The Golden Vendetta (9 page)

“Barb One and Barb Two,” said Lily.

“Exactly,” Becca said. “Of course, every bit of this was Roman Empire at one time. There are Roman ruins and a famous amphitheater not far from here—”

“Bringggg!” said Lily. “History class is over. I actually like what Darrell said better. This is France. And you know what? We should eat French food at a French restaurant. It's practically dinnertime. Somebody ate the absolute last croissant, there's nothing left in the fridge except cheese, and I'm hungry for more than cheese. I've never been so hungry. Madame Cousteau didn't shop today, and all I can think of is the food they give you on the train, which is not actually food but a kind of recycled wood chips with gravy, and of course you eat it because you don't want to starve to death in your compartment, but then later—like exactly later enough to be the farthest away from any kind of bathroom—you realize that wasn't food, but it's already way too late. Right, Bec? I mean, I'm right, right? You didn't like your wood chips, either, right?”

Becca stared at her. “I did not.”

Maybe the phone call was all right after all, thought Darrell. Lily's up, happy, maybe a little over the top, but that's so much better than not having her here at all. Holy cow, what would
that
be like?

Sara insisted that they go to the downstairs restaurant and bring the
charming
housekeeper with them. “We'll be down a little later, as soon as Roald finishes this last phone call. The café is open in front,” she said,
“so you can see the square, but it has a back room where you can eat privately.”

“As long as they have French food,” said Lily.

“They do,” said Roald, cupping his hand over his phone. “Look, the Teutonic Order will know by now that we didn't continue to Rome. You know what to do.”

They did. It was a way of life now. The kids took the public elevator with the housekeeper, who seemed to be liking them less with each passing hour.

The Place du Palais de Justice, which the apartment overlooked, was a public square free of cars. On three sides were restaurants, on the fourth an imposing classical building that could have been anything from a library to a bank but turned out to be the Palais de Justice.

The café in the building was exactly as Sara had described it. The back room was secure, but it had a full view of the square outside through a wall of mirrored glass. Madame Cousteau stood guard at the doorway like a statue.

“This is the life,” Becca said, relaxing into a chair next to the two-way mirror. “I can't believe we're actually here. Two days ago, Lily and I were in a motel in Florida. Look at us now, about to order French food in France.”

A waiter in a long white apron slid between the tables to them.
“Oui, messieurs, mademoiselles. Que voudriez-vous commander aujourd'hui?”

They ordered two grilled ham-and-cheese sandwiches of the kind called
croque-monsieur,
two authentic
salades niçoises,
and four Orangina soft drinks. The cold drinks arrived first, the food after ten or so minutes. Lily proclaimed that food had never tasted so good, “or so real!”

While they ate, the sun slowly lowered in the sky, and a cooler breeze swept across the square and into the café. Here and there lights came on, windows twinkled, and soon the open part of the café was blue with late-afternoon shadow. The waiters began to light candles on the tables. Wade realized that his father and stepmother hadn't joined them. He got out his phone.

“Don't spoil it,” said Becca. He didn't make the call.

“Excusez-moi,”
said Lily, and she went off down a corridor to find the restrooms. Becca went, too. Madame Cousteau followed them.

“She's like a ghost, that lady, shadowing us everywhere,” said Wade. “I kind of like it. I wouldn't like to be the bad guy that meets her.”

“However, as usual, grown-ups don't like us much.”

Wade nodded. “Well, you.”

Darrell scanned the menu again. “I completely admit that. My question now is, what's a
profiterole?
Second question: Should I be getting one? It sounds French and gooey. Is it? Well, it's probably French. But is it gooey? I feel like something gooey.”

“You look like something goo—” Wade's phone buzzed. He swiped it on. “It's from Dad.” On the screen was a series of numbers. “Coordinates. Why doesn't he just tell me?” He plugged the numbers into his GPS app.

The screen showed a map. He zeroed in on it. It was an image of that very square, the plaza outside their café. The coordinates identified a table under an umbrella at a bistro on the far side of the square.

“What is it . . . ?”

“That's what I'm asking,” said Darrell. “Is a
profiterole
a kind of
roll?”

Wade stood up from the table and stared through the mirrored window across the square to the exact spot the coordinates pointed to. Suddenly, the skin on the back of his neck began to prickle. His blood pounded in his ears.

“No . . . no . . . no . . .”

“No, what?” said Darrell. “It's not how you pronounce it?”

“No . . .” was all that Wade could manage to say.

“Yeah, you see, that kind of answer doesn't help—”

“Robin, stand up and look!”

Staring straight across the Place du Palais, Wade had spotted a face he'd hoped he would never see again.

D
arrell grumbled. Wade was doing it again: not saying the thing, but just pointing his face at it. Still, in the interest of stepbrotherhood he paused on his quest for dessert and followed Wade's weird stare across the Place du Palais.

Fifteen or twenty small round tables were scattered under a café awning. Looking beyond them, he spied the table Wade's eyes were fixed on. Two men sat at it. One had his head down, reading the menu like Darrell had wanted to do.

The other . . . the other wore wraparound sunglasses. “I can't believe it!”

“No kidding.”

The man in sunglasses—this particular man in sunglasses, code-named Sunglasses—had tried to kill them about a hundred times. Worse, he had nearly incinerated Lily and Wade. Worse than worse, he had kidnapped Darrell's mother in Bolivia, then flown her to Europe and finally to Russia.

In a coffin.

After Markus Wolff, Sunglasses was the scariest person they'd ever met. And the person Darrell most wanted to . . . to . . . never mind. But it was grim.

“Mom must be freaking out,” he whispered.

“Is he here because of us?” said Wade. “Does he know we followed the bookseller? He's good, but we've been so careful.”

When Lily and Becca returned with the frowning housekeeper, Darrell told them. “Look over there, but don't look like you're looking.”

“No one can see us,” said Becca. “Mirrored walls.”

Lily seemed to shiver from her head to her feet. “Oh my gosh, I hate that creep. Let me go over there and pour hot café au lait over his head.”

The man sitting next to Sunglasses lifted his face. It was the taller of the two fake porters from the train station yesterday. Instead of a jumpsuit and work cap he wore dark pants, a green polo shirt, and a
narrow-brimmed straw tourist hat.

“This is no coincidence,” Darrell said. “Sunglasses is after us again.”

Sara entered the café from a side door. She now wore a green sundress and matching sun hat. The moment she actually laid eyes on the man who had kidnapped her, she turned red in the face. But she kept her rage down. “We spotted him from the balcony upstairs and sent the coordinates. Terence was delayed. He should be in Nice soon. He told us his police friend said to expect something we wouldn't like.”

“What won't we like more than we don't like Sunglasses?” asked Lily.

“That.”

Sara nodded toward the staircase outside the entrance of the Palais. Two policemen emerged from the building and hurried down the broad stairs to the plaza, holding a small man by the arms.

“Oskar Gerrenhausen,” said Darrell.

“Do you think they're going to take him to prison?” asked Lily.

Becca shook her head. “That's not how they do it, is it? Not out the front door and right in the street like this. Don't tell me they're going to—”

“They're letting him go,” Darrell said. “He's not even
wearing zip cuffs. You can't go killing people, even in self-defense, and then just get set free so soon.”

“Not without help,” said Lily.

“And we all know who helped him,” said Wade. “And who sent Sunglasses to be his bodyguard.”

The two police officers paused at the bottom of the stairs, spoke with the bookseller for two or three minutes, handed him his messenger bag, then stepped back. They nodded in unison and hustled back up the stairs without him.

Gerrenhausen rubbed his wrists and loosened his shirt collar.

Darrell blew out a quick angry breath. “Galina has agents inside the French police. No more zip cuffs for this guy.”

“Zip cuffs. Zip cuffs,” said Lily. “What even are they?”

“Look 'em up,” said Darrell.

“You bet I will.”

Gerrenhausen adjusted his spectacles and scanned the tables at the café to his left. The railroad porter raised his hand. Soon the three men were sitting together, their backs to the Kaplans, drinking from tiny cups.

“I wish we had a bug at that table,” said Becca.

The three men spoke closely to one another for a
while, then rose to their feet.

“They're leaving,” said Wade. “Sara, can we see where they go?”

“From a long distance,” she said. “With all of you behind me.”

They hovered inside the café until the three men left their table. Gerrenhausen passed over his messenger bag to the porter, who mounted a motorbike that was parked nearby and took off in one direction, while he and Sunglasses left the square together and walked the opposite way, south toward the beach.

“Becca, come with me,” said Sara. “The rest of you meet us back at the flat.”

“Mom, I don't know,” said Darrell. “I think we should tag along.”

“All right, but keep far out of sight,” she said sternly.

“But why me?” Becca asked.

“The bookseller didn't see you on the train, at least not face-to-face,” Sara said, pulling her hat low. “And in case we get near enough to hear something, you can translate. Maybe we can find out where they're going.”

“Not into Galina's secret lair, I hope,” said Becca.

The two followed Sunglasses and the bookseller for several blocks to Promenade des Anglais, the wide,
bustling avenue that ran by the beach. They walked on the inland side of the street for a little while, when Sunglasses tugged a set of keys from his pocket and pressed an alarm release. A sleek silver Mercedes nearby gave out a subtle
beep-beep,
and its doors automatically lifted from the body of the car, slowly, like a pair of wings.

The men spoke for a while before getting in.

Becca snapped several pictures of the car, including the license plate, then had an idea. “Sara, without a ride, we're going to lose them. We need to get closer.”

“Becca, don't you dare—”

But she slipped away and moved quickly out of whisper range. It was an odd thing to do. She was the least adventurous of them all and hated to disobey Sara. On the other hand, she'd gone five centuries into the past and returned to talk about it, so she could obviously handle herself. She ducked past several pedestrians, moving as close as she dared, but could hear nothing of their conversation. The street noise was too loud.

Then another idea. Hoping the computer setup in Terence's apartment was really as hard-core as it looked, she switched on her phone's recorder and while they weren't looking lobbed the phone into a nearby trash barrel, hoping it wouldn't fall into something wet.

The men spoke—in what sounded like German—for
another minute or so, then slid into their seats, and the doors folded back down into the car. With a great roar, the Mercedes squealed away from the curb.

By the time Becca rushed over and picked the phone out of the barrel—it was dry—the car was lost in traffic.

“Oh, Becca,” Sara said. “That was just so—”

“I know. Super dumb.”

“Yes, but brilliant!”

Geneva, Switzerland

June 5

Six hours earlier

A
squat, middle-aged, balding gentleman in a lightweight gray suit, blue shirt, and red tie walked out of his apartment at 7 Rue Sismondi in Geneva and met a squat, middle-aged, balding gentleman in a lightweight gray suit, blue shirt, and red tie.

The first man was the physicist Dr. Marin Petrescu, who had recently been named director-general of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. He stared at the second man. “Who the devil are you?”

The second man, whose name was Johann, or
perhaps Esteban, was an employee of the Teutonic Order and said nothing. His chief qualification for this encounter were his height, weight, and facial construction.

“This is ridiculous!” Dr. Petrescu protested, trying to step away from the second man. “I have a meeting to attend. My car is waiting. Let me pass.”

Petrescu then performed a neat twirl on his heels and pushed past the other man, making for the corner around which his private car and driver, François, usually waited. Before he got to the corner, however, he was pulled off the pavement by two large men in ski masks; then he was bound and gagged and dragged into a black van that drove up at that moment. At the same time, his impersonator entered the director-general's private car, his head bowed. In a reasonable imitation of Dr. Petrescu's voice he said, “Drive around the lake, François. To Montreux.”

His driver flicked his eyes to the rearview mirror just as the divider rolled up. “Sir, that is two hours, round-trip. You'll miss your meeting, Dr. Petrescu.”

“It will wait,” his passenger said.

“But . . . two hours?”

“To Montreux, François.”

Galina Krause stared at the bewildered man in the back of the van. Her agents were moving across the globe to effect Operation Aurora. One aim of the operation—a major one—was dependent upon the cooperation of Dr. Petrescu.

The van motored slowly away from Rue Sismondi and took a left at Rue de Berne, which after several name changes finally became the Route de Meyrin.

She loosened the gag and let him spout his outrage.

“What is this? Who are you? Are you kidnapping me? No one will pay a ransom. I have no family, and no one will pay. My organization is instructed to ignore the demands of terrorists. You will not receive a single euro from killing me. You are committing a serious crime. Let me out at once! I repeat—”

Dr. Petrescu was indeed a man without a family. He was a man without a life, which made him fearless regarding his own safety. A man without fear must be convinced in other ways.

“You do not recognize me, do you, Doctor?”

His response was swift and dismissive. “I do not memorize the faces of terrorists.”

“Doctor, this van will soon arrive at the CERN laboratories. I have two demands. First—”

“Never!” he interrupted her. “Whatever it is—never!”

“First, I will attend the meeting you have scheduled at CERN headquarters in five days' time.”

“Meeting? What meeting? There is no meeting. And if there were, I would certainly not—”

“I understand that you are planning to inform the attendees at your secret meeting about certain temporal disturbances your instruments have discovered. That you have chosen your attendees for their expertise in atomic physics. That you can prove the existence of a rogue group undertaking experiments in time travel.”

“How can you possibly know . . .” Dr. Petrescu paused. He scanned her face like a painter preparing to render a portrait. “Those eyes . . . that scar . . . I have seen you before. . . .”

“Three years ago. I was sixteen. I asked you then for access to your laboratories, to Project ICARUS, to the Obelisk Papers. You dismissed me with a wave of your hand.”

“You are she! Galina Krause. Your organization of thugs and hoodlums—”

“You will not dismiss me now, Doctor. For my second request, I require complete and unrestricted access to your facilities and equipment in Meyrin and at your partner laboratories. I will need your data on every project, including DarkSide-Fifty, OPERA, the others,
as well as your access to the intelligence services of world governments—”

“I cannot be blackmailed!” He laughed a hollow, frightened laugh. “Murder me, go ahead. I will never give you such access. You don't belong in a laboratory. You belong in an asylum! You are mad, little girl. Mad!”

Galina smiled as she pulled her phone from her pocket. “Let us see how mad I am, shall we, Doctor? Do you know what this is?”

She opened her phone to an image taken inside a Soviet submarine long buried in the arctic ice.

His eyes grew wide. “How did you . . . You are toying with nuclear disaster!”

“This warhead is one of several I am gathering,” she said. “Tell a soul, a single soul, and I will detonate it and flood countless coastal cities. Believe me, Dr. Petrescu. It is not my wish. I will be present at your meeting in
Geneva. I will speak with your guests at the conference. I will have access to your research.”

“No! No! I demand to be let go! I demand—”

Galina slid the gag roughly over his twisting mouth. As she had expected, this was not the visit that would change his mind. This was merely to prime him for the next time they spoke. Dr. Petrescu would soon discover how quickly his estimation of her changed from “mad” to “she who would change his world forever.”

She turned to the driver.

“Drop the good doctor back home. Then drive me south to the Côte d'Azur.”

One thousand thirty kilometers northeast of Geneva, if anyone were paying attention, he might have seen Marius Linzmaier, the driver of a gray, oversize, and somewhat beat-up delivery truck, depart Schwarzsee, Galina Krause's lakeside estate in the forests northeast of Berlin, and travel south.

The truck was loosely accompanied by three large old vans, one in front and two following, but all hundreds of yards apart. It barely looked as if there was any connection among them. There was.

All four trucks carried what Marius could only call “strange cargo” and were attended by thirty-five knights
of the Teutonic Order, not including Marius's odd front-seat passenger. In addition, the convoy was on a strict timetable. They were to arrive at their destination at one p.m. Central European time on Tuesday the tenth, five days from today. Their first stop was Vestec, south of Prague in the Czech Republic, to pick up more strange cargo.

In the truck's passenger seat, with his eyes trained coldly on the gray road ahead, sat a cold brick of a man in the uniform of a colonel from some indistinct Southeast Asian paramilitary group.

He said nothing as the truck gained speed.