Page 63 of Stuart Woods' Golden Hour

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 togetherat 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.

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