Blind Instinct
She Knows His Secrets… One of them is that she has to die Within hours of finding a Nazi World War II codebook in her father’s attic, librarian Sara Fischer becomes a target. Afraid for her life, Sara calls in a debt. FBI agent Marc Bayard moves in the shadowy world that Sara has fallen into and may be the only one who can guide her out.In a race to reveal the secrets of a Nazi code, Sara and Marc are catapulted into the cutthroat world of international intrigue and politics. Sara wants to believe she is more than a means to an end for Marc.And with history repeating itself, she is aware that this time their survival depends on whether or not they are able to see through the mistakes of their past.
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For Marion.
The very best of friends.
Thank you to Jenny Haddon, a former bank
regulator, for her invaluable advice about the world of international banking; Pauline Autet, for help with the French language; Claire Russell of the Kerikeri Medical Centre, for help with the medical details; Robyn Kingston, for lending me two wonderful books about spies and codes; and Tim and Simon Walker, for supplying ballistics and WWII military information. Thank you also to Miranda Stecyk for her professionalism and help with this trilogy.
Prologue
France, 1943
The drone of a Liberator B-24 bomber broke the silence of the forested hills and valleys that flowed like a dark blanket to the Langres Plateau. The plane dipped below ragged clouds that partially obscured the light of a full moon. Below, bonfires pinpointed the drop zone and a light flashed from the edge of the thick pine forest.
Morse code for “zero.” The agreed signal.
The engine note deepened as the American aircraft banked and turned to make its drop. A pale shape bloomed against the night sky, growing larger as it floated to earth.
Icy air burned Marc Cavanaugh’s lungs as he stripped a leather glove from his right hand. Unfastening a flap pocket, he extracted a magazine for the Sten submachine gun that was slung across his chest and slotted it into place.
Fingers already numbed by the cold, he jerked on the parachute cords, steering himself toward the flashing pinpoint of light. He studied the thick swath of forest from which the signal had originated, the stretch of open country below—a plowed field bare of crops. As he lost altitude, detail rushed at him: a tree, wind-blasted and skeletal; a rock wall snaking across ground plowed into neat furrows; the glitter of frost.
Shadows flowed across the field. Jacques de Vallois’s men—he hoped.
Marc jerked on the cords, slowing and controlling his descent then braced for landing. Seconds later, he unlatched the harness and shrugged out of the straps. Stepping away from the distracting brightness of the chute, he dropped into a crouch, the Sten pointed in the direction of a flickering shadow to his right.
“Benis soient les doux.”
Blessed are the meek.
Cavanaugh let the muzzle of the gun drop, but only fractionally. “Car ils hériteront de la terre.”
For they shall inherit the earth.
“De Vallois.”
White teeth flashed and metal gleamed as de Vallois lowered a Schmeisser MP40. “At your service.”
A brief handshake later, de Vallois barked orders at his men. A former attaché of de Gaulle, de Vallois was formidably skilled in clandestine operations. One of the architects of the French Resistance, he had worked tirelessly refining their systems and training recruits. It was unlikely that his efforts would be fully recognized during his lifetime, but de Vallois’s determination was unshaken. He lived for la France, and he would die for her.
De Vallois said something in rapid French. With economical movements, two of his men gathered up the chute, which glowed with a ghostly incandescence. Within minutes the field was clear, the bonfires doused.
De Vallois jerked his head. “Allons-y!” Let’sgo.
Seconds later they were beneath the cover of the pines.
The parachute was buried in a hole that had been previously dug and the disturbed ground was covered over with a thick scattering of pine needles. As high a price as the silk would command in Lyon or Dijon, the risk of being searched while transporting the parachute was too high and de Vallois’s men too valuable to risk. With the recent incarceration and execution of key Resistance figures, Himmler’s SS and the Geheime Staats Polizei—the Gestapo—were actively hunting insurgents and traitors against the Nazi Regime.
Half an hour later, they walked free of the trees and stepped onto a stony track. De Vallois checked his watch, then signaled them off the road.
Lights swept across the bare fields. An armored truck rumbled past.
Long minutes passed. De Vallois grunted. “Come. That is the last patrol of the night. Even the SS have to sleep.”
Marc stepped up onto the road. The cloud cover had broken up, leaving the night even colder and very clear. Moonlight illuminated the barren fields and a stark avenue of pines.
Jacques grinned at the exposure. “Don’t worry—my information is exact. My people understand that many lives are at stake.”
A truck, its headlights doused, cruised out of a side road and halted beside them. Jacques opened the passenger door and gestured for Marc to climb in. “The only thing I can’t guard against is a traitor.”
One
Shreveport, Louisiana, 1981.
Mae Fischer flicked on her bedside lamp and shook her husband’s shoulder, the pressure urgent.
Ben’s eyes flipped open, instantly alert. “She’s sleepwalking again.”
“And talking.”
“Damn.” He thrust out of bed in time to see his seven-year-old daughter, Sara, dressed in pink flannel pajamas, her long, dark braid trailing down her spine, drift past his bedroom door. He walked out onto the landing as she came to a halt alongside the landing rail, staring fixedly at something only she could see.
