“Now, driver,” Lance said, “give their vehicles a two-minute head start, then drive over to the hangar they are covering and park this van to the right of the main door, where there’s a smaller door in the big door.”
“Yes, sir,” the man said.
They all sat and waited for two minutes, by Stone’s watch. “Lance,” he said, “what is your plan?”
“Plan?” Lance asked, as if surprised. “I plan to be reasonable, if I can.”
“And if you can’t?”
“Then all hell will break loose,” Lance said. “Time to go,” he called to the driver.
The van began to move toward the hangar.
55
As the armored van rolled across the tarmac toward the hangar, the huge doors began to rise and fold, and from the left, a tow tractor appeared from the darkness and moved toward the big jet.
The van pulled up to the position Lance had ordered. They had a very good view of the front of the Gulfstream, to just past the main door. Lance produced an iPhone, tapped the Contacts icon, then tapped in a name. “Ah,” he said, then tapped the resulting phone number. He put the instrument to an ear and listened for several rings, then he apparently got an answer. “Yevgeny!” he said, smiling, as if the man were an old friend. “It’s Lance Cabot here. Good morning! Yes, I know it’s rather early, but I wanted to speak to you before you abandoned Paris.” He listened. “On your way, are you? Well, not quite. If you will be kind enough to send someone to inspect your nosewheel, you’ll find that it’s in no condition to roll, and thus, neither is that beautiful Gulfstream of yours. Go ahead, I’ll wait.” He held the phone a few inches from his ear, and shouting in Russian could be heard. The door of the airplane swung down, and a uniformed pilot ran down the air stair and to the nosewheel, which was quite flat. He ran back up the stairs into the aircraft.
“Had a look, have you?” Lance said into the phone. “Did your pilot explain to you that, with a deflated tire, your airplane cannot move? Good, now let’s have a little chat. I’m sitting outside your hangar in an armored personnel carrier”—he winked at Stone—“and the prefect of the Paris National Police is here along with, I don’t know, perhaps fifty of his men, all suited up for combat, armed with automatic weapons and raring to go. He’s asked me to speak to you, since you, your family, and I are, well, old acquaintances, sort of. Prefect Michel Chance would like for you, your traveling companions, and your airplane’s crew to walk down your air stair into the hangar, and he would very much appreciate it if none of you were holding a weapon or anything else in his hand.” He held the phone away from his ear, and Stone could hear more shouting in Russian. “Now, now, Yevgeny, we don’t want that beautiful airplane of yours all shot full of holes, and the hangar burning down with the airplane inside it and you and your friends inside the airplane—do we? Of course we don’t, but I’m very much afraid that that is exactly what will happen if all of you are not down the stairs in, say, sixty seconds. Let me make it easy—I’ll count down for you: sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight . . .” Lance continued to count.
Stone turned to Holly. “What do we do if Lance gets to zero?”
“Duck,” Holly said.
“Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen—running out of time, Yevgeny! Twelve, eleven, ten, nine—hurry up, now, trigger fingers are getting itchy! Eight, seven, six, five, four”—the count slowed—“three, two and a half, two, one and a half, one . . .”
A woman’s hand was stuck out the door, waving a handkerchief.
“Come along, now, Yevgeny, nobody’s going to shoot a woman waving a lace handkerchief. Let’s get them all out.”
One by one, people appeared and walked down the airstair, the men with their hands in the air. Finally, Yevgeny Majorov came out the door and followed them to the shiny white concrete floor of the hangar.
Rick’s men spilled into the hangar, weapons at the ready, and began securing the group’s hands with plastic ties.
Lance was making another phone call. “Prefect Chance, please,” he said. “I apologize for the hour. Just tell him it’s Lance Cabot on an urgent matter.” He covered the phone. “I think he must be asleep,” he said. “His wife sounded very grouchy.” He smiled. “Good morning, Michel. I’m terribly sorry to call at such an ungodly hour, but I have some very good news for you that just won’t wait for the sun to come up. I’m out at Le Bourget, and some of my people and I have detained Yevgeny Majorov, just as he was about to fly off to Saint Petersburg. You see? I told you it was good news, didn’t I? Well, I suppose we could deliver them all—there are about a dozen, including some air crew—to a police station of your choice, but I thought for appearance’s sake that you might want to run out here with a contingent of France’s finest and take them into custody. After all, we’re guests in your country, and we don’t want to presume upon your hospitality. Good, Michel. We’ll look forward to seeing you and your people in an hour or so. Au revoir.” Lance hung up. “Ah,” he said, “that was very satisfying.”
“It was satisfying to me, too,” Stone said.
Rick LaRose walked up, smiling. “All accounted for,” he said.
“Good, good,” Lance replied. “Prefect Chance and his merry men will be here fairly soon. In the meantime, why don’t you turn their pockets out and then have a look in their luggage. You never know what you might find.”
Rick turned to his work.
Lance put his hands on Stone’s and Holly’s shoulders. “Now, since we have a few minutes on our hands, why don’t I have a chat with Comrade Majorov?”
56
Stone said to Lance, “Mind if I sit in on your conversation?”
“Ordinarily, I wouldn’t mind,” Lance said, “but I think Mr. Majorov is likely to be more forthcoming if it’s just the two of us.” He strode over to Majorov, took him by the arm, and marched him up the airstair into the Gulfstream.
“Well,” Holly said, “that was almost exciting.”
“Don’t complain—nobody got hurt,” Stone said. They stood around for a few minutes watching Rick’s men go through the passengers’ pockets and luggage, and apparently not finding anything worth their attention.
Then a white truck rolled into the hangar. Two men in white coveralls got out and produced a tire, a toolbox, and a tank of compressed nitrogen.
“That was fast,” Stone said. “I once had to replace a tire and it took half a day.”
“Gulfstreams get better service than Mustangs, I suppose,” Holly replied.
The two mechanics went to work changing the tire. They jacked up the front of the airplane, removed the wheel, removed the tire from the wheel, then worked the new tire onto the rim. That done, they inflated it with nitrogen, bolted it onto the airplane, and departed in their truck.
“Wow,” Stone said.
Lance appeared in the doorway of the airplane and beckoned to Rick, who ran up the stairs and conferred with his boss. For a moment, he seemed to disagree with Lance, but Lance seemed to speak firmly to him, and he backed down. He started back down the stairs, but Lance stopped him with a word. Rick took something small from a pocket, handed it to Lance, then continued down the stairs. He had a few words with his men, and they began, rather haphazardly, repacking the passenger luggage, then reloading it, under the direction of one of the pilots.
Then, to Stone’s astonishment, Rick’s men began cutting the plastic ties from the passengers’ wrists, and they all reboarded the aircraft.
Lance reappeared without Majorov, came down the stairs and had a word with the pilot, who got on his phone, then handed Rick his pocketknife. Lance came over to Stone and Holly. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, and waved to the van’s driver, who drove into the hangar.
The FBO’s tow tractor reappeared, hooked up to the aircraft, and began rolling it out of the hangar. Someone inside the airplane retracted the airstair and locked the door.
“Lance, what’s going on?” Stone asked.
“Into the van, both of you, if you please.”
Stone and Holly climbed into the van. When Stone took a breath to protest, Holly squeezed his knee and shook her head.