As they drove away from the city, Coastie started breathing deeply and shutting down her emotions, letting her body and mind slow down and focus. It took only fifteen minutes to get to the beach road, and the car slowed for a curve. “Good luck, señora,” said the driver as he tapped the brakes once and Coastie rolled out the door and into soft sand.
A side road fed off toward the water, and she jogged down it quietly, unseen in the shadows. The house was straight ahead now, with no lights burning. Manuel Beltran was asleep. Beth made herself comfortable in a ditch, pulled on some night-vision goggles, and watched the single guard make his rounds. The man was so bored that he hardly looked beyond his feet. There was no movement inside the house. By about two o’clock, the fat guard was nodding off in a sagging beach chair on the patio with his weapon across his knees. Coastie moved like a black cat, a shadow lost in the other shadows. A hop over the rail put her on the patio. A few more steps and she was behind the guard, pulling his head back to stretch the neck and slashing fast, deep, and hard at the arteries to leave as much of a mess as possible.
Inside the house, she paused and took a note from her pocket. Written by one of the marines so that it looked as if it had come from a man, it was a warning to the Beltrans to stay in their own territory. Ramiro Delgado had powerful friends, it read, and tonight was a night of revenge.
She moved like a wraith down the hallway and into the bedroom area, checking each room until she found Manuel Beltran sound asleep, with his right arm thrown across a woman. Slowing even more, Beth assumed a proper shooting stance and brought the pistol into position, even taking a moment to aim. As time stood still, she felt in complete control of her world, and a burning hatred for the man in the bed.
Shooting had always seemed so easy and natural to her, and she gently gave Manuel a triple tap in the head, two in the chest, and one in the groin. The noise awoke his bed partner, and Beth stepped forward and clobbered her twice with the pistol. She wouldn’t be able to remember a thing.
Beth bailed out, avoiding the guard’s blood on the patio, and jogged back down the road, tasting the sweet night air rich with its salty ocean smells. By the time she was back in the car and moving off, she had decided to leave for Washington on Sunday.
It was easy to hide in France in the springtime. The annual flood of tourists was rising fast, and no stranger drew a lot of attention. For the freshly shaved Nicky Marks, it was easier to blend in as a somewhat lost and overwhelmed American sightseer than to sneak around like the killer he was. As that wise old Chinese Communist dude Mao Zedong preached, the revolutionary should mingle among the people the way a fish swims in the sea. Marks was no revolutionary, but he got the point.
The girl he picked up last night was the real deal, a freshly divorced American lawyer out to experience the wonders of Paris, and hooking up with a handsome French-speaking escort like Nicky was a find. Sylvia White of Montgomery, Alabama, spoke with a funny southern accent, and he let her do most of the talking in public as she struggled with her maps and guidebook and laptop. Her holiday was more like a military campaign, from the food at a certain sidewalk café, to the artists on the Left Bank, to the Louvre and a list of at least twenty must-see artworks. At least Nicky could have a nice dinner in the evening and an energetic bout of sex while Sylvia commented that her former husband — also a lawyer, name of Reginald — had never done that to her in bed, or THAT! Nicky would put up with it for a while, for being with Sylvia meant that he was safe. Terrorists normally run. Her accent, however, was driving him crazy.
He hadn’t spent much time thinking about throwing that grenade back in Berlin. He did it and got his money. Planning wasn’t his responsibility. He was puzzled about why he hadn’t been instructed to make sure of a kill. Setting off a loud boom and doing nothing else seemed rather pointless. The thing in Mexico had been equally nonsensical, to his way of thinking. However, the Prince was working out another one of his master schemes.
“I want to go visit that big Versailles place tomorrow, and see where Marie Antoinette lived,” Sylvia had announced in bed, making the name sound like Marie-Ann Tawnette. “Would y’all like to go along?”
“The Château de Versailles,” he said, gently correcting her mangled pronunciation. “Sure. Let’s do that.” In fact, the choice pleased him. The monstrous complex of palaces, gardens, and museums would swallow him from sight for an entire day, just another tourist fish.
The Prince would signal when it was safe to come out of hibernation. The lawyer from Alabama was in France for two more days, after which she would move on down to Italy to absorb the colors of the golden Tuscan sun. That was a whole different set of guidebooks, and he had already politely refused to accompany her, claiming important pending business meetings. She would be able to find another sleeping dictionary down there, he told her, and she giggled.
By then, the Prince would probably have him on the move anyway.
7
Sir Geoffrey Cornwell relaxed in a lawn chair that sagged in the shape of his butt. The warm sun baked on his face while his wife, Lady Patricia, puttered nearby in a patch of flowers. She could have had the gardener perform that chore, but Pat delighted in helping the earth come to life again in springtime, after the frosts, and she was thinning her perennials. Beside her lay a pyramid of fifty bulbs that needed to be planted today, and those Gladioli acidantera didn’t care that she was rich. If her ladyship wanted their gorgeous summer flowers, she needed to get them into the ground.
Kyle had arrived the night before, in time for a family dinner with these two people who were his surrogate parents. They had known one another for years. The gods of fate had gambled freely with Kyle’s life until he got a winning hand with the Cornwells. Merely being around them was a calming balm. He threw a pebble at a duck in the pond and missed.
“Quite a conundrum, my boy,” opined Sir Jeff. “You and this Nicky Marks fellow being tied together in two attacks on different continents.” Kyle had laid out the situation in a late-night session with them, then let them sleep on it before having any real discussion.
“So the bad man is after you personally? It has to be you, doesn’t it?” added Pat.
“I don’t know.” He threw at the duck again, skipping the rock past its tail. The bird quacked annoyance. “It’s too early in the game, Pat. I don’t have enough information.”
“It cannot be a coincidence,” Sir Jeff observed.
“No. Maybe I killed somebody’s cousin at some point back in the day and they’re out for revenge. A lot of people hold grudges against me.”
“Sit down and stop molesting our livestock, Kyle.” Lady Patricia shook her dirt-scabbed trowel at him, put it down, and lit a long, thin cigar. “We haven’t seen a thing on the news or in the papers about either of these incidents.”
“Different stories in Mexico and Germany. Nobody has tied them together yet.”
She was cross-legged on the grass. “Our poor Coastie. That was a beastly thing to do. She and Mickey were a wonderful pair. I called her yesterday and we had a long talk. She’s not very steady yet.”