“You are ready?”
It was just after dawn. We were somewhere in France, gassing up the Peugeot at a BP station, steam rising off the cups of espresso that Gobi had brought out a few minutes earlier along with a loaf of bread. On the opposite side of the road, two cows were gazing at us with unblinking bovine indifference. If American cows looked bored, French cows had elevated it to an art form.
I started the engine, pulling away from the service station while Gobi tore a chunk of bread off, smeared it with cheese, and handed it to me. I wasn’t hungry, but after driving through the night, I was starting to get the shakes. All around us, the countryside spilled out in wet brown fields that looked like the Cezanne paintings I’d seen in one of my mother’s coffee table books. None of it looked like it had changed much in the last hundred years except for the occasional satellite dish.
My phone started to buzz. The one that Gobi had planted on me. I looked over at her.
“Who else has this number?”
“No one.”
I hit TALK. “Hello?”
“Hey, kid.”
That voice, like broken gravel being shoveled in my ear. “Agent Nolan,” I said, feeling Gobi react beside me as I glanced over my shoulder at the empty roadway behind us.
“Listen, about last night, no hard feelings, huh?” Nolan coughed, not bothering to cover his mouth. “I didn’t want you to think I was mad about that or anything.”
“That’s a load off,” I said.
“You have to admit, it was kind of stupid, though, right?” This time the cough sounded more like a humorless chuckle, and it was easy to imagine him sitting in a safe house somewhere back in Switzerland, stirring Nescafe and checking his e-mail. “You don’t have many friends in Europe now.”
“I’ve got one.”
“I wanted to let you know that we checked on your family. Nothing yet.”
“Thanks, and good luck tracing this phone. I’m ditching it.”
“I would expect nothing less.”
“Goodbye, Nolan.”
“See you, Perry.”
As soon as he hung up, Gobi looked at me. “What did he say?”
“He said I don’t have many friends in Europe.”
“Is he right?”
I looked at the sign up ahead. PARIS-262 KM.
“We’ll see.”