As she walked to the door, he called, “You never did tell me what bothered you so much.”
Kate looked over her shoulder. “You really want to know?”
“Couldn’t sleep if I didn’t.”
“What bothered me, Colonel Graves-”
“Call me Charles.”
“What bothered me, Charles, wasn’t that you came into my home unannounced and took it upon yourself to march into my kitchen.”
Graves set his hands on his hips. “What the hell was it then, DCI Ford?”
“Kate.”
“Okay… Kate.”
“I saw your Rover yesterday morning at One Park. What really pissed me off was that you arrived before I did, and you didn’t tell me. It was my crime scene. I don’t like to be second to anyone.”
32
The Peninsular and Orient ferry Princess of Kent, 179 meters in length, 40 meters from sea to smokestack, and 33 in width, with a draft of 22,000 tons and capable of carrying 500 automobiles or 180 trucks, along with 2,000 paying passengers, sat moored at the dock of the Dover-Calais terminal, ready to commence boarding in twelve minutes and thirty-seven seconds, as noted by the enormous digital clock arrayed on the neighboring warehouse. It was 6 a.m. The sun had come up a half-hour ago, and though the temperature was no more than seventy-five degrees, there wasn’t a lick of wind, and it was already uncomfortably humid.
Jonathan snaked through the idling trucks. Drivers milled outside their cabs, smoking, exchanging trade tips with one another, or just stretching their bones. He was studying the size of the cabs, the addresses of their owners (usually noted on the driver’s door), as well as the rigs’ home country plates. As important, he was determining whether the driver was at the wheel waiting to guide his rig aboard the ferry or somewhere en route to or from the ticket office.
He eyed a Peterbilt cab belonging to the freight forwarder Danzas and piloted by a M. Voorhuis of Rotterdam, Holland. The cab would be perfect, offering ample room to hide a fugitive eager to reach the European continent. Better yet, it belonged to an established freight company. Customs and immigration checks were carried out upon landing in France. Inspection was supposedly random, but he knew that vehicles registered to the established companies were rarely selected.
A man he assumed to be Voorhuis stood on the running board, smoking. Next to him, resting her head on his shoulder, was a frizzyhaired woman, all jeans, black leather, and skull rings. But Rotterdam wasn’t any good, and three was definitely a crowd.
Eleven minutes.
A Volvo FH16 carrying a Cat backhoe out of Basel, Switzerland, gave Jonathan momentary hope. The cab had a rest area behind the driver’s seat, and the Swiss plates meant free passage across borders. Even the driver looked okay, a middle-aged schoolboy wearing a silver cross around his neck. It was the biblical scripture airbrushed on his cab’s side panel that was the problem. If push came to shove, there would be no doubt that he would offer up a prayer and scream for the police. Besides, Switzerland wasn’t far enough south.
It was then that he saw it. Situated above the ticketing office stood a regulation highway-sized digital billboard, and on the billboard was a color photograph of Dr. Jonathan Ransom. A scroll running beneath the picture read, “Have you seen this man? His name is Dr. Jonathan Ransom and he is wanted for questioning in association with the London car bombing of 7/26. Ransom is six feet tall, approximately 180 pounds, and is thought to be armed. Do not attempt to approach him on your own. If you have any knowledge of his whereabouts, call…” A London number followed.
Despite the heat, Jonathan felt a chill along the back of his neck. All he had in the way of a disguise was a watchman’s cap to cover his graying hair and a pair of wraparound sunglasses. It wasn’t much, but for the moment, no one could match him to the man on the billboard. He stared at the picture of himself. It was the same photo used in the convention’s brochure. There was no longer any chance of bribing his way onto a truck. He’d have to sneak aboard.
The clock ticked down to ten minutes.
Ten minutes to find a way out of England.
Jonathan rubbed the sweat out of his eyes and kept moving.
The parking lot was a modern-day stockyard, with eighteen-wheelers and double-rig juggernauts taking the place of longhorn steers and grass-fed cattle. The random blare of an industrial-strength air horn was as disconcerting as the lowing of ten thousand frightened cattle, and the billowing exhaust every bit as noxious. If you couldn’t see the English Channel pressing down on three sides of the lot, you wouldn’t imagine that you were anywhere within a hundred miles of the sea.
Jonathan came to the end of a row and moved down the next. He’d left London at the wheel of Meadows’s Jag. He’d found the car around back, exactly as Jamie had said. It was a risk, but then everything was. He’d driven until three, then pulled off the motorway in Canterbury to rest, but he’d been too wired to sleep.
It had been five when he arrived at the ferry. After checking the morning’s schedule, he’d driven to the outskirts of town and parked on the fourth floor of a long-term garage. He’d even gone so far as to steal a tarp from a nearby Mercedes and throw it over the Jag.
Another horn sounded. Longer and louder. At the rear of the lot, a boom dropped, effectively prohibiting any further entrants. Jonathan stopped, leaning against a fender to scan the assembled armada of trucks. There were rigs from Germany, Belgium, France, Sweden, and Spain. Where was Italy?
Jonathan’s logic was straightforward, if problematic. Emma claimed to have been attacked in Rome. By the look of the scar, the wound had demanded immediate medical attention, if not a convalescence in the hospital. Somewhere there would be a record of her admittance. He was sure she hadn’t used her own name. He could rely on a picture and his own expertise in dealing with hospital administrators. That and something else.
His work provided one last arrow in his quiver. Years back, an Italian physician had joined the Doctors Without Borders mission in Eritrea on the horn of Africa for a three-month rotation. (This short stay was more the rule than the exception. Most doctors who gave their time to DWB did so temporarily. Stints normally lasted between three and six months.) The doctor’s name was Luca Lazio, and if Jonathan wasn’t mistaken, his practice had been near the Borghese Gardens in Rome.
There remained one small problem. Jonathan and Lazio hadn’t parted on the best of terms. In fact, a broken nose might have been involved somewhere along the line. But Lazio owed him. Of that, there was no doubt. Lazio owed him big.
Either it was Rome or it was nothing.
A shrill whistle followed the horn, and there was a thunderous, knee-shaking rumble as the drivers fired up their engines and shifted the drive trains into first gear. One by one, the rigs boarded the ferry, advancing up a wide black iron ramp and disappearing into a murky netherworld for the ninety-minute traverse.