The Day After Tomorrow

64

IT HAD happened in Lyon, at the Gare la Part Dieu shortly after six. Lebrun had just gotten out of a taxi and was entering the train station when a gunman on a motorcycle opened fire with an automatic weapon and then immediately fled the scene. Three others had been shot as well. Two were dead, the third seriously injured.

Lebrun had been hit in the throat and chest and had been taken to the Hospital la Part Dieu. Initial reports were that he was in critical condition but expected to live.

McVey had listened to the details, asked to be kept abreast of the situation and then gotten quickly off the phone. Immediately afterward he’d dialed Ian Noble in London.

Noble had just come in to the office and was having his first tea of the day when he found McVey on the line. Immediately he sensed McVey was being careful with what he said.

At this stage McVey had no idea whom he could trust and whom he couldn’t. Unless the tall man had gone directly from Paris to Lyon after his escape from Vera Monneray’s—which was very unlikely, because he’d know the police would throw an immediate dragnet out for him—it meant that whoever was behind what was going on not only had capable gunmen elsewhere, they were somehow monitoring everything the police did. With the exception of himself, no one knew Lebrun had gone to Lyon, yet he had been tracked there just the same, to the point that they knew precisely what train he was taking back to Paris.

Completely baffled, he had no idea who they were, what they were doing or why. But he had to suppose that if they’d taken out Lebrun when he got too close to their setup at Lyon, they would know he and the Paris detective had been working together on the Merriman situation and since he had not, as yet, been molested, the very least he could expect was a tap on his hotel phone. Accepting that, what he conveyed to Noble was what anyone listening would expect to hear. That Lebrun had been shot and was in Lyon at the Hospital la Part Dieu in grave condition. McVey was going to shower and shave, grab a quick breakfast roll and get to police headquarters as quickly as he could. When he had more news, he’d call back.

In London, Ian Noble had gently set the phone back in its cradle and pressed his fingertips together. McVey had just told him the situation, where Lebrun was, and that he was afraid his phone was tapped and would call him back from a public phone.

Ten minutes later, he picked up his private line.

“There’s a mole of some kind in Interpol, Lyon,” McVey said from a phone booth at a small café a block from his hotel. “It has to do with the Merriman killing. Lebrun went there to see what he could find out. Once they know he’s still alive, they’ll go after him again.”

“I understand.”

“Can you get him to London?”

“I’ll do what I can. . . .”

‘I assume that means ‘yes,’ “ McVey said, hanging up.

Two hours and seventeen minutes later a British Royal Air Force medevac jet landed at Aerodrome Lyon-Bron. As it did, an ambulance carrying a British diplomat who’d suffered a heart attack raced out to the tarmac to meet it.

Fifteen minutes after that, Lebrun was airborne for England.

* * *

At five minutes past seven, a car pulled up in front of Vera Monneray’s apartment building at 18 Quai de Bethune and Philippe, weary and ragged from a long, unsuccessful night of staring at photographs of known criminals, got out. Nodding to the four uniformed policemen standing guard at the front door, he entered the lobby.

“Bonjour, Maurice,” he said to the night man behind the desk he was late to replace, and begged an extra hour to shave and get a little sleep.

Pushing through a door and into the service hallway, he went down a flight of steps to his modest basement apartment at the far end of the building. His key was out and he was almost to the door when he heard a noise behind him and someone call his name. Starting, he whirled around in fear, half expecting to see the tall man standing there with a gun aimed at his heart.

“Monsieur Osborn,” he said in relief as Osborn stepped out from behind a door to a room that housed the building’s electrical meters.

“You should not have left your room. There are police everywhere.” Then he saw Osborn’s hand, bandaged and held like a claw near his waist. “Monsieur—”

“Where’s Vera? She’s not in her apartment. Where is she?” Osborn looked as if he’d barely slept. But more than that, he looked frightened.

“Come inside, s’il vous plaît.”

Quickly Philippe unlocked the door and they entered his small flat.

“The police took her to work. She insisted. I was only going to the toilet and then up to see if you were there. Mademoiselle was equally concerned.”

“I have to talk to her. Do you have a phone?”

“Oui, of course. But the police may be listening. They will trace the call back here.”

Philippe was right, they would. “You call her, then. Tell her that you are very concerned the tall man may find her. Tell her to ask the inspectors guarding her to take her to her grandmother’s house in Calais. Don’t let her argue. Tell her to stay there until . . .”

“Until when?”

“I don’t know—”Osborn stared at him. “Until . . . it’s safe.”