“And you’re sure there’s no one in the room?” he asked.
“Positive,” said the clerk. “I just finished preparing it myself.”
For this thoughtful gesture, Gabriel placed a ten-euro note upon the desk. It was seized by a grimy hand and disappeared into the pocket of an ill-fitting blazer.
“Do you require assistance with your luggage?” he asked, as though assisting Gabriel was the last thing on his mind that evening.
“No, thank you,” said Gabriel cheerfully. “I think I can manage.”
He wheeled the suitcases across the linoleum floor, then did his best to make them appear weightless as he lifted them off the ground by their grips and started up the narrow staircase. His room was on the third floor, at the end of a dimly lit hall. Gabriel inserted the key into the lock with the care of a doctor wielding a medical probe. Entering, he found the room empty and a single light burning weakly on the bedside table. He rolled the bags just across the threshold. Then, after closing the door and drawing his Beretta, he quickly searched the closet and the bathroom. Finally, certain he was alone, he chained the door, barricaded it with every piece of furniture in the room, and wedged the two suitcases beneath the bed. As he stood upright again, the phone he had collected in Calais rang for the second time. “Very good,” said the same computer-generated voice. “Now listen carefully.”
This time, Gabriel issued several demands of his own. She had to come alone, with no backup, and no weapon. Gabriel reserved the right to search her—thoroughly and intrusively, he added, just so there were no misunderstandings. After that, she could take all the time she needed to verify that the notes were genuine and, when tallied, amounted to a sum of ten million euros. She could count the money, smell it, taste it, or make love to it—Gabriel didn’t care, so long as she made no attempt to steal it. If she did that, said Gabriel, she would get hurt, badly, and the deal would be off. “And don’t make any stupid threats about killing Madeline,” he said. “Threats insult my intelligence.”
“One hour,” responded the voice, and the connection went dead.
Gabriel removed a straight-backed chair from his barricade and placed it in the room’s arrow-slit of a window. And there he sat for the next sixty-seven minutes watching the street below. Forty minutes into his vigil, a man hurried past the hotel beneath an umbrella, pausing only long enough to pull at the latch of the Passat’s front passenger-side door. After that, there were no more cars or pedestrians, only the gulls circling overhead, and a gang of street cats that feasted on the rubbish from the seafood restaurant next door. The waiting, he thought. Always the waiting.
When sixty minutes elapsed with no sign of her, Gabriel felt a stab of panic—a panic that worsened with each passing minute. Then, finally, a BMW wagon nosed into the empty space next to his. The door opened and a stylish boot emerged, followed in short order by a long, blue-jeaned leg. The leg belonged to a woman with coal-black hair that fell about her shoulders and shielded her face from Gabriel’s view. He watched as she came across the street through the rain, watched the rhythm of her stride, the bend of her knees. It was a curious thing, the gait; it was like a fingerprint or a retina scan. A face could be easily changed, but even professional intelligence officers struggled to change the way they walked. Gabriel realized he had seen the walk before. She was the woman from the ferry.
He was certain of it.
25
GRAND-FORT-PHILIPPE, FRANCE
It took her less than a minute to make her way from the street to the third floor of the hotel. Gabriel used the interval to remove the barricade of furniture from the entrance hall. Then he placed his ear against the door and listened to the tack-hammer clatter of her heels along the uncarpeted hall. It was a good door, solid and thick, enough to slow a bullet but not to stop one. The woman knocked lightly upon it, as though she suspected children were sleeping within.
“Are you alone?” asked Gabriel in French.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Do you have a gun?”
“No.”
“Do you know what will happen if I find a gun on you?”
“The deal is off.”
Gabriel opened the door a few inches with the chain still in place. “Put your hand through,” he said.
The woman hesitated for a moment and then obeyed. Her hand was long and pale. She wore a single ring, a band of woven silver, and there was a small tattoo of the sun on the webbing between her thumb and forefinger. Gabriel seized hold of the wrist and twisted it painfully. On the underside were the long-healed scars of a youthful suicide attempt.
“If you ever want to use this hand again,” he said, “you’ll do exactly as I tell you. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” gasped the woman.