“Odd,” said Marcel, “they’ve not even finished the hardscaping on that. Isn’t it too soon for plants?”

“The hell should I know?” groused Paul. “I grew up in Paris. I don’t think I ever saw a tree or shrub until I enlisted.”

He stepped past Marcel and made that hand-patting gesture that told a driver to slow down and stop. The lorry was a big one, and Marcel wondered how many damned shrubs they had ordered. Or did someone screw up and send a big lorry like this instead of a more appropriately sized van?

The driver was a very pretty woman, and Marcel perked up. She was petite, blond, very nice to look at. A bit like that actress from the comic book movie. The one with the baseball bat and too much lipstick. Marcel could not fish her name out of his head. His knowledge of American cinema was only marginally better than what he knew about British film. He was okay with the Italians, but mostly the retro stuff. This driver, though, could have fit into the old sixties and seventies giallo films. Or maybe a young Catherine Deneuve, but with a punk finish.

Marcel watched the woman hand an ID card to Paul, give only a slight uptilt of her nose at Paul’s leering smile, pop chewing gum very loudly, take her card back, and drive in through the gate.

Marcel smoked a cigarette with Paul, then continued his patrol. He kept thinking of the driver mostly because he could not remember the name of the actress who played in that superhero movie. The sentries were not allowed to use their cell phones on patrol, so he couldn’t do a search. And, eventually, he forgot about the actress, the driver, and the truck.

His memory was triggered when the truck drove out ninety-four minutes later, and then it vanished again.

What really made every detail of that woman and that truck was when all the lights on the base flashed on, a dozen sirens blared, and military police swarmed through in riot gear. For the next three days, Marcel—along with Paul and everyone on patrol or guard duty that night—sat in rooms while teams of investigators screamed questions at him.

They did not actually explain things outright, but over time, by piecing together bits of different questions, he worked it out. The truck drove in using false ID. It parked behind the biomedical research center. A gate was lowered, and two forklifts were offloaded—and later found abandoned—and then used to remove tons of vital and highly classified machines, computer mainframes, and other unspecified materials.

INTERLUDE 11

SALES PRESENTATION VIA SHOWROOM

TWO MONTHS AGO