She was only a few yards from the start of the orchard, could already smell the sweet apples, when the earsplitting crack of a rifle snapped across the huge lawn from behind her, echoed off the tree line in front of her, and she stumbled and fell head over heels into the low shrubbery at the orchard’s edge.
—
“What the fuck was that?” shouted Lloyd in surprise, but he knew a rifle shot when he heard one. He poked his head out of the command center. The guard at the end of the hall on the third floor was clearly as clueless as the questioner.
Lloyd rushed past him down the stairs. The young American’s suit coat was off, his tie was untied and draped around his neck, and his collar hung wide open. His sleeves had been rolled up, and his armpits, face, and hair were covered in sweat. A mixture of perspiration and blood had streaked across his shirt where he’d recently brushed across a fresh wound.
At the second-floor landing he nearly crashed into a Belarusian coming up to get him.
“What’s happening? Who’s shooting?” Lloyd asked.
“Come, please to hurry!”
Lloyd followed the man down to the first floor. There was screaming from the living area. It was Elise Fitzroy’s voice, coming from the kitchen. Men from Minsk yelled back at her. Mr. Felix appeared, asked Lloyd what had happened, and was curtly instructed to return to the library and shut the door. Lloyd started to enter the kitchen, but the guard who’d been leading the way turned back and took him by the arm. He said something, but his English was poor. Lloyd brushed the man’s hand off him but followed him out the back door.
At first the American lawyer saw nothing but the white stone fountain, the green lawn, the distant apple orchard, and the clear blue sky. He followed the guard, moved sideways around the fountain, and found three Belarusians and a dog standing over a form on the grass.
“Gentry?” Lloyd could not believe it. How had he made it so quickly to—
The man with the dog stepped aside, giving Lloyd a clean view of the body facedown on the lawn.
Lloyd’s jaw tensed. “Shit. Shit! This is the last thing I needed today!”
Just then another security man appeared from the orchard, another one hundred fifty yards away. He held the leash of a large black hunting dog in his right hand, across his chest was a shotgun, and the firm grip of his left hand was cinched around the wrist of a little girl with brown hair.
One of the twins. Lloyd hadn’t taken the time to learn their names, much less tell them apart.
Lloyd yanked the radio off the hip of the Belarusian who had led him out to the yard. He pressed the transmit button. “You. Take her around to the front entrance. We don’t need a hysterical brat on our hands.”
“Yes, sir,” said the man in the distance through his walkie-talkie. He yanked hard on the girl, pulled her along the edge of the orchard, well out of view of the body of her father that lay facedown in the thick grass, a small hole drilled into the back of his head and his face blown off.
—
Gentry pulled out onto the highway, heading south to Lausanne and then past to round Lake Geneva to the west. His green panel truck had a few nine-millimeter holes in it, but the oil pressure and gas needles remained steady in the center of each gauge. Behind him at the train station at least four South Americans lay dead in the snow. The rest were pinned down by the eight men from the four police cruisersthat had just arrived on the scene. Court had made it across the tracks just as the large intercity train passed. He’d then doubled back up the hill and climbed into the green truck with the keys in it and the engine running.
And now he was hauling ass. Fifteen minutes earlier, he’d been the most wanted man in Switzerland. Though that mantle had surely been handed off to the Latin gunners shooting it out back at the train station, Court knew he was still in second place, and the local authorities would soon enough put the word out that a highly wanted man was driving around in a bullet-pocked green panel truck.
TWENTY-TWO
No one told the Belarusians at Château Laurent about the helicopter. Consequently, pandemonium ensued when a Sikorsky S76 appeared over the woods to the south, banked hard, and landed at the helipad next to the gravel car park.
Lloyd alone had been informed of the impending arrival of the helicopter from Paris. He sat in the control room, listened to the rotor wash beat against the leaded glass window next to him. He’d sent the Tech downstairs for a lunch break, and he’d pushed Fitzroy’s chair, with Sir Donald chained to it, into an adjoining bathroom.
Lloyd just sat there alone and stared at the stone wall in front of him.
Three minutes later, the door behind him opened. Lloyd did not turn around immediately.
“Lloyd? Lloyd?”
Slowly, the American attorney rotated his swivel chair to face the newest guest to the château. Riegel was a big man, six five at least. He had swept-back blond hair with flecks of gray and bushy blond eyebrows. He wore thick khaki pants and a casual suede sport coat. His shirt was open at thecollar. He was twenty years or so older than Lloyd, but he’d not let his body soften, and already his powerful voice and overbearing countenance told Lloyd the afternoon would be difficult and taxing.
Lloyd did not get up. “Mr. Riegel. Welcome to Château Laurent.”
Riegel was angry. “Did it not occur to you to mention to the guards I would be arriving? I’ve had three Belarusians just tell me they almost fired on my transport.”
“That would have been unfortunate.”
Riegel looked like he was going to continue the argument, but instead he let it go.
