“It was clearly triggered by the ignition of the truck, so the driver had to initiate the receptor as he was lifting that tray out. We don’t think he ran to the truck thinking he could avoid the blast but rather simply to do the deed before the restaurateur made enough of a scene to draw authorities.”
“So plainly a suicide mission.”
Grosvenor nodded. “But what an elaborate scheme, eh? All the detail on the truck. And those baked goods appear to be the real thing.”
“I don’t mean to insult you, but I assume you checked—”
“These pictures with Parisian bakeries to see if anyone sold the goods to this man in this truck? Of course.”
“Sorry.”
“No apology necessary. I know this is not your field, Doctor. But then I don’t imagine anything you’ve just seen gives you any insight into the religious nature of this crime.”
“No.”
“Pity.”
“You say there were surviving eyewitnesses? I can’t imagine.”
“As often happens, even in heinous events like this, blind luck finds someone standing behind the right girder or falling beneath the right bodies and somehow avoiding death. They might as well have died for the horrific memories they’ll live with, but out of hundreds we did have a half dozen survivors actually under the tower. Two of them have a vague recollection of the confrontation, and one believes he heard part of the conversation. That’s poignant, I must say, as it’s touch and go whether he’ll ever hear another thing as long as he lives.”
“What did he hear?”
“He claims the driver shouted, ‘Long live Jonah’ as he threw the wadded-up paper at the other man.”
“You know the significance of that, don’t you, Chief?”
“I’ve been briefed on all the findings in Rome, yes. And we were all aware of your Las Vegas case.”
“Might I get a few minutes with that witness?”
“Sorry. Have to say no on that one. He’s been so traumatized that his lawyer refuses to let him talk about it anymore. Waiting for money from the entertainment industry, if you ask me. But also, I’m satisfied that we got out of him everything he knew. And what we know, you know.”
Jae had pulled up to her parents’ Georgetown brownstone late the previous evening, the kids sound asleep. She was disconcerted to find cars in the driveway and on the street, the light burning in her father’s den. Jae’s mother answered the door in her bathrobe. She embraced Jae and carried Connor up to bed while Jae lugged Brie inside. Neither child stirred.
“Where’s Dad?” Jae asked as her mother followed her back out to the car to help with the luggage. “You shouldn’t have to do this.”
“Big meeting. He says to say hi and he’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Can’t even break to greet his daughter.”
“Now, honey, you know how important these last-minute meetings can be.”
Once the luggage was inside, Jae’s mother asked her if she was hungry or thirsty.
“No,” she said. “I need to get to bed and so do you. Thanks for everything.”
Her mother tried to express how thrilled she was to have Jae and the kids, but Jae shushed her and nudged her toward her bedroom. Then Jae hurried back out to the car and grabbed her disc player and pulled the disc from the dashboard. She was exhausted and ready for sleep, but there were a few things she had heard during the last hundred miles that she wanted to hear again.
Finally in bed, she attached the earphones, looked at her hastily scribbled notes, and found the verses. In First Corinthians she had heard:
It is this Good News that saves you if you firmly believe it—unless, of course, you believed something that was never true in the first place.
I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me—that Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, as the Scriptures said.
Jae had no idea why these verses gripped her so, but she felt compelled to memorize that last one, beginning with “Christ died for our sins . . .” She played it and replayed it until she was able to recite it without aid. Then she found the passage in Ephesians that had also made her make a note:
God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so very much, that even while we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s special favor that you have been saved!) For he raised us from the dead along with Christ, and we are seated with him in the heavenly realms—all because we are one with Christ Jesus. And so God can always point to us as examples of the incredible wealth of his favor and kindness toward us, as shown in all he has done for us through Christ Jesus.
God saved you by his special favor when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.
Jae didn’t intend to memorize that, but she wanted to hear it again and again. So she set the coordinates and programmed the player to repeat, and she listened to the passage all night, six or eight times before she drifted off.
“Would you care to take a walk-through?” Grosvenor said. “Not too many will get the privilege, if you can call it that.”
“I’d be honored,” Paul said. “I’d regret it if I didn’t.”
“I’m going to pass, if you don’t mind. Once is more than enough, believe me.” Grosvenor gave him a pass to clip to his coat. “Take your time, and I’ll be parked near the École Militaire at the other end.”
Paul started at the base of the tower. Forensics personnel told him that the mostly intact bodies had been removed, but that this team was now collecting body parts. Everyone wore surgical masks and rubber gloves, and they all looked dog tired as they picked through the debris with small brushes, placing tiny fragments in plastic bags.
The three remaining legs of the tower were silhouetted in surreal relief against the late morning sky. From where he stood, looking at the gold girders strewn across the length of the park, Paul could not see the end, the top of the tower, which had whip-cracked, according to authorities, and actually catapulted over the École Militaire.
As Paul walked the more than half mile from the base to the waiting Karlis Grosvenor, he was overcome. He felt the presence of evil, of grief and tragedy. Death here had an author, and though he knew that somewhere Styr Magnor was likely rightly taking credit for it, the real source of these casualties was the enemy of God himself. Straight and what he had heard of the New Testament over the past several months had taught him that much.
He couldn’t forget the passage in the book of John where Jesus Himself spoke of Satan as the thief: “The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give life in all its fullness. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.”
Paul’s molar emitted a tone and he took a call from Alonza Marcello. “Thought you’d want to know,” she said. “DNA and actually part of a fingerprint from the second suicide bomber traces to a Scot named Philip McCandlish, a penny-ante mercenary lowlife NPO International had in their files. Used to be in jail all the time. Hasn’t been arrested for more than ten years.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Neither have we, but we thought it significant that he’s not Scandinavian.”
14
BRIE AND CONNOR SEEMED to have forgotten their aversion to Washington and woke Jae with their roughhousing. Actually, what woke her was her father barking at them. They quieted immediately, and Jae assumed they were scared of him. Why shouldn’t they be? She always had been.
Jae called down the stairs, “Dad, just give me a minute to get a shower and I’ll take over!”
“Your mother has already taken over. They’re going to the zoo.”
“Have her wait for me! I’ll go along. The kids are going to be without me enough during this visit.”
“No! I need som
e time with you, Jae. They’re on their way out the door.”
“Did they eat?”
“They’re getting fast food.”
That, Jae assumed, would make everything worth it.
When she finally dressed and headed downstairs, Jae smelled pancakes and sausage, her father’s specialty and one of her childhood favorites. It had taken her years to catch on that his fixing this breakfast was always a means to an end. It was his way of apologizing for a slight or an overreaction. It could also be his way of telling her he loved her or respected her or even liked her—things he had never been able to put into words. Often this morning ritual was a way of breaking down Jae’s resistance to some scheme or another.
Wonder what he wants.
As usual, her burly father dominated even their expansive kitchen. Wearing corduroy trousers and a thick, flannel shirt, and padding around in woolen socks, he had set her place, with every utensil where it ought to be. He kissed her on the cheek but didn’t embrace or touch her because he had a mitt on one hand and a spatula in the other.
How convenient.
“S’pose I’ve told you before,” he said, his shock of white hair gleaming under the kitchen chandelier, “but I had to learn etiquette when I studied protocol for overseas duty.”
She nodded. Only a million times.
“Sit right here, princess,” he said. He had set a place for himself directly across from her. “You remember this breakfast, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. My favorite.”
“You can have it every morning if you want.”
“Yeah, and I can go back to Chicago weighing five thousand pounds.”
He wasn’t listening. Nothing new. “Not that I’ll fix it every time,” he said. “Your mother does a passable job, and you can cook it for me once in a while. We’ll be riding to the office together, needless to say.”
“We will?”
“’Course! I can’t wait. Commuting with my favorite daughter.”
“Your only daughter, Dad.”
“My favorite child then, all right? There, I’ve said it.”
“You’ve said it before, Daddy, and you know you shouldn’t. I hope you’ve never let Berlitz get wind of that.”
“Agh!” he growled, waving her off with the spatula. The very mention of her brother’s name had clouded him over.
Jae had never minded needling him. “You ought to get him a job with the NPO,” she said. “He might surprise you.”
“Surprise me? Surprise me! I’d be amazed if it weren’t the end of the republic as we know it.”
As always, everything was hot and done at the same time, and Ranold Decenti piled the plates with food and set them out like a pro. “Got something I want to talk to you about, honey.”
What a shock.
For all his manners and etiquette, Jae’s father had a penchant for talking with his mouth full when he was excited. Jae never ceased to be amazed at how he could pull it off without offending. Somehow he was able to tuck his food deep in a cheek somewhere and sound as articulate and passionate as ever.
“You’re not really coming to work for me as a numbers gal,” he said.
“What?”
“Now don’t get your linens in a bind,” he said. “It’ll look like that’s what you’re doing. You’ll have spreadsheets on your computer and all that, but I’ve got much more important work for you.”
“But, Dad, I’m not trained in—”
“Bip, bip, bip,” he said, “don’t start fighting me on this before you even hear what it is.”
She hadn’t lifted her fork yet. He pointed to her food. “Enjoy, enjoy. You’ll like this idea.”
“Do you feel like a light lunch,” Paris NPO Bureau Chief Karlis Grosvenor said, “or did your walk spoil your appetite?”
“Both,” Paul said. “I was a baby when the war ended, you know, so to see this and the Rome thing inside a few days . . . whew. How do you deal with it?”
“I don’t know,” Grosvenor said. “I am old enough to remember the war, so I saw the original tower before and after. It was nothing like this, but the TV images from around the world? A lot worse then. Makes me want to be the guy to kill Magnor though.”
“I know what you mean.”
Grosvenor pulled up to a huge, ornate, white building atop Paris’s tallest hill at the north edge of the city. It was called Coeur de Paris. “The Heart of Paris,” he said. “Besides the upscale shops, there’s a great little bistro here. As you can imagine, I know them all.”
Paul was not in a mood to kid the chief about his girth, even if Grosvenor had raised the subject. As they walked through the parking lot, Paul stared at the onion-shaped dome and bell tower of the magnificent structure. “This had to have been a church once too.”
Grosvenor nodded. “Basilica du Sacré-Coeur. The Basilica of the Sacred Heart. Yet another gaudy monument to the so-called sacred heart of Mary, mother of the God who allows things like the bombing of the tower. If that doesn’t disabuse these lunatics of their ideas—but of course, it was the crazies who did this! Or at least they want the credit for it. Does that make a bit of sense to you, Doctor?”
“Not a bit,” Paul said.
“We’ll just have appetizers,” Grosvenor said as they were seated, which sounded just right to Paul. But while he ordered a small plate of snails in garlic butter sauce, the big man ordered pastries stuffed with chicken and cream sauce, plus mushrooms in a thick wine sauce. Still he finished long before Paul and was soon bouncing a knee and quietly drumming the table.
“Sorry to keep you,” Paul said. “We can go. I can even get a cab to my hotel.”
“It’s not that far,” Grosvenor said. “I’m ready when you are.”
Paul was eager to be alone so he could check in with Straight and find out how he was to connect with the head of the Parisian underground tonight. But he didn’t want to appear too eager to be free of Grosvenor, even though the chief didn’t hide that he was ready to get back to his own affairs.
“We’ll stay out of your hair,” Grosvenor said as he dropped Paul off at his hotel. “And we’ll expect to hear from you only if you have insight that will help our case.”
Paul found it interesting that he was assigned a room on the fortieth floor. Had he been in charge of that—assuming International was making sure their inquiring eyes had plenty of time to pick up his trail every time he left the hotel—he would have at least tried to throw off the target by giving him a fancy suite and blaming the high floor on that. But he had a normal room, still spectacular and with an awe-inspiring view.
On the phone Straight told him that Chappell Raison was eager to meet him and had been waiting for a couple of hours already.
“Waiting? Waiting where?”
“You’ll need to record this.”
“Meet him in broad daylight? I don’t know, Straight.”
“It’s remote. Trust me.”
“Yeah, but I still have to get there. How remote?”
“A little more than a hundred miles southwest of you. You recording?”
“Just a minute.”
Paul pressed his index, middle, and ring fingers to his thumb tip simultaneously and heard within his skull a woman’s voice. “Recording.”
“Fire away,” he said.
When Straight finished reading the directions, Paul turned off the mechanism. “I can’t take an International car. I’ll have to rent.”
“There’s a rental agency within walking distance of the hotel,” Straight said. “And here’s Raison’s number.”
Paul took it but said, “You call him. Tell him I’ll be a couple of hours.”
“A couple of hours for a hundred miles? What century are you living in, Paul?”
“I’ve got to get the car, and I don’t know the terrain. I’m just saying . . .”
“I’ll tell him.”
“You can also tell him I don’t like the idea of doing this during the day.”
“Already
did,” Straight said. “You want to hear why he thinks it’s important, or you want to let him tell you in person?”
“In person.”
“Jae, we’re on the cusp of a very exciting adventure, maybe one of the most important missions in the history of the NPO. Are you in?”
“I don’t know, Dad. I didn’t exactly sign on for this. I came here so I wouldn’t go crazy with Paul being away. I wanted to help where you had a need, and I wanted my kids to get to know my family a little better. You can’t say you’ve been a terribly involved grandfather.”
He ignored that, again no surprise. “But, Jae, listen; your country needs you. I need you. I’m going to let you in on some highly classified information, and I need to know you can handle it. You’re smart, you’re patriotic, and I’ve always known you to be a loyal citizen. Does that still apply?”
In spite of herself, even knowing that her father was flattering her for his own purposes, Jae lived and died for positive input from him. “Of course, Dad. If there’s something you think I can help with—”
“It’s more than something to help with, honey. It’s top secret, classified, for-your-eyes-only kind of stuff, and frankly you were the first person who came to my mind for the assignment.”
Now he was really shoveling deep. A founding father of the National Peace Organization, having worked with the best minds in international espionage, intelligence, and security for decades, and she was the first person he thought of for—what had he called it?—one of the most important missions in the history of the agency? Please. “Why me?”
“Finish your breakfast and we’ll talk in the den.”
Uh-oh. This has to be about Paul.
Paul closed the drapes to within six inches of each other, then set timed triggers on his television and lights. While he was gone it would appear he was still here, and anyone monitoring his window would see the flickering of channels changing and lights going on and off in various rooms every few hours. The question was whether he could slip out unnoticed.
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