Private Monaco

Chapter 27

Duval had made some calls to his contacts in the Monaco police while we’d prepared for the expedition but had no luck pushing them to deploy faster. Cross-border operations took time, he’d told us with an air of frustration, so we took matters into our own hands and set out for Utelle. Duval drove us up the neighboring valley in his G-Wagen, which was more than capable of handling rough trails when the road ran out.

Sci and Mo-bot had brought three gear bags with them, and when the terrain got too steep and rocky for the Mercedes SUV, Duval parked and he, Sci and I each took a backpack before we all set out on foot.

It took us about thirty minutes to cross the ridge and we reached a decent vantage point shortly after midday. We were on a rocky outcrop surrounded by Aleppo pines, overlooking steep, sloping fields of recently churned and sown earth. Further down the mountain, to the west, was the first farm, and beyond it a forest of pine and cypress. The farmhouse was an early-twentieth-century rustic building constructed of yellow stone. There was a large cobblestone yard and half a dozen barns and outbuildings. It was the highest of the three properties we’d come to investigate, and I knew it was our target the moment I saw armed men in the yard and others fanning out into the surrounding woodland.

“What are they doing?” Duval asked.

I took a pair of field glasses from my backpack and scanned the scene more closely. I noticed a large stone beside an outbuilding that had a hole visible low down in its wall.

“I think Justine escaped,” I said, suddenly alive with excitement at the thought of her slipping away from her captors.

Mo-bot held out her hand and I gave her the field glasses.

“They’re certainly searching for something,” she said as she examined the farm and its surroundings. “I count sixteen men. Most are armed with pistols or sub machine guns. A couple of automatic rifles.”

“That seals it,” Sci remarked.

“I’m going to call it in,” Duval said, stepping away from us to use his phone.

Sci put his backpack on the ground and opened it to remove a collection of small flight cases. While he rooted around them, Mo-bot returned the field glasses, and I surveyed the scene. I spied the shaven-headed man, the driver of the van from the convenience store video, and noticed another man in the center of the farmyard. He was issuing instructions and appeared to be in command. He was slim and muscular with short black hair. He had a downturned mouth and sharp, pitiless eyes in a scowling face. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we’d met before or that he was somehow familiar to me. There was a great deal of anger about him and a slight air of panic, which supported my theory that Justine had escaped.

“Let’s see what this baby can find,” Sci said, and I turned to see him standing over a small drone.

He used a remote control to launch it, and I moved to get a better view of the footage being broadcast by the drone’s video camera, which was displayed on the screen of the controller.

He swept round the farmyard at high altitude, and I went over the outbuilding with the hole in the wall. The large stone looked like a perfect fit for the hole in the wall and there were scuffmarks that suggested it had been pushed from the outbuilding. I was thrilled at the possibility Justine had forced her way out, but now we had to find her before her captors did.

I scanned the mountainside with the field glasses, trying to figure out where she would have gone. The other farms weren’t visible from up here, but they might have been from further down the mountain. She could have headed south-west toward them, or maybe she’d opted for the more difficult task of going north-east, toward the summit, toward us. There was plenty of cover in the woods that spread across the mountainside in all directions. Justine was tough and resourceful, but I also knew she’d be frightened. Who wouldn’t be? These men looked like killers and they were heavily armed. At a guess, we had fifteen square miles to search, unless she had made it to a vehicle, which seemed unlikely given the response of her abductors. Her escape seemed recent because they were searching on foot, hadn’t gone far from the farm and weren’t making any use of the vans, pick-up trucks or SUV in the yard.

“How do you find someone who doesn’t want to be found in a place like this?” Sci mused.

An idea that had been forming in my mind suddenly crystalized. “I think I know,” I said.