Tracy would make a great heroine, he thought. Bullheaded and brave. Intelligent bu
t impulsive.
His mind drifted back to the case. He’d spent the morning watching CCTV footage provided by London’s Transport Police, showing Tracy clearing customs and emerging into the arrivals terminal at Heathrow four days ago. She was wearing a head scarf and glasses, which did a good job of concealing most of her face. Her demeanor was casual and relaxed. She neither hurried nor dawdled and she never looked over her shoulder or behind her as she walked toward the tube.
Jean had played and replayed the clip for hours, searching for a clue, for anything that might jog his memory or stir up a new lead.
Was Cooper in London? In England, at any rate?
Some instinct told Jean he wasn’t, but he told himself that perhaps his instincts were wrong. Just before he drove to pick up the kids, he’d learned that there was a painting in the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square entitled Six Hills. He’d dropped a quick e-mail to Interpol’s London field office to contact the authorities at the gallery, but he was itching to get on the phone to them himself.
Pulling his cell phone out of his pocket, he switched it on, ignoring the disapproving glances of the other parents. He set it to vibrate. Immediately it began to jump and buzz in his lap, like an angry bee.
Nine missed calls.
Nine! Something must have happened.
He opened his text messages and began to read.
SYLVIE RIZZO WAS CURLED up on the couch at home, reading a novel and enjoying some well-earned peace, when the front door opened and two crying children burst in. Their father trailed behind them, looking stressed.
“I’m sorry,” Jean mumbled. “I have to go. I have to catch a plane.”
“What, right now?”
“The film wasn’t even halfway through!” Clémence moaned.
“Dad wouldn’t let us stay. I didn’t even get to finish my ICEE!” Luc sobbed.
“You bought them ICEEs?” Sylvie’s frown deepened. “I told you they make Luc sick.”
“I have to go.”
“For God’s sake, Jean!” Sylvie snapped. “I’ll have to go to court if this goes on. You can’t keep letting them down like this. It’s Clémence’s birthday!”
At that moment Luc vomited violently, spraying blue sugary puke all over the living room carpet.
Jean ran to his car and didn’t look back.
Tracy had been spotted at Heathrow. The footage was two days old, but it was clear. With a new alias, and dark brown hair extensions, she had boarded a Britannia flight to Sofia, Bulgaria.
This year’s World Chess Championships were being held in Bulgaria.
Jean had Antoine Cléry look up the date and venue.
“The competition began yesterday. It’s in Plovdiv, a provincial city, in a conference center attached to a hotel.”
Jean Googled “Plovdiv” as he left Sylvie’s house.
“Plovdiv is often referred to in Bulgaria as ‘the City of the Seven Hills . . . Inside the city proper are six syenite hills, called tepeta . . .”
Jean Rizzo slammed his foot on the accelerator.
CHAPTER 26
PLOVDIV, BULGARIA’S SECOND LARGEST city and the venue for the latest World Chess Championships, is set on the banks of the Maritsa River, about a hundred miles southeast of the capital, Sofia. With over six thousand years of history, the city is a treasure trove of archaeological wonders, with sites from antiquity, including two ancient amphitheaters, set beside Ottoman baths and mosques and the remainders of medieval towers.
Tracy booked a hotel in the old quarter, a pretty maze of narrow, paved streets lined with old churches and homes from what was known as the National Revival period. The Britannia Hotel was really little more than a guesthouse, with a few rooms, a grubby reception area and a salon that served fruit, bread and coffee for breakfast but nothing else. It suited Tracy perfectly. From her bedroom window she could see the heights of Sredna Gora rise to the northwest, above the alluvial plain on which Plovdiv had proudly stood since four thousand years before Christ was born. It had been a decade since she’d set foot in Europe. In other circumstances she would have drunk in the culture and beauty of her surroundings like a wanderer stumbling upon a water hole after years in the desert. As it was, the pealing church bells and sights and smells of the Old World barely registered.