An Affair of Vengeance (14 page)

And then she remembered that running an SDR route didn’t require speed, so she tempered her touch on the accelerator. The basic idea behind an SDR wasn’t to
lose
one’s surveillance but rather to reveal it, preferably without alerting the surveillance team to one’s awareness of them. Once drawn into a space with multiple points of entry and exit, like a traffic circle or a big park with many gates, surveillance has to make a choice: come closer and stay on the target, or pick one choice and risk losing the target. If she ran a well-designed route, she’d present them with more options than a team could reasonably have members. Unless a surveillance team had enough agents to cover every exit option, as the Soviets used to when they’d run surveillance on Americans in Moscow, they’d have to get closer than they’d like—close enough for her to spot them. If she did it often enough, she’d ferret out and foil most attempts to track her movements.

But she needed to make it all look natural or else they’d know she was checking for surveillance, thus proving that she had something to hide, so she needed a good cover story. Tonight, she was heading to the bustling
quai du port
for a second helping of dancing, but she’d be getting a little bit lost along the way. At least, that’s what she kept in her mind as she spun out of the third arrondissement and headed for the old harbor at the center of the city. She’d take a surveillance-busting route there, stash her car someplace quiet, and then head on foot to Miel.

She’d run endless SDRs during training on the Farm. Despite the high-intrigue premise, in reality, they were long, stressful, and in the beginning, rarely successful. It took months to get it right. Now, she did them so regularly that they were second nature, but
that didn’t mean she could slack off. So as she slung her little turbo through the maze of Marseille, taking plenty of long, straight streets that allowed her to see behind her for several blocks at a time, she let herself enjoy one aspect of the process, at least: driving. Her favorite part of her CIA training at the Farm had been learning how to drive a car. Not like in high school, when the driving instructor had told her to find the lane of least resistance as soon as possible and stay there. At the Farm, the CIA trainer had forced her to take corners at such speeds that the car’s wheels lifted off the ground, just so she could know how to take a car to the very edge of its abilities. She’d jumped out of a moving car, practiced the best way to get into an accident, and discovered how to drive down a flight of stairs safely and quickly. Hadn’t gotten to use any of those yet, but she looked forward to the chance.

She’d loved every adrenaline-pumping second of the time she’d spent behind the wheel on the Farm. And now, as she swept the silver bullet around an exceedingly slow Honda, she didn’t entirely mind the drudgery of running an SDR through the streets of old Marseille.

A few miles away from the waterfront, she turned off a main road and rolled through a sleepy residential district. It was a shortcut of sorts, one she might reasonably take on her way to the center of town. It also held a nice little traffic circle, perfectly round, with three possible routes out.

Far behind her, a beat-up old red Renault and a silver hatchback just like hers took the same turn. A black Opel sedan followed them. As she headed into the roundabout, the Renault disappeared down a side street. The hatchback and Opel stayed with her. She took the second exit out of the circle.

So did the Opel.

Intriguing, but not evidence of a surveillance op against her. Sighting something once was a coincidence, twice was suspicious, and three was an offensive maneuver. She’d wait for two before getting her hair in a twist. But at the third, she’d take action.

She took a couple of quick turns that hooked her north around the Saint-Charles train station. The Opel faded back, out of view. She turned left onto Boulevard Charles Nedelec and from there ran straight into the big traffic circle around the Port d’Aix triumphal arch.

She cut right and accelerated into the triangular roundabout that ran counterclockwise around the park. The first exit was for the big expressway to Aix-en-Provence. She ignored it and banked left around a stand of trees to stay in the traffic circle, checking her mirrors. Both lanes of traffic were empty as she bypassed the second exit. The massive, Roman-style triumphal arch loomed on her left as she turned right down Boulevard des Dames.

Cruising slowly down the working-class retail artery of des Dames, she waited to see who would follow her out of the circle. A few seconds later, a Toyota hybrid hummed after her, followed closely by a white Ford supermini.

And then the black Opel sedan. That made two sightings. Definitely suspicious.

Her adrenaline spiked, and she eased off the pedal. If he was after her, there was no point in losing him. Not yet, at least. She wanted to know for sure that he was after her before she made any evasive moves, and while the car’s continuing presence behind her was fishy, it wasn’t conclusive.

Mason liked conclusive. So did she. She devised a plan to force the Opel’s hand.

Up on her left, a green, illuminated cross hung high over a door. With slick precision, she pulled her hatchback into a parking spot in front of the pharmacy storefront.

The Opel cruised by, and while she didn’t stare, she was able to note that the driver’s head was turned away from her. All she saw was that he had short, dark hair. One of billions. She noted the license plate and walked up to the pharmacy. At this hour, it was closed, but she pretended not to know it. When she got close
enough to the door to read the hours of operation, she stomped her foot and whirled back to her car.

She resumed her progress down des Dames and saw the black Opel parked, with its lights off, fifty yards down a sidebranching alley.

She considered the very real possibility that the owner of the car lived in a flat above one of the stores. But as she approached the big intersection with Rue de la République, she decided to take no more chances. If the black Opel was following her, it was time to shake him off.

In the center of the nearly empty intersection, she spun the steering wheel hard and accelerated rapidly to turn three hundred degrees left and head south down Rue de la République. Such a turn was a little odd, for she was now traveling in nearly the opposite direction from which she’d come, but she was an American in a foreign city. She could always claim confusion.

Rue de la République was a broad commercial street with room for four lanes of traffic, but two sets of train tracks ran up the center. Waist-high black poles funneled each direction of traffic into its own narrow lane. She cruised into the restricted southbound path, her eyes on her rearview.

Seconds later, the black Opel sped by on Boulevard des Dames.

That made three sightings.

Adrenaline shot through her cells. Sure, it could still be a coincidence. But a good CIA officer didn’t believe in coincidences.

The street on which she drove was long and straight. If he’d been looking to his left as he’d crossed the intersection, he’d have seen her, clear as day. But if he wanted to follow her, there was no easy way of getting onto Rue de la République from Boulevard des Dames once he missed that crucial, crazy turn she’d taken at the last possible second.

And even if he knew a shortcut, he’d still have to catch up with her.

Good luck
.

She downshifted and pressed her toes to the floor. The hatchback responded with a high-pitched buzz and she shot down the street, hurtling at breakneck speed toward the traffic circle at Sadi-Carnot. The whine of her turbo engine bounced off the elegant neoclassical buildings on both sides of the road. She braked hard twenty yards from the roundabout, saw that she had an opening, and rocketed into it.

Behind her was no trace of the Opel. She imagined the driver cursing, trying to find a route to Rue de la République, but he’d find nothing but a series of frustrating dead ends at every turn while trying to get back on her ass.

Still, she was far from home free. She took her first two rights and headed west on Rue Caisserie. Three hundred meters down the road, an odd little service station was shoehorned into the ground level of an apartment building. At this time of night, she could hide her car deep in the station’s recesses for a few hours. It wasn’t foolproof—she wasn’t the only person who knew about the free, late-night parking spots—but it should buy her enough time to get away cleanly on foot.

At the station, she pulled into the garage, found an empty nook, and parked the car. She got out, wondering if she’d feel comfortable retrieving it. While she’d run a hundred SDRs during her time abroad, this was the first time she’d ever actually thought somebody was following her. Agency-installed sensors or not, the possibility that somebody would find the car again and plant something undetectable on it was too great for her to imagine getting back in it. She’d have to have a CIA team check it out and haul it away under the guise of a parking violation.

Damn. She’d liked that car, too.

But she left it behind as she jogged across the street. There, a break between buildings afforded a brief view to the parallel but
sunken street below. The treetops of a small garden rose up out of the gap, which was barricaded by a low black-metal railing and afforded no access to the lower street level.

No
direct
access, at least.

Evangeline leaned over the edge of the railing. The ground below wasn’t far down, perhaps twenty feet. In a better pair of shoes, she’d only need one break point between her and the dirt. But in bare feet, she’d need two.

A quick glance down the street told her she was alone, and no one loitered in the sunken park. She slung her purse and the ankle straps of her shoes over one wrist and hopped over the railing, her bare heels landing on a shallow concrete outcropping. Without pause, she launched into the crown of the nearest tree, digging her toes into the rough bark of a sturdy limb as she caught a thick branch with her hands. Around her, leaves shimmied as if shaken by a stiff breeze. A second leap took her back in the other direction, toward the building. She landed in a crouch on the sill of a deeply recessed window, and from there jumped silently to the ground.

The whole process took a few seconds and very little effort, but she doubted that anyone following her would expect her to have done it. Fewer still would try repeating it.

She slid her shoes on and hastened around the curve of Place Vivaux toward the salty, fish-laden smell of the harbor. One block away, she turned down an alley between buildings. In front of her, row after row of white sailboats bobbed in the water, their tall masts looking eerily like glowing bones in the night sky. In the distance, high above the crowded tangle of apartment complexes that lined the opposite bank of the small port, jutted the square bell tower and rounded cupola of the neo-Byzantine Notre-Dame de la Garde.

Gorgeous view, and very popular, even now, as evening turned into early morning. Evangeline stepped into the loud, cheerful throng that strolled the promenade. She forced her steps to their leisurely pace. Music boomed onto the waterside esplanade from the open doors of discotheques. A few blocks down,
the signature golden honeycomb of Miel blinked above an otherwise unmarked steel door between a Greek café and a tapas bar.

She followed three unusually tall blonde women into Miel’s dark and steamy bar, where they melted into the crowd that pulsed in unison to sexy French rap spun by a DJ in the far corner. Great dance spot, but it was a mere lobby to those who knew better. She pushed her way past the impressive slab of gleaming oak that protected the hardworking bartenders from the heaving masses. No one seemed to notice her as she walked up a narrow, half-hidden hallway to the right of the bar. In the narrow corridor, she danced around a redhead tottering in wicked green stripper heels and cut the corner tightly at the end of the hall. A short flight of stairs took her up a half level. A second took her back down two. Now in the subterranean portion of the club, she met fewer fellow patrons. As she continued to walk the maze of passageways and stairs deeper into Miel’s honeycombed interior, she met fewer and fewer people until finally she was alone in a dark corridor with a low, vaulted brick ceiling.

A man in designer jeans and a black button-down shirt leaned against the wall at the far end of the hall, a green bottle of beer in his hand. He looked nonchalant enough, but as she approached and he gave her an appraising look, the sharpness in his eyes made it clear to her that he was anything but casual about guarding this spot.

She knew the words he needed to hear.

“Are you Etan Bettelheim’s brother?”

“I am. Are you looking for Henri Appel?”

“Yes.”

The names meant nothing; they were codes. With the proper phrases established, the guard smiled. “Door number two.”

Evangeline nodded and proceeded down the hallway. She opened the second door.

Inside the dark room, the gangster McCrea sat quietly on a red velvet sofa.