State of Honour (26 page)

Tom watched Lester walking back to the van. Karen had opened the door and had slid out, saying that she had to check her bag. He decided to call Crane.

“Tom, it’s good to hear from you, although if anyone is checking my calls they’ll think we’ve got something going on between us.”

“Are you done?”

“You can’t last in this job without a little humour, Tom.”

“The man responsible for the abduction of Lyric is called Peter Swiss.”

“Wow, hold on there. That’s a helluva statement to make.”

“I got the proof. He’s the CEO of ADC, the corporation that Hawks worked for.”

“You said
worked
for.”

“Swiss killed him.”

“What?”

“I’ve got it on video. But don’t bring him in. Watch the borders and airports if you must, but don’t bring him in yet.”

“Why’s that?” Crane asked.

“Because those that have Lyric will likely kill her and disappear.”

“And they are?”

“I don’t know exactly. But I’m pretty certain she’s being held in Normandy, France.”

“I know where Normandy is,” Crane said, his tone serious. “But what does
?pretty certain’
mean?”

“You of all people should know that nothing’s certain in this game, right?”

As he was telling Crane the exact location, Karen opened the door and he held up his hand so that she wouldn’t interrupt him.

“I gotta contact the DCRI,” Crane said, referring to France’s Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence. “But it’ll take them hours to get organized, put a team together and arrive there from Paris.”

“What about their Special Forces?” Tom asked

“They’ve got the 1st Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment. That’s their equivalent of the British SAS. But they’re based in Bayonne in the far southwest. I don’t even know if they’re at their base. Anyone else, it’ll be hours, too.”

“I thought they were fast-response.”

“That generally means twenty-four hours. What are
you
gonna do, Tom?”

“I’m going to France. The French intelligence service ain’t trained for sophisticated hostage situations.”

“Neither are you. Unless you’re not telling me everything. And I don’t wanna bring you down too hard, but you got as much chance of hooking up with them as they got of bringing back the monarchy. Gimme one good reason why they gonna do that?” Crane asked.

“I’m still head of Lyric’s protective detail. That’s gotta mean something. Besides, I know something nobody else does.”

“And that is?”

“I’ll call you when I land,” Tom said. “Just tell them that. And I know I don’t have to say it, but if the place is crawling with cops she won’t get out alive.”

“I can’t guarantee the DCRI will go for it, but I’ll do my best. Someone’s gonna have to make a quick decision about how we’re gonna get Lyric outta there. And, Tom?”

“Yeah.”

“Steve Coombs had a bank account in the Caymans with three million in it.”

Swiss’s blood money, Tom thought.

“But that’s not all, Tom. I got a hold of his medical records, too. He’d been diagnosed with brain cancer a year ago, told that he wouldn’t reach his fiftieth birthday.”

So it was the money, but not for him. His family, Tom thought. He disconnected the call, remembering Coombs complaining about headaches as they stood outside the secretary’s temporary office in Islamabad the morning she was taken.

“How long before we get the plane?” Tom asked Lester as he came up to the van.

“Thirty minutes tops.”

Tom jumped out and Karen came over to join them. Lester pulled out the two reinforced-plastic cases from the back of the van and lowered them onto the damp grass. He flicked open the clasps and lifted the first lid.

“These here are state-of-the-art lasers.” Lester took out four separate shafts, which he proceeded to fit together into a long black tube, a full metre long. “This was adapted from a tank-based prototype used in the Gulf War,” he said, smiling broadly and holding up the tube. “I call it the Stingray.”

He explained that CCTV cameras could be taken out because they were imperfect mechanisms, susceptible to both what he termed blooming – where the camera sensor was overloaded – and lens flare, caused by light filtering into the internal glass. The CCTV cameras on the chateau’s wall could be located by an anti-sensor laser, which picked up the glints of reflected light. They were disabled as the Stingray switched to a high-energy laser capable of overloading the sensor behind the CCTV cameras’ lenses.

“And this,” he went on, putting down the tube and picking up a shorter one about half as long and the circumference of a nightstick, “is an adaption of the US Air Force Saber 203. An antipersonnel laser used to dazzle.”

“Dazzle?” Karen asked.

“That’s a technical term for spot-blindness. It causes disorientation and enough delay for someone to stand, aim and pop a cap in enemy ass. And it ain’t no coincidence that I got an M16 for you, Karen. This baby fits into the grenade-launch mechanism. The beam shoots out in line with the scope. Effective up to three hundred metres.”

“Does it cause permanent blindness?” Tom asked.

“Nope. Unfortunately.”

“What’s in the other case?” Karen asked.

Lester opened the second lid, which looked like an outsized hatbox, and took out something that resembled a TV satellite dish. “This is anti-personnel sonic sound system.”

“We gonna drive them mad with Gangsta Rap, Lester?”

“That ain’t funny, Tom. And it’s ancient history,” he said, shaking his head. “The prototype was used against protestors in Tbilisi, Georgia, and against them Somali pirates. But, this, hell, it’ll send a freakin’ elephant to its knees.” He grinned. “Effective up to a hundred-metre radius.”

He tossed Karen and Tom a pair of ear defenders each.

“You got sensitive ears, Tom. You don’t wear those, you won’t have to worry about that no more, cuz you won’t be hearing jack shit. Okay?”

Lester said the plugs were reinforced military ones, adapted precisely for use with the sound system.

“These are somethin’, Lester,” Tom said, referring to the weapons. “I’ll give ya that. But we’re hooking up with the French intelligence service if all goes well. We won’t need them. We won’t even be allowed to use our SIGs.”

“Whatever,” Lester said. “I’ll show y’all how they work anyways. We got the time.”

Lester spent the next twenty minutes teaching them how to use the equipment, which was surprisingly easy.

A Bombardier Challenger business jet, black and shiny like a beetle’s back, appeared out of a bank of cloud as dusk was fading. The plane could fly for four thousand miles and was capable of taking off and landing on an airstrip of a hundred and fifty metres or less. Three of them were on standby in DC for corporations and wealthy individuals twenty-four-seven. Tom wondered how Lester could have afforded it, but guessed that his business was doing better than he’d let on.

He checked his watch. 21:04. Fifteen hours to go.

The jet seated nineteen people in cream-coloured leather seats, with touch-screen entertainment, Internet access and fold-away teak tables. There was a well-stocked galley up front, and a baggage bay accessible in-flight in back.

After they’d loaded up and fixed their seat belts, Tom took out his small Buddha and began rubbing the mahogany surface with his thumb.

“That for luck, Tom?” Karen asked, sitting opposite.

“Not exactly.”

She cocked her head to one side. “And?”

“It’s freaky shit, you ask me,” Lester said, sitting across the deep-piled carpet, fiddling with his iPod.

“That Miles Davis?” Tom asked.

“Who else?” he said, closing his eyes.

“So, Tom,” Karen said, “you were going to tell me about your little friend.”

“It’s nothing, really,” he sighed. “Okay. It’s not a religion; more a psychological aid. It’s about controlling emotions by controlling thoughts and behaviour. In this way, you can experience a calmer mind, although, I have to admit, it ain’t working lately. But, for me, a calm mind is an optimal state of mind.”

She nodded, and he saw something in her face that spoke of recognition; regret, too.

“I guess a calm mind is important in your line of work,” she said.

Not exactly, he thought. But he refrained from saying that DS agents were taught to have a paranoid mindset, at least on duty. It would only complicate matters.

They chatted for a further five minutes or more. She had a knack of getting him to open up. But in truth, he felt a need to. He told her something he hadn’t told anyone for years. His mother had gone to the local store one day when he was a teenage kid. But she never returned. She died that day on her way home. As a result, he was brought up by his maternal grandparents in a small town in Louisiana, ten miles from where he’d lived with his mother. Good people, he said, generous with their time. His granddaddy had taught him to fly-fish; a helluva lot else besides.

“I joined the DS after college and got posted to Bangkok. I met a woman there.”

“A woman?”

“Not like that. She helped me to begin to come to terms with what had happened, I guess.”

“Was your mother killed in a car accident?” she asked.

“No.” He looked at her straight in the eyes. “I killed her.”

Karen’s forehead creased up. “I don’t understand, Tom.”

“I shoulda been there for my momma. I promised her I’d pick her up. I went fishing with a buddy instead. She decided to walk home. They found her body in a shallow grave less than a mile from our house. She’d been raped and murdered by an ex-con,” he said, his eyes glistening over.

He realized he hadn’t told anyone that.

Ever.

But the emotion it’d evoked hadn’t been the one he’d imagined it would. It was cathartic rather than shameful.

Hours later, the jet banked through grey, ribboned clouds before descending in steep steps, each one making Tom’s stomach flip as he tried to pop his ears. For a man who travelled frequently by plane, his body had never quite attuned itself to altitude. He felt queasy.

Beneath the cloud line, the outskirts of Rouen were just visible in the distance, the capital of Upper Normandy, the Seine snaking through it like a dull brown cable.

“Down there,” Lester said to Tom, pointing at five o’clock.

There was a large square of grass, edged by high hedges, with acres of fields beyond. The outline of two buildings was in the far left-hand corner. It looked like a farm. After giving Lester the thumbs up, Tom reached over and shook Karen’s knee gently. She had fallen asleep less than an hour after take-off. As she blinked herself awake he checked the time difference. Paris was six hours ahead of DC, which, after the eight-hour flight, meant it was midday here. Seven hours and counting.

Karen stretched her arms and yawned. She made eye contact. “Are we here?”

Tom nodded.

They landed a few miles outside Rouen, some thirty miles from Évreux. Karen estimated that it would take them about an hour to get to the chateau. Lester told them to stay put for a couple of minutes, took their passports and left the plane, heading for a breeze-block building. The hangar next to it had looked like a barn from above. It struck Tom that it was purposefully deceptive.

“How is Lester going to get us through customs with all this firepower?” Karen asked.

“They don’t have customs at airfields like this. They rely on people’s honesty. It’s a system of prior notification and permission, or not as the case may be. Just like back in Virginia.”

“Places like these cater for small aircraft and they rely on honesty?”

“You can get searched, but it’s rare. It’s mostly just a paper exercise.” He saw her scoff. “Yeah, I know, makes as much sense as asking a junkie to mind a drugs store.”

“Are you okay, Tom?” she asked, reaching over and placing her hand on his.

He looked at her, found himself asking her to stay put in his mind again. But he said, “Don’t worry about me.” He took out his cell. “I gotta make a call.”

“You want some privacy?”

He thought about it. “No. We’re in this together,” he said, searching the speed-dial numbers.

He called Crane, who said that he’d swung it before telling Tom the directions to the rendezvous point where he’d meet up with three operatives from the DCRI.

“Only three?” Tom asked.

“Trustworthy men I’ve worked with before. French Special Forces are getting it together as we speak. But it could be another couple hours before they arrive. What’s the one thing you know that nobody else does, Tom?”

“Something we can get them to ask Lyric to check she’s alive if we have to.”

“And?”

“She gave me a present in Islamabad the morning she got taken. A diamond-studded silver Omega. No one else knows that as far as I’m aware.”

Tom still had it on him. He would keep the engraved message to himself for now:
To Tom with heartfelt gratitude. Linda G. Carlyle. US Secretary of State
.

“Don’t do anything dumb.”

“I’ll call you in an hour,” Tom said, disconnecting.

“Everything okay?” Karen asked.

“Everything’s fine.”

“I need some air,” she said.

She got up and disappeared through the clamshell door. He saw her a few seconds later, stretching on the grass, her arms clasped above her head, her sweater and T-shirt riding up as she flung her head back and drank in the cool air. Behind her, Tom saw Lester emerge from the building and get into a dark-green Land Rover that was parked between a Citroën and a Fiat on the small lot adjacent to the building, thinking that his friend was … what? Too resourceful? He shook his head and dismissed the notion. The sooner this was over, the better. He felt as if his mind was deliberately playing tricks with him and he didn’t care for it. He got up and walked down the short flight of steps to the narrow runway.

Lester parked the car next to the plane, so that they could unload the equipment into the large trunk space. He said that he’d agreed with the pilot and co-pilot that they’d hang around for six hours. They would refuel via the truck parked on the other side of the hangar. If they didn’t get a call to stay longer, they’d fly back to the States. Tom put his arm on Lester’s shoulder, leading him away from where Karen was still stretching her body.

“I went back to Islamabad the same day the secretary was taken. I met up with a Pakistani, a CIA asset. I nearly got captured by the ISI. A few hours later, a bunch of guys at a remote roadblock had my photo on their cells.”

“They know you were coming?” Lester asked.

“A CIA guy in Kabul said his room had been bugged, so when we’d discussed the fact that I was going over the border, I guessed that someone was listening,” Tom said, referring to Crane. “He figured my cell had been bugged, too.”

“That’s why you asked the DS agent I capped at Fresh Pond.”

“Coombs, yeah. He coulda bugged the room. He sure as hell sent the photo of me to them.” Tom kept quiet about the CIA woman, figuring it would complicate matters for Lester.

“So that’s it, right?”

“I guess. But Coombs didn’t admit to bugging the room.”

“No, he didn’t,” Lester said. “He just made a noise as he was dying.”

“And, Lester, let’s just keep this between us. I don’t want Karen getting spooked for nothing.”