As Coop had said, “There’s no luck in living.”

  It was 1:00 A.M. local time when we landed and pulled into Drewson’s private hangar in Biarritz. On the descent, the Atlantic Ocean’s white breakers were etched across the Grand Plage between Côte des Basques and the Phare de Biarritz, marked by the spinning lighthouse lamp casting strobes of yellow beams across the roiling black sea.

  The steps dropped, and I descended with a backpack slung over one shoulder. I had condensed what equipment I needed into one small ruck, leaving everything else on the plane. Having done my best to check for tracking devices, I was still concerned Drewson had placed trackers somewhere in the gear. If there was such a thing as smart dust, anything was possible these days. While it was most likely that Drewson was tracking me via something he put on Coop’s dog tag, it was Blanc that I needed to elude.

  A man wearing a gray herringbone driver’s cap and a matching overcoat approached from a door, hands stuffed in his pockets. He looked left and right, assessing potential threats, I presumed, and then locked eyes with me. The turbines whined as they wound down. The air was frigid inside the hangar.

  “Monsieur, pour vous,” he said, placing a set of keys in my hand.

  “Merci,” I replied, and walked past him, through the door that he had entered, through a nondescript hallway and into the cold night. A small blue Peugeot 208 was parked in the lot. I quickly used a Spy-Hawk GPS detector to scan the outside and inside of the vehicle. Satisfied there were no overt explosive or tracking devices, other than the actual GPS of the car, I unplugged that device and left the cord hanging by my feet. The car started promptly at the push of a button, and I followed D260 to D810 for a couple kilometers around the airport. I pulled into a Best Western Hotel parking lot and parked the car at the far, unoccupied end. Disabling the dome light, I slipped into the night with my backpack strapped across my shoulders.

  Walking through an adjacent neighborhood, I tugged a ball cap low over my forehead and eased along the quiet streets. These were mostly summer homes owned by wealthy Parisians, like Martha’s Vineyard or the Hamptons in the United States. Very few houses showed any signs of life here in the biting February winds. Few had any lights switched on, and the manicured rows of twenty-foot boxwoods provided me concealment as I hustled along Avenue du Braou past the Olympic training facilities. These neighborhoods, too, had security cameras and sometimes actual guards, or at the very least house sitters.

  Two cars crept toward the town of Anglet, three kilometers to my north, as I swiftly crossed Avenue de Biarritz. One of the cars braked as I continued north toward the Forêt du Pignada. I switched streets so that I was now on a smaller road as the vehicles traveled on the street perpendicular to this one. It wouldn’t surprise me if Phalanx knew that I was in Biarritz looking for Evelyn, either through eavesdropping devices inside Drewson’s headquarters or via their massive surveillance operation connected to every camera in the world, whether it be a security camera or ring doorbell. Phalanx had created a virtual web cast around the globe.

  I was surprised I had made it this far.

  A light buzzing above me had me blending into a densely forested front yard to my left. I knelt next to a large hardwood tree and held my night vision goggles up to my eyes. A tethered drone swept the expansive front yard of the mansion across the street. Assuredly passively connected to Phalanx, the drone’s cameras clicked and whirred as it traveled the forty-meter arc. I waited until it began scanning the side yard to continue my progress toward my destination. Another car approached me from behind, so I cut through the campus of the Lycée Stella Maris. Angling from there across a golf course, I was able to enter the heavily wooded Pignada Forest from the south.

  By now it was nearly 4:00 A.M. Part of the mature forest had acres of charred husks of tree trunks, the victims of a fire no doubt. The southern end of the park, however, was filled with towering hardwoods and untrodden tanglefoot. After navigating through the trails, I found the Pignada Campground. A few of the buildings were dilapidated, but others seemed reasonably fit. Thunder rolled in the distance, and before long, wet slaps of cold rain were hammering my back and face. I slid inside one of the buildings and heard movement. When I shined my flashlight, there were two raccoons seeking shelter, also. They stared at me with their burglars’ eyes and went about their business. Once the rain subsided, I continued my inspection of the summer grounds.

  As expected, the area was totally vacant. I picked up the glint of small metal in the dense tanglefoot. Upon inspection, it was a bicycle of relatively new origin. The tires were warm despite the cold rain. Someone was here, and I was hoping I knew who it was. I walked across a gravel driveway, rain coming down in sheets now, lashing at me as if to warn me to stay away. I stepped onto the stoop of the headquarters building, which seemed to be in decent shape. I picked the lock in the back and stepped inside only to be confronted by a man and a weapon.

  “Monsieur?!”

  “Laurent,” I said, quickly, placing my hand on the long-barreled shotgun he was nervously holding in his hands.

  “Général?” The word came out, gen-eh-ral, with his smooth inflections.

  “Oui,” I said. “Were you followed?”

  “Non,” he said, shaking his head. “Reagan said to meet you here. I took all precautions. But you look … different.”

  He was trembling as I removed the shotgun from his hands.

  “We won’t be needing this,” I said. “And yes, I’ve been trying to be incognito for a bit.”

  “It was all my parents had in the cottage,” he said.

  Their “cottage” was a four-thousand-square-foot beach home overlooking the high sand dunes and Atlantic Ocean in Hossegor, some twenty kilometers north of here.

  “Where is your car?”

  “I rode my bike,” he said. “It is laid flat in some bushes.”

  No one else was here for the moment, then, but I didn’t trust that would last long.

  “Okay, thank you for meeting me,” I said.

  “Please, General, have a seat.”

  We sat in two chairs, and he opened a brown paper bag with a six-pack of Kronenbourg’s 1664 beer, handed one to me, and said, “General, looks like you could use this. Remember we drank these and talked about Normandy and your grandfather Coop?”

  “Stop calling me ‘general,’” I said. “And yes, I remember. That’s why I had Reagan reach out. How’s your business doing?”

  Laurent had a company called Alpes et Océans, with the tagline “Et Tout le Reste.” From the Alps to the Oceans … And Everything in Between. Once, we had shared a six-pack of Kro’s when I had visited their home in Hossegor a few years ago with my two children. Though just twenty-five years old now, Laurent was an old soul. While Brad, Reagan, and their friends had hung out on the beach, Laurent and I sat on the patio overlooking the ocean while we drank beer and discussed his budding tourism start-up business. Conversely, he had asked me about American Special Forces and mentioned that the French DGSE were recruiting him because of his family connections and the fact that he was literate in multiple languages. While he eagerly pursued his business, there was a light in his eyes when he spoke of the spy world. That connection and pursuit of intrigue might have explained why he made the effort to be here tonight.

  He shrugged. “Business is good. Many Americans traveling after COVID. Everyone was cooped up for two years. Now they want to get out and see the world.” He changed the subject and asked, “How are Reagan? Brad?”

  “They’re okay. Their old man was in jail for a year, so it’s been tough on them.”

  He looked through the window at the rain hammering on the glass. It was the most miserable type of weather. Not cold enough to snow but still freezing. He had a small propane burner providing useless heat and some light. His face glowed orange in the pulsating flame.

  “I can’t imagine,” he said. “The things you have done for your country. The world. It’s ludicrous what governments are doing to their people, including mine.”

  I tasted the beer. It was cold and bitter, just how I liked it.

  “Yes, that’s why I need your help, Laurent. I’m reluctant to involve you but cameras are everywhere, and I know you own a tourist business.”

  He nodded and smiled. “That’s correct.” Then he frowned. “Is this concerning Aurelius Blanc and his Phalanx squads? Can I help?”

  I wondered how much he knew about Blanc. Was it coincidence that he latched onto Blanc’s Phalanx teams when I mentioned the cameras? To 99 percent of the population, Blanc was a good Samaritan tech mogul making the world a better place through technology.

  “Perhaps. What do you know about him?”

  “He’s French. Everyone here knows him. Like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg in your country,” he said, mostly dodging my question about Blanc.

  I paused and nodded. “Of course you know who Blanc is. Do you use Phalanx social media apps?”

  “Yes of course. Like Facebook or Amazon, they are everywhere. I have a LanxPro profile for my business. It generates a lot of income for me. They use artificial intelligence to scan people’s phones or listen to their conversations. I pay for the premium service, which provides me leads for people considering vacations in Europe. LanxPro then drops an advertisement for my services in their social media feeds. They can geolocate at high-end resorts and do discrete messaging. Blanc may be bad, but LanxPro is good for business.”

  “That’s the dilemma, isn’t it?”

  “It seems so,” he said.

  “His company is the fulcrum of everything that is happening.”

  “How so?”

  “Think about what you just told me. They are listening to everything we do. Watching every step we take. They have infested many governments and intelligence agencies,” I said.

  “Probably our DGSE, for sure,” he added. I agreed. France’s foreign intelligence agency was no more immune from skullduggery than ours.

  “Speaking of which, this person I need to find can be helpful. I can’t do it alone, though. I need you to do some observation.”

  “Mon général, I get to do double top-secret spy things with you?”

  “I just need you to talk to people in the Napoleon hotel and ask if they’ve seen someone.”

  “The Hôtel du Palais?” He chuckled. “This I can do. It is my business. What would you like for me to do?”

  I liked Laurent and had vetted him prior to Brad and Reagan visiting him. All indicators were that he was a normal French kid that liked girls and Formula 1 racing. His LanxPro profile, which I retrieved during the flight, included lots of pictures of him and beautiful young women at scenic resort spots around Europe. A striking blonde at the Tower of London. And the same woman again, on Corsica. And later in Dubrovnik, Croatia. It was my good fortune that he was not similarly indisposed with his girlfriend tonight. Perhaps I had caught him before a ski trip to Garmisch, Germany. Regardless, I was glad he was here. And the chances of him owning his own tourist business and not being an undercover DGSE agent were near zero. The only question was, whose side was he on, Blanc’s or Drewson’s, because there really was nothing else today. My guess was Drewson because I was still alive.

  “Be yourself,” I said.

  “Beautiful ladies in Biarritz. I am always happy to go there,” he said. “Even this time of year, the spa is a destination.”

  “I need you to ask around about this woman,” I said. I handed him a picture of Evelyn Champollion. Her hair was a mix of brunette and blond, eyes crystal blue, and full lips slightly spread enough in a smile to see a glimpse of teeth. The slightest crow’s feet pinched around her eyes. She was forty-seven years old and an international enigma who supposedly possessed the key to dismantling Aurelius Blanc’s authoritarian grip on the world.

  In the picture she was standing at the Eye of Africa a few days before I met her over a year ago. With one foot propped up on a rock, she was holding a sweat-stained olive Australian breezer hat in one hand and a claw hammer in the other. She was wearing khaki-colored pants with a matching multi-pocketed safari shirt. The sun was setting behind her, the orange hues subtly highlighting the blond hints in her hair.

  Laurent smiled. “Mon général has a crush. She’s beautiful, for sure, but wouldn’t the general prefer a much younger woman?”

  Laurent was amused.

  “Not my style,” I said more defensively than I intended. “She is important to solving a large problem for all of us.”

  He shrugged. “As you wish. I know many beautiful women who would die to be the wife of a general.”

  I didn’t know if he was pimping or genuinely interested in finding me companionship. Either way, it was irrelevant.

  “Thank you, Laurent. I appreciate the gesture, but this is mission related. I will pay you.”

  He pursed his lips and nodded. “There is compensation?”

  “Of course,” I said. I handed him two thousand in cash. I had asked Drewson for euros, but Laurent’s eyes brightened at the thick wad of dollars, which I hadn’t anticipated would be a problem.

  “I am happy to do this as a friend,” he said.

  He wasn’t pushing back hard enough for me to believe he didn’t want the money.

  “No. If you don’t do it in a day, we’re done, and you go home. I don’t expect she will be there much longer.”

  “The hotel?”

  “There is a rumor of a tunnel from the hotel to an escape hatch beneath the lighthouse. The lightkeeper supposedly lived in the old hotel before it burned down a hundred years ago. The tunnel remained and in fact became an escape route for several trapped by the fire.”

  Laurent nodded furiously.

  “Yes. Yes. I know this story,” he said. “Remember, General, I have a tourism degree and escort foreigners all over the country. It is my business. I have toured many times through the Hôtel du Palais. It has an iron gate across this tunnel. I’ve seen it many times if it is the same one you are looking for.”

  “Sounds like it,” I said.

  He opened his phone, snapped a photo of the photograph, then pinched and squeezed the picture on his phone until he had the face large enough. He added a filter and saved the image, handing me back the picture.

  “I find this woman for you, whatever she means to you. I know you are a serious man, and I must ask the amount of danger I might face. As you must know, the internet makes the world a small place. I look up the news on you and one minute I learn of an explosion at a prison in Kansas and the next there is an article correcting the information.”

  “All of that is part of what I’ve been saying. The only thing worse than a fascist state is an interconnected fascist world where there is no refuge. Just by being here with me you are placing yourself in danger. If you can’t do this, I understand. I appreciate the beers.”

  “I can do this,” he said quickly. “If it is for you, I’m in. If it is for a good cause, I’m also in.”

  I opened another beer, and we tipped the bottles together.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I had a lot of experience working with indigenous forces in lands across the globe. As a private citizen, I had just hired my first insurgent.

  10

  WE TOOK TURNS SLEEPING for the remaining three hours of darkness using Nemo Disco ultra-light sleeping bags that Laurent had carried in his hiking backpack. I had my Beretta 9 mm pistol clutched in my right hand on my chest through the night.

  When I woke, he was huddled over a small propane stove making coffee on what would be the check-in counter of the camp front office. I walked to the window and studied the landscape. The sun was cresting over the ridge, which meant last night’s cold front had passed. The ocean and the bluffs were still shrouded in darkness. A light mist was rising off the damp floor of the forest.

  “Warmer today,” he said. “Still crisp but okay.”

  “Let’s exchange phone contact information,” I said.

  Laurent took my phone, entered his information, then texted himself.

  “This is my burner mobile,” he said.

  He handed me a cup of coffee. It was scalding hot on my lips but felt good going down after a bone-chilling night.

  “Tell me, General, this woman is Evelyn Champollion, no? A direct descendent of Champollion le jeune?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “She is quite famous in France. Infamous in some circles.”

  I nodded.

  “She has notoriety from the Eye of Africa fight,” he said. Not a question.

  “Perhaps,” I replied.

  “Why is it that everyone knows that war is a bad thing, but we never seem to stop fighting?”

  “That’s a question for another time. Right now, we’re burning daylight,” I said. “If you go into the hotel and see what you can find out, I’m going to recon the lighthouse and its perimeter.”

  “Oui. I only have one bike, which I’m happy to loan you.”

  “No, I’m going to be dressed in running clothes and pretending to be jogging,” I said.

  He looked at me with curious eyes and a smirk. “But won’t you be actually jogging? Not pretending?”

  “Just get to the hotel and pretend like you’re planning for some Americans coming over,” I said.

  He smiled again and said, “Well then, I’m off. I’ll text you if I see anything.”

  He slung his backpack over his shoulder, walked outside where mist escaped his mouth, and ambled into a white beam of sunshine cutting through the trees. With my first task accomplished, I changed into a long-sleeve T-shirt and running shorts with New Balance shoes. I slipped the Beretta into a clip-on holster and covered it with a light blue windbreaker. In the mirror, I checked my newly shaped ears and brown contact lenses, thanks to the disguise materials Drewson had provided. I tugged a wool skullcap over my head and low on my brow and slipped some Oakley sunglasses over my eyes.

  A flash passed across the office window, an interruption in my periphery. It could have been Laurent zipping along on his bike, but the timing didn’t compute. Drawing my pistol, I slid quietly against the wall, out of view of the windows. A tree branch scratched against the roof. The night before, I had assessed the security of the camp office. There was a locked back door that led to a room with two windows and four desks scattered with papers and old tower desktop computers. The passageway from the reception area where I had spoken with Laurent was to my left.