LACKING VIRTUES (54 page)

The bike hit on the other side of the ditch, plowed forward in deep mud and fell on its side. Pain shot up his leg as he bent around to see where Warner was. The circle of light charged past them, still on the road. He could see men inside the glass front of the helicopter.

Too close. 

He lay and waited for the sound of the chopper to fade. The bird was still flying away from him, but for some reason the engine sounds were growing louder.

Through a gap in the trees, he caught a terrifying glimpse of another chopper. Its twin searchlights skimmed above the trees as it approached from the other direction, scouring both sides of the road.

He heard Warner whisper nearby. He threw his jacket over the Harley’s chrome and dove under a bush.

The lights closed in, turning, probing, burning like a scythes of fire. The chopper stopped overhead. The forest around them lit up bright as day.

Steven held his breath for what seemed an eternity. At last the chopper moved on. A break! A miracle! They hadn’t been seen! Fresh resolve pushed him to his knees. The fight wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot. He gritted his teeth and rolled over to check on Warner.

“You all right?” he whispered.

“Banged up but all right,” Warner said. “You?”

“The same.”

“That was good driving, Steven.”

“Thanks. Let’s get out of here.”

“Just a minute. Look how they’re changing their helicopter formations. Take in the scope of their entire action. What do you see?”

“Airborne assholes,” Steven said. “Let’s go.”

“Listen to me. They’re setting up a perimeter, putting a road block on every donkey path that leads out of here. They’ve got us in a noose. We’ll have to try to slip by them on foot.”

“Forget it,” Steven said. “Those dogs and about thirty thousand of their pals will be back. I’ve had enough of them for one day.”

“We don’t have a choice.”

“You’re wrong.”

Steven pulled Warner to his feet and righted the motorcycle by himself. “Hold on tighter this time.”

“I jumped,” Warner said, helping him drag the Harley across the ditch and back onto the road. “I’d like you to tell me what you’re going to do.”

“Get on.” Steven hit the throttle as soon as Warner’s arms locked around him.

Warner was right. They were setting up roadblocks. A mile ahead, a helicopter landed on the road. Another remained in the air, hovering directly above. Another break. The noise around the roadblock would be deafening. They were unlikely to spot the bike if he didn’t use his light, and they wouldn’t hear it if their ears were filled with the clatter of their own choppers.

They came out of a long S curve. Moonlight shone on the tracks that crossed the road half a mile ahead. Steven reached around, poked Warner and pointed. Warner must have understood, because he poked him back.

The bars were up, no trains coming just now. It was a double track, a main line, concrete ties and electric lines overhead.

Which side did the trains run on? Or did they run on one side in particular?

How the hell should he know? He eased the bike between the first set of rails, accelerated. The vibrations caused by the ties were horrendous, almost enough to knock them off the bike. A stroke of luck: when they reached a certain speed, the ride grew more tolerable.

He was beginning to get comfortable when another blinding light on this night of lights swept around a curve and bore down on them. He heard Warner’s yell above the roar of the Harley. He couldn’t respond, no time, but he knew they were all right. Just before the train exploded out of the darkness, it had lit up the rails in front of it, those on the right a little more brightly than those on the left. So let it come. Don’t look at it and get blinded but let it come. It wasn’t on their track.

Steven ducked down to handle-bar level, anticipating violent turbulence. Good idea. The air pushed ahead of the freight hit him like a wall of water. Deafening sounds exploded in his ears. The bike seemed to lift off the ties for an instant, the vibration of the ride replaced by the crescendo of sonic fury beside them.

And then it passed as quickly as it had come. The night was calm, the bike settled into its roadbed rhythm.

Glowing signals, green, red. Lights beside the tracks, lights on pylons for the overhead lines, light from the moon sculpting the tracks into gently curving rivers. They were making progress, making time.

Another headlight, another train. This one was more difficult to read, coming straight at them over the crest of a hill instead of rounding a bend. It seemed to be coming faster, too.

Steven slowed the bike. The vibrations increased until it was hard to hang on. He stared into the blinding light, but could not see which track the train was on.

Warner banged on his back with a fist. He was trying to tell him something. Steven took off his helmet flung it away.

He felt Warner’s breath lashing his ear, hot in the cold wind. His words had the ferocity of a shout, but the noise reduced their volume to a whisper. 

He thought he heard, “Wrong track! Wrong track!”

No time for clarification, he would take Warner’s word for it. He was doing 80, Frog trains did 200. He could see a crossing ahead, the bars down and red signals pulsing. He would have a 20 foot stretch of road where the asphalt was built up to the level of the rails, 20 feet to make a perfect maneuver and change tracks without dumping the bike.

But could he get to the crossing ahead of the train?

He didn’t know.

He buried the throttle, lowered his head and engaged the oncoming behemoth in a race to the crossing. What difference did it make whether you were doing 120 or standing still if you hit a train head-on?

He got there first, only by a few yards but what the hell, swerved to the right and landed between the parallel set of tracks.

It was an express. When it had passed, he felt Warner’s hand squeezing his ear lobe. “We’re outside the search perimeter. Get the fuck off this line.”

Steven smiled to himself. He reached around and patted the side of Warner’s helmet.

They rounded a bend. There was a crossing 300 yards ahead, and the gates were up.

Steven took the exit fast to avoid the horrible vibrations of slowing down while driving on the ties. Warner whacked him on the shoulder as he turned the bike onto a deserted secondary road and headed for Paris.

Chapter Forty-One

For Sophie it was a moment of relief when, shortly after 3:00 a.m., a soft knock sounded at Steven’s door.

She glanced toward the room in which Nicole had fallen fast asleep, wondering if she should wake her.

No, she decided, she would let her catch up on her rest. She knew this was selfish, but she couldn’t help it: she wanted Steven and Warner to herself for a while.

She left the Mozart piano concerto she had dug out of Steven’s otherwise wretched music collection on, picked up her snifter and hurried to the door.

All the things she should have thought and done but had not hit her in one terrifying moment when she opened and found herself standing face to face with a stranger. He made no attempt to push his way into the apartment, but when she tried to shut the door he blocked it with his foot.

“What do you want?” she said. “Get out of here before I call the police. If it’s a phone you need, there’s one just across the square.”

The man smiled, thinly, arrogantly. His eyes seemed to bore into her soul, intelligent eyes, cruel eyes. She recognized Hans-Walter Claussen from the Bonn photograph. She also recognized him from her nightmares: he was the Face of Evil that had haunted her since the Holocaust.

She hoped she hadn’t let on that she recognized him, though she feared she had. She said, “Look, I want you to leave. I’m not going to ask you again. I’m going to count to three, and then I’m going to scream so loud half the Paris police force will hear me.”

His smile remained unchanged, as if it were frozen on his taut perversely handsome face. “Why this is indeed an unexpected pleasure. Madame Sophie Marx, the world-famous journalist, a professional whose keen analyses I have admired for years. I cannot help but wonder how you became associated with a nobody like Steven LeConte.”

“Who are you?” she said harshly, trying to hide her fear with a firm steady voice. If you’ve come for Steven LeConte, I am not associated with him. He is out of town until tomorrow. We are acquaintances, neighbors. He looks after my flat when I’m away and I return the favor.”

The man didn’t seem interested in what she was saying. He pushed his way inside and locked the door. “You know who I am, don’t you, Madame Marx?”

Sophie backed up, uncertain what to do. “No, of course I don’t. “

”I asked you a question,” he said, snarling through his smile. “When I ask you a question, I want a truthful answer. You know who I am, don’t you?”

“What kind of nonsense is this? I told you I don’t.”

“The civilized approach you seem to favor in your writings is not working, is it, Madame Marx? I suppose we’ll have to try something else.”

She gasped when she saw the long slender blade. “One cry out of you, Madame Marx, and you will force me to do what is otherwise unnecessary. You see, I do not have to kill you. I do not particularly wish to kill you. I would rather trade your life for some other type of service, say editorial input on my memoirs. I guarantee it would be the most interesting assignment you have ever had, a fitting way to cap a brilliant career. But, as they say, let’s make no bones about it. If you do not wish to live, that is not a problem either. The choice, Madame Marx, is yours. Now, who am I and what do you know about me?”

She stumbled back toward the sofa, fighting to keep up some meager semblance of composure. She sat and poured more Armagnac into her snifter. He sat across from her in Steven’s favorite armchair, knife drawn and pale blue eyes unwavering.

In that moment Sophie knew she had no way out. She was going to die. But something else flashed in her awareness, a dazzling revelation that gave her the strength to resist despair. Steven and Warner had escaped! Otherwise, Claussen would not be trying to extract information; he would simply have opened the door and killed her. Steven and Warner were on the lam. She couldn’t help herself but maybe she
could
help them. If she succeeded, her last deception would be her best.

Claussen said, “I’m on a tight schedule, Madame Marx. Forgive me if I insist that we keep our conversation brief. You are going to begin by telling me what you know about me.”

Sophie let the tears flow. She shuddered violently. “How? How can I? I don’t know you.”

Claussen was beginning to lose his patience. “Of course not, Madame Marx. That is why you – the best investigative journalist in Europe, a woman endowed with a talent so remarkable that she has brought down Willi Brandt and Giulio Andreotti – just happens to be sitting in the apartment of the man who has cracked the Airbus affair, a man whose only credentials would seem to reside in his shorts. I’m sorry, but to believe your tale one would have to be very naive. I am not prone to naïveté, Madame Marx. I am going to give you one final chance to talk. What do you know about me?”

She started to say something, then stopped. Claussen leaped to his feet, jumped over the coffee table with cat-like agility and sat beside her on the sofa. He wagged his knife back and forth. She cowered, the move had startled her. She didn’t believe he would do anything yet, but she was wrong. He touched the knife to her throat. He had cut her! She felt warm blood trickling down her neck.