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resemble a tourist, so he decided he was a businessman, fatigued
and stressed-out after a long sales trip, going home thankfully.
He even got a tie out of his bag, letting it hang loosely knotted
around his throat. He examined himself in the mirror. It would
have to do. Of course, the driver of a French car should be
French, too, so he tried not to say anything to anyone. At the gas
stations he kept to bonsoir and merci; ditto at the various péage
booths.
Heading for Paris, he caught sight of signs for Orly. He knew
either airport, Orly or Charles de Gaulle, would do. He was
going to ditch the car. He figured the ports might be on the look-
out for a stolen Xantia. And if the authorities weren t checking
the ports, he reckoned his attackers almost certainly were. In
which case they d be checking the airports, too. But he had a bet-
ter chance of going undetected on foot.
He drove into an all-night parking garage at Orly. It was a
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Ian Rankin
multistory, and he took the Xantia to the top deck. There were
only two other cars up here, both looking like long-stayers or
cars which had been ditched. The Xantia would be company for
them. But first of all he knew he needed sleep  his brain and
body needed rest. He could sleep in the terminal maybe, but
would be easy meat there. He reckoned there d be no planes out
till morning, and it wasn t nearly light yet. He wound the car
windows open a couple of inches to help him hear approaching
vehicles or footsteps. Then he laid his head back and closed his
eyes . . .
He had a dream he d had before. Argentina. Grassland and
mountain slopes. Insects and a constant sea breeze. Two canoes
paddling for shore. In the dream, they paddled in daylight,
but really they d come ashore in the middle of the night, faces
painted. Supposedly in silence, until Jay had started singing . . .
The same song he d sung when they landed on the Falklands
only a week before, taken ashore by boat on that occasion. Splash-
ing onto the beach, meeting no resistance. And Jay humming the
tune he d been ordered to stop singing.
Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
A dream? More like a nightmare when Jay was around. He
was supposed to be a good soldier, but he was a firing pin short of
a grenade, and just as temperamental.
Just as lethal.
They d sent for them after that firefight in the Falklands.
They wanted to mount a two-man mission, deep surveillance.
They were briefed onboard HMS Hermes. Their mission would
be to keep watch on Argentinian aircraft flying out of Rio Grande.
(Reeve was told only afterwards that another two-man unit was
given the same brief with a different location: Rio Gallegos.)
Nobody mentioned the words suicide mission, but the odds on
coming back alive weren t great. For a start, the Argentinians on
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the Falklands had been equipped with direction-finding equip-
ment and thermal imagers; there was little to show that the same
equipment wouldn t be available on the mainland.
Therefore, their radio signals out would be monitored and
traced. Meaning they would have to stay mobile. But mobility
itself was hazardous, and the possibility of thermal imagers meant
they wouldn t even be able to rest at night. Getting in would be
easy, getting out a nightmare.
Jay only demurred when his request for a few Stinger shoulder-
launched antiaircraft missiles was rejected out of hand.
 You re going in there to watch, not to fight. Leave the fight-
ing to others.
Which was just what Jay didn t want to hear.
Row, row, row your boat . . .
And in the dream that s what they did, with a line of men
waiting for them on the beach. For some reason, the men couldn t
locate them, though Reeve could see them clearly enough. But
Jay s singing got louder and louder, and it was only a matter of
time before the firing squad by the water s edge let loose at them.
Row, row, row your boat . . .
Reeve woke up in a sweat. Christ . . . And the true horror was
that the reality had been so much worse than the dream, so awful
that when he d finally made it back to Hermes they d refused to
believe his version. They d told him he must be hallucinating.
Doctors told him shock could do that. And the more they denied
the truth, the angrier he got, until that pink haze descended for
the first time in his life and then lifted again, and a doctor and
two orderlies were lying unconscious on the floor in front of him.
He sensed movement, something low to the ground and in
shadow, over beside one of the other cars. He turned his head-
lights on and picked out a thin, hungry-looking fox. A fox scav-
enging on the top floor of a multistory parking garage. What was
wrong with the fields? Had things got so bad for the foxes that
they were moving into high-rises? Well, Reeve could talk: he was
hiding in a garage. Hiding because he was being hunted. Right
now, he was being hunted by the bad guys; but all too soon the
good guys  the so-called forces of law and order  would be
191
Ian Rankin
hunting him, too. He turned off the headlights and got out of the
car to exercise. Sit-ups and push-ups, plus some calisthenics.
Then he looked in his traveling bag. He didn t have much left in
the way of clean clothes. At the first service station on the route
he had scrubbed away the blood. There were dried stains on his
sweater, but his white shirt was still clean. He was wearing it now.
He d tried cleaning his shoes, not very successfully. They looked
like he d been playing football in them.
In his bag he found Lucky 13. The dagger was a problem. He
knew he couldn t hope to get it past airport security. It would
have to stay here. But it was a murder weapon; he didn t want it
found. He walked with the dagger over to the elevator, and
pressed the button for it to ascend. Then he wiped the dagger
with his handkerchief, rubbing off fingerprints, and held it with
the handkerchief. When the elevator arrived, he leaned in, pressed
the button for the floor below, and stepped out again as the doors
were closing. He slipped the blade of the dagger into the gap
between the doors and, as soon as the elevator started to descend,
used the blade to prize open the doors a couple of inches. Then
he simply pushed the hilt and handle through the gap and let the
dagger fall onto the roof of the elevator, where it could lie until
maintenance found it  always supposing these elevators had any
maintenance.
It was still early, so he sat in the car for a while. Then he got
out and went over to the far wall, and leaned out so he could see
the terminal building. There were two terminals, separated by a
monorail, but this was the one he wanted, and he could walk to it.
There were bright lights inside, and movement, taxis pulling
up  the start of another day. He hadn t heard any flights leave
in the past half hour, excepting a few light aircraft. But they
would start leaving soon. During the night some larger planes
had landed. At that hour, they had to be package operators or
cargo.
Reeve made a final check on the contents of his bag, finding
nothing immediately incriminating or suspicious. So he walked
through the cool morning air towards the terminal building.
He was starving, so he bought coffee and a sandwich first thing. He
slung the bag over his shoulder so he could eat and drink as
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Blood Hunt
he walked. He walked among businessmen, all looking bleary-
eyed and regretful, like they d spent the previous night being
unfaithful. He d bet none of them had spent a night like his, but
at least he was blending in better than expected. Just another
disheveled traveler up too early. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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