Read Chapter 21: The Depot Approach

The tunnel’s roar changed pitch—a hollow, cavernous boom that vibrated through the floor plates. Mercer felt it in his teeth before he heard the brakes. The train was slowing, not stopping, but decelerating with the deliberate grind of a machine being guided somewhere precise.

He pressed himself against the rusted service ladder bolted to the depot wall, Camille a shadow beside him. Ahead, the tunnel opened into a wide, floodlit bay—a decommissioned maintenance station with cracked concrete platforms and the skeletal ribbing of old gantries. Painted-over signage in French and Russian peeled from the walls.

“That’s not a station,” Camille breathed. “That’s a garage.”

The train slid into the bay with a hydraulic sigh, its autopilot cutting engines. The doors on car two hissed open before the wheels had fully stopped. Sokolov’s men were already moving, boots hitting concrete in disciplined pairs. Mercer counted eight of them, plus Sokolov himself, tall and unhurried in a long coat that didn’t belong in a tunnel. They fanned out, weapons low but ready.

Mercer and Camille dropped from the ladder onto a maintenance catwalk that ran parallel to the platform, screened by a wall of dead junction boxes. Mercer flattened against the grime-caked metal, watching Sokolov’s team form a loose perimeter around the train’s rear cars.

“He’s not here for the train,” Camille whispered.

“He’s here for the meeting.”

The bay’s far corner resolved out of the sodium haze: a Russian military UAZ-469, boxy and faded, its tires caked with tunnel grit. Parked beside it, a man in civilian clothes leaned against the hood, smoking. He was thin, sharp-featured, and he didn’t flinch when Sokolov approached.

“That’s not Remi,” Mercer said.

Camille’s jaw tightened. “You know him?”

“No. But Remi was supposed to be the one with the briefcase.” Mercer scanned the bay again. No briefcase. No Remi. Just Sokolov and the thin man, exchanging words too low to carry across the gantry.

“We need to get closer,” Camille said.

Mercer’s eyes tracked the catwalk. It ran the full length of the bay, but the last thirty meters were open—no cover, no shadow. Below, a stack of rusted cable drums offered concealment at the edge of the light pool. He pointed. Camille nodded once.

They moved fast, low and silent. Mercer’s improvised weapon—a steel pry bar he’d claimed from the train’s tool locker—was cold against his palm. Camille carried a fire axe handle with the head snapped off, sharpened to a crude point. Improvised still, but better than fists.

They reached the cable drums as Sokolov’s voice rose, edged with impatience.

“You said he would be here.”

The thin man dropped his cigarette, ground it out deliberately. “He was. He left.”

“With the merchandise?”

“With his part of it. The rest is where we agreed.” The thin man tilted his head toward a structure behind the UAZ—a low, windowless warehouse with corrugated steel walls and a single roll-up door, half-lost in shadow. “Getting it out is your problem now.”

Sokolov’s face was immobile, but Mercer caught the flicker in his jaw. “And the informant?”

“Still breathing. Wanted me to remind you of the arrangement—the family stays untouched. You’ll get your man, he gets his exit, and the files stay buried.” The thin man spat into the gravel. “You try to burn him, he burns everything. You understand?”

Sokolov said nothing for a long moment. Then he raised a hand—a lazy gesture that sent two of his men jogging toward the warehouse.

Mercer’s stomach turned. *The informant.*

He felt the shift in Camille’s posture before he saw it. Her head had turned toward him, sharp and accusing. “You said the informant was dead. In your briefing. You told me he was dead.”

His mouth went dry. “Camille. Not now.”

“When?” Her voice carried on the echoing concrete despite her whisper. “When were you going to tell me you lied about him? That the man you said Garrick burned is *alive* and running a deal with Sokolov?”

Mercer kept his eyes on the bay. Sokolov had turned to watch his men work the warehouse door, and the thin man had lit another cigarette, apparently in no hurry. They had maybe ninety seconds before the perimeter shifted and they were spotted.

“His name is Emil Doucet,” Mercer said. “He was Fournier’s asset. When Fournier died, Emil went dark—took the files, disappeared. MI6 marked him dead because I filed the report. I said he’d burned in a fire that never happened.”

“Why?”

“Because he had a family. A wife and two daughters. Garrick wanted leverage—want him to testify against Fournier’s network, he needed Emil’s family to guarantee his compliance. I faked the death to get Garrick off his trail.” Mercer’s voice was flat, deliberate. “I didn’t lie about who he was. I lied about what happened to him. There’s a difference.”

“There isn’t,” Camille said. The ice in her voice was absolute. “Not to me.”

“You’re right.” He met her eyes, letting her see the weight of it. “But I’d make the same call again. His daughters are seven and nine. Garrick would have used them like a key.”

She held his gaze, her jaw set. The fury was there—but so was something else. Calculation. She was weighing his lie against what they’d survived together. He couldn’t tell which way the scale was tipping.

Below, the warehouse door shuddered open. Sokolov’s men disappeared inside, and a moment later one reemerged, shaking his head. Sokolov’s composure cracked—he said something sharp in Russian, and the thin man’s easy posture stiffened.

“The warehouse is empty,” Camille said.

Mercer squinted. The open door showed only stacked pallets and dust. No briefcase. No files. And no sign of Doucet.

The thin man was talking fast now, both hands raised in a placating gesture. Sokolov stepped closer, and Mercer watched the whole dynamic shift—the thin man’s confidence draining as Sokolov’s men circled him.

“They’re going to kill him,” Camille said.

“Maybe.” Mercer was already moving, darting toward the next cable drum, closing the distance to the warehouse’s blind side. “But Sokolov came here for the files, and they’re gone. Which means Doucet either moved them or never planned to hand them over. And if he didn’t mean to hand them over, he’s still here.”

“Here where?”

Mercer reached the warehouse’s rusted corner, pressing his back to the corrugated steel. A ventilation grate at ground level rattled faintly—not from wind. Inside, a shadow moved across a sliver of light.

“There,” Mercer breathed.

Camille came up beside him, her earlier fury banked but not gone. She looked at the grate, then at Sokolov’s men, who had their backs to the warehouse as they closed on the thin man.

“We go in now,” she said. “Before Sokolov decides to search the building.”

Mercer nodded. He tested the grate—loose at one corner, screwed tight at the other. The pry bar would take seconds.

“If Doucet has the files, he has leverage over Sokolov,” Camille said quietly. “And if he has leverage over Sokolov, he has something Garrick wants buried.”

“And something Fournier wanted found.”

She looked at him, the accusation still burning behind her eyes, but something else had crept in beside it. Curiosity, maybe. Or the beginning of understanding.

“Whatever we find in there,” she said, “you tell me the truth. All of it. No more protecting your dead mentor’s ghosts.”

Mercer slid the pry bar under the grate’s corner. “Deal.”

But as the metal bent and the way opened, he felt the weight of what he hadn’t told her yet. The truth about Emil Doucet wasn’t the only lie he’d buried. And the person behind Fournier’s debt—the one Garrick served, the one who’d built the decommissioned lab and the shell companies and the train itself—was someone he’d hoped never to name out loud.

He dropped into the dark, hoping the files inside would tell him he was wrong.