At 9 p.m., the Defense Ministry announced that funeral services for Antoine Martin would take place on Tuesday at 11 a.m. at L’église Notre-Dame de Bonne-Nouvelle, in Paris’s 2nd Arrondissement. Damien would be buried the next day at the same church. Besides the French President and Prime Minister, Martin’s funeral was expected to draw the leaders of every big Western spy service, including MI6, the CIA, and even the Mossad.
“Security at the church will be extraordinary,” CNN’s Erin Burnett reported. “Police are already blocking off the streets and alleys nearby. There will be snipers, bomb-sniffing dogs, and a small army of police and bodyguards. The various services are already coordinating to make sure they don’t step on one another’s toes.” Good idea. Trigger fingers would be psoriasis itchy on Tuesday, and friendly fire on the Paris streets would hardly inspire public confidence.
An hour later, Wells’s phone buzzed. Shafer.
“Anne called me. Wanted to know if you’re okay.”
Wells silently cursed himself. He had forgotten Anne knew he was in Paris. Of course she’d wondered if he’d been caught up in this.
“I lied. Said you were. You ready?”
“In the wee small hours of the morning.”
“Ol’ Brown Eyes. That’s my boy. I’ll be waiting by the phone. And I’ll see you Tuesday either way.”
“You’re coming?”
“It’s a hotter ticket than Hamilton.”
“Think it’s the next target?” Wells couldn’t imagine a bigger bull’s-eye.
“The obvious play. Probably means it’s wrong. Besides, they’d need a Panzer division to get close. Have you seen that church?”
Wells had, on Google Maps. The streets around Our Lady of Good News were narrow and easy to block. The building itself looked solid. A car bomb a hundred feet away wouldn’t do the trick. Even with attackers who were willing to die, a conventional ground attack would require hundreds of well-trained men and be obvious long before it began. But ground attacks weren’t the only way to go.
“What about a cruise missile?”
“They have Tomahawks, we’re in even more trouble than I thought. And if you’re thinking plane, Paris airspace will be closed to civilian traffic all day. If you made me wager, I’d say they’ll take advantage of the fact that every cop in the city is in the Second to do something else.”
Wells didn’t answer. He was seeing Raouf Bourgua’s cool eyes. Bourgua struck Wells as a man who didn’t care much for silver medals.
“John?”
“Maybe the answer’s in the garage. At least enough to get the DGSE to bite.”
“If it looks impossible tonight, tell me. We’ll have a face-to-face with the frogs after the funeral. By then, maybe they’ll have run through their best leads and be ready to listen.”
“If it’s not too late.”
“It won’t be.”
“From your lips to Allah’s ears,” Wells said.
“Allah listens to Jews?”
“As much as anyone.”
—
THREE A.M. Wells bungeed his gear to the Suzuki and saddled up. He’d already checked the bike’s engine, chain, brakes, and tires. He didn’t need a flat on this run.
The night air was calm, clear, fresh against his skin. Sevran was among the banlieues farthest from Paris. Much of the land between it and the airport was surprisingly rural. Wheat, barley, and oat fields stretched to the perimeter of Charles de Gaulle. Hard to believe that the center of the great city was not even twenty miles away. Past the empty lands, the airport had mostly shut for the night, a slumbering beast with lights twinkling. Wells spotted a pair of helicopters several miles south, their spotlights faint at this distance, circling over Bondy or another close-in banlieue. He rode steady down the empty road at ninety kilometers an hour. The Suzuki didn’t have the power of the 1000 cc monsters he favored, and its engine labored when he wound down the throttle. He was used to bikes that jumped almost before he gave them gas. Still, he was making decent time.
On the left, the farmland ended. Wells passed a big industrial park, presumably put here to be close to the airport and the big highway called La Francilienne. The French had meant it as the third big ring road around Paris, though they’d never finished it. The N2 gained a lane here as the two roads briefly merged.
Wells felt as strong and clearheaded as he had in months. Motorcycling always agreed with him. As the bike thrummed, he imagined exactly how he’d attack the garage. He should have at least sixty seconds before the alarm went off, several minutes more before anyone showed up. Shafer’s theory that Bourgua had arranged for the alarm company to notify him first made sense. If it was wrong, then Bourgua probably didn’t have anything interesting in the garage anyway.
So. Clip a hole low in the fence . . . Take a few fast chances with the alarm, remembering to enter the birthdays in the European style, day-month-year . . . If they didn’t work, shoot out the lock . . . He’d brought a pillow from the hotel . . . During his long-ago training at the Farm, some soulless Cold War pro had called pillows the husband’s silencer . . .
And inside. The bear went over the mountain, / To see what he could see . . .
Ahead, the highway divided. Wells stayed in the right lane. The off-ramp rose to become an overpass. Beneath him, La Francilienne made a sweeping right, turning northwest, an empty river. The N2, his road, continued tracking west-southwest. About a mile or so ahead was the traffic circle where the N2 met the N370. The overpass peaked, eased down.
Too late, Wells saw the lights twinkling at the traffic circle. A half dozen. More. Only one explanation. The French cops had set a roadblock. In the middle of the night. In a locked-down banlieue. Damn their diligence. And Wells had nowhere to go. The N2 had no exits before the circle. Should he ride on, try to brazen his way through the checkpoint? No chance. He had a pistol on his waist and a bank robber’s worth of gear in his bag. Ditch the bike, cross the highway, and disappear into Sevran?
No. Back. He turned the Suzuki around, glad for once he’d stolen such a dinky bike. The headlight was barely worthy of the name. Probably they hadn’t even seen him, a speck in a sea of darkness. No cars coming. He would go the wrong way over the overpass. At the merge with La Francilienne, he’d make another U-turn, follow the big highway away from Sevran. He’d circle, come at Sevran from the rural roads to the east. An hour’s delay, nothing more.
As long as he could get to the La Francilienne.
Wells wound down the throttle, scrunched over the handlebars, begged the bike for speed as the little engine yipped. He heard the thrum of a helicopter behind and knew they were hunting him, these French. Probably the helicopter had infrared cameras and been tracking him even before he’d seen the cops. The U-turn would have been obvious. Now they would have him if they could.
The bike’s speedometer was stuck at one-forty kph, not even eighty-five miles an hour. It rattled madly despite the smooth asphalt. Why hadn’t he stolen a BMW? Or a jet pack? Wells eased off the throttle—he feared blowing the engine—and then wound it down once more. He topped the overpass. Ahead he saw the N2 off-ramp come together with La Francilienne, his life running in reverse. He raised his head, chanced a look at the helicopter. It was a couple of miles out. Police sedans were no doubt chasing him, too, but the traffic circle was a couple kilometers away. Even at one hundred sixty kilometers an hour, they wouldn’t make up ground quickly.
Wells knew from memorizing the maps that just after the big highway turned right, it offered an exit into Villepinte, the last banlieue before the airport. If he reached the surface roads, he’d have the advantage, he could ditch the bike. He knew how to disappear—disappearing was his specialty—he still had a chance.
Except . . .
Screaming down the highway, west, toward him, two new sets of police lights. Maybe three kilometers away, but coming fast. And Wells wa
s working for them, actually closing the gap with them, as he rode the wrong way down the ramp.
By the time he reached the point where the ramp met the highway, he knew he had no chance. The police cars were barely a kilometer out. He would have to slow to make the U-turn before he accelerated again. If he didn’t stop, they might kill him, accidentally or intentionally. His best chance now, his only chance, was to tell the truth. Maybe he could convince them to look at the garage.
Not much of a plan, but he couldn’t think of a better one.
At the merge, he pulled the bike to the edge of the road. Dismounted. He couldn’t do anything about the bag of gear, but he could at least get rid of the pistol. He threw it off the highway, into the woods. Then he went to his knees, raised his hands, waited for the police.
—
THEY PILED OUT of their sedans with assault rifles drawn. Wells’s eyes bled tears under the spotlights, but he kept his hands high. A police officer, thick in a Kevlar vest, walked over to him, screaming.
“I don’t speak French.”
“No French? What are you doing here?”
“I’m American. I work for the CIA—”
“Name?”
“John Wells.”
“Identification.”
Wells shook his head. The officer walked behind Wells and Wells heard him unzip the bag of gear. “What is all this?”
“There’s a garage in Sevran—”
The officer reappeared. “Lie on your stomach.”
“Please, there’s a man you need to look at, a Tunisian named Raouf Bourgua—”
“On your stomach.” The officer kicked Wells, a quick one-timer that popped the air from his diaphragm. Wells groaned and lay flat, feeling the asphalt kiss his cheek. So much for convincing them.
“You want to make fools of us? After yesterday? Whoever you are, you won’t see America for a long time.”
Oh, the irony. After he’d gone to so much trouble to get sent to prison.
The officer put a knee in Wells’s back, grabbed his wrists, laced handcuffs tight on his skin.
“Up. On your knees.”
“Please. If you’ll just let me talk to someone.”
Another cop stepped forward, black hood in his hands.
The darkness slid over Wells’s eyes. And, with it, the bitter knowledge that he’d failed.
26
LANGLEY
WHERE was Wells?
He hadn’t said when he planned to hit the garage. But Shafer figured he’d head out around 3 a.m., the black heart of night. He should be back at the hotel in two hours, three at most. France was six time zones ahead of the East Coast. Thus, Shafer expected a call by midnight at the latest.
But midnight came and went. One a.m. By now, the sun was up in Sevran. Shafer stopped waiting, started calling. Wells’s Bulgarian mobile went to voice mail. The phone in his hotel room rang without end. Where, where, where?
He’d had an accident. The cops had picked him up. Or, after all those years dancing on the edge, he’d finally slipped. Raouf Bourgua had caught him at the garage, shot him, stuck his body in storage.
No. Shafer refused to believe some French-Tunisian sneaker salesman could beat Wells.
Two a.m. Shafer headed for Langley, hoping at least to catch up on the classified traffic. Paris Station reported the French had found the motorcycle used in the attack in the 7th Arrondissement, the Left Bank. It had been reported stolen a week before. No fingerprints. The cops were looking at cameras in the area to see if they could trace where the rider had gone. But the bike, probably not coincidentally, had been parked on a quiet, surveillance-free street.
Meanwhile, big surprise, the Islamic State had claimed responsibility for the attack. It promised so-called martyrdom videos from the bombers within a day. Jihadi websites and Twitter feeds were cheering, and promising more.
The most notable news came from the DCIA, a cable issued four hours before: ALL EUROPE/AFRICA/ME STATIONS ORANGE STATUS; DGSE MAY ASK AID. Orange was the CIA’s second-highest readiness level. It meant canceled vacations and mandatory overtime. All case officers had to be ready to be report to duty within two hours.
In forty years, Shafer had never seen the agency raise its alert level at the request of another country’s intelligence service. The attack had obviously stretched the DGSE and the internal French security services to their limits. The American ambassador was even now headed to the Élysée Palace, the French president’s residence, to offer condolences from the White House and whatever help the French needed. Duto understood allies cemented their bonds at these moments.
After an hour reading cables, Shafer realized that he was only distracting himself, hoping Wells would call. He needed to get to Paris. But a look at airline timetables revealed that he had no options until late afternoon. The commercial flights from the East Coast were all overnights. United had the earliest. It left Dulles at 5:25 p.m., touched down Charles De Gaulle at 6:55 a.m. local. Shafer couldn’t do better unless he convinced Duto to charter a jet. Ludlow and the seventh-floor officers were taking a CIA plane to the funeral. But they were leaving later, planning to land around 9:45 at Le Bourget, a private airport closer to Paris than CDG. The French police would escort them in. Afterward, they were heading to DGSE headquarters for an emergency meeting that Shafer planned to crash.
Shafer booked the United flight. With the help of his diplo passport, he ought to be on the ground in Sevran by 8 a.m. local time tomorrow. Almost twenty-two hours away. What about today? Paris Station didn’t know Wells was in France. Shafer didn’t want to tell them. Anyway, given everything else they had to do, the case officers would help only if Duto personally insisted. And no one woke the President of the United States at this hour unless ICBMs were inbound.
No. Shafer needed someone on the ground now. Someone who could go to hospitals and police stations and jails around Sevran and ask questions that would only be answered in person.
The Marine. Coyle. Wells had said he was good. And he was the only one who had any inkling what Wells was doing. He might not know much, but he knew more than nothing. Shafer spent a few minutes putting together a list of the hospitals and police stations where Wells was most likely to be, then reached for his phone.
“Staff Sergeant Coyle.”
“Who’s this?”
“Ellis Shafer. I work with John Wells.”
Coyle didn’t answer.
“You bought shoes for him yesterday.”
“Yeah, we’re on alert here. Talk to my commander, Mr. Shafer.”
“Call me Ellis. And I need your help.”
“Help to what?”
“Find him.” Shafer explained how Wells had disappeared overnight.
“That’s not even six hours ago.”
“This mission, he would have called as soon as he could.”
“You think he’s where they keep the shoes? Those Arabs caught him breaking in and they’re holding him there?”
“Maybe.”
“I don’t even know where that is.”
“I do. I’ll give you the address. If he’s not there, maybe a hospital, a jail.”
“Jail? Why would the French— You know what? I don’t want to know. I have to go, sir.”
“Give me one day. No more. I’ll be in Paris tomorrow.”
“You’re CIA. The station—”
“If we could have used them, we would have already. I promise, I’ll get this cleared for you. Officially. Just like Saturday night and yesterday. But I have to talk to the ambassador and he’s in a meeting with the French president, so that’s going to take some time and I don’t have that luxury. I need you now.”
“I’m sorry, sir—”
“You have my word you won’t get in trouble.”
“Your word? I’ve never even heard your name. Call me f
rom Virginia at four in the morning over there, ask me to go AWOL when the embassy’s on lockdown—”
“There are fifty Marines guarding the embassy. You’re the only one who can do this. The only one who knows what Wells looks like now. Who knew where he was.”
“It’s that important?”
“Sergeant, you have no idea.”
Coyle sighed in defeat. “All right. My girlfriend would tell me I’m a fool, but I’m trusting you, sir. Please don’t get me dishonorably discharged.”
“Thank you.” Though Shafer knew if this mission went sideways, a dishonorable discharge would be the least of Coyle’s problems.
“So where do I look?”
“The garage first.”
“Don’t ask me to break in.”
“No. If there’s been trouble there, it’ll be obvious. Blood on the wall, a cut in the fence. You see that, you call and sit tight. Do not go in.”
“If I don’t.”
“There’s a local hospital near the garage and a big medical center close by. If he got hurt somehow, they would have taken him to one of those two. I’ll give you the addresses.”
“They won’t tell me anything.”
“I’ll email you a copy of his passport, his real one, and a PDF of some kind of official-looking letter. Tell them the truth, he’s an American who’s gone missing. Might have been brought in overnight. You don’t need any details, but his family’s worried and has asked you to find out if he’s a patient.”
“Then what?”
“Back to his hotel, see if his motorcycle’s in the lot. Probably not, but I want to be sure. Knock on his door, too. After that, the flics. The police stations in Sevran and Villepinte, maybe they’re holding him.”
The Prisoner Page 34
