Chapter Seventeen

Thorn

Brussels, Belgium

Saturday, Nineteen Fifteen Hours

H oney followed behind Thorn and Gage as they walked through the door of room 601 at the hotel, straight over to the table where Honey, once again, propped his phone after he opened a video link with his encryption capabilities.

"Good, you're back," Nutsbe said by way of greeting. "I hope you had a good dinner, because we're about to get you moving again. Time is uber tight, so strap in. Lynx?"

"Thank you." Lynx gave him a nod. "Okay guys, we have a contract in place. But the suits upstairs want me to remind you all that foreign soil means foreign laws. We can't help you with warrants and such. It is expected that you will to conduct yourself in ways that are befitting your positions, will serve the United States, and will not get you into trouble while abroad." She paused. "That said, we certainly do have a mystery on our hands. Why did our client think that Juliette and her child were kidnapped when Brigitte believes that Juliette doesn't have a child?"

Honey leaned in. "Yes, let's start there. Is there a child in harm's way?"

"That's a question we need boots on the ground to help us figure out," Nutsbe said. "Here's a rundown of what we know right now ? I'm creating a time line and a facts sheet that will go to your cloud files. I'll have it ready as soon as possible and keep it updated ? Okay, what we have now is that Dr. David DuBois was born in the United States to parents who held French citizenship. Father deceased. Mother now lives in Toulouse. David DuBois received his master's degree from The University of Toulouse. He received his MD and PhDs in the United States and worked for the US military for a time before settling in Lebanon where he had research grants and taught graduate classes at the American University. The last time he was in France was almost two years ago. His trip at that time was only for the day, with no over-night stay. He was travelling from Beirut and back."

"That seems odd," Lynx said. "It seemed odd when I read it the first time, and it seems even odder when I hear you say it."

"Agreed, I'll flag it to see if we can't figure out why he was there," Nutsbe said to her then turned back to look into the camera. "The timeline ? DuBois was in the Middle East doing research in a private facility and teaching at the American University in Beirut. When he moved back to the United States, at the government's request to work for DARPA, he brought his adult daughter Juliette with him. Juliette Marie DuBois has a green card that says she holds French citizenship."

"You checked with France to see if there are birth records connected to Juliette?" Thorn asked. "Maybe that was her kid down in Toulouse this morning, and the child is living with someone else. Maybe the reason for Juliette's trip to France was to visit her child?"

"A vital statistics search was conducted, and the reports passed to us by our client. There are no birth records – no records at all that include the name Juliette Marie DuBois or any permutation thereof," Nutsbe said.

"Are you serious?" Thorn was hunkered into the tight circle that put all three operatives faces on the camera. "But she must have had French paperwork to apply for her US green card."

"That's true. She presented paperwork, which was apparently counterfeited."

"Could she be…I don't know, an operative working for the Mossad?" Gage asked. "Maybe that's why Brigitte knows her and wants her back. Obviously, that wouldn't be the first time that issues have come up around DARPA scientists and Israeli agendas."

"Whatever the gig is, David DuBois was down with it," Thorn said. "I wonder if that was by choice or by some kind of force."

"We have no clues as to who she is or what she's up to," Nutsbe explained. "But David DuBois emphatically isn't interested in returning to the United States. Whatever is going on, he's married to it. I would also caution that the woman posing as Juliette DuBois could be a highly skilled, lethal entity, stay frosty as your team moves forward."

There was a knock at the door.

The room stilled.

Thorn stalked over to look through the peep hole. There stood a man with their three duffels slung over his shoulders.

"Got it," Thorn said.

The man laid their bags down and walked away. Only when he was well out of sight did Thorn crack the door, sweep his gaze along the hallway, and drag the bags back into the room.

After he found his seat in front of the phone with his teammates, Thorn told Nutsbe, "The housekeeper delivered the packages."

Nutsbe lifted his head from his focus on the keyboard. "Good. Now that you have your computers. Let's turn off the phone and get a computer booted up so you can see the details better.

Gage dug his computer from his duffle and brought Nutsbe back on line.

"I wanted Lynx to take you through the kidnapping tape." Nutsbe tapped a key. "I just uploaded it into your files along with the best still photos we could cull from it, so you'll be able to recognize the players if you see them. I'm working on identifying the assailants by name and country of origin, possibly organization, if I can get it. I'll let you know if and when I track down anything concrete."

A shaky video played on the screen. It was short, not even two minutes long.

"Okay." They heard Lynx's voice while the image moved back to the beginning of the video. "We know something odd must have been happening for this man, Gaston Claire, to start taping on his phone while he was out walking his dog. I'll post his address, in case you want to talk to him. But I've read the police report. It basically says, he saw something weird, he videotaped it, and called the police. He has nothing new to add."

"But you're walking us through it," Honey said, "because you saw something important."

"Interesting at least. Slowing down the video, watch this part. There are two men, each with an arm bent at an angle as they face Juliette. Juliette's expression shows shock and discovery as she looks at their faces. She knows who these men are. Her focus travels down to what we have to assume are weapons in their hands. And then, as she throws her head around to look back over her shoulder her expression changes to fear. That's protective fear."

Protective-fear. It was a fear that could turn deadly aggressive. It was a fear that made brains make quickly calculated reactions. Aggression wasn't always the best way to keep everyone safe. Thorn had seen that look in mothers' eyes so many times, on so many deployments. He could well understand why someone who watched this video would see Juliette's expression and think that she was protecting someone.

Lynx moved the video forward a few more frames as she said, "She's anxious for the person she's searching out." Lynx stopped the video. "This is who she wanted to protect. Her focus goes to this small child. The child is snatched away by an adult, who is, based on AI calculations, probably five-foot seven inches in height. That neighbor videoing shifts the child and adult out of the frame. The camera swings back to the men pushing Juliette into the car. They're getting in. And taking off."

"So some random kid was there and saw this," Honey said. "He looks like he's about three years old. That won't help."

"Random isn't a given," Lynx said. "We just know that the child was not placed in this car."

"The child wasn't mentioned in the police reports," Nutsbe said. "I'm guessing…the adult in charge of that child made a grab and ran for safety. That adult probably has some more details about what happened just before the video was shot. The timeline between this event unfolding and our contract being signed is very short. I think our client simply made the call to include both female and child in the description because it was better to be inclusive to cover their bases."

The screen showed Lynx and Nutsbe again.

"All right, so one of us needs to go down there and ask questions," Honey said. "I think that should be me."

"Copy, Honey," Nutsbe agreed.

Lynx stretched out her hand to squeeze Nutsbe's arm. "Thorn has to go."

"I?"

Lynx cut Nutsbe off. "This needs to be assigned to Thorn ." Her words were emphatic and were met with a shrug and a head nod from Nutsbe.

"We have the license plate and more information about direction of travel. From this point, our next piece of possible information is that at fifteen thirty hours a man called the police because his car had been stolen by a woman. He has no descriptors other than he knew it was a woman by size and hair length. Nothing else, just female. The victim of the carjacking had stopped by the side of the road to lend a hand after he saw that two men were off on the shoulder, jacking up their car."

"Good Samaritan," Gage said.

"No good deed goes unpunished," Nutsbe replied. "The spare tire in the disabled vehicle was dry rotted, and the two men gave the Samaritan a large sum of money to buy his spare or to go get them a tire."

"What's a large sum of money?" Thorn asked.

"That would be approximately three-hundred dollars."

Honey let out a whistle. "That didn't make him curious?"

"He realized they were foreigners," Nutsbe said. "He thought maybe this was the normal amount that it would cost wherever they'd come from."

"And where did he think they were from?" Thorn asked.

"He said they had Eastern block accents. Their French was basic. At any rate, he went to his car and got his spare, took it back, and that's when he heard his car engine roar. Someone was flooring the gas pedal and spraying mud out the back, then the car took off."

"Juliette for the win!" Gage said.

"An interesting detail is that we can't find a driver's license in the United States for a Juliette Dubois," Lynx said.

Gage leaned forward. "She didn't happen to drive to the nearest police station and ask for help did she?"

"There's no new information about where she went," Nutsbe said. "Certainly not the police. Noteworthy, Juliette might have been chemically restrained. The car's owner indicated that she was swerving over the road as if she were drunk. No accidents have been reported."

"Brigitte said strawberries. That means injured according to Margot," Thorn pointed out. "Is Margot around?"

"She's in a meeting," Nutsbe said.

Thorn nodded. "Okay. When she's free can you ask if ‘strawberries' could mean medicinally restrained?"

"I'll text her now." Lynx reached for her phone.

"Wait," Gage said. "This good Samaritan is standing by the side of the road with the two kidnappers and calls the police because his car was stolen. The kidnapper's car is on a jack. Did the police get there in time to question these guys? What did they say about the situation?"

"There was construction a couple of kilometers south of them on the highway that locked up the cops," Nutsbe responded without looking up. "By the time they got there, the kidnappers had replaced their tire and had taken off after Juliette."

"Wait. Do we know this was actually the kidnappers, and we're not following a false lead? They have evidence it was the same car that was used to take Juliette?" Thorn asked.

"The Samaritan described the same car that was in the video and was able to remember three of the license plates digits. So it's looking good for a positive ID. All right, here we go. Here are the new assignments…" Nutsbe paused as his fingers flew over his key board.

The three operatives waited patiently.

"Okay." Nutsbe focused on Thorn. "Tight time schedule."

"Wait. Margot just texted back." Lynx lifted her phone and waggled it, then brought it closer to read. "‘Strawberries can be any physical issue that makes the mark vulnerable. Typically, this means they're wounded. We don't have a code between Brigitte and I to specifically indicate someone's been drugged.'"

"Copy," the men said together.

"I have two taxis headed to your location," Nutsbe said. "Thorn, you have a flight to Toulouse. I'm sending your ticketing information to your phone. Let's hope there's a flight delay so you can make it in time. Lynx will be posting files for you to review on your flight, so you can catch up with our intel. Grab your gear and go."

"Roger." Thorn leapt from his chair and moved toward the door, grabbing up his bag. As he left, he heard Nutsbe telling Honey and Gage that they were going to meet the client at the airport and be security as the client flies DuBois home. "Note, he is going home against his wishes."

Before anything else was said, Thorn had shut the door and was jogging toward the elevator.

***

The flight attendant pulled the door closed as Thorn made his way down the aisle. He was the last passenger on board. Belted into his first-class seat, Thorn was alone in his row. He knew that Nutsbe would have purchased both seats, so he could safely read the files that were waiting for him in the secured folder. Thorn downloaded them so he could go over the intel while his phone was set to airplane mode.

The flight attendant stood with her hand on the back of the empty chair on the aisle. "Can I get you anything to drink, monsieur?"

"Just some water, thanks." He offered up a smile.

The flight would take an hour and forty minutes, but the pilot was announcing a tail wind that might get them there twenty minutes ahead of schedule. Thorn hoped that was true. He didn't want to knock on people's doors any later than he had to. He would. He'd drag people out of bed if needs be. But it always went better when you showed up at a more mannerly time of day ? and this would get him on site at the hair's edge of polite.

Thorn looked at the address Nutsbe had forwarded. The notes said these were the GPS coordinates for where the child had stood. Plugging it into the mapping app, Thorn thought if he could snag a taxi right away, things might just work out. The house was only a fifteen-minute drive from the terminal.

He tapped his phone to airplane mode as they took off, then closed his eyes for a moment to review all that had gone on that day, to look for small details that might need his focus. What he landed on was the fact that DuBois hadn't mentioned his daughter's well-being, he didn't want to fly back to the United States, and he had not only been fighting against them from the time when Thorn had pulled the janitor's gun out from under the scientist's ribs, but had been communicating with the Omega team. And the Omega Team was working, he believed, on a Russian contract.

That could be an individual or it could be the government.

The Russian government liked to keep an arm's length from any actions, either overt or covert that took place on foreign soil. Of course, they did. Every country did. That was one of the reasons why Iniquus existed, to do the work that the normal channels couldn't. That's why Iniquus had signed a contract, but the operatives remained in the dark as to whose signature was scrawled on the bottom line.

Knowing who had hired them would sure give Thorn a better way to frame up this operation.

It wasn't the lynch pin, though.

Right now, he was on a fact-finding mission. A person-finding mission. He'd probably start to wipe some of the fog off his lenses as he went along. As soon as that metaphor came to mind, he thought again about Brigitte's secretly-passed information on the bathroom mirror. Why was the Mossad involved?

With the plane in the air, Thorn lifted his plastic cup of water and took a drink as he scanned the first-class cabin. Sitting in the last row, with the carpet-covered wall behind his chair, everything around him looked copacetic.

He angled his body away from the aisle and opened the files list. Now, he'd get a clearer picture of what was to come.