Chapter Twenty-Three

Thorn

Toulouse, France

Saturday, Twenty-two Forty Hours

"I t's surprising how busy the airport is for this hour." Thorn had taken a seat on a bench in a green area that would allow him to see any lurkers who might be trying to listen in on his conversation. Still he kept his tone low. He had a ham and cheese sandwich on a baguette, unwrapped, and resting on his knees. He'd placed his duffel between his feet.

"Are you clear to speak? We have information about Juliette's escape from the kidnapping attempt."

"It's confirmed that was her in the stolen car?" Thorn asked taking a bite of his sandwich.

"Yes, and there's some interesting information for you in that vein." Lynx's voice shifted away from the phone. "Nutsbe, are you ready with that?"

"Yeah." Thorn heard him call from a distance.

"Nutsbe here. Okay. Here we go. Lynx and I tried to figure out her possible direction of travel along the highway. We thought she'd take the highway north to Orléans, and we sent that information to the local police. Following this, our computer picked up police comms. They located the stolen car there at the top of a pedestrian-only shopping area. The keys were left in the glove box."

Thorn swallowed his bite of food. "That's exactly what Honey did earlier when we stole the car. He threw in a wad of cash to cover repairs and inconvenience."

"No money, but there was a note."

"Yeah?" Thorn reached for his water bottle. "Any clues there? What did it say?"

"Hand that to me Lynx…Okay, it said, ‘ I'm so sorry to have put you through this. Forgive me. I was kidnapped and running for my safety. You saved my life. I will always be appreciative and hold you in prayer.' "

"Okay then." After he took a swig, Thorn screwed the top back in place. "She didn't leave money like Honey did, but chances are that she has no cash, or she wanted to preserve what cash she has. But, as Lynx would say, extra good karma points were given."

"It's true though," Lynx said. "There are no coincidences. She needed help and an angel pulled over and let her steal his car. He deserves an extra boost of good karma points. Don't you think?"

"I'd never deprive a guy of his karma," Thorn replied.

Lynx laughed. "Okay, here's the great news. The DGSE gave our client CCTV footage and it's very interesting to say the least."

"I haven't worked European cases very much. Is French intelligence usually this helpful?" Thorn asked.

Lynx said, "I don't know. I can ask around. Echo Force is normally in Europe. I'm writing that down for a follow up. But in this case, I think they're concerned about someone claiming French citizenship and traveling on a fake French passport when they don't have her information in their system."

"Hey, man," Nutsbe cut in. "I loaded the edited video onto your cloud, so you could look while Lynx takes you through it."

"Do we have time for this?" Thorn asked, wrapping his sandwich up and shoving it into the side pocket of his duffle. He looked down and saw a polished red stone near the instep of his boot. "When does my plane leave?" He gave it a quick wipe on a napkin and looked it over. He thought it might be a piece of red jade that someone had carried as a worry stone. He shoved that into his coat pocket as he retrieved his phone.

"I'm watching for progress," Nutsbe replied. "They're still trying to force some passenger to give up their seat for you. I'll give you the heads up when you need to go in."

Thorn tapped at his phone to bring up the video file. "All right, I've got the footage queued up."

"Press play," Lynx said. "We'll start. Here we see Juliette. That's an electronics store. Fast forward and stop when you see her get to the next point."

Thorn tapped and scrolled. "Got it."

"That's a tabac. We got a ping on Juliette's bank account. At the time when she was inside this store, she withdrew a wad of cash. It converted after fees to two-thousand dollars in cash."

Thorn let out a whistle. "Smart move. Now she has an invisibility cloak."

"Scroll forward. You'll see that she goes back to the electronics store."

"To buy a burner phone?" he asked.

"Our team hacked the store computer and during the time she was in there, a cash transaction was registered for a tablet, a pre-paid phone, and a prepaid hotspot," Lynx said.

"Interesting. She seems to know what she's doing. But it looks like she was having a hard time walking a straight line. Let me play that again." Thorn scrolled back and watched frame by frame. "She's not clutching any one body part. She's not limping. We talked about the possibility of a medicinal restraint. It could be they drugged her."

"Yeah, Nutsbe and I have watched it a couple dozen times now. And I'm hard pressed to find an explanation. I'll show you why," Lynx replied. "If you move the video forward, you'll see we edited out sections when she's not in the frame. She goes to the clothing store. She goes to the pharmacy. She goes to the used book store."

Thorn watched as Lynx labelled the stores that were too grainy for him to figure out on the small screen of his phone. "She's gathering pocket litter, making an alias for herself." He spread his fingers on the screen to focus in on what type of clothing store she'd chosen. "That clothing store looks like it had a teen vibe to it."

"Exactly," Lynx said. "Then she goes into this café and never comes out."

"She changed her clothes? The camera didn't catch it?"

"It means she didn't come out of the front door," Nutsbe said.

The video blipped, and it was on to another section of the footage. "Yup." Thorn nodded toward the screen, pressed stop, scanned his own surroundings to make sure no one was approaching, then focused back in. "She's this girl in jeans and tennis shoes, stumbling out of the alley. Hood up."

"That's her," Lynx confirmed. "This next part shows her progress back to the pharmacy and then walking to the square where she buys a movie ticket."

"Which is a great place to disappear, especially if you need to nurse your wounds. She's too practical and strategic to be doped up. Do you know what she bought at the pharmacy the first time around?"

"Hard to say." Nutsbe's voice was in his ear. "We hacked in but there were a lot of transactions at that time period and multiple cash registers. Tech tried to get internal CCTV footage, but their cameras are on the fritz."

"Too bad," Thorn said. "Buying bandages and alcohol would tell us a lot." He watched the small woman hidden under an over-sized black hoody walk back out the door. "So this is her second trip to the pharmacy, and she buys crutches. Why didn't she buy them the first time?" Thorn asked. "If it were me, I'd guess that she wanted the crutches to be associated with hoody-teen not high-heeled chic woman."

"That makes sense. She must know there are cameras all over the public spaces. If she'd bought those crutches when she was dressed chicly, we'd see her come out with the crutches in her hand. If she waited until she changed her clothes, we might not have identified her."

"I haven't seen her face on camera since she went into the restaurant. You're sure this is the right woman?" Thorn asked with another scan of his area. He couldn't see anyone, but he felt eyes on him, and they felt predatory.

"We have her face farther into the footage," Nutsbe said.

"Got it. Someone trained her well," Thorn said under his breath. He wondered if she had a connection to the Mossad herself? It was possible that one of them fell off the grid, and they needed help getting her back. Or perhaps the Mossad simply wanted to let America know that they were on the same trail, so they wouldn't step on each other's toes. Thorn thought that, then rejected it. If that were the case, Brigitte wouldn't have needed code words for Margot to interpret about strawberries and pink rabbits, and he wouldn't have found the soaped message on the bathroom mirror. For a flash, Thorn thought that perhaps Brigitte had sex with him for the sole purpose of having an excuse to shower, and for him to shower as well. There was almost no other scenario that would have given her the chance to pass by surveillance. And she seemed to know exactly where that surveillance had been placed. The sweepers didn't find anything in the bathroom. Clever , he thought.

"Juliette never goes to the movie," Lynx was saying, "she just buys the ticket and goes to hang out near this group of young adults – late teens."

"Solidifying her cover. She's acting like a pro. Hood up I see. And the crutches seem to be helping with stability. She was wobbly coming out of the alleyway. Whatever's going on for her, they seem to be helping."

"Watch carefully here," Nutsbe said. "She grabs that guy's arm. Drops the hood and smiles. Guy looks to his friends who are walking toward the theater. Back to her. Texts his friends to head on, and he walks with Juliette to his car."

"Were you able to capture the license?"

"We have it. Lynx has got a field trip to take. But I'll keep working on a destination point."

"All right." Thorn rubbed his palm over his five o'clock shadow. "What's your take? She seems to be working protocol. She's acting like a professional. There's probably not anything that I would have done differently if I were in her shoes. Is she friend or foe?"

"Shit if I know, man," Nutsbe said. "But I just got pinged by the airlines. We'll keep working it from our end. It's time for you to hang up and start running. I got a green light on your flight, and they've already started boarding passengers."

Thorn was already in motion as he said, "Roger. Wilco. Catch you on the flip side."