Twice a Spy_ A Novel - Keith Thomson [85]
He had no better ideas. Not even any other ideas.
But his father might. Hearing the three sets of approaching footsteps in the hallway, Charlie’s hope rose.
On the other side of the door, Private First Class Arnold grunted, “Hey.” He received similar salutations from two other men.
As the new arrivals continued past the detention room, Charlie heard Drummond say: “I’m going to have to take my medicine before bedtime.”
They looked like the three-story flophouse’s typical guests. Ideally, that’s what they hoped the prematurely hunched woman at the reception desk would remember about the too-loud American couple who, while checking in for an estimated stay of two hours, debated which was the best of the daiquiris they’d just had at various Pointe Simon bars.
Stanley’s other reason for debating tropical drinks with Lanier was to divert the attention of the woman behind the desk from Lanier’s duffel bag. It was a good Louis Vuitton knockoff, decent camo. But the woman might think it odd that someone checking into a seedy hotel for a couple of hours would pack a bag, let alone such a big bag.
It contained a forty-four-inch-long Remington bolt-action M40A1, the M40 variant with the relatively lightweight McMillan HTG fiberglass stock. Lanier would have preferred to use a Mark 14 Mod 0 rifle with a collapsible stock, but the M40 wasn’t bad given that she’d had just over an hour to devise this op. M40s were common enough; she’d rented this one from a hunting and fishing supply store in nearby Lamentin for “target practice.”
She initially set the bag on the floor of the lobby, so that the woman would miss it from her elevated seat in the Plexiglas-encased front desk. The bag would come into view, however, as Lanier climbed the spiral stairs to the rooms.
So after Stanley got the room key, he lingered at the reception desk and smiled his appraisal of the warbled drinking song cascading down the stairwell from one of the upper floors. The woman smiled along with him.
Then he asked, “Avez-vous des cartes de Pointe-Simon?”
While she rifled through a drawer behind her for a map—the staff here probably didn’t get this request often—Lanier and her bag disappeared up the stairs.
The third-floor room was shaped like a wedge of cheese and smelled a bit like one. The furnishing included a pipe-frame twin bed that looked as if it had survived a flood, a dresser missing one drawer and all its handles, and a nightstand that belonged in a child’s room. Bolted to the top of the dresser, evidently in an effort to thwart theft, was a clock radio that emitted a mechanical grunt each time the digits flipped. It read 6:51. According to Stanley’s watch, the time was 22:13.
“All in all, not bad for forty euros a night,” he said.
Lanier flashed a smile and returned to assembling her bipod near the room’s key feature, the mullioned dormer window overlooking the Forêt Communale de Montgérald parkland. She had a clear shot, save for a few palm fronds, at the American consulate.
Peering into her scope, Lanier said, “You’re not going to believe this, but I think I can make out Charlie Clark standing right by his window.”
Charlie turned away from the window when his door opened and Arnold entered with a plastic bottle of Coke. Charlie was about to say thank-you when something or someone crashed against a door down the corridor, followed by a heavy flop of a body against tile floor.
Charlie glanced beyond Arnold. Outside of the next room down the corridor stood the young stone-faced marine from the yacht—the name silk-screened onto his uniform was, fittingly, Flint.
Regarding the closed door, Flint asked, “Mr. Clark, are you all right?”
There was no response from Drummond’s room.
“Mr. Clark?” Flint again asked.
Still no answer.
Did Drummond have an escape