by Allan Topol
Quizzically, he studied the number on the pager.
As he did, Françoise looked at him in irritation. She wasn’t accustomed to having a man’s business interfere with her getting sex when she wanted it, and she wanted it right now.
Victor got up from the sofa and walked across the room.
“Where are you going?” Françoise demanded.
“To use the phone. Just for thirty seconds, I promise, ma chérie.”
She pouted. “I’m looking at the clock. If it passes thirty seconds, I go into the bedroom and lock the door. You go home. Is that clear?”
He knew that she meant it. His erection was already withering.
The phone was answered by a man, who said, “Philippe, National Security Police.”
Oh shit, Victor thought. “My name is Victor Foch. Someone called me from your number.”
“I’ll get the prisoner now,” he said. There was a delay while Philippe put the phone down to get David.
Victor didn’t even bother looking at the clock. There was no need for that. He sighed in resignation when he heard the bedroom door slam loudly and a dead bolt snap into place.
* * *
An hour later, Victor and David were seated at a table in a small brasserie that stayed open all night. The lawyer was still in the double-breasted charcoal Brioni suit, starched white shirt and Hermes tie he had worn to the opera. David was in the wet and dirty clothes he had been wearing when the police pulled him off the stocky assailant. His pants were mud-stained and torn at the knees. His scratched face was streaked with mud and caked with dried blood, as were his arms and legs. His whole body ached from the blows the police had inflicted with hard rubber clubs in the van on the way to jail.
They were the only customers in the brasserie. A surly waiter deposited two cups of double espresso and quickly departed, hoping that David wouldn’t get too much mud on his chair.
“Well, your name certainly carries influence,” David said. “All I had to do was mention it, and the police stopped smacking me around. And then you sprang me in record time.”
“Goddammit, Nielsen! Cut the bullshit and tell me what happened.”
“You’ve got it ass backwards. You damn well better tell me what happened,” David replied angrily.
“What the hell’s that mean?”
David leaned forward and grabbed the lapels of Victor’s jacket. “My analysis, while waiting around for you to come, was that you told the Iranians about me, and where I was staying. The rest was up to them, but they botched the job.”
“You really believe that?”
“Just as sure as God made little green apples.” Victor looked at him in bewilderment. David added, “That’s an expression they use in Texas when they’re positive something happened.”
Victor pushed David’s hands away. “I don’t care about your stupid Texas slang. I just can’t believe that you think I had anything to do with this.”
“Well, you sure as hell don’t like me. You haven’t made any secret of that.”
“Absolutely true. But you’re overlooking something.”
“What’s that?”
“You’ve managed to con Madame Blanc, who’s my most important client and who believes that you’re valuable to her project.” Victor scoffed. “She’s told me that I’m personally responsible for your safety. What’s more, she’s a person I wouldn’t cross under any circumstance. With her intelligence network, she’d find out in hours that I was responsible for your death.” Victor gave David a sly smile, letting him know how attractive the prospect of killing David was for him. “Much as I’d like to get rid of you, I might as well be signing my own death warrant, and I’m afraid you’re not worth paying that price.”
David paused to sip his espresso, thinking about what Victor had just said. He had to admit that the French lawyer’s argument sounded persuasive. But if Victor hadn’t called in the Iranian hit squad, then who did? Was it the same people who had tried to kill him in Green Park in London?
David said, “Did the police give you any information about the two who attacked me?”
“You killed both of them.”
David looked at him in disbelief. “I only killed the one. The other one was still alive when the police came.”
Victor looked David squarely in the eye. “Not by much. The pounding you gave him on his head caused a cerebral hemorrhage. He was dead before they got him to jail.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure. The time of death was recorded as nine-thirty p.m.”
David knew there was something wrong here, but he was too weary and battered to put his finger on it. “Could the police identify them?”
“Negative. They both had Iranian passports in their pockets. Their names and fingerprints didn’t come up on French police records or on Interpol, but the names could have been phonies.”
David looked at the natty lawyer anxiously. “Will I be charged? What happens now with the police?”
“Not a damn thing. You’re off the hook. I’ve fixed it all.”
Grudgingly, David said, “Thank you. I appreciate that.”
The lawyer gave him a surly look. “I didn’t do it for you. I did it for Madame Blanc. But even so, I had to use up a lot of chits that meant a great deal to me. We’re talking double homicide on your part, one with an unlicensed gun, among other crimes. Don’t do it again. I won’t have such an easy time if you stage a repeat performance.”
“Understood.”
Victor finished his espresso. “I’ll take you back to the Bristol for a couple of hours of sleep. Remember, tomorrow’s a working day for you.”
David frowned. “Forget the Bristol,”
“What’s that mean?”
“The Bristol’s too hot for me. They know about it. I’ve got another place to stay.”
“Wherever you want. I’ll drive you.”
“Nope, I can’t take a chance of us being followed. I’ll get there myself.”
David handed Victor his room key at the Bristol. “If you want to do something useful, then pack up my things at the hotel. Deliver them to me at eleven tomorrow morning, when your car takes me back to PDF.”
Victor found the idea of cleaning up after David distasteful, but he decided that he had no choice. Madame Blanc’s orders had been clear. He had to keep David safe at all costs. “Where shall I meet you?”
“There’s a brasserie where avenue George V hits the river. I’ll meet you there at eleven o’clock.”
“Why there?”
“It’s a busy commercial area. I think I’ll be safer in a crowd. Besides, I have to go shopping for clothes in the morning.”
* * *
Even though he was exhausted and beaten, he made sure to follow his routine of changing Metro trains to make certain he wasn’t being followed. At the second station he used a call box and dialed Sagit’s cell phone.
“Can you meet me at the Hotel Gironde near the place des Invalides?” he asked.
“I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
“Tell the man at the reception desk that you want Micky Mantle’s room. Oh, and bring some alcohol or something to treat cuts, would you?”
Half an hour later, she was still gripping the can of pepper spray when she knocked on the door to his hotel room. David had arrived only a few minutes ago himself. She took one look at him and pulled back with apprehension.
“I better get you to a doctor.” she said. “We have some people we use in Paris.”
“Nah, I’ll survive. It’s only superficial.”
“I was worried when I didn’t hear from you. I sent one of our people from the embassy to talk casually with the doorman at the Bristol. He said the police arrested two men. One sounded like you.”
“Yeah, well, the police did more to me than either of those guys.” He lifted up his shirt and showed her the bruises on his chest and back.
She swallowed hard, upset by what had happened to him. “Can I help clean you up?�
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“That I could use.”
She washed the cuts and bruises on his face with warm, soapy water and then helped him into a hot tub. He winced from pain when the hot water stung his wounds. As she scrubbed and washed his cuts with alcohol, he bit down hard on his lip. Afterward, she draped a thin cotton robe the hotel provided around him.
From her purse she pulled a flask with cognac and handed it to him. David took a long gulp, then raised the flask to her. “You saved my life tonight. I won’t forget that.”
His gratitude was so genuine that it lit up her face with pride. “Well, having worked out that great deal for you in Washington, I didn’t want all my hard work to be for nothing. Now, tell me what happened after we separated.”
He described the rest of the night for her, including his discussion with Victor. When he was finished, he said, “I’m convinced that snake, Victor, didn’t send the two Iranians to kill me, but I sure as hell want to find out who did. Got any ideas?”
“I have a friend in the French secret police, somebody who worked with us back in ‘56. He’s close to retirement, but he still has warm feelings toward Israel from those days. I’m meeting with him tomorrow to enlist his help with Daphna. I’ll ask him to find out if there’s any more information on the ID of the men who attacked you. That could give us a start.”
“Use any sources you can. If we don’t find and stop the bastards, they’ll try again.”
“I’ll do that.” She looked worried. “In the meantime, why don’t you get some sleep? I’ll stand guard.”
He pointed at the canister on the bed. “With your trusty can of pepper spray?”
* * *
Daphna watched the first rays of sunlight slip through the narrow gap between the heavy gray curtains. It was morning already, and she hadn’t slept a minute. She had spent the night tossing and turning in her bed. All night long she had relived in her mind, over and over, her last mission in the Israeli air force. She cursed at herself. She would need all of her wits if she was going to pull off the planned escape that she had developed in her mind yesterday.
In theory, it should be easy. On each of the last three mornings, exactly at nine o’clock, an Aerospatiale Alouette III helicopter had landed on a small concrete pad just beyond the swimming pool. That was when Daphna swam laps, making sure to keep up her strength.
When she swam, only a single armed guard watched her, and most of the time he looked bored and stared off into space. The helicopter had one pilot, and he left the chopper alone when he disappeared into the house with supplies.
All she had to do was suddenly leap out of the pool, overpower the guard and get to the chopper. She should easily be able to fly it over the walls of the château to the nearest large town, before the kidnappers got her.
That was the way it went in theory. It was a good plan. It had a strong chance of succeeding because she had been such a good prisoner, acting frightened and intimidated, that the level of surveillance had dropped. They weren’t expecting her to try to escape. She would have a strong element of surprise.
But her plan had one more major problem—besides all of the obvious ones. She wasn’t certain that she’d be able to force herself into that helicopter and actually put her hands on the controls. Until last night, she had buried the tragedy of her last mission so deeply in her subconscious that she never spoke of it and never even thought about it.
It had been a rainy, foggy morning in mid-January. All night long terrorists from Southern Lebanon had been firing rockets at an Israeli town on the border. Most of the residents had spent the night in bomb shelters, and that’s where they were in the morning, repeatedly calling Jerusalem and demanding that the government stop the attack. In view of the weather, putting Israeli jets in the air wasn’t an option. So the air force commander decided to use four Boeing Apache helicopters equipped with hellfire laser-guided missiles, which were stationed at a nearby base, to conduct a surgical strike against the terrorists’ position. Each had a crew of two. Daphna was the pilot of one of those Apaches. In front of her sat Yuri, her copilot/gunner.
The four choppers were still in Israeli airspace, flying north, when the terrorists suddenly let loose with a barrage of rockets. One of them struck the front of Daphna’s helicopter, and Yuri was wounded by flying shrapnel. A second struck the rear, knocking off the tail rotor. The chopper veered out of control, spinning wildly. Desperately, Daphna tried to call the base on her radio, but all she could get was static. She was on her own.
The only chance she had was a guided crash landing. Below, she spotted a cluster of fruit trees on an Israeli kibbutz, and she decided that was the best she was going to do. She tried to stay calm, not panicking as she struggled to get control of the chopper. Meanwhile, anguished cries of pain came from Yuri. She could see the blood flowing down the side of his head.
“Hold on,” she called out through clenched teeth. “We’re going down.”
The trees softened their landing, as Daphna hoped, and the Apache had a unique fire-control system that prevented it from exploding. But on impact Daphna struck her head hard on a side panel and lost consciousness.
She came to hours later. She was in a hospital. She’d suffered a concussion, a broken collarbone, a broken arm and three broken ribs. Yuri wasn’t so lucky. Her commanding officer told her that Yuri had died from wounds incurred in the air, but Daphna didn’t believe him, though. She was sure that he had died in the crash. That she had killed him. The three other choppers had returned safely to base after knocking out the terrorist position. The guilt she felt was horrible.
Despite psychiatric counseling, Daphna refused to get into a helicopter ever again. She was so traumatized that she refused to discuss the incident with anyone – not even with her mother. Her broken bones healed, and she served out the rest of her military duty in a desk job processing paperwork for air force purchases. She vowed that she would never go up in a helicopter again—a vow that she had never even contemplated breaking until now.
She put on the one-piece black bathing suit Mary had provided, her palms wet with perspiration, her knees knocking and her teeth chattering, despite the warmth of a beautiful fall day in Provence. As she walked downstairs toward the pool, she told herself, Just get to the chopper first. Don’t think about flying it.
When she approached the pool, the helicopter pad was empty. But it was still early. Based on the schedule of the last few days, it shouldn’t be here for another ten or fifteen minutes.
As she swam, she saw Yuri’s face, the blood flowing down it, in her mind. I’m never going to be able to do it, a part of her said. Another voice responded, Don’t be a fool. It’s your only chance for escape.
Each time she turned at one end of the pool, she glanced up to survey the scene. The guard was playing a small hand-held video game. Overpowering him shouldn’t be a problem. Yet the chopper still hadn’t come. It was late.
When she was too exhausted to swim any longer and the helicopter hadn’t come, she pulled her weary body from the pool.
Then she heard Mary telling the guard that once the prisoner went back into the house, he was to drive into Grasse for supplies.
“But where’s the helicopter?” he said. “It’s good weather, no?”
“I got a call. They need it for something more important. They’re not going to use it to bring us supplies for a few days.”
Listening in, Daphna didn’t know whether she felt sorry or relieved.
* * *
“Nice suit,” Colette Martique said to David when the armed guard deposited him in her office late the next morning. “I believe that blue pinstripe is becoming on you.”
“I can’t tell you how happy that makes me feel.”
He looked at her and smiled. Victor must have told her something about what happened, because she didn’t comment on the bruises and scratches on his face.
“Just trying to help the local economy,” he added.
She was astounded that he could
jest after what had happened. “Well, Paris is after all the fashion capital of the world.”
“Don’t let a Milanese hear you say that.”
It was time to get down to business, she decided. “Another long day today?”
“Probably.”
At that moment, the wooden guillotine on her desk caught his eye again. It was a beautiful reproduction about six inches high. It even had a metal blade in the raised position.
He walked over to her desk and studied it carefully. “What a great model,” he said. “Where did you get it?”
She grew flustered. “It’s nothing, really. Just a child’s play toy.”
He touched his finger against the blade. It was sharp. “Pretty rough toy for a child. How long have you had it?”
“I said it’s nothing,” she replied sharply. “Now I think you should get to work.”
An hour later, she took him to lunch, the same as yesterday.
Afterward, back in his office, he took a pad of paper from his briefcase and drew a rough map of the Ras Tannarah oil fields along the Persian Gulf. With his eyes focused on the computer screen, he marked the approximate locations at which explosions would occur in the oil fields if the system was activated from the royal palace. Then he began marking a series of X’s to represent major oil installations and O’s to represent key Saudi military defensive positions. Suddenly, he became aware of the scent of cigar smoke in the doorway behind him. He bolted upright and wheeled around in his chair.
It was Madame Blanc, watching him carefully. She was puffing on a Cohiba.
“I hope I didn’t disturb you,” she said. “But I like to pop in unannounced on all my employees from time to time. I find that it keeps everyone on their toes.”
This woman has got to be hated by everyone in this building, he thought. “I’m sure they love it.”
“Victor told me what happened to you last night. You want one of the medical people here to take a look at you?”
