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“You want to tell me what happened?” Dieter asked, his normally smooth tone somehow sounding more menacing than it would if he were yelling.

He had pulled the BMW to the side of the road and was staring into the back seat at Max Gruber, who was still panting from being chased.

“I’m sorry,” Gruber said between breaths. “Someone must have been watching us.”

“Really? What gave you that idea?”

“Well, I mean, she had to—”

“Obviously, someone was watching you,” Dieter cut him off. “What I’m wondering is why you didn’t spot them earlier?”

“I swear we did a thorough search. There was no one.”

“And yet there was. Which means your thorough search was not thorough enough, don’t you think?”

Gruber reluctantly nodded.

“And where is Hilgard?” Dieter asked.

“I’m not sure. He was still inside when I was, um, spotted.”

“Perhaps you should tell me what happened from the beginning.”

“Um, sure. I can do that.” Gruber ran a hand through his hair. “We did exactly what you told us to do. We followed the CIA agent to the building, then we searched the area to make sure he hadn’t brought anyone else with him.”

Dieter arched an eyebrow.

“Which we failed at,” Gruber added quickly. “Then we waited to see what would happen. About thirty minutes later, another guy showed up and went inside.”

“Was the new guy alone?”

“He was when we caught sight of him.”

“Did you recognize him?”

“No. But I got a photo.”

“Show me.”

Gruber did so. The image was of a man walking down a dimly lit sidewalk.

Dieter zoomed in to get a look at the man’s face, but it didn’t help. The man was wearing a baseball cap low on his forehead and a face mask that covered everything except his eyes.

The photo was practically useless.

“Continue,” he said to Gruber.

“Right. We, um, gave the new guy a few minutes inside, then Hilgard went in to bug the meeting.”

“Did he succeed?”

“I don’t know. Not long after he entered, I heard several loud thumps, like something hitting metal over and over. That’s when I spotted the woman sneaking up behind me and ran.”

“Have you tried calling him?”

“I couldn’t. I was running.”

Dieter pulled out his phone, but his call to Hilgard was sent to voicemail. He tried twice more, but the response was the same.

He turned the car around and headed back toward where he’d picked up Gruber.

“Which building was the meeting in?” he asked.

Gruber leaned between the two front seats and frowned. “You can’t see it from here. It’s three or four streets up, I think.”

Dieter scanned the area until he spotted a building taller than the others, then drove toward it and parked.

“Come on,” he said to Gruber as he climbed out.

After he picked the lock and disabled the alarm, they took the stairs to the roof.

“Point it out,” Dieter said.

Gruber looked around, then said, “There.”

They watched the building for twenty minutes without seeing anyone going in or out. Dieter was just starting to think that they could go investigate it themselves, when the headlights of a delivery van turned onto the road the building was on and then entered the building’s parking lot.

As the vehicle stopped, a man stepped out of the building. Dieter used the zoom on his phone to get a better look at him. It was Rick La Rose, the CIA’s Paris station chief.

Several men dressed in dark coveralls piled out of the van and followed La Rose inside.

Fifteen minutes later, they exited carrying a body bag.

“Well, that isn’t good,” Dieter said.

“Do you think that’s Hilgard?” Gruber asked.

Dieter didn’t answer. Of course it was Hilgard.

He watched the men put the bag in the back of the van, then everyone, including La Rose, climbed in and the van drove off.

Dieter pulled out his phone to call Braun.

Teddy and Vesna sat together at the back of a mostly empty train car on the return ride across the lagoon.

“Did your friend have any useful information?” she asked.

Teddy handed her the photo.

“This looks like the guy we helped off the train,” she said.

“That’s because it is.”

“Does he have a name?”

“Several, actually. Check the other side.”

She looked at the list of names on the back of the photo, and her brow furrowed.

“Don’t tell me you know him,” Teddy said.

“Oscar Schmidt,” she said, rolling the name over her tongue. “It sounds familiar. Do you know anything else about him?”

Teddy relayed what Rick had told him. When he mentioned the guy had worked as a mercenary for a Bulgarian outfit, she smirked.

“That’s it,” she said. “Horne Solutions.”

“Never heard of them.”

“You know these groups. They come and go. Horne was swallowed up a year or so ago by a German company. Maybe Schmidt moved with them.”

“Do you know the name of the company?”

“Unfortunately. It’s called Braun Logistics and Security.”

“Never heard of them.”

“You wouldn’t have. They popped up about ten years ago or so. Until they purchased Horne Solutions, they concentrated solely on event and personal security.”

“Why do I get the feeling you don’t like them.”

“Where in the world did you get that idea?” she asked in mock innocence.

“The use of ‘unfortunately’ was a bit of a tell.”

She chuckled. “It’s not that I don’t like the company. I am not a fan of one of the men in charge.”

“Who’s that?”

“Dieter Wenz.”

“Now that name sounds familiar,” Teddy said.

“Only because you’ve heard me cursing him.”

It took Teddy a few seconds to connect the dots. “Is he the guy with the neck fetish? The one you were with in Cyprus on that—”

“He is. And please, let’s not talk about it any further.”

“Consider the topic shelved.”

Among Wenz’s many storied traits was his penchant to inject a knockout drug to the base of an abductee target’s neck to subdue them.

During the mission in Cyprus, Vesna had become romantically entangled with him until it ended in spectacular form when it turned out Wenz was working both sides and nearly got the whole team killed.

“Is there anyone you can check with to see if Schmidt made the transition to Braun Logistics?”

“If you are asking me to contact Dieter, that is not happening.”

“I was thinking someone who you’d be less likely to kill on sight.”

She thought for a moment before nodding. “There are a few people who might know. I can try them.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Thank me if it pays off.”

As they were nearing the station, Teddy remembered her text from that morning.

“You said you had info about Owen Pace’s murder.”

“I said might . And that hasn’t changed.” She pulled out her phone and shook her head. “Still nothing. I’ll give them a nudge.” She sent off a text.

No reply arrived by the time they reached their stop. Acting once more like they didn’t know each other, they caught separate boats.

Teddy was almost to the hotel when his phone vibrated multiple times. He opened the cell and was greeted with three messages from Vesna. The first two were photos and the last a two-word text, which read:

You’re welcome

Teddy waited until he was inside Mark Weldon’s suite before he looked at the images.

They both appeared to be grabs from security footage. But unlike the middle-of-the-road image quality of standard CCTV cameras, these were taken at a much higher resolution.

The first picture was of two men sitting in the cab of a delivery van. The second was the back of what he presumed to be the same van. Its doors were open, and three men were standing near it, facing in the camera’s direction.

Two of the men were propping up the third, who was none other than a clearly unconscious Owen Pace.

Teddy called Vesna.

As soon as she answered, he asked, “Where were these taken?”

“Specifically, I can’t tell you because I don’t know. What I can tell you is that the van was at a facility owned by a Paris crime organization, though the men in the photo are not Paris locals.”

“The crime org sent you these?”

She snorted. “Of course not. These were taken by their rivals, who have been keeping an eye on the facility.”

“Do you recognize any of the men?” he asked.

“Funny thing that. Earlier this evening, I would have said the only one I recognized was Owen Pace.”

“And now?”

“The guy in the van’s front passenger seat is the same asshole I chased this evening.”

Teddy brought up the picture of the cab and zoomed in on the man’s face.

“You know what this means?” she asked.

“It means that they were trying to bug my meeting tonight because of Golden Hour. Are you sure they didn’t follow us there?”

“I would bet your life on it.”

“That’s not how that idiom goes.”

“I stand by what I said.”

Teddy looked at the pictures again. “If I give these to the Agency, and the people you received them from find out, will there be any blowback on you?”

“I am not an amateur. Do whatever you need to do. They have no idea who I am.”

“Thank you, Vesna. This is better than I’d even hoped.”

“You asked for my help, so I am helping. But I do need you to do one thing for me.”

“What’s that?”

“Go to sleep so I can go to sleep.”

“Good night, Vesna.”

“Good night, Teddy.”

Before going to bed, he sent copies of the photos to Lance and Rick, with a message about the man in the van being connected to that evening’s activities.

He then used his back door into the CIA’s computer system to upload the images of the four men from the van into the facial recognition program. Lance and Rick would likely do the same, but he didn’t want to wait for them to give him the results.

With that done, he finally lay down. Within seconds, he was out like a light.