a Michael story set between On Borrowed Time and Getting Out of Reverse

The characters of Lasalle and the de Grieu family are the inventions of the authors. The characters and settings of La Femme Nikita are the property of Warner Brothers, LFN Productions and Fireworks Productions, and are used here without permission for non-profit entertainment only. No copyright infringement is intended.

***********

The first flash of lightning brought Michael up to the cockpit in a single swift movement. Parachuting into a location in darkness was dangerous, in pouring rain was worse, but during a thunderstorm, that was madness.

"Should we abort?" Fear snapped in the pilot's voice. "We can't do the drop in this weather."

"Get us to the drop point." But Michael stayed up front. The mission, taking out a chemical weapons plant near Nimes that was supplying hardliners in Algeria and Morocco, was worth taking a few risks to accomplish.

The only noise from the back of the plane was Lasalle's persistent whistling, which had been getting on everyone's nerves since takeoff. Michael knew that the tune, which had extremely coarse French lyrics, was intended to irritate him personally, as Lasalle had been trying to do ever since the team had been called together.

Michael had no idea what Lasalle's problem with him was. Lasalle had been brought up from North Africa station less than a year before, and this was their first mission together. Jealousy, Michael supposed. Lasalle was a jump trainer, an ex-paratrooper from French Special Forces, recruited after the French down-sized their African operations in 95. Perhaps he thought he should be leading the mission, since he had more jumps than Michael, perhaps he disliked the idea of Section carrying out missions on French territory. He had been sullen throughout Operations' briefing, never acknowledging Michael's presence, and late for equipment pickup. Except for telling Walter, "this cell is broken", as he helped himself to a new phone, Lasalle hadn't spoken to anyone. Michael had neither time nor patience to smooth ruffled feathers. Lasalle would just have to get over it. Michael didn't care about anyone's mood, provided that it didn't affect performance.

The decision was to abort made for Michael a few minutes later, when the plane took a direct lightning strike. Communication and navigation were lost in an instant electrical fire.

"Evacuate."

************

Instead of arguing, Lasalle abruptly changed his leitmotif to Edith Piaf, and helped Michael ruthlessly push everyone else out to the tune of "Non, je ne regrette rien." Michael hoped no one else recognized the pessimistic tune. Lasalle was still whistling when he went out the plane door. Michael jumped last himself. The explosives left on board would make sure no one found any compromising material in the wreckage. They'd have to take their chances on landing safely with the scanty assistance of night-vision goggles and flashes of lightning. The briefing had talked about poor weather, but nothing like this electrical storm. Still, Operations could hardly have arranged for it, and Michael knew how uncertain the weather could be over the Massif Central.

Once on the ground, after a desperate ricocheting slide through branches which snatched at him like claws, Michael reviewed his situation. On the plus side, he had managed to land without serious injury in a heavily treed area, and he was armed to the teeth. But on the negative, he had neither food nor water, and his cellphone was not responding, no surprise in this kind of terrain. His compass told him where north was, but not where the nearest civilisation was. His GPS had been torn out of its pocket in his descent; Michael found it smashed against a rock, useless. The maquis had eluded the Germans for four years in this region of forested mountains, twisting ravines and scattered villages, as had generations of bandits and Huguenots fleeing the authorities since Louis XIII. If Michael had wanted to hide, this would have been ideal. When you want cover, there's never any around, and when you'd rather be found, you have nothing but cover.

Lasalle, on the other hand, had been born in Avignon, and and spent his holidays from childhood hiking and hunting in these mountains. He'd strapped his GPS to his wrist before he jumped, so he could watch it as he descended. He was steering by memory for the national park around Mont Lozere, the open, marked trails and the parking lots giving him his best chance for a safe landing. He'd switched on the directional beacon in his leg pocket - standard issue for mountain climbers and skiers, although the cycle of frequencies he'd programmed it to broadcase was strictly DGSE. He wanted to be found by the CRS, French search and rescue, but not as a Section One operative. He saw an opening in the trees and began to steer for it as best he could against the wind.

Michael spent what remained of a wet, blustery night in the limited shelter of his parachute draped over a couple of branches, catching at bits of sleep and running through ways he might be able to complete the mission. At first light he climbed back up the tree that had nearly killed him the night before to reconnoitre. He was in a narrow valley, neither road nor house in sight, but the trees parted just to the east, and Michael hoped to find a river there, and more open ground. His best hope of finding settlement, and reaching his target, was to the south, out of the Cevennes. He could risk heading north, towards where he thought Mende was. But if he missed the town, he'd simply lose himself in the mountains. There was nothing much in walking distance to the west. He put the thought of hot coffee out of his mind, and headed towards the break in the trees. He found a narrow stream, flowing roughly southwest, with something like a track on its far bank. Michael decided to ignore for now the difficulty of explaining his appearance to the hunters or hikers he might run into, and pushed on southwards. He wasn't hurt, he'd find a clear transmission area, and then he'd be out of there. He wondered where the rest of his team was, and what Operations had done about the mission. No excuses were accepted for failure, not even natural disasters. Oddly enough, the idea of taking advantage of this opportunity to disappear into his native country never crossed his mind. And yet he was in Languedoc, not so far north of Marseilles. The people here would speak the Provencal of his childhood.

************

Lasalle, on the other hand, was acutely aware of being on his home ground. He'd managed to land on a service road near the summit of Mont LozŠre. It was a considerable hike down to the tourist cabins and the ranger station, but he knew that if he stayed on the road he couldn't get lost. If he found an empty cabin, he might even risk catching a few hours sleep. The rain let up as dawn was greying the sky, and Lasalle saw his first ranger, in a jeep with CRS - MONT LOZERE lettered on the side. But he didn't want to make up a story for one ranger, he wanted to get to the station, and the radio. So he turned off the service road onto a trail, and kept hiking downhill. It was late enough in the year that the bulk of the tourists had gone, and he wasn't too worried about meeting anyone civilian. At an intersection of two trails he found a map posted, and turned left. He was on edge now, he couldn't afford to run into anyone, not this close to success. He spotted the smoke rising from the chimney of the station, and abandoned the trail for the woods themselves. From the cover of the woodpile he scouted the station itself. He couldn't see anyone, but there were two vehicles outside, another jeep with CRS MONT LOZERE on the side, and a plain black van. The sight of the van froze him for a moment, then he started working his way closer to the station. He had to try to overhear what was going on inside. He tried the back door, found it unlocked, and slipped inside. Perhaps his first mistake. It's hard to be silent in heavy boots on wood floors. Lasalle actually had his hand on the doorknob of the radio room when he felt something hard push into his back.

"Don't move," someone told him in French.

Lasalle held up empty hands. He had no intention of killing park rangers.

"Turn around slowly."

Lasalle obeyed, and saw one man in CRS uniform holding a shotgun, and another in plain clothes behind him.

"Who are you?" asked the man in plain clothes, while the man in uniform carefully lifted the Glock out of Lasalle's thigh holster.

Lasalle decided to play a card - literally. He opened the small chest pocket on his jacket, and slid out an ace of spades. The man in plain clothes didn't appear to find this humourous. He looked at both sides of the card - the reverse was printed in blue and red.

"We'll see what the colonel will say about this. Come on."

Lasalle allowed himself a brief smile. Section would also have understood the card's meaning, and would cheerfully have cancelled him for carrying it around. Members of the DGSE are officially posted to the 44th infantry regiment, Orleans, whose insignia is a red and blue shield marked into quarters by a white cross. At the centre of the cross is a black spade. Lasalle got into the back of the van, and went back to whistling the rude song, which detailed the preferences of certain regimental officers for various farm animals. The CRS man kept the shotgun on him, and seemed to be offended by the song. The drive to AlŠs took them nearly an hour, because of a rockslide across the road near Florac. Lasalle kept up the whistling all the way, as a trick to keep his breathing steady. But his heart was pounding, and his hands sweating. Was it going to work? Was he going to get out of this alive?

************

The trail was narrow, slippery from the previous night's rain, and littered with branches torn off by the storm. If anyone did try trying to follow him, Michael thought, they would get little in the way of clear footprints. More by force of habit, he did his best to leave no tracks. He couldn't make any great speed over this terrain, though. By noon, he thought he had covered about twenty kilometres on the ground, perhaps fifteen as the crow flies. Hunger was a steady, nagging ache in the back of his mind. He was going downhill sharply now, sliding here and there on the muddy trail. Ahead of him the trees were larger, the undergrowth less. He saw his first signs of human occupation -horseshoe tracks, still clear under the dense tree cover. The forest around looked too tidy to be entirely natural -the trail widened out into a four-foot wide path. He might have got into the national park around Mont Lozere, which had hundreds of kilometres of trails, but he didn't see any markings or signs. More likely he'd found the grounds to a chateau or a hunting lodge. He tried to review the briefing maps in his head.

Then he heard the dogs -perhaps the most terrifying sound to a solitary man on foot, the baying of a pack. Even though logically he knew that they should not be on his trail, he tensed and looked for shelter. On the ground he could never hit all the dogs before at least one got to him, not that a .45 calibre handgun was the best weapon against a relatively small and fast-moving target like a dog. From a tree, he'd have a better vantage point. Although hampered by a heavy pack and boots, he picked out a sturdy looking evergreen and ran for it. There weren't many up to his weight. Once up the tree, some kind of pine with dense foliage and resinous branches, Michael began to consider how to deal with the people who were likely to show up with these dogs. Could be anyone from police to park rangers to local hunters. If he had enough tranquilizer darts with him, that would be the best choice for a quiet departure. He checked his clips, only nine darts. It might not be enough, but he switched clips from live ammunition to darts.

Eight feet up, Michael believed himself invisible from the ground, but the thick branches narrowed his own area of vision to a semi-circle about ten feet out from the tree trunk. He had just seen the first dogs, with the smooth cream-and-rust coats of French Braque hounds, look up at him panting and pleased with themselves. Hooves pattered into silence on the soft dirt of the path.

"You might as well come down - you can't possibly finish your assignment now," a woman's voice told him in crisp, unsympathetic French. Michael froze, one hand on his gun and the other on his clip of bullets. "The plane went down near LozŠre; the park rangers have had us all on the lookout for survivors."

Michael thought hard and fast -was she lying? The woman he couldn't see appeared to have ears like her own hounds. She heard the click of the safety being released on the .45, and said quickly, "If you shoot one of my dogs, I'll see you court-martialled. You paratroopers are all the same, playing action-hero on my land."

So she could see him and hear him. She'd have taken a shot at him by now if she wanted him dead. Michael put the .45 back in its holster, slid the live clip into his pocket, and dropped out of the tree. The dogs were very interested in what he smelt like, and their noses could reach as far as his elbows. He stood still and endured this, his eyes on the woman who had spoken. She was on a dapple-grey horse, riding with an English saddle, and dressed sensibly for riding: pale tan breeches, pull-on ankle boots, leather gloves, a dark-green tweed jacket over a cream turtleneck and one of those hard black helmets. Somewhere around thirty, though she might look younger in makeup, fit rather than fashionably thin. The knot of hair at the back of the helmet was light brown. Her eyes looked green, but that might have been an effect of the jacket. Not exactly a pretty face, it had character instead.

"I suppose I should thank you, madame." He concentrated on keeping his French precise and his manner formal, since he was apparently some kind of Air Force officer.

"It doesn't matter. You were headed in the right direction. The chateau is only another kilometre or so."

Michael summoned up his memories of the maps he'd studied - a private estate not too far from Mont LozŠre -and guessed, "The chateau de Grieu, madame? Then I am near AlŠs."

"You're closer to Florac."

"I thank you again, madame." Michael started to shoo the dogs away, and settled his pack more securely on his shoulders.

"Is it against regulation to accept any assistance from civilians? I would have supposed that your first priority would be to inform your commander of your safety."

"I intend to do so."

"There are no telephones closer than Florac, unless you come to the chateau. I cannot tempt you with lunch while you wait for transport?"

So she didn't realize he was carrying a cellphone. Actual paratroopers wouldn't. And she had mentioned lunch. Michael would have eaten with the devil himself at this point. "I confess to a certain weakness."

"We picked up your trail three or four kilometres back, where you came down the Col du Pasteur. From the stride, you are obviously not hurt."

"No, madame." Then Michael remembered his manners. It had been a while since he'd had to operate at this level of formality in French. It reminded him briefly but painfully of living with Elena and Adam, being polite at school meetings.

"Allow me to present myself. Monsieur le Capitaine Michel Desrochers." A reasonable enough surname in French, and the first one to spring to mind, given the situation. Forˆt would have been too obviously fake, and Samuelle was too risky to use in France. It was a small country, and by her clothes she had money. She could easily know someone who knew someone who knew Elena.

"Eloise de Grieu."

"I am enchanted to make your acquaintance, madame la baronne," giving her the title she had omitted. It had been a note on his briefing maps, the de Grieu family retained both their title and a considerable expanse of private land around the chateau. She nodded in acceptance of it.

"For such a short distance, Abelard can carry two riders." She reached down her left arm and grasped his at the elbow to help him swing up. Michael found her surprisingly strong. He also banged his leg against a rifle in a sling on the right-hand side of the saddle which he hadn't been able to see before. So she was armed, but she had made no attempt to use it so far. Perhaps she hunted, perhaps she carried it to signal other searchers. However he explained it to himself, it bothered him.

Michael was by no means convinced Eloise was harmless, but he needed food and transport. The chateau was his logical destination. It seemed the Section had not been able, or had chosen not to bother, to cover up a plane crash -not surprising, since hundreds of people would have been able to hear and see it in a popular national park. This mission wasn't worth the trouble of a formal extraction. Team members would be expected to call in as they were able to; Michael assumed the local military at least was co-operating.

Both he and Madame de Grieu behaved themselves on the ride back to the chateau. He balanced himself on Abelard's hindquarters without presuming to lean against Eloise or slip an arm around her waist. Nikita would have been amazed to disbelief. Madame la baronne was younger than him and not even unattractive. Eloise for her part refrained from encouraging Abelard beyond a placid walk. Michael had only been on a horse once or twice before, and she seemed to pick up on his inexperience. She herself rode as though she were part of the horse, hardly seeming to use her reins, just subtle shifts of her weight that Michael could feel rather than see. She talked more to the dogs than to him during their ride, calling them back from explorations of other trails and keeping them from running too far ahead.

********

The black van parked around the corner from the police station in AlŠs, and two armed officers came out to escort Lasalle and the plain-clothes man into the building. The CRS officer stayed in the van. Lasalle kept himself loose, relaxed, looking for the first break, the first mistake. Inside the station he was escorted into an interrogation room. A man in army uniform stubbed out the last of a series of cigarettes, to judge by the heaping ash tray, and turned around to face them as Lasalle came in. He was grey-haired, with a hooked nose like a falcon's beak; his uniform bore the shield insignia of the 44th infantry, and the gold braid of an officer. The harsh smell of Gauloises hung in the air.

"Monsieur le colonel, " said the plain-clothes man, and saluted. Lasalle's tongue felt like wood in his mouth. He was looking at his former commander from DGSE, and he couldn't think of anything to say.

"You'll never go back to the Section, Lasalle." The colonel paused before speaking the name, with a certain ironic emphasis.

"And NŒmes?" The immediate and burning issue for Lasalle.

"The site is cleared."

Lasalle let out his breath. It was all over now.

***********

"Chateau" in France covers a wide variety of dwellings, from good-sized country houses to the fairy-tale magnificence of Chenonceau. The ancestral home of the Grieu family was not ostentatious, but it had certainly been in existence since the fifteenth century, to judge by the pointed turrets and the remains of a drawbridge entrance. The gate itself was gone, but the archway itself remained, wide enough for cars. There were two vehicles parked near what looked like stables, a Renault sedan and a Volkswagen van. Eloise called for Antoine, who proved to be a tall, bulky man in his late fifties, with the broad, flat face and massive nose of Depardieu. The dogs ran over to him eagerly, snuffling at his pockets with the confidence of experience. His voice was rough, but his hands were gentle as he patted a head here, pulled an ear through his fingers there. Michael slid off the horse, intending to give Eloise a hand, but she had already dismounted, and held the reins out to Antoine.

Antoine paid no attention to Michael's unconventional attire, or even to his polite "bonjour." He took Abelard's reins, and said in a gruff voice with a Provencal accent, "Madame, there was a phone call. Th‚rŠse took a message." Then he went back towards the stables, calling the dogs to follow.

"We live very simply here, monsieur Desrochers. I hope you will not mind."

"It cannot be simpler than where we met."

"True enough. Please come in." Eloise left her riding helmet, gloves and crop on a marble-topped table in the entry, and looked critically at her hair in the mirror hanging above it. Both pieces of furniture looked as if they had been in place since they had been delivered by their makers two or three hundred years before. There were fresh roses on the table, and a silver tray with keys on it. Michael made a mental note of which bunch had the Renault key. He needed to get away from here once he'd called in and set up a rendez-vous.

Life might be simple here , but it was hardly impoverished. Michael knew it from Eloise's tailored clothes, the spotless rooms with their antique furniture and carefully arranged flowers, the carelessness with which expensive knickknacks were being used. There were Lalique vases in the salon, a portrait of a lady over the mantel which might easily be a Fragonard, a number of silver-framed photographs scattered along the back of a cherrywood desk. Lunch would undoubtedly be excellent.

"The telephone is here. If you would like to wash before lunch, it is behind you, under the stairs. If you will excuse me while I change?" She left him in the salon, and he heard her boots on the staircase. While Eloise's manners were perfect, they were certainly somewhat stiff. Michael was not used to being around a woman who in no way indicated that she might find him attractive. Eloise was treating him as though he were old enough to be her father, and pot-bellied on top of it. Why? He wasn't her type? She didn't wear a wedding ring , and hadn't recently -he'd looked when she took her gloves off, and there was no white mark. If there were a Monsieur le baron, it could only be her father or her brother, unless she was a widow.

This speculation was pointless. Michael sat at the desk, facing the door, and took out his cellphone. He'd have to keep it short and quiet or he'd blow his cover as a French officer. If only Birkhoff spoke French.

"It's Michael."

Birkhoff's voice showed relief. "You're all right?"

"Fine. My team?"

"No one else has called in. Local reports say no survivors in the plane wreckage, two bodies found in the national park. What happened?"

"The plane was hit by lightning. There is a search going on here. Are we monitoring that?"

"We've got Alain in Toulouse fielding calls. He'll arrange for pickup." Birkhoff gave him the number. "It's patched through the air force base there, for the benefit of the locals."

"What about the mission?"

"That's what puzzled us. French CRS reported it was a success. They did aerial reconnaissance this morning. So you made the site before the plane went down? The ground team never heard from you - but they saw the blast from their retreat point. So why didn't you call for pickup?"

Michael prevented himself from blurting out "What?" and thought hard. Two bodies -Birkhoff must be assuming they were of the flight crew. But how could the site be cleared? Had some of the team landed close enough to carry on? No, because then they would have called in. Had the target been warned, and torched the site themselves? He'd have to go himself and check. If only he could get the Renault to himself for a couple of hours. Normally, that would have been easy to arrange -a little something in the wine, Eloise would simply sleep longer afterwards, and wake up to find a polite farewell note from Captain Desrochers. But if she couldn't be tempted into bed, then he'd have to risk Antoine or one of the other staff finding her too soon and raising the alarm. Every gendarme between here and AlŠs would know her license number by heart. Damn, damn, damn, he thought.

"Someone must have got through. I'm not secure here -civilians. Later." He zipped the phone back into its pocket. The clatter of china in the next room warned him not to risk looking through the desk. The photographs on it ranged from infants to a hawk-faced man in army uniform receiving a medal from de Gaulle.

He decided to keep playing his character rather than grabbing the Renault key and making a run for it, and went back into the entry looking for "under the stairs". There he found a small washroom neatly built into the panelling. Although the plumbing was pre -World War I, the water was hot. He stripped to the waist and washed as thoroughly as he could, scrubbing away dirt, sweat, and an amazing amount of pine resin. The soap smelled like rosemary, and it tempted him to rummage through the cabinet. There was a razor, and Michael didn't think twice about using it. He had to look like an officer, didn't he? He slicked his hair back to hide the non-regulation length - special forces tended not to be spit-and-polish dressers in any case. He could keep the thigh holster and the knife on his belt without raising questions; the detonators themselves were in his pack along with a couple of bricks of plastique. He'd meant to leave them all on board, but there hadn't been time. They still might come in useful.

Eloise obviously wasn't a slave to fashion. He was tucking in his turtleneck when he heard footsteps on the stairs above him. When he came out, she had changed her attitude as well as her clothes. She actually smiled at him.

"Find everything you needed?"

"I seem to do nothing but thank you, madame." Michael gave her his best charming smile, in recognition of the transformation. Instead of the stiff, buttoned-up woman with her hair in a tight knot, Eloise was now relaxed and apparently prepared to be friendly. Her hair was loose over her shoulders, and she had changed into a pullover and long skirt in jade-green. The vivid colour surprised Michael, but he decided it suited her, made her eyes look truly green and her hair blonder. He also noticed a thin chain around her neck, the end of which was inside her sweater. A cross, or a St. Christophe?

"Since I know you've had no breakfast, I took the liberty of ordering a considerable lunch. Would you like wine to begin, and coffee afterwards, or just coffee?"

What Michael really wanted was his own personal pot of coffee, with a companion jug of hot frothed milk. But it would hardly be in character to refuse wine. "Whatever you would choose, madame."

She led him into the room next to the salon, a formal salle a manger with tall windows framed in faded old brocade opening onto a terrace. Eighteenth-century improvements to the original house, the builders of which would never have sacrificed security for a view and could not imagine being able to buy so much glass. But the two places were set together casually at one end of the oval table, butter-yellow napkins in silver rings, a wineglass and a water glass each, but also Limoges soup plates and thin old sterling silver.

"I thought we would begin with something hot. Thank you, Therese."

A sturdy, sour-faced woman in the same throat-to-calf drab black dress Michael remembered from his childhood in Marseilles brought them potage bonne-femme to start, steaming and thick, with a spoonful of creme fraiche swirled through it and fresh tarragon snipped over the top. Therese brought fresh bread with this as well, and Michael resisted the temptation to wipe out his plate with the crust as his mother used to let him. Eloise poured them glasses of cool pale-amber wine, a local white called Chateau de Cabriac. Michael drank enough of the wine to be polite, and filled his waterglass. Then Therese brought in a quiche studded with wild mushrooms and precious shreds of black truffle, and haricots verts with almonds. Michael could not remember a better meal, nor one to which he brought more appetite. He was pleased to see that Eloise ate as well, rather than picking at things and making him feel like a glutton. Finally there were pears and apples and a nice bit of local cheese. Michael declined a glass of sweet Muscat in favour of the coffee he had been waiting eight hours for, and savoured every mouthful.

"Madame, you have truly saved my life. I regret that I cannot repay you suitably."

"We do not often see guests here - Therese is pleased to have the opportunity to show her skill. You must not imagine that I enjoy truffles every day. Therese would never allow me to be so extravagant."

That told Michael more - Eloise was not wealthy then, just upper middle-class, able to keep this house going by the income from the estate, but probably no servants beyond Antoine and Therese, no appartement in Paris. But there was something off-key about Eloise, as though she were playing lady of the manor for his benefit. This elaborate formal French, this careful politeness. She didn't come across as though she were hiding anything, exactly, but he could sense when someone else was acting.

"Now then," she put down her coffee cup. "Do you need to get to Nimes or Montpellier or Toulouse?"

"Nimes. Any of my team who are found injured are being taken to hospital there. But I should not take up any more of your time."

"Nonsense. I am happy to have an excuse to go into the city. Nimes is only half an hour from Ales. Shall I drop you at the hospital then?"

"That would be very kind of you." This time he was quick enough to help her with her chair. He caught only the faintest scent from her, a mere breath of something floral. As he followed her out of the dining room he let himself relax a little. From the hospital he could easily steal a car, check out the target site himself, and then report to Alain in Toulouse before evening. Whatever was going on at the chateau de Grieu had nothing to do with him. It could be as simple as the boyfriend upstairs.

He slung his pack onto one shoulder and followed her into the entry. There he caught sight of himself in the mirror. He couldn't wander around Nimes in mission gear with a thigh holster - civilian police would pick him up on sight. But he'd looked pretty cold and damp when Eloise had found him. It was worth asking.

"If I might borrow a coat?"

She opened a different door set into the panelling, which proved to be a cupboard, stepped inside for a moment, and returned with a loden-green car coat.

"Don't worry about returning it."

Michael shrugged it on - not a bad fit, a little loose, a little long in the arms.

"Permit me." He helped her into an attractive black leather wrap. She collected the Renault keys from the table top, and her slim black handbag from the drawer below.

"Therese!"

The dour woman came out from the corridor leading to the dining room, carrying a tray of dirty dishes.

"I'll be back by this evening, if anyone calls."

"Oui, madame." Therese, like Antoine, never acknowledged Michael's existence.

***********

Eloise drove well. The Renault was obviously hers, she didn't need to adjust the seat or the mirrors. Not a brand-new model, but well-kept. She didn't smoke as far as Michael could tell, no breath of tobacco on her. But someone did - there was a lighter in one of the cup holders, and the car smelt faintly of smoke. Was there a monsieur le baron de Grieu after all, or did the widow amuse herself elsewhere? Michael wondered whose coat he was wearing.

For the first thirty kilometres or so, the road snaked between steep cliffs and and deep gorges along the southern edges of the Cevennes National Park, without so much as a village until they reached La Grand'Combe, a few kilometres north of Ales. Not a road to undertake after dark, though Eloise seemed confident about it.

"You don't mind heights?" she asked him, as the car appeared to hold on by its toenails around a particularly nasty corner. Michael had his eyes closed, not out of fear, although from the passenger seat he could look straight down the mountainside to a stream weaving through a tangle of sharp-edged boulders. He was focussed on resisting the urge to make Eloise stop the car and allow him to drive, at gunpoint if necessary. "Modestine is very sure-footed."

She had named her car. For the first time Michael saw a point of resemblance between Eloise and Nikita. His familiarity with English literature was too slight to clarify her reference to one of the most famous books about the Cevennes, Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey, namely Modestine.

They were held up briefly by a rockfall that narrowed the road to one lane at a time. Despite the unanswered questions in his mind, Michael decided to wait until conversation wouldn't distract Eloise. However, as they neared Ales and the road smoothed out, Eloise switched on the radio.

"The news. You don't mind?"

"Not at all."

The broadcast was from Nimes, and led with the story about the mysterious fire just north of the city. A deserted warehouse had exploded and burned to the ground, but the fire had been contained. No casualties, but the police were searching the wreckage. The source of the explosion was unknown, as there were no gas lines in the vicinity. It was suspected that the warehouse had sheltered an illicit methamphetamine lab, with its notoriously unstable chemicals.

Michael had no attention to waste on the rest of the news, let alone Eloise's love life. An explosion, but no traces of casualties - and Section had not sent housekeeping that Michael knew of. The site must have been evacuated - didn't that have to mean they had been warned, somehow? How was he going to explain himself to Operations? Had any of his team survived? Now he wanted Eloise to drive faster - he couldn't wait to get to Nimes, call in, find out what was going on. He was relieved when she left the radio on.

Ales, for all its ancient importance, is not a big city, less that 50,000 people. Even so, if he had been less occupied by his own thoughts, Michael might have realized she was taking the scenic route. He noticed that they were passing through the centre of town, he noticed a theatre with the striking name of Le Cratere, and then he saw the street sign - Pablo Neruda Square. Why a small, historically Protestant French town had chosen the name of a Chilean poet, Michael didn't even wonder. All thought of missions and intell leaks were drowned for the moment in a sudden rush of poetry.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.....
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too....
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky....
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her....
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me....
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

[Tonight I can write, by Pablo Neruda, translated by W. S. Merwin]

Michael came back into alertness in time to notice that Eloise was now driving past the industrial park - the French government attempting to develop regional economies by moving R&D out of the big cities. They had to stop to allow a plain dark-blue van to negotiate the roundabout turn into the park on their left. Michael looked it over - sixty hectares or so, a number of new buildings from standard box-shapes to a geodesic dome, a cluster of radio-telephone transmission towers, the smooth grass and geometrical landscaping beloved by the French. Not a bad place to put a covert facility, Michael thought, trained to think of everything in terms of operational efficiency, everyone would expect trucks coming in and out at odd hours, tight security, staff turnover, and only an hour from the Mediterranean.

"It's only thirty or forty kilometres to Nimes now. We'll be there in half an hour unless traffic is bad."

She took the most direct route south, through Vezenobres and along the Gard River. They were driving against rush hour, and Eloise was as good as her prediction. Thirty minutes later she was parking at the main entrance to the hospital.

"I hope you find your team is all right."

"I cannot expect to. Au revoir, madame. Your jacket."

"Keep it. You may have to wait, and hospitals are always cold. Goodbye, Captain Desrochers."

**************

Michael watched Modestine disappear into traffic before he went into the hospital and through to the Emergency entrance. Only then did he call in.

"Michael, where have you been? I've been trying to reach you for more than two hours."

"Civilian transport. It wasn't safe to talk. What do we know now?"

As he talked, Michael surveyed the staff parking lot for a likely vehicle. It was nearly four o'clock, so most of these people would be on shift till eleven, more than enough time to get to the site.

"Search and rescue has found three of our people alive."

"Everyone but?"

"Lasalle."

Michael was a little surprised. Lasalle was the only member of the team with more jumps than himself. But the terrain was unforgiving - if he'd been blown down into one of those rocky valleys or against a cliff, skill didn't matter very much. It was actually good work by Search and Rescue to find six out of seven, alive or dead, in less than twenty-four hours.

"Are we bringing them in?"

"It's all set up. They're being helicoptered out from Mende tonight. That's why I've been trying to get a hold of you."

"I'll rendez-vous with them." Michael thought out how to get back to Mende. Not straight north, the way he'd come, but west through Quissac and Vigan to the autoroute A75, then north through Millau and into Mende from the west on RN 88. Much better roads, and no chance of being recognized. "One of ours?"

"At the mountain rescue station. They have a helipad for medivac."

Michael frowned. Here was the CRS again. France runs its search and rescue through one of their domestic security agencies. Officially the CRS limited their activities to mountain and sea rescue, highway patrol and security for government officials.

But Michael also remembered them as brutal opponents in his student activist days, when they were popularly compared with the SS for their use of water cannons, tear gas and batons. It was always a delicate balancing act, carrying out Section missions on French territory. The Surete Nationale and the Secretariat General de la Defence Nationale loathed foreign intelligence.activity and spent as much time tracking and interfering with American and Israeli activities, in particular, as they did on their own problems of domestic terrorism and counter-intelligence. Michael knew the original mission had not been cleared with French national security or national defense - that's why it had been such a small team and an air drop instead of the van. They had been intended to get in and out without anyone noticing. Michael was not happy about appearing in need of their assistance. But it told him that Operations wasn't overly concerned about keeping the mission secret from the French, or perhaps the plane crash had allowed Section to claim a foreign destination. That had to be it. Operations had told them the team was headed for North Africa or Egypt. Then he could argue that if it was more cost-effective to use someone else's search and rescue, why not, instead of diverting Section resources from more important tasks. .

"Monitor, avoid contact." Michael didn't care if Birkhoff tracked him to the target site - Section would expect that kind of thoroughness.. But if there were still gendarmes on the scene, Michael didn't want to risk their picking up transmissions, even encrypted ones. The Surete had excellent broadcast surveillance technology, and they had to be suspicious of this explosion.

With his choice of cars, Michael picked a maroon Peugeot sedan, common enough but powerful. A quick search provided him with the spare key from the wheelwell . It had nearly a full tank of gas, another key element, since Michael had no means of buying any and it left such a trail for the authorities if you robbed gas stations. He hadn't been to Nimes in several years, so he was going by what he remembered of the briefing maps. Fortunately, it was a little late in the year for crowds of tourists heading for the Roman arena or the Maison carree. He kept his patience in heavy commuter traffic out of town, and turned off the main route towards the rail line once he had cleared city limits.

The site was still marked off with orange tape - printed with Attention! Defense d'entrer! over and over, but Michael didn't see any police cars around. He parked his Peugeot out of sight from the road, and slipped under the tape. The site had certainly burned out completely - there was very little left but twisted and torn metal, from strips of roofing to crumpled beams, and some charred -looking slabs of concrete. The explosion had been from the inside out, to judge from the way the roof beams were bent outwards, not from a bomb being dropped on the building. But Michael didn't see any evidence of lab equipment - no glass, but Pyrex should have survived in some form, no source of propane for bunsen burners, nothing that suggested benches or cabinets. Moreover, Michael saw a good deal of wreckage that could only be electronics, including crumpled lengths of radio antenna and the remains of a satellite dish.

Over the stink of wet ashes, Michael began to smell a rat. A large, silver-haired rat. At first he had grave doubts of the wisdom of joining that helicopter airlift from Mende, since another accident seemed likely. But that seemed too reckless, even for Operations - two air crashes in as many days over the same area of France. CRS officers would know the helicopter had been all right when it took off, and they would be able to assure an investigation that sabotage was out of the question.

And there would be an investigation, Michael could promise them that. If he died unexpectedly, he had already alerted his "resources" outside the Section to be sceptical. Everyone on Oversight knew that Michael was Operations' logical replacement; anything happening to him would have to stand up to the closest scrutiny. Perhaps this was the only thing Michael had gained from fifteen years of loyalty to the Section, the confidence that he could not be cancelled out of hand anymore.

He made his way back to the cached Peugeot, and invested another fifteen minutes investigating this convenient access road. He found no more that he might have expected, signs of at least one heavy vehicle, the footprints of boots, marred but not wiped out by the previous night's rain. The tire ruts were too far out of the way for fire or police, too much rain still puddled in them to have been made that day rather than the night before, but too cleanly cut to be old. However, there was nothing to tell him who had made them. It might have been a shadow team from Section. The profile had put the retrieval team a kilometre away, out of a direct line of sight. It could even have been CRS for that matter, doing surveillance. He couldn't be sure of anything except that this hadn't been any kind of working chemical lab. It looked more like somebody's listening station, and Michael wondered if it had been one of DGSE's own . Section taking out an installation of a friendly power - just the sort of crazy stunt Operations might pull. Nothing to be gained by staying here - he hadn't seen any watchers, but that was no guarantee. He went back to the Peugeot, and turned it around, heading for the A9, the western route out of Nimes .

************

If Michael had risked driving back through Ales, he might have caught a glimpse of Eloise's dark-green Renault as it pulled into the Parc Industriel Scientifique et Technique outside the city, and then parked behind the blue van. She went into the square building next to the transmission towers by a door marked:

Institut EERIE
Atelier pour recherches en telecommunication.

Thus far, everything was legitimate. The Institut EERIE - Enseignement, Etudes et Recherches en Informatique et Electronique - really exists in Ales, for training electronic and computer science engineers. But inside she met the hawk-faced colonel from DGSE. He embraced her by the shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks.

"We have succeeded, ma fille."

She leaned against him briefly, and then straightened up.

"Surveillance report?"

"He went to the site, and he's heading north on A75 towards Millau. We'll get confirmation of departure from Mende."

She nodded, and then went past him to Lasalle, who was leaning against a table. Unlike Michael, Lasalle had had no opportunities to shave, and the meal he had been given would not compare to Therese's cooking. However, he had been allowed as much coffee as he liked after his first interview with the colonel, and even cigarettes, so that he faced Eloise de Grieu with more confidence than he had felt on seeing his old commander.

"Three years I've waited for this." She was doing her best to control her voice, but some emotion vibrated in it - anger or relief or even amusement. "And you haven't even shaved. You look like a bum!"

***********

Night was falling as Michael drove north, and he was grateful for the borrowed jacket. It kept his body warm despite the open window letting the cold air blow on his face. He hadn't slept more than a couple of hours the night before, and these roads were unfamiliar.

Although Mende is the largest town in Lozere, it has only a few thousand year-round inhabitants. Michael had little difficulty finding the CRS station. He was half-an-hour ahead of the rendez-vous, but the helicopter was already on the pad. Michael drove past, looking for a convenient place to abandon the stolen Peugeot. Since he hadn't taken his gloves off at any time, he didn't have to bother wiping the steering wheel or the door handles. But he did take the opportunity to switch back from tranquilizer darts to live ammunition. He would never like or trust the CRS, and if the explosion at the listening post hadn't been set by Section then CRS was a likely alternative. He wouldn't walk into their hands with anything less than a full clip.

However, the CRS was playing friends. He was offered his choice of coffee or brandy, and the opportunity to see his team. Michael accepted black coffee. They were keeping the medical room particularly warm, and Michael slipped off his jacket when he went in. Reivers and Trask were awake, but not exactly mobile.

"Nothing much," Reivers told him. "One ankle broken and the tendons pulled. I've been sitting around since breakfast."

"They found me later," Trask went on. "I got caught up in a tree. I cut myself loose, but I fell badly. I separated the shoulder when the lines snagged, and banged up my knee falling."

Michael caught the subtext - they were assuring him the injuries hadn't been due to incompetence and wouldn't be permanent. Scaife, on the other hand, wasn't telling him anything. He lay on a stretcher, breathing through his mouth, his head encased in bandages.

"Concussion, he's been in and out." Neither Reivers nor Trask would meet Michael's eyes. They figured this were just housekeeping, bringing the body back for disposal. They might even be right, it depended on Operations' mood, Michael thought. Or it could be evidence that his team had actually been made up of abeyance ops, despite what the profiles had said.

But then helicopter started to warm up. . Michael looked around for the loden coat, then decided to leave it in the CRS station before he followed the stretchers on board. If there was anything to identify it as belonging to the de Grieu's then CRS would send it back. He didn't want any questions from Madeline about where he'd borrowed it until he'd had a chance to do his own research on Eloise de Grieu.

The two bodies found had been flight team, as Michael had guessed. CRS had kindly packed them in body bags in the back of the helicopter. No great surprise, since most pilots didn't keep up their jump practice. But Lasalle should have had the best chance of survival. Michael kept going over the mission profile in his mind. Had it all been staged as a failure, to discredit him with Oversight? Had the target site been blown up by its own inhabitants, somehow tipped off to the raid? Or had it been boobytrapped, himself or Lasalle or all of them the intended victims? At this point, Lasalle might be dead, or escaped, or safely back inside another part of Section, mission accomplished. Operations' reaction would tell him more. But the flight from Mende was almost over.

"Well done, Michael, under the circumstances." Operations was waiting for them in Access, and so were medical personnel. Michael noticed that all three stretchers went down the hall to MedLab.

But Operations' limited praise was not what Michael had expected, and not in the least reassuring.

"Thank you. The search for Lasalle?"

"CRS is going on with it. They'll keep us informed. I expect they'll find a body eventually. We can't afford to waste a lot of time on it."

Ops' indifference inclined Michael to believe that Lasalle had been a plant. Operations would only be this blase if he actually knew where Lasalle was.

"The profile should be reviewed, see if this could have been avoided."

"I look forward to your report." But Operations seemed to have his mind elsewhere.

Michael walked across Comm towards his office, eyes focussed straight ahead. They wouldn't catch him looking for Nikita.

***********

Once he had changed, and locked his office door behind him, Michael started with research on the de Grieu family. He doubted there would be anything new or reliable in the mission profiles themselves, and put them to one side. The first thing he discovered, in the public domain records, was that there was no madame la baronne de Grieu, not since 1975 when she had died of cancer. There was a Colonel le baron Maurice de Grieu, aged 62, officially with the 44th infantry, Orleans. Michael didn't need Section files to tell him that this meant the Colonel was with Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, France's MI - 5, only to specify that his post was as assistant director in charge of the training facility at Cercottes. There had been a daughter, who died in childhood of meningitis, and a son, Roger, formerly in the 11th Regiment parachutiste de choc, the shock troops of DGSE in the eighties and early nineties. He had been reported killed in a training accident in '95 at Cercottes, not long after the dissolution of the parachute regiment into three training camps. Michael recognized the photo of Roger de Grieu's widow, Marie-Heloise, and found out that she worked in the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of national security, including the CRS. Roger de Grieu, in the only photo Michael could find, had a nose which had been allowed to heal without being set properly. When he mapped the photo over one of Lasalle, with his thick mustache and straight nose, there was a strong resemblance, but the program only gave him a 66% likelihood of identity, no higher than that of a family relationship. If he had more or better photos of Roger de Grieu, he might have done better, but the files had been stripped after his death.

Section files told him that Lasalle, like Roger, had been in the 11th RPC. According to the records Michael was authorized to access, Lasalle had been soft-recruited in 97, after a DGSE listening post in central Africa had been closed by government cutbacks, a good fit of expertise and attitude with Section's needs after their losses to Red Cell. Lasalle had gone through an accelerated training in view of past experience, and had been posted to Tangier until the viral outbreak inside Section One last year had brought him up to Paris.

Michael knew there had to be more to Lasalle. He weighed whether the risk of breaking into Level Two files was worth it. He'd built up a back door into the most highly classified material, slowly and carefully, during the times he had been acting head of Section. Every time he used it, he increased the chances of it being found. But if they were trying to eliminate him anyway ---- Madeline's personal files, they should tell him whether there was anything being concealed about Lasalle . He could get in and out quickly, and then judge whether he should dig deeper.

Madeline's files told him enough. The link to the de Grieu family didn't show up, but the one to DGSE was front and centre. The site in Nimes had been a DGSE listening post, and Operations believed it was tracking and decrypting communications between Section substations in North Africa. He couldn't prove it, he wasn't even sure that Lasalle had been involved, and complaining to Oversight would make him look weak. Even more startling to Michael was the discovery that Lasalle had actually been seconded, not recruited, and DGSE had been asking for him back for the last year. Instead, Section One had brought him up from Tangier to main station. Madeline's file was carefully vague about the lack of concrete evidence against Lasalle or the Nimes listening post. There was no specific operation gone wrong, no source eliminated due to an information leak, just a chronic "bad feeling" that DGSE was up to no good. The file entry concluded, "Seek opportunity to eliminate on active duty." Whether or not Operations was being paranoid about the station in Nimes, Madeline wasn't about to let a potential security risk like Lasalle walk out and report to DGSE. There were too many dangers in what he might have seen or overheard in his months at One. Michael erased his search results and sat back in his chair.

So the op had been set up primarily to eliminate Lasalle as well as to take out a DGSE site Operations suspected of spying on them. Michael going along would make sure Lasalle couldn't tip anyone off or screw up the mission, because Michael would kill him, end of problem with DGSE. Best case scenario, to Operations' mind, was if the site were well defended, then Michael himself might have been killed too. But Lasalle had outmaneuvered them somehow - he must have warned the listening post. They had evacuated and then demolished it - with CRS backup to make sure there was no interference. He needed to find out how Lasalle had managed that. And he needed to decide whether to tell Operations about the potential link between Lasalle and Colonel de Grieu. Did they already know? Is that what Operations had meant by "they'll find a body eventually"?

Moreover, Michael didn't feel like telling anyone he'd caught a ride into Nimes with the woman he believed was Lasalle's wife. He should have been more suspicious at the time - he'd been too distracted, first by hunger and then by the news of the explosion. At least Michael understood why Eloise hadn't had any attention to spare for him - she'd been out in the woods hoping to find her husband. Presumbly Antoine or Therese had told her he'd been retrieved before she came downstairs all smiling for lunch. The someone who was going to call. Michael wondered if he had been wearing Lasalle's old coat, and remembered how he had thought it prudent to leave the coat at the CRS station in Mende.

Never mind that. He needed to figure out how Lasalle had managed to communicate with DGSE. There had been something about cell phones before the mission left. Michael tried to remember despite the rising exhaustion. He'd had a strenuous forty-eight hours since his last night in a bed. But he was interrupted by the buzz of the intercom.

"Yes."

Madeline's voice came through. "You're still here, Michael."

Michael interpreted this as a criticism rather than as a question, and didn't reply.

"Bring me your preliminary report and then get some sleep."

So Madeline was cutting his analysis short. Concerned about what he might discover, perhaps? Michael considered what to include. Not Lasalle's secondment, which was highly classified, not the potential link between Lasalle and Roger de Grieu, which only made sense if there had been a secondment rather than a recruitment. Otherwise, why was Heloise de Grieu directly involved? Just the minimum, then, leaving Lasalle's disappearance a question to be answered. He typed a few quick paragraphs, and shut down his system before leaving his office. The link between Lasalle and de Grieu now existed solely in his head.

"Did you find anything useful?"

Michael considered whether this was a loaded question from Madeline.

"Not really. The weather pattern shifted after we were in the air. The storm was projected to move further east than it did. Couldn't have been anticipated."

"Anything else?"

Madeline couldn't expect him to ignore what he'd seen at the target site. "Intel must have been corrupt. It wasn't a chemical lab." He stopped.

But Madeline was as good as this game as he was. "Go on."

"It appeared to be some kind of scanning post - remains of antennae and a satellite dish."

"We'll go back to our sources in North Africa. If they've tried to use us to get rid of government surveillance, then we'll have to eliminate them as unreliable."

Michael admired Madeline's quickness. A good explanation, if they could substantiate it with Oversight, except that it left out who was responsible for the explosion.

"No one on my team reached the target that night."

"Not even Lasalle?"

It was barely conceivable - if he had landed safely near a populated area, stolen a vehicle, and driven like hell over those tortuous mountain roads. "Possibly. Why hasn't he checked in?"

"It could be that he was eliminated by resistance on site, after he'd set the charges. If it was a DGSE listening post, they'll try to identify the body. We'll keep an eye on them."

"Makes us look bad, taking out one of their sites."

"Only if they can establish it was our responsibility. So far they haven't challenged us. They appear to have lost equipment rather than personnel. We'll deal with our intel source first. I've got Birkoff working on that already. If we have to, we'll tell DGSE their own security was faulty, the location obviously insecure. They'll focus on who in Algiers could have betrayed their location."

Michael realized this was the official explanation, which he had better go along with. Madeline didn't want any awkward inquiries into how Lasalle might have communicated directly with DGSE about Nimes, which would only tend to suggest that Section had known from the beginning whose site they were targeting. If Section tried to make an issue of Lasalle warning them, DGSE would counter with a claim that Section had deliberately refused to honour the secondment and targeted a known DGSE position. Ugly, endless wrangling at the Oversight level, which would accomplish nothing. Madeline never wasted time fighting lost battles; she went directly to minimizing damage.

"Lasalle has already been presumed dead?"

"His codes were deactivated this morning, just in case. What this shows is how urgently we need to re-assess our North Africa operation, after they sent on this kind of bad intel. We can't allow anyone to think they can manipulate Section to their own advantage."

Except you and Operations, Michael thought.

Madeline was looking over the report on his pad. "Do you cover how you got to Nimes?'

"A civilian. Everyone knew about the plane crash." Birkoff had told him this much -with a public search unavoidable, they had circulated a cover story of the flight originating at the air force base in Toulouse. "Told her the injured were being taken to Nimes, so she drove me there."

"I see." Michael saw the little smile, and congratulated himself. This was a useful assumption on Madeline's part, cutting short further questions. He expected Madeline to tell Nikita about the mission, but even if Nikita believed he had slept with someone, it could hardly do more damage to their relationship than had already been done. It might even spark a little jealousy.

"Goodnight, then, Michael." He couldn't even detect any irony in her tone. She might well believe sincerely that he was better off without any emotional distractions.

"Goodnight." There was no reason to stay in Section, and God knew he was tired.

So heads would roll, Michael thought as he walked towards the elevators. but not inside Section One itself. Whatever explanation Madeline put forward, the Section would be able to look for and close up any leaks Lasalle might have left behind. They were more likely to find them in Tangier than here. His own record was clear, and while his death might have been wished for, it hadn't been the point of this mission. So he could go home and sleep with no more than the usual wariness. He never slept as well alone, but it did keep him on his guard. Still, it pleased him to think that Madeline and Operations had been caught in the wrong and out-maneuvered. DGSE had got their man out of Section alive, and had been able to strip and destroy their own listening post instead of losing data and personnel.

*************

Forty-eight hours after landing on Mont Lozere, the first desperate urgency of Roger de Grieu's reunion with his wife had cooled off a little. For the first time they had managed to dress and come downstairs for a meal. Not that Therese begrudged taking up trays to the bedroom. Nothing was too good for Roger. Full of wine and lunch, he stretched out on the sofa, his head in Heloise's lap.

"Am I different?"

"I miss your nose." She traced the smoothed-out line from bridge to tip. The mustache had gone with his first hot shower. "It gave you character."

"Don't you want to know anything? All the other women?" His voice was light, but his eyes couldn't meet hers. She knew he'd tell her, he'd want to tell her the worst. She shook her head and put her finger on his lips.

"I agree with your father - it's safer for me to know nothing. If you need to talk about things, you can with him." The wedding ring was back on her finger - instead of hanging on a chain around her neck with his as it had been for the last four years. "Let's pretend it never happened. And no more secret agent for you!"

"I know, it's a desk job, taking over the station in Ales. Driving to work every day, leaving you with the babies." It was mock regret in his voice, and Heloise knew it. She bent over him for a long kiss. However eagerly Roger was looking forward to a placid future, he did have one urgent question about the past. "So, what did you think of Michael?"

"Your...team leader?" There was a faint twist of mockery in Heloise's tone. Her Roger had never taken kindly to orders. " I didn't really notice him. I just wanted to get him out of here. There you were, safe and sound in Ales, and I couldn't go near you until he was off on his way to Mende. He got to eat your lunch - quiche aux cepes et aux truffes noires. Therese was livid."

"That's all?" Roger didn't grudge him lunch if that had been the only sensory experience Michael had enjoyed in this house.

"It was so hard to keep my mind here, on acting like the lady of the house. But he didn't seem to notice."

Roger froze for a moment, thinking of what would have happened had Michael become suspicious of Heloise. She had never been a field operative, only an analyst. Thank God Michael had other things on his mind these days.

But Heloise was still talking. "I just fed him and drove him to Nimes as quickly as I could."

"How did you get a tracker on him?"

"He asked to borrow a coat. I think he realized people would notice him on the street in Nimes if he didn't cover up the flak vest and the holster. So I put my locator beacon under the epaulette. Your father had insisted I carry one if I was going to take part in the search. Good thing I had it handy." Heloise thought back to that strained afternoon. "One thing, he didn't seem to like my driving much."

Neither did Roger. "He's not suicidal. But he's supposed to be very good-looking, very successful with women."

Heloise stared down at him. "You must be joking. Stiff as a board, and about as much expression as one. The last thing on either of our minds, I'm sure. Though he has much nicer manners than you do. He called me madame la baronne."

Roger was reassured. "In a way, I'm sorry for him. He's their best field op and they treat him like dirt. But I'm glad I'm out of the line of fire. If he ever decides to pay the Section back, then I'm sorry for them."

The end

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