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“BLOODY HELL!” MANNY leaned away from François, staring at his closed jacket. “Is that true?”
“What?” François’ voice came out hoarse. “A bomb?” His voice rose in volume and pitch and he shifted. “Get it off me! Get it off me!”
“Don’t fucking move.” Vinnie stepped closer, put his hand on François’ shoulder and pushed hard. “We don’t know what will set it off. Stay as still as you can.”
François froze, his eyes stretched as wide as they could with the swelling. “Get it off me.”
“The oldest fossil was found in a rock almost three and a half billion years old from western Australia!” Caelan slapped his thighs, looking at Vinnie’s hand on François’ shoulder. “Mayflies live only twenty-four hours!”
“Wait.” Colin raised one hand to stop Vinnie when he reached out to lower the zipper of François’ jacket. He was frowning at François. “How can you not know there’s a bomb strapped to your chest?”
“Oh, God!” A tear rolled down François’ face. “I... I passed out. He must’ve put it on me while I was out.”
“Who’s he?” Manny asked.
“Shahab.” François raised his hand to wipe at his cheek, but moaned loudly. “He broke all my fingers. Every single one.”
More tears rolled down his face. I didn’t know what to think. His injuries and the swelling made it impossible to read his micro-expressions. Phillip had told us about the François he knew many years ago. Given the current situation, I doubted that he’d changed his character traits and stopped being manipulative.
But after our conversation with him in Phillip’s conference room, I found it hard to imagine that he would choose this moment to be deceitful. His fear had been real then. It was real now.
“Where is Shahab?” Manny kept shifting his glare from François’ face to his closed jacket.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know how I got here.” He looked past us. “Where are we? The storage place? Oh, God. How did I get here?”
“A Great Basin bristlecone pine in California is more than five thousand years old!” Caelan was busy losing his voice, the words a rough whisper. “It’s the oldest tree on Earth.”
I looked at the rope around his ankle and stared at the broken skin, dripping blood onto the floor. “We need to get this rope off him.”
Colin shook his head. “I think we first need to see what’s under François’ jacket.”
“Carefully, big guy.” Manny raised his gun, but kept it pointed at the floor. “I’ll provide cover.”
Vinnie nodded and holstered his gun. He frequently boasted about the training he did with Daniel’s team, especially the basic training in identifying improvised explosive devices.
I barely breathed as I watched him carefully lowering the zipper. The sound of the slide gliding over each tooth was exaggerated in my mind, making me wince with each movement. The progress was slow, but smooth and Vinnie gently disconnected the zipper at the bottom.
I held my breath as he lifted the two front panels of the blue winter jacket and opened them to reveal François’ torso.
“Oh, God. Oh, God.” François’ voice trembled, tears streaming down his face. “Get this off me. Please, get this off me.”
“Did you tell Dan to bring the bomb squad, old man? Because we’re going to need them.” Vinnie straightened to give us a full view of François’ chest.
Darkness immediately crowded my peripheral vision and my breathing became erratic. A small box was strapped over François’ heart. It was the size of a smartphone, but four or five times as thick. The rope that went over the box and around François’ chest seemed to be the same rope that tied Caelan to the chair. It seemed like the lid was only a thin piece of black plastic that covered the box and was held in place by the rope.
“Dan is bringing the bomb squad.” Manny leaned a bit forward and scowled. “Do you recognise it? Can you disable it?”
“It’s small.” Vinnie rested both hands on his hips, his thumbs pointing to the front. He was thinking. “I can’t see much. And I don’t think I want to mess around with it. In our last training, we were shown a bomb the size of a matchbox that could take out three of these buildings. I have no idea what explosives are in here. It could be just for this dude or to destroy the entire building.”
“Russia and the US are geographically only four kilometres apart, but there’s a twenty-one-hour time difference between them!” Caelan’s rocking increased.
I was fighting to not give in to my shutdown. I was also angry with myself. What had I been thinking to come here? I was in no position to be of any help to anyone. I didn’t know anything about bomb disposal. And I wasn’t capable of helping Caelan right now.
“I suggest we turn off our phones.” Colin reached into his trouser pocket. “We don’t know what will set it off.”
My throat was instantly dry. My phone was in my handbag in Vinnie’s SUV. I didn’t know if I would’ve been able to turn it off in any case. I felt frozen.
“The book says we should all leave.” Vinnie looked at Caelan and his top lip curled. “Not happening.”
“I’m not leaving Caelan.” Colin took a step closer to the young man still rocking. “Jenny?”
I shook my head. Even if I wanted to leave, I didn’t think my feet would obey signals from my brain at the moment. Colin, Vinnie and Manny were calm and composed. I was not. My mind was reeling and it was clear to me that François was close to a breakdown as well.
“Bloody hell.” Manny exhaled loudly. “But the moment the bomb squad comes, we leave.”
“We’ll see about that,” Vinnie said. “What about Caelan? The rope?”
“Yeah.” Colin walked over to Caelan and went down on his haunches. “Caelan, bud. I’m going to untie you, okay?”
“Russia spans eleven time zones.” Caelan nodded, then didn’t stop. A tear ran down his cheek. “The length of a day on Earth is twenty-three hours and fifty-six minutes.”
“I know it’s hard, superman.” Vinnie’s tone was gentle. “But you’re doing a great job.”
“Uh, Vin.” Colin prodded the rope. “This is a double fisherman’s knot.”
“Fuck.”
“What’s a bloody double fisherman’s knot?” Manny took a step back to better see everyone.
“Something that I’m not going to be able to untie. Not tonight. These knots were designed to be nigh-on impossible to untie.” Colin looked up at Vinnie. “You have your knife on you?”
“Of course.” Vinnie reached into one of the side pockets of his combat trousers and handed Colin a red multi-purpose knife.
Colin sat down on the floor. “Caelan, bud. I’m going to cut through this. Then we’ll have you out of here and safely at home with some white cookies and milk. Or Vin can make you some of his pasta with white beans and white cheese sauce. Would you like that?”
“China encompasses five time zones, even though the entire country only uses one!”
Colin opened the knife and cut at the length of rope not tied around Caelan’s leg, but the part connected to the chair. He grunted and sat back. “Well, shit.”
“Speak.” Manny’s scowl intensified.
“This rope has a wire core as well as thin wires threaded in the nylon.”
Caelan recited another fact and I had to force myself to slow my breathing.
“Can you cut through it?” Manny asked.
Colin looked at Vinnie. “Did you bring your toolbox?”
“Yeah, but Pink borrowed my wire cutter yesterday. Fuck. I don’t have anything in there that will cut through it.” He nodded at the knife in Colin’s hand. “The best bet is to saw through the wire with that. It will take longer, but that’s an ace knife. It will do the job.”
“What about me?” François’ voice had a hysterical tone to it. “What are you going to do to get this off me?”
“We’re waiting for the bomb squad.” Vinnie pressed down on François’ shoulder when the injured man started to move. “Just don’t fucking move.”
“I can’t do this. I don’t want to do this. Get this off me.”
The thought of François acting on his neurotypical panic and mindlessly struggling to get away brought more darkness to my mind. I pushed hard at it and tried to concentrate. There had to be something I could do to help. It felt like I was fighting against an invisible force to get my mind to let go of the panic and focus on something proactive. “Why did Shahab torture you?”
François took a sharp breath and looked at me. “Because he found out I wanted to take his business away from him.”
His frankness surprised me and also didn’t surprise me. In Phillip’s conference room, he’d appeared desperate to share whatever had caused him such fear. It was, however, unusual for someone from his background to disclose criminal activity so quickly.
“What business?” I asked.
“You know.” He started shrugging, but stopped when Vinnie increased the pressure on his shoulder. He winced. He sighed heavily, then winced again, his arms moving closer to his torso, to his broken ribs. “Drugs. I was going to take some of his drug business to fund my art business.”
“You had a plan.” And I wanted to know what it was.
“Yes. Well, Élodie had a plan.” His sigh was sad. “I liked her. It’s awful that she died at Shahab’s hand.”
“Why did he torture her?”
“To find out where all the crates with Shahab’s product were, of course.”
“Let’s get back to the plan.” Manny took a step closer. “Tell me about that.”
“Élodie had figured out most of Shahab’s operation. She had it all mapped out. She knew how he got his product into France, she knew where he got his product from and she had figured out most of his distributors. It must have been one of those fuckers who told Shahab that we were offering them a better deal.”
“What deal?” I asked when he glanced down at his torso and his eyes widened. “Were you offering them more money?’
“No. A partnership. Élodie had it all figured out. She was working with the manager from this storage place. He was going to be the import point for us. The guy had been accepting all kinds of illegal shipments for years, including Shahab’s stuff. He got all this at his courier business. Somehow, Élodie found out about that and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”
Something in his tone made me frown.
“You mean she blackmailed him.” Vinnie must have also heard the tone.
“It was her original plan. But when she went to Gilles, he was so excited about the quantity and the kind of money she was talking about, he immediately agreed to accidentally lose one shipment. He would then bring it here. From here, Gilles and I would co-operate in future deals. Élodie only wanted to do this one deal. Nothing more.”
“How’re you doing there, Frey?” Manny narrowed his eyes to see past Colin’s hands.
“Slowly, but surely.” Colin didn’t look up.
“An African elephant is pregnant for twenty-two months!” Caelan had slowed his rocking, but now it increased again.
“Oh, God.” François groaned. “We’re going to die here. I should never have gone against Shahab.”
“Where did Shahab get his heroin from?” I needed François’ attention away from the situation. And I needed something to focus on.
“Rudbar. It’s a small town in Iran. Shahab has a registered vineyard there. And they don’t produce wine.”
“He used the vineyard as a cover.”
“A great cover, as it turns out. He’s been importing crates of wine bottles to France for nine years already. His shipments were always about the same size as the one Gilles had brought here. Twelve crates.” He closed his eyes again, a tear rolling down his cheek. “We really thought we had planned it all out.”
“What went wrong?”
“Shahab has many contacts. He would never have known that Gilles had changed the recipients. Élodie helped him and they covered their tracks really well. They made it look like the crates never left Iran. But Shahab had someone at the port in Iran who told him the crates made it to France. His contact at the French port confirmed it.”
“That’s why Shahab came to Strasbourg.”
“Yes.” François swallowed. “He went straight to Élodie’s house. She’d only taken four crates. Shahab told me that she wasn’t able to tell him a lot before she died.”
“She had a pre-existing heart condition. The stress of the torture gave her a heart attack.”
“Shit. I didn’t know that.” François took a shaky breath. “Shahab took the four crates from her house and went looking for the rest. When he didn’t find it and those people he tortured knew nothing about this, he went back to her house to see if she’d lied and maybe had it hidden somewhere.”
That explained why Shahab had spent an hour in Adèle’s house after he’d sent the officers away. Colin grunted and I looked over. He was still sawing away at the rope. It looked like he was almost halfway through. Caelan had calmed down a bit, but was still rocking.
“Did Adèl... Élodie tell him about this warehouse?” Manny asked.
“No.” François groaned. “He told me she only had time to tell him she had stored the crates in a warehouse, but not which one. It took him a few days to figure that out. Then he found out about the treasure-hunting young people.”
“Geocaching,” Vinnie said. “Not treasure-hunting.”
“Well, he went after them.” He shivered. “First that young man. Then those other two. He made me take them out of his SUV and hide them in the forest. The first time I was lucky. The second time... those women saw me before I could get away. Shahab had already left and I was stuck there with the police. And somewhere in the process of killing these young people he found out about Gilles’ role in this takeover.”
“When did Shahab tell you this?” Manny asked
“When he still considered me a business partner.”
“Business partner?”
“I was his distributor in Rotterdam and sometimes supervised distribution here.”
“That’s how you knew Gilles.” I thought back to his reaction when Daniel had given the news about Gilles’ death. “You suspected Gilles would tell Shahab about your plan.”
“He was always a coward.” François sighed. “When I heard Gilles had been tortured, I knew my time was limited. Gilles would’ve told Shahab after the first punch. He was terrified when we found out Élodie was dead. That’s why he gave those other crates away. He didn’t want anything in his possession if Shahab came around asking him questions. And look how that worked out for him. When I left your office, I tried to play it cool so I could get away, but that stupid lawyer Shahab hired for me took me straight to that monster.”
“That was Shahab’s lawyer?” Manny asked.
“Oh, they’re best pals. Bastards.”
I thought about everything he’d told us so far. “How did you find out who Shahab’s distributors were?”
“I don’t know how Élodie did her research, but she was able to track down all of them. I think she did a lot of stalking. She told me that she knew where they were, but wasn’t sure about their names and exact details. So I used my contacts to find out more about the vineyard. Turned out that all of the workers are there because Shahab threatened to torture and kill their families. We made contact with one who was willing to give us everything she could find in Shahab’s books. For a price.”
“Élodie sent her the money through the hawala system.”
“Yes. And we got what we needed.”
“How did this worker get the information to you?” I asked even though I was sure I knew the answer.
“She was very clever. She worked in Shahab’s office. She was the one who printed the labels for the bottles. She told us she would put the names and towns of the distributors on the labels. It would be in the lines of the background.” He huffed softly. “We never got it. Élodie took those four crates to check the labels and get the names. But then Shahab killed her.”
“You used the past tense for the woman who gave you this information.”
“Oh. No. She’s not dead. She managed to escape with her family before Shahab found out about all of this.” He glanced down at his chest. “Where is that bomb squad? You must get this off me.”
“They will be here soon.” The doubt on Manny’s face couldn’t be about their arrival. Did he doubt they could disarm the bomb? I glanced at Colin still sawing the rope. It looked like he’d cut through the centre and was now struggling with the last half.
Panic crept up on me and I forced myself to focus. “What was Élodie’s plan?”
“She wanted out.” François shuddered and tried to control his breathing. “That’s why she sold me Shahab’s business model for one million euros. I negotiated of course. For that money I wanted her to help me plan the first shipment, use her hawala contact to pay our informant in Iran as well as pay for the artefacts.”
“You mean the artefacts you stole from the Iranian people?” Colin’s voice was strained.
“I didn’t steal it. Someone else got 3D-printed copies made and paid a worker at the museum to replace the originals. I only paid for it.” He winced. “Élodie told me it was as good as stealing it myself. But she was no better than me. She dealt in drugs. Art is actually better. It’s a victimless crime.”
Colin stiffened, but didn’t respond.
“All I wanted was for the drugs to give me enough money to build a healthy portfolio of art.”
“To sell illegally.” Colin’s anger gave him more strength to cut through the rope, but the progress was slow.
“Doesn’t matter now.” François looked at his chest again. “Élodie will never get to study music. And if you don’t get this off me, I’ll...” His head jerked up when the sound of sirens came closer.
“Deep sea perch can live up to a hundred and forty-nine years!”
“We’re getting there, bud.” Colin increased his sawing. “Almost through.”
I wasn’t sure how many vehicles were outside, but it sounded like more than three came to a screeching halt close to the door we’d entered. Within seconds footsteps sounded in the warehouse. I didn’t move.
“Over here,” Vinnie called out. “The old man and I are armed and there’s one bomb here.”
“Clear!” a few male voices called out from around us.
“Can’t stay away from the action, Genevieve?” Daniel walked to us, his assault weapon lowered.
I frowned. “I don’t like action.”
“I know.” His smile was genuine. Then he sobered as he looked over the situation. “Well, you sure find a lot of it.”
“Where’s your bomb guy?” Manny asked.
“Where is he?” François searched the aisle. “You need to get this off me.”
“I’m here.” A muffled voice came from the end of the aisle. A suited man was slowly walking towards us. He was dressed in a blast-resistant suit, his large helmet obscuring his features. “Why are there so many people here?”
“The Sumatran-Andaman earthquake in 2004 lasted five hundred to six hundred seconds!” Caelan was slapping his thighs again. “Doctor Lenard! The three-toed sloth can move maximum five metres a day.”
Everything slowed down in my mind. I looked at François, his badly injured face, his broken hands and the bomb strapped to his chest. He’d used the last nine minutes to confess his entire criminal career and plan. I wondered if he’d accepted that he would die. Or was it that he desperately needed to relieve himself of the guilt he suffered for playing a role in the deaths of so many people?
“You need to get these people out of here, Daniel.” The bomb disposal technician stopped in front of François and leaned over to look at the device.
“It took more than two thousand years to build the Great Wall of China!”
“I’m almost done, bud.” Colin glanced over his shoulder towards François and the technician, but quickly turned back to continue sawing.
Caelan was losing control, his movements becoming more erratic by the moment. Then a realisation crashed into my thinking brain, followed by a rush of adrenaline. Caelan’s facts had first been about volcanoes to warn us about the bomb. All the other facts had been somehow related to time. I gasped.
“Jenny?” Colin looked at me.
I stared at the bomb disposal technician. “There’s a timer.”
“What?” The technician stilled. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“Because we didn’t bloody know.” Manny took a step away from François. “If there’s a timer, there’s a countdown. What are we looking at?”
“Give me a moment.” The technician’s hands were steady as he took a device from his bag and aimed it at the bomb. The device immediately showed a red light. “A lot of explosives here.”
He took another device from his bag. A mobile x-ray machine. He aimed that at the bomb. The display showed a lot of wires. The technician put the machine down. “There are no wires under the lid. I’m going to remove it to see what we’re looking at.”
“It takes twenty-seven point three two days for the moon to orbit around the Earth!”
“Shit.” Colin’s jaw was tight as he worked harder to cut through the last wires on the rope.
“Oh, God. I don’t want to die.” François was crying, yet trying hard to control his breathing.
The technician carefully removed both the ropes that held the lid in place. With steady hands, he removed the lid. And tensed. “Evacuate. Now.”
Daniel didn’t hesitate. “Evacuate! Evacuate! Evacuate!”
The sound of boots running towards the door filled the warehouse. I stood frozen.
“I’m not done yet.” Sweat was forming on Colin’s forehead. “How much time do we have?”
“Twenty-three seconds.” The technician grabbed a wire cutter from his bag and tossed it to Colin. He lifted his bag and looked at François. “I’m sorry, sir.” Then he looked at Colin. “Don’t waste time.” He grabbed his bag and ran to the exit, slowed down by his bulky suit.
“Ninety percent of Earth’s population lives in the Northern Hemisphere!”
“Oh, God. Oh, God.” François looked at me, tears streaming from his eyes. “Tell Phillip I’m sorry.”
“Done!” Colin threw the wire cutter on the floor and got up. “Vin! Grab Caelan. I’ve got Jenny.”
Blackness rushed towards me, but I kept fighting it. Caelan wasn’t safe yet. Colin, Vinnie and Manny weren’t safe yet.
Vinnie ran to Caelan and picked him up like a baby. Caelan was jerking and keening, but he didn’t fight Vinnie as they ran to the exit, followed by Manny.
“Let’s go!” Daniel was waiting for us. Colin looked at me once, then lifted me over his shoulder and ran as fast as he could, Daniel by our side. I was looking back towards François still tied to the chair. He was sobbing, his one hand reached out towards us, his broken fingers stretched out.
That was the last image in my mind as we left the aisle and a few seconds later ran into the frigid night air. Manny, Daniel, Colin and Vinnie continued running towards the GIPN vehicles, their red and blue lights still flashing.
The bomb exploded.
The warehouse lit up, followed by intense heat and a rush of air so strong that it pushed Colin off his feet. His legs buckled under him and we fell. I watched the snow-covered ground rushing up towards me and surrendered to the safe warmth of a shutdown.
