"Oh yeah," Neeley said. "He's one of Nero’s people. Don't waste any tears on him."
Hannah shook her head. “He said Racine. Not Nero.”
“Same thing.”
“No, it isn’t,” Hannah disagreed.
“It doesn’t matter,” Neeley said.
Hannah thought it did, but didn’t say anything. "Why the hell did you jump over the side?" she demanded, changing the subject.
"It was the only way to stop Mitch," Neeley said. "Rule fourteen. Desperate times call for desperate measures."
"'It's a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things,'" Hannah quoted in turn.
Neeley looked up from the package. "What?"
"Shakespeare. Beats Gant hands down in my book."
"Oh, shut up," Neeley said. She ripped open the waterproof wrapping and pulled out a small square of paper.
"So where's the tape?" Hannah asked.
"Damn," Neeley exclaimed. "It's only half a cache report."
"Cache report?" Hannah dully repeated.
"It's a format that gives directions to where something is hidden. In this case, it must be the tape."
"So where is the tape?"
"This only gives the IRP," Neeley said.
"IRP?" Hannah wearily asked.
"Immediate reference point," Neeley said. "It's the final fixed point from which you go to recover the cache. In this case it’s a bridge abutment. The only problem is we don't have the FRP, the far reference point and the area which tell us where the hell in the world the FRP is, which in turn leads us to the IRP."
"I don't have a clue what you're talking about." Hannah sat on a rock and leaned forward, putting her face on her knees. "Why wouldn't he leave the whole report here? For that matter, why didn't he leave the tape here? Hell, he could have left it all at the house in the closet with the climbing gear."
Neeley used a handkerchief to rub the sweat out of her eyes. "Come on Hannah, think about it. Gant had to make it hard to find the tape. The only reason I knew about this place is because I lived with him for over twenty years and climbed this route with him. But he couldn't put all his eggs in one basket. We need to find the other half of the cache report."
Neeley shook her head. “I don’t buy that. Gant could have cached it — as you call it — somewhere and told only you where it was. He has — had — another reason to make you go through all this.”
Once more Hannah’s words struck a chord of truth in Neeley, especially as she hadn’t told Hannah about the second note in the packet.
Hannah stared at Neeley. “How old are you?”
“Is that important?”
“It’s just a question.”
“Thirty-two.”
“You don’t look it.”
Neeley shifted uncomfortably.
“Maybe there’s something be said for living a life on the edge,” Hannah said. Sensing the other woman’s uneasiness, Hannah looked over at the wide expanse of plains to the east and the towers of Denver on the horizon. "So where else did he tell you to go?"
Neeley held up the second piece of paper from the packet.
"Not another climb."
"No, this is on flat ground."
"All right."
"It's in France."
"Oh." Hannah considered that piece of information. “France? Really?”
“Yes.” Neeley motioned for Hannah to follow. "We have a lot to do. Let's go. Hey, come on, don't you feel good about yourself knowing you got up here? Do you realize how difficult that climb was? It's a miracle really that you made it with no experience at all."
Hannah retrieved her backpack. "How come at the bottom you told me it was so easy and how anybody could do it? Does this mean I can't trust you?"
Neeley paused. "No, Hannah, it means you can trust yourself."
Neeley turned and made for the rappel point. She figured with luck they'd make it back to town before dark and Mitch's body wouldn't be found before the next day.
Neeley looked at the piece of paper and shivered at the thought of returning to Strasbourg and all the memories there. The ‘Goose Girl’, was all Gant had written on the paper. Neeley knew exactly what that meant. She had told Gant many times about the statue in Josephine Park in Strasbourg. Even about her niche in the rock wall where she hid her treasures as a child. Could it be that Gant had had the piece Nero thought she had? And he had put it there along with the video?
Looking behind her, she gave Hannah what she thought was an encouraging smile as she hooked up the rope. Hannah was looking down at Mitch’s body.
“Let’s go,” Neeley said.
CHAPTER 19
The desk in Nero's office was now covered with Braille folders. Racine had said the women wanted a trade. Nero had been right so far. She had Gant's videotape or knew where it was. It’s exactly what Nero had predicted Gant would do. The tape and papers had been sitting for over ten years; a few more hours would be inconsequential. Indeed, what was difficult was reining in Mister Racine. He had apparently put the women on his ever-growing personal vendetta list. Nero wondered again how such an emotional man could have functioned so long in his profession.
While all appeared to be developing the way he had planned, there was an aspect about this that bothered Nero. He had thought he’d known the full story so many years ago. But he considered one of his greatest strengths to be the ability to admit that he was wrong. Maybe something had escaped his notice. He was disturbed by the Racine-Collins connection. The Senator would not have pulled Racine out of a hat to do the job in Baltimore. That indicated a prior relationship; perhaps one outside the province of the chain of command of the Cellar at even an earlier date. He had thrown the Sudan connection at the Senator to probe for more. What else had the two done together? Had the Senator been riding his own agenda for the past couple of decades, and if so, what was the agenda, and was it good for the country or just Collins?
Had they been together as early as the Sudan or even before? Nero had never considered the possibility before recent events because things had turned out the way they should in the long run from that event. Until 9-11 that was.
Nero saw a definite connection between what happened in Mogadishu and 9-11. Even Bin Laden had admitted as much, saying on record how he had felt seeing the Americans turn tail and run after a handful were killed in Somalia. Nero now felt there was more to Collins being in the Sudan and Racine disappearing for several months around that time. He had to wonder if an extension could be drawn to Mogadishu.
This angle was why he had brought Racine in on this operation, rather than another operative. He’d always found that thrusting someone into a crisis tended to expose their true nature. If Mogadishu had not been as he thought, then many subsequent events that had wavered from the path Nero had aimed for could be explained.
All Nero had been able to find so far was that Racine had been seen in Berlin later that October in 1993. Gant had been in Berlin also then, as he worked under a cover of a covert Special forces unit there. In fact, that was when Gant had ‘resigned’ and brokered his deal with Nero.
There was something interesting in Senator Collins classified file. The French Directorate of Territorial Security, the DST, had a flag on a bank account the Senator held in Geneva. Regular withdrawals were made from the account at a French bank in Paris and it was assumed that Collins had a mistress he was paying so no further inquiries had been made. Collins was a United States Senator after all.
Nero checked further into Collins file but if the Senator had a mistress in France, he saw very little of her unless she came to the States. Nero considered it, then pressed the intercom, instructing Mrs. Smith to get a hold of his contact in the DST. He wanted to know who the money was going to.
Nero lit another cigarette. It was early morning in Paris and he knew it would take Mrs. Smith a little bit of time to track the man down. Nero’s doctor had left the office earlier, still preaching about imminent death due to smoking, high blood pressure, bad diet and some words too long for Nero to consider. Nero found the idea of death not disturbing in the least. He had the contented repose of the lifelong atheist who had lived without the threat of hell and would die basking in the surety of his convictions.