The Day After Tomorrow by Allan Folsom

Author:Allan Folsom [FOLSOM, ALLAN]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: FIC000000
ISBN: 9780446549899
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2008-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

76

* * *

WORD OF the Paris-Meaux train derailment reached Ian Noble less than an hour after it happened. First reports indicated sabotage. A second report confirmed that an explosive device had been set off directly under the engine.

That McVey and Osborn would be on the same route, at the same time, to rendezvous with Noble’s pilot at the Meaux airstrip was too coincidental. And since the pilot had landed, waited the allotted time and then taken off with no sign of them, there was every reason to believe McVey and Osborn had been on the train.

Immediately, Noble put in a call to Captain Cadoux at his residence in Lyon and informed him what had happened. It was important he know what Cadoux had found out in his investigations into the German fingerprint expert, Hugo Klass, and the death of Lebrun’s brother, Antoine. Noble was going under the assumption that McVey and Osborn had been on the train and that whatever organization Klass was working for, or Antoine might have been involved with, was responsible for the derailment. It was another demonstration of just how far their intelligence network reached. Never mind they had found Merriman, Agnes Demblon and the others, and knew who Vera Monneray was and where she lived—that they’d been able to pinpoint McVey’s clandestine meeting with Osborn at La Coupole and then discover they were on the Paris-Meaux train was nothing short of astonishing.

Cadoux was speechless, and the situation made his own frustration all the worse. The tail he’d put on Klass had so far turned up nothing more sinister than the fact that he’d gone to work as usual on Monday. A tap on his phone had given up nothing. As for Antoine, he’d come directly home Sunday night after a late dinner with his brother, and gone directly to bed. For some reason he’d gotten up and gone to his study before dawn, which was not his habit. And it was there his wife found him at 7:30. He was on the floor beside his desk with his nine-millimeter Beretta on the carpet beside him. The gun had been fired once and there was a single gunshot wound in his right temple. An autopsy-ballistics report proved the bullet had come from the same weapon. The doors leading outside were locked, but the latch in a kitchen window was open. So it was possible someone had both come in and gone out that way, though there were no signs of it.

“Or just gone out,” Noble said.

“Yes, we’d thought of that too,” Cadoux said in his heavy French accent. “That Antoine had let someone in the front door and relocked it. At that hour he would have known whoever it was or he would not have let them in. Then they killed him and went out the window. Still, there were no signs of it, and the coroner has officially ruled it a suicide.”

Noble was as baffled as he’d ever been. Everyone who knew Albert Merriman was

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.