To start at the beginning go here.
Atwell began to protest even as he reached for the ignition. To get him to shut up I added, “Jesus, Atwell, you were following them anyway. Just keep going. I can explain on the way.” His displeasure at my appearance only hampered his desire to keep up with Sartre for a second. He released the parking brake and we went.
Having displayed a near-complete disregard for clandestine activity in the past, I was surprised that Atwell had actually managed to follow Sartre without being spotted, but the Citroen sped out without attracting attention. It was another surprise that Atwell apparently knew how to handle the car.
He slowed, keeping Sartre’s convoy just in sight. There was very little traffic on the road at that hour of the morning, making it that much harder to follow without being noticed. As we caught up, though, there wasn’t any change in the rear car’s behavior. I watched the cars turn onto the Promenade’s motorway, disappearing into what little early morning traffic there was.
With as much concentration as I had seen him muster, Atwell was focused on the road as he followed onto the main drag, trying to find the target. Through clenched teeth he asked, “What are you doing?”
I took my eyes off Atwell to join him in staring ahead. “Same thing you are – following Sartre.”
I heard the displeasure in his voice warring with his concentration as he prodded for more information with, “Why?”
“I think he’s going somewhere that I need to know about.” I felt the car slow down, Atwell’s foot off the accelerator, so I added, “And you probably need to know as well.”
Like most professional cheats, Atwell didn’t like being lied to and he wasn’t sure I wasn’t lying to him now. After a moment’s deliberation, the car began to speed up again. “Why do you need to know where he’s going?” Up ahead, a series of blue-white lights were probably Sartre’s cavalcade.
Distracted as he might be I didn’t have an abundance of time to develop an alternative answer for that, so I went with the truth. “He’s going to dig up a body.”
Closer to the harbor now, Sartre’s cars began the slow bank around the World War I monument at the base of Chateau Park, letting us back off without fear of losing them. The stretch of roads had no exits, sandwiched as it was between the steep hill of the memorial and the sea. With a moment to breathe Atwell asked a clarifying, “What?”
“One of Mitnick’s men went missing a few days ago. I think Sartre knows where he is.”
Headlights painted suspicion onto Atwell’s face. “So he’s dead.”
“Yes.”
“Did Sartre kill him?”
It was no time to be clever, but I tried anyway. “I don’t know.” It was possible that Sartre had lied to me about that. In picking up speed out of the long curve between the 20th century dead and the harbor with its 21st century yachts, I discovered I didn’t care if Sartre had lied. It didn’t make a difference to me. So I said, “But everyone is going to think so. And Mitnick wants to know where the body is.”
“How do you know that?”
“Mitnick told me.” It felt close enough to the truth.
The straightaway banked away from the port and plunged again into the nettle of criss-crossing side-streets and alleys of Old Town. Sartre’s cars took a sharp turn inland. Atwell jerked the wheel in the same direction, jumping the car off the causeway and down a side street, scattering trash and alley cats. “Why?” His focused interest in my statement only seemed to improve his driving.
“He may not know his man is dead. Or he may want the body to ship it back home.” Atwell hit a bump, big enough and fast enough that it felt like it sent the Citreon airborne. I crunched back into my seat as we landed. Sorting myself out as Atwell continued to speed along I added, “But I don’t think that’s why Mitnick wants the body.”
Atwell doused his lights as the car catapulted out of the alley, causing a yell and some swearing from some near-missed pedestrians. Back on a causeway, he spun the Citroen in the direction that the convoy had headed. We set our sights on some red rear lights up ahead, hoping they belonged to Sartre.
From behind clenched teeth Atwell muttered, “Why?”
“I think,” emphasizing those words, “I think Mitnick wants the body found.”
Given how much of his mind and hands were occupied it was impressive Atwell managed to persist with a, “Why would he want his man’s corpse found by anyone but him?”
Watching a pair of the xenon lights up ahead zip in and out of traffic I worried that we’d been spotted. I re-focused on what I could control and told Atwell, “Because everyone will assume the same thing you did – that Sartre killed him. It could strip away some of his political protection if it caused a big enough stink.” Imagining Sergei’s bloated corpse washing up on a beach to be found by screaming tourists, I thought, yeah, that would do the trick.
To read the previous chapter, go here.
To read the next chapter, go here.
See the author’s published work here.
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