Kill Shot

by Vince Flynn

  Neville shuddered at the thought of touching him. With a frown on her oval face she put out her right hand, signaling him to keep his distance. His audacity had certainly not diminished over the years. “Why are you here?”

  Fournier let the wounded look fall from his face and began patting the pockets of his gray trench coat in search of something. A moment later, he fished out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He lit one and then extended the cigarette to Neville.

  The gall of this man, she thought to herself. When she had first met Fournier, nine years ago, she had been drawn to his confidence, but in the end, she realized that what looked like confidence was actually the facade of a cold, calculating, manipulative, selfish prick. Straining to keep her cool, she shook her head at the offer and said, “Why is everything so difficult with you?”

  “I’m sorry?” he asked, pretending to not understand.

  She shrugged. “I ask you a simple question, but you refuse to answer.”

  Fournier suddenly looked offended. “Come now, my dear Francine. I know things did not end well between us, and I am sorry for that, but it was what . . . ten years ago? Surely we can be professional about this.”

  She ignored the fact that he was off by six years and instead focused on a thousand things she’d like to say to the jerk. All of them would have felt good, would have been accurate, and they would all have been a mistake. Accuracy and truth had no sanctity to Fournier. For him they were devices to be used to advance his agenda and schemes. He would obfuscate and claim the mantle of victim no matter how egregious his sins. Engaging him was exactly what he wanted. “Paul, I am being completely professional about this. That is why I asked you why you are here. This is my crime scene. Directorate of Security or not, I need to know why you are here.”

  “Fair enough,” Fournier said in an easy tone. He exhaled a cloud of smoke and turned to the bed. “Do you have any idea who that is?”

  Neville was suddenly very angry with the officer she had sent down to the front desk to find the answer to this exact question. She straightened a bit and said, “I do not.”

  The answer brought a smile to Fournier’s face. “Well, let’s see.” He wheeled back toward the dead bodies and said, “Four men with suppressed automatic weapons, all dead.” Gesturing to the bed he continued, “An overweight man in his sixties and a skinny young woman less than half his age . . . most likely a prostitute.”

  Neville acted bored. The conclusions were obvious. She was tempted to say so, but knew the less she said the better. Fournier had his stage, and he needed to play out this little game in order to diminish her in front of her men. “The man’s name?” she asked in a dispassionate voice.

  “I’m getting there,” Fournier said, holding up a cautionary finger. “Six bodies. That’s rather a lot.”

  Neville didn’t bother to correct him and tell him about the other three bodies. She would offer as little information as possible in hopes that the spook from Directorate of Security would get what he was looking for and leave.

  As Fournier continued to analyze the obvious, his eyes were busy noting the more interesting aspects of the crime scene. There were certain incongruities that Neville and her team would eventually notice, but for now, it was hard to see the proverbial trees through the forest. He placed himself in the room when it all went down. Looked at the shattered glass headboard, the bullet-pocked plaster wall, and the two bodies on the bed, riddled with bullets. Brass shell casings littered the floor. Hundreds of rounds had been fired. That the assassin had escaped was a miracle. Fournier looked at the nearest man on the floor and noted the precise location of the bullet hole in his forehead, and couldn’t help but nod in respect for the man whose aim had stayed so steady under a fusillade of bullets.

  “The man’s name?” Neville asked again.

  Fournier approached the bed. He looked down at the heavyset man, noted more than a dozen shallow entry wounds, and then his eyes found the near-perfect dot just above the minister’s nose. That would have come from their assassin. Fournier inhaled deeply and waved his cigarette at the bed. “That, my dear, is Tarek al-Magariha.”

  Neville waited for him to expand. It was a long moment that grew longer, and when she tired of the wait, she asked, “And who is Tarek al-Magariha?”

  “He is Libya’s oil minister, and these men I presume are, or I should say were, his bodyguards.”

  Neville closed her eyes for a moment and clenched her fists. Serbian and Russian gangsters killing each other was one thing—it wasn’t good, but to a certain extent the good people of Paris didn’t care as long as they were killing each other. A foreign diplomat, however, was an entirely different mess. A Libyan diplomat was even worse, and their oil minister the worst of all. Neville didn’t know the exact number, but she knew her country received a large portion of its oil imports from the country across the Mediterranean.

  “Any idea who killed him?” She found herself asking the question before she could stop herself, and she instantly regretted it, for she knew Fournier was incapable of telling her the truth.

  “No idea at the moment, but the usual suspects will be looked at.”

  “The usual suspects?”

  “The Israelis . . . a few others.” Fournier knew much more than he was letting on, but he wasn’t about to tell someone from the National Police that al-Magariha had spent most of his career working for Libya’s brutal intelligence service, the Mukhabarat el-Jamahiriya.

  Neville eyed Fournier with suspicion. All of her instincts told her he was holding back information. “How did you find out so quickly?”

  “Quickly?”

  “That he’d been murdered.”

  Fournier flashed her a proud smile. “I have my sources.”

  Neville wondered if the DGSE had had the Libyan under surveillance. She was about to ask the question but thought better of it. He would never give her an honest answer. She would pass her suspicions on to her bosses, and they could lock horns with the higher-ups at DGSE. “I’m still a bit confused as to why you are here.”

  “We have a dead foreign diplomat, my dear. I would think you would understand the need for the Directorate to be involved.”

  Neville gave him nothing.

  Fournier shrugged. “Well, my superiors want me to keep a very close eye on your investigation, so we will be seeing quite a bit of each other.”

  Neville’s light brown eyes were fixated on the inch-long piece of ash that was precariously dangling from the end of Fournier’s cigarette. “This is a crime scene. I don’t care how much clout you think you have, if that ash hits the carpet, I will have you handcuffed and removed.”

  “Sorry,” Fournier said, wide-eyed, as if he’d suddenly realized his mistake. He held a hand under the ash as he made his way to the balcony door. With light breaking in the morning sky, he could see the bullet holes in the curtain. He shouldered his way through the curtains and out onto the small balcony. Fournier flipped the ash over the edge and followed it down to the sidewalk. The police barricades were up and a few members of the press and curious onlookers were beginning to gather. Word would continue to spread and this place would be a circus by midmorning. He turned his head toward the roof and took note of the fact that his man had retrieved the rope before the police had figured out it was there. Fournier wasn’t sure how much more he could do to help muddy the waters, but he did know he needed to get out of here before too many cameras showed up.

  He walked back into the hotel suite and began stepping around bodies. “Francine, I will be in touch. If you need me, you know where to find me.”

  Neville turned away from the examination of several shell casings on the near side of the bed. She felt a great sense of relief as she watched him leave the room, but then within a few seconds, asked herself why he was leaving so quickly. Something didn’t feel right, and in that moment, Neville had final confirmation that Paul Fournier was going to be a major complication in an already complicated case.

  CHA
PTER 7

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  THOMAS Stansfield was accustomed to working Saturdays. The world did not stop for the deputy director of Operations for the CIA to rest so he worked six and a half days a week. He was, however, not accustomed to being rousted by the secretary of state at four in the morning on a Saturday. Even so, he kept his cool as the secretary told him the news of a dead Libyan diplomat in Paris. He also managed to patiently listen as the secretary made some extremely wild and uninformed accusations. Stansfield assured him the CIA had nothing to do with whatever it was that had happened in Paris, and before hanging up, he promised America’s top diplomat that he would have some answers by noon.

  By 8:00 a.m., Stansfield was ensconced in the Situation Room at the White House with most of the National Security Council. With the president off playing golf in Maryland and the vice president AWOL, Secretary of State Franklin Wilson led the meeting. After two hours of idle conjecture, and a lot of bluster about putting pressure on Israel, Stansfield finally managed to break away from the meeting.

  With the morning already half gone, Stansfield was irritated that he didn’t have a single salient fact. The questions were piling up, and he knew if he was going to get some answers, he would need to escape this meeting of Washington’s power elite and have a much-needed discussion with one of his junior operatives and an old colleague who had better be waiting in his office back at Langley.

  Stansfield found Irene Kennedy sitting in his small lobby and signaled for her to follow him into his soundproofed office. In his eternally composed way, Stansfield motioned for Kennedy to sit in one of the chairs opposite his desk and then asked, “Where is Stan?”

  Kennedy shrugged. Her shoulder-length hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail. “He wandered off a while ago. Said he needed to talk to someone.”

  Stansfield unbuttoned his gray suit coat, took it off, and draped it over the back of his leather office chair. He was annoyed that Stan Hurley was loose in the building, but he didn’t let it show. They had a long, colorful history together and Stansfield was intimately familiar with the man’s abilities as well as his weaknesses. There were some very good reasons why Stansfield had turned him into a private contractor a few years ago. Chief among them was that Hurley was completely tone deaf when it came to the internal politics of Langley. He was like a child who simply couldn’t resist touching the paint when the sign clearly said, “Wet paint. Do not touch.” In the ordered, uptight halls of Langley, he was a disaster waiting to happen.

  Stansfield looked at his Timex watch and decided he would give Hurley five minutes before he sent someone looking for him. Turning his thoughts to the matter of most concern, he asked, “Our young friend . . . has he checked in?”

  Kennedy knew Stansfield’s office was swept for listening devices on a daily basis, but these conversations always made her nervous. “No.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “I would prefer not to jump to any conclusions until we know more.”

  Stansfield looked at her with his gray eyes, waiting patiently for her to say more. The look on his face was one that was familiar to all who worked for him. He paid his people for their intellect and their opinions, not to play it safe until the answer was obvious. “I know he’s still relatively new . . . but I assume you properly impressed on him the need to check in.”

  “I did, and although he may be new compared to some of the other people around here, in one year’s time he’s racked up more real field experience than any other ten operatives combined.”

  Reading between the lines, Stansfield understood that by practical field experience, she meant kills. “Has he ever failed to check in before?”

  Kennedy considered the question for a moment, but then the door opened and Stan Hurley walked in. He was wearing a boxy-fitting blue suit, white shirt, and no tie. His mustache was trimmed short but he’d skipped the razor this morning, so he had scruffy stubble that looked like it could be used to sand wood. Stansfield, knowing Hurley’s uncouth side better than most, was impressed that he’d actually bothered with the suit at all.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Hurley announced with a basso voice that he’d developed from years of smoking, drinking, and yelling.

  “What have you been up to?” Stansfield asked with sincere curiosity.

  “Just checking in on a few old friends.”

  “Do I want to know who?”

  Hurley flashed him a lopsided grin and said, “Boss, you’ve got more important things to worry about.”

  Stansfield would find out later. For now they had to figure out what had happened in Paris, and to what extent they might be exposed. Keeping his eyes on Hurley, he asked, “Any word on what happened last night?”

  “Nine bodies. Libyan oil minister and a prostitute were gunned down along with his four-person security detail.”

  The deputy director of Operations gave a slight nod. He’d already confirmed as much.

  “There were also three innocent civilians.” Hurley leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He stroked his mustache with both hands and folded them under his chin. The man seemed to be in perpetual motion. Even at fifty-three, he had a youthful energy about him.

  “Three innocents?” Stansfield asked, betraying his surprise with only an arched brow. He turned to Kennedy. “Did you know about this?”

  “No,” Kennedy answered honestly.

  “Two hotel guests,” Hurley added, “just down the hall from Tarek’s room, and then a kitchen boy in the back alley.”

  “Nine bodies,” Stansfield repeated, still surprised by the number.

  “That’s right,” Hurley said as if it was no big deal.

  “Any chance one of these bodies is the man we’re looking for?” Stansfield asked.

  “It doesn’t sound like it.”

  Kennedy turned in her chair to face Hurley. “Where’d you get this information?”

  “Listen here, Missy,” Hurley snarled, “I wasn’t the one who planned this half-assed op.”

  “Let’s hear it,” Kennedy said with a confrontational edge in her voice.

  “Hear what?”

  “How the great Stan Hurley would have done it differently.”

  “For starters I would have never sent him in alone.”

  “That’s pretty much all we’ve done for the last nine months and he’s been pretty successful . . . a hell of a lot more successful than you and your boys have been the last couple years.”

  “You can bitch all you want, but I warned you. You gave that boy way too long a leash.”

  Stansfield was not in the mood to referee another argument between these two, so he cleared his throat and asked, “Who’s your source?”

  “Don’t worry about my source. He’s impeccable.”

  “All the same,” Stansfield said, “I’d like to know.”

  Hurley put on an irritated face. He’d known Stansfield for three decades and he knew by the arch of his damn right eyebrow when there was no sense in trying to put him off. “An editor at one of the major dailies over there. She says the press is all over this thing.”

  Kennedy noted that he’d originally referred to his source as a he. The man was always thinking of ways to throw you off.

  “Is this the she I’m thinking of?” Stansfield asked.

  Hurley knew how proper his old friend was, and he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to say openly what he was really asking. “You mean the editor from Le Monde I used to sleep with?”

  Stansfield nodded.

  “That would be her.”

  “And how do we know that she has her facts straight? We can assume they have it right on Tarek and the prostitute. What about the other seven bodies?”

  “She already has names on all of them. The police have asked her not to release them until they can notify families, but none of the names I was given popped.”

  “So we can assume he’s alive,” Kennedy said, with just a hint of relief in her voice.

 
“And that he fucked up, big-time!” Hurley said, not giving her an inch.

  “We don’t know that,” Kennedy retorted, addressing Stansfield instead of Hurley. She had known both of these men since birth. Her father had worked with them out of this very building. She was perhaps the only person at Langley under the age of thirty who would dare disagree with them. Stansfield admired her for it, while Hurley thought she should keep her mouth shut until she’d served at least a decade.

  “What we know,” Hurley said, his voice growing in intensity, “is that innocents are off limits. That is the unbreakable rule.”

  “That means a lot coming from you,” Kennedy said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes.

  “What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “You know exactly what it means.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Uncle Stan,” she said in a voice devoid of affection, “you’ve based your entire career on breaking the rules, and I think the reason he pisses you off is that he’s a constant reminder that you are getting old and he’s better than you were at your best.”

  Stansfield knew the words hurt his old friend, and he also knew there was a great deal of truth to them. Most of this was beside the point, however. They needed to focus on the problem at hand. “I want both of you to listen to me. We don’t know what happened over there, and as we’ve all learned before, it’s a dangerous thing to rush to conclusions.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s dangerous,” Hurley snapped, still smarting from Kennedy’s comments. “Letting a fucking untrained dog off the leash. Letting him basically run himself without any proper handling. That’s what’s dangerous.” Hurley leaned back, shaking his head. “I’ve been warning you two about him from day one.”

  Kennedy turned and gave him an icy stare. “I assume you’re referring to the same dog who risked his life to save your ungrateful, stubborn ass in Beirut?”

  Stansfield desperately wished these two could work out some truce, but according to Dr. Lewis, there were no signs of things cooling down between them. He listened to them argue back and forth for a half minute and then said, “Are you two done?” He gave them a moment to absorb the fact that he was sick of listening to them and then said, “Does either of you have any useful information that you could give me?”