by Lee Goldberg
She held her hand out to Ian. “Give me the phone.”
“What for?” Ian spotted the Hotel Parisian Montparnasse at the corner of Rue de l’Arrivée and Place Bienvenüe.
“I’m going to call Healy.”
“And tell him what?” Ian waited for a break in traffic.
“That Wang Studios has an office in the Montparnasse tower with a clear view of the Eiffel Tower and there could be an assassin in there with a rocket launcher.”
Ian didn’t say anything. He just looked at her, giving her a moment to think about what she’d just said.
“Okay, scratch that,” she said. “Healy won’t believe it and even if he did, he probably couldn’t convince the French or US Secret Service in time.”
“Exactly.” He dashed across the street and she followed, joining him again on the sidewalk.
“We could call in a bomb threat to Montparnasse and tell them the explosives are in the Wang Studios office,” Margo said.
Ian walked up to the door of the Hotel Parisian Montparnasse. “We don’t know how many assassins are in the office or what measures they’ve taken to protect themselves to get the job done. All we may end up doing is getting a lot of people in the building killed along with two presidents. We have to do this ourselves.”
She tilted her head at the hotel door. “So what are we doing here?”
“Research,” he said and walked in.
The lobby was tiny and contemporary, the front desk doubling as a coffee and snack bar. There were two dining tables, a couch, and an office nook in the far corner with a desktop computer, printer, stationary, maps, and tourist brochures for hotel guests.
Ian went up to the counter, booked a room with the bored, balding clerk, and got the key while Margo sat waiting on the arm of the couch. When Ian was done, he tossed her the key.
“You can take our bags to our room.”
“What will you be doing?”
“I’m going to use the guest computer to look up the phone numbers of the tenants on the forty-fifth floor and get us an appointment with someone up there.”
“And then what happens?”
“I haven’t plotted that far yet.”
“Take your time. It’s not like we’re in a rush.” Margo took the key and the two suitcases, squeezed into an elevator that was barely large enough to hold her, and rode it up to their fifth-floor room.
Ian sat down at the computer, took out his phone, and scrolled through the photos of forty-fifth-floor tenants in Tour Montparnasse. The tenants on either side of the Wang Studios office were an accountant and a psychologist, Dr. Alex Barlier. He looked up Dr. Barlier on the internet and gave him a call.
A man answered on the first ring. “Bonjour. Dr. Barlier.”
“Hello, do you speak English?”
“Yes, I do,” he replied.
“Thank God,” Ian said. “I’m an American tourist here with my wife and we have a marital emergency.”
“How did you find me?”
“We’re staying at the Hotel Parisian Montparnasse across the street. I saw the huge office building and figured there must be at least one psychologist inside. I got your name off the tenant list in the lobby.”
“Incroyable,” Barlier said. “What is your emergency?”
Ian looked up and saw Margo walking across the lobby toward him. He maintained eye contact with her and said, “I just walked in on my wife in bed with a woman! We weren’t even here a day! Our entire marriage is based on a lie.”
Margo gave Ian the finger.
“Is your wife willing to see me, too?” Barlier asked.
“Yes and no,” Ian said. “I told her to come with me or I’m calling my lawyer to file for divorce right now. So she’s coming.”
“I can see you tomorrow morning at ten.”
“No, no, no, I can’t wait that long, or one of us will take a flying leap out of our window. The question is will it be me or her.”
Barlier sighed. “All right. I can see you at six thirty tonight.”
“What’s wrong with right now?”
“I have other patients. You’re lucky I’m squeezing you in at all. I’ll need your names for the visitors list.”
“Ian Ludlow and Margo French.”
“Bring your passports. You’ll need them at the security desk. Try to calm down in the meantime,” Barlier said. “Perhaps it’s best if you two remain apart until we talk.”
“That will be no problem. I can’t stand to look at her.” Ian disconnected and smiled at Margo. “We have an appointment at six thirty with the shrink in the office next door to Wang Studios.”
“Good, because you need professional help,” Margo said. “I can’t believe that you’re still upset that I got Susie into bed.”
“I’m not,” Ian said. “I needed a story to tell the shrink and the best lies are based on truth.”
“So what’s the truth? Do you feel betrayed that I slept with her and not with you or are you upset that I got her and you didn’t?”
It was both. “Neither one.”
“Then what is it?”
“You lied to me so you could go on the trip to Hong Kong and jump into bed with Susie Yip.”
“That wasn’t why I lied to you,” Margo said.
“Save your excuses and rationalizations for the shrink,” Ian said and checked the time on his phone. It was 5:00 p.m. “We have bigger issues to resolve.”
“We certainly do. Like how the hell are we going to get into Wang’s office and what are we going to do after that? We have no idea how many people are in there or what weapons they have.”
“Besides a missile launcher,” Ian said.
“Yeah, and that, too.”
“What do you know about missile launchers?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“They didn’t teach you anything about them at the Farm?”
“I was training to be a spy, not a soldier,” she said. “Spies don’t typically go around firing rockets.”
“Did they teach you how to play baccarat, or fly a fighter jet, or choose the best wine to go with fish?”
“No, they didn’t.”
“James Bond wouldn’t have survived thirty seconds if the CIA had trained him,” Ian said. “Their curriculum needs a total rethink.”
Ian thought about the obstacles the two of them were facing. They were unarmed and in ninety minutes they might be confronting a group of well-armed killers with rocket launchers. They were doomed. What would Straker do in a situation like this?
Straker was never doomed but he’d often helped people who were. That got Ian thinking about how Straker had evened the odds for some innocent, wholesome, unarmed civilians facing an army of gun-toting, bloodthirsty, merciless killers. Straker’s plan had worked for them. There was no reason, besides being entirely fictional, that it couldn’t work for Ian and Margo.
Ian stood up. “Come on, we have some shopping to do.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Paris Metro, Paris, France. July 7. 5:15 p.m. Central European Summer Time.
Andre Le Roux’s assignment was simple and specific: kill a Chinese businessman named Maurice Kwok anytime after 9:00 p.m. on July 7, preferably when Kwok returned to his apartment or his car, and dispose of the body where it wouldn’t be found.
He was given a picture of Kwok, the address of the Airbnb apartment where Kwok was staying, and the make, model, and license plate of Kwok’s van, which was parked in the Alésia-Maine underground parking structure beneath L’église Saint-Pierre de Montrouge.
But Le Roux was a big believer in Le monde appartient à ceux qui se lèvent tôt, which translated to “The world belongs to those who get up early.” So Le Roux was outside Kwok’s apartment this morning and had followed him around all day on what appeared to be a Paris sightseeing tour.
Kwok got off the train now at the Raspail station, so Le Roux figured the Montparnasse Cemetery was the next tourist stop on the businessman’s checklist.
Le Roux’s phone vibrated with a call as he was following Kwok up the steps to Boulevard Raspail. The harsh computerized voice on the other end of the line said in French:
“The job has changed. Contact the target right away, tell him ‘you have been compromised,’ and then walk away. No other action is necessary. Confirm completion of the assignment by text. You will be paid your full fee.”
In other words, whoever ordered the hit had second thoughts. That was usually the reason why a kill order became a warning without even a good beating to underscore it.
Le Roux was disappointed. The anticipation of the kill had already started to build up in him, like sexual desire, and now he had no way to release the sweet tension. After he gave Kwok the message, perhaps he’d indulge himself and stab the first person he saw who let their dog crap on the sidewalk. He hated the dog shit all over Paris.
Kwok emerged from the Raspail Metro station and walked around the corner, past a café, and onto Boulevard Edgar Quinet. It was a wide tree-lined street that ran along the northern wall of the Montparnasse Cemetery, where over forty thousand graves were crammed into forty-six acres, and ended half a mile away at Tour Montparnasse.
The cemetery was a housing tract for the dead, with row after row of elaborate family mausoleums. The bodies inside these small marble-and-limestone structures were stacked on shelves, the coffins emptied and consolidated to make room for each new generation of corpses. But if a family stopped paying for their mausoleum’s upkeep, the bones were cleared out and the crypt was left to fall into ruins until someone came along to buy the plot, clear away the rubble, and build their own monument to their dead. Lately, most of those buyers were cash-rich Chinese, who knew a cemetery wasn’t just a place to bury bodies but also their money, figuratively speaking. Unlike the dead, money could be resurrected.
He glanced at the windshield of a parked car to check on his pursuer and in the reflection he saw Hook Nose, the impatient imbecile, picking up his pace, moving in for the kill at least two hours early.
Kwok pretended not to notice and casually entered the cemetery. He stayed a few steps ahead of Hook Nose, while making sure he was easy to spot, as he snaked around the various tombstones, until he found an abandoned mausoleum and slipped inside. The dark space smelled of urine and the ceiling was a blanket of spiderwebs. It was only seconds later when Hook Nose moved past the doorway. Kwok charged out of hiding, grabbed the killer in a headlock, and dragged him into the crypt.
Hook Nose tried to speak, but Kwok broke his neck before any words came out. Kwok laid him down and searched the man’s pockets. What he found was a stiletto, a garrote, a wallet, and a burner phone. There were no saved text or phone messages on the phone, so Hook Nose wasn’t a complete idiot. Kwok ignored the cash and the fake ID and credit cards in the wallet. All that mattered was that he hadn’t found a badge or a wire. Hook Nose was a lone wolf. He pocketed the man’s weapons and slipped out of the crypt.
The encounter was unexpected but helpful. Now he knew for certain that he was targeted for death that night, just like the president of the United States. The difference was that Kwok would survive. He strolled out of the cemetery and up Boulevard Edgar Quinet to Rue du Départ and his date with destiny.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
The destiny that Kwok was thinking of probably wasn’t the one that occurred without him noticing.
Kwok crossed Rue du Départ to Tour Montparnasse at the same moment as Ian and Margo, only going in opposite directions, neither of them aware of the other. Kwok was going to Tour Montparnasse while Ian and Margo were going to the Monoprix, the French equivalent of Target.
As soon as they were inside the store, Ian and Margo each took a shopping cart and split up. He hurried through the aisles, filling his cart with household cleansers, several bottles of water, a box of sugar cubes, an instant cold pack, a table salt substitute, and a roll of aluminum foil. He nearly collided with Margo ten minutes later at the cash registers.
She smiled when she saw what was in his cart. “That’s the finale from Death Benefits.”
In the book, the basis for the movie in Hong Kong, Straker used common household items to help the simple Texas townsfolk make bombs to fight back against the well-armed, ruthless Mexican drug cartel.
“It seemed fitting to go back to that book for this,” Ian said.
“More like destiny,” Margo said. Her cart contained a box of steak knives, several rolls of masking and duct tape, and eight hand-painted porcelain souvenir tiles, two each of the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, and l’Opera.
“What is that stuff for?” he asked.
“Protection,” she said. “I’ll explain later.”
Ian paid for their items and they rushed out, carrying their shopping bags. But they didn’t go far. Two doors down was a Relay, essentially a storefront version of an airport newsstand, and Margo hurried inside.
She went straight to a display of hardcover bestsellers. Mixed among the titles was Le Ciel de la Mort, the French edition of Ian’s Straker novel Death in the Sky.
Margo took all eight copies. “We have to get these.”
“I’m flattered,” Ian said, “but we can buy them after we’ve saved the president.”
“No, we can’t,” Margo said, moving past Ian and heading for the cashier. “Our lives may depend on these books.”
“That may be the best blurb I’ve ever received,” Ian said.
They got back to their hotel room at 6:00 p.m. Margo dumped her bag out on the bed.
“Have you come up with a plan?” Margo asked as she pulled down her socks and folded up her pant legs.
“We use the bombs to create a diversion, break down Wang’s door, and subdue the assassin before he can fire the missile.”
“That doesn’t sound very imaginative to me.” Margo opened up the box of steak knives. “But sometimes simple is better.”
“What are those knives for?”
“Killing,” Margo said and began using the masking tape to secure a knife to each ankle. She was definitely not the same woman he’d met in Seattle.
“I’m not killing anyone,” Ian said. “It’s not that I’m unwilling to—it’s just that I probably suck at it.”
“I’m sure you do. Killing is my job. Yours will be disabling the rocket launcher,” Margo said. “I’ll buy you the time. No matter what happens to me, that is your mission. Are we clear?”
“Yes, but I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“Me too.” Margo pulled up her socks and folded down her pant legs hiding the knives. “Okay, let’s go save the president.”
Clint Straker couldn’t have said it better.
Ian and Margo approached the security desk in the Tour Montparnasse lobby. He was holding the shopping bags with most of the stuff from Monoprix and she was wheeling a carry-on suitcase containing his books and the souvenir tiles.
Ian told the guard they were there to see Dr. Barlier and handed over their passports. The guard verified they were on Barlier’s guest list while another guard examined the contents of Ian’s bag and Margo’s suitcase, ending his inspection without comment.
The counter guard handed Ian and Margo their passports along with two visitor pass stickers. “Place these on your shirts. You are restricted to the forty-fifth floor. You will have to come back down here if you want to go to the observation deck or the restaurant.”
Another guard walked Ian and Margo to an elevator, swiped a card key over a pad on the wall, and typed “45” on a keypad. The elevator doors opened and the guard waved them in. Ian and Margo stepped inside, the doors closed, and up they went. They were alone in the elevator but they were silent in case there was a microphone in the cabin. But somewhere around the thirty-fifth floor, Margo reached for Ian’s hand and gave it a squeeze. They looked into each other’s eyes for ten floors.
“God, I wish you weren’t gay,” he said softly as the doors slid open.
She abruptly let go of his han
d. “You just had to ruin the moment.”
“How did that ruin anything? I was speaking from the heart.”
“You were speaking from your crotch.” Margo marched out of the elevator.
They rounded a corner and headed down the hall toward Dr. Barlier’s office. Margo gestured to a standpipe and fire extinguisher in a glass box in the wall across from the psychologist’s door. Ian nodded to show her that he’d seen it, too. He also saw the door to Wang Studios and thought about what terrors might be behind it.
Ian took a deep breath and opened Dr. Barlier’s door, and they stepped into a small, unoccupied outer office with four chairs and a coffee table covered with a selection of magazines.
Dr. Barlier stood in the doorway directly across the room. He was younger than Ian expected, maybe in his early thirties, with a carefully curated two-day beard that diminished his slight overbite and pointed nose. He wore glasses, a turtleneck sweater, corduroy slacks, and tasseled loafers and held a notepad.
“You must be the Ludlows,” he said, stepping aside to usher them into his office.
“Thank you for making time to see us tonight.” Ian walked past him to the floor-to-ceiling window and the incredible view of the Eiffel Tower. Even from this distance, he could see that the Champ de Mars had been cleared of people. Police cars lined each side of the park and barricaded the streets all the way up to the tower.
Ian turned to the door as Margo came in, rolling her suitcase behind her. The doctor’s desk and a file cabinet were in a corner, to one side of the outer office door. A couch was angled diagonally to face the window and a painting resembling a multicolored inkblot was on the wall. The doctor’s armchair was also at a diagonal, putting his back to the wall and the view so he could focus all of his attention on the patient.
“I apologize for wasting your time, Doctor,” Margo said.
Ian dropped his bag beside the couch and confronted Margo. “You don’t think this marriage can be saved?”
