“Don’t you see?” he continued. “The box held my future. Its contents had given me purpose, a goal to strive for. I had an education. I had a job with unlimited prospects. A career on the right side of the law. That empty deposit box made me richer than I ever could have imagined.”
“I think I see now.”
“It was like the book by Dumas. I had found my treasure. The rest was up to me.”
“So here you are.”
Simon nodded. He kept his eyes straight ahead, offering a prayer to whoever or whatever was listening, thanking them for putting the monsignor in his life. The road dipped and began the long descent into Marseille. Already he could see the tips of the apartment buildings on the northern edge of the city.
After fourteen years, he was coming home.
He looked at Nikki and took her hand. “Let’s go get that letter.”
Chapter 53
Neill sat on a bench at the head of the platform reading a copy of the Nice-Matin, watching with dismay as the last of the train’s passengers filed past without any sign of Simon Riske. He was dressed in shorts and sandals, checked short-sleeved shirt, a cap on his head, looking as Gallic as a native of Athens, Georgia, could hope.
The train had arrived ten minutes earlier and was met by a dozen police officers. The passengers had been made to wait to disembark while the police supervised the unloading of the Russian agent. From his vantage point, Neill watched as the body was removed on a stretcher, placed on a gurney, and wheeled past him.
“Where is he?”
“I checked the train. He’s not here.” The voice on the comm link belonged to Dobbs, a Paris-based field agent who’d shared the train with Riske.
“How is that so?”
“He must have gotten off in Avignon.”
“Your brief was to keep an eye on him.”
“I saw him return to his seat after the Russian killed herself. The rail marshal was with him. It was impossible to keep eyes on him without drawing attention to myself. I just assumed—”
“So you didn’t actually see him get off the train in Avignon?”
“At least thirty people disembarked. It was crowded.”
“That’s not my question.”
“No, sir, I did not see Riske or Detective Perez with them.”
“Stay in place.” Neill called Riske’s phone and, when it rolled to voice mail, hung up and dialed the team in the surveillance van. “Get me a location on Riske.”
“One minute, sir. He’s in Marseille…at the station…actually, he’s about twenty meters away from you.”
Neill hung up and addressed Dobbs on the comm link. “Get back on the train. See if you can find Riske’s phone.”
Neill continued to the café, where he ordered an espresso and a lemon tart. He dropped two cubes of sugar into the coffee and drank it before starting on the pastry. During his time in the air, the boys in the van had run a check on the phone numbers Riske had found in Luca Falconi’s apartment. All five SIM cards had been purchased at a kiosk on the Rue Saint-Martin, a block away from the apartment. The first of the numbers had been activated several hours earlier, shortly after the number Riske had reported as belonging to Coluzzi had stopped functioning. At present, whoever was carrying a phone with that SIM card was on or near Entre les ?les, a pair of islands lying east of Marseille.
The men in the surveillance van had also followed Riske’s calls to the Saudi telecom service. With dismay, Neill had listened to the tapes of Riske obtaining the prince’s email password. The evidence led to an unpleasant and unimpeachable conclusion. The man knew too much.
“He ditched us,” said Dobbs.
“Come again?”
“I found their phones stuffed between their seat cushions.”
“Bring them to me.”
With care, Neill carved off a piece of the lemon tart, only for it to crumble before he could place it on his fork. The French, he had come to decide, possessed a mastery of cutlery beyond his ability. He chewed on the creamy filling, pondering his next move. Riske, it had turned out, was that rarest of all birds. He was even better than advertised.
Neill finished his tart and dumped the paper plate into the trash. Walking toward the exit, he placed a call to a home in the hills above Antibes. A man answered. “Jacob.” Zha-cobe.
“Is this Martin Jacob?”
“No, I am Gilles Jacob. I’m afraid you have the wrong number.”
But the call did not go dead. There were several clicks as Neill was switched over to the secure line of the CIA substation located in the basement of Monsieur Jacob’s house.
“Hello, Barnaby,” said Larry Tanner, the agent who ran the place. “Didn’t know you were in the neighborhood. How can we help?”
“I have a situation that’s developing a bit too quickly. I need to borrow one of your men.”
“Not a good time. We’re stretched thin these days. What do you have in mind?”
“A shooter. I need him on-site within three hours. Should have him back to you by tomorrow.”
“Let me check.”
Neill left the station and walked up the hill a block to where he’d parked his car, a silver Audi sedan. Just then, Tanner came back on the line. “You’re in luck. I have just the guy. Put in twenty years as a sniper with your old outfit.”
“The Corps?”
“MARSOC.” Marines Special Operations Command. The successor to Force Recon and the United States Marine Corps’ most elite unit. “Spent a bunch of time in Afghanistan. He was a night soldier. In between he stopped off in Iraq. There’s a note here says he held the record for the longest kill in his battalion. Took out a bad guy at twelve hundred yards.”
Neill whistled long and low. “Quite some distance.”
“Been with us since ’11. He’s solid. I’ll task him out to your shop, but make sure you sign off on an interagency chit within thirty days. We’re watching every penny these days.”
“You got it. What’s his name?”
“You’re gonna love this. Jack Makepeace.”
“You’re right. I love it,” said Neill, sharing Tanner’s jocularity like any good fraternity brother.
“You’ll have his records in a second,” said Tanner. “Where am I sending him?”
“Marseille.”
Chapter 54
Coluzzi’s phone rang as he stepped onto the dock in the old port. The screen showed no number, only the word “Unknown.” Unknown to others perhaps, he mused, placing the phone to his ear. “Yes,” he said.
“I will be arriving this evening at eight p.m. at the aerodrome in Aix-en-Provence. I do not wish to stay long. Please have my property ready.”
“Just bring the money. There won’t be any problems.”
“You’ll have your money,” said Vassily Borodin. “Eight p.m.”
“One last thing,” said Coluzzi, needling the Russian. “How will I find you?”
“If there are other Gulfstream jets there, look for the one with the Russian flag on the tail.”
The line went dead. Coluzzi left the dock and walked up the hill toward the Basilique Notre-Dame de la Garde. The Aerodrome d’Aix-en-Provence was a modest airfield ten kilometers outside the city with a single runway long enough to accommodate only midsized jets. No commercial air service was offered. In fact, if Coluzzi recalled correctly, it wasn’t licensed to welcome international flights. There was a reason he knew so much about the aerodrome. Years back, when he’d brought in planes from Morocco packed to the gills with hashish, the aerodrome had been his port of choice. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one able to buy off the ground personnel.
Coluzzi arrived at the top of the hill. He was hot and sweaty and on edge at the prospect of making the transfer at the aerodrome. He didn’t relish the idea of walking by himself across a wide-open runway to Borodin’s plane. He’d be a sitting duck. Any of Borodin’s men could take him out with an easy shot. How could he have agreed to such a thing?
He clutched his phone, weighing whether he ought to demand that Borodin meet him elsewhere. After all, he had what the Russian wanted. Why shouldn’t he be the one to decide? Then an idea came to him. Oh yes, he thought. That might work. He relaxed, if only for an instant. Sometimes the best ways were the oldest.