The next town was Sangatte, a wind-whipped cluster of flint cottages that looked as though they had been plucked from the English countryside and plopped down in France. From there, they sent him farther west along the Channel coast, through the villages of Escalles, Wissant, and Tardinghen. There were periods lasting several minutes when there were no instructions. Gabriel could hear nothing at the other end of the call, but he had a sense he was nearing the end. He decided it was time to force the issue.
“How much farther?” he asked.
“You’re getting close.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s safe.”
“This has gone on long enough,” Gabriel snapped. “You’ve seen the money, you know I’m not being followed. Let’s get this over with so she can come home.”
There was silence on the line. Then the voice asked, “Where are you?”
“I’m passing through Audinghen.”
“Can you see the traffic circle yet?”
“Wait,” said Gabriel as he rounded a bend in the road. “Yes, I can see it now.”
“Enter the circle, take the second exit, and go fifty meters.”
“What then?”
“Stop.”
“Is that where she is?”
“Just do as we say.”
Gabriel obeyed the instructions. There was no shoulder along the road, leaving him no choice but to drive over a low concrete curb and park on the asphalt pedestrian walkway. Directly before him stood a commercial building of some sort, long and low, with chimneys at either end of the red tile roof. On his right a field of grain swirled in the wind and rain. And beyond the field was the sea.
“Where are you?” asked the voice.
“Fifty meters past the traffic circle.”
“Very good. Now turn off the engine and listen carefully.”
The instructions had obviously been preloaded into the computer, for they spewed forth in a disjointed but steady stream. Gabriel was to open the trunk of the car and throw the key into the field on his right. Madeline was approximately three kilometers down the road, in the rear storage compartment of a dark blue Citro?n C4. The key to the Citro?n was hidden in a magnetic box in the left-front wheel well. Gabriel was to keep the phone in his hand until he arrived at the car, with the connection left open so they could hear him. No police, no backup, no traps.
“It’s not good enough,” he said.
“You have fifteen minutes.”
“Or what?”
“You’re wasting time.”
An image flashed in Gabriel’s mind. Madeline in her cell, clawing herself bloody.
“I can’t take much more of this.”
“I know.”
“You have to get me out of here.”
“I will.”
Gabriel climbed out of the car and hurled the key so hard that, for all he knew, it splashed into the Channel. Then he marked the time on the mobile phone and started running.
“Are we on?” asked the voice.
“We’re on,” said Gabriel.
“Hurry,” said the voice. “Fifteen minutes, or the girl dies.”
28
PAS-DE-CALAIS, FRANCE
Three kilometers was slightly less than two miles, or seven and a half laps on a four-hundred-meter oval track. A world-class distance runner could be expected to complete the distance in under eight minutes; a fit athlete who jogged regularly, in about twelve. But for a middle-aged man who was wearing jeans and street shoes, and who had twice been shot in the chest, fifteen minutes was more than a fair test. And that was if the distance was truly three kilometers, he thought. If it was a few hundred meters longer, the time limit might be beyond his physical limits.
Mercifully, the road was flat. In fact, because Gabriel was moving toward the sea, it had a slight downhill pitch in places, though the wind blew hard and steady into his face. Fueled by a rush of adrenaline and anger, he set off at a maniacal sprint, but after a hundred meters or so he settled into what he assumed to be roughly a seven-minute-mile pace. He clutched the phone in his right hand but kept his left hand loose and relaxed. His breath was smooth at first, but it soon grew ragged and the back of his throat tasted like rust. It was Shamron’s fault, he thought resentfully, as he pounded along the pavement with the rain stinging his face. Shamron and his damn cigarettes.
Beyond the commercial building there was nothing at all—no cottages or streetlamps, only black fields and hedgerows and the broken white line at the edge of the road that guided Gabriel through the dark. The gaps between the lengths of white line were equidistant to the lines themselves, two strides per line, two strides per gap. Gabriel used the lines to keep his motion rhythmic and even. Two strides per line, two strides per gap. Fifteen minutes to cover three kilometers.
“Or what?”