There were five days left.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s get to work.”
Bisch left within the hour, the documents secure in a hidden pocket of his coat.
Will and I drove into Bern that afternoon. We took the long way. The very long way.
“Gray Peugeot,” I said, watching the rearview mirror. “Three cars back. It’s been with us since the last village.”
Will didn’t turn around. “How long?”
“Six minutes. Maybe seven.”
He took the next right without signaling, a sharp turn onto a narrow road that wound between farmhouses and frozen fields. I kept my eyes on the mirror and counted seconds.
The Peugeot didn’t follow.
“Clean,” I said. “Or smart enough to hand off to another team.”
“Assume smart.”
We drove in silence for another ten minutes, winding through back roads that added an hour to our journey. Every intersection was a decision point. Every car that appeared in the mirror was a potential threat.
A black Mercedes sat idling outside a café—I memorized the plates.
A delivery truck followed us for three kilometers before turning off toward a warehouse.
A woman on a bicycle glanced at our car as we passed, and I found myself wondering if she was a spotter, a pair of eyes reporting our movements to someone with a radio.
This was what the conspiracy had done to us. It had made us see enemies everywhere, made us trust nothing and no one.
“Blue Opel,” Will said quietly. “Just pulled out behind us.”
I checked the mirror.
He was right. A small blue car with two figures in the front seats was maintaining a steady distance.
“Coincidence?”
“Let’s find out.” Will took the next left, then an immediate right, then pulled into a petrol station and stopped by the pumps. I got out and made a show of checking the tires while watching the road.
The blue Opel drove past without slowing.
The driver didn’t look at us.
Neither did the passenger.
“Could be nothing,” I said when I got back in the car.
“Could be.” Will pulled back onto the road, heading the opposite direction from the Opel. “Or they could be radioing our position to a team ahead.”
“You’re a real ray of sunshine, you know that?”
“We’re alive. That’s not optimism; it’s tradecraft.”
We switched routes twice more, cut through an industrial district, and doubled back through aresidential neighborhood where the narrow streets would make a tail obvious. By the time we reached the outskirts of Bern, I was reasonably confident we were clean.
Reasonably.
