Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
All things being equal, John should be terrified. He was a bargaining chip amid armed strangers. His secret agent fiancée’s ex-boyfriend and a crime boss’s daughter had drugged him, threatened him and zip-tied him.
And yet he was fine. Calm.
Because if there was one thing he believed in, it was Vivian Bernardita Flint.
He chuckled. Bernardita. Back when they were first dating, “Jane” had joked her parents had picked “Marie” as her middle name because they liked the way it sounded with Jane.
“Why are you laughing?” Lola asked.
“Guess I’m drunk,” John answered.
Regaining the ability to lie was handy.
Was this what Thomas meant about being in a foxhole? No, he’d meant it as a metaphor, like when a new hot water heater wipes out your savings. Not literally sitting in a violent situation with his hands zip-tied.
Which was a silly restraint.
He worked with zip ties all the time. They were super handy for art installations. When art handlers got bored, they did goofy shit. Like zip-tie their wrists and see if they could escape.
“Hey.” He held up his wrists. “Can you loosen these?”
This was a risk, but he bet Jean-Michel had a sadistic streak.
“Oh, yes, of course.” Jean-Michel rose from his chair, then grabbed John’s bound wrists. With a smile, he tightened the band. “Better?”
“Ow,” John said. “No.”
“Good,” the Frenchman said.
The ties chafed his skin. Perfect. The more rigid they were, the easier they’d be to break.
* * *
Vivian elegantly dropped onto the alley’s stone sidewalk from the fire escape. She couldn’t let Jean-Michel have the drives. But if she didn’t hand them over, he’d hurt John. Or worse? Had Jean-Michel leveled up to murder, too?
Panic gripped her throat.
As she walked in Vandenberg’s shoes, her words circled her brain. Sometimes there’s no good decision. Just the least bad one.
She didn’t accept that. Couldn’t accept that.
Her churning thoughts leaped like a frog in a frying pan. Despite feeling like she had zero seconds, she needed to take a beat to stop, breathe and look for patterns in the intel, the people, the history. With her sweaty palms pressed to the building, she leaned against a wall.
Patterns, patterns, patterns…
A carousing group of partygoers stumbled past, singing, “Bon anniversaire, nos v?ux les plus sincères…”
Happy birthday, our most sincere wishes.
Something about birthdays snagged her brain.
Above the roofs of Paris, the Eiffel tower’s lights began to shimmer like they did for the first five minutes of every hour. Midnight. A week since John proposed.
June 27.
Vandenberg’s birthday.
0627.
She pulled the code index card from her underpants. The last four digits were 0627—Vandenberg’s birthday. She traced the code with her eyes. Holy shit.
Dragomir’s birthdate was one of the limited pieces of intel she’d gleaned from his whisper-thin file. Christmas Day, 1986.
1986122519580627.
Was the full code a combo of their birthdays? Were they in this together?
She had to call Anjali. She pinched her lip when the six-digit code prompt popped up on Vandenberg’s phone. She entered 861225 and was almost disappointed when it worked.
Vivian dialed Anjali’s desk number.
Calling the agency with a stolen phone at the end of Langley’s work day violated several orders of professional and friend protocol, but it couldn’t be helped.
“Officer Patel.”
“I need you to look something up for me.”
“Hi, Anjali, how are you? I’m fine after showing up at your house with a global security risk and then disappearing into thin air. Just wanted to call so you didn’t worry.”
“Sorry.” Vivian stared at the sparkling Eiffel Tower. “Please help?”
“Is it about the buyer from the London Rocksy auction? I’ve been digging all week, but I’ve got nothing.” Shuffling paper noises came through the phone. “Are there more sales to check? If so, I might be able to pull something together.”
“I’ll bring you more when I’m back. But there’s something else I need. Urgently. Is Vandenberg’s birthday June 27, 1958?”
“Hang on.” The jokiness had left Anjali’s voice. “Confirmed.”
“Where does the system say she is right now?”
“Um…” Clicking keys. “Skype says she’s on vacation.”
If she was on official business, she would’ve set their internal messaging system to indicate she was on a work trip.
“Where was she operating in the mid-eighties?”
More clicking keys. “Yugoslavia.”
Which broke up in the 1990s and became Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia.
And Croatia.
“How long?”
“1982 to 1990. Not continuously, though. Her file says she took a medical leave of absence in November of ’86 and was back on duty by February of ’87.”
The Eiffel Tower’s dancing lights resolved into a solid glow.
Finally a pattern that tied it all together.
Vandenberg had a baby, and Vivian would bet her ass he grew up to be Dragomir Mihailovic.
The redacted reports, limited system info, the tip-off to Jean-Michel.
Vandenberg must be Jean-Michel’s inside person, which made a hell of a lot more sense than MacColl.
She was giving her kid top cover while throwing MacColl under the bus.
Vivian and John, too.
In fact, it would be better for Vandenberg if they didn’t make it back from this operation.
“Thanks, Anj. Let’s get drinks when I’m home? Maybe a double date?”
“Love to. Be safe, asshole.” Anjali hung up on her.
Time to arrange for backup. Confident in her abilities as she was, she couldn’t tackle this many open switches. Vandenberg, the goons, possibly Hall and Rodriguez, Jean-Michel and Lola, and Dragomir out there…somewhere…
Hopefully the cavalry would pick up.
She dialed the MacColl’s number, the new one he’d given her in Marseille.
“Boss? So many palette knives.”
“How can I help, Canvas?”
MacColl’s gruff familiarity nearly made her cry. No time for tears, though.
“I need help,” she said. “Big Boss found us. We’re in Paris. Dilettante’s holding Brawn hostage at the Maison Moreau.”
Sacrilege to use actual place names, but she couldn’t afford to be coy.
After a beat, MacColl asked, “Where’s Big Boss?”
“At H?tel Chevalier, penthouse. I chloroformed her.”
“Happy to stay ignorant of those details.”
“Dilettante wants the drives in exchange for Brawn.”
“You can’t do that, Canvas.”
“I won’t let him keep them,” she said. “But I need backup. Can you send someone to join the party in the upstairs office at Maison Moreau in ten minutes? Signal word is mix-up.”
“On it,” MacColl answered.
“Also, Boss. The Croatian national you like for the London purchase? I’m pretty sure he’s Big Boss’s son, and she’s covering for him.
His birthday aligns to medical leave in her work history.
And get this—we slipped a tracker in his pocket at our last location. He’s in Paris. Can’t be a coincidence.”
Silence.
“Boss?” she prompted.
“Haven’t we talked about burying the lede? I knew something was off. Her interest in him has always gone way too deep. Good work here, Canvas. What’s your current location?”
“On the way to extract Brawn, sir.”
“A team will meet you there.”
“Thanks, Boss. Wish me luck.”
The Seine’s marine scent hit Vivian hard as she rounded the corner to the Quai de la Mégisserie. Her thighs burned as she jogged down the walkway to the Voie Georges-Pompidou, the riverside walking and bike path.
John is okay, she repeated in time with her pumping knees.
Had to, or the fear would choke her.
Sweat slicked her neck as she crossed the Pont des Arts with the Louvre staring down at her. Hundreds of thousands of padlocks clutched the bridge, symbols of unbreakable love.
Yearning nearly buckled her knees.
She should have been strolling through the Louvre, holding John’s hand, not sprinting past it to rescue him from the terrible people she’d brought into his life.
A reevaluation of her work/life balance was way overdue.
At the bridge’s end, she hung a right. Three blocks to go. Her lungs screamed, but she ignored them. She paused at the Maison Moreau’s street corner and took Vandenberg’s phone from her pocket, then zoomed in on the café across the street.
Hall and Rodriguez were enjoying the same sweaty glass of pinot.
An excellent sign that Vandenberg was still knocked out.
She cut down the alley until she spotted a catering staff on a smoke break. Elif, the waitress she’d met earlier, sat among them. She fired up her vape. Ugh, she picked lemon-mint because it tasted terrible, and she didn’t want to get addicted to it.
“Bonsoir, Elif.” She blew lemon-mint smoke over their heads. “I think it’s cooler out here than it is inside.”
Elif politely chuckled. “I agree.”
“Pity I need to return, but I left my man inside. Au revoir.”
On her way through the kitchen, she grabbed a stainless steel tray and headed toward the back stairwell.
If Jean-Michel had bothered to make friends with the people hanging their show’s art like she had, he’d know the bedroom/office where he was holding John wasn’t secure.
Serge Moreau was paranoid and never slept anywhere with a single entry/exit point.
Hence the secret entrance in his walk-in closet.
She ducked under the velvet rope that was swagged between steel stanchions guarding the stairs to the second floor.
When she reached the landing, she nipped toward a four-foot-tall built-in shelf laden with a dozen framed articles about the museum, grateful for the thick carpet that hushed her footsteps.
Please still work.
After removing the articles, she pushed the spot the contractors had shown her, and voilà—the shelving unit swung inward. She eased the shelf closed. The closet that once held feather boas and sex toys was now stocked with office supplies.
Serge Moreau would be most disappointed.
Jean-Michel’s and Lola’s murmuring voices sifted through the closet door. With the steel serving tray tucked between her knees, she untied her neck scarf, then wrapped one end around her fist several times. She peeked through the slats in the door and her heart stuttered.
John looked okay. Actually, he looked annoyed. But she’d take it.
In addition to Lola and Jean-Michel, two new goons occupied the room. Fantastic. And based on the bulges under their jackets, she’d brought a platter and a scarf to a gunfight.
Surprise was a powerful advantage, though.
Deep breath.
Now or never.
She burst through the closet and whipped the tray at the short goon and clunked him in the head. While he was stunned, she looped her scarf around the tall goon’s neck and yanked him into the kick she delivered to his chest, knocking the wind out of him.
Short goon regained his senses and was coming for her.
“Little help?” she called to John.