Stranded with a Spy (2 page)

Think about France. Undulating vineyards. Fairy-tale castles. Crusty bread and melt-in-your-mouth pastries.

And anonymity. Blessed anonymity.

Ten whole days with no reporters hounding her, no microphones shoved in her face. She’d lose herself on back roads. Put the awful mess behind her.

Nine hours, she thought as she found her seat and buckled in. Nine hours flying through the night, then freedom.

As soon as the jumbo jet reached cruising altitude, she plugged in her earphones, slipped on the eye mask provided by the airline and reclined her seat.

Ms. Dawes was one cool customer, Cutter decided, watching from a few feet away at the baggage carousel.

He’d tracked her from the moment she exited the aircraft. She’d looked straight ahead as she stood in line at passport control, didn’t so much as nod or speak to any of her fellow passengers. Same here at the baggage carousel. Below the shield of her sunglasses, her mouth was set in a line that warned off all comers.

With seeming nonchalance, Cutter pulled out a slim cell phone. Mackenzie Blair, Nick’s wife and OMEGA’s guru of all things electronic, had packed the slim case with enough gadgetry and software to make Bill Gates drool.

She’d replaced the built-in camera with one so powerful she swore it would capture a mosquito in flight a block away. With a flick of one button, Cutter could reverse the lens and activate an iris scanner. The digitized image identified him instantaneously to his controller at OMEGA headquarters. Voice-recognition software provided additional security, as did the satellite encryption transmissions. Not even the spooks at the National Intelligence Collection and Processing Center could intercept these calls.

What interested Cutter most at the moment was the embedded GPS transceiver that caused the phone to vibrate when the compact disk tucked into Mallory Dawes’s suitcase moved so much as an inch.

It was moving now. The vibrations tickled Cutter’s palm and had every one of his nerves jumping in response. Screwing in an earpiece, he flipped up the phone and made like the other half dozen or so passengers busy calling home or confirming reservations now that they’d landed.

“I’ve got movement.”

He didn’t bother to identify himself. The phone took care of that. Mike Callahan’s reply came through the earpiece.

“Roger that, Slash. I’m tracking the case via the airport’s security cameras. It’s on a baggage cart, headed your way.”

Cutter acknowledged the transmission and tucked the phone back in his pocket. As the vibrations grew stronger, his instincts went on full alert.

His gut told him the most likely spot for the Russian or one of his cohorts to make the pickup was right here at the airport. Odds were it would happen shortly after Dawes claimed her bag.

He was right on her tail when she exited through passport control, had the woman and her roller bag firmly in his sights when she strode through the terminal, felt the phone vibrating like hell in his shirt pocket as she marched up to a rental-car counter.

It was still vibrating when he tossed his briefcase and carryall in a rental car some minutes later and trailed her midget Peugeot out of Charles De Gaulle Airport.

M
allory was amazed that she could still function with semiefficiency.

The long flight across the Atlantic should have wiped her out, especially coming on top of all the weeks of stress. Not to mention the sleepless nights wondering why she hadn’t just quit after Congressman Kent had grabbed her ass the first time.

Dillon Porter, Kent’s senior staffer and Mallory’s closest friend on the Hill, had smoothed things over that first time. Dillon had agreed with her that their boss was a throwback, a total Neanderthal. He’d also warned that Kent was so slick, any charges Mallory brought against him would slide off his Teflon-coated back.

How right Dillon had been!

Only now, after two hours of ambling west along the two-lane road that led from Paris to Evreux, were Mallory’s jagged nerves beginning to smooth out. The brisk sea breeze as she neared the coast of Normandy blew through the open windows of her pint-sized rental like the breath of life.

This wasn’t the route she’d laid out when she’d planned this long-dreamed-of vacation in such meticulous detail. A history major in college, she’d intended to spend at least three days exploring Paris before heading south to visit the medieval walled city of Carcassonne and the Roman ruins at Nîmes.

With the miasma of the hearing hanging over her, however, Mallory had decided to reverse her itinerary. She needed calm and space and solitude, which she certainly wouldn’t get in the bustle of Paris. She’d hit the city on her way back. Maybe. For now she’d just follow the coast and let the winds blow away the stink of the past weeks.

Her first stop was Caen, William the Conqueror’s stronghold and the site of vicious battles during the Second World War invasion of Normandy. Mallory squeezed out of her rental car and treated herself to a flaky quiche and a sinfully rich napoleon eaten at an outdoor café in the shadow of the castle walls. After lunch she visited the museum housing the Bayeux Tapestry embroidered by William’s wife, Matilda, after her husband had conquered England.

Musing at the vagaries of fate that had one nation invading another, only to be invaded itself centuries later by the nation it had once conquered, Mallory drank in the history that went into the hundred-and-sixty-eight-foot tapestry. The segment that dealt with William’s visit to a nearby holy place spawned another spur-of-the-moment decision.

“Mont St. Michel,” she murmured, her gaze fixed on the embroidered panel depicting mounted warriors pulling pilgrims from the treacherous waters surrounding the shrine. Mesmerized by the scene, she consulted her plastic-coated, foldaway tourist map.

The shrine was only a little over an hour from Caen. Not on her original route, but so what? She wasn’t too jet-lagged yet. She could do another hour of driving easy. After she’d explored the ancient abbey, she’d find a nice little seaside pension and crash.

Bad decision, Mallory thought two and a half hours later.

Very bad.

The countryside of Lower Normandy was pretty enough. She’d left the sea behind at Caen to cut across a broad peninsula dotted with magnificent forests and tranquil streams flowing through rich farmlands. Apple orchards lined the road and hand-painted signs pointed to tasting stands for Camembert, Livarot and Pont l’Evêque cheese. Without intending to, Mallory had stumbled onto France’s Wine and Cheese Road.

Which would have been fine except that the fall harvest was in full swing. Tractors hauling trailers mounded with apples competed for road space with busloads of tourists come to sample fresh-squeezed cider and pungent cheese. As Mallory inched through a picturesque village behind yet another tractor, she looked in vain for an inn or a pension. She was ready to call it a day
and
a night.

The tractor finally turned off at a crossroads. A tilted signpost pointed to villages with names Mallory couldn’t pronounce. Below the signpost was a blue historical sign indicating that Mont St. Michel was five kilometers away.

“Finally!”

Surely there would be plenty of hotels at such a touristy spot. Aiming her tiny rental car in the direction of the sea once more, she soon left the forests and orchards behind. The topography flattened to marshy fields topped by feathery grass. The tangy scent of the ocean again flavored the air.

Then Mallory turned a bend in the road and there it was, rising out of the salt marsh. Stunned, she pulled to the side of the road and sat there, arms looped over the wheel.

Mont St. Michel was a small island, an outcropping of solid granite thrusting up from sand flats at the mouth of St. Malo Bay. A defensive wall bristling with turrets and a fourteenth-century barbican encircled the rock at its base. Above the battlements, a village of slate-roofed buildings stair-stepped up the steep slopes. A magnificent twelfth-century abbey crowned the island, overwhelming in its size, overpowering in its grandeur. Atop the abbey’s tall spire was a gilded statue of Saint Michael that glinted in the afternoon sun.

According to Mallory’s guidebook, the Archangel Michael had appeared on this spot in 708
AD
. The glorious abbey was built to honor that visitation. All through the Middle Ages, pilgrims had risked the treacherous tides that rushed in, cutting the island off from the mainland, to worship at the site. Modern-day tourists were no less enthralled. Mesmerized by the magnificent sight, Mallory paid no attention to the tour bus that chugged by her, spewing diesel exhaust.

The driver of the vehicle some yards behind the lumbering bus cursed as he approached the car pulled onto the side of the road. Cutter had been swallowing exhaust for twenty minutes. He’d had to, to keep some distance between him and his target. God knew there wasn’t any other cover on this stretch of flat salty marsh.

Now he had no choice but to drive right past the woman and onto the causeway leading to the island dead ahead. The causeway was elevated above the sand flats and wide enough to accommodate dozens of parked cars and buses. Cutter could turn around easily enough if the woman he was tailing didn’t follow him onto the bridge.

“Come on, Dawes,” he muttered, “put it in gear.”

He kept her in the rearview mirror and was all set to make a turn when the cell phone in his pocket began to vibrate. The car behind him eased back onto the road.

“That’s right. Come to Papa.”

Dividing his attention between the vehicle behind and the battlements now looming before him, Cutter cruised the long bridge. The tide was out, baring the hard-packed sand below. Overflow traffic was being directed to park on the sand, but a minivan pulled out of a parking space atop the causeway as Cutter got close. Whipping into the space, he remained in his vehicle with the engine idling while his target neared the island.

He speared a quick glance at the walls looming above him. Was this where Dawes planned to make contact with the Russian or one of his henchmen? Or would she just diddle away a few hours, as she had in Caen? Or had she tipped to the fact that she was being followed and had decided to lead her tail away from a possible rendezvous point instead of toward it?

Cutter was ninety-nine-percent certain that wasn’t the case. With the directional signal implanted in her suitcase to guide him, he’d stayed well out of her line of sight while on the road. He’d mounted a closer surveillance in Caen, waiting, watching, his instincts on full alert. But she hadn’t removed the disk from the suitcase locked in the trunk of her rental car. He’d trailed her into the museum, keeping well back, knowing the signal device would alert him if someone
else
retrieved it. No one had.

Wondering if this pile of rock would be the rendezvous point, Cutter narrowed his eyes behind his aviator sunglasses and watched as Dawes drove along the causeway. The bridge was a quarter-mile long and raised some ten or twelve feet above the sand flats. Dawes drove the length of the causeway, searching for a parking space, before nosing down a ramp to the hard-packed sand.

When she exited her rental, Cutter held his breath. Would she unlock the trunk? Slip the disk into the wallet-type purse slung over her shoulder?

To his intense disappointment, she did neither. Instead she joined a throng of tourists decamping from a bus and trekked up the ramp toward the barbican. Muttering a curse, Cutter pulled out his cell phone.

“The target has exited her vehicle,” he advised Mike Callahan after the iris scan and voice data print had verified his identity. “Again.”

“Roger that. You want to confirm the location? GPS is showing her parked about ten yards off the causeway leading to the island of Mont St. Michel, in what should be about eight feet of water.”

“The tide’s out, Hawkeye, so it’s high and dry. She’s walking up to the island from her car, minus her suitcase.”

“Could be intending to establish initial contact before making the drop.”

“Could be,” Cutter agreed, shouldering open his car door. “Check the tide tables for me, will you? I want to know how long we’ve got here.”

“Will do.”

He could have spared Mike the trouble, Cutter realized as he trailed his target toward the massive gates guarding the entrance to the walled town. Warning signs posted at several points along the causeway warned visitors in five different languages to stick to designated walkways to avoid dangerous quicksand. The signs also advised that high tide would occur at eighteen hundred hours that evening.

Three and a half hours, Cutter thought grimly. Plenty of time for Ms. Dawes to establish contact, return to her car and retrieve the disk.

As he had at Caen, he stayed out of her line of sight. Not hard to do, with so many tourists thronging the narrow, cobbled streets. Then again, Dawes made for an easy tail. She wasn’t all that tall. Five-six, according to the background dossier OMEGA had hastily compiled on her. Yet her cap of shining blond hair acted like a beacon amid the shadows thrown by the tall, narrow buildings lining the streets and alleys. The navy blazer she wore with a white tank top and jeans also stood out among the post-summer throng of primarily middle-aged tourists in jogging suits and windbreakers.

Eyeing the trim rear and slender thighs encased by those jeans, Cutter had to admire Congressman Kent’s taste, if not his morals. Ms. Dawes’s behind looked eminently gropeable. Her front looked pretty good, too. Narrow waist. Full breasts. A determined chin softened by lips he suspected might tempt a man to sin if she ever smiled. Cutter could certainly understand why the clown she’d picked up in a D.C. bar had described her to the press as a real piece of eye candy.

But it was the way she moved that stirred unwelcome memories. Cutter had known a woman who walked with that same hip-swinging grace once. He still wore the scars she’d left on him.

Which was probably why he noticed when Ms. Dawes began to move with considerably less elegance. Obviously, the climb up the winding streets and steep stairs was taking its toll. Her pace got slower and more deliberate. Her shoulders started to sag. She paused more often to study shop windows displaying fresh pastries, cheeses, handmade lace and the inevitable cheap souvenirs.

Cutter was thirty yards behind her when she veered toward a small café carved out of the rock below the walls of the cathedral. Potted geraniums added splashes of color to the tiny patio, which contained all of three tables. Dawes dropped into a chair at the only empty table. When she shoved her sunglasses to the top of her head to study the menu, lines of exhaustion were etched into her face.

Cutter continued his surveillance from a combination
boulangerie
and sandwich shop across the street. Surrounded by the seductive aroma of fresh-baked baguettes and twisted loaves of rye, he ordered a ham and Swiss and coffee. He carried both to a stand-up table in the window and had the crusty sandwich halfway to his mouth when he froze.

Eyes narrowing to slits behind his mirrored sunglasses, Cutter assessed the heavyset male who scooted his chair around to face Dawes. Early fifties. Dressed as a tourist in no-press khaki knit pants, a blue windbreaker and a baseball cap with some kind of a logo on it. Heavy jowls, flushed cheeks and a knowing smile that lifted the hairs on the back of Cutter’s neck.

The guy knew Dawes. He’d recognized her, perhaps had been waiting for her. Whipping out his cell phone, Cutter zoomed in on the man’s red face and took several quick shots with the instrument’s built-in, jazzed-up camera. A click of a button transmitted the photos instantly to OMEGA. Cutter followed with a terse instruction to Mike Callahan.

“Give me an ID on this guy, and fast.”

“Will do.”

He needed to get closer for the sensitive receiver built into the phone to pick up the conversation between his target and the fleshy tourist. Abandoning his coffee and sandwich, Cutter exited the
boulangerie
and crossed the cobbles. He kept to the shadows thrown by the cathedral directly above. With each step closer, the receiver filtered out the background noise from the busy street until Dawes’s voice came through sharp and angry.

“No, thank you.”

“Ahhh, c’mon. We’re both ’Mericans. Let me buy you a glass of wine. Jes’ one glass.”

From the sound of it, the supposed tourist had already downed several glasses. Or wanted to give that impression.

“Didn’t you hear me? I said no.”