The Whole Truth

by David Baldacci

  CHAPTER 39

  SHAW WAS ON THE MOVE. The warehouse was in an area of Paris where people who liked to avoid violence never ventured. This small patch of French earth wasn’t controlled by the police; it belonged to others who called it home. And they did not encourage visitors.

  Four skinheads came out of the darkness toward Shaw, who stood at one end of the warehouse, a few dim bulbs overhead the only illumination. The young men encircled him; they didn’t even bother to hide their weapons. They probably ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner holding them closer than any woman they’d ever bedded.

  Three of them wore tank tops though it was chilly outside. They were all white, though it was actually hard to tell because their torsos were so blackened with tattoos. The skin engravings were all different, except for one that appeared on the right triceps of each man: a swastika. One of them, who looked about twenty, had an entire dragon wrapped around his upper body, in black, green, and salmon colors, the fangs spreading across the bottom part of his face. He was carrying a pump-action twelve-gauge in one hand with “I don’t give a shit about nuthin’” attitude awash in his brown eyes that stared at Shaw with a convincing mix of hatred and contempt. He loaded up and sent a wad of spit an inch from Shaw’s foot.

  Your mother must be so proud.

  Shaw turned to another man who was walking up to him. He wore a jacket, pressed jeans, and tasseled loafers instead of black cammie pants, muscle shirt, and head-busting combat boots. But his attitude mirrored his men’s. He moved with a conceited swagger that just made you want to reach for a gun or ball up your fist and squash him for the good of humanity.

  He couldn’t have been more than thirty but his scarred face and expressive features intimated a far greater experience level than three decades normally provided.

  He shook Shaw’s hand and motioned him over to a small table set up in one corner. Only when he took a seat did Shaw follow. The skins now encircled the table. They were pack animals, Shaw observed, always waiting for the order to kill.

  “Je suis Adolph, monsieur. And you go by?”

  “Nothing,” Shaw said. “I have all you need.”

  “The price was never mentioned,” Adolph said. “Unusual, yes?”

  Shaw leaned slightly forward. “There are some things more important than money.”

  “Most things are more important than money, but you need money to accomplish all of them.” The man smiled and lit up a cigarette. “If only Sartre were still alive, he could give us the precise philosophical analysis, or perhaps he would simply answer, ‘C’est la vie.’”

  “You want to kill President Benisti,” Shaw began. “That will throw France into near anarchy.”

  Adolph shook his head. “You overestimate the French love of politics. You say I want to kill Benisti? That is your opinion only. But even if I did, it’s only one dead president. They will simply elect another idiot.”

  “This is the land of political revolution,” Shaw retorted.

  “Au contraire. This was the land of political revolution,” Adolph answered. “We have been truly Americanized. All my fellow citizens care about now is whether they have the latest iPhone. But we are the real revolutionaries, mon ami.”

  “And what is your revolution about?”

  “What do you think?” he suddenly snarled, grabbing one of his men’s arms and pushing the swastika right in Shaw’s face. “Unlike Hitler’s phonies who only wore this on their uniform, we have stained it into our skin. It’s our permanent identity. And I have taken the master’s name as my own.”

  “So Jews are the root of all evil?

  “Jews, Muslims, Christians, they share equal culpability. Benisti’s mother was a Jew, though he tries to hide that fact. You said you have the information and credentials to get us into the hotel where he will be?”

  “I do. Not all here. But I brought a sampling to show you I’m serious.” He slowly reached in his pocket and pulled out an official-looking press badge and a ticket to the president’s upcoming speech at a Paris hotel.

  Adolph looked at them, impressed. “C’est bon. Bien fait!”

  “I have five more of these,” Shaw added. “Plus you will be included on the official VIP list.”

  “Weapons?” Adolph asked.

  “The French aren’t as paranoid as the Americans. VIPs don’t get run through the detectors.” He looked at the snarling skins. “But you have to look and act like VIPs.”

  Adolph laughed. “These are my personal bodyguards. We grew up together on the streets of Paris. Each one of them would gladly give up his life so that I would live. I am the chosen one. They all understand that.”

  Shaw looked at the dragon skinhead. Yep, he looks stupid enough to die for this megalomaniac asshole.

  “So you’ve got others to do the deed. And look the part?”

  Adolph nodded. “When can we have the rest of the documentation?”

  “As soon as my price is met.”

  “Ah, now we get to that.” Adolph sat back, crossed his legs, and blew a circle of smoke toward the warehouse ceiling thirty meters above them. “I will tell you up front, monsieur, we don’t have much money.”

  “I thought I made it clear that I’m not interested in money.”

  “Everyone says they’re not interested in money until they ask for it. We are not drug dealers or desert terrorists grown fat on oil. I do not have billions of euros in a Swiss account. I am a poor man with rich ideas.”

  “My father died in a French prison last year.”

  Adolph sat up straighter and looked at Shaw with some interest now. “Which prison?”

  “Santé.”

  The man nodded and crushed his cigarette with the heel of his shoe against the cold concrete floor. “That is one of the worst. And French prisons are for shit anyway. Several of our men reside in Santé now, their crime only that of cleansing the streets of filth. And for that, they are locked up like animals? The world is insane.”

  Behind Shaw the dragon skinhead let out a grunt.

  Shaw turned to look at him and watched as another gob of spit hit near his shoe.

  Adolph said, “Victor’s brother was also one of them. He committed suicide at Santé last year. You were very close to your brother, weren’t you, Victor?”

  Victor let out another grunt and racked his shotgun.

  “I’m sure they were very tight,” said Shaw dryly.

  “So your father died in prison. For what crime?”

  “My father was an American who immigrated here to start a business, a business that became competitive with several others run by friends of Benisti, too competitive, in fact. So when Benisti was a prosecutor for the government he framed my father for a number of crimes he never committed, just to ruin him. It was all lies and Benisti knew it. My father spent twenty years in that hellhole and on the eve of his release he died of a heart attack. A broken heart. Benisti as good as put the knife through his chest.”

  “And if we check your story out, we will find it is true?”

  “I speak the truth,” Shaw said emphatically, his gaze leveled on the other man. “Otherwise I would not have walked in here.”

  “So you want revenge. That is all?”

  “Isn’t it enough? I give you the information, you kill Benisti.” He paused. “And someone else,” he added slowly.

  “Who?” Adolph said sharply.

  “Benisti’s father. He cost me my father, I will now take his.”

  Adolph sat back and considered this. “I understand that he is also guarded.”

  “I have it all planned out. I have spent years planning it out.” He looked around at the skins. “These men can do it. It only requires a little courage and a steady hand.”

  “And how did you come by this intelligence? That interests me greatly.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it has been rumored that Benisti is not above setting traps, that is why.”

  Adolph motioned to his men. They seized Shaw, pulled o
ff his jacket, and stood him up. Victor pulled out a knife and slit open Shaw’s shirt, checking for a wire. They pulled his pants off doing the same. After a search that would have made a proctologist blush with its intimacy, Shaw was allowed to put his clothes back on.

  “I’m surprised you waited until now to search me,” Shaw said as he buttoned his shirt.

  “What would it matter if you were a poseur and wearing a wire? You would be dead anyway. And I would be long gone before the idiots showed up here.”

  “They could have surrounded this warehouse,” Shaw pointed out.

  Adolph smiled patronizingly. “No, no, monsieur, they could not come within ten blocks of here without my knowing. The gendarmes, they control the parts of Paris where the tourists go, but not here I think, monsieur, not here.”

  Shaw sat back down. “I am close to Benisti. He trusts me.”

  “Why, after what he did to your papa?”

  “He doesn’t know the man was my father,” Shaw said simply. “I left France, changed my name, assumed a new identity, and then returned. I do his dirty work behind the scenes. Oh, he trusts me, like a son. I think about the irony every day.”

  “Your hatred is inspiring.”

  “Do we have a deal?”

  “Vive la revolution, monsieur.”

  CHAPTER 40

  ANNA FISCHER WAS IN HER OFFICE at The Phoenix Group building where she continued to pore over the documents that littered her desk. She actually now had more questions than answers about the Red Menace. And every day, sometimes every hour, a new revelation would burst to the surface like the aftershocks of a tsunami, and the earth would shake.

  What bothered Anna the most was that there was no face, no name behind the R.I.C. Press releases were done over the Internet exclusively. No one had come forward and said I am the R.I.C. And with the murder of Petrov, and the attack on Afghanistan, Anna could perhaps understand why. Gorshkov had stated very clearly that whoever was behind this was going to be punished, and there were few nations on earth as good at punishment as the Russians.

  Had this somehow backfired on the people who had perpetrated it? Were they running scared, unsure of what now to do? Anna couldn’t answer any of those queries. All she knew was that the effort had been extraordinarily well planned. Yet was it for benign or evil motives? She could understand the benign argument; Russia after all did not have an exemplary track record on human rights and there were many people and organizations out there that would love to put them in their place. The evil side Anna had a more difficult time conceptualizing. What purpose would be gained by turning Russia into an even more isolated and paranoid country? It would be akin to giving North Korea free nukes and telling them to fire away.

  She rubbed her temples. She couldn’t spend all her time on this. Yet she was certain lots of other people across the world were doing the same thing right now. Someone had to find the truth at some point.

  She checked her watch. It was nearly three o’clock. There was a firm-wide meeting today and all the staff was required to attend. She wasn’t looking forward to sitting through what usually turned out to be a boring discussion. But at least she had a half hour to work on something of importance. And then this evening she had something still more critical to do.

  She was going shopping for her wedding dress. Her in a wedding dress? Anna smiled at the thought and her skin actually tingled. The only thing better would be seeing Shaw in a tux. She had no doubt he would carry it off wonderfully.

  With the world in crisis, it seemed ludicrous to be thinking about dresses and weddings. On the other hand, if the world were going to blow up sooner rather than later, she had no desire to wait to legalize her relationship with the man she loved.

  A few minutes later she was so intent on her work that she never heard what was going on downstairs.

  At precisely the same instant the front and rear doors of the building burst open and twelve men wearing long coats swarmed in. From under their coats they drew silenced weapons, took aim, and started firing.

  When they charged in the receptionist in the front foyer had just lifted up the phone to make a call, but the line was dead. A moment later she was too as a bullet hit her in the forehead. She slipped off her seat and fell limp beside her desk, the blood from her head wound staining her dress front. A middle-aged analyst had unfortunately chosen this moment to come into the foyer. A second later he lay dead next to the receptionist. Some of the armed men headed to the basement. Others went room to room on the first floor, kicking open doors and killing anyone inside. Still others raced to the upper floors. There were twenty-eight people in the place today. Not a single one of the twenty-eight would be going home tonight.

  When the screams reached Anna’s ear, she thought someone had injured themself. She jumped up and rushed to the doorway. When she heard a muffled sound, she didn’t immediately realize what it was. When she heard it again, the truth hit her.

  That was a gunshot! Then she heard several more.

  She slammed her door closed and locked it, raced back to her desk, and tried the phone. The line was dead. She grabbed her purse off the shelf and slid out her cell phone. The sounds of footsteps were growing closer. She heard more bangs, more screams, and more thuds as bodies presumably hit the floor. She tried to remain calm but her hands were shaking so badly she could barely hold the damn phone.

  She punched in the emergency number for the police and then watched in disbelief as the phone tried to connect, but no ringing came. She had made many calls on her cell from the building. What was going on? She looked at the tiny screen. She had no bars of reception. She tried again and again with no luck. She finally threw her phone down and ran to the window. She was three stories up, but she had no choice. She heard the sounds of feet pounding up the stairs. Her office was the last one on the hall. Still, she probably had barely a minute if that.

  She struggled with all her might to raise the window. The exterior had recently been painted and Anna suddenly realized that the idiots had painted the window shut. She dug her fingernails into the wood frame, applied every ounce of strength she had. It would not budge. The sounds were coming down the hall. She heard a door kicked open, and next came a scream. Then a sound like a book being dropped as another body hit the floor.

  In the midst of her terror, this actually gave her an idea. She grabbed a book off her desk and used it to smash the window glass open, and then to clean out all the shards. She leaned out the window and screamed.

  “Help us! Help us! Call the police.”

  Unfortunately it was a quiet street with unoccupied buildings on either side of her and no one was down there to hear. She saw a large van parked at the curb. She called again, but apparently no one was in the vehicle. She was going to throw something at it when she noticed what appeared to be a small satellite dish attached to the van’s roof. It was pointed right at the building.

  Her panicked mind still working at incredible speed, the truth came to her. That’s why she had no reception bars on her phone. Whatever was coming from the van was blocking them. She glanced up and down the dead-end street and noted the temporary barriers that had been set up at one end, preventing traffic from coming through.

  She slipped off her pumps, climbed onto the windowsill, and looked down. There was an awning over the first-floor window. If I can hit that and then roll to the street.

  She had no idea whether there was anyone left in the van. She only knew that if she stayed here she was dead. She steeled herself to jump. Tears were sliding down her face as she heard another door crash open next to her office. A scream, a thump, and then a thud. That was poor Avery. Gone.

  God, if only Shaw were here.

  She said a prayer, took aim, and tensed her legs for the leap. As soon as she was safely out, she would run like she had never run before, to get help. Although she doubted there was anyone left alive to save. Except her.

  The two bullets fired right through the door hit Anna directly in the back
and exited out her chest into the fresh air of a London afternoon. She squatted there frozen on the windowsill, seemingly unaware that she had just been shot as blood gushed all over the floor and window. And all over her. As her eyesight began to fade, the blue sky turned brown, the small patch of green grass across the street eroded to yellow. She could no longer hear the birds in the sky or the cars passing along on the next block over. She gripped the wood of the window with all her strength, but within a few seconds, as her blood left her far too fast, she had no strength left.

  When Anna Fischer fell, it wasn’t forward and out the window, but backwards, and into the room. She lay there spread-eagled staring at the ceiling of her office.

  The door was kicked open and two men came in to stand over her. One of them slid off his mask and looked down at her, shaking his head.

  “Damn lucky shot,” he said. “I was just trying to blow the door.”

  The other man took off his mask and gazed down at her. “How the hell?” Caesar began. “Two chest shots dead-on and she’s still breathing?”

  The other man said, “Give it a minute; she’s about to kick.”

  “I don’t have a minute. Look at the window. She was trying to get away.”

  The other man followed his gaze to the shattered glass.

  Caesar took careful aim even as Anna’s chest started heaving erratically with the last throes of life.