David Baldacci - Deliver Us From Evil

Now Whit looked uneasily at Reggie.

Dominic said, “He’s right, Whit, we’re not prepared for this.”

Whit fumed inwardly for a few seconds. “All right, but the first time you try anything…”

“Right, whatever.” Shaw brushed past him heading for the aircraft’s exit door.

“Shaw!” shouted Frank. “You can’t do this. You don’t even know who they are.”

“I’ll be in touch, Frank. Hope you heal fast.”

The others followed him off the plane.

As they climbed into the Range Rover, Whit asked Shaw, “Hey, how did you get away in the first place?”

“With a toilet, a little water, and some elbow grease. And you might want to call somebody to untie your guy after they wake him up.”

“Bloody hell,” said an impressed Whit.

FEDIR KUCHIN’S villa was empty. No SUVs out front, no windows open, no cigar-smoking in the rear grounds. The bags had been packed, battered men gathered up, and they were gone. A phone call had been placed and his private jet had picked him up not at the commercial airport in Avignon but at a corporate jet park. He now looked down at the French landscape from twenty thousand feet as his private plane worked its way up plateaus of calm air to its cruising altitude.

Next to him sat Alan Rice holding an ice pack against his face with another strapped to his right knee. Pascal, and two of the other guards who’d been attacked by the Muslim impersonators, were nursing their own injuries. The man who’d been hit by the car had a broken leg. Kuchin’s mouth and jaw were badly swollen from Shaw’s blow and there were two new empty spots in his gums. He had refused any medical attention, not even Advil. He simply sat in his seat and stared down at the quickly vanishing French terrain.

They are down there somewhere. And they know who I really am.

He flicked a gaze at Rice. “In all the excitement you have not explained how you were able to rescue me, Alan,” he said, his damaged mouth moving slowly.

Rice gingerly removed the ice pack and glanced at his boss. “I followed the woman to the church one night.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t trust her,” he said simply. “That’s why I tested her.”

“Tested her?”

“When I pretended to warn her off. I lied to her and said that you had become infatuated with women in the past. I wanted to see if she would do the rational thing and leave you alone. She didn’t. That, coupled with her late-night excursion, made me even more suspicious. I also didn’t like the way she was playing you off against that other man.”

“So you followed her? But how is it that you were in those catacombs waiting for us?”

“I also saw who she was meeting with that night. I had him followed.”

“You did all this without telling me?”

“I wanted to be sure, Evan. I didn’t want to turn out to be wrong. I am a smart man, meaning I am terrified of you.”

Kuchin leaned back into the leather of his seat. “And then?”

“And then we saw them go into the church and down to the catacombs. When they came back out to get something, we snuck down there and took up position. I was very afraid because they had guns, and I have never even fired one. Witness my poor shot today.”

“You saved my life.”

“I’m glad I could be there for you. Had I known what this was all about I never would have let you go with her to the market today. By the time I realized what was happening it was too late. They were cunning. I assumed the two guards with you would be sufficient, but I was obviously wrong.”

“So I struck you in error earlier?”

“You had every right. I appeared to have overstepped my bounds.”

“I was surprised by that.”

“I’m sure. But I was just trying to protect you.”

Kuchin turned away, stared out at a cloud. “I’m sorry, Alan. I misjudged you. I saved your life, now we are even on that.”

“Well, thank God it ended all right.”

“End? No. This has not ended.”

“You’re going after them?”

“You had doubts?”

“No, no doubts,” Rice said nervously.

“The tall man? Why do I think he was not with them?”

“But he was there.”

Kuchin said, “I think he followed you into the church.”

“Me?”

Kuchin ran a finger along his battered jaw. Talking was painful but he was focused on something else. “You heard what they called me?”

“The name?”

“Fedir Kuchin.”

“Yes. I heard.” Rice put the bag of ice back on his face and tried to breathe normally.

“Do you know who that is?”

“No. I don’t.”

Kuchin was both pleased and disappointed by this. He bent down and removed an object from his briefcase. It was a bag wrapped in plastic. Inside was a gun.

“This is the woman’s pistol that she left in the church. I want it checked for prints but I doubt we’ll be successful there. When I picked it up I probably smudged any that were there. But it’s a relatively new model and we can check for serial numbers on the slider, barrel, and breech face.”

“They probably sterilized it. Used acid or a drill to remove the numbers.”

“You know more about guns than you let on, Alan. Yes, that is true, but there is a thing called microstamping. It uses a laser to imprint the numbers microscopically on the breech face and the firing pin among other places. They are not so easy to remove. If we can trace the gun perhaps we can trace the woman.”

“You really want her, don’t you?”

“The background check we ran on her was obviously flawed. I want you to find out all you can about who she really is.”

Kuchin stopped rubbing his jaw and took out the laptop computer they had found in the catacombs that was the source of the picture show down there. He turned it on and pushed some keys. A few moments later he was staring at graphic images of his work in Ukraine. He turned to see Rice glancing over his shoulder. The younger man quickly looked away. Kuchin finally eased his gaze from the images on the computer and put it away. He retrieved a small book from his bag and opened it. On one page were the beginnings of a sketch. Holding a bit of charcoal, Kuchin’s hand moved across the paper. As he did so Janie Collins’s face began to more fully appear.

SO FIRST, where do you want to go?”

Shaw was driving with Whit next to him. Reggie and Dominic were in the backseat of the Range Rover. Dominic had dozed off from the painkillers the doctor had given him.

Reggie and Whit looked at each other.

“It’s a valid question,” said Shaw as he patted the steering wheel. “It sort of tells me which way to point the ride.”

“North,” answered Reggie as Whit glared at her.

“North?” said Shaw. “ Paris? Normandy? Calais?”

“Farther north.”

Shaw eyed Whit. “The Channel? The North Sea? Do you live on a boat?”

“Funny.”

“You mean you’re Brits?” Shaw added sarcastically, “Bloody hell.”

“I’m Irish, remember, Paddy? Not British,” retorted Whit. “But I’ll let it pass. This time. So you got an idea how to get across the Channel? Hey, maybe this Rover’s amphibious.”

“Do you have passports?”

Whit pointed behind them. “Back there. But we can make some calls and get them quick enough. In fact, I don’t know what we need you for, actually.”

“Because I know what I’m doing. And don’t underestimate the French police.”

Whit slowly nodded. “I don’t underestimate anybody, least of all you.”

“Make the call. Tell him we’ll meet at Reims in four hours. When we get close we’ll call and pick the place.”

“So you know France?” asked Whit.