Stranded with a Spy Read Free Page B

an outcropping of solid granite thrusting up from sand flats at the mouth of St. Malo Bay. A defensive wall bristling with turrets and a fourteenth-century barbican encircled the rock at its base. Above the battlements, a village of slate-roofed buildings stair-stepped up the steep slopes. A magnificent twelfth-century abbey crowned the island, overwhelming in its size, overpowering in its grandeur. Atop the abbey’s tall spire was a gilded statue of Saint Michael that glinted in the afternoon sun.
    According to Mallory’s guidebook, the Archangel Michael had appeared on this spot in 708 AD . The glorious abbey was built to honor that visitation. All through the Middle Ages, pilgrims had risked the treacherous tides that rushed in, cutting the island off from the mainland, to worship at the site. Modern-day tourists were no less enthralled. Mesmerized by the magnificent sight, Mallory paid no attention to the tour bus that chugged by her, spewing diesel exhaust.
    The driver of the vehicle some yards behind the lumbering bus cursed as he approached the car pulled onto the side of the road. Cutter had been swallowing exhaust for twenty minutes. He’d had to, to keep some distance between him and his target. God knew there wasn’t any other cover on this stretch of flat salty marsh.
    Now he had no choice but to drive right past the woman and onto the causeway leading to the island dead ahead. The causeway was elevated above the sand flats and wide enough to accommodate dozens of parked cars and buses. Cutter could turn around easily enough if the woman he was tailing didn’t follow him onto the bridge.
    “Come on, Dawes,” he muttered, “put it in gear.”
    He kept her in the rearview mirror and was all set to make a turn when the cell phone in his pocket began to vibrate. The car behind him eased back onto the road.
    “That’s right. Come to Papa.”
    Dividing his attention between the vehicle behind and the battlements now looming before him, Cutter cruised the long bridge. The tide was out, baring the hard-packed sand below. Overflow traffic was being directed to park on the sand, but a minivan pulled out of a parking space atop the causeway as Cutter got close. Whipping into the space, he remained in his vehicle with the engine idling while his target neared the island.
    He speared a quick glance at the walls looming above him. Was this where Dawes planned to make contact with the Russian or one of his henchmen? Or would she just diddle away a few hours, as she had in Caen? Or had she tipped to the fact that she was being followed and had decided to lead her tail away from a possible rendezvous point instead of toward it?
    Cutter was ninety-nine-percent certain that wasn’t the case. With the directional signal implanted in her suitcase to guide him, he’d stayed well out of her line of sight while on the road. He’d mounted a closer surveillance in Caen, waiting, watching, his instincts on full alert. But she hadn’t removed the disk from the suitcase locked in the trunk of her rental car. He’d trailed her into the museum, keeping well back, knowing the signal device would alert him if someone else retrieved it. No one had.
    Wondering if this pile of rock would be the rendezvous point, Cutter narrowed his eyes behind his aviator sunglasses and watched as Dawes drove along the causeway. The bridge was a quarter-mile long and raised some ten or twelve feet above the sand flats. Dawes drove the length of the causeway, searching for a parking space, before nosing down a ramp to the hard-packed sand.
    When she exited her rental, Cutter held his breath. Would she unlock the trunk? Slip the disk into the wallet-type purse slung over her shoulder?
    To his intense disappointment, she did neither. Instead she joined a throng of tourists decamping from a bus and trekked up the ramp toward the barbican. Muttering a curse, Cutter pulled out his cell phone.
    “The target has exited her vehicle,” he advised Mike Callahan