The phone rang in the busy police station in Marseilles, one call among many; three o'clock in the morning being as busy as two in the afternoon or nine at night. The switchboard routed the call to Francois, secretary of Captain Jean Dupres. After the fourth ring, Francois picked up the receiver, the picture of the formal policeman, and listened for a few seconds. "Yes, mademoiselle, I understand. I will see if he is available."

As he put the caller on hold, his face betrayed the glee he felt; a very sexy-voiced woman wanted to speak to his very proper captain, on a 'personal matter'. The local head of the Traffic Department does not deal with informants-it couldn't be a snitch.

He rose, knocked once on his boss's closed door, and pushed it open just enough to slip in.

Captain Jean Dupres, a tall man with a full head of graying brown hair, was seated at his desk opposite the door. To his left, the drapes were drawn closed as if to prevent the night's darkness from streaming through the tall windows, from dimming the entire office.

Dupres ignored his underling. This was Sunday. He should be resting at home, building his strength in preparation for the rigors of a family visit--this coming day should be spent with his family, playing with his grandchildren. One more damn report and he could leave. Interruptions this late always meant some high official had been found speeding, intoxicated, in his expensive vehicle in some small town. It meant that he, Jean Dupres, would have to fix the traffic records to protect someone's good name. This would have to be done quickly, today, before the press got to the information. Interruptions always meant another shift he'd go home late. Perhaps if he ignored Francois long enough, he would go away.

Francois's face fell back into its normal blank facade as he cleared his throat, still trying to get his superior's attention. As the Captain's pen continued to scratch out the report, the secretary resorted to more drastic measures-he wanted to leave on time, too. "Pardon, Captain, but there is a young lady on the telephone for you."

The pen barely paused. Francois would have to do better than that.

A few minutes passed and Francois did not move. His boss stole a glance at his underling. Hmmm, the man fairly reeked of curiosity. So, it was not the usual high official's dilemma. Perhaps someone else? No, no sense guessing. He finally gave up. With a well-practiced sigh, he lifted the receiver, listened a moment, said "Oui," and hung up. As if he were just ending his shift, he closed the folders on his desk, put them away for the night, and stood. Managing, with great difficulty, to keep his face properly blank, he thanked Francois and left. He succeeded in ensconcing himself in his car before gales of laughter erupted from deep in his memories. Francois, the station's 'keeper of morals,' thought a woman had called him. Ah, well. The caller had not changed voices immediately when Dupres answered, but the speaker was well known to him in any disguise.

Thirty minutes later, Captain Dupres entered a dark bar, so close to the docks that the room and patrons reeked of sweat and raw fish. He scanned the small room as he entered, feeling as if he had stepped backwards in time. He had spent many shifts, as a mercenary and as a junior-ranked policeman, in places just like this. The patrons could almost be the same people he had drunk with so long ago. This place, too, was almost full with the kind of people who rarely had families to enjoy on a Sunday, who stayed at places like these after their shifts to get drunk, watch the all-night sports channel, and commiserate with the other habitues.

An onlooker would have thought the companion Dupres sought was not there, for he eventually placed himself at an empty table toward the rear. There was one other stranger in the place, sitting close to the door, but he seemed more interested in his drink than in the television or in his fellow patrons.

Dupres nursed a beer for some twenty minutes, looked at his watch, and then stood. His face bore the resignation of a man used to being stood up. He tossed a few coins on the table and headed for the door. His path took him past the other stranger, and he stumbled against that table, knocking the empty chair. He righted himself and the chair, mumbled an apology, and left.

Some five minutes later, the stranger left.

Once outside the door, Kermit replaced his trademark sunglasses and read the note he had palmed after retrieving it from where the other man had dropped it while straightening the chair. There were two lines. The first read "123." Ah, thought Kermit, That means the alley to the left. The second line was an address.

He strode to the corner of the building, and ducked into the fifteen-foot wide passageway between the bistro and the next building. The third-quarter moon was beginning to set; the few streetlights and commercial signs were still lit. There was just enough illumination to avoid the obstacles in the alley--mainly trashcans and boxes, with a couple of bicycles propped against one wall. He moved in farther than he had intended--where was his friend? Had he been attacked? As he started to retrace his steps out of the alley, checking the shadows for his friend's dead or comatose body, he sensed company.

Two men had entered the alley from the streetside, another one from the rear of the building; they moved cautiously, like hunters who had cornered their prey. Three of a kind, they were medium height, broad-shouldered, stockily built--nondescript. They moved as a practiced team, able to shift cargo or victims as well as any efficient machine.

A feral grin appeared in Kermit's mind, his face went blank, and he flattened his back against the bistro's outer wall. He shifted his weight, contemplating whether to draw his gun. No, that might be overkill, and too noisy. Finally, to help him project the proper emotion of fear, he called up an image of Bon Bon Hai's return from Shambala as the new protégé of the Dark Warrior--one of the scariest things he had recently encountered. These animals expected the scent of fear from him; he did not want to forewarn them of their impending doom.

The trio moved to form a half-circle around Kermit, the man in the middle standing about ten feet in front of him. The other two stood on either side of the first, out about seven feet from the wall. They paused, allowing time for their victim's panic to escalate.

Kermit let them think their victim was running true to form; he called up his memory of the demons grabbing him at his sister's house and trying to pull him towards them. That had frightened him more than the Dark Warrior's minion had and so increased his projected fear. Behind that curtain of imagined emotion, his mind was racing, evaluating the three before him. They had moved with ease, indicating they had done this many times before. He suspected that the two closest to him were the more dangerous; one-on-one with either of them just might find him the loser--unless they had fought as a team too often so that each had lost his edge as a solo combatant. The third was most likely the leader, since he was standing farther away. The leader probably had not had to fight for a long time, delegating combat to his men; he might even have lost confidence in his ability to survive a one-on-one confrontation. So Kermit needed to take out the first two quickly and together, if possible, and then the leader, if that were still necessary.

Griffin addressed the leader, "Can I help you?"

"Of course," the man responded, chuckling. "You can give us all your money. Maybe we won't kill you."

"Oh. But you see, I need my money. Why should I give it to three lazy bastards?"

The leader gestured for the others to move in for what they all thought was an easy kill. They were wrong. The two moved a half step in, waiting for the inevitable mistake victims make of rushing one attacker, hoping to reduce the odds, hoping to remove that attacker first, hoping to escape.

Kermit watched the two approach slowly and saw how they arranged themselves so it appeared there was an exit from their trap. He recognized the tactics--move slowly, to escalate the rise of panic in their prey; change positions, to let the prey think there was a chance to escape, while actually pulling him out of his vantage point and exposing his back to one of them. The second would move in if their chosen victim tried to put up a real fight.

He played to their expectations and feinted to his right as if he were going to try to run for it. This maneuvered him close to the man on that side, who promptly attacked. The man to his left hung back to let his compatriot enjoy the kill. But Kermit had timed his move. His next step was more rapid and so placed him closer to that attacker than the thug had presumed. He grabbed the knife hand as it came toward where his side had been a moment before. He spun inside the man's arc, using the man's momentum, pulling the man toward the wall, knife hand first, and then continued the spin with the man practically hanging on his back

The first attacker's head and back together made hard contact with the wall, knocking the thug unconscious.

As Kermit spun the one attacker toward the wall, the other two attackers realized they had underestimated their prey and moved into the fray. The man to Kermit's left dashed forward, not realizing that Kermit's back - draped with the first attacker--was turning toward him. The second attacker's forward momentum worked against him as his compatriot's lower body knocked into him. He was sent flying backward into the wall a little further down the alley, just hard enough to stun him briefly.

Kermit continued the spin, then shifted his weight, causing the now-unconscious attacker's body -still on his back--to continue moving until it was between Kermit and the leader of the thugs. Kermit propelled the body into the leader, knocking him back against the far wall.

Attacker number two, to Kermit's left, was groggily getting to his feet. Kermit moved swiftly to him and, with a short jab to the jaw, knocked him completely out.

Now the leader was on his feet, knife in hand, and moving menacingly toward Kermit. Again the internal feral grin appeared, as Kermit realized his guess had been right. The man before him wasn't even holding the knife properly; he had the tip aimed up and was moving the knife hand back and forth in what was supposed to be a threatening manner.

Kermit shook his head at the stupidity of the man even as he distracted the attacker with his own hand motions, pretending to fend off the knife. As the man stepped in with his knife hand raised to slash downwards, Kermit stepped quickly in and kicked the right leg out from under the thug. As the man landed on his back, Griffin leaned down and sent him to dreamland with one punch.

Satisfied, he stood, dusted off his hands, straightened his clothes, and walked toward the alley opening. He stopped just before the exit and wiped his hands and face with his handkerchief. When he turned into the street, he paused to straighten his tie and finally heard the voice he had expected to hear earlier.

"Have you need of police assistance, my friend? Or have they passed the need for medical assistance?"

Kermit looked at the speaker over his sunglasses and raised his eyebrows. "Do you really enjoy paperwork that much? They'll wake up shortly, if some of their friends don't take advantage of their current state."

"You didn't finish them off?" Captain Jean Dupres might be a policeman in this life, but he had trained in the same school of pragmatism as Kermit.

A quick sardonic grin flashed across Griffin's face. "I've been corrupted by a recent friendship --let's just leave it at that, shall we?"

Jean answered with a shrug, "It's your decision. See you in twenty minutes."

The two men parted company, each seeking out his own car, each taking a different route to the address on the paper Kermit had stuck in his pocket just before the attack in the alley.

Dupres' car was cooling by the time Griffin reached the still-closed bistro. He had had to rely on distant memory to find this place; the policeman most likely came here often.

With automatic caution, he had parked on a nearby side street, two blocks away as a pedestrian would walk, but closer, on a direct line, as a mercenary would run. The quiet houses were set back from the streets, with large, full oaks lining the roadways. Here and there, as he drove to this area, he saw an occasional small business-such as the bistro. All were closed at this hour. With no one else on the streets in this quiet area, so early on a Sunday morning, Kermit moved silently through the shadows provided by the trees.

Four in the morning was a long way from dinner, the warm, yeasty scents emanating from within reminded him, as he approached the two-story building. His stomach growled, just a little, as he slipped past the stranger who had opened the side door for him, just enough to let him in.

Before Kermit could react to the stranger's presence, Dupres was at his elbow. "He's a friend, relax. I will introduce you two later." Dupres turned to lead Kermit and the stranger. "Come, the proprietor of this establishment is a close relation, and has set a table for us. There are croissants fresh from the oven and hot chocolate. We will eat and talk."

The captain led the others through the kitchen to what had to be the owner's office. With a smile, he indicated they should sit around the worktable, already set with linens and tableware. "Pierre lets me use this sometimes, in exchange for my not telling his wife, my sister, when one of his horses comes in."

The three sat, Dupres at the head of the long table. Dupres gestured Kermit to the chair on his right and the third man to the one on his left. The two positioned themselves exactly opposite each other along the length. Kermit was nonplused that the stranger seemed to know him and suspicious of the man's presence. He cleared his throat and growled at the captain, "Are you forgetting your codes in your old age? This is a private matter."

Before Jean could speak, the stranger offered his hand. "Sorry to break in on your meeting, Detective Griffin; but I'm with Interpol and Captain Dupres here knew you would want me in on this. My name is Martin Bradshaw."

Griffin rocked back on his chair and stared for a moment. He moved forward again and shook the proffered hand. "Well, I'll be damned!" He paused, dropped the hand, and then rocked back again. Tilting his head first to one side then to the other to get a better view of the man's face, he finally said, "You don't look at all like your brother."

Martin responded with the Caine shrug and Kermit laughed, "Oh, yeah, you're part of the family, all right." He stopped and then continued, "Pete told me about meeting you. Thanks for helping him out."

Kermit moved forward to lean on the table. "Now, why are you here?" He looked back and forth between the two men and then addressed Dupres. "Why did you think he should be in on this? You don't even know what I need to ask."

Bradshaw answered. "You're right, Griffin, we don't know why you're here. However, we do know that something's afoot in Ste. Adele…"

Kermit interrupted him. "You're going way too fast. And why would I care about Ste. Adele?"

Now Martin rocked back, a satisfied grin on his face. "You were there yesterday. We have your prints on the wine bottle."

"I still know how to smudge them."

"True, but with our new imaging software, we can make a good guess at an ID, even if it's not enough for the courts. Out of the twenty possibles, you were the only one who fit the general description, the only one who had any kind of link to the area."

"Gloves would have been suspicious. Okay, I was there. Why were your people there?"

At this, Dupres spoke up. "Look, Griffin, you called me, using the code for private information. I've known Bradshaw for a long time--he knew you and I worked with Blaisdell long ago. So, when your name turned up on the list of visitors to Ste. Adele, he called me--wanted to know if I knew why you were there. When you called, I got in touch with him and asked him to come."

Kermit leaned way back, tilting the chair to a comfortable thirty degrees off vertical. With his hands in his pockets, he studied first one, then the other. Did he still trust Dupres this much? So Bradshaw was Kwai Chang Caine's brother; did that automatically mean Kermit should accept him also?

During the long drive down to Marseilles, he had pondered the contents of the file Carolyn had managed to decode. The file had the same place names and dates that Paul had hidden in his messages to Kermit; but the names in the file differed from those in Paul's messages. In addition, the converted file contained the names and addresses of establishments where, he guessed, Paul had met the people named. Too, there were names and dates not included in Paul's list; perhaps these meetings had not been as important to Paul.

As he drove, Kermit had enumerated to himself what he wanted out of this trip to Marseilles. He needed to find out who those people were and why the names did not agree, to get names to match the faces in the color images he'd processed last night, and, finally, to find out who was so interested in Paul's information.

Now he mentally swore to himself. Damn it! He'd wanted to be the one to decide what authorities needed to be called in, and when. Interpol? He should just get up and walk out…

The other two allowed him his reflection. Since Griffin ignored the soft knock and the young man who entered with a tray of food, Martin and Jean wordlessly agreed to start without him. Quietly they attacked the fragrant breads and drink supplied by the youngster.

Kermit, momentarily distracted from his thoughts by the delivery of the food, resumed his musing realizing he felt no danger here. Becoming a policeman had not dulled his instincts; in fact, it had probably honed them. These two before him were only interested in solving a puzzle. His gut told him he was the only one here with a hidden agenda; whatever information that disk held related to a secret kept close by his friend and mentor, Paul Blaisdell. He had no idea what Pandora's box might be opened if the encrypted file was published. Martin might feel a strong responsibility to turn that file over to his organization. However… he had been successful before in limiting access to information he held.

Kermit lowered his chair to its normal horizontal position, returning himself to the table physically and mentally. He reached into his inside pocket and removed the list of names Carolyn had decoded from the 'static' in her father's messages. Perhaps these two could help identify the people listed by Paul.

Griffin placed the list on the table, facing Dupres; Bradshaw moved to read over the Captain's shoulder. The two men read silently for a few moments.

Martin looked up first. "I recognize about two-thirds of those names. Where did this list come from?"

"Some thirty months ago, Paul Blaisdell left home, family, and precinct, to 'find' himself after former comrades in Paul's Falcon Wing had tried, unsuccessfully, to frame him for a murder," Kermit explained. "You may not have heard about that . It was hushed up as much as possible, because of Paul's position. From time to time, as he traveled, Paul sent me untraceable e-mail, just to let me know he was alive, I thought. After we heard of his death, I showed the mail to his daughter, Carolyn, and she spotted extra characters within the e-mail character stream-- they turned out to be names." He didn't mention the cities included with the names.

Dupres pointed out several names. "I remember these people from the old days, Kermit." He checked them off with a pen from his pocket. "These are agents from various countries--some were allies then, some not."

"The ones I recognize," said Bradshaw, marking as he spoke, "whatever they were known or wanted for, all died within the last three years." He looked at the other two sheepishly. "One of the 'punishment' jobs we can get is to correlate deaths with our files. I got a bit careless with the rules of evidence a couple of times…"

The other two snorted, but grinned with sympathy. Worse punishments for disobeying rules existed; that didn't take away from the discomfiture felt while serving the time.

Kermit looked at the marked list and then checked two more names. "I ran into these two on some mission with Blaisdell." He could see that several names now had two marks. After a moment he said, "Bradshaw, is it possible that some of these others might be in your dead files, too, but you just haven't seen the names? Is there a chance we could run these by your computer?"

The sudden dead silence in the room reminded Kermit that these two were not members of an inferior species; they had caught the implication of his words before he had. He put both hands on the table, rose out of his chair slightly, and leaned first into Dupres' face and then into Bradshaw's. Seeing the stronger conviction in the younger man's face, Griffin gave him his full attention. Still glaring into the man's eyes, he growled, "Get that ugly thought out of your mind. Paul did not kill those men."

The two men continued the staring competition for several moments. Jean finally gave a polite cough and touched Kermit on the shoulder. Remembering Kermit's aversion to unwanted contact, he immediately removed his hand.

The quick touch worked. With a final thump on the table, Kermit sat down again and leaned back in his chair.

Dupres again cleared his throat. "Kermit, we both understand your loyalty to your friend. But, with him dead also, does it really matter?" He looked at Bradshaw, who was just beginning to relax again from Griffin's implied threat, and then at Kermit. "Is there something else you wanted from me? That list you could have faxed to me."

"True. But, these I couldn't have." He reached inside his coat and removed a packet from which he extracted three sheets. He started to place one on the table and was stopped by gasps from the other men.

The words rushed out of Martin's mouth. "My god, Griffin! You can't pull that out here! Are you telling me Sid Harrison is in Ste. Adele? Put that away. No wonder you wouldn't fax it!"

Bradshaw turned to Dupres, making an obvious attempt to calm himself. "This place may be safe for your usual tete-a-tetes, but not for this."

The police captain nodded agreement and addressed the mercenary, agitation also evident in his voice. "You may not realize how interested we are in this man. Even my traffic department has been asked to watch for him. Your interests may be as serious as the French Police or Interpol. Whatever your tale, ours cannot be told here." He looked over at the Interpol agent. "Do you have a safe place for this discussion? I do not believe my Police Station would be appropriate."

He heaved himself to his feet, fatigue evident in his movement. "This has been a long night and I am going home." He turned to Bradshaw. "Kermit Griffin was a mercenary long before he was a policeman. I strongly suspect his information-as much as he will share-and his questions will be more properly within your jurisdiction."

He turned his attention to Kermit, "Look, my friend. You better decide quickly if you are going to trust Martin. I do, for whatever that is worth."

He clicked his heels and bowed slightly as he made his finally sally, "Gentlemen, I believe I am even, with you both. Bon soir or perhaps bon jour would be more appropriate at this ungodly hour. Mon amis." He left.

Kermit had retrieved the offending picture and placed it into his pocket. Shaking his head to clear the cobwebs, he rose from the table and placed the rest of the pictures into the packet and then inside his jacket. I am getting too old for this, he thought to himself, I've always known when I'm being set up, and that is not happening here. Maybe I'm overreacting. I don't like even an implied accusation against Paul… But I've seen him dispatch people without blinking an eye… I need more information. And if this Martin Bradshaw can get that… He is Caine's brother, after all. He may not be another Damon. I'll just watch my back. At least I can act civil.

He offered his hand to the other man. "Maybe we just got off on the wrong foot--let's start again. Hi, I'm Kermit Griffin."

Bradshaw grinned as he rose to meet Kermit. He had his own reservations, but went along with the obvious decision to wait and see. He took Kermit's hand and shook it as he said, "And I'm Martin Bradshaw. I believe you know my half-brother, Kwai Chang Caine?"

Kermit chuckled in response, "Oh, yeah. Now, where's your computer? Before we go making wild accusations about murders, we should make sure we have corpses."

He peered at Bradshaw as a new thought hit him. "Isn't your office in Lyons? You couldn't have gotten here from there in the hour after I called Dupres, unless you flew…and you had no reason to do that, did you?" Tinges of suspicion flavored his voice and face.

"I have an apartment down here and a girl friend. I had the weekend off, so I came down late Friday. Lucky for you, your friend called right after we had a fight and she left… Great timing, huh?" Martin laughed when Kermit gave a fairly good imitation of the Caine family shrug. "So I should guess my brother has similarly good timing?"

This time, Kermit's shrug was accompanied by his own signature phrase, "Oh, yeah. I'm no longer surprised when Kwai Chang shows up just as chaos strikes."

As Martin was straightening the table, moving cups and crumbs to the tray on which they had been carried to the room, Kermit decided against leaving so quickly.

"Look, Bradshaw. We've both got our laptops here, why don't I copy the list to a disk and then you can run it by your database? You can connect from here, right?" He was not quite sure enough of his companion to enter his lair right now, but he really wanted access to whatever the man could find out.

Martin apparently agreed with Kermit's unspoken thought, because he immediately retrieved his computer and the necessary accessories from his briefcase where it rested casually by the door.

The two men attached their modems to the computers and then coupled the modems to their cellular phones. The room was quiet for several minutes as they completed that, then linked to their individual servers--so quiet that Pierre had stuck his head into the room to make sure his guests were still breathing.

As Martin linked to his home database and started the search process on Kermit's names, he commented, "We should have the latest info on them in a few minutes. This on-line database is quick. We're still entering data prior to Nine teen seventy, but everything since then is available." He clicked on the necessary commands as he spoke.

Griffin listened with half an ear as he checked his e-mail. The list of mail had grown to several hundred letters since he had left his office less than thirty-six hours before. A quick scan of the senders convinced him he could continue to ignore all but three, for now.

Karen's note was short and to the point: "She came, she saw, she conquered. Miss you. Love, K." That went into a special folder for rereading later.

The next note shook him for just a moment, and then he chuckled at himself: "He says to trust him and to bring him, now. M." So; that short message told him several things. Kwai Chang Caine is paying attention to more than just his patient, Matthew does e-mail, and Martin does not know his half-brother is in the area. Too, while Kermit had intended to take the list of names and places and check them out, once he knew who he was looking for, the prescient priest wanted him to return soon and to bring Martin. Interesting.

Carolyn had sent the last note he read. "Thanks, I think. C."

He had sent quick responses to Carolyn and to Matthew and was pondering the right words to send to his former captain when Martin cleared his throat and announced the responses to the database queries were in.

Griffin moved around to look at the screen on Martin's computer. He could sense the growing unease in the other man.

Bradshaw looked from the list to his companion and back again several times, as if weighing the advisability of what he had just done. He spoke slowly. "That was an interesting list you showed me, Griffin. I'm not sure what to do next. I suspected from the start that you were hiding something, and now I know. And I know that tomorrow, if I'm not at my boss's desk explaining why I was asking about some twenty spies who disappeared over the last ten to twenty years, there will be a warrant for my arrest. Especially since eight have since turned up again, dead, with different identities. I do not like this."

As he spoke, he released the gun in his sleeve and aimed it at where Kermit had been just a moment before. Before Martin realized his target had moved, Kermit's gun butt connected with Martin's head and Martin collapsed to the floor.

"Damn." Griffin muttered to himself. "I trust my instincts before Caine's. I'll bring him with me, but not as a guest."

Within minutes, the computers and accessories were back in their cases. Pierre's young son had returned from his reconnaissance of the area, accomplished while taking the trash to the bin in the rear. Pierre's older son had happily retrieved Kermit's car--without a scratch, and Kermit had walked his 'ill' friend to his car and tied him firmly to the seat.

With the passenger seat down, so his friend could 'sleep it off', Kermit headed back to Ste. Adele.

About an hour into the drive, Martin woke. "Damn, you got me first. Do I need to ask where we're going?"

Griffin's response was a curt, "No."

Part 1   Part 2    Part 3   Part 4   Part 5   Part 6   Part 7

Back to author's index      Back to Story index