12:30 am Central European Daylight Time
Engel Castle
Engeldorf-Pont
Luxembourg
“My brother is not acknowledged as a Willems,” Aliz said.
She was still on the sofa, still wearing the red dress from earlier this evening. She must be on her fourth glass of wine. She was beginning to warm up to them, and the wine was starting to loosen her tongue.
The mansion, and the castle looming above it, were protected by 16 security cameras, and a series of motion detecting lights. There was a laptop computer here on the coffee table, and Aliz had explained to Dubois how to use it to monitor the cameras. They’d been here for some time, and unless there were forces out there gathering quietly for a full-on assault, it seemed that they hadn’t been followed.
That was good enough to allow Troy to help himself to a couple of beers from Aliz’s large double refrigerator. He didn’t ask permission, and Aliz scowled at him, but he ignored her. She was hardly in any position to complain. Prissy Dubois alone abstained from taking a drink. She was at work, according to her. Was she always at work?
Troy sat in an easy chair, sipping from his beer bottle. Sometimes he would watch Aliz as she spoke. Sometimes he would gaze out the bay window at the medieval castle on the hillside. It really was something else. Looking at it reminded him of the Legend of King Arthur. He could picture this region a thousand years ago, knights on horseback riding out of the mists, the sound of horses clop-clopping on the paving stones, flags waving on the battlements. The whole thing was out of sight. The fact that this woman sitting here owned that castle… How could a person own it? It was as if she owned Troy’s daydreams. It was as if she owned King Arthur himself.
“He’s my half-brother, just six months younger than me. My father, I think, was a good man overall. He tried to be a presence for good in this world, unlike his father before him, and so many of our line going back into history. But he was an incorrigible womanizer. That was his weakness. That was his shadow.”
Troy sipped his beer. Neither he, nor Dubois, said anything. Dubois was watching those security monitors intently. She hadn’t said anything about it, but Troy suspected that this night had scared her a bit. People had been shot. People had been killed. She had responded well, and held her own for the most part, but things were getting deep. Troy got the sense she wanted off this job before she was the one who got killed.
“While my mother was very pregnant with me, he impregnated another woman, Imane, an Algerian who worked as a domestic at our home in Paris. My father was at the embassy there at the time. Of course, he never acknowledged the child publicly, but he did provide for both mother and child. Luc was born Lucien Mebarak, and grew up in a Paris high-rise, a building full of doctors and lawyers and other professionals. Luc and Imane never wanted for anything - Luc went to very good schools. But they didn’t have…”
She raised her right hand and gave a sweep around the room, taking in the living room, the nearby kitchen, and the towers of the castle outside the window.
“All of the comforts that come with being a Willems. The best schools, the best homes, the luxury, and the mingling with the elite of Europe. Luc did not experience these things. But he knew what he was missing.”
“How did he know that?” Dubois said.
Aliz shrugged. “His mother was my father’s mistress for many years. It was an open secret within the family. I met Luc for the first time when I was nine years old, or around then. We were on holiday in the Bahamas, at one of the grand hotels there. We were staying in a two-story suite of rooms, with views of the ocean from nearly every window. My father must have been tipsy one day - another of his weaknesses - because he took me to another part of the hotel, and we visited with Imane and Luc in their two-bedroom suite, with an eat-in kitchen and a terrace with a view of the swimming pool below. It was what a person might call nice.”
“They were second class citizens in your world,” Troy said.
She nodded. “Very much so.”
“And he resents it.” It wasn’t a question.
“I’m afraid Luc hates me,” she said. “And he has the meanness and the greed that has defined my family through the centuries. The Shadow. He has it. He is it. He began to get into trouble as a young teenager. He was expelled from numerous schools, at first for behavior infractions, later for selling drugs. He has the Willems ambition, and the sharp Willems mind. He wouldn’t simply sell small bags of pot at school. He would set up networks to bring him the stuff from across the city and expand his wares to include whatever the other kids wanted or could afford - designer drugs, psychedelics, cocaine.”
She took a long sip of her wine, finishing her glass. Then she reached to the bottle on the table at her elbow and poured herself another one. She was the one getting tipsy. Troy watched her. Her fundraiser had been blown to pieces tonight. She didn’t seem particularly concerned about it at this moment. The Willems ambition. The sharp Willems mind. She seemed more interested in blowing gas up her own behind than in the fates of anyone who was at that party tonight.
“By the time he was 19, he was running a small ecstasy and ketamine empire in the nightclubs of Paris. We were nearly the same age, and I would spend time with him sometimes. He was outwardly friendly to me, but I knew what he was doing, and it frightened me. When he was 21, the Paris police shut him down.”
“Did he do any time?” Troy said.
She shook her head slowly. “My father suppressed it. He had that kind of influence, the kind that purchases prosecutors and judges.”
“Is this going anywhere?” Troy said.
Good looks only bought you so much slack, and no more than that. There had already been two terrorist attacks, and there was bound to be another one at some point. They were probably lucky the next one hadn’t hit already. A group of men had tried to abduct her, and maybe kill her tonight. She had barely survived the car chase. And now she wanted to wax nostalgic about the specialness of the Willems family, and a kid who got busted for dealing drugs 15 years ago.
She looked at him with big pretty blue eyes. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, the clock is ticking here. Did your brother graduate from selling X to terrorism, is that what you’re trying to tell us? Because he felt left out of the family fortune, and he got stuck with a last name that would make Muhammad proud?”
She shook her head. “My brother inherited money. Not as much as I did, but a lot by the standards of many people. He used it to further his criminal activities. He has the blood of his grandfather, and a long line of Willems men before him, running through his veins. He is the polar opposite of my father. Luc became involved in dealing weapons to North African rebel groups and warlords when he was still in his 20s. He branched out to smuggling heroin from Afghanistan into Europe, apparently using western troops as mules, carrying it on military transports. I believe he’s been involved in prostitution and human trafficking of women from societies ravaged by war. And he has become a heroin user himself, if not an outright addict.”
“Uh…,” Troy said. “Heroin is one of those things. You use it for a while, next thing you know, you’re hooked.”
“He’s a Willems,” Aliz said. “He may have control over the habit.”
That hurt Troy. It just hurt. Who were these people? These sharp-minded, ambitious, impervious to the effects of addictive drugs people. Clearly, they were super people. The laws of nature were put on hold when they walked in the door. They were rich, they were above the law, and they deserved everything that came their way.
Including Troy Stark.
“He tries to incriminate me, when he can,” Aliz said. “I have never been online as The Shadow, not one minute, not one time. I wrote a book about the topic, but I did not name myself after it. I’m not that absorbed with myself. Luc has computer experts at his disposal who leave trails across the dark web, and the internet proper, that lead back to the foundation. He has mocked my work to my face, through his actions he makes a mockery of my desire to have our money help the world, and he mocks it even further by tangling up the foundation in his web of lies.”
She shook her head. Tears began to form at the corner of her eyes. There seemed to be a lump in her throat. “If my father were still alive…”
Troy watched her closely. It could all be a lie, he knew that. It seemed like she was about to cry. But it could be a fake. She wouldn’t be the first woman in the world to shed crocodile tears. Even so, Troy was content to let this story unfold for the moment. Maybe she really believed what she was saying. Maybe it was even true.
True or false, it might bring them closer to the answer.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You think your brother bought the drones used in the terror attacks, may have been involved in the attacks themselves, all so he could incriminate and publicly humiliate you?”
Now the tears dropped down her cheeks.
“I don’t know why he does what he does. Maybe he wants to prove something to himself. You say the computer trail leads back to me. I had nothing to do with it. He has tried to entangle me before. I would hope that he wasn’t involved in these attacks, not even as a middleman for the weapon sale. But I just don’t know. He has become involved with very dangerous people over the years. Sicilians. Russians. Mexican cartels. Afghan warlords. Maybe darker than these. He seems to have a boundless appetite for dealing with the worst people on Earth.”
She grunted, and half-laughed. “He goes by the name Luc Willems once in a while, did I tell you that? There are people who know him as this. He is pleased with himself when he can tarnish the family name.”
“Do you think he’s in trouble?” Dubois said. “Those are some heavy hitters that you mentioned.”
“If he’s alive, I think he probably is in trouble. I haven’t seen him, or spoken to him, in over a year.”
“That’s convenient,” Troy said.
She looked at him. “What’s convenient about it?” It was apparent that she didn’t get the joke.
Troy shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. Your brother gets mixed up with a bunch of shady characters, he may be involved in terror attacks, but you haven’t seen him or heard from him in more than a year, so you have no idea where he is.”
“I don’t think I like what you’re hinting at,” Aliz said.
Troy stared into her eyes. “I’m not hinting.”
“You think I’m lying?”
Troy thought about that, but just for a few seconds. In general, he thought the overall arc of the story was probably true, or something like true. Her brother was probably a bad cat. He was likely into all the things she said he was. Maybe he had even bought the drones.
Troy doubted very much that Aliz had bought them. Unless this was an Oscar-worthy acting performance, she was all wrong for international terrorism. She was smart, but she lived inside a bubble. She was a house cat. Terrorist masterminds tended to be alley cats.
The only thing that didn’t ring true was the idea that she hadn’t spoken to her brother in over a year. That was hard to swallow.
“No,” Troy said simply. “I don’t think you’re lying. Not necessarily.”
“Do you plan to kill my brother?”
“I plan to ask him who carried out the terror attacks. When he answers me honestly, I plan to move on to whoever those people are.”
“And leave my brother floating in a canal somewhere?”
Troy stared and stared. He didn’t have an answer for that.
“I witnessed how violent you are tonight. I will never forget it. If I knew where Luc was, and I was concerned that you were going to hurt him, why would I tell you?”
Troy didn’t miss a beat. “To save hundreds, and possibly thousands of lives.”
Now she was staring back at him. Tears streamed down, but she didn’t look away. “He’s so full of hate! Why is he this way?”
They stared at each other.
“Will you promise me?” she said.
Troy shrugged. “Promise you what?”
“That you won’t kill him? I think he has goodness in him. If it’s possible not to hurt him, if you can just bring him in, that you will do that? Maybe if he spends years in prison, if he can think about the things he does…” She trailed off.
Troy nodded. “Okay. If he surrenders, I will not hurt him.”
It was a lousy promise to make, and he hated it. But it was also a reasonable trade-off. Maybe the guy was just a middleman, and he would go away for 30 years. Maybe smart, ambitious, super Luc was really just a dupe, being played for a sucker by much more powerful forces. Maybe when Troy walked in, the guy would lie on the floor and immediately recite the names of the real terrorists.
“Luc owns an old convent,” Aliz said. “The nuns are all gone. The place is in champagne country, in northern France, near Reims. In the Middle Ages, the nuns made wine as their livelihood, so there’s a vineyard and a wine cellar attached. There is also a house on the property. I don’t know if Luc is there, but he has used it as a hideout before. For all I know, he has used the cellar as a place to store his weapons and drugs and whatever else. I visited him there once. It’s a lovely place. The vineyards are rolling green hills, overgrown now. He was on the run from the Italians that time. I spent a week walking the grounds and talking with him. I told him I thought he should resurrect the winery and make that his business. He had me abducted and brought there, much like tonight. Which is why I think those men meant me no harm. They were probably just going to take me to him. But you couldn’t have known that.”
Troy nodded. It sounded okay. “How far is it?”
“About two and a half hours from here, by car.”
“We’re going to need a car,” Troy said.
She gestured out the window. “There’s a Porsche Cayenne in the garage. I never drive it. I don’t like modern cars, and I don’t like SUVs. It was a gift from a former boyfriend who was not a good listener. He was more interested in airbags, rollover reinforcement, and impact… how do you say it? Dispersal. He wanted me to be safe, I guess. You can use the car. Just try not to damage it. The impact is liable to disperse all around you.”
Troy nearly laughed. Had she noticed the Jaguar when they pulled in here? Maybe not. The shock of the evening had worn off the more wine she drank.
“Thank you,” he said.
This was interesting. She seemed to have anything and everything a man could want. He might as well take a stab in the dark here.
“Do you have any guns?” he said. Her eyes widened and he raised a hand. “No, I won’t hurt your brother. But he might have henchmen with him, and I might have to deal with them first.”
“I hate guns,” she said.
“That doesn’t really answer my question, does it?”
She paused for a long moment. Then she seemed to make up her mind. “In the castle. The ancient keep. It’s full of guns. I’ll bring you there.”
* * *
“I don’t like it,” Mariem Dubois said.
Her voice echoed off the high ceiling, sounding childlike to her own ears. She stood in the formal dining room of the house. The room was cavernous. Hence the echoes. They reminded her of the gymnasium at her school when she was very young.
She held her mobile phone to her ear, waiting for her call to go through to the Special Investigations Unit office. It seemed like the call was taking forever to connect. She lowered her voice, mindful of the acoustics. She didn’t want the Willems woman to overhear.
“We’re already in an awkward position. We kidnapped that woman…”
“We saved her life,” Stark said.
Mari watched him. He was a big man, and very handsome as men went, she supposed. He was too confident for his own good. Was it his looks? Were good-looking men prone to being overconfident? Or maybe he was just a psychopath. He had killed a man tonight, shot him in the head with no hesitation at all. Yes, it had ended the crisis of the man holding a knife to Aliz Willems’s throat. But it was so sudden. Afterward, he had seemed to feel nothing about it at all. He had simply dumped the body in the woods as if it was some trash left behind.
And he had been confident! Confident that he was right, that it was the right thing to do. How could a man take a life so cavalierly?
She imagined it would take her months to recover from that one act. What about the man he had killed on the street?
The phone rang and rang.
“I need to talk to Miquel,” she said. “If that woman has information about her brother, and he may be involved, then we should bring her in so she can give a formal…”
Stark shook his head. “No. I got no time for that.”
And rude. He was rude. It was nearly impossible to finish a sentence in his presence. Mari had been identified as gifted and talented at a young age and had gone to schools reserved for the upper classes most of her life. Manners were important at these schools. Her parents were civil servants who had met in Senegal, her father French, her mother Senegalese. They valued decorum, respect for tradition, patience with bureaucratic processes - the wheel grinds slowly, but it does grind if you let it.
Troy Stark valued none of these. He spoke English in a garbled torrent of tortured syntax. He interrupted. He was sarcastic, almost caustic at times. He beat people. Instead of interviewing subjects, he put guns to their heads. He ended tense standoffs, what might even be considered a hostage negotiation, with a bullet to the brain.
“I just need to go there, check the place out. She says it’s about two and a half hours away. If I leave soon, I can be there before dawn.”
Over the phone, someone finally answered. “Hello?”
Mari raised a hand to Stark.
“Miquel, it’s Mariem Dubois.”
Miquel sounded far away somehow. “Mari. It’s good to hear from you. We’ve seen the video. Much of Europe has seen it.”
“This phone rang and rang,” she said. “I think the phone might be compromised.”
“Jan re-routed the office phone to my own mobile. He encrypted the calls and made mobile phone calls bounce around the world to mask their locations. He did in case you called. We can speak freely, and no one will know where you are.”
It was a curious thing. “Why? I don’t understand.”
“I am under investigation,” Miquel said. “They sent an Internal Affairs man up from Lyon. I was confronted by the Europol Deputy Director. Someone from the Dutch National Police was there, and someone else who chose not to identify himself.”
“Oh, God. Miquel.”
“It’s fine. This has been coming. You’re a good agent, Dubois. I told them you returned to Lyon this evening. If you don’t turn up at Interpol tomorrow morning, you will probably have some difficult questions to answer, but as of now there’s no talk of you being investigated or suspended. Merely reprimanded, if that. You saved Aliz Willems. You did an exceptional job under intense fire. In normal circumstances, you would receive a commendation. You might still.”
Mari took a breath. Miquel was her mentor. She had spent her entire career at Interpol under him. If he were fired…
“You should produce the woman unharmed, as soon as you can. Is she still…”
“Alive?” Mari said. “Yes.”
“Did she have any information to offer?”
“She denies involvement. She thinks it may have been her brother. His name is Lucien Mebarak. He’s really her half-brother, the bastard child of her father. He’s been a drug dealer and maybe an arms dealer. He has ties to organized crime.”
“If so, he’ll be in the database.”
Mari nodded. “Yes. But there’s more. She told Stark…”
“Stark will be deported from any European Union country back to America, as soon as he’s apprehended. He should know that. In fact, I told the investigators that he is already gone.”
She looked at Stark. He was looming there, staring at her. It occurred to her that he was still wearing his tuxedo. Outside of the blood stains splattered on it, it looked good on him. The fit was excellent.
“I think he probably already assumes that,” she said. “Willems gave him some intelligence on an old convent in champagne country, near Reims. She thinks her brother uses it as a hideout.”
“No one is going to use our intelligence,” Miquel said. “If the Willems woman has intelligence to offer, she’s going to have to come in, and deliver it to Interpol or Europol directly, and in a formal setting.”
“Stark wants to go there now.”
There was silence over the line.
“Miquel?”
“I agree with him. Given the circumstances, I would say that we are not highly valued at this moment. Our mandate is on hold. Even if she wants to come in, it could be some time before anyone sees fit to interview her. By then…”
“Should I go?” Mari said.
It was a strange question to ask Miquel. It put him on the spot. Should she risk her life to follow the lunatic Stark into battle one more time? To what end? It wasn’t even clear that all of this had produced anything of value. Men had died last night, Miquel was in trouble, the Special Investigations Unit was disregarded, and the best they had come up with was a woman who thought her brother might be involved in some manner, and he might be hiding at an old convent in northern France.
“I think you should,” Miquel said. “I think you and Stark are on to something. You are at the edge of acceptable behavior, but if this woman is correct and you stop the next attack, it will be the right thing, no matter what the career rewards or punishments are. You just have to approach it carefully and stay safe.”
Had he seen the video? A shooting war had erupted in the middle of a fundraising gala. It was probably too late for careful and safe. The next one was liable to be worse.
“I would do it, if I were you. And I would stay dark until it’s done. Don’t talk to anyone. I don’t know how long Jan will be able to hold this encrypted line of communication open. Interpol will probably notice it soon enough. If you tell a soul, it could be leaked.”
She looked at Stark now. He was making hang-up gestures with his hands. Now he was slicing a hand across his own throat. Kill it. Okay, okay.
“I will do that,” she said.
“Good,” Miquel said. “You’re a good agent, Mari. Exceptional.”
“Thank you.”
She hung up.
“Are you gonna come or not?” Stark said.
“My boss is under investigation by Interpol Internal Affairs.”
Stark’s brow furrowed. “Ouch. Because of what we did?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
He sighed and shook his head. “In that case, why don’t you go home before you get into more trouble? You’re probably a good cop. You definitely have a lot of skills. If you come back into the fold now, I’m sure all will be forgiven.”
“What about you?” she said.
“I don’t work for Interpol. I’m not on the chopping block. I’m going all the way with this. If you continue, you’ve gone rogue and you’re risking your career. If I continue, I’m doing what I was sent here to do. My superiors don’t want me to stop. They don’t want me to ask for permission.”
“You’re going to get killed if you go by yourself.”
He smiled. “I doubt it.”
“But you don’t know for a fact.”
His smile faded, and for the first time, he looked very tired. “No. I don’t.”
“In that case,” she said, “I’m coming with you.”
* * *
“Take this,” Aliz said.
They stood in the courtyard between the house and the stone steps leading up to the castle. Aliz held a small lantern, that made a circle of weak light around them. She held something out to him, which flashed in the light.
“That’s to the Porsche. It’s on the far left as you walk in.”
Troy looked at what she had put in his hand. It was the electronic fob to a car. He glanced at the doors of the garage where he had stashed the ruined Jag. There had been a few other cars, but they were covered with showroom drapes. Besides the Cayenne, he had no idea what kind of wheels she was sitting on.
“Walk this way, please,” she said.
She held the lantern aloft. Troy and Dubois followed her up the winding stone stairway, which was hewn into the side of the hill. They passed through a low tunnel, the lantern sending shadows crazily against the walls.
They reached a tall, heavy wooden door, rounded at the top.
“We keep it locked, so that vandals and squatters cannot come in. Parts at the top are open to the elements, and so they could come in that way. But they would have to climb the walls to reach such a place.”
She had a large key in her hand. She stuck it in the lock, cranked it, and pushed in the giant door. It swung easily. They kept the place maintained. Because of course they did. They were Willemses, were they not?
Now they moved through the old castle, following the lantern down dark hallways and then down a long, narrow flight of stone stairs. They were delving deep into the mountain. With each step, Troy felt like he was traveling further back in time, to the time of knights on horseback.
They came to another door, much smaller than the entryway.
“This is it,” Aliz said. “This is the ancient keep.”
She opened this door the same as before, with a heavy key, and this door swung inward easily as well.
“You would not believe the craftsmanship to make a working door that fits this doorway from so long ago.”
They all ducked to step through the doorway. She held up her lantern to reveal a rough rectangle of a stone room, extending backwards into deep darkness.
“There are guns here,” Aliz said. “Also, other supplies, which you will not need.”
The place was some kind of apocalypse fallout shelter. There was a long gun rack, with rifles and shotguns slung along it. There were shelves with more guns, boxes of ammunition, and various types of non-lethal grenades - stun grenades, smoke and tear gas grenades. There were numerous bulletproof vests hanging like coats - old school heavy vests, not the more modern Kevlar or dragon skin body armor. Moving along from there, down the wall, there were shelves with hundreds of cans and packages of food, those boxes of irradiated long-lasting milk, bottles of whiskey and vodka, dozens of cartons of cigarettes, pallets of water on the floor, all of it disappearing into the darkness.
“Do you smoke?” Troy said.
“The cigarettes and hard alcohol are for trading,” Aliz said. “Some things are always in demand.”
“Is this your getaway, in case the world ends?” Dubois said.
Aliz shrugged. “This part of the castle has survived for nearly two thousand years. A hundred years after Christ is said to have walked the earth, this was here. It outlasted the Roman collapse, the Dark Ages, wars, plagues, and into the modern era. It’s where my grandfather and great-grandfather hid Luxembourg Resistance members and re-supplied them with weapons in World War Two. They crossed into Germany three kilometers from here, carried out guerrilla attacks, and came back. Many of them died in the fighting, but the Nazis never found this place. Societies come and go, the centuries pass, and this suite of rooms has remained. If that day comes, yes. I will hold out here.”
She gestured at the gun rack, and the table.
“Please. Outfit yourselves.”
Now she was talking his language. Troy skipped over the rifles and the shotguns. He noticed that Dubois did the same. He picked an Uzi submachine with three 32-round replacement magazines. He took a couple of semiautomatic pistols of unknown vintage. He looked through the grenades. He took a couple of stun grenades and a couple of smoke grenades.
He glanced at Dubois. She had chosen two handguns and was mounting two holsters on her belt.
“Is that all?” he said.
“Before tonight, I never fired a gun on duty in my life. I rarely even carry one.”
Troy nodded. It didn’t matter. She was a decent partner. She was fast, she was light on her feet, and she didn’t fall to pieces when the action started. She had those karate kicks. She could fly an airplane. She didn’t have to shoot, and she didn’t have to kill anyone. He would do it, if it came to that.
He looked through the heavy vests and found the smallest one. He picked it off the rack and held it out to her. “Wear this, though, if you don’t mind.”
She held it, apparently surprised by its weight.
“Just because you don’t shoot, doesn’t mean they won’t.”
Now Troy looked around the room again. A new thought occurred to him. Aliz was sending them somewhere a few hours away. She was willing to give them a car and guns. But she didn’t want Troy to hurt her brother.
What if she was setting them up?
What if she wasn’t setting them up, but got cold feet after they left and warned her brother they were coming?
What if she did something else that he couldn’t predict?
He didn’t like it.
Several meters down from him, there was something like a living area arrangement. There were three upright leather chairs, a sofa, and a table. He figured if you were going to live through the end of days, you might as well have somewhere to relax.
He went over and tried to lift one of the chairs. It didn’t budge. He looked down at the legs. They were bolted to the stone floor. All the chairs, the sofa and the table were like that. There must be a rationale for it - earthquake?
No sense trying to figure it out. The ultra-intelligent and ambitious Willemses had their reasons.
“Aliz?” he said. “Can you please come here a moment?”
As she approached, he reached into his pocket and came out with the zip ties he’d had ready for the fundraising event. He hadn’t found a need for them, until now. He separated two of them out from the bunch.
“Yes?” she said.
He gestured at one of the chairs. “Can you sit in that chair a moment? I want to see something.”
Her smile said she was confused. That was good. Confused people often did things that weren’t necessarily in their own interests.
She sat down. Instantly, he seized her right wrist, fastened a zip tie around it, then attached the other end to the arm of the chair. By the time she began to stand up again, he had secured her arm to the chair.
“What are you doing?”
He raised a hand and gently pushed her back down into the chair.
“Shhhhh,” he said.
He crouched and quickly fastened her right ankle to the leg of the chair. Now she wasn’t going anywhere.
“Stark?” Dubois said.
He raised a hand to Dubois. “It’s okay. This has to be done.”
He got up and went over to the food shelves. There was an immense quantity of items to choose from. He took two bottles of water, a large canister of mixed nuts, and a package of tea cookies. He brought them over and set them on the table in front of Aliz.
She was squirming in the chair, grunting, and groaning. It was sort of funny, but he didn’t laugh. It had been a long night, and there was still more to go.
“I’m going to scream,” she said.
He shook his head. “If you do, I’ll friction tape your mouth shut. You don’t want that, and I don’t want to do it. So don’t scream. Okay?”
She began to breathe heavily, hard eyes staring up at him.
“Listen,” he said. “I can’t have you calling anybody right now, least of all your brother. So you’re just going to have to stay in here for a little while.”
“I told you where I think he is. Why would I call him now?”
Troy shrugged. “Because you told me where you think he is. And I’m coming for him. After I leave, you might change your mind about my visit. Now, I’m not going to hurt him, because I promised you that. But I’m not going to let him hurt me, either. And I’m not going to let any goons he has around hurt me, or Agent Dubois. So you stay here for a little while, and once we conduct our little visit, someone will be by to let you out.”
She stopped squirming. Maybe even she could see the wisdom in this. If she succumbed to temptation and warned her brother, she could find herself with big problems.
She pouted now, like a child. “What if I have to go to relieve myself?”
“Already thought of that,” Troy said. There was a stack of large white buckets among all the supplies. He went over, took a bucket, and brought it back. He slid it next to where she was sitting.
“Instant ladies’ room.”
She shook her head. There almost seemed to be tears in her eyes again.
“You’re a terrible person.”
He nodded. “You’re not the first to tell me that.”
Dubois went over to a shelf and came back with a fat pill bottle. “This is the substance called melatonin. It will help you sleep.”
“I know what it does,” Aliz said. “Who do you think stored it here?”
Dubois shrugged. “So, take one. Sleep for a while. By the time you awake, it will be time for you to be free.”
She opened the bottle and held it out to her. Aliz reached in with her free hand.
“Take two,” Dubois said.
Troy watched Aliz take the melatonin out. They were gummies. “Yeah,” he said. “Good idea. Take a nice long nap. Look! They’re shaped like teddy bears.”
Aliz put the two gummies in her mouth.
Troy picked up the lantern. “Nighty-night. We’ll see you soon.”
“Wait!” Ali said. “You can’t leave me in the dark.”
Troy sighed. “We need to find our way back outside. Anyway, the darkness will help you sleep.”
They left, pulling the door almost, but not quite closed.
“She’s a trooper,” Troy said. “I think she’ll be fine.”
They wound their way back out through the castle, then down the stone stairs to the lower courtyard. As they came out of the staircase, a small man was just pushing an old scooter type motorcycle up the driveway and onto the property.
“Hello?” Troy said. He had the Uzi strapped to his back. For an instant, he considered taking it down. Where there was one, there could be more.
“Hello!” the man said. He raised a hand. “Good evening to you!”
Troy looked at Dubois. “Go inside and get your stuff ready. If Aliz has any bread, cheese, coffee drinks, anything good we might want to take, bring it along. I’ll handle this guy.”
“Who is he?” she said.
Troy shook his head. “I don’t know. But I’ll move him along.”
Dubois backed toward the house, her eyes still on the man. Troy walked over to the guy. It was Alex.
“Can I help you, sir? This is my house. We don’t get many visitors.”
Alex gestured at the bike. Its headlight was dim and flickering. “Oh, I was just having some problems with my moto. I saw the gate and thought this would be a good place to repair it. I know what’s wrong. It will only take a few moments.”
Alex opened the storage compartment and pulled out a small toolbox. He opened the engine compartment and got down on one knee. He seemed to be playing around in there with something. Probably not, though.
“Sir, I don’t have all night. I need to drive to France very soon.”
“It’s a nice night for a drive. A little late, though. Where in France?”
“Will you even remember, if I tell you?”
Alex shrugged. “I don’t need to remember. I let tiny machines do my remembering for me.”
Troy nodded. “In that case, I’m going to check out an old convent called Lumiere de Dieu. That’s the Light of God in English.”
Alex smiled up at him. “Your French is impeccable.”
Troy nearly laughed. “Thank you. The convent is near the city of Reims, in champagne country. The man who owns it is a wealthy gentleman by the name of Lucien Mebarak. Sometimes he goes by Lucien or Luc Willems. Sometimes he goes by other names. Nice guy. Thought I might acquire the place from him. Or at least the stuff that’s in it.”
“What’s in it?”
“I don’t know yet. Could be drones, I suppose. That’s going to be the big surprise.”
Alex nodded.
“A man left me a gift in a forest last night. It was kind of a surprise, too.”
“Oh? What was it?”
“It was an Albanian gangster by the name of Besnick Shkodra. He operates out of Brussels, normally. But not anymore. There are lots of Albanians in Brussels these days. They run the drug trade mostly, and in a big way. They also do some prostitution and gambling. It’s hard to penetrate their little world. Family ties, and all that. They seem to have made friends with some of the Islamic extremists in Molenbeek, though. The two groups have some shared enthusiasms. Money. Weapons. World domination.”
“That’s very interesting,” Troy said. “I’ll tell you something else that’s interesting. See that big castle up there? It was built a long time ago. Deep inside the oldest part of the castle is a rich lady named Aliz Willems. She’s a clever lady, wrote a book about something or other. I don’t think she played any part in this, but I think her brother Lucien did. I think she might like to contact him and let him know I’m coming for a visit. But at the moment she’s tied up with other things. It might be nice if someone checked on her for me. Not right away, but in a little while. Made sure she was still breathing or whatever. Also, it’s good that we have her here, in our possession so to speak, on the off chance that she was involved.”
Alex nodded. “See? It only took me a moment.”
The flickering headlight had come back on full power. He stood and started to put his tools away. His hand came out of the storage compartment with a Rock Star Zero. He passed the slim can to Troy. It was warm, but that was okay.
Alex got on the bike. He revved the motor just a touch.
“There’s security video of the little scrape you got into last night. Also, there’s some mobile phone video, shot by terrified partygoers who were crawling on the floor. A man of your description is wanted for questioning pretty much everywhere in Western Europe right now. Two security guards died in the attack. No other bodies were recovered so far, but there’s suspicion that a few of the kidnappers were killed.”
“They were,” Troy said. “Their buddies must have removed them.”
“Persons says if you get busted, just clam up. You don’t know anything. There are friendlies embedded who will pull strings and try to get you off the continent.”
Troy nodded. “Understood.”
“Nice talking to you,” Alex said. He walked the bike so that it was pointing back down the driveway, put his feet up, and drove away. At the bottom, his turn signal indicated left. A second later, he was gone.
Troy turned around and Dubois was coming out of the house with their bags.
“Who was that?” she said.
“I don’t know. Some guy who needed to stop here and fix his motorcycle. He spoke English, a little. I didn’t find him the least bit suspicious.”
She gestured at the Rock Star. “Where did you get that?”
Troy shrugged. “The guy gave it to me. He insisted. He wanted to pay me for letting him work on his bike here, but I said no. Then he gave me this. I tell you: life is like magic sometimes. This is just what I needed. You want a sip? It’s warm.”
She shook her head. “Let’s just go, all right?”
He nodded. “Fair enough.”
They headed for the garage and the Porsche Cayenne. Troy checked his watch. It was coming up on 2:30 am. With a little luck, they’d pull up to the convent in the hour before dawn. Maybe they’d catch whoever was there napping.
“You navigate,” he said. “I’ll drive.”