To start at the beginning of the story go here. 

For the note to Nika to work as intended, it would need to contain a day, a time, and a place. At that moment, I had none of those.

I headed back to the phone near the cathedral. I kept an eye out for Russians, feeling like I was dragging a long shadow behind me through the sun-bleached streets of Old Town. 

Visiting the phone booth so many times in such a short period made me wish Atwell had setup more than one dead drop. He didn’t, though, so I performed the increasingly ridiculous charade of making a phone call while writing out a note. After far too much contemplation I only wrote, “Meeting with Mitnick and Rotella.” After a moment, I added, “Stay away from the Night Governor.” I hadn’t yet told the lie about Atwell saving Sartre by setting the fire, so I wasn’t sure what kind of reception he’d get if they ran into each other. And I might need Atwell yet.

I stood at the telephone, paralyzed by the speed in which things were moving. I hadn’t expected the meet with Mitnick to happen this quickly. I decided there wasn’t enough time to wait for the Idiots to sleep off their hangover. I had an idea of where Lanzo might be, though, so that would have to do.

I was about to point my feet to the nearest tram station when I remembered Brick and Whip interrupting my meet with Moreau at his scooter shop. If one of them had told the Russians about my working at the casino, it was possible they would have mentioned the shop. As unlikely as it might be, it was there, and Moreau had already demonstrated a willingness to leave me to my fate.

I thought about this until I picked up the receiver to call information. I got the number Petit Moto Moreau and dialed. In a surprisingly short amount of time, Moreau picked up, the creaking in his bones coming out in his voice. I didn’t waste any effort on trying to make small talk, but had the decency to speak in French. “I need to speak with Lanzo.”

I could have dropped a depth charge into the silence that followed. Eventually, words bubbled up in return. “He is asleep.”

“Wake him up.” The urgency I tried to channel sounded hostile, so I followed with, “It’s important.”

Moreau either didn’t want to speak to me or took me seriously because the line went quiet. I stood and began to sweat, telling myself it was the growing morning heat. My hand was growing damp against the receiver when a voice came on that sounded like a hangover that had been baking on the beach. “What?”

“Things are moving fast,” I repeated the phrase into the phone. “Meet me at the botanical gardens as soon as you can.” I gave Lanzo a moment to process this, then asked, “Do you understand?”

He said “Oui,” and I hung up.

Stepping away from the telephone, I looked down the alley at the tall onion domes of the cathedral. There was a time in history such a place might have acted as a sanctuary, that the institution itself would have held enough authority that even men who could have breached its walls wouldn’t have dared to do so. Now though, less than two decades into a new century, I could only imagine men like Sartre and Mitnick breaking down its doors if what they wanted what was inside. Atwell would probably cheer from the sidelines. The city might have been held together with some kind of holy authority back when it was just Old Town, but now it was held together with greed and sunshine. Neither church nor government garnered much respect anymore and, looking at a structure created by the last Czar, I couldn’t help but feel like I was waiting for the next round of executions. It was just a question of which side of the firing line you were on.

I shrugged out of navel-gazing and double-timed it to the nearest tram station. I took one west, hopped off before I hit the periphérique.

In Grenoble, I headed south. Walking past the black-armored gendarmerie I wondered how fast they could respond if I lifted the visor of one of their helmets and punched the cop underneath it in the face. There was something about their hidden stares that provoked the idle curiosity and a part of my brain gleefully imagined the chase I could lead them on before they caught me and beat me to a bloody pulp. If I knew I was going to get caught, I might as well lead them into a local museum and cause as much havoc as possible. The image of running down the uniformly white halls of one of Old Town’s historical institutions, though, reminded me too much of an old palazzo in Venice. The thought of the real violence that happened there took the fun out of my fantasy.

By the time I had arrived the sun was out in full force, banishing any cloud from the bluebird sky. The grounds of the botanical gardens were an oasis of well-tended palm trees and shrubs crowding around a glass pyramid greenhouse at its center. The vegetation grew right up next to its honeycombed walls as if the structure had pushed itself out of the ground like the plants surrounding it, making it look like an abandoned set from some sci-fi movie. It was built between the ocean and a lagoon, limiting the numbers of approach. With its wide walkways, these were easy to surveil from the raised platform that was the greenhouse’s entrance. This was added to by the lack of tourists. With the beaches, casino, and glamor of Old Town to compete against, not many people visited.

All in all, a good place for a clandestine meet.

To read the next chapter, go here.

To read the previous chapter, go here.

To read a polished and published prequel to this story go here.

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