by Dana Haynes
“Colorado State Police found another of our agents,” De Castro said. “He was lodged under a car. He’d been shot in the head, too.”
John winced. “God, I’m sorry. So what were they transporting?”
She hesitated, her image flickering a little. “We don’t know.”
John blinked. “A blind transport? You do that?”
“Not usually. We will, if it’s on behalf of another agency. And if the request comes from high enough up the food chain.”
“Who asked for the favor?”
“The Department of the Army.”
John began nibbling around the edges of the scenario. “Okay. So, the army needs something transported. It’s obviously a weapon of mass destruction, because the law is clear that you guys are the only agency tasked with moving something like that across U.S. soil. But there’s a handshake agreement at the top of both agencies, and the Secret Service agrees not to look inside the box.”
De Castro nodded.
“Search-and-rescue hasn’t stumbled on a dirty bomb or a thermos of sarin or whatever, so the package was stolen. Plus, you’ve got at least two Secret Service personnel dead with gunshot wounds.”
She kept nodding.
“Who do I talk to at the Pentagon to figure out what was being transported?”
“Johnny boy, you didn’t hear this from me.”
“’Course.”
She gave him a name.
“Okay. I got the go-ahead to look into this. I find anything worth sharing, you know I will.”
“Thanks,” de Castro said, licked her lips. “Hey, John?”
He nodded.
“You didn’t state the obvious. The candor is appreciated.”
The obvious was this: three Secret Service agents were ambushed, and two ended up with bullets in their brainpans. The first, most obvious suspect was agent number three. Who remained missing.
John said, “Thanks. I’ll keep in touch.” And rang off.
He paid his tab and stepped out of the café, buttoning his coat, as his cell phone chirped. He checked the message. It was Nanette Sylvestri.
“Hey.” His eyes checked the pewter sky and the bustling people, heads down, shoulders hunched. They were predicting snow or sleety rain.
“John? The FBI liaison, Ray Calabrese…”
John glanced at his watch. “Is he in? I’ll head over to National. He should—”
“He’s been shot,” Nanette cut in. “They found him at the airport. Two to the back. Nine caliber. He’s alive, but John?”
John already was racing for the subway.
“It doesn’t look good.”
Twelve
Paris
Daria and Belhadj took two quick rights through narrow streets filled with more middle-class businessmen and nannies with prams than clusters of tourists. They climbed a short, high canal bridge and Daria tried to gain her bearings. She was used to seeing the skyline of Paris but the point-of-view was unfamiliar, until she realized they were in the western peninsula of the Right Bank, created by the curve of the Seine. It was Paris’s Sixteenth arrondissement—9 o’clock, if the arrondissements, or neighborhoods, had been laid out as a clock face.
Daria said, “This way,” and led them over the narrow pedestrian bridge toward a commercial district.
Belhadj said not a word.
They caught the metro at Michel-Ange-Auteuil. They found two seats together in a car near the back of the train. Belhadj discreetly kept his sapper jacket closed to hide his shoulder holster.
Daria felt better knowing she had the spade-shaped knife in her waistband. It was, unfortunately, a weapon best suited for hand-to-hand combat. If and when she made her move against Belhadj, she would prefer to fight from a distance.
He leaned toward her and whispered. “Give me the handcuffs.”
“Why?”
“Because it never dawned on me they could be used as a weapon.”
She sighed and handed them over. “You lack imagination.”
“I imagine you’re right.”
She blinked back in surprise. Had Khalid Belhadj just cracked a joke?
“So”—she leaned against his shoulder to whisper—“that was … most interesting. Those men were Syrian.”
“Were they? I hadn’t noticed.”
Daria smiled. “They were agents of the Mukhabarat. They were staking out a Syrian safe house looking for you.”
He did not reply.
“This is not a sanctioned operation. Your superiors don’t want you going after Asher Sahar.”
“Don’t speculate about things you don’t understand.”
“That’s assuming Asher is even involved. He could still be in prison. You could be lying about everything.”
Belhadj gave her a withering glance. “He isn’t. I haven’t. Which stop do we want?”
“La Motte-Picquet Grenelle.”
Belhadj looked at her doubtfully.
“I told you I was stationed in Paris.”
He did not reply.
“Let’s say I believe you. Why are you running from your own agency? And why wouldn’t your superiors want to stop Asher?”
“This would be a most excellent time for you to stop talking.”
Daria didn’t take the hint. “Something’s not adding up. There is a part of this you’re not telling me.”
He sighed. “I haven’t decided when or if to kill you yet. But the more you prattle, the closer I get to a decision.”
Daria figured she had needled him enough for now. They rode in silence.
* * *
John Broom strode down the halls of George Washington University Hospital, looking not for room numbers but for dark blue suits and conservative haircuts. When he found a nest of them, he was sure he was close to Ray Calabrese.
“Excuse me.” He walked up to the first of five people whose wardrobe, hair, and palpable anger-plus-anxiousness screamed FBI. He presented his photo ID; not the lanyard one with CIA in bright-red letters, three inches tall, but the one designed not to draw attention in public. “John Broom, CIA. I’m the guy Calabrese was coming to see. Who’s in charge here?”
A stocky man with a bristly military haircut said, “Special Agent Kitsen.” He stepped forward and offered a beefy hand. One shake, up and down.
“How is he?”
No one looked very happy. “Still on the operating table. One collapsed lung. He lost a lot of blood. They have him in intensive care now. It’s fifty-fifty.”
“And the shooter?”
Kitsen shrugged. “Witnesses have a smallish man with a beard. Someone working for Gibron, probably.”
John said, “You have her down for this?”
“CIA says she’s running with a known assassin and they have plans for the president. You tell me, Mr. Broom: who’s the one guy who could fuck with Gibron’s plans the fastest? Her FBI case handler, that’s who.”
John pulled out his iPhone and started tapping buttons.
Kitsen said, “Her record’s been spotty since immigrating here. She did a stint with a cowboy ATF element in Mexico that was way past illegal. Seems Calabrese and the L.A. office have been covering for her since…” John kept fiddling with his phone. Kitsen turned to the other FBI agents in the corridor and gave them a “can you believe this asshole?” look. “Excuse me. Mr. Broom? Am I boring you here?”
John put his phone on speaker.
“Hi. Broom? It’s Ray Calabrese. I’m at LAX, heading to Reagan National. Look, I don’t know what the hell’s going on, but I can assure you, Daria Gibron’s on our side. If I had a way to stake my life on it, I would. That’s ’cause I still have a life to stake, and I have her to thank for that. Got it? Keep the dogs at bay ’til I get there. Broom? I’m counting on you, man.”
Click.
John looked straight into Kitsen’s eyes. “You’re not boring me, Kitsen. How’m I doing?”
* * *
The archeologist with whom Daria had had an affair kept a fla
t on rue Saint-Dominique in the Seventh arrondissement in Paris, less than three blocks from the long, green park that separated the Eiffel Tower from L’Ecole Militaire. They approached the building on foot, Belhadj with his hands jammed into the pockets of the olive jacket, looking doubtful and dour.
The building’s door was ten feet tall and wooden, painted a chipped green, embedded in a wall that looked like it had been constructed at least a hundred years earlier. Daria pushed a door button. They waited, eyes on the brass speaker built into the wall.
“Do you carry lock picks?” she asked.
Belhadj produced two picks from his messenger bag.
Daria pushed the bell again. Nothing. She used the picks to manipulate the lock.
Belhadj looked incredulous. “You intend for us to hide here? This is your idea of inconspicuous?”
“Look around,” she said. “What do you see?”
Belhadj glanced at the street of stores and apartments, the meat shop and fruit shop and florist. Gay bunting wafted from streetlamps; celebrating some-such holiday, though Belhadj couldn’t tell which. “What?”
“Tourists.” The big door clacked open. “Americans, Asians, Germans. This is a tourism district. No one would think to look for us here.”
Inside, they found mailboxes for eight apartments, two each in the four-story building. The archeologist’s name was still etched into its brass plate but no other name had been added to it. It was unlikely the professor was cohabitating.
The foyer was poorly lit, the floor covered in clean but cracked white tile. The lift was ancient and minuscule, accessible through an aluminum accordion-style door. A tight helix of stairs wound around the elevator shaft, a long ancient rug with a faded flower design tacked down on the middle of the stairs.
“We’ll take the lift,” Belhadj said.
They both fit in, barely, facing the side wall, their shoulders touched. Belhadj tensed up and Daria wondered if he had a bit of claustrophobia.
The rickety elevator rumbled to a stop on the fourth floor and Daria shoved open the iron gate. The archeologist’s door was to their left. Daria picked the lock quickly. Belhadj entered first, drawing his handgun and turning to keep an eye on her as he did so.
The apartment was large by Parisian standards, clean but cluttered, with a living room, a bedroom, and a small but efficient kitchen. The ceilings were ten feet high and painted pristine white with filigree bas-relief designs in the corners. The walls were peach. The hardwood floors were blond, the furniture masculine and minimalistic. Books were everywhere. Some neatly on their shelves, others strewn about. Daria remembered the old bookstore smell of the place. The living room was exactly as she remembered it. She saw no signs of a woman’s touch.
Belhadj snapped his fingers. “Give me my picks. And your phone.”
She handed them over. Then she threw open the celery green curtains on one of two windows in the living room. The windows opened inward with black wrought-iron barriers up to belt height close in on the outside; large enough to slip a potted plant out there, but not much else.
The top third of the Eiffel Tower loomed over the building across the busy street.
“You and … this man?”
Daria turned from the window. Belhadj held up a framed photo that had rested on the white fireplace mantel. It showed a lean, taut-skinned man with a wheat-colored beard, his arms around two people who clearly were his parents. Daria crossed to Belhadj, cocked her head to the smile. “Thierry, yes. For about two months.”
Two months was probably Daria’s personal best, but she didn’t share that with the Syrian.
“He’s old enough to be your father.”
“He’s kind. And funny. And brilliant.”
She moved into the tiny kitchen. Belhadj returned the photo and followed.
“Ah-ha!”
He entered to find her withdrawing a bottle of champagne from a small, waist-high refrigerator. “That’s more like it.”
She found two champagne flutes, peeled back the foil and popped the cork.
“You haven’t eaten in forty-eight hours,” he noted.
“My friend will have a well-stocked pantry. I’ll find something.”
She poured and pointed to the other flute.
“I don’t drink alcohol.”
“One of the many mysteries of Islam.” She sipped the amber drink, sighed theatrically. “Very nice. Dry. You’re sure…?”
“Find something to eat. Then take me to the man who can lead us to Sahar.”
Daria sipped the champagne. “Why is your own agency trying to stop you?”
Belhadj studied her with tired eyes.
“Okay, fine.” Daria let it go. “Use my mobile. I don’t know if you can get an Internet connection here, but if so, use it to look up Rue du Terrage. Find out what subway route we’ll need.”
He studied her. They stood only two meters apart, she in the tiny kitchen with its pristine pearl white tile floor, he with his boot heels still in the short, dark corridor. Daria sipped champagne, reached for the bottle.
Belhadj shrugged his right hand into his trouser pocket, momentarily throwing off his balance, if just the slightest, to withdraw her telephone.
Daria splashed champagne at his eyes. She let the glass go, so that it, too, flew toward Belhadj’s face. She grabbed the bottle in her other hand.
It’s not like in cowboy movies, where whiskey bottles instantly shatter upon hitting a cupboard, and shatter exactly how you want them to. Especially heavier, more substantial champagne bottles, which are designed to take the internal pressure of the bubbles. But who needs a serrated weapon when a heavy club would do?
Daria’s rubber-soled boots gave her an advantage amid all the wine she was spilling.
Daria surged forward, Krav Maga–style. Belhadj stepped back, into the corridor. She kicked out, aiming for his balls. She didn’t have room for a proper spin, instead kicking straight out. The tight quarters weakened the strength of her attack.
She reached backward for the spade-shaped knife in her skirt waistband.
Belhadj took the kick on his hip, not his balls. His arm shot out, hand around her throat, and drew her forward. He spun, hip-checked Daria, kept turning away from the kitchen, and she flew over his back, the length of the short corridor, her boots higher than her head. She slammed into the closet door hard enough to crack the wood. She slumped to the floor, stunned.
The little leather sheath slipped from her fingers and came to rest under her thigh.
The Syrian was on her in a second, one knee planted between her breasts, the barrel of the .45 jammed under her chin.
Daria saw stars and she had the wind knocked out of her, even before he knelt on her rib cage. Her eyes fluttered.
Belhadj cocked the gun, thrust it harder under her jaw.
“If you truly believe that Asher Sahar is a lesser threat to the world than I am, you are as insane as he!”
“How many?” Daria croaked, not moving her jaw. They were both splashed by wine. “How many missions in Israel? How many good men and women butchered by you and the Mukhabarat?”
Khalid Belhadj’s eyes did not shift and his voice did not change. “Many. You spent years in Beirut and on the West Bank. How many Muslims did you betray or kill? It is what our kind does. We spy, we lie, and, eventually, we die. The body count is between us and our God.”
“Go to hell, you fucking piece of shit!”
Belhadj had her dead to rights. He stared into her eyes. He paused, seemed to be considering his options.
He pulled back a bit and surprised her by using his free hand to untuck his shirt. He lifted it. In the corridor’s dim light, Daria could see a nasty, puckered scar, left of center, four inches below his pectoral muscle. It was an entrance wound.
“You say we’ve never met,” Belhadj growled.
Daria’s brain tried to catch up to him. Of course they hadn’t met before Manhattan. What did—
“Damascus. Six years ago,” h
e said, still holding up his shirttail, still showing the cratered scar. “That bridge near Al A’ref School.”
It took her a few seconds to recollect, her head still ringing from the collision with the closet door and the pressure of his knee on her sternum. Al A’ref … a bridge near a school …
Daria said, “What? That … journalist? Ahmed?”
“The fat bastard wanted to defect, to tell the Jews about North Korean missile platforms secreted in the Golan Heights.”
Belhadj pulled the gun away from Daria’s throat but did not ease up the pressure of his knee on her chest.
“I … remember,” she gasped. “I was covering the meeting from a bridge. I saw a sniper. I fired.”
“Yes. From a kilometer away. Not a bad shot.”
Belhadj let his shirt fall, hiding the bullet wound. He climbed off her and slid home the hammer of his .45. Daria lay on the well-waxed wooden floor, catching her breath.
He glared down at her, jammed his weapon into its holster. Daria reached for the small leather sheath and tucked it into her fist. Belhadj knelt and twisted her arms, cuffed her wrists behind her back. She kept her fist tightly clenched.
He stood again. Belhadj’s fingers subconsciously traced the entrance wound on his flank. “Never met? Go fuck yourself, Miss Gibron. Then help me stop Asher Sahar.”
He stalked away.
* * *
John Broom went directly from meeting the FBI brass at Ray Calabrese’s hospital room to a 2 P.M. meeting at the Pentagon, which took place in a conference room that could easily seat two hundred and fifty. It was an odd setting, in that only two people were present.
John removed his winter coat and scarf, and took a seat on one side of a long conference room table. General Neal Glenn sat opposite him in full dress uniform. He was a two-star, a balding man with thick jowls and soft hands. He didn’t look like he had ever held a gun or performed a push-up. John wondered how a guy like that came to be a two-star general.
John sat and glanced around the immense auditorium. His voice echoed a little in the vast space. “I’m sorry if you mistook me for the London Philharmonic. I get that a lot.”
