becs,” he said. “Don’t freak out.”
Instead of his wife, a familiar voice crackled over the line. “I have your wife, Mr. Hitchcock.”
Roger felt like falling over. He leaned against
a store window like he’d been gut punched. “Oh my God. Harry? Harry Huberman?”
“The very same.”
“What . . . what are you doing here?”
“The same thing as you, Mr. Hitchcock. Looking for the MGF. I’m willing to trade it for your wife.”
Roger inhaled deeply.
“You have my wife?”
“Don’t worry. She’s perfectly healthy.” He paused. “For now.”
Roger forced himself to stand up straight and think.
“Listen, hold on a sec, OK?”
He switched lines back to Monsieur Vadim.
“Where do you want to meet?”
Vadim’s voice was level, betraying no emotion. “There is a deserted monastery forty miles north of Sofia. We meet there at six. You take the bus and come alone.”
“At six,” Roger repeated. “Right. Alone. Done.”
With that, Roger took a deep breath. He had one more thing to do. He clicked back to the other line.
“Do not put me on hold ever again, Mr. Hitchcock.”
“I’m sorry,” Roger stammered. “It was my kids.”
“I do not care about your kids, Mr. Hitchcock. How do I get my MGF?”
Roger couldn’t believe what he was about to do—but what were his options?
“There’s a monastery, due north of the city. Meet me there at six. You give me my wife and I’ll give you your MGF.”
With a click the line went dead. Roger found himself standing on a crowded street, all alone, in a strange city. Distraught, Roger sank slowly to his knees, his face pressed against the storefront window. Which is when he noticed something. He was looking at a display of toothbrushes, aspirin, and mouthwash.
He was standing outside a drugstore.
Before him was a bottle filled with light-blue mouthwash—the same color as the MGF.
Roger stood up slowly. Did he dare? It was crazy. Then again, what other choice did he have? With a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t being watched, Roger hurried into the store.
Chapter Nineteen
Early that evening Roger Hitchcock sat in the backseat of a public bus that was snaking its way up a winding road toward the monastery. Behind him the lights of Sofia were receding rapidly into the distance. Roger looked out the window and tried to breathe. Had he really done it? Promised to hand over the MGF to two different people? Then again, what other options had he had? He couldn’t go back to the embassy—not with an APB out accusing him of espionage. Besides, his gut told him that if he brought along a troop of possibly trigger-happy agents, it would lead to disaster. No, his only chance to retrieve his wife and kids was to go in alone.