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It didn’t much matter. The coffee was good, as good as the rest of the meal. I sipped and pondered just how deep the shit was that I’d been dumped into. Somehow, the rich décor of the cabin and the mellow afterglow of the meal made it seem a little less terrifying. Or at least, a little easier to ponder without ripping out my hair and screeching. Because I was still in very deep shit, no doubt about it. And after an hour of figuring, it still looked pretty deep. I was going to steal a wall. From the Vatican. Or else I was going to be dead. Probably after a long visit with Bernadette. Taking it all into consideration, dead looked most likely.
Yup. That covered it. Very deep shit. Exceptionally deep.
I was still looking for a way out, and not finding one, when we landed. It turns out Perth does have an airport. So the landing was uneventful, which is always nice. When we stopped moving, Danielle beckoned me to the door and opened it. A blast of warm air hit me as the port swung open. Just another lovely day in Oz. But after the cold and damp in Boniface’s fortress of solitude, it seemed hot. The stairs were already in place, so I climbed off the jet. I was soaked with sweat by the time I got down onto the tarmac.
I stopped at the foot of the stairs and scanned the horizon. We’d landed at the private flight terminal, where all the billionaires land their jets. What looked to be the main commercial terminal was about a mile away. More shit. But what the hell, a nice stroll across pavement might clear my head. And it’s always nice to stroll while inhaling jet fuel fumes.
“M’sieur?” Danielle said from the bottom step. I turned to her. She gave me one last professional smile and handed me a large manila envelope before heading back up the steps. I opened the envelope. Inside was a passport with my picture in it. It was French, in the name of Hervé Thierry. The name I’d used in Russia. I stuck it in a pocket and reached back into the envelope to find a first-class ticket in the same name.
All the way through to Little Rock, Arkansas. The closest major airport to Fayetteville.
The sonofabitch knew everything. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. He had the money, the connections, and the squeeze to find out whatever he wanted, pretty much anywhere in the world. Still, it was a nasty shock. And it meant I was going to be moving me and Mom as soon as I got home. Which was not going to be as soon as Boniface thought, so he didn’t know everything after all.
I closed the envelope and watched Danielle sashay up the stairway into the jet. As she pulled the door closed I turned and looked at the distant terminal. We come into this world to suffer, Mom used to say. She was always right about that sort of thing. I started to walk, and behind me Boniface’s jet taxied away.
I hadn’t gotten more than fifty yards when I heard the whisper of tires behind me and turned.
A large black Escalade came to a stop and a guy in a chauffeur’s suit hopped out. “Mr. Wolfe?” he said. He had a cheery Aussie accent, and he spoke really politely and carefully, like he thought I might kick him in the balls if he was rude.
I just nodded, and he smiled and opened the back door of the car. “The main terminal is quite far, sir. I am instructed to give you a ride.”
It was just the kind of thoughtful detail I should have expected from my new best friend, and even though I’d been sort of looking forward to delightful stroll and accompanying sweat bath, I didn’t want Boniface to think I had spurned his thoughtful gesture. So I nodded and climbed into the Escalade back seat.
We were rolling as soon as I buckled in. The door locks clicked, like they usually do when a car gets moving. I didn’t think anything of it—until I saw we were headed in the opposite direction from the main terminal. Okay, so maybe we had to get onto an access road and circle around? Sure, that was it. You can’t drive a car across the runway. Not even an Escalade. Nothing to worry about.
But we hit the access road, and we turned away from the airport.
“Hey,” I said to the driver. “The terminal’s over there.”
He looked up and caught my eye in the rearview mirror. He winked.
And he leaned forward and hit a switch I couldn’t see, and a pane of thick glass, almost certainly bulletproof, shot up between us.
I tried the car’s door. It stayed locked. I tried to undo my seat belt. It wouldn’t undo.
So it was definite. I was in some brand-new shit. And this time I didn’t even know what it was.
I got no clues over the next forty minutes. We rolled smoothly through Perth and out into an area with no buildings, just scrubby trees. We turned onto a small road. There was a big sign that read, “PRIVATE ROAD—NO TRESPASSING.” And under that, in red letters, “ARMED RESPONSE.”
That was the final touch. I’d been kidnapped from my kidnapper by someone who lived in the Australian fucking outback with armed responders. It was totally clear to me now. God really did hate me.
The private road wound up a hill through more of the scrub for a couple of miles and then up to a massive iron gate. The driver stuck a plastic card into a slot on the gatepost, the gate swung open, and we went through, following the road for another mile, until we came to a large circular driveway in front of a big stone house. The circle had a large patch of manicured lawn in the center, and there was a fountain in the middle of it, squirting water twenty feet into the air. A little ostentatious for the outback, but you can’t buy good taste.
The car rolled to a stop at the front door, a massive, beautifully carved thing that looked like mahogany. Hard to tell; my view was partially blocked by six guys in gray paramilitary uniforms, holding automatic weapons. My driver hopped out, opened my door, and held it for me.
I didn’t move, except to undo my seat belt. It opened fine now. So I unbuckled—and then I just sat there. I had no idea why I’d been brought here, or whose idea it was, or what was supposed to happen next. But nothing that had happened so far had given me an irresistible urge to cooperate. I figured I would just wait and see what the next move would be. Whatever it was, there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it. But if somebody was going to kill me, I wasn’t going to make it easy for them. So I just sat there, waiting to see what would happen.
For a minute, nothing did. The guards stood at attention; the driver held the car’s door open; the mahogany front door stayed carved. Finally, the driver leaned in. He had a kind of anxious expression on his face. “Mr. Wolfe?” he said. “Please step out, sir.”
“No,” I said.
The driver looked nervously at the big front door, then back to me. He lowered his voice and said, “Come on, mate, why not? You’ll piss him off. You don’t want to do that, do you?”
“Sure I do,” I said.
“No, mate, you absolutely do not,” he said, very serious, like he really, truly meant it. “My word you don’t.”
I just shrugged.
