“Police! Ouvrez la porte! Maintenant!” The pounding at the door increased in urgency, the voices demanding that he open the door.
Jonathan eyed the pistol. He’d left Prudence Meadows’s gun in Rome, and he’d sworn never to touch one again. It was, he decided, a rash promise. He scooped up the pistol and ran down the hallway. The door to the stairwell stood open. A flight of stairs led steeply down to a dusky basement. He ran down several steps, then abruptly stopped. He gazed up. From where he stood, he could see the door to the office half open, and beyond it the laptop computer.
“Police! Ouvrez!”
Jonathan hesitated for a moment longer, then moved.
63
Kate Ford jumped from the Écureuil helicopter as soon as the skids touched ground. Head bowed, she ran to a small contingent of policemen gathered across the road. “Where is everyone?” she asked.
“At the house,” called one of the men as he led her toward a Renault painted with the fluorescent orange stripes and white body of the French state police. “You’re late. Come with me. I take you there. My name is Claude Martin.”
Kate shook hands and introduced herself. “What do you mean, late? You were supposed to wait for me.”
“Monsieur le Commissaire grew nervous. He will not permit Ransom to escape from us.”
The barb cut deep. Ransom had escaped from the English. He’d escaped from the Italians. Monsieur le Commissaire intended to show that the French at least were competent. History writ small. “So Ransom is there?”
“We’re not certain, but we found a motorcycle parked up the road.”
Kate nodded and looked away, struggling to mask her disappointment. The flight from Italy had passed in a flurry of diplomatic wrangling. Calls had passed from the Met to the French National Police, from Five to the DST-the Directorate of Territorial Security, France’s internal special forces-and then crisscrossed between the four of them. The French were wary about launching what they termed a wild goose chase to capture a foreign fugitive who most likely was nowhere near their borders. A full hour had been wasted debating the likelihood that Ransom could have covered such a long distance in so short a time. Another hour had passed discussing who would pay for the operation, England or France. It was finally decided that the police of the Alpes-Maritimes would coordinate the operation with the local brigade of the DST, to be flown in from Marseille. The bill would be settled later.
“How many men do you have in place?” asked Kate, feeling the knot that had been in her stomach during the entire flight from Italy tighten.
“We ordered two of our best men up to the house five minutes ago,” said Martin, who by his shoulder boards was a corporal, and by his peach fuzz and hulking shoulders barely out of university. “We have a dozen more setting up a perimeter.”
Kate wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. “I’d requested a tactical team from the DST. I thought this had been settled.”
“I wouldn’t know. We only arrived fifteen minutes ago.”
“So it’s just local?”
“So far, yes.”
Kate didn’t know why she was surprised. She wasn’t in London calling out a team of her own to set up a blind on a suspected bank job. This was international, and international things rarely went smoothly or quickly.
“How far is it to the house?” she asked.
“Five minutes, but I get you there faster.”
Kate climbed into the front seat. Martin left a yard of rubber on the pavement as he pulled away and attacked the road as if it were a Formula One track. “You said there was a motorcycle parked up the road, but did anyone get an actual sighting of Ransom?”
“I’m not certain, but I do not believe so. We are setting up a surveillance position across the hill, but it is getting dark.”
The car negotiated a last hairpin turn and slammed to a halt. Parked on a steep section of pavement in front of them was a cluster of vehicles-a van, two police cars, and an unmarked sedan-but nothing that looked remotely like it belonged to the DST.
Kate left the car and hurried to a circle of uniformed policemen. In short order she was introduced to the chief of the state police and his lieutenants. There wasn’t a woman in the bunch.
“We sent two men to the front door five minutes ago,” explained the commissaire. “No one answered.”
“Do you have a visual?”
“No,” responded the commissaire. “But no matter. We have the residence surrounded. If he is there, we will get him.”
Kate offered no reply. She’d said the same thing herself more than once and here she was all over again. “Do you have a phone line into the house? Let’s call and see if anyone answers.”
The commissaire shot her a black look. “It is too late for that.” He motioned toward the hillside, where six uniformed policemen clad in Kevlar vests surrounded the house. Four of them were positioned near the front door; two more had climbed onto the terrace.
Just then there was a shrill whistle, and the team commenced its assault. The men on the stairs charged the entrance. The others went in through the terrace doors. A moment later came the explosive thuds of a Wingmaster blowing the front door off its hinges. Two muffled explosions followed: stun grenades, designed to immobilize any occupants. Smoke curled from the terrace.
Three minutes later a policeman appeared at the railing. “Il n’y a per-sonne là-dedans,” he yelled down.
“What did he say?” asked Kate, looking from face to face. “I don’t understand.”
“There’s no one inside,” translated the commissaire. “Merde! Do you know what that means?”
Kate turned away, biting her lip white. She had come to know Ransom as a resourceful man. He had slipped through Graves’s fingers in London, managed to escape England and to navigate as he pleased hither and yon across the European continent while being the subject of an international manhunt. But this was too much. Was Ransom a ghost?
“Attention! Someone is leaving!” one of the men shouted.
Fifty meters down the road, well behind the mass of parked vehicles, the door to an unnoticed garage bay stood open. Kate spun in time to see a white Peugeot burst onto the road and turn sharply down the hill. She had only a moment to glimpse the driver. It was a man with cropped dark hair and a tanned face, wearing a dark T-shirt.
For a split second he looked directly at her.
Ransom.
Kate ran to the nearest car and jumped in the front seat. The keys were in the ignition, and she fired up the engine. Martin, the blossom-cheeked corporal, climbed in next to her. “You can drive?” he asked.