Chapter 128 - The Grand Council's Ultimatum
"They aren't trying to breach the blast doors," Ethan said, his voice dropping into that terrifying, icy calm that had kept his unit alive through three ambushes in Kandahar. "They know this bunker is rated for five hundred pounds of high explosives."
"Then what are they doing, Ethan?" I asked, pulling Noah and Sophie behind the heavy mahogany briefing table.
"They're starving the clock," Ethan replied, pointing his laser pointer at the countdown timer on the wall.
10:14:22.
Forty-six minutes until Judge Henri Laurent convened the closed-door custody hearing at the Palace of Nations.
Under Swiss civil procedure, if the respondent party fails to appear within fifteen minutes of the gavel falling, the presiding magistrate has the statutory authority to issue an immediate, unappealable default judgment granting temporary custody to the petitioner.
"If Laurent bangs that gavel at 11:15," Marcus said, his hands tightening on his leather binder, "the Swiss federal marshals receive an automated warrant to seize Noah and Sophie on sight as wards of the court. We become international fugitives, and our French diplomatic escort becomes an act of unauthorized foreign military intervention."
Sophie stepped forward from behind the table, her plush bunny tucked beneath her arm.
"Mom," she said, looking up at me with those wide, intelligent gray eyes that mirrored the storm outside. "The building has a pneumatic mail tube system, doesn't it?"
I blinked, looking at my daughter. "A pneumatic tube?"
"When Grandpa Arthur took me to the French Consulate in New York two years ago," Sophie explained, her small voice clear and remarkably steady, "he showed me the diplomatic pouch conduits. He said every French mission built before 1980 has an underground pneumatic brass line connecting directly to the Swiss Federal Post Office on the Rue du Mont-Blanc to send diplomatic telegrams without using telephone wires."
Marcus’s head jerked toward the corner of the crisis room.
Behind a heavy steel filing cabinet stood an antique brass junction box with three curved, four-inch copper tubes disappearing into the granite foundation.
"She’s right," Marcus gasped, running over to the brass cabinet, wiping away fifty years of dust. "The sovereign diplomatic pneumatic loop. It runs beneath the city's sewer lines directly to the central telegraph vault behind the post office—three blocks from the Red Cross headquarters."
"It fits a six-inch capsule," Dr. Moreau said, his old eyes blazing with hope. "The key and the digital authorization token will fit inside an armored message cylinder."
Ethan turned to his lead tactical sergeant, a towering Frenchman named Captain Dupont.
"Dupont," Ethan commanded. "Send the cylinder through the tube. Have two of your plainclothes operators waiting in the post office basement to receive the capsule, run the three blocks to the Red Cross vault, and secure the Saint-Germain dossier."
"And what about us?" I asked, looking at the forty tons of concrete rubble blocking the vehicle ramp. "We still have to be sitting in Courtroom 4B at eleven o'clock."
Ethan looked at the concrete ceiling above our heads, then looked at the heavy industrial hydraulic winch mounted to the rear of our armored Land Rover.
May you like
A slow, terrifying, magnificent grin broke across his face.
"We aren't taking the ramp, Victoria," Ethan said softly. "We're taking the sidewalk."
