Page 1 of Blood Game

PROLOGUE

CALAIS, FRANCE

Headlights slipped in behind her in the stream of traffic, and glared in the rearview mirror. Close, too close.

Those headlights had followed from Paris, not obvious at first, moving through traffic on the motorway as she moved through traffic, like dozens of other automobiles in the fading daylight. It was there again when she stopped for fuel, then returned to the roadway, slipping back into the traffic.

Hiding.

Now those lights appeared again, the silver Audi briefly silhouetted in the headlights of a passing cargo van. Closer now.

She wasn’t intimidated. She'd sharpened her driving skills on dangerous roads, through dozens of roadblocks and bombed-out streets in Beirut, then Iraq, going after the story. It was her job. It was what she did, in places where few dared go, let alone women journalists.

But this wasn’t Lebanon or Iraq, or Afghanistan. It was the French countryside, and she was after a different story.

She thought of the photograph taken by a young war-time photographer—her father—over seventy years earlier.

France had been a different place then, a country occupied by the German army, determined to destroy anyone who stoodin their way during one of the most horrific events in human history.

The photograph, taken in June 1944, was tucked into her notebook, a black-and-white image taken just after the landing at Normandy, like the selfies people took with their cell phones, smiling images taken in front of a church or castle, oblivious to the past, the struggles, the wars.

Was it a diversion from the other photographs Paul Bennett had taken? Of young soldiers with haunted expressions who had faced the horrors of four long years of war, then stormed the beaches of Normandy where so many had died, their names etched on a plaque at one of the memorials, or simply lost forever?

What would historians, centuries from now, think when they discovered those concrete bunkers still in place where the German army had made a last stand? Would mankind have reached a better place a couple of centuries from now, a better understanding that went beyond the greed for power?

Power. History was full of those who had exploited it, killed for it, and had then fallen—the Greeks, Romans, Germans in the last century, and the recent Gulf wars. Old conflicts that reached back into the ancient world, and now terrorists on the streets of cities throughout the world.

She glanced at the rearview mirror again as those headlights suddenly loomed closer and accelerated until the silver sedan was beside her, then suddenly swerved toward her. She swore and tried to steer out of it, the rental car slipping over the edge of the roadway, then felt the tires break loose.

The rental car shot over the embankment, then rolled. Shattered glass and twisted metal exploded in a violent shower, the rental car finally shuddering to a stop.

The wipers flapped like broken wings in the pouring rain on what was left of the shattered windscreen. The steering wheelpinned her as the taste of blood backed into her throat. Pain spiraled through her.

She would have laughed if she could at the irony that after dozens of roadside attacks in the Middle East, hiding from rebels and insurgents in bombed-out buildings and the barren mountains in Afghanistan, she was going to die in a car accident in the French countryside.

Dazed, fighting back darkness at the edge of her vision, she was aware of a shadow that moved through the watery glare of headlights at the edge of the roadway as someone came down the embankment. Then that shadow fell across the shattered windscreen, and a hand reached past her through the gaping driver’s window and grabbed her notebook.

Unable to move, barely able to breathe, blood pumping out onto the rain-soaked upholstery, she stared up at the driver of the silver Audi.

“You...!”

CHAPTER

ONE

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND

Kris McKenna frowned as her cell phone lit up with an endless stream of messages.

It was just after 12:00 noon, New York time, except she wasn’t in New York.

She’d caught the red-eye out of JFK, the only flight available on short notice, and then information blackout since taking off from London—some technical issue with the plane’s wi-fi, they were told.

Now messages that she hadn’t been able to pick up earlier, were popping through—her publisher, their legal counsel working through the night on damage control, Alec Cameron, red-haired with his bow ties from the London Office, and several calls from Brynn Halliday at Sky News.

She was running on caffeine and two hours’ sleep as she scrolled through the stream of messages, other passengers and flight crews cutting around her.

There were a couple of messages she didn’t recognize and a few more she chose to ignore, as she passed a pizza bar on her way to ground transportation. Images from the midday news that had become too familiar played on the wide-screen.