Twice a Spy_ A Novel - Keith Thomson [4]
“You do get to see more of the sights this way,” she said blithely.
“People don’t consider the benefits of being a fugitive.”
Another quick turn and Charlie’s side mirror showed only the town of Avenches shooting aft. The chalets became specks, then disappeared altogether behind a mountain of fir trees laden with snow.
As Alice drove up the rugged Bernese Oberland, Charlie scanned the sky. The Cavalry sometimes deployed unmanned aerial vehicles—UAVs, remotely piloted, miniature aircraft equipped with cameras sharp enough for their operators to view a driver’s face from ten thousand feet up. Some UAVs carried laser-guided missiles capable of turning the road into a crater and the BMW into shiny gravel.
Alice smiled. “Given their small size and high altitudes, the odds of spotting a drone aren’t too good.”
Charlie sat back, admitting, “The odds are probably better that I’ll discover a new planet.” A moment later, he resumed scanning. “It’s harder to just do nothing.”
On their descent from the mountains, wispy, low-lying clouds dissipated, revealing a valley dotted with toylike chalets, Alpine ski slopes, and cows whose bells blended into a single mesmerizing chord. The slopes converged at Gstaad’s central village, a congregation of rustic Helvetian buildings, many with bright red geranium-filled window boxes. Factor in the fairy-tale turrets and horse-drawn sleighs and Gstaad was less believable than the Disneyland version of an old-world Swiss hamlet. After just a week, Charlie dreamed that he and Alice would stay for the rest of their lives.
As she nosed the car into a parking spot behind the train station on Hauptstrasse, the sun dipped behind a pair of soaring peaks, bronzing the entire valley.
They proceeded on foot through an empty alley to the Promenade, Gstaad’s main street, where the only vehicles permitted were horse-drawn. The alley was another in Alice’s bag of countersurveillance tricks. Pick out the surveillants before leading them to the chalet.
Among the boutiques, galleries, and cafés on the Promenade was Les Frères Troisgros, a tavern whose grilled bratwurst was good enough to persuade Charlie to stay in Gstaad even without Alice. The tavern’s large front windowpane reflected no one behind them in the alley.
“We good?” Charlie asked.
“We are or they are.” Alice pushed open the door, surrounding them with the aromas of roasting meat and ale. She led the way inside with circumspection in place of her usual buoyancy. If she saw or sensed anything wrong, she wasn’t saying, not in a barroom with a hundred eyes upon them, all aglow in candlelight—Les Frères Troisgros had no electric lights. A collection of big smoke-darkened stones held in place by ancient beams, it had changed little from the seventeenth century.
Charlie fought the compulsion to stare at the jolly and ruddy faces. He worried he’d come here once too often.
He and Alice received their takeout orders without being shot at or otherwise imperiled. But on the way out, in the smoky mirror behind the bar, he caught a glimpse of a ruddy middle-aged man wearing a black beret. The man was staring at them as he snapped open a cell phone.
“Ghost, I think,” said Alice, taking Charlie’s hand in hers.
“Because of the beret?”
“Yeah.”
“Over-the-top for a pro, right?”
“One would hope.”
The question became: Who was he calling?
Not someone who followed them to the car. At least as far as Charlie or Alice could tell.
Letting Alice ride shotgun—in point of fact, 9mm pistol—Charlie drove away from the village, managing the winding mountain road up to a secluded cream-colored chalet. In the dwindling sunlight, the structure blended in with the towering pines.
With a stern gaze at a field blanketed with a fresh snowfall, Alice said, “Hit teams love snow. With a few thermal-insulated, arctic-terrain ghillie suits and rifle wraps, you can turn a clearing like this into an excellent ambush site.”
“Great.