MAPLE LEAF INN

COLBY, LONG ISLAND

Saturday, noon

Everyone’s eyes were on the large TV on the wall behind the counter in the main dining room, where the news was reporting at the scene of the horrific TBV train wreck hours before, thirty miles north of Lyons, France. A massive explosion had ripped through five first-class cars and derailed them, hurling flaming debris over a mile of countryside, some of it still burning and smoking. As the camera panned over some of the wreckage, a reporter was saying what incalculable loss of life and property might have resulted if a bomb that size had exploded under the train in a town or city. So far forty-eight people were confirmed dead, more than a hundred injured. The count would continue to rise.

Pip Erwin raised his head from his bowl of vegetable soup, pointed his spoon at the TV. “I’m waiting for someone from the French government to even acknowledge that carnage was another terrorist attack. They’ll have to, eventually. I’d be willing to bet the rest of my minestrone it’s the same people who attacked us, that it was part of their Bella project. Not a cathedral this time, but certainly a national treasure, the famous French high-speed train. They were so proud of having built the fastest train in the world for the past thirty-five years.”

Cal said, “They said the train was traveling at three hundred kilometers an hour, not anywhere near as fast as the TGV can travel—but that’s a hundred and eighty miles per hour, fast enough to make that bomb a thousand times more effective. Can you imagine sitting in one of the last cars on that train and watching the front of it get blown off the track at that speed?”

Kelly’s BLT and the lovely pile of french fries cozied up to it lay untouched on her plate. On even a mildly bad day, she still loved her french fries, but not today, not watching the horror unfold in France. She agreed with Pip, knew everyone else at the table did, too. It was terrifying. “Maybe someone in the group will take credit? Maybe this Strategist? We still have no idea who they are.”

Cal’s eyes were glued to the TV screen. “A couple years ago I rode on one of those from Paris to Geneva. Train à Grande Vitesse, they call it. They’re amazing, some can travel up to nearly half the speed of sound. I remember we were hardly out of the station when the train was passing cars on the highway. It was better to be sitting as it picked up speed, one hundred kilometers before it even left the station, I heard. The French who rode the train already knew that, so only a couple tourists ended up getting slung into someone’s lap.

“What was amazing to me was you couldn’t tell you were moving that fast because the ride was smooth, and it was quiet, until you looked out the window and saw the world going backward. Eat your lunch, Kelly.”

She picked up half of her BLT, studied it, set it back down. “Terrorist groups want to take credit. It brings them credibility, more support. I can understand not hearing from anyone after they failed to blow up Saint Pat’s, but this”—she waved a hand toward the TV—“vicious act was a massive success.”

Sherlock was listening to a reporter interviewing a bystander who’d witnessed the explosion, and a passenger traveling second-class who’d survived it. An English newscaster interrupted him. “A French government spokesman has confirmed that French economic minister Marcel Dubroc was aboard the train and is presumed dead. President Dumas is expected to arrive at the scene shortly and to make a statement.”

Cal said, “Dubroc had to be in first class, where all the cars were blown off the tracks. I wonder if that was by design or accident?”

Pip said, “At that speed, the timing would require great precision. They had to have wired an electronic detonator set off by the passing train itself. No way would you do that remotely by hand. A fraction of a second off and it would have been the second-class cars instead. They’d have to dig down deep under the ballast—”

Kelly shook her head. “The what?”

Cal said, “Ballast is simply the thick layer of gravel beneath and beside the train tracks. It’s the bulk support for the train tracks, used for stabilization. For the TGV, I’d guess it would go deeper under the tracks than most, probably at least a foot beneath the tracks, and a foot and a half at the shoulders. The hard part would be digging down without being seen, without tripping any sensors, and plant what must have been a heavy load of explosives.”

Sherlock frowned into her bowl of vegetable soup. Vice President Foley had been in St. Patrick’s, as had a great many politicians and their rich and powerful friends. Was it people who were being targeted, as well as buildings and trains?