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Flicka von Hannover
Fiddlesticks.
Flicka walked behind Dieter as they stepped off the maglev train at Paris’sGare du Lyontrain station. He took the point position, of course. Her job was to keep up with him and not lose him as he navigated through the crowd.
The clamor hit her first: the overwhelming roar of the voices talking and whirring trains and pounding feet and thumping bags and clacking signs. Odors of piss, sweaty people, and sour coffee stank in the air. People pressed close, shouldering their way through the train terminal in the direction of the street. The ceiling flew far above them. Support columns stretched and poked the skylights and gold panels with green steel branches.
Flicka pressed closer to Dieter in the shoving crowd and swatted away a hand that tried to worm into his backpack.
Hey, she might be a princess and more accustomed to thieving billionaires who skimmed money from do-nothing charities, but she wasn’t going to let a pickpocket nick Dieter’s wallet.
They hustled through the crowd and broke out of the door onto a busy sidewalk, where throngs of people streamed out the open doors into the summer sunshine.
Dieter grabbed her hand and tugged her to walk with him, glancing at his phone as he threaded through the crowd. “He’s coming.”
“Who?” Flicka asked, breathless as she stared at the crowd around them. One teenaged boy stared back at her, his brown eyes widened by thick eyeliner and mascara.
“Our ride.”
A car screeched to a stop on the street beside them.
Dieter ducked and looked in before opening the back door and wheeling Flicka around to shove her inside.
The driver was a black-haired man crowded into the small car’s front seat. He turned and glared at them, his black eyes unfathomable in their darkness. A day’s growth of coarse beard covered his cheeks, but his hair was cut military-short. He looked at Flicka through the rearview mirror and said, “Ah, I see now.”
Dieter nodded back as he climbed into the back seat beside Flicka and slammed the door. “Anything new to report?”
“I arrived four hours ago. Monegasque Secret Service is definitely surveilling the law office, even though it is Sunday afternoon. I have identified six operators and six additional possibles. There is a white van parked nearby. I assume, for kidnapping. Your meeting will have to be off-site, and I suggest you call in additional Rogues for operational security.”
“Thank you, Aaron,” Dieter said. “Let’s do that.”
“I have an apartment set up as a safe house in the Latin Quarter, as you requested. It’s modest,” his dark eyes glanced in the rearview mirror at Flicka, “but it will suffice for most needs.”
Dieter leaned back. “Perfect.”
Flicka piped up, “Wulfram keeps an apartment in Paris. We could stay there.” But there were problems with going to a location owned by a member of her family and staffed by family employees. “Or maybe that wouldn’t be the best idea.”
Dieter gave her a half-grin, while the driver ignored her and drove.
She shrank in her seat, trying to keep out of sight. She turned her head away from the window. The sun, lowering toward the buildings in the West, warmed her arm and neck as the car dodged through the heavy traffic.
Dieter watched the traffic and the mirror on his side of the car.
Twenty silent minutes later, the driver stopped the car in front of a building that occupied an entire Parisian city block. “Third floor, apartment 3C. Entry code is five-eight-nine-six. There’s food in the fridge.”
“Thanks.” Dieter picked up his rucksack and helped Flicka out of the car and onto the sidewalk.
The streets in the Latin Quarter were much less crowded, probably because it was after five-thirty on a Sunday evening. Though the sun was still shining above the rooftops, few people meandered on the streets. The cafes and stores on the ground floors of the graceful buildings were shuttered and locked.
Flicka followed Dieter in a door and climbed the narrow, spiral stairs behind him. The old wood and plaster of the building smelled like the musty back rooms of some museums. Light streamed through a stained-glass skylight at the top.
On the third-floor landing, Dieter asked, “What was the code?”
“Five-eight-nine-six.”
“Right.”
