Armen Gharabegian - Protocol 7

“Why?” Sabrina whispered, choking on her own blood.

Her attacker did not answer.

The light was starting to drain away. The lamps were liquefying, the windows growing dim. Even the sound of the rain was moving farther away…and farther still.

The sound of the rain was the last thing Sabrina ever heard.

Oliver's Estate

The frigid dusk breeze was sharp enough to sting as Simon drove a little too fast down the dark and secluded road to his father’s old hideaway. Three days had passed since the team had separated in London; since then, he and Samantha had made their slow and circuitous way across Europe, acting exactly like brother and sister on an extended holiday, even though they felt the weight of the world on their shoulders.

The farther they got from Oxford and its madness, the more Samantha acted like her old, tough, smart self. She had avoided talking about the future entirely; there were moments along the way, Simon thought, when she actually seemed to forget why they were traveling and where they were going.

But now they had arrived, and the darkness had returned. She had been very quiet ever since their small charter plane had landed on one of Corsica’s World War II-vintage airstrips.

Simon made a sharp turn as the road took another twist to the south, then an almost immediate twist to the north, winding between yet another set of steep, rocky peaks. The island seemed to be made of nothing but small mountains with the occasional pocket valley just large enough for a single cottage and a pasture.

Simon almost smiled as the SUV pushed on and the mountains unfolded around them. He vaguely remembered this approach to his father’s property. He knew they would be reaching the nearly hidden gate any moment now. Assuming I don’t miss it entirely, he told himself.

Simon hadn’t spoken to any of the team since Oxford. He didn’t dare-and didn’t need to. They each had their own route, their own set of tasks, and they all had the same destination on the same date: the cottage on Corsica, no later than sunset on May 22. It wasn’t written down anywhere; it didn’t need to be. They each knew it by heart.

Still, Simon couldn’t help but wonder if they were all still alive.

He gazed idly at the winding road, the ragged hillsides, the tiny, tidy cottages. Nothing’s changed, he thought as they sailed along the roughly paved road. He hadn’t driven to this cottage in twelve years, but the roads were etched in his mind as if he had driven through them yesterday.

And then there it was: the Gate, an overgrown alcove of trees at the side of the road that blocked the main entrance to the property. Anyone who was unfamiliar with the entrance would easily miss it in the deep blue shadows of the thick foliage; the fact that it was dusk made it even harder to decipher.

The cottage had always been a mystery to Simon. Ever since his childhood, conversations about the hideaway were discouraged. Oliver never liked to discuss it, and Simon himself had only been there twice-once as a child, and once when he was in college. The college trip had been terribly important, but for some reason his childhood memories were far more vivid. Like a dream, he thought. One of the few really good ones I had as a boy.

He looked into the rear-view mirror and saw that Samantha was sleeping soundly. Good, he thought. She needs it. He saw her stir and mumble something he couldn’t quite hear. He hoped it was a good dream. He could use a few of those himself, he thought.

As he drove up the rough dirt road, he realized that he needed to focus on why he had come. He reviewed the next stage of the plan one more time. It wasn’t going to be easy; the cottage’s remote location made it safe and secure, but it made the communication links that were crucial to the plan very difficult-almost impossible.

One night, he thought. If they were right about the location of the S.S. Munro and its precious cargo, they would have a single window of less than one hour, on this very night and no other, to make contact. Ryan had told them that he could scramble the satellites in their specific location for one hour before it raised suspicion. If they succeeded, they would all leave together-and stay together from now on, until the end. There was a chartered yacht moored in a small lagoon near town. It would wait until one hour past high tide for them to board and no longer. Or at least that was what Ryan was supposed to have arranged, he told himself.

“Timing,” he said aloud, but very softly. “It’s all about timing.”

As he passed through the final copse of trees, so dense it was black as coal, the rich smell of the pine in the cold mountain air brought a sacred memory back to him: three days with Oliver, here on Corsica, when he was no more than seven years old. He remembered everything they had done together that long summer weekend-making breakfast, fixing the porch steps, hunting for foxes with a shared compound bow in this same slice of wood he was passing right now. They were together every moment until the late evening of every day, when his father had disappeared into his upstairs study and closed the door behind him, locking it and leaving Simon alone.

The study, he thought. I need to get inside the study. There were secrets in there, he knew, enormous secrets his father had kept locked away for a generation.

He pictured the door to the study as if he had seen it yesterday. He was convinced-almost certain-that the key to Oliver’s predicament waited for him inside.

Ask Leon, the coded message had said. He knows. It was more than a decade since Simon had seen the groundskeeper. The dour old Corsican native had terrified him when he was a boy and made him bloody uncomfortable when he’d visited as a young man. Now, somehow, he was at the center of this mystery.

And Simon needed his help.

He remembered how scared he was when he’d first met Leon as a child. He was an unusual person to Simon-he would have been to any child-and Simon had been terrified by his stark, cold demeanor.

The groundskeeper never talked much. He was a tall, slender fellow with hair as black as obsidian and hands the size of shovels. He had dedicated his entire life to caring for the estate-and it really was an estate, Simon admitted to himself, not just some modest cottage in the Corsican hills. He and Leon had never been friends; they wouldn’t be friends now, he knew. But he needed to talk to the man, and he needed his help, if only for the next few hours.

Simon had sent him a message from Oxford and had received a one-word response: COME. They hadn’t exchanged another word since.

He maneuvered around the trees, then tapped his brakes, and slowed the car as they approached the massive iron gates that had been hidden from sight. They blocked the entrance to a winding road that led even further up the mountain. As the vehicle crawled forward, the gates started to open slowly. So he did get the message, Simon thought. Otherwise, he knew, that huge threshold would have remained silent and immobile. He’s expecting us.

The road beyond was narrow and covered deeply in gravel that was so coarse it was almost like cobblestone. The popping crunch of the tires pushing down onto the small stones unnerved him all the more; it was an all-too-familiar sound he hadn’t heard in years. Outside, the mountain was strangely quiet, almost expectant, as they slowly drove up toward the cottage.

Simon didn’t know why he felt so awkward as he drove the last quarter-mile to Oliver’s cottage. It was as if he was about to meet his elementary school principal again-a feeling of tacit anticipation he couldn’t shake off, even as an adult. Was it the caretaker himself who gave Simon this awkward, nervous feeling, or was it the prospect of all that had to happen once he’d arrived?