Read Chapter 8: The Crawlspace

Mercer handed Camille her phone without a word. She took it, turned it over in her palm, and looked at the cracked screen—a hairline fracture running from the top corner to the home button. The display glowed when she thumbed it awake. She didn't thank him.

"Lambert," she said. "You got a reservation slip under Lambert."

"Édouard Lambert. Train manifest, Car 6, berth 14. That's the compartment adjacent to Vernet's original booking."

Camille processed that, her thumb hovering over the phone's screen. "So Sokolov booked the seat next to hers. He was watching her before we even boarded."

"Or he was watching whoever was supposed to take her." Mercer leaned against the corridor wall, arms crossed, aware of the sway under his feet. The train had resumed motion minutes ago, but the rhythm felt wrong—slower, the lurch of the carriages heavier. They were not running at full speed. They were being guided somewhere.

"Where are we?" He asked it carefully, watching her face.

Camille didn't look up. "Paris is still ahead. About a kilometer of tunnel left before Coquelles, then the platform. Thirty minutes, maybe less."

Mercer said nothing. She wasn't lying, exactly. But she wasn't telling him everything either. He knew that look—the way her eyes stayed just a beat too long on the phone, the way her fingers had already moved to the Settings menu to check for tracking. She was a DGSE officer operating inside her own country's jurisdiction, and she was treating him like a complication.

"Renard," she said, breaking the silence. "The attendant. He wasn't killed in the luggage car. The blood pattern was wrong—he'd been dead for hours, moved after."

"I noticed the lividity too."

"Then you didn't mention it."

"I was busy finding the card you're pretending you don't want to ask me about."

Camille's mouth tightened. She pocketed the phone and stood straight. "Fine. The queen of hearts. Henri Fournier's card. Old SVR habit from the 90s. He left them on operations he didn't want traced back to Moscow—a little joke. The French and British services both laughed when they found them. Fournier's been dead for six years. So explain it."

"Maybe someone's collecting his cards."

"Or maybe you brought one and planted it."

Mercer's jaw tightened. He forced himself to breathe, let the accusation hang, and didn't rise to it. "If I'd wanted you dead, Camille, I'd have left you in the shaft with Sokolov. I pulled you out."

"You pulled me out because you needed my phone."

"When did the DGSE start recruiting freelancers?"

Her silence was the only answer. The train gave a long, shuddering groan, steel grinding against steel as they curved through the tunnel. Mercer steadied himself against the wall. The lights flickered once, and for a moment, they stood in darkness—the sound of their breathing loud in the enclosed space—then the fluorescents buzzed back to life.

"Sokolov's real name is Viktor Sokolov," Camille said finally. "He's a former GRU major who went private in 2019. He does kidnap, extraction, and body disposal—not always in that order. Interpol flagged him three years ago for a job in Vienna, but he disappeared before anyone could pick him up. Since then, he's worked exclusively for people who pay in cryptocurrency or diamonds."

"You know a lot about him."

"I pried into the control room earlier. The train manifest flagged a passport anomaly—the name Lambert came back as a known alias attached to Sokolov by Czech intelligence."

"Through the train computers?"

"Through the train computers. France owns this route, Mercer. We still have access."

The implication sat between them. He didn't argue the jurisdiction issue. Not now.

"Then you know Vernet is still aboard," he said. "Where?"

"If I knew, I'd have told you. Sokolov isn't on the manifest for a seat anymore—the system shows his berth reserved but empty since Calais. He's moving."

"Then we stop running and start crawling."

Camille raised an eyebrow. Mercer led her two carriages forward, past the sleeping compartments where passengers had shut themselves in against the chaos, past the dining car where a handful of travelers sat in subdued clusters, whispering. He stopped at the service door marked PERSONNEL SEULEMENT.

"Luggage car had a maintenance duct running along the ceiling," he said. "Goes the full length of the train, right side, above the light fixtures. Sokolov used it to get to the shaft without being seen."

"You're suggesting we crawl through the ceiling."

"I'm suggesting we do what he did. The train's slowing. If he's got Vernet, he's going to want to get off before we dock. He'll use a maintenance point—there's a spur about three kilometers out, an inspection gap, if he's got people waiting."

Camille paused. In the half-light of the corridor, he saw her weigh the information. He saw her realize he'd read the route change too—a thing he'd mentioned no one had told him, but which he'd noticed with his own eyes on the carriage indicators. The board above them still read PARIS, but the speed and the grain of the tracks told the story better.

They didn't have time to argue about trust.

Camille pulled open the service door and stared up into the dark crawlspace above them.

The duct was narrow—a steel channel barely wide enough for a man's shoulders, access panels every few meters leading down into each carriage. The air inside was hot and still, heavy with the smell of machinery oil and dust. Mercer hoisted himself up first, his hands finding the metal runner, his body pressed low as he moved forward. Camille followed.

They crawled in silence. The metal vibrated under Mercer's palms with the rhythm of the wheels below. Every thirty seconds, a light fixture hummed overhead, casting slashes of white that swept across their faces. He counted panels, measuring distance, trying to orient himself relative to the carriages.

"Vernet's research," he said, voice low. "You found something."

"Precision biofuels. She was a metabolic engineer. That's what the exchange dossier said."

"But?"

Behind him, Camille's breath came steady. "The control room had a file. Not the manifest—the backup drives, the one the station staff doesn't use. It flagged her name through the EU travel database at the request of a UK defense procurement office. Six months ago, someone searched her academic records and medical history."

"Someone in the UK?"

"Someone using a UK military IP address. The search was for her cell line work—antigen synthesis, specifically. And her daughter."

Mercer stopped. "Vernet has a daughter?"

"Aberdeen. Twelve-year-old, boarding school, father deceased." Camille's voice was flat. "The file noted a standing weekly payment from a private trust to the school—began the same day Vernet was recruited for the exchange."

They reached a junction. The duct forked—one direction continuing toward the rear, the other feeding up into a vertical shaft directly above the luggage car. Mercer shifted, easing onto his back to look up. A maintenance ladder rose toward a ceiling hatch, iron-black in the dim light.

"Biological agent," Mercer said. "Vertnet's not a biofuels engineer. She's a biochemist. It's why the exchange was so sensitive."

"You knew."

"I suspected. The people who ordered the exchange didn't tell me what she was carrying, but they told me enough." He didn't elaborate. He thought of the message he'd received, the order to abort. He thought of the girl in Aberdeen and the way the hostage logic worked, the leverage tightening like a noose. "The samples. Sokolov's got them—silver container. Medical grade."

"And Vernet?"

"If she's alive, she's not going to stay that way if Sokolov reaches the spur."

Mercer pushed up on the hatch. It didn't budge. He braced his shoulders and shoved again, metal screeching. The hatch gave a millimeter, then stuck. Camille moved past him in the duct, pressed her shoulder beside his, and together they heaved. The lock—rusted or jammed—gave way with a shudder, and cold air rushed over them. The night sky appeared, pale with distant city glow, the wind whipping through the opening.

They clambered onto the roof of the train.

The wind was immediate and brutal, cold off the Channel and tearing at their jacket collars. Mercer kept low, one hand on the ventilation housing, his feet finding purchase on the ridged metal. Above them, the tunnel arch had receded—they were already out, the train having broken from the bore minutes ago, rushing through the dark French countryside toward the coast. Moonlight silvered the rails ahead. The maintenance spur branched off the main line about half a mile ahead, its signal lamps burning red.

Mercer's phone vibrated against his chest. He keyed it open, squinting against the wind. A message, encrypted, from the handler in London.

ABORT IMMEDIATELY. HOSTAGE BINDING. VERNET IS EXPENDABLE. COME HOME.

The words sat there, cold and final. Camille watched his face. He didn't hide the phone.

"That's your order," she said.

"Sokolov's got Vernet and the samples. If he walks, we lose both."

"Your people just told you to let him."

"My people aren't here. They don't have a daughter in Aberdeen." Mercer pocketed the phone. Ahead, the spur's signal light flashed amber, and the train began bleeding speed, the grind of brakes building under them. A shape moved at the far end of the roof—low and quick, maybe forty meters ahead, ducking behind a vent housing.

Sokolov.

Mercer looked at Camille. For a long moment, something shifted between them—not trust, exactly, but a kind of sober recognition. They were both outside their orders now. Both beyond what headquarters would sanction. Whatever happened on this track, they'd have to invent the outcome together.

"Stay low," he said. "He's moving to the rear."

Camille nodded, pulling a lock of hair from her face as the wind gusted.

They went after him, crouched and silent, the train roaring into the dark.