The Diaries - 01 (54 page)

Gage accepted the
pistol before shaking Marcel’s hand.
 
Neither man smiled, but there was a respect between them as their eyes
locked.
 
“Oh,” Marcel said, remembering
something.
 
“Wait here.”
 
He reappeared moments later holding a paper
sack wrapped around something large and rectangular.
 
“Luc and Bruno took this when…” Marcel’s
voice trailed off as his eyes went to the floor.

Gage accepted
it.
 
“Thank you.”

“I specifically ordered
them not to harm her.”

“I believe you,”
Gage answered, dropping the bag into his pack.
 
He was ready to leave France.
 
He
looked at his pack and back at Marcel.
 
“Did you read the diary?”

“I did.”

“And do you know
who wrote it?”

“I believe I do.”

“Would you mind
keeping it to yourself?”

Marcel was silent
for a moment before his mouth creased into a smile.
 
“I hate history, Herr Hartline.
 
It was among my worst subjects in school.”

Gage laughed,
immediately clamping a hand to his side.

The two men became
silent again, lifting their eyes to the ceiling.
 
For a full minute they waited—there were no more
sounds from upstairs.
 
Marcel pointed his
finger to Gage’s pistol.
 
“Might I borrow
that for a moment?”
 
Gage handed it to
him.

Marcel ejected the
cartridge and the round from the chamber.
 
He used a sharp knife to gently scoop out even more of a bullet’s tip,
making a dull, blunt hole in the projectile that would hit someone like a Mack
Truck at close range.
 
Pressing the
bullet into the top of the cartridge, Marcel cocked it and told Gage he would
be right back.

Gage waited twenty
seconds before he heard the thunderous boom.
 
Marcel reappeared and handed Gage the warm pistol.
 
“Nicky Arnaud has been beheaded,” he said
flatly.
 
Eyeing Gage he said, “This is
France, after all.”

Gage nodded but
said nothing.

After Marcel removed
the lasers from the fence, he drove Gage up the hill to his car.
 
Gage was unlocking the Opel when Marcel spoke.

“There’s one more
thing.”

Gage tossed his
bag into the trunk and turned.
 
“Yes?”

“A man, a
Frenchman, Jean
Jenois
: do you know him?

Gage straightened.
 
“I do.”

“Watch out for
him, Monsieur Hartline.”

“He wants the diaries,
doesn’t he?” Gage asked.

“Yes, and he will
kill you for them.”

“And you?”

Marcel pitched his
cigarette onto the sidewalk.
 
“I am
finished with you, sir.”
 
He crossed his
hands over one another, a cufflink catching a glint of the streetlamp.
 
“And you with me, I hope?”

Gage nodded.
 
The two men stared at one another for a few
more seconds, with Gage finally breaking eye contact.
 
He eased into the seat and started the car,
turning onto the Avenue d’
Essomes
.

He headed east.
 
His destination was Frankfurt.

Chapter 14

Monday, November 16 – Frankfurt,
Germany

The
small room overlooked the
alleyway that ran parallel to
Wildunger
Strasse
.
 
Jean
Jenois
had no other choice than to pay eight thousand euro
for one month—twenty times the room’s worth—simply because he had a pressing
need and the Polish landlady was a shrewd, conniving old bitch.
 
He stood from his air mattress, his bones
aching as he twisted the ancient radiator, desperate for more heat.
 
Three long days and nights without a decent
meal, without a drink, and without a shower were killing him.
 
Being dirty intensifies a person’s sense of
cold, and also takes a toll on well-being.
 
And for a man who had grown quite used to the finer things in life, the
effect was exaggerated on Jean
Jenois
.
 
He’d endured survival school in the frigid Pyrenees,
a month in the searing Gobi—and even a week in Detroit—but nothing had yet been
this miserable.

On the window sill
was a compact motion-detecting device aimed across the alleyway, its invisible
beam bouncing from a palm-sized mirror Jean had affixed when he had decided
that long-term surveillance was the only way to crack the egg.
 
Normally, such measures would have required a
team of six to eight men, but Jean had managed to keep his mission quiet,
convincing Henri to cover for him in return for a cut of the profits.
 
So since Friday, he had spent every minute of
his time in this miserable space, never once leaving.
 
His nights were restless, waking every time a
garbage truck or some drunk staggered through the alleyway, thereby setting off
the motion alarm.
 
During the day, Jean
would read, play solitaire, talk on the phone with his many lady friends:
anything he could do to kill the monotony.
 

But primarily he
would daydream about the purported worth of the mythical diaries.

Marcel had called
several times but Jean didn’t respond.
 
Hornet nests were best left undisturbed, and only in the event that the
surveillance dragged out more than a week would Jean return that call.
 
He lit a cigarette and kicked aside the pizza
boxes and empty containers of Chinese food.
 
Fortunately for him, two streets over on
Rohmerstrasse
,
there was a small café that had made an exception for him, willing to deliver
bread and good coffee for ten euro extra.
 
He rubbed his oily hair as he dialed their number, remembering to tell
them both coffees were to have heavy cream and be triple-cupped, so they would
retain their heat.

After his awakening
cigarette, he brushed his filthy teeth and washed his face.
 
Feeling somewhat human, he smoked again as he
waited on his delivery.
 
The alley alarm
sounded—not unusual for seven in the morning—and he stepped to the window to
see three children passing through, the packs on their backs signifying that
they were school kids.
 
He heard
footsteps on the stairs, hoping that it might be the café’s post-teen employee,
the one with the round face and large breasts.

She had delivered
his bread and coffee Saturday morning, making another delivery that afternoon.
 
He guessed her heritage as Greek, or perhaps
Turkish, with her full lips being her second best asset.
 
She couldn’t have been more than twenty, wore
tattered clothing, and probably hadn’t fifty euro to her name.
 
And while he had not enjoyed a shower in
days, Jean wanted her underneath him in the worst kind of way.
 
A weekend was the outer range of his
abstinence limit and, because he felt masturbation was the ultimate sign of
weakness, he was absolutely on end to find release wherever he could.

A knock at the
door.

Jean opened it,
relief flushing over him as the girl—the one he wanted—lifted the tray and
white bag.
 
She wore a friendly smile.
 
“
Kaffe
und
Bröt
fur Du?”

The poor girl in
her immigrant ignorance could barely speak German.
 
Jean eyed her hungrily.
 
He
had
to have her.
 
Now.
 
Digging the money from his pocket, he decided
to be frank, speaking in simple German.
 
“How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“Greek?”

“Turkish.”
 
She looked wary.

“As you might
imagine,” he said, handing her the money and smiling broadly, “I am very
attracted to you.
 
I have been stuck in
this,” he waved his arm, a disdainful look on his face, “this…
Sheissbude
…for
days, due to my job.
 
And it would do me
more good than you could ever imagine to spend, say, a half hour with you.” He
arched his plucked brows.
 
“I’d be happy
to pay you for your time.”

The girl’s face
went blank as she was apparently trying to comprehend exactly what he was
requesting.
 
Jean took the coffee and
bread from her, deciding to soften the blow a bit.
 
“You can just sit and talk if you like.
 
You see, I am a man accustomed to beautiful female
company.”
 
Besides, even without a shower
and smelling like an old goat, he was confident enough in his seduction
abilities that if he could just get her inside, he, too, could “get inside”.

As she stammered
for a response, the alarm went off again.
 
Jean rolled his eyes and held a single finger up.
 
“
Einen
moment.”
 
He placed one coffee and the bread
on a cardboard box, popping the lid on the other and sipping as he casually
walked to the window.
 
Before he looked
out, he glanced back, happy to see she was still standing there, still smiling.
 
Good!
 
As soon as he checked on what had to be
another false alarm, he could begin working his magic.
 
The air mattress would be an adventure, or perhaps
this
Rubenesque
Turk preferred it standing up?

Jean gulped at the
coffee and glanced out the window, looking at the mirror, before turning to the
left where a blue sedan had driven in and parked.
 
Probably
just one of the shop owners unloading something or—

The man exiting
the car stiffly, only forty feet from where Jean stood, was none other than
Gage Hartline.
 
The hair was short and
dark, he was tan and bearded, but Jean had memorized every feature of Gage’s
being, and the profile and posture were unmistakable.

Coffee splattered
as Jean dropped the cup and the cigarette, jerking the pistol from the wire
shelf on his way out.
 
He knocked the
girl backward as he sprinted from the apartment and down the stairs.

And the girl,
Gabriella, insatiable (and quite broke) in her own right, had thought he was
kind of cute and was actually going to take him up on his offer.

 
***

Gage’s injury
prevented him from taking a good stretch, but at least he was able to straighten
his cramped legs and walk around for a moment in an attempt to shake off the after-effects
of a long drive and several days straight from the bowels of hell.
 
The frosty morning air felt good after five
hours in the dry heat of the car.
 
He
lifted his sweatshirt, happy to see that there was no blood leaking from
Marcel’s pressure bandage.
 
Unwilling to
take the painkillers the Frenchman had offered him, Gage had taken two Tylenol
every hour, crunching them like candy to quicken their effect.
 
It was sufficient enough to dull the sharpest
of the pains.
 
He had not yet decided how
he would explain away the obvious gunshot to a doctor, but he would focus on
that once he had his other identity and the diaries.

Coming back for
the remainder of the diaries was something he had struggled with for the first
half of the drive, but in the end he decided that he had no other choice.
 
Without any serious money, or any place to
go, it was his only chance to give himself enough collateral to possibly negotiate
himself out of the situation.
 
In
addition to the diaries, the small safe in the storage area held the
high-quality fake passport and his emergency prepaid cell phone that he should
have had with him the entire time.
 
Gage
glanced both ways down the alley, pressing the four digits on the back door to
the dingy apartments on the Am Weingarten side of the alley.
 
Inside, rather than going up like most
residents, Gage proceeded down the concrete stairs, into the basement, wincing
with each footfall.

At the end of the
long hallway, next to the laundry, were the apartment storage units.
 
Each one had a corresponding letter on the
door, signifying the unit it was paired with.
 
Gage’s was at the end, marked by the number two.
 
The owner of the building had three extra storage
units, charging fifty euro monthly for the cramped space.
 
For Gage it had been perfect.
 
Well hidden, but out in the open.
 
In a building with twenty apartments, no one
would think a thing about seeing a man occasionally coming and going from his unit
with a suitcase or a gym bag.
 
He used
the small key to open the door, holding his breath as he pulled the string on
the light bulb.

The suitcase was
there.

Gage stepped to it,
feeling the weight, wincing as just the slight tugging hurt his side.
 
He unzipped it; the remaining diaries were
stacked neatly, exactly as he had left them.

Exhaling a large
breath of relief, Gage went into the safe, spinning the dial as he hurried
through the five-part combination.
 
Exactly
where it was supposed to be was a Canadian passport of one Martin
Jak
Clawson.
 
It had
cost Gage nearly four thousand euro to get an official passport and, unlike the
day he had purchased it, today it seemed worth every cent.
 
He would keep the passport Kenny had given
him, but in case that cover had been burned, he’d immediately start using the
Canadian one.
 
In his mind, he began
saying his temporary name over and over.

Also in the safe
was the prepaid phone.
 
Gage powered it
up, turning and looking at the suitcase, thankful it had rollers.
 
Once the phone had a signal, it chirped three
times.

Gage frowned, swiveling
his head to the phone.
 
The small digital
readout showed an unopened envelope, indicating that he had a message.

“Must have been a
wrong number,” Gage mumbled to himself as he held down the number one to check
it.
 
After a short delay, he listened to
the message from the bartender.
 
It had
been a safety precaution that he had forgotten about in all the excitement; the
bartender, in his Bavarian drawl, relayed the story of a Frenchman who had been
nosing around, asking about storage units in the neighborhood.

The reality of the
situation shocked Gage more than a bucket of icy water poured down his back.
 
Jean knows
the approximate location of the storage unit.

Consciously
controlling his breathing, Gage stepped forward and glanced down the
hallway.
 
No one.
 
He leaned back inside and listened to the
bartender’s message again.
 
Gage’s heart
pounded as he focused on the suitcase.
 
He would have to lug it up the half-flight of stairs and into the alley,
bullet-wound and all, with the knowledge that Jean could possibly have the area
under some sort of surveillance.

Sweat beading
despite the cool, Gage stored the phone and passport in the front pocket of the
suitcase.
 
Just as he was zipping it, his
eardrums registered a minute change in air pressure.
 
The lower hallway was cramped and there were
no vents.
 

Someone had just
entered from the alleyway.

 
***

The Sig Sauer P-225
was outstretched in textbook fashion as Jean silently padded down the six
concrete stairs in his calf-leather driving shoes.
 
The hallway was narrow, packed with doors
representing each storage unit.
 
Predictably, only one was open, at the end.
 
Dirty light spilled into the dark hallway,
and Jean could hear the scraping noises as Gage readied the diaries for
transport.

Feeling his mind
already claiming victory, Jean reminded himself of what Gage had done to him in
the storage shed.
 
Wily. Dangerous.
 
“Time to demonstrate to him what DGSE Agent
Jean
Jenois
is capable of,” he thought to himself.
 

Jean’s eyes
flicked to the hammer of the Swiss-made pistol.
 
Yes, it was cocked, loaded with nine-millimeter steel jacketed rounds.
 
Gage had been moving strangely after exiting
the car, probably wearing a vest.
 
A head
shot would be most effective, but Jean knew it was risky.
 
Maybe a body shot to knock him down, then a
head shot.
 
Two gunshots were a lot of
noise to risk; Jean cursed himself for not thinking to bring a silencer.