AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Mister Gloucester,” Jeremy says. “So pleased to meet you. My name is Jeremy Windsor, and I need to ask you a few questions.”
Perkins nods and his smile widens at seeing Amy standing there. “How pleasant, how pleasant—and is this gorgeous creature your wife? Your secretary?”
Jeremy shakes his head. “No, sir, I’m with the SIS and Amy, she is with the CIA.”
“But on a day like this, sometimes I wish Iwasa secretary,” she says.
The old man looks at both of them and says, “Ah, I should have known—that American accent.”
Jeremy displays the photo of Rashad. “This man,” Jeremy says. “Randy. What do you know of him?”
“Ah, yes, Randy,” he says, settling back in his chair and smoothing the blanket. “Oh, he was an inquisitive sort, he was. He wanted to know all about blowing up trains. Managed to fatten up our society’s bank account, he did.”
Amy interrupts him. “Mister Gloucester…you have special knowledge, then, on how to blow up trains?”
An eager and satisfied nod. “We learned that quite early in the war. A small bomb or removing a piece of track, it’s only a small derailment. That’s all. Hunh. They get it fixed the next day. No, my real job was to sabotage different railcars and other stock so that you can destroy the whole train in minutes, tie up the entire rail line for days. And that’s what Randy was so eager to learn about, even though it’s still highly secret.”
Jeremy tries to get the conversation back to the present. “But why are your activities still classified?”
“Why?” Perkins asks, still smiling. “My dear boy, it wouldn’t do for any Tom, Dick, or Harry to know the best way to easily blow up a train line, now would it?”
Chapter69
JEREMY ANDAmy leave Perkins’s room and the care home to find Winnie coming at them from the open passenger door of their damaged van.
“Felicity dug deeper into the tracking hits we got from Paris. All but one turned up empty…nothing of any real interest. But that one hit, the one that lasted the longest—about five seconds of a strong signal—came from a little restaurant in Paris, the Café Falguière. Right next door to the Pasteur Institute. Where they do research on various infectious diseases.”
Jeremy sees Amy’s face pale. “Go on.”
Winnie says, “Felicity got deeper into the French internal-security computer servers, looking for anything odd or untoward concerning the Pasteur Institute,” he says, motioning them to a park bench near the entrance. “Like missing vials, a break-in—anything like that.”
Amy says, “And?”
Winnie shakes his head. “Nothing to do with the institute proper, but one of their microbiology techs, a woman named…yeah, here it is. Nadia. Nadia Khadra. She’s been missing for two days. And her credit-card statement shows she was having breakfast at that same restaurant, the same time Rashad’s tracking device pinged its location.”
“Winnie,” Jeremy says, “that’s all well and good, but—”
“Damn it, Jer, let me finish,” Winnie snaps. He takes a breath and goes on. “Like I said, Nadia’s been missing for two days. The local gendarmes went to her ground-floor flat, and when they checked the basement they found her landlady dead.”
Amy says, “How?”
“Multiple blows to the rear of the head,” Winnie says. “And it gets worse, much worse: They found she had converted the basement into a laboratory—petri dishes, refrigerators, autoclaves. And when they tested the area, they found traces of anthrax.”
Jeremy can’t say a word. He’s been in desperate firefights in hellholes across the world, has jumped from aircraft of all types into the freezing night, and right now, seeing the innocent and thankfully ignorant civilians strolling by him on this warm spring evening, he thinks of them crowding into hospital wards, coughing out their lungs and lives, and those thoughts scare him more than anything else ever has.
Amy says, “What now?”
Jeremy gets off the bench. “That bastard Rashad was sayingso longto Nadia before she left to go to New York. Come along, we’ve got to get the word out.”
Amy and Winnie stand with him, and they start heading to the van. Amy says, “Trains? Blowing up trains?”
Jeremy says, “Could be a way to disguise the anthrax disbursement. Blow up a few trains in a crowded civilian environment, mix the anthrax into a cloud, and soon enough, chaos and death.”
They are about three meters from the van when it happens, and later, Jeremy has to admire how quickly and professionally it all went down.
On the sidewalk, a plump, older woman wearing comfortable clothes and pushing a pram takes something from her coat pocket and sprays Jeremy with a liquid. His eyes burn and his breathing freezes, and though he fights against the chemical he is forced to his knees, unable to catch his breath.
Winnie calls out as he falls as well, taken down by a slim woman jogging by, likewise holding a spray dispenser in her hand.
