Unhurriedly, Flynn glanced around, discreetly scanning his surroundings again. The dinner-and-drinks crowd was definitely starting to thin out, but there still seemed to be a few people headed toward Kitzbühel’s train station — which was his destination. He checked his phone. The last train that would get him to Vienna tonight was due to arrive in a half hour. And he planned to be aboard when it pulled out.
He slid his phone back out of sight and started off, trailing after an older couple towing rolling suitcases. Mentally, he crossed his fingers. So far, this entire supposedly low-key operation had seemed jinxed from start to finish. Now, if ever, would sure be a good time for some of the luck his Irish immigrant grandfather so often swore by.
Five minutes later, Flynn figured out he was not going to be that lucky. From a shadowed vantage point across the street from the train station, he’d spotted trouble waiting for him on its brightly lit platform. He could make out two hard-faced men trying to blend in with the other passengers already gathered there. Although they were dressed in ski apparel pretty much like that worn by everybody else, their behavior was different. And it was clear to him that they were covertly surveilling the small crowd… looking for someone.
Looking for him, he was sure.
He dismissed the possibility that these guys were just plainclothes Austrian federal police keeping travelers safe from pickpockets and other petty criminals. They didn’t have the right demeanor. If he had to bet his life on it, and he did, he was confident those two men were part of the opposition team that had taken out Khavari so effectively and permanently. But neither of them looked Iranian or even Arab. Instead, something about their facial structure and mannerisms practically screamed “made in Moscow” to his twitchy subconscious. Which strongly suggested they might be more of the foreign mercenaries Khavari had warned about.
Flynn frowned. In his considered judgement, he had just two chances of slipping past those watchers to board the train without being detected — slim and none. And he sure as hell didn’t want to give them another shot at him sometime during the four-hour-plus nighttime rail trip to the Austrian capital, especially since he’d have to change trains en route. He might be able to take one of those guys in a fight. Maybe. On a good day. But going up against two of them in the close, confined quarters of a railway coach or at some semideserted transfer stop? No sale, he thought grimly. If he wanted to commit suicide, he’d pick a much less messy and far less public option.
Unfortunately, that still left the problem of how he was going to get out of Kitzbühel in one piece. If the bad guys had a surveillance team keeping tabs on the train station, they probably had someone watching the bus depot and even the car rental agencies in this little town — all two of them.
Suddenly, he felt a woman’s warm arm slide through his. At the same time, her cheerful, friendly voice said loudly, “Da bist du, Max! Ich fragte mich, wohin du gegangen warst. There you are, Max! I wondered where you’d gone.” Her German was perfect, with just the slight vowel and consonant changes that would mark her as Austrian to any trained linguist eavesdropping on them.
Startled, Flynn looked down and saw Laura Van Horn looking back up at him with a mischievous expression on her attractive face. When he’d first met her, she’d been the copilot of a crippled Air National Guard C-130J that had made an emergency landing at his last duty station, a lonely radar outpost on Alaska’s frozen northern coast. Later, he’d learned that her primary job was as one of Four’s top special agents. And it was her recommendation that had prompted a final decision to recruit him into the Quartet Directorate.
Which left the question of just what on earth she was doing here in Kitzbühel now? This was supposed to be a one-man operation, with Flynn as that one man. But this wasn’t the right moment to ask awkward questions, he knew, at least not while they were out in the open and under probable observation. Instead, it was time to put on a show for anyone paying close attention to them. Adapting fast, he matched her phony conversational gambit on the fly using the same idiomatic Austrian German. “Oh, I thought I’d check to see if Karl and Clarissa had gotten here yet. In case we needed to change our dinner reservations, I mean.”
Van Horn laughed softly, playing along. “Those two? You must be joking. They wouldn’t be caught dead on a train. I bet they’ll drive in later tonight. So, for now, I have you all to myself.” Tightening her grip on his arm slightly, she turned him around until they were headed directly away from the train station.
A block farther on, Flynn glanced down at her. “Okay, Laura, what’s the deal here?” he asked quietly. “And no bullshit.”
“Bullshit? Who, me?” she said with exaggerated innocence. Seeing his pained expression, she shrugged. “I tagged along on this op purely as a precaution, sort of an emergency backup,” she said. “Br’er Fox wanted someone flying distant cover for you, just in case the shit hit the fan.” She looked him up and down. “And based on those goons I saw parked at the train station, I guess it has.”
Somberly, Flynn nodded. Quickly, he filled her in on the sniper ambush during his meeting with Arif Khavari.
Van Horn’s eyes narrowed. “So what’s your estimate of the opposition strength?”
“No way to tell,” he admitted. “Those two men at the train station, for sure.”
“Make that three-plus,” she told him. “I spotted another one keeping an eye on the station parking lot. Whoever these guys are, they want you bad.”
“I’ve always been a popular fellow,” Flynn said virtuously.
Van Horn snorted softly. “Popular isn’t really the word I’d have chosen, Nick.”
“So now what?” he wondered.
She grinned impishly. “Simple. We blow this cow town and leave the bad guys standing around in the cold wondering where you went. My ride’s parked not far away, outside a really cute little Gasthaus.”
Flynn stared down at her. “You got a car? And a hotel room?” He shook his head in disbelief. “All Four gave me was a second-class train ticket.”
“Senior operative status, remember, Nick?” Van Horn murmured in amusement. “There are some perks, you know — along with the occasional inconvenience of being tasked with rounding up a newbie gone astray.”
For just a moment, Flynn felt himself bristle. Finding out how far he’d been kept in the dark on this assignment pissed him off. But then he forced himself to relax. In the circumstances, Fox’s decision to position Van Horn as discreet support if things went wrong had proved to be a very sensible safety measure. With an inward sigh, he decided to bow to the inevitable and let himself be rescued. “Moo,” he lowed in agreement, mimicking a lost steer she’d just roped.
Half an hour later, they drove out of Kitzbühel in the four-door Mercedes Van Horn had rented when she flew into Vienna. Her usual preference in cars was something flashier, in bright red, but she’d opted for a more discreet dark blue sedan for this assignment. “Just another of the cruel sacrifices I make for undercover work,” she’d told Flynn with theatrical sigh and self-mocking smile when they got in. “They never stop.”
At her insistence, he drove, following her directions to take a two-lane highway heading northeast, toward Salzburg and Vienna. Outside of town, the snow-covered fields and small clumps of trees lining the road were in darkness. Clusters of bright lights — ski chalets and on-mountain restaurants — dotted the steep slopes rising on either side of the valley. It was still snowing lightly, and the falling flakes caught in their headlights glittered briefly as they flew past.