“Hanna” had removed the blonde wig and let her black hair fall from the wig cap. They rolled up to Raffey’s house just as he entered the front door.
“Well, Maya, he is predictable,” her partner said from the backseat. She knew the house well, having been there only hours before. “Das ist gut,” she said.
Holding ice on his lip, Raffey went upstairs and gingerly closed the bathroom door before turning on the light, trying not to disturb his niece and her mother. He opened the medicine chest and found the iodine and gauze. Tape, he thought as he moved a box of tampons to see if the roll was behind it. A bottle of witch hazel fell off the shelf and crashed loudly on the edge of the toilet. He stiffened, waiting to hear his sister call out — nothing. He opened the door. “Sorry,” he said in a whisper. He strained to hear any response. When there was none, he ventured into the hall. “Leena?” He approached her bedroom door and found it half open. He opened it all the way and the light from the bathroom splashed across the bed. It was still made, and had not been slept in. He walked to his niece’s room figuring that since the child had been having bad dreams of late, maybe his sister slept with her.
Again, both beds neat. He returned to Leena’s room and turned on the light. Not a sign of her. He went down to the kitchen and found the electric teakettle was on but all the water had steamed out. He pulled the plug. Walking into the living room, he turned on the light and was shocked to see the place in a shambles. He ran to the front door, opened the closet nearby, and pulled out his home guard rifle. He fumbled with the magazine and landed it in the breach. He was shaking like a leaf, not knowing what to do next when the phone in the kitchen rang.
“Your sister and her daughter are fine and they will continue to be unharmed as long as you do what we say. If you deviate from the plan or alert the authorities or anyone else, Leena will watch her daughter die slowly and horribly. Do you understand?”
“Hanna?” Raffey recognized the voice and immediately went into a spiral of confusion.
“Verstehen? Do you understand? Do you understand? Raffael!”
He snapped out of his momentary paralysis. “Yes, please don’t hurt them.”
“That is solely up to you. Go outside, get in the blue car. Bring nothing. We already have your papers and personal items.”
In the sedan, Hanna closed her cell phone. Next to her, Leena was crumpled in the passenger seat. Hanna’s partner was sitting next to Kirsi in the backseat. Both were unconscious, having been injected with a fast-acting anesthetic. “We give him two minutes. If he doesn’t come out…” She pulled a gruesome-looking folding knife from her belt and clicked it open. She reached around and handed it to Hans in the back seat. “…chop off one of the little girl’s fingers and I’ll bring it to him.”
In the house, tears started to well up in Raffey’s eyes. What had he done? What was going on? Why would a hooker do this? He tried to clear his mind, then had an irrational thought. He got up and parted the curtains in the living room window that looked out on the street. There was a blue car he hadn’t noticed before. With shaking hands he brought the rifle up to his chin and tried to aim at the car. He flipped the selector switch to burst as he had been trained to do. He tried to catch his breath, tears now rolled down the wood stock of the semi-automatic weapon. As if in a spasm, his finger jerked on the trigger.
Maya asked, “What is that?” The man with the knife turned to look up.
Raffey jumped back, the rifle hitting the floor — he had forgotten the safety. His whole body now shook. Then he thought for a moment. She must have accomplices. Shooting whoever was in the car would surely mean a death sentence to Leena and Kirsi.
“Whatever it was is gone now. How long do we give him?” Hans asked, as he positioned Kirsi’s hand in his, extending one of her fingers to be clear of the others.
“He’s coming out now,” Maya said with a slight tinge of disappointment.
Raffey approached the car, half expecting to be shot as he neared. The rear door opened and he got in.
“Shut the door. Turn your back to me,” a voice said, and he complied.
He thought he caught a glimpse of his niece in the backseat but it was too dark. “Please just don’t hurt my nie…”
That was as far as he got as the injection directly into his neck put him under.
A young government man in a three-piece suit watched as the Navy helicopter flared and did a perfect three-point landing dead on the circle at the Brétigny-sur-Orge Airport helipad. Joey emerged quickly and half-jogged toward him and the State Department vehicle.
As he stretched out his hand he said, “Joey Palumbo.”
“Yardley Haines, State Department.”
Joey got in the back. Yardley went around to the other side and also got in the back. When he closed the door, he tapped the driver’s seat and the car took off for the seventeen-mile ride north to Paris.
Yardley handed Joey a red-lined folder. “Ever hear of this Percival Cutney?” he asked as he scanned the papers within.
“No, not that I would. He is a subject of the UK;I have been stationed in Paris for the last nine years.”
“That’s it. I knew I had heard your name before.”
“Yes, I worked with your Quarterback team on the Peter Remo killing a while back.”
Joey couldn’t remember at that moment what part of the operation code-named Hammer of God had been declassified, so he chose not to inform Yardley that Peter was alive and well. That the murdered man had been a poor schmuck who had stolen Peter’s jacket. “Yes. You did good work on that. What happened with Lloyds of London?”
“I’m afraid they are denying all knowledge of Percy.”
“He most stringently prefers Percival.”
“Yes, of course.”
“The douche bag.”
Yardley smiled — here was a guy from back home.
“So, where do we go to get a lead on him?”
“We’ve cross-checked the White House scan of his ID and, using facial recognition, have him entering the UK through Gatwick yesterday, traveling under the name Percival Smyth.”
“Traveling to where?”
“Paris, we think.”
“Think?”
“We think he’s “chunneling” over this morning.”
“So that’s why I am here.”
“You were already airborne when we learned this, and Quarterback had the copter vectored to here. We have men at the train depot and his picture is everywhere as a person of interest in the UK bank scandal.”
“Cute — covering your bases with the cross-channel rivalry?”
“There are many die-hard French civil servant soccer fans who hate Manchester United and would pull out all the stops to embarrass the English. We should know more in an hour when the train arrives.”
“I’d like to be there.”
“That is where we are heading. We should be there thirty minutes before the train.”
“Good, then I have time to take a piss without risking my life.”
Yardley didn’t bother to ask.
Cheryl poked her head into Bill’s office and announced, “Agent Burrell on line two.”
“Brooke, how is France?”
“Lonely place to be working while others are here for love. But it forces me to focus on how crummy my love life is.”
Her TMI response reminded Hiccock of how women respond differently to work and life. A guy would have said, “Like a foreign film where everybody speaks a funny language,” or something else ‘shrug of the shoulder’ neutral, but a woman sees and hears things differently. And that was why he was glad Brooke was on the case.