Stranded with a Spy Read Online Free PDF

cell phone in his pocket began to vibrate. This motion had a different pattern from that of the GPS tracker attached to the disk in Dawes’s suitcase.
    That was Mike Callahan signaling him. He must have IDed the fleshy tourist. Keeping the entrance to the small crypt in sight, Cutter retreated into the dim recesses of the subterranean vault and screwed the phone’s earpiece into his ear. A click of the receive button brought Callahan’s face up on the screen.
    “What have you got?”
    His voice carried no more than a few feet in the dank, gloomy stillness. Callahan’s came through the earpiece clearly.
    “Your friend is Robert Walters.”
    A photo of the paunchy tourist replaced Mike’s face. This shot showed him in a business suit, smiling for the camera as he gestured toward a warehouse with a sign announcing Walters Products.
    “Age,” Hawkeye reported succinctly, “fifty-three. Born, Sterling, Indiana. One hitch in the Navy. Made three trips to the altar, the same number to divorce court. Owns a siding-and-storm-door installation company in Indiana. He and two buddies are on a tour of the Normandy beaches, sponsored by their local American Legion.”
    “Doesn’t sound like the profile of someone with ties to an international thug like the Russian.”
    “Didn’t to me, either,” Hawkeye agreed, “until I dug into his financials and discovered our boy Walters is six months behind in alimony to wife number two and wife number three. He also owes a cool hundred thou to his bookie. Seems he has a weakness for the ponies.”
    “Interesting.”
    “Yeah, it is. I’m working authorization to run his cell, home and business phones. Will get back to you as soon as…Hang on!”
    The terse admonition came at precisely the same instant the instrument in Cutter’s hand began to vibrate to a different pattern. Smothering a curse, he recognized the signal before Mike’s voice cut back through his earpiece.
    “We’ve got movement on the disk, Slash.”
    “Yeah, I’m receiving the signal.”
    “Is the target back at her vehicle?”
    “No.”
    She hadn’t moved, dammit! Not so much as an inch. She still dozed on that bench. Or pretended to. The perfect decoy.
    Swearing viciously under his breath, Cutter took the stairs from the crypt two at a time. Tourists sent him startled looks as he raced through the cathedral, his footsteps echoing on the granite blocks.
    Dodging a group of Chinese visitors, he burst through the abbey doors onto the small terrace. The western side looked to the sea. The south edge, he saw when he pushed through a gawking, pointing crowd, looked down over the causeway and what used to be the overflow parking lot.
    The sand flats on either side of the causeway were empty now except for a single tour bus with its wheels awash in seawater…and Dawes’s rented Peugeot, floating on the tide. As Cutter watched, tight-jawed, the little car bobbed farther and farther from the causeway.
    Loudspeakers blared, slicing through the tourists’ excited babble. An urgent message was broadcast first in French, then English, then in Japanese.
    “Attention! Attention! The driver of Tour Bus Number Fifty-Seven must return to his vehicle immediately! The storm at sea has created a severe riptide. Your bus will soon be afloat.”
    So that was the muffled announcement that had failed to penetrate to the subterranean crypts! The off-shore winds had churned up a vicious riptide and sent it rushing in, well ahead of the posted times for normal high water.
    Drivers alerted by the announcements had managed to clear most of the vehicles parked on the sand. Only two hadn’t been rescued—the heavy tour bus with gray-green water now swirling up to its fender skirts and Mallory Dawes’s lightweight Peugeot, at present floating on the outgoing current.
    “Omigod!”
    The shriek came from directly behind Cutter. He edged to the side to make room for the woman who elbowed her way through the crowd.
    “That’s my