Day Of Atonement

“Now I’m liking the way you’re thinking,” Philippe murmured as he glanced out the side window. Clever. She could be friends with this one, she decided.

“I think we might even stretch it to sharing a bottle,” she suggested.

It wasn’t long before her mind was elsewhere though, as the horn of a car traveling toward them on the other side of the road blared, causing her to admit she’d drifted toward the middle of the road. Instinctively, she jerked to correct the drift, overcompensating and yanking the wheel too hard in the other direction, which had the seat belts bite hard into their shoulders.

“Whoa, there, speedy. I know you want me, but let’s get to the bar in one piece, eh?”

“You wish,” she snapped back, regretting it the moment the words left her mouth. She tightened her grip on the wheel and eased her foot off the accelerator. “Sorry, it’s been a weird day.”

“All the more reason to end it with a friend,” Philippe said, and she realized he was right.

“I need to blow off some steam.”

“I think I can help with that,” the cameraman said with a wry smile.

“I’m sure you can.”

10

Garin was in the air within the hour.

He leaned back in the seat as soon as he was able to switch to automatic pilot. He wouldn’t normally have taken the stick himself. It was late, he’d been working hard all day, then playing harder, but there was something about being up in the clouds, surrounded on all sides by the stars, the lights blinking on the wings, the city laid out below in a landscape of molded light, that clung to the world. It was one of the most beautiful sights, so completely manmade, unlike many of the other spectacular things he’d seen in his life.

It was a sight he could never grow tired of.

Up here, away from the world, he could think.

His hacker had already come through with the information Roux was looking for, but he wasn’t going to pass it on to the old man yet. Information was as good as currency. And given he wanted something in exchange for it, he wasn’t about to say anything until they were face-to-face. Garin was good at reading people. That particular skill had made him a lot of money. He was also good at exploiting weaknesses and vulnerabilities. He fully intended to make himself indispensable to the old man and, once he was on the inside, pull the strings.

Garin was determined to get his hands on Guillaume Manchon’s papers, but not simply to hand over to his mysterious client. He wanted to know what was in them himself. Knowledge. If it wasn’t money, it was knowledge that greased the wheels in this life. And then he’d decide if they were worth more than the agreed sum, and just how desperately his buyer wanted them. It wasn’t personal. It was purely business. Roux would understand one day.

Garin had been surprised at the ease with which the hacker had traced the source of the call and turned up the information the old man was looking for, but then, a location was worthless in this day and age when you could circumnavigate the globe in twenty-four hours. The caller would have moved. Potentially a long way. Even so, he’d paid the hacker a hefty bonus to keep on digging and see what else he could turn up.

Now he was more interested in his own questions, like what it was that had gotten Roux spooked about the call, and how it was connected to Annja and the medieval town of Carcassonne. Because there was always a connection. Nothing in life was random when it came to trouble—especially the kind of trouble Roux brought to the party.

It had been a while since Garin had last heard from Annja, but that was hardly a surprise, given that he was once again persona non grata thanks to a little greed on his part. He couldn’t exactly remember what it was he was supposed to have done, but obviously it had offended her sensibilities. She didn’t approve of the way he lived his life. He didn’t take it to heart. But it would be best for both of them if she would just learn to shrug things off. Nothing was that important in the grand scheme. And it wasn’t as if he actively set out to piss her off; that was just an unconsidered consequence of his actions. Surely the fact he didn’t mean to do it should count for something?

He glanced at his watch. He was making good time.

The radio burst into life with a request from the airport.

The short hop had taken an hour, and the time had rushed by so quickly that he’d almost missed the twenty-minute descent and wound up bringing the jet down a little more sharply than intended. With no passengers to complain about the steep angle of descent and hitting the runway hard, he wasn’t worried. He’d called ahead, so his car was already waiting for him in the parking lot.

He allowed himself a smug, satisfied smile; it felt good to be him.

Next stop, the chateau.

Once he was inside those doors, in Roux’s inner sanctum, the rest would be child’s play.

Garin lived for this kind of stuff.

Even after all these years, he enjoyed it when the apprentice could get one over on the master.

But then, it was all a game to him, and money was just a way of keeping score.

11

Roux never seemed surprised to see him.

It was as if he knew Garin wouldn’t do as he was told.

The old man’s expression was utterly unsurprised when he opened the door to find him on the doorstep.

“You have news?” Roux asked as he ushered him inside.

“Carcassonne,” Garin said, pausing just long enough to make sure that he was well inside Roux’s home before he said it. He had to make sure the old man couldn’t just close the door in his face now that he had what he wanted. He wouldn’t have put it past him. They had a peculiar relationship these days. Once upon a time Garin had been the student, Roux his mentor, master. He knew the old man better than anyone alive—better than himself probably. He knew he wasn’t averse to using people to get what he wanted, then discarding them when he had it.

That one word shook the old man.

Without another word he led the way through passageways of priceless oil paintings and previously lost antiquities into his study. The wealth assembled in the house was beyond counting. Roux crossed the room, straight to the old freestanding globe beside his leather-inlaid desk, and opened the world up to get at the drinks inside.

“I take it you are thirsty?” Without waiting for an answer, he uncapped a bottle of brandy aged to the point of musky perfection. He handed a snifter to Garin and sat in the leather armchair beside the guttering coals of the open fireplace. Garin sniffed at the liquid, knowing it dated back to the time of Napoléon.

“All right, now that we’re being all civilized, do you want to tell me what’s so special about Carcassonne?” he asked.

“Annja’s there,” Roux said as though that answered everything.

“So?”

“So, think. I get an anonymous call asking if I’ve heard from her. When I eventually get hold of her, I find that she’s had a near-miss with half a castle wall, and both the phone call and the near-catastrophe originate from Carcassonne.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that—two events, same town. So you think your caller fired a warning shot? But was it meant to kill her, or screw with you?”

“I don’t know. Yet. But we have to work under the impression that option number one is true, and just hope the answer to number two is the reality we’re actually facing.”

“Motive? Why would someone want to kill Annja? Revenge?” There were any number of people she’d crossed in the past who could come looking for some kind of payback. It wasn’t impossible even if it was improbable. But who, then, would tie her to Roux? That changed everything in Garin’s mind. It surely meant the trail ran instead from him to her. They hadn’t exactly broadcasted their relationship. Roux was the kind of man who lived his life in the shadows even if his protégé was one for living in the spotlight.

“Possibly, but I’m inclined to send the questions the other way. Who would want to draw me out by threatening her? Who would have the wherewithal to get hold of my phone number and orchestrate something like this?”

“It’s not that hard to get hold of a telephone number. Telecommunications companies don’t exactly have the most effective security systems in place, even given your special arrangements, so we can assume he bribed someone, or has an element of technological know-how. The thing is, it didn’t take long to source the call, did it? So he can’t be that clever.”

“I suppose not,” Roux said thoughtfully. He raised his snifter to his lips and took a slow swallow, then rolled the remaining brandy around the glass. “Of course, it would be a lot easier if the caller already knew the number, or knew someone who did.”

Garin could feel the old man’s stare burning into him.

“You can’t really believe that I have anything to do with this?”

Roux said nothing.

“Do you really think so little of me?”

Roux said nothing.

“Seriously, this has nothing to do with me. I was in bed with a beautiful woman when you called. I would tell you who so you could corroborate this, but I didn’t get around to getting her name. I’ve got nothing to do with this. Come on, Roux, we go back a long way. You know I wouldn’t hurt Annja.”

“No, but you’d screw with me, so if you knew she was never in danger?”

“She’s one of us, Roux. She’s just like you and me. It’s the three of us against the world.”

“Is it? Is that how you really see things? I thought it was, but after the Pass of the Moor’s Last Sigh it’s hard to believe you sometimes. I think the things you want are very different from the things we want.”

“Okay, so I like the finer things in life. I would say that’s not a crime, but obviously sometimes it is. But you know me. You know I’d never hurt her.” It was true, and he was very delicately dancing around the fact that he’d come here with every intention of stealing from the old man. The objects of his nefarious intention were only a few feet away in his hidden vault. There was wealth beyond imagining in that vault, not just in monetary value, either. The old man was a hoarder. He had works of art and irreplaceable antiquities all around the house. He wasn’t worried about prying eyes seeing those, so he didn’t keep them under lock and key. It was only things that could lead back to who he really was that ended up in the vault. Secrets.

“You may be telling the truth,” the old man said, but he didn’t sound entirely convinced. Garin was a gambling man. He knew a safe bet when he saw one. Roux still thought he was behind the whole scheme. Old habits died the hardest. Garin had to force himself not to look over the old man’s shoulder at the vault.

He could almost taste the money heading his way once he had his hands on Guillaume Manchon’s papers. It would only become a tough choice if, after examining them, Garin found something incriminating in the writings that tied them back to Joan of Arc’s execution, and that was almost certainly not the case, even if Manchon had recorded their names. Lots of Frenchmen had been called both Roux and Braden in the intervening years.

“Okay, worry about me if it makes you happy, but what do you want to do?” The old man shrugged for an instant, revealing the years that lay behind his eyes. “My instinct is to go and find her.”

“Which, for argument’s sake, if it were me behind the call, is exactly what I’d expect you to do, so you’d be walking right into the trap.”

“But you’ve convinced me it isn’t you,” Roux said with irritating smugness. “So, if the caller is in Carcassonne, and Annja is in Carcassonne, that’s exactly where I want to be.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that. But we don’t know who’s behind this. The number’s dead, so it’s either a burner phone or they’ve just destroyed the SIM card and we’re going to be chasing shadows once we touch down.”

“Then we make ourselves the bait to lure him out,” Roux said. “If he wants me, I’ll give him the chance to come at me and hope he makes a mistake.”

“And you wonder why I think you have a death wish sometimes, old man? You have no idea who you’re going up against, what he looks like, nothing.”

“I’ll recognize the sound of his voice.”

“Great, let’s hope he offers a nice convenient threat before he cuts your head off.”

“So you’d rather sit here and wait to see how things play out?”

“Yes. Think, Roux. If this guy really has it out for you, he’ll call you to taunt you again, won’t he?”

“And what if the next time it’s because Annja’s dead?”

“Have you met that woman?”

Roux shook his head. “How do you live with a lifetime of regret when your lifetime might never end?”

“I hate you when you get like this.”

“You mean when you know I am right?”

“Okay, fine. He’ll call or he won’t. He’ll make another attempt at Annja or he won’t. He’ll be waiting for you, though, that’s for sure. And that’s like putting your head in the noose and taunting the damned hangman.”

“Or perhaps, just perhaps, going to Carcassonne means we are in the safest place in the world, as he’d expect us to sit here and wait for his call and is lining up an attack on the house.”

“Not if he knows you, old man.”

“So you stay here, answer the phones, while I go out and risk my life for our mutual friend.”

And there was an offer that was almost impossible for him to refuse: Roux out of the house, and him having the run of the place and all the time in the world to infiltrate the vault and liberate Guillaume Manchon’s papers. The temptation was incredible. But he could hardly say yes. Instead, Garin moved to take control of the situation by seeming to agree with Roux.

“All right, all right. I’ll make you a deal. If he hasn’t called by the morning, we head to Carcassonne, okay? There’s nothing we’d be able to do tonight, anyway, so a few hours aren’t going to kill us. Get some rest. We’ll head out at first light.”

Roux agreed, but there was an obvious element of reluctance in his voice.

He made a show of looking at his watch, no doubt calculating how long it would take them to get there.

“We’ll be there in no time at all. Don’t fret, old man. It’s not like a few hours will make a difference.”

12

Morning.

Annja had had a restless sleep and the bottle of Pouilly-Fumé hadn’t helped. She had a dry-wine hangover and needed to get some air.

It felt like weeks since she’d been out for a proper run, really pushing herself. She had her gear with her, including a good pair of running shoes, so she got dressed, pulled her hair into a ponytail, stretched the kinks out of her muscles in a warm-up, then hit the streets. She pounded the pavement for a predawn hour, nothing but the wind in her face and the bite of the icy air in her lungs to keep her company until the first birds started to sing.

And then she kept on running, glad she’d resisted the temptation that Philippe presented, even when the wine had been flowing. It was always a mistake to mix work and sex. Always.

The ice glistened on the road ahead of her as the sun rose.

There was nothing like being out before the rest of the world woke up; it was like sharing a secret with the universe.

It was the best hour of the day, because it was just her and nature.

She kept on running, pushing herself to go faster as she reached the hills, and whenever she was presented with a choice of the hard way or an easy way, Annja chose the hard way every time. It felt like a metaphor for life as well as being a grueling workout.

Ninety minutes later she was in the shower, steam venting up out of the drain where the hot water hit the cold tiles, then she toweled herself dry, dressed and went down for breakfast.

The dining room wasn’t busy. Half a dozen people were keeping very much to themselves. She stocked up on a continental breakfast—fruit, muesli, yoghurt and a wonderfully fresh brioche—before she headed out to the car.

The run had cleared her head and taken the edge off her stress, as it always did. Even so, she checked over her shoulder as she slid the key into the lock, looking for the Mercedes.

She was past the point of being afraid. Very little in life scared her these days—in part because Joan of Arc’s mythical blade was only an arm’s length away in the otherwhere, just waiting for her to reach for it, but more because of the way her own body had changed during the few years since she’d first reached out to take it. She wasn’t the New Yorker she had been, and even back then she’d been a together, strong, independent woman. Now, though, the strength of the ages ran through her veins. She could run farther, faster, fight harder, and had lightning-fast reactions. Now she was a daunting foe for anyone. She’d handled the worst the world could throw at her, and came away from it feeling indestructible. Maybe this is how it feels to be bitten by a radioactive spider, she thought, grinning, as she slid into the driver’s seat.

If the guys from the Mercedes were interested in her, then let them come. It was as simple as that. They’d regret it. People who tried to mess with her always did.

That was why she was in the car in the first place, taking control of the situation.

She was using herself as bait to lure them out—or discount them as an actual threat and put the dumb notion out of her mind once and for all.

Annja took the road out of town, heading into the countryside. It was still early, meaning it was what passed for early-morning rush hour in these parts.

She checked the mirror.

There was nothing back there.

It wasn’t the possibility that they were watching her, but the fact that she had no idea of who they were that bugged her. She didn’t like not knowing.

Annja was barely half a mile outside the town when she caught the glint of sunlight on silver behind her.

She smiled to herself, and muttered, “Come out, come out, whoever you are.”

Even without being able to see the shape clearly, she knew it was the silver Mercedes, and with no other cars on the narrow road it caught up with her quickly. She slowed, imperceptibly at first, gradually allowing the Mercedes to close the gap and invite it to pass her. But that wasn’t the intention of the Mercedes’s driver, and she knew that. Annja would have felt more in control if she were behind the other car, if she was the hunter rather than the hunted in this game of cat-and-mouse. But beggars couldn’t be choosers.

She eased her foot off the accelerator, but kept clear of the brake. She didn’t want the flare of the brake lights to betray the fact she knew they were back there until it was obvious.

As they drew closer, they slowed, too, tucking in fifty yards behind her, matching her speed, a sure sign they were indeed following her and this wasn’t just the most ridiculous case of the universe having fun at her expense.

The road ahead was straight as far as the eye could see, the pavement shimmering with frost haze where the sun reflected off the surface.

Her hands felt slick on the wheel. Her heart beating just that little bit faster, the thrill of the extra adrenaline pumping through her veins.

She pulled over to the side of the road, put the car into Neutral and released her seat belt. She didn’t kill the engine, letting it idle.

She wasn’t going anywhere until she knew what was going on.

If the Mercedes raced by, she’d just follow it. Simple as that.

The other car reduced its speed, no more than ten miles an hour, as it drove by. The passenger, the giant brute of a man, held her gaze without blinking as the driver pulled up in front of her car.

The passenger door opened and the big man climbed out.

Police? It was possible, but it was a nice car for an unmarked gendarmerie vehicle, which made it unlikely it was local law enforcement. She had come across enough of them all over the world to know when it was the law keeping an eye on her. It was a sixth sense now.

The man reached down for her door handle before she thought to lock it from inside. She reached for the button just as he tugged hard at the handle, as though brute force would be enough to beat her and the lock. When the door didn’t open, he banged against the window with the side of his fist.

Annja took a breath. It was that moment, the single point between fight and flight. She inched the window down a crack.

“What do you want?”

“Miss Creed,” the man said in a gruff voice, taking a step away from the car.

“Yes,” she said.

“Get out of the car.”

“No,” she said, not making an argument of it, but simply stating that there was a line she wasn’t stupid enough to cross just because he said so. “Not until you say please.” She used humor to show she wasn’t frightened, no matter how physically intimidating the giant was. And towering over the roof of the car, he was like a mountain more than a mere mortal.

“Please,” he said, laboring over the word, like it was something unfamiliar to his lips. Annja saw by the way he clenched and unclenched his fists that he was pumping himself up for an explosive confrontation. She almost felt sorry for him. It wasn’t as though he could know what he was letting himself in for. She was ready.

He used one ham hock of a hand to pull back the edge of his leather jacket to reveal the butt of a pistol tucked into the waistband of his jeans, removing all doubt as to his motivation. So much for the hope he was an overzealous autograph hunter. The odds of a peaceful outcome whittled down to zero as the driver opened his door, emerging from the Mercedes to join his hulking companion.

She needed to act quickly.

Dealing with them one at a time was preferable to taking them on together. It was simple mathematics. She had seconds to make the parity count. Annja moved fast, unlocking her door and slamming it open, far harder than she needed to, forcing the mountain to stumble back a couple of paces. He actually moved pretty well for such a big man, which was disappointing. She slid out from behind the wheel, climbing out of the car just as he reached for his gun. In a fair fight he would have drawn down on Annja before she was halfway out of the car, but this wasn’t a fair fight. Annja was fast. Even if he knew who she was, he had no idea just how fast she was.

Before he could raise the muzzle in her direction, she had reached into the otherwhere, her fingers curling around the familiar grip of her sword. Her entire body thrilled to the touch of the ancient blade, her blood resonating with the weapon on some primal level as she pulled it free of its resting place. Sunlight glinted from the keen steel edge that never dulled. She brought it down hard, slashing through the air in a savage arc that drove the mountain back two more steps, stunned by the impossibility of what had just happened.

It didn’t matter how big he was, or how many bullets he had in his magazine, he was afraid. She had seen that look often enough in the past. The sword had a way of making big men shrink down to size.

She moved the blade through a kata, whipping her wrist about to control the vicious dance of steel.

The man released the first shot.

Annja was barely three steps away from him, but it was all the room she needed to bring the ancient sword to bear, deflecting the bullet off the flat blade and sending it whistling away harmlessly in a shower of sparks. The sound of the ricochet rang through the air, echoing over the fields on either side of them.

The second shot nicked the blade, lodging itself in the body of the rental car behind her. He didn’t have time for a third. Annja slashed the tip of the sword close to the mountain’s great barrel of a chest, slicing through the leather jacket and parting the cotton T-shirt beneath without breaking his skin.

“See how easy it would be for me to gut you?” Annja said, completely matter-of-factly, her breathing deep, calm, controlled.