Fair enough. Lee Yuan may have had no bearing on recent events after all. Or maybe, she wondered when her darkest notions took over, the whole story was a bit of concocted fiction. Maybe she was being played for a sucker by Peter and his sharp little gang of Sino-warriors.
She had the uncomfortable feeling of being a fool but didn’t know whose. In a final email dispatch of the evening, she sent to her museum contacts her tentative itinerary to Switzerland, CC-ing Mike in Washington. It was a debatable step, but she decided long ago that it would be better to have your peers recover your body than to just disappear forever.
When evening came, Alex grabbed a light dinner toward eight o’clock in a tapas bar. She had the inclination to phone Peter but knew that there was always the chance that one of their cell phones or even both were no longer secure. Since it was part of the overall plan to not reveal their association to any enemy, calls needed to be kept at a minimum
She arranged with the hotel for an evening check-out, finished the final details of packing, and went to the train station by 10:00 p.m. She boarded the train and found her private compartment. She was tired from the previous late night, so she eased into her bed with a couple of books. A final check of email came up empty.
The train, while fully boarded, stayed in the station for two hours before pulling out and hitting the open tracks. At this time she tried to settle in for sleep, carefully placing her loaded gun at her bedside.
Alex had not taken an overnight train for many years and had forgotten how tactile the cozy charm of the train was. The feel of the steel wheels on the rails had a comforting rhythm to it. It lulled her to sleep almost immediately.
FORTY-SEVEN
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 12, AFTERNOON
That same afternoon, Jean-Claude was down in his tunnel again. And he could barely conceal his delight at what he saw. The blast had blown a perfectly sized hole in the debris. It had cleared a route to the other side of the Calle Juan Bravo.
The pathway was dirty. It was musty and dusty and ankle deep in water. But he managed to crawl through it. Then, scanning ahead, pointing his flashlight, he could see that the pathway continued for maybe another thirty meters before encountering another wall. He examined his new location and realized that he was still working in a closely parallel path to those taken by Metro workers, electrical workers, or telephone technicians. There were several old power grids and telephone junctions along this route.
Well, the chamber had been cleared. His people were ready to work again.
Jean-Claude retraced his steps, went back, and reassembled his small underground army.
Within another two hours he had his team of subversives reassembled and went back to work. This time they were punching through some old bricks to enter a corridor that would run parallel to the Metro tracks.
Jean-Claude felt wonderful. Everything was falling into place perfectly. Now for the next step. He needed that set of detonators for the big blast. He had already placed his order. He would go back to see the man in his neighborhood named Farooq who could acquire such things.
Farooq’s name was promising. It meant “one who distinguishes truth from falsehood.” Maybe it was why everyone trusted him.
Allah be praised.
FORTY-EIGHT
MADRID TO GENEVA, SEPTEMBER 12-13, EN ROUTE/OVERNIGHT
In the middle of the night, as the train wheels rumbled beneath Alex, the sharp sound of someone trying the doorknob to her compartment jolted her awake. She sat upright, her weapon pointed toward the door.
She kept still and said nothing, feeling her heart pounding. The doorknob continued to rattle from a strong, insistent hand on the other side.
Then she heard sounds from the other side of the door. A man’s voice. Very angry. The man spoke French. The door thumped. It sounded like he had put his shoulder to it.
Alex scurried to her feet and peered through the peephole. The hallway was dimly lit, but she could see a man and a woman, lurching.
The attempt at entry stopped, followed by a brief but noisy hallway discussion in heavily accented Midi French.
It was an obscene accusatory argument. They were drunk and obviously at the wrong door.
From what she could catch of the dialogue, it sounded like the drunken husband was finally wandering back to his own compartment after falling asleep elsewhere on the train. His wife had waited up for him.
Or something.
Alex smirked slightly. But for good measure, she kept her gun trained at the door in case this was some sort of cover for a sudden break-in. And she moved away from the door in case anyone suddenly fired a bullet through it.
When it was quiet again, she went to the door, pistol aloft in her right hand, and opened it slowly. The corridor was empty.
She returned to bed and slept.
The next morning she arrived in Figueras, the final stop in Spain. The day was warm and sunny, a pleasant late summer day in Europe. She was dressed casually, light jeans and a T-shirt, dark glasses, her gun in her purse this time, right next to her US passport.
She connected in the Figueras station with the train that would take her to Montpellier in France. There was no longer a stop for customs. After a ninety-minute trip, she then changed trains again in Montpellier for the Train de Grande Vitesse, which would speed her to Geneva.
She sat in a coach car next to a Frenchman who was a banker out of Dijon. He initiated the conversation and presented her with a business card. They spoke French. He was intrigued when she said that she was American and intrigued a second time when she said that she worked for the United States Department of Treasury.
Instinct again. She had a funny sense about him, maybe that he had been waiting for her. But the conversation went nowhere.
He nodded and went back to his reading. A few minutes later, his cell phone rang. The conversation was brief. Then he closed the phone and turned to her.
“I’m going to be changing seats,” he said.
She nodded and rose, stepping to the aisle.
“Would you like the window?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
“Take it,” he said. “You might prefer it. And my associate likes the aisle.”
He stepped past her with infinite courtesy. He turned and disappeared toward the rear of the train. Alex slid back in and sat down. She slid to the window, waited, and made sure her weapon was accessible under her jacket. She kept her hand near it. With her other hand, she flipped open a mirror from a makeup case. She positioned it and herself so that she could see anyone approaching from the train cars ahead of her, while watching the rear via the mirror.
She knew something was up. A minute passed and she spotted a heavy-set balding man approaching her row from behind. He was in his mid-forties and built like a brick outhouse. She had seen him once before in her life, at the meeting at the embassy.
Maurice Essen of Interpol, the Swiss-German who was a representative of the International Criminal Police Organization. He stopped at her row and glanced to her, indicating the open seat.
“Is this seat free?” he asked in very good English.
“I believe it’s yours, Maurice,” she said.
He smiled graciously. He sat down.
“If you’ve gone to this effort to follow me so you could speak in person,” she said in low tones barely audible above the sound of the train, “you must have something pretty good.”
“That or I believe you do,” he said. “I flew to Montpellier this morning so I could take this train so we could talk in person,” he said.