Vincent Voland parked his rented Toyota Yaris four-door compact on a hill just a block away from the camera that had recorded the sighting of Bianca Medina, Drexler, and the Syrians the day before. It was not yet seven a.m.; he’d come straight from the hotel after his late-night flight and his early-morning checkin, and he’d just spoken with the two watchers he’d hired to keep an eye on the port and told them they could go home for a few hours’ rest.
His men had seen nothing, so Voland worried the Syrians were no longer in the area.
Voland needed more rest himself, but he was too wired to sleep. He figured there was little chance he’d see Drexler and company walking around the dock, and that he’d probably already boarded a ship, but as soon as offices at the marina opened up he’d start pumping the workers there for information.
In the meantime, however, he wanted to walk the area to get a feel for the location.
He walked along Akti Kondili, where the images had been taken, and then he went down to the water. An occasional car drove by behind him, but this was near the closed private marina, so there wasn’t much going on this early in the morning.
He turned to go into the city a few blocks, to try to get a feel for where Drexler and his entourage had been coming from on their way to the port, because he felt certain he knew where they’d been going. They’d gone to the marina to board a boat, and that boat was gone.
On the corner of Egaleo and Kastoros he heard a noise off to his right. It was a door closing, and this surprised him, because the only buildings he saw were commercial, and none of the offices would open for hours.
In the dim light a block away, he saw a group of people walking south, towards the water.
There were six men and one woman. The woman was tall and beautiful; the Frenchman could tell this even from a block away.
Vincent Voland turned and began running down Egaleo, parallel to the group but out of sight behind a row of buildings. He didn’t have a gun, and he didn’t even know the number for the police here in Athens. He was a sixty-five-year-old man with no hand-to-hand fighting skills, and after half a block he was already feeling the pounding of exertion in his heart. He had no plan other than to try to see if this group was, in fact, Bianca and her captors.
If these were the people he’d come from France to find . . . he hadn’t a clue what he would do about it.
* * *
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Drexler had pushed and pushed for Malik to begin the movement towards the docks, for the simple reason that he knew his plan to kill the three Syrians, then Sauvage and Medina, would only work if there wasn’t an additional skiffload of Syrian operatives on the shore to stop him.
Malik had pushed back, of course, because he wanted the skiff to arrive at the water’s edge at the same time as those boarding it to reduce the chance that any passing police or harbor official would see the illegal transfer.
But Drexler had won the fight. Although he would have liked to have left the office minutes ago, so there was no chance the men in the boat would be near enough to the marina to see what happened, he decided instead to rely on the darkness of the alleyways leading to the docks and a quick getaway.
Malik put his earpiece in so he could stay in constant communication with the men on the skiff, and then the entourage walked down Etoliku, a two-lane street with cars parked on both sides, making for a narrow advance. The street ended perpendicular to the docks, and already in the distance Drexler could see a dark skiff approaching, with several men dressed in black on board. He had positioned himself behind Malik and one of the GIS men. Bianca was walking along silently at his right shoulder, and Sauvage was on his left a few feet away, behind one of the GIS officers.
The last GIS man brought up the rear.
Drexler looked right at Sauvage as he walked, willing him to look his way. When he finally did, Drexler saw the terror in the man’s eyes.
The Swiss operative only needed the French cop to fire his gun twice, shoot or slow down two of the four operatives, and then, when he invariably tried to shoot Drexler himself, Drexler would simply kill Sauvage and then Medina.
All his problems behind him, right here in this alley, and all he needed for this to happen was for Sauvage to reach for his gun.
Just then, Sauvage glanced to Bianca, nodded to her, and then his right hand went into his jacket.
Drexler sensed something was wrong, and he went for his own weapon.
* * *
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Henri Sauvage’s legs would barely function, but he forced them forward, and though he had similar trouble reaching for his weapon, the moment Drexler reached into his own coat he knew he had to act.
As he felt the grip of the revolver under his coat, Malik put his hand to his ear and said, “Wait.” He stopped, and Drexler stopped in midreach for his pistol. Sauvage took his hand away from the gun in the small of his back lest the man behind him see him telegraph his draw.
Without turning around to face Drexler, Malik said, “The skiff reports an old man running down the street a block to the west. I don’t know who—”
Sauvage saw Drexler begin moving again, executing his draw stroke. With speed and skill he raised his weapon to the back of Malik’s head. The GIS man walking just behind Drexler saw the movement and began to call out to his boss, but Sauvage reached back for his gun, spun around on the balls of his feet, and fell to his knees.
The GIS man in back shouted, “Malik!”
Malik tried to spin away, but Drexler’s gun cracked in the narrow street, and the GIS leader stumbled forward into the street.
Sauvage’s pistol fired into the chest of the man just behind him a fraction of a second later.
Drexler swiveled to shoot one of the two standing operators, and Sauvage spun back around 180 degrees towards the man who had been walking in front of him but was now turned towards Drexler and drawing a submachine gun from under his jacket.
Drexler and Sauvage both fired at the same time, both their targets fell, and the man closest to Sauvage dropped onto his back with his submachine gun out in front of him.
Sauvage dove for it.
Sebastian Drexler swiveled his Beretta towards Henri Sauvage now, just as the French cop leapt for the little Uzi, but as Drexler was about to press the trigger, he felt an impact on his right side.
Bianca Medina slammed into him, grabbed his gun arm with all her might, and threw her 110 pounds of weight into his torso, knocking him off balance.
But Drexler did not go down. He fought to free his arm, then stumbled back as he pushed her away and down to the asphalt, and as she landed on her back below him next to a parked car, he leveled his gun at her face.
The sound of automatic gunfire chattered in the alley now, and Sebastian Drexler arched forward, his weapon spun away, and his face slammed hard into the hood of the parked Citro?n.
He slid off the hood and fell onto his back between the Citro?n and the car parked in front of it.
Henri Sauvage fought his way back to his feet, took a step forward, and leveled the gun at Drexler, prepared to shoot him again.
Bianca screamed, “Henri!” She pointed to Malik. He sat up in the street on Sauvage’s left, his pistol out in front of him, the right side of his face red with blood.
Sauvage turned to the man, but another crack and flash of gunfire in the alley sent Henri Sauvage tumbling backwards, shot through the chest.
Bianca rolled onto her hands and knees and crawled between two parked cars. She continued around to the dark and narrow sidewalk, but soon she heard the grunt of a man blowing out his last breath, then the thud of Malik as he fell onto the cement on his back. She then heard the clanking sound of his pistol falling away.
“Bianca?”
Bianca stood up from behind the cars, looked down the street in the direction of the port, and saw a man running through the low light towards her. Behind him, some 150 meters away, she could see the black skiff full of men landing at a dock there. Men leapt from it and began running in her direction.
* * *