And now he had Belkaïd’s attention. “C’est vrai?”
“Oui. Somewhere, before, our paths have crossed. I don’t know where.” It had been there, just gnawing at him ever since the meet at the colliery. Like an itch he couldn’t scratch.
“He has told me that he was in Syria,” Belkaïd offered, a moment later. “Perhaps you might have encountered him there?”
“Perhaps.”
10:34 A.M.
Seine-Saint-Denis
Suburbs of Paris
“. . .we’re going to need to launch the drones outside the city, get them up to altitude before making our way in toward the stadium,” Harry said, drawing a circle on the tablet’s screen with his stylus. “Perhaps here. Or here. If we’re discovered at launch, it’s all over—but their extended flight time should give us plenty of room to launch on approach.”
He lifted the tablet in one hand, holding it up so that Aryn and Yassin could see the screen from the back seat. Hearing their murmurs of assent—Faouzi’s dark eyes on him from the driver’s seat as he went on, outlining the plan.
Just like so many times before—standing in the ready room at Langley, sketching out a rude map in the dirt outside a FOB in Afghanistan. It was all so very familiar, preparing to lead men—mujahideen—into battle.
And it was a good plan, he had to admit. Nearly flawless. Or would have been, if he hadn’t been there. If they weren’t already several men down.
“We can drop you here,” he continued, meeting Yassin’s eyes in the rear-view mirror, “near the stadium, before proceeding to our control point with the vans. . .here.”
“What about Nora?”
What about her. . .Harry went silent for a long moment, the SUV’s engine throbbing gently under the hood in front of him, cold, conditioned air blowing over his face. She was back, as of last night, along with Ghaniyah—both of them brought to the house in Coulommiers by Belkaïd’s guards.
She had shared Gamal’s bed, once again. And she was going to take part in the attack, no matter what he or anyone else had to say about it. Case closed.
He cleared his throat, only too aware that he had to answer the question. “She’ll be with me.”
11:07 A.M.
Vélizy – Villacoublay Air Base
Thirteen kilometers southwest of Paris
“Sergeant Nathalie Jobert, reporting for duty as ordered, madame,” Jobert announced, drawing herself up at attention, her right hand snapping off a crisp salute
A smile creased the face of the middle-aged woman behind the desk as she rose, rounding the front of the desk to offer Jobert her hand. “There is no need for these formalities, sergeant, si’l vous plait. I have not held a commission in the Armée de l'Air for nearly two decades. Now, I am simply a commissaire, tasked with protecting the President of France. Marion Leseur, but you may address me as ‘Marion.’”
Simply, Jobert thought, struck by the woman’s calm, authoritative demeanor. Leseur possessed none of the trappings of authority that she had become accustomed to in her own career in the French military, but there was a confident assurance in her voice, her bearing, that left one with no doubt as to who was in charge.
“Please, have a seat,” the commissaire continued, waving to a chair. “Lieutenant-Colonel Deneuve was kind enough to offer me the use of his office for this, our first meeting.”
“Merci,” the French Air Force sergeant responded, taking the proffered seat.
“You’ve been briefed on the security situation surrounding the upcoming game at the Stade de France?” Leseur asked, going on when Jobert nodded. “In addition to the crowd of nearly seventy thousand, we are expecting a significant protester presence, as part of the ongoing anti-drone protests.”
“Still?” Jobert shook her head. It had been weeks, but still they continued, harassing diplomats outside the American embassy in Paris—beleaguering the residences of high-ranking French ministers, pressing for an official condemnation of American actions in the Sinai.
Leseur nodded grimly. “They don’t seem to be going anywhere, at least as long as President Albéric maintains our ongoing cooperation with American forces in Syria. They’ve been a presence at all of the president’s engagements for the last month. It creates a. . .challenging environment for my officers, as I’m sure you can understand. And now we have a credible terrorist threat to deal with as well.”
Jobert flinched palpably, knowing her reaction had been visible in her eyes—that hadn’t been part of her briefing, and she suspected Leseur knew it.
“Oui,” the older woman went on grimly, almost subconsciously smoothing a crease out of the leg of her dark pantsuit, her eyes never leaving the younger woman’s face. “And that is where you come in. You. . .and your eagle.”
11:14 A.M.
The Fountainebleau Forest
Seine-et-Marne Department, France
Freedom. At one with the wind, the road. The machine. There was something exhilarating in it all, Kolesnikov thought, feeling the slipstream tug at him as he tucked his body into the turn, accelerating past a small sedan—deliberately close, hearing the sound of their horn behind him as he sped up the road, a wild grin on his face.
Outlaw. That’s what he was, for all the training the Centre had instilled in him. For all they had tried to rein him in. They had trained him, and then handed him over to Vasiliev. And that is where he had truly learned to be a spy.
When he had learned that the secret of surviving in the field was knowing when to follow the rules—and when to break them.
The fields of France flew past, an emerald-and-tan blur as the Harley Davidson’s big engine powered him up the A6, toward Paris. Toward his destiny. Passing a brown sign for the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte as he slid the bike into the next lane over, in front of a semi-trailer.
Another few days, and this would all be over. The French president, dead. This country in flames, tearing itself apart along fault lines which had been allowed to slowly widen for generations. A new revolution? Perhaps.
The Fifth Republic had stood for long enough. Time to bring it all down.
8:05 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
It was quiet in this wing of the New Headquarters Building, this early in the morning, Bernard Kranemeyer realized, glancing around him at the artifacts of the OSS Exhibit, the CIA Museum’s only permanent display.
So many relics from those early days of their history—years in which every action could have made or unmade the nascent agency, rendered them vulnerable to the political sharks which had circled even then, sensing blood in the water. Eyeing covetously the turf these cowboys had carved out for themselves.
But Bill Donovan had looked out for his people—ensured that they would survive, go on beyond their wartime role to the brave new world which lay beyond.
Even if that new world would hold no place for him.
There had still been a handful of old OSS hands remaining at Langley when he had himself come to the Agency, almost a decade before—a small knot of men and women, in their eighties, so far past retirement that one wondered if they even remembered what it had looked like.
Still there, serving their country. Despite all they had seen. Stark testimony that idealism actually could survive six decades at Langley.
But how strong would you have to have been, going in? Kranemeyer wondered absently. Far stronger than himself, that much was clear.
He paused by a familiar exhibit, a hand-written letter under glass, written on the letterhead of one Adolf Hitler.
The letter of a young father, an OSS officer named Dick Helms, to his three-year-old son on Victory in Europe Day.
“Dear Dennis,” it began in a strong, flowing hand, the words so familiar that Kranemeyer could have quoted them from memory. Had, more than once.
“The man who might have written on this card three short years ago when you were born once controlled Europe. Today he's dead, his memor
y despised, his country in ruins. He had a fear of intellectual honesty, a thirst for power, he was a force for evil in the world—his passing, his defeat, a boon to mankind, but thousands died that it might be so. The price for ridding society of bad is always high. Love, Daddy”
Helms had known what he was talking about, Kranemeyer thought. Known, and gone on to head the Agency for seven long years, in the heart of the Cold War. Paying the price.
Because it was ever there, just waiting to be paid, by each and every generation which came through these doors.
And what am I doing today? Kranemeyer asked himself, glancing around as though he had hoped to find the answers written somewhere in these relics. Paying the price, or deferring it? Shifting the blame to the shoulders of another man? Surviving, true enough, but at what cost?
“I had wondered who was in here, so early,” a woman’s voice began, breaking in upon his thoughts, and he looked up to see the familiar visage of the museum’s curator, her face framed by the shadows as she stepped from the fuselage of an old OSS transport which served as an entryway to this part of the exhibit—her short, golden hair glinting in the overhead lights. “I should have known.”
Kranemeyer smiled. “Just getting my bearings, Toni. Trying to prepare, to ground myself.”
She nodded her understanding, a sober look in her eyes. Everyone at the Agency had been bracing for this, ever since the first images came back from the Sinai. Knew what it could mean. “Have you found what you need, sir?”
“I’m not sure,” he replied thoughtfully, looking away—his eyes gliding once more over the Helms letter. “Perhaps guidance is too much to ask of ghosts.”
Another nod. “It’s going to be a long day.”
3:07 P.M. Central European Summer Time
Fort Noisy-le-Sec
Seine-Saint-Denis, suburbs of Paris
There was silence in the small room when the video finished playing for the second time. As Emile Vautrin glanced around at the faces of his team—three men, and two women. All of them prior French military—one of them a Legionnaire—all now working for the Division Action. Assassins, to put it baldly, and he saw no reason not to do so. Unlike their allies across the Channel, the French had never quailed from direct action.
“This man,” he said, extending a long, delicate index finger toward the frozen, masked image on-screen, “is our new target. We know him only by the nom de guerre Ibrahim Abu Musab al-Almani, a returned fighter from Syria. He is believed to be a German convert to Islam—a Caucasian, not an Arab. And that’s about all we know, or think we know.”
“That’s not very much,” Bérénice Lefebvre observed, a cold, skeptical look in her dark eyes. They’d met five years before, on an operation into the Algerian Maghreb, and it had been her bullet which had killed their target—her status as a woman getting her in closer than any of the rest of them could have ever dreamed.
“Non,” Vautrin acknowledged. “It’s not. But that’s our starting point. And we won’t rest until we’ve identified him. Until we’ve found him. Until he’s dead.”
10:45 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Capitol Hill
Washington, D.C.
“. . .the committee will come to order,” Antonio Tamariz intoned, glancing briefly up at the battery of press cameras surrounding him before returning to his prepared notes. “I would like to welcome our witnesses, Director of National Intelligence Lawrence Bell, and Director of the National Clandestine Service Bernard Kranemeyer. Thank you both for being here today.”
Kranemeyer nodded, almost imperceptibly, a grim smile frozen on his lips—his coal-black eyes unreadable. He felt Bell lean back in the chair beside him, envied the man his ease. Then again, this was far more his “battlefield” than it was Kranemeyer’s. The place where political blood was shed, where victims were to be sacrificed to appease the gods.
One wondered what they would read from his liver, Kranemeyer thought unamusedly, his eyes meeting those of the chairman.
“Before we begin,” Tamariz continued, a pompous, grating edge to the voice of the congressman from Arizona, “I would like to remind our members—and witnesses—that this is an open hearing. I recognize the challenge of discussing sensitive national security issues in public, however, as part of this committee’s investigation into June’s tragedy in the Sinai, I consider it critical to ensure that the public has access to credible, unclassified fact.”
And what will they do with it, once they have it? Kranemeyer found himself asking, a cynical half-smile playing behind the mask. Do they even care? Is anyone even watching?
There was no delusion more common in this city than the belief that their every waking moment was of vital importance to the nation. That people out there, in fly-over country, clung to their every word.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. Most of them, simply didn’t care. They had better things to do with their lives. Leave them to it.
“. . .at this time, I will ask the witnesses to stand and raise their right hands.”
Kranemeyer heard Bell’s chair slide back beside him, pushed himself to his own feet, balancing against the prosthesis as he raised his right hand, palm facing outward, toward Tamariz. The chairman meeting his gaze for a brief moment, before looking away.
“Do you solemnly swear or affirm, that the testimony you will give to this committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
“I do,” Kranemeyer replied, unblinking, taking his seat once more at the chairman’s nod. A saying from long ago running over and again through his mind.
“My tongue has sworn; the mind I have has sworn no oath. . .”
5:07 P.M. Central European Summer Time
The new safehouse
Coulommiers, France
“I think these will work,” Harry announced, emerging from the back of the second utility van now parked in the vacant lot behind the Coulommiers safehouse. They weren’t Électricité de France—the plain white vans bore no markings at all, but they were unobtrusive enough. The type of vehicle even a trained eye might see and forget, without a second thought. “They’re the right size—we just need to build some kind of simple platform in the back of each to support the control laptop. Nothing elaborate—it could even be wood.”
“Can’t you simply hold the computers?” Gamal Belkaïd asked, motioning to one of his men to close the doors as Harry stepped down.
Harry shook his head. “You saw our results in the Ardennes—and that was with smaller, unloaded drones. We really need more practice, at least for Aryn—another couple weeks, optimally. But we have less than two days. At the very least, we have to have a stable operating platform. Without it. . .”
He pantomimed a crash. “All this, for nothing.”
“I’ll have my men get to work.”
“Tell me, Ibrahim,” Belkaïd began, as they walked back toward the house together, “what do you think of our chances?”
“They are as Allah wills,” Harry replied simply, glancing over at the older man. “Our fate is in His hands, and His alone.”
Belkaïd emitted a short, barking laugh. “If I had been content to leave my fate in the hands of God, I would have spent far more time in prison than—”
“Do not blaspheme!” Harry spat, his blue eyes turning steely as he turned on the Algerian. “You endanger us all. Do you want us to fail?”
“Of course not, don’t be absurd. I am sacrificing everything for this. Everything I have built, all through the years—for this moment of vengeance. Of justice.”
“Then don’t tempt the Lord of Worlds with your impiety.” He held Belkaïd’s gaze for a long moment before subsiding, answering the man’s question. “Quite good, I believe, as long as we can get the drones in the air without being detected. A launch from the forest of Montmorency is, I think, our best option—if you believe the loaded drones will have the range.”
A nod. “Oui. They should. It’s not more than
eleven or twelve kilometers, at the most. Faouzi will go with you, as part of your team. To fly the drone.”
Harry pulled up short, unsure whether he had heard Belkaïd properly. He and Aryn had been the designated “pilots,” since the loss of Driss.
“I don’t understand, I—”
“You are the only one of all of us who has seen combat, Ibrahim,” the Algerian replied, not looking back. “You’re wasted behind a computer. I want you there, at the gates, engaging the security teams. Cause as much chaos as you can.”
“Insh’allah,” Harry responded, his mind racing to process what he had just been told. This changed things.
He was still working through it when Belkaïd paused on the step just ahead of him, his hand on the back door of the house. “The Russian—the one who calls himself ‘Grigoriy’—he believes that he has met you before.”
Harry froze, taken off-guard, looking steadily into the Algerian’s dark, glittering eyes. “C’est vrai?”
“He couldn’t remember just where—Syria, perhaps. Do you not remember him?”
“There were foreign advisors in our camps in Sham,” Harry replied, choosing his words carefully. Knowing how thin the ice had just become beneath his feet. “Russians among them. It is possible. But no. . .I don’t remember him at all.”
11:09 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Capitol Hill
Washington, D.C.
“. . .the final death toll, as reported by the Egyptian government, stands at over thirty souls, Mr. Kranemeyer. Civilians, women and children, executed by your hand—on the orders of this administration. In light of the results, can you still say that the decision taken to execute the strike was justified?”
Presence of Mine Enemies Page 51
