Part One - continued
They had the back booth in The Wren, dark and murky except for the glow of their laptops painting their faces in ghostly ice blue light. It wouldn't surprise anyone to find them here. The off-the-beaten-track inn catered to locals only, and by now, the Musketeers of the Garrison were considered local. They stared at their screens, the whisky beside them ignored.
"I'm locked out of all of the SVOI records," Porthos grumbled, tapping at the screen.
"Not surprising," as Athos had suspected, it took about 10 minutes for Treville to revoke their access to all mission records. They still had system access to logistics and operations, things like reserving time on the firing range or checking out a company vehicle were apparently still allowed on bereavement leave.
"Here," he handed Porthos a portable drive from the gear bag on the bench beside him, "That's the mission archive going back 3 years. Everything with an inactive status," Porthos's brow shot wrinkled in disbelief, "What? I have automated monthly archiving. I like to be prepared."
"You are one paranoid bastard, Athos," Porthos laughed as he plugged in the drive, "Ok, what am I looking for?"
"Check the SVOI logs," Athos said, "Find out who Aramis has been paired with when he hasn't been with us. Captain believes in teamwork to a fault. Musketeers deployed to SVOI are not random picks. Nothing Treville does is random. We need to figure out who it is Treville is hunting."
"Why?" Porthos said, tapping away at the computer again.
"If we know who's chasing him, we have two leads to follow. Aramis has to know it was an inside job or he would have made contact by now."
"But he trusts us," Porthos said, "No matter what, that can't be in question."
"Yeah but maybe he trusted someone else too," Athos sighed, "Twenty dead. Who do you trust after that? Damn, this is gruesome."
"What?" Porthos looked up from the screen.
"Incident photos and security video, it was ruthless," Athos scrubbed a hand over his face and met Porthos's worried gaze, "It's so brutal it had to be personal Someone is sending a message. No wonder Treville suspects an inside job."
"How'd you get that?" Porthos wondered, "Our clearance was pulled."
"Serge," Athos answered, "He sent them to me in a clean feed. He's been through this. He knows we won't believe it until we see it."
"Old man's gonna get in trouble when Treville finds out," Porthos said, eyes still locked on Athos.
"Treville won't find out. Serge is that good and he's been at it a long time," Athos stopped flipping through the photos and met Porthos's demanding gaze, "You don't want to see this," he said, answering the unspoken question. Porthos had seen heavy combat in the middle east. He was a rock in the field, but the aftermath was sometimes hard. He had a hard time with gaping wounds and excessive amounts of blood. Photos like this could trigger an anxiety attack they didn't have time for. "They were executed. It looks like some of them didn't even fight back. We knew a lot of these guys, not just the Musketeers."
"Who?" Porthos's voice held a dark threat.
"Maeve and Beatrice from Ops. Johnny, Sparky and Sam from the San Francisco unit. Those two Irish guys, the ones that looked like twins . . . " Athos couldn't remember their names.
"Seamus and Francis," Porthos said, jaw tight, "Those were good men. All of 'em, good people."
"If Aramis survived that . . . " Athos's statement was cut off by Porthos's fist hitting the table.
"Not if. He survived," Porthos growled, "Not. If."
"Okay," Athos nodded, "You're right. I'm seeing lots of faces I know, but I'm not seeing Aramis. But not all of the bodies are identifiable. They set charges too. We'd have to wait for DNA to be sure."
"I have eight names," Porthos passed his phone to Athos, the list of men who had worked SVOI the most frequently.
"Dutch, Spider, Rex and Boomer are dead," Athos's voice was emotionless as he rattled off the nom de guerres of four of their musketeer comrades he had seen in the photos. It sucked, but he didn't have the luxury to indulge himself in grief. Not if they were going to find Aramis and whatever musketeer Treville thought betrayed them.
"Booker wasn't there, I saw him at the Garrison when we were on our way to Treville's office," Porthos offered.
Athos tapped at his computer, "Looks like Curly has been on medical leave for two months. Blew out his knee skiing in the alps. No way he was on that mission."
Porthos scrolled down his screen, "Lucky is still in Tunisia. At the beach according to Instagram."
"How can you know that?" Athos asked, "You can post beach photos from anywhere."
"Guy is on his honeymoon, Athos," Porthos said, "That's one hell of an advance cover for murdering musketeers. Do you really think Ginny was a schill?"
"That leaves one name," Athos said, looking up at Porthos and handing him back his phone, "Marsac. So where is he?"
"Damned if I know," Porthos said, scrolling through his screen, "He's not on the current duty roster, not on the leave list, and not suspended."
"How did you get that info?" Athos said, surprised.
"I still have access to all of the active duty rosters from my five weeks on desk duty after that business with Bonnaire last year," Porthos said, "They never took me off the distro lists or the admin site. I see everything except high clearance deployments."
"Like SVOI," Athos said.
"Yeah, like SVOI," Porthos furrowed his brow, "If it's Marsac, that's gonna mess with Aramis's head. Aramis has been friends with him since before the Musketeers. No wonder he went to ground."
"I can imagine Marsac betraying the musketeers, that bastard is the biggest opportunist I've ever met," Athos said, "But Aramis? He's about the one thing Marsac does care about."
"Whatever happened, Aramis is spooked and Marsac is missing," Porthos said, "Do you think they could be together?"
"I don't know," Athos sighed.
"Why hasn't he called in?" Porthos pressed
"I don't know," Athos stared at the screen in front of him. Tapping at a key, the bloody photographs blinked out of existence
"Where did he go?" Porthos continued.
"I don't know," Athos was too tired to be exasperated.
"No one is looking for him except us, right?" Athos nodded in affirmation, "So wouldn't he find a way a send us a message? Wouldn't he know we'd come for him?"
"I don't know," Athos blinked at the screen. He really didn't know. Athos had been betrayed before, deeply, and it almost cost him his own life. Most of his family was dead and if it hadn't been for a long-standing friendship between his father and Treville, he might have gone down for the crime. His ex-wife had framed him, run off with his younger brother, and emptied the family's trust before they found Tommy washed up on a beach in southern Spain. After he was cleared, Treville had pulled strings and got him assigned to the new Musketeer's unit. Athos owed Treville his life - joining the Musketeers had brought him Porthos and Aramis and those two men were bound and determined not to let him die. Of grief, of self-loathing, of loneliness. He couldn't imagine how badly it would break him if he was betrayed by one of them.
But he was not Aramis. Their sharpshooter was a picture of paradoxes but one thing he never questioned was his own unwavering faith. Aramis would have faith in them. He would have sent them a message.
"He would know we'd come for him," Athos revised his answer with a conviction he hadn't felt before, "We just have to figure out where he'd go."
"He can't head back to the Garrison if he thinks he's being hunted so what then?" Porthos was ready to go down the rabbit hole and Athos for a change was right with him.
"He'd stay in Italy," Athos said, "Wouldn't risk crossing the border on any credentials issued by the Musketeers. His Italian is excellent. He would stay in-country. Lay low somewhere he felt safe."
"I'm checking hospitals in Turin for John Doe's fitting his description," Porthos clicked away at the keyboard.
"He'd leave Turin if he could," Athos countered. "Open the search further, anywhere he could drive to in say eight hours max."
"Surprising amount of dark-haired men in their 30s turning up unconscious in hospitals in Italy," Porthos said sarcastically.
"If he had been in that attack, he'd be a mess," Athos said, "Look for multiple lacerations, gunshot wounds or burns from explosions."
"Nothing like that in the last 12 hours," Porthos said, "At least not that I've found yet."
"He might not go to a hospital," Athos speculated, "Clinic, local doctor? He'd even go to a vet if he had to."
"Not gonna find him this way. What else?" Porthos's dark eyes flashed.
"Aliases? You have his credentials?" Athos asked. Porthos nodded, "Start pulling credit cards and passports that we know he's got. Use that app Finegan gave us when we were looking for those smugglers in Bali."
"That's a sweet app," Porthos said, "But if our clearances are pulled will it work?"
"It's not going through our systems, and the app is local to that laptop," Athos explained, "And both of these laptops are clean. These are mine."
"You keep clean gear just sitting around?" Porthos seemed incredulous.
"My trust for any agency, even the Musketeers, only goes so far," Athos shrugged.
"I'm striking out here," Porthos was getting frustrated.
"Run everything we have, agency or not," Athos suggested. They all had multiple identities created for them by INTERPOL, complete with passports, credit cards and backstories. As team leader, Athos had access to everything issued to his men through the Musketeers, but they had a few tricks of their own up their sleeves. Credit cards in the names of relatives and exes, stashes of cash and unregistered firearms in places where they might need them. Nothing like leading a life of an international special ops agent to up anyone's paranoia level although Athos knew, he was an extreme case.
"Well damn," Porthos said with a smirk, "Let me see your wallet."
Athos fished his wallet out of his pocket and flipped it open. It was a slim black leather case, with a neat row of credit cards sorted by color in two rows. One was conspicuously missing, "Bastard stole my bank card again. I'm gonna kill him."
"Yeah, but I got a hit on it," Porthos smiled, "The rail station in Turin."
"When?" Athos chewed on his bottom lip. When was the answer to everything.
"Eight hours ago," Porthos grinned broadly and Athos felt the tension drop from his chest like the release of a metal band.
"Its proof he survived," Porthos couldn't stop smiling, "Treville was wrong."
"Okay, but now we really need to find him," Athos said, "If that call you got was him . . ."
"He's hurt," Porthos finished the sentence, "Didn't get to a hospital, and took a train somewhere out of Turin."
"What does the ticket say?" Athos asked.
"Can't identify that with this app," Porthos said, "It's a Eurorail pass - its good for five days of travel anywhere in Europe. We'd need full access to the agency system to find where he'd use it. Or hack the Eurorail database."
"We don't have time to hack anything. We just have to figure it out. He's not still on a train," Athos puzzled it out, "He bought that with my card so we'd know he'd left Turin, but he's not going to travel that far. He wants us to find him."
"You seem sure about that," Porthos said
"He used my personal card. He knows I'll get a flag on that." Athos tapped at his phone, "It's in my priority email - I just wasn't looking."
"I get so many I don't pay attention," Porthos said.
"You have to read bank security notices," Athos was shocked, "Your identity could be stolen."
"Athos, I have like six identities at this point. So do you," Porthos laughed, "I hardly think it matters."
"Right now, Aramis seems to have stolen one of them," Athos said, "So where did I go next after the train ticket?"
"That's it," Porthos said, "No other charges to that card or any other of mine or yours that I know of."
"Damn," Athos pushed his hair out of his eyes, "Where the hell would he go?"
"First train leaving after he bought that ticket was heading north," Porthos said, "Why would he go north?"
"He wouldn't," Athos answered, "He wouldn't cross the border. What else?"
"Local train to Milan, Local train to Bologna, Express train to Florence . .." Porthos rattled off the timetable, "All within 30 minutes of him purchasing that ticket. Has to be one of those."
"Local stops won't help him," Athos said, "He'd have to go to a major city if he was hiding."
"Not necessarily," Porthos countered, "Fewer records, fewer cameras, more help available that wouldn't leave the kind of records you'd find in a major hospital."
"Porthos, if he is hurt and holed up in some barn in Tuscany someone would call the police as soon as they found him. Or he'd be a corpse in a hayfield somewhere. He needs the resources of a major city. And we have operatives in Florence. Maybe some that he'd trust."
"This is getting us nowhere," Porthos snapped closed his laptop and picked up his phone, flipping through text messages again. Athos knew he hadn't missed anything but he knew Porthos kept hoping.
"In any other circumstances, he'd head for a safe house," Athos said, "But if he's trying to avoid Marsac or the Musketeers, that option would be closed. Where else? Does he have family in Italy? An ex that's still speaking to him?"
"They're all still speaking to him, problem is there are too many to track down efficiently and probably lots we don't even know about." Porthos sighed.
"Old army buddies, someone from university . . . "Athos wracked his brain trying to remember the small details of Aramis's life that he liberally shared during their many stakeouts, bar talks, or sitting by each other's bedsides in the infirmary.
"Wait, wait, wait!" Porthos leaned forward, flipping open the laptop again, "Safehouse logs. I have access to those from the admin site I'm still on." Porthos typed furiously at the keyboard.
"Porthos, he wouldn't," Athos shook his head, "It's too obvious. Why go to all this trouble to hide his trail from the Musketeers if he is just going to show up at a safe house? It's too easy to search in the database."
"If you're looking for him, yeah. But you wouldn't be looking for me," Porthos said, turning the laptop around to face Athos. There on the screen, highlighted in a list, was the name Porthos, logged in to the musketeer safe house in Florence six hours ago.
"You gave him your ID code?" Athos was stunned. It was a complete breach of protocol.
"Well not exactly," Porthos said, rubbing a hand at the back of his neck, "You know how we have to change it every 30 days, yeah? Well, I use the name of the last woman I walked in on him with plus the last four digits of his phone number."
"It happens that often?" Athos sounded shocked.
"It's about the only thing we fight about. He needs to close his damn door."
"So he knows your INTERPOL ID?" Athos couldn't get past Aramis having Porthos's clearance code.
"Well I know his," Porthos shrugged. Athos stared, wide-eyed, "Right now it's his mother's name plus your birthday."
"My birthday? Why my birthday?"
"He figures no one else would know it but us," Porthos said, "Besides, he likes you."
"This is all kinds of wrong," Athos said shaking his head.
"Yeah, well whatever it is we just found him in Florence," Porthos said, turning the computer back around, "And I bet we don't have much time until someone eventually notices my name on this list. So now what?"
"Got that covered," Athos said, "You and I are booked to leave for Spain tomorrow morning."
"Spain?" Porthos was confused. Athos rolled his eyes.
"Spain. Where presumably Aramis's family will hold services and where everyone will expect us to be going," Athos said, "We are on bereavement leave. I've rented us a car and paid for a hotel stay."
"We gotta tell his sisters he's not dead," Porthos looked panicked.
"We can't. Not yet. Not 'til we have him," Athos said. He could tell Porthos wanted to disagree but the big man knew he was right. Despite the optimism they wanted to have, they didn't know for sure Aramis was still alive. Besides, they needed to play the grieving comrades so that anyone looking would see what they expected to see.
"We'll leave anything traceable in the SUV," Athos said, "The agency is going to come looking for their property eventually. But us being here at this bar isn't going to raise any alarms for a while yet. Marie is going to give us a ride."
"Where we going?" Porthos ask, suspicion coloring his face.
"Don't freak out. We're going to get a ride to Florence," Athos said, "From Squeaky."
It was a testament to how worried Porthos was when he hadn't complained about their transportation to Florence. He just sat white-knuckled and tight-lipped as the retired musketeer piloted what was certainly an illegally obtained US Blackhawk helicopter over international borders without authorization. But that was Squeaky, always had a way to squeak by somehow.
Porthos was not a fan of the garrulous old man, nor particularly confident in how he maintained the fleet of choppers, planes, boats and motorcycles he had someone acquired over the years, but he had agreed with Athos that the only way to Florence without being tracked was Squeaky. Athos, who mostly liked no one, seemed to get along well with the retiree and would often spend his leave time in the cabin on the farm helping Squeaky with chores or maintenance on his fleet of illegal vehicles.
He dropped them in a sunflower field an hour before dawn about a mile outside of Bagno di Ripoli, a thriving town about 25 minutes from downtown Florence. Porthos hiked into town to pick up the rental car Athos had reserved for them while Athos double checked the gear bags, medical supplies, ammo and electronics looking for anything that the Garrison could use to trace them. He had told Marie that when someone came looking for the car to say she had given them a ride home. The quartermaster would eventually log the weapons and realize that some - ok lots - were missing, and when they didn't make their flights for Spain, Treville would start looking. They weren't exactly AWOL as Treville had sent them on leave, but they still had agency firearms and that was a deep breach of protocol.
They'd be hard to find though. Porthos had used Finnegan's app to delete the traces of the train ticket Aramis had purchased. Athos ran his transactions through an old account tagged to his ex-wife that was virtually untraceable back to him. Squeaky had emptied the cashbox for them. They had enough euros to get themselves just about anywhere without having to draw a note off of Athos's considerable line of credit. And even if they did, Athos would contact his attorney for the transaction. They'd done this before when they'd run into trouble on the Bonnaire mission, but Treville still didn't know the half of what they had pulled off, which was what had landed them all on desk duty for weeks. There was a reason MU1 was considered the elite unit of the squad.
Waiting for Porthos to return, Athos had ample time to think things through again. They were doing more than breaching protocol, they were breaking international law by crossing a border illegally, armed to the teeth, and without any regard for the orders from their unit commander. If they were caught, Treville couldn't bail them out of this if he wanted to - unless it was to suggest a firing squad in France. No, they were completely on their own and risking everything for the sake of one man.
It didn't have to go this way. They could have told Treville that they thought Aramis had escaped the massacre. Athos knew in his gut he could trust Treville, had always trusted him, but something about the entire thing wasn't adding up. Marsac was an operative like they were, but not even a team leader. He would not have had the clearances, resources or access to pull off an operation as large as what was needed to have taken down 20 INTERPOL agents. There had to be more to this than one rogue agent and until they knew the rest, no musketeer was safe. Aramis alive was no more than an inconvenient loose end to whoever had orchestrated the murder of the SVOI team. They had to stay off-grid to find Aramis, keep him alive, and maybe get to the bottom of whatever was going on. Aramis had been there, he was too good of an agent not to know something. It wasn't just Aramis's life at stake, it might be the entire Garrison.
At least that's what Athos kept telling himself because he was damned uncomfortable owning the fact that he'd risk anything for the two men who had been by his side for the last three years. He'd been hollowed out by grief and loss when he'd joined the musketeers. He had expected to die somewhere on a mission, or in the bottom of a bottle of whisky in some hell hole in Africa or the Middle East. He had expected just about any fate other than those two men crashing into his life. He would do anything for them, just like he would have done anything for Anne or for Thomas. Only he'd been completely wrong about both of them, about his own family. But he wasn't wrong about Aramis and Porthos. He didn't think he'd survive it if he was and he wasn't going to fight it now. Whatever walls and barriers he had told himself he needed, his heart had had other ideas. They had become his brothers, in a way Thomas never really had been. All for one, one for all. He'd bought into Treville's musketeer motto a long time ago. Those two had refused to let him do otherwise.
Athos heard the crunch of gravel on the farm road and stood, shading his eyes in the early morning sun to see a nondescript black SUV curling up the drive. That would be Porthos. Athos was done brooding. One of his brothers was in trouble and Athos was going to move heaven and earth to bring him home. That's just how it was.
