lackey. Now he was a freelance bounty hunter, and if this Franco character turned out to be carrying anything of real cash value, then Escher was going to take it to the highest bidder. Schillinger might be out to score points and kiss ass, but Escher was simply out to make a score.
“Oh, Ernst,” Schillinger said condescendingly, “it sounds to me like you are about to make such a grave mistake.”
Escher could picture him slowly shaking his shaggy white head.
“By now, even a man of your limited imagination should have been able to figure out that it’s not only me you’re working for. I’m just a functionary, if you will. The organization is more extensive than you know. And frankly, I’m the best protection you’ve got.”
“That’s funny,” Escher replied, reflecting on the two most recent attempts on his life, “but I’m not feeling particularly well protected these days.”
“Why, did something happen?” Schillinger asked, and Escher couldn’t decide whether to believe him or not. More and more, he’d come to suspect that he was caught in the middle of a cross-continental rivalry-a bitter and deadly contest that Schillinger, an old fool marooned in Chicago, would surely lose.
And Escher didn’t like being on the losing side of anything.
In the rearview mirror, he spotted a sleek, silver Maserati pulling up to the side door of the house. A tough- looking guy in a black windbreaker-he looked like a tradesman, Italian or maybe a Greek-tossed some duffels and backpacks into the open boot. Then the girl, Olivia, came out of the house-wearing a black coat, different from the day before-and slid into the backseat. David followed, and got in the front on the passenger side. He was dressed all in black, too. They looked like a troupe of mimes, or second-story men.
“Ernst? Are you still there?”
“No,” Escher replied, snapping the phone shut and turning on the ignition. He felt like a falcon that had just flown free.
The boot was slammed shut, and the driver stopped to exchange a few words with a formidable-looking man, well dressed, leaning on a black walking stick. The lord of the manor, Escher assumed.
The Maserati-a car that Escher knew cost no less than ninety thousand euros-purred out of the driveway, and as it passed the stubby Peugeot, Escher slumped down in his seat, waited for a delivery van to get between them, then promptly pulled out. The street was quiet and serene, with the park on one side and the row of elegant town houses on the other, but soon the Maserati had entered the thick, late-morning traffic of the city. The congestion actually made it easier for Escher to follow unnoticed; for all its horsepower, the Maserati couldn’t get through the honking horns and red lights and stop signs any faster than anyone else.
Still, he wished he’d had the chance to attach a transponder under its bumper. Technology always helped in situations like this.
He especially regretted it when the car rounded a busy traffic circle and signaled a turn onto the ramp leading to the A 10, a major motor route heading southwest into the Loire Valley. Once they got out onto the highway, where the speed limits were 130 kph and enforcement, even of that speed, was virtually nil, it was going to be a struggle for his little Peugeot-which wasn’t exactly a new model to begin with-to keep pace, much less without being spotted.
And Escher didn’t doubt that David and Olivia had wised up enough to check if they were being followed. They might be naive, but they weren’t stupid.
Schillinger’s crack about his limited imagination came back to him, and before focusing again on his driving, Escher entertained a brief fantasy of retribution, stuffing the old man’s mouth with whatever precious papers were in that valise. The Maserati had flown down the entry ramp and merged seamlessly with the swifter highway flow. Fortunately, this close to Paris, there were still plenty of other cars and lorries and tour buses-dozens of the buses, in fact, packed with tourists setting out on the chateau circuit-to impede its progress. But that wouldn’t last long.
Escher checked his gas, and at least he was still running on a virtually full tank.
Within a half hour, however, the buses had all moved to one lane, and the other traffic had sufficiently thinned that the driver of the Maserati could start to step on it. And he did. The silver car zoomed ahead, and Escher had to put his foot to the floor of the Peugeot just to keep it in sight. The cabin whined with the sound of the engine and the doors rattled, as, on both sides of the road, fallow fields and barren vineyards flashed past. The car was going so fast that Escher, who had to keep one eye on the Maserati at all times, barely had a chance to read the little blue-and-white signs marking each town and tourist site they passed. Several times, one bus or another would peel off, but the silver car stayed in the passing lane and barreled straight ahead like a bullet.
Escher adjusted himself in his seat, and kept both hands tightly on the wheel. But he was afraid that if he kept up this speed much longer, the motor might die, or something else might go wrong. He berated himself for not having gone to some other rental agency and getting a better, more powerful car.
And then, just as he was sure he was about to lose the Maserati altogether, it suddenly, and without warning, cut across the traffic lanes, causing one truck to swerve wildly and another to hit its brakes, before shooting toward the exit ramp for a couple of towns called Biencie/Cinq Tours. It was standard procedure for losing a tail, and Escher wondered if he had actually been spotted, or if the driver was just doing what came naturally.
But with only seconds to react, Escher simultaneously flipped on his flashers and his turn signals, and navigated as fast as he could toward the right side of the road. Other cars blasted their horns and one driver flew by giving him the finger. But he was too far along to make it down the ramp, and it was all he could do to stop the Peugeot on an overpass a hundred yards ahead and jump out of the car.
With the roar and the wind of the traffic rushing by, he ran to the guardrail. Below him he saw empty fields, a white farmhouse, and a two-lane blacktop going north and south. The Maserati was sitting at the crossroads, plainly waiting to see if any other car came down the exit behind it. Escher instinctively ducked lower, and watched as the car sat there for a full minute before turning to the right, where a blue arrow pointed toward the town called Cinq Tours.
Chapter 36
The moment Ascanio swept the car across the traffic lanes, and gunned it down the exit ramp, Olivia had let out an involuntary scream and David clutched the walnut trim on the dashboard so hard his knuckles turned white.
“Are you crazy?” Olivia cried.
But Ascanio was looking in the rearview mirror as the car descended the ramp, and at the bottom he stopped abruptly, letting the car idle there. It was a lonely spot, with brown farmland and a white farmhouse off in the distance, and it took David a few seconds just to release his grip on the dashboard.
“I had to be sure we had no company,” Ascanio said.
“Well, I think we’ve settled that question,” Olivia said. “But next time, could you at least give us some warning?” She muttered an oath in Italian, and Ascanio smiled.
Then, he turned the wheel to the right, toward the town called Cinq Tours. The road there, part of the Route Nationale system, was older and narrower, and it meandered through scenic but now-barren fields and forests. In a grove of old oaks, David saw a pack of wild boars, pawing and snuffling at the hard ground.
“A local specialty,” Ascanio observed with a tilt of his chin. “In his day, the marquis was a very good hunter.”
“But not so much anymore, I’d guess.” David had been wondering how to ask the indelicate question, but this was as good, or bad, a time as any. “How were his legs injured? In an accident?”
Ascanio waited for a tractor to lumber over an old stone bridge, then maneuvered around it. “An accident of history,” he replied. “It happened during the war.”
The war. David almost laughed at the absurdity of it. Which one? It could be almost any war at all, from the Napoleonic campaigns to the Second World War. The marquis might have been a field marshal at Waterloo, and Ascanio his aide-de-camp. It was an alternate reality that David was working in, but since that was also the only reality in which some hope for his sister survived, he was not about to challenge it.
