Presence of Mine Enemies

by Stephen England

  “It will be a beautiful day, brother,” he smiled once again, moving to the door—placing a hand on Faouzi’s shoulder as he passed

  The Algerian’s hand came up with unexpected swiftness, seizing Harry’s wrist in a firm grasp—their eyes locking as Harry assessed the threat, reading the intensity written in the man’s swarthy face.

  “Do you think truly that this is going to be enough?” Faouzi demanded, his dark eyes radiating fire. Hate. “That it could ever be enough, for what has been done to us?”

  Harry just stared at him, his eyes cold as ice—holding the stare until the Algerian released his grip on his wrist.

  “Non,” he replied then, his own hand falling to his side. “This isn’t the end, but only the beginning, my brother. Others will take us as their example.”

  “Will they, though?” There was the bitterness of the skeptic in the man’s voice. Bitterness and sorrow. “My son went to visit family in the banlieues of Paris two years ago on summer vacation. He was sixteen at the time. He and a cousin were stopped by the French police—wrong place, wrong time, a robbery had happened, apparemment, and you had two young Muslim men in the area. Both of them ran—the cousin got away, but my son. . .”

  The man paused, his voice suddenly choked with emotion. “They caught him, and they beat him—with their batons. He. . .he will never walk again, will never leave his chair, without help. My only son. And no one did anything. I—his father—did nothing.”

  Harry placed his hand once more on the man’s shoulder, squeezing it fiercely. “Two more days, brother. . .and that will no longer be the case.”

  Chapter 34

  1:35 A.M. Central European Summer Time, August 6th

  The safehouse

  Coulommiers, France

  The house was quiet, the kitchen dark when Harry entered it, the only sound the faint murmur of the television from down the hall, the room where the drones still sat, out on the big table.

  When he had looked in, an hour or two before, the new guard had been watching Die Hard, his own rifle cradled in his lap, fingers curled loosely around the pistol grip. There had been a contented, even amused smile on his face, watching Bruce Willis take down one German terrorist after another.

  Everyone is the hero, Harry thought, moving to the cabinets. In their own story.

  John Patrick Flynn had told him that once, on one of their first missions together overseas. Wisdom. Like so much else the older man had passed along in those early years at the CIA, becoming far more than a mentor to Harry. Almost a father.

  What would he say now? To see how things had ended for his protégé, now on the run and out of time.

  Impossible to say.

  Harry reached up, pulling a tin down from an upper shelf—the distinctive aroma of cardamom filling his nostrils as he scooped the loose leaf black tea into a ball-shaped diffuser. Flynn had been gone for years, dead after a lengthy battle with cancer, having finally, after a career in the CIA which had spanned from Vietnam to Afghanistan 2.0, found the one enemy even he couldn’t beat.

  Perhaps he was at rest now. Perhaps. It had been rare for the the old CIA hand to discuss anything of his own personal life.

  At any rate, Belkaïd’s guard was far from asleep, Harry thought, bringing his attention back to the present as he brought the water to a boil—rendering any attempt to get to the drones. . .perilous, at best.

  He had few doubts that he could overpower the man, even in the still-weakened condition he found himself in post-Scotland. But could he do it quietly enough to avoid bringing the house down on him?

  That was a much harder question, and he had to face the reality that disabling the drones wasn’t enough, in itself. Even without them, they would still have the weapons—the explosives, Russian intelligence had provided them.

  Russian intelligence. Harry dropped the ball into the steaming water, closing his eyes as he remembered the way Gamal Belkaïd had looked at him. So Grigoriy had remembered him. Perhaps not as vividly as he himself remembered those days in Iraq—but the memory was there, nevertheless, no less dangerous for lying dormant. He would have to—

  “Unable to sleep?” a woman’s voice asked, and he turned, the steeping glass of tea in his hand to find Ghaniyah Belkaïd standing there in the doorway of the kitchen, her figure cloaked in the formless folds of her abaya.

  He nodded, truthfully enough. There had been far too much on his mind, too many questions, too many riddles left yet unsolved. “There’s just so much yet to be done, so much we have to account for—to plan for.”

  He smiled ruefully at her. “I wish it wasn’t tomorrow. We really need more time.”

  “You will succeed,” the older woman responded, her worn, leathery face lit with an unaccustomed passion as she dropped into a kitchen chair, her elbow resting on the table as she regarded him. “You must succeed. Everything depends on it—everything.”

  He turned away from her wordlessly, pouring a second glass of the warm water and dropping the diffuser into it before crossing the room to set down before her the first glass he had prepared.

  “May God bless you,” she said, a smile creasing her aging countenance as she looked up at him. “For all you have done.”

  He shook his head. “I have done nothing—I am but the slave of God.”

  Her hands appeared from within the folds of fabric, reaching over for a packet of sugar and tearing it open. “You are more than a slave. You are the reason for all of this, even if you have yet to realize it.”

  The words hit him with the force of a physical blow, the certainty with which she spoke them—forcing him to turn back, to look at her.

  “My brother,” Ghaniyah continued, dumping the sugar into her tea before looking up at him calmly, “left Algeria behind decades ago—he was too young to have remembered what was done. Too consumed with money, to care. And then you came into our lives—reminded Gamal of the demands of his honor and his faith. Showed him the way.”

  “Insh’allah,” Harry breathed, scarce able to keep his voice from trembling as he regarded her, sitting there across from him—a quiet, almost matronly figure.

  Was it even possible that she was right? That all of this had, in fact, been set in motion by his own actions.

  The brothers in Molenbeek, hanging out with their friends at the boxing club—talking jihad on the Internet forums—but talk had been all it was. . .until he had arrived in their midst.

  Gamal Belkaïd, running his drugs, his counterfeit electronics, his women—a criminal, perhaps even a facilitator of terrorists, but little more—until he had gutted Lahcen like a fish there in the Outremeuse, bringing the crime boss in to investigate, to clean up the mess.

  Marwan, most of all.

  The smallest of stones, rolling down a mountainside, colliding with others—gathering momentum, building force—until it was unstoppable, crushing everything in its path.

  Avalanche.

  9:06 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time

  An apartment

  Washington, D.C.

  Kranemeyer had been expecting the knock at the door ever since the phone call three hours earlier.

  “Come in,” he called in response, brushing the final scraps of his takeout to one side of his plate as he reached over for the remote, pausing the film.

  He could hear the door open, the sound of heavy footsteps against wood in the brief moments before the figure of Roy Coftey appeared in the entryway. “Getting a little careless, leaving the door unlocked, aren’t you, Barney?”

  Kranemeyer inclined his head toward the Sig-Sauer P226 lying on the end table a few inches away from his fingertips and shrugged. “It wasn’t open long. Have a seat.”

  The senator rounded the kitchen counter to step down into the apartment’s living room, stopping short at the sight of Kranemeyer sitting there in the wheelchair—an involuntary expression of surprise on his face.

  “What?” Kranemeyer asked, quiet amusement in his voice. It never failed.

 
Coftey shook his head, covering his confusion with a short laugh. “I’m sorry, it’s—I just—”

  “It’s all right, Roy,” the DCS said, the smile making its way out onto his face. “Everyone does it. . .even those who know. It’s just not something that crosses their mind. Doesn’t, unless you have to live with it.”

  He raised himself up in the chair, the stump of his leg brushing against the edge as he shifted position, gesturing Coftey to the sofa. “Please, sit down.”

  “I was out today while you were up on the Hill,” the senator said, regarding Kranemeyer with a canny look as he took his seat, “but I caught the highlights.”

  “How did I do?”

  “You weren’t comfortable, the camera could tell that much, but no professional ever is, under those lights.” Coftey shrugged. “Listen to CNN, Fox, MSNBC. . .they’re all reading something different into your facial expressions. But that’s what talking heads are gonna do—talk. If they had anything relevant, they wouldn’t be trying to decipher your ugly mug.”

  Kranemeyer laughed at that, a harsh, mirthless sound.

  “The only reaction that’s worthwhile is that of the White House, and between you and Lawrence. . .you put the fear of God into them.” Coftey cast a glance toward the window, the D.C. night beyond. “Tamariz is probably there now, trying to plan out their next move for tomorrow’s round of hearings, not that they have any good ones. Lawrence will be gone by the end of next week, that much is sure. Likely branded, in media sources friendly to the President, as a holdover from the Hancock administration who never truly had Norton’s policies at heart. A member of the so-called ‘Deep State.’”

  The scapegoat, Kranemeyer thought. Led away into the wilderness, carrying with him the sins of the administration.

  A slate washed clean. Go and sin no more.

  There was bitter irony in the realization, even though it was what they had planned. Prepared for. That a good man’s career would end this way, in disgrace.

  “But it wasn’t his call, was it, Barney?”

  Coftey’s question came so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that Kranemeyer simply stared at him, unsure if he’d heard the senator correctly. “What did you say?”

  “It wasn’t Bell’s decision to pull that trigger, was it?”

  8:57 A.M. Central European Summer Time

  DGSE Headquarters

  Paris, France

  “. . .a couple, out hiking with their dog in the Ardennes Department near Bogny-sur-Meuse, came across the body in a shallow grave late yesterday and called the police,” Albert Godard said, his eyes never leaving the notes on the screen of the computer before him. “It took some hours for photos of the corpse to make their way up to our counterparts at the DGSI—after word of the body’s discovery had already leaked to the media—but we got word from them two hours ago, with a positive identification. It’s one of the members of the Molenbeek cell. . .a 23-year-old Moroccan named Idriss Benslimane.”

  Anaïs Brunet took a deep breath, processing the reality of the news. They were in the country.

  Confirmation of what they had all feared following Belkaïd’s flight from Liège. “What killed him?”

  Godard shook his head. “We don’t know, yet—won’t have an official cause of death from the coroner for several days, but there was blunt force trauma to the back of his head, and water was found in his lungs—we believe he was drowned, perhaps in the small stream which lies less than a quarter of a kilometer from where he was hastily buried.”

  Brunet grimaced. It made no sense. None, whatsoever. But this world rarely did.

  “You said that this was already in the press, non?”

  “Oui. The discovery of the body—not its identification, naturellement.”

  “Let’s ensure that it remains that way.”

  9:26 A.M.

  The forest east of Villeneuve-le-Comte

  Seine-et-Marne Department, France

  It was a near-perfect morning, Harry thought, gazing around him as Belkaïd’s men unloaded the drones from the back of the van, setting up the controls and getting them ready for flight. Cool, at least by the standards of a French summer, and slightly overcast—providing relief from the intensity of the sun, the birds singing in the nearby woods.

  The beauty of the morn marred only by the reality of what they were here to do—and his own lack of sleep.

  The field in which they found themselves was one of the few open spaces in several kilometers of forest, an abandoned house lying nearly a hundred meters behind them to the south, a thick hedgerow walling them off from the view of passing cars on the road, fifty or sixty meters west of their current position.

  It had taken less than a twenty-minute drive from the safehouse to reach this spot, and several of the Algerian’s “employees” were already fanned out toward the driveway, pulling security.

  Inside the vans, the laptops were already being set up on the makeshift wooden platforms which had been built for them—the drones’ software coming on-line. This was as close to a dress rehearsal as they were going to get.

  A dress rehearsal, for a play which would never see the stage. Not if he had anything to do with it.

  Only Belkaïd himself was absent—had said he’d be along in an hour, maybe less. Business to take care of, apparently.

  It was enough. He wasn’t going to need long, not to do what he needed to do.

  A single flight, and that would be enough to crash. . .at least one of the drones, perhaps both. That would be enough to postpone the attack, buy himself more time.

  And what will you do with that time, once you have it? A nagging, insistent voice from within asked. Anything? Anything at all?

  Just another question with no answer—he’d been putting off the inevitable for far too long, each effort to confront it costing him another tattered piece of his soul.

  Every man might well have been the hero in his own story—but he had become the villain in his. Reza. Driss. Marwan. All of them dead at his hand. Only the beginning.

  And how were they any different, from all the rest? The voice asked. All the men you have killed, all through the years? No less deserving.

  But I knew them, he felt himself reply, fighting back against the voice’s insistence. And that was it, at the heart of this. Killing a man wasn’t about right or wrong—it was about your ability to disassociate yourself from his humanity.

  And he was losing his ability to do that—had been, ever since Hamid Zakiri, only his rage at Davood’s murder carrying him through the final act.

  But now, as then. . .he had no other choice. Not really. He stooped down beside one of the large quadcopters, running his hand along the black central fuselage, barking a quick order to one of the Algerians to hand him the controller. Time to get them in the air.

  Time to do this. He felt the smooth plastic of the controller beneath his fingers, felt Yassin’s eyes on him as he stepped up, into the back of the van—powering the laptop on. Just a few moments, and laptop and UAV would sync, each device recognizing the other. Another minute, and it would be in the air.

  And then he heard Faouzi’s voice from without the van, rough, shouting. “Shut everything down, pack it back up. Yalla, yalla!”

  Quickly.

  “What’s going on, brother?” Harry demanded, leaping down from the van to confront the Algerian, coming face-to-face with the man, standing there—a cellphone pressed to his ear.

  “It’s Belkaïd,” came the reply, as Faouzi covered the phone with his hand. “He’s ordered us to return to the safehouse. At once.”

  Disaster.

  “Pour quoi?” Harry demanded. There had to be some reason—if this attack were to succeed, this rehearsal was essential.

  “He says it’s all over the news. They found the body. . .”

  10:13 A.M.

  Palais de l'Élysée

  Paris, France

  “Non,” President Denis Albéric responded firmly, shaking his head as he paced the room, his suit
jacket discarded over the back of his chair—hands resting on his hips. “I am sorry, but I simply will not do this.”

  “But, mon presidente,” Anaïs Brunet began, trading a look with her colleagues around the table, “given the potential severity of the threat. . .”

  “I would advise against it,” the GSPR head spoke up, her clear, authoritative voice cutting across the room. Brunet had always admired Leseur’s no-nonsense, at times almost brusque, approach—never more than today. “With the Consortium refusing to make the requested concessions to meet our security requirements, the task of protecting you has become—”

  “Your requests were unreasonable, madame le commissaire,” Albéric interjected, cutting her off, “and everyone sitting here at this table knows it. There was no way the Consortium could be expected to comply with such measures.”

  “You have entrusted me with your personal security, mon presidente,” Leseur retorted, not backing an inch. “With respect, I do not view any measures necessary to keep you safe as ‘unreasonable.’”

  “But are they necessary? C’est vrai?” Albéric stopped his pacing, glaring back at the table. “Tell me, Raoul—do you have any intelligence indicating a specific threat to the Stade de France?”

  “Non,” Dubois replied, reluctance in the voice of the DGSI chief, “but as we now have reason to believe that the terrorists have crossed the border into France itself, we must—”

  “And you, madame le directeur?”

  Brunet shook her head slowly. “No specific threat to the stadium itself.”

  “Commissaire?”

  “I can only act on the intelligence provided by my counterparts in the security services, mon presidente,” Marion Leseur replied, her eyes still filled with cold resolution. “The GSPR does not itself collect or analyze intelligence. Based on what I have been provided, I believe the threat to be—”