Boniface had anticipated that I’d at least need some new clothes. He’d put some cash in that envelope—around ten grand; I didn’t count it. And he had told me that I hadn’t had anything on my person when Arvid had delivered me. That gave me one more small item to think about.
In the meantime, I was off to sea on a great adventure. And I had no seabag, no sextant, no official Royal Navy midshipman’s dirk—nothing at all to carry. No luggage, no clean undies, nothing. At least I wasn’t in chains this time. After all, I was on the payroll now. And to be fair to Boniface, which I thought was a really smart idea, it was going to be one hell of a payday. He’d even agreed to pay expenses off the top. Agreed, hell, he’d suggested it. It was a very good deal, a ton of money, and it would have made me happy, except for one small detail.
It couldn’t be done. No fucking way.
Steal an entire wall? From the Vatican?
Come on, Riley. You can do that, right? Sure, why not? Just because it was totally fucking impossible, so what? That’s what I do! And while I was there, maybe I could snatch the dome of the basilica, too. I could stuff it right into my imaginary dimension-bending backpack, along with the wall. It would fit right next to Schrödinger’s cat. And hell, why not just take the entire Vatican City while I was at it? I could shrink it and put it in a bottle, like the city of Kandor in Superman.
Except I really had to get that fresco, and I was pretty sure a fictional solution wasn’t going to work. At least not one from an old Superman comic—Marvel, maybe, but old-time Superman? No way. But I had to find an answer somewhere. Boniface hadn’t made any threats. He didn’t have to. One of the big advantages of having a reputation like his was that he never had to use the corny lines the bad guys used in James Bond movies. He didn’t have to tell me what would happen if I didn’t get him his fresco. I knew. It would be lights-out for Riley Wolfe. And that is something I generally try to avoid.
This time, I could not see a way to do that.
So I had a lot to think about, and I was just as glad that my dear friend Frenchy didn’t talk. He kept his lip zipped all the way through the tunnel, out the channel, and away from the island. He didn’t speak until we were out into open sea, heading away from the island.
“I will now take you to the airplane,” he said.
I looked out the windscreen. I didn’t see anything but water. “Really?” I said. “Is it a seaplane?”
“No.” He shook his head. “There is a small airport. Monsieur keeps his jet there.”
“Of course,” I said. “And, uh—where exactly is there?”
He curled his lip at me. “Les Îles de la Désolation,” he said. Then he added, like he was accusing me of something heinous, “You would say, Kerguelen Islands.”
“Would I?” I said. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t say that, since I’d never heard of it, by either name. But there was time to Google it later. “So where does Mon-sewer’s jet take me?”
“Perth,” he said. He made it sound like he was spitting. His sneer got sneerier. “Zat is een Australia,” he added. And then he went silent again and turned away to look out the windscreen.
Fine by me. I couldn’t really come to an appreciation of his conversational skills anyway. And now I kind of knew what part of the world I was in. That didn’t cheer me up a lot. If the closest chunk of civilization was Perth, I was way the fuck out in the middle of nothing at all. The South Pole was closer than Rome. And Perth was just about the last civilized stop before you started to run into icebergs. And I wasn’t all that sure about the “civilized” part. I didn’t know much about Perth.
But at least it would have an airport. I mean, I was pretty sure it did. That would be a very good thing, especially since a plane with me on board was going to land there. Landing is a lot harder where there’s no airport.
Perth. Shit. It was at least a full day to get back to the States, to the place in the Ozarks where I was staying at the moment. I had Mom in a good extended-care facility in Fayetteville, about ninety minutes’ drive from my hidey-hole in the mountains. The flight from Perth would probably take me to L.A. Then a flight to Fayetteville—or probably more than one; you can’t go direct to anywhere nowadays.
So add in a couple of stopovers, and call it two days, maybe two and a half, to get from Perth to Fayetteville, check on Mom, and head back to my snug little bed in the mountains. And nothing to do the whole trip except try to figure some unlikely way to keep breathing long term.
Double shit.
It was around five hours before we came in sight of a large island. Frenchy aimed the boat right at it, so I figured it had to be where we were going. It had been a very quiet trip. Frenchy concentrated on sneering out the windshield, and I spent my time chewing my teeth and swearing. I have never been the kind of guy who pouts, but I have to admit I was pretty close to it this time.
We pulled in at a rough concrete dock and I climbed off. I don’t think I would have said any fond farewells to Frenchy, but I didn’t get a chance. He was already backing the boat out while I still had only one foot on land. I scrambled up the rest of the way and looked around. Not much to see, but at the far end of the dock an ATV was waiting, with a uniformed man standing beside it. It was the same black uniform Boniface’s mercs wore, so I figured it was my ride.
I was right. With only a few necessary words, he drove me across the island, about fifteen minutes of bumping over mossy rocks, circling around big holes, until we finally came to the airstrip. Mon-sewer’s jet was waiting. It was a very pleasant little aircraft, a Cessna Citation X that went for around twenty-five mil, plus whatever personal comforts Boniface might have required. I decided it wasn’t really beneath me to be seen on such a modest conveyance, and I would let it carry me to Perth.
A uniformed flight attendant was waiting at the foot of the boarding stairs. She was a woman in her thirties, good-looking in that kind of tight, buttoned-up way that a top executive secretary has. The look that says, “Yeah, I’m decorative as hell—but lay one finger on me and if the frostbite doesn’t kill you, my TigerLady knife will.”
“Bonjour, m’sieur,” she said. “I am Danielle. It will be my pleasure to serve you today.” She smiled and beckoned me up the stairs, and I boarded.
The interior did nothing that might have endangered my social standing. It was furnished like somebody had decided to decorate
the world’s most exclusive whorehouse in quiet good taste. I buckled myself into a seat that would have looked okay in the penthouse suite of a luxury hotel, and three minutes later we were in the air.
8
The trip to Perth took around four hours. I wasn’t watching the clock. But I wasn’t suffering, either. At least, not physically. Danielle plied me with food and drink, top-quality stuff that did not disgrace the plane’s luxurious interior. And real food this time; the Day of the Algae was over at last. Good fluids, too. I limited myself to a couple of glasses of wine—a really terrific Domaine de Chevalier—and a light meal of snails in butter and garlic, Caesar salad (with anchovies, of course), fresh lamb shank in a blackberry-mint sauce, new potatoes with rosemary, grilled asparagus, and a nice crème brûlée that I watched Danielle set on fire, and then a very modest two or three glasses of Châteauneuf marc.
When I was finished I leaned back with a cup of coffee—I would swear it was kopi luwak, but it’s possible to be wrong. After the wine and the marc, it was hard to say whether the beans had actually gone all the way through a civet’s digestive system. They could have gone through a common house cat, and I wouldn’t have known the difference.