Lucien looked up at the sky. Night was fast approaching, and with it a cold breeze was settling in. His eyes stayed in the sky for a long while, searching, listening.

He saw and heard nothing.

‘Get in,’ Hunter commanded again.

With Geisha steps Lucien moved toward the car. Hunter held the door open. Like an educated lady, Lucien sat down first before bringing his legs in. With his hands and feet shackled to his waist, it was easier that way.

Hunter closed the door and signaled Taylor to go over to the other side. She did. Only once Taylor had taken her place in the backseat did Hunter get into the driver’s seat.

Taylor’s gun was still aimed at Lucien.

‘I want your back against the seat,’ she said. ‘And your arm on the door’s armrest at all times.’ She pulled down the back seat’s center armrest, creating a flimsy division between Lucien and herself. ‘You make any sudden movements, and I swear I’ll blow your kneecaps. Is that simple enough for you?’

‘Perfectly simple,’ Lucien replied.

Hunter started the car.

‘So where to from here?’ he asked.

Lucien smiled.

‘Absolutely nowhere.’

Eighty-Six

Hunter had been right. Director Kennedy would always have a plan B for any situation.

Exactly ten minutes after the Lear Jet with Hunter, Taylor and Lucien took off, a second jet left Turner Field landing strip in Quantico. This one was carrying five of Kennedy’s top agents, all of them expert marksmen skilled in covert operations. With them they had a satellite-tracking device that specifically tracked the GPS signal coming from Hunter and Taylor’s microphone buttons. They also had ears in the plane, as the surveillance microphones transmitted back not only to Director Kennedy at the FBI Academy, but also to the second jet and its agents.

Inside the FBI Operations Control Room back in Quantico, Adrian Kennedy and Doctor Lambert were following both planes’ progress on the radar screen. They had also been listening to every word that had been uttered between Hunter, Taylor and Lucien. As soon as their jet landed at Berlin’s municipal airport, Kennedy reached for the phone in his pocket.

‘Director,’ Agent Nicholas Brody, the team leader in the second jet, answered his cellphone before the second ring.

‘Bird One just landed,’ Kennedy said.

‘Yes, we saw,’ Brody replied. They were also following the first plane’s progress on their radar application.

‘Tell your pilot to start flying in circles right now,’ Kennedy said. ‘Do not, and I repeat, do not fly over airspace which is visible from the ground from Berlin’s municipal airport. I’ll call you back when you’re clear for landing.’

‘Roger that, sir.’

Agent Brody disconnected from the call, passed the new instructions to the pilot, returned to his seat, and waited.

Eighty-Seven

Hunter met Lucien’s cold eyes in the rearview mirror. The smile on Lucien’s lips was a mixture of arrogance and defiance.

‘What was that?’ Taylor asked, her patience more than wearing thin.

Lucien kept his gaze on the rearview mirror, his eyes battling with Hunter’s.

‘We’re going absolutely nowhere,’ he said again, his tone controlled and even.

Hunter calmly turned the engine off.

‘What do you mean, Lucien?’

‘I mean exactly what I said back in my cell,’ Lucien said. ‘The deal was – just the three of us, no one following. You break the deal, I take you nowhere. I thought I had made that perfectly clear.’

Hunter took his hands off the steering wheel and turned his palms up.

‘Do you see anyone other than the three of us? Anyone following us at all?’

‘Not yet,’ Lucien replied confidently, before his eyes moved up and to the right, ‘but they’re up there, probably waiting, flying around in circles. You know it and I know it.’

Taylor’s inquisitive eyes also found Hunter’s in the rearview mirror. He kept his gaze on Lucien.

‘No, we don’t know that,’ Hunter said. ‘And neither do you. You’re assuming it. So you want us to sit here while Madeleine runs out of time because of an assumption?’

‘My assumptions are always very accurate because they’re based on facts, Robert,’ Lucien said.

‘Facts?’ Taylor this time. ‘What facts?’

Lucien’s stare finally left the rear-view mirror and moved to Taylor. On its way, Lucien noticed that her grip on her gun had slacked just a touch.

‘Let’s see, Agent Taylor, we can get a move on as soon as you and Robert take off your shirts and throw them out the window. How about that?’

‘Excuse me?’ Taylor said. The offended look she managed to pull could’ve won her an Oscar.

‘Your shirts,’ Lucien repeated. ‘Take them off and throw them out the window.’

Silence from Hunter and Taylor.

‘You disappoint me, Robert,’ Lucien said. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t notice the buttons on both of your shirts?’

A muscle flexed on Taylor’s jaw.

Lucien addressed her. ‘It was a good try, but the colors don’t quite match the ones you had earlier.’ He lifted his right index finger and pointed at Taylor’s shirt. ‘Those are about two shades darker. I’m guessing that what we have here is a microphone, a GPS satellite transmitter, and perhaps a camera?’

There was no reply.

‘Disappointing. I’d imagined that the FBI would be more careful than that.’ Lucien shrugged. ‘But then again, I didn’t give you guys that much notice, did I?’

Hunter’s earlier thought came back to him: this could be a costly mistake.

‘So,’ Lucien carried on, ‘we have a few options here. You can both take off your shirts and throw them out the window . . .’ He gave Taylor a provoking wink. ‘And that would no doubt add to my pleasure here in the backseat. Or you can rip the buttons off, one by one, and throw them out the window.’ Lucien was still staring at Taylor. ‘I bet you have a beautiful belly button, Agent Taylor.’

‘Fuck you,’ Taylor couldn’t contain herself.

Lucien laughed. ‘Alternatively, you can keep your shirts on with the buttons intact and just rip off the satellite transmitter, which I’m sure is taped to your bodies somewhere.’

Without even noticing it, Taylor looked like an angry kid who had just been caught on a lie.

‘Please,’ Lucien added, ‘waste as much time as you like thinking about it.’ He placed his head against the leather headrest and closed his eyes. ‘Let me know when you’ve made your minds up.’

Hunter unbuckled his seatbelt, leaned forward a little and ripped the satellite transmitter from his lower back.

With her weapon still aimed at Lucien, Taylor did the same.

Back in the Operations Room in Quantico, Director Adrian Kennedy heard a scraping sound. A moment after that, Hunter’s microphone went into complete silence. A couple of seconds later, so did Taylor’s. The two dots that represented both of them on the radar screen they were looking at faded to nothing.

The agent sitting at the radar station quickly typed several commands into his computer before finally looking up at Kennedy, who was standing by his side. ‘We’ve lost them, sir. I’m sorry. There’s nothing we can do from here.’

‘Sonofabitch,’ Kennedy whispered between clenched teeth.

Inside Bird Two, circling around the sky near Berlin’s municipal airport, Agent Brody ran his hand through his close-cropped hair and uttered the exact same comment.

Eighty-Eight