Planned Chance

by Robert Webb

  Chapter 6

   

  He was out of breath and physically and emotionally drained as he ran down the darkest side streets of Paris that he could find. He was becoming paranoid, evident by his jumpiness each time a sound broke the silence of the night, it's not paranoia if someone is out to get you, he thought to himself.

  He did not feel comfortable enough to slow his pace to a brisk stride until he was several blocks away from the Eiffel Tower. The night had become muggy and the heavy air was making it even more difficult to perform any type of physical exertion. Before he knew it, he had entered a side of Paris that tourists would never see in a travel brochure.

  There were far more of the real Parisians here, people who had escaped into the life of the seedy district with its scruffy bars and prostitute lined streets. The government was not concerned with these trash-laden streets, and unlike the ones near the tower, these had never seen a street sweeper or any maintenance since they were constructed. He did not care about his surroundings, only that they offered a sense of anonymity so that he could blend in.

  Almost without thinking, he turned down a side street where the rusted street lamps had stopped working long before he ever walked the pavement. The only establishment doing business back here would have to be a strip club, he joked to himself as he paid the cover charge to the large, bald man. The man’s bulging biceps, that he was sure to show off by wearing the tightest shirt ever made, gave anyone that entered the club warning that it would be best not to create problems.

  The dive smelled of stale bear and body funk, but by the look of the men, and a couple of women, they could have been standing in the city’s sewer system and would have cared less. The stripper performing on stage was an attractive woman wearing a fire engine red g-string; her large breasts were exposed as she bent over so that her backside was facing the customers, leaving little to the imagination. By the looks of the two men at one table who were stroking themselves, imagination did not matter. One man at another table was climaxing on the floor, and with a wince, Tom realized the origin of one of the foul smells in the dive.

  "How bout a drink handsome?" A surprising lovely red haired beauty said as she approached him.

  She was, without a doubt, a paid worker to get men to buy overpriced drinks. She was shorter than Alyse, and lacked that innocent personality so unique to his lost love; maybe the fact that she wore little more than the stripper performing on stage played part in her persona. She sat on an old and dirty fabric covered bar stool; He stood beside her, leaning over the severely worn bar.

  "Give the lady what she wants, and I'll have a beer," he interjected.

  The middle-aged bartender, without even asking his newly acquired company what she wanted, poured her top shelf liquor, leaving the bottle next to her. He, on the other hand, was given the stalest beer he thought he had ever drunk.

  "What brings you here of all the places in the world?" The red hair woman asked.

  "I just happen to be in the neighborhood," he said after noticing some blood spatter on his hand, which he quickly rubbed out before anyone noticed.

  "Sure," she said, knowing he was not being forthcoming. 

  "Honestly, I need a place to lay low for a while," he said half asking if she knew of a place by the tone in his voice.

  "Without hesitating she said, "One hundred Euro and you can crash on my couch tonight, I sure could use the money."

  He hesitated a moment mulling over the offer before telling her to inform her boss that she was going to make some money tonight, knowing that the club would get a percentage of what she made. 

  He and the woman walked out of the back of the bar into a private parking lot as he waited for the woman to head to her car, "Where’s your car?" He asked.

  "What car?" The woman asked as she opened the back gate of the lot and started walking up the sidewalk. "I only live three blocks away."

  He nodded and followed the woman to a rundown apartment building and entered what looked like an old freight elevator. The woman pushed the fourth floor button, and just that fast, he was standing in a hallway that was adorned with a worn green carpet, at least he thought the carpet was green, but there was so much staining that he could not be sure. The woman walked up to the apartment marked, 402, which was written in pen on the dirty white colored door. Expecting the worst when the woman opened the door, he was pleasantly surprised to smell the aroma of vanilla and spice permeating the small studio apartment.

  "By the way my name is Lisa.” The woman said laying down her purse on a wooden end table next to the light green couch that appeared not much different in color from the hallway carpet. "Make yourself comfortable."

  "What would you like to drink?" The woman said as she opened her older model refrigerator.

  "I have beer and water, your choice," she said

  "Beer is fine," he said, sitting upon the couch, not sure what this woman was expecting from him.

  He was still waiting for her to bring the beer, when he instinctively grabbed the gun that he had tucked in his waistband when he noticed the door of the apartment opening.

  "Don't worry it is just Beth, my roommate," Lisa said, while putting her hand on top of the gun that he had pulled.

  "You are edgy," she said as she handed him the beer.

  You would be too if you had the night that I had, he thought to himself as he tucked his weapon back to its original position.

  He wondered how she could have a roommate, being that this was a studio apartment. That question was quickly answered when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the two women lip locked in a passionate embrace.

  "What’s wrong honey?" Lisa asked when she saw him staring in her direction, "I only sell drinks not my body. I don't screw for money, besides you don't have the right parts for me."

  He was relieved because he did not want anything physical to happen that night; he just wanted a quiet place to rest and collect his thoughts while figuring out a plan for the next day.

  He let out a big yawn and stretch as he awoke the next morning, refreshed from his much-needed recharge after all the adrenaline was sucked out of his body by the events of the previous day. The apartment was very quiet and peaceful, and he chuckled at the thought of Lisa and her roommate spooning underneath the brown blanket that lay over them on the bed just near the couch.

  The studio apartment was so small that he was surprised that the two women did not wake him during the night. After lying quietly for a little while, he went about his morning ritual of using the bathroom, so his bladder could relax from being stretched to its limit. The toilet was located right next to the only other room in the whole apartment, if you could call it that, it was more like a closet.

  He could not find an extra toothbrush, so he just took a bead of toothpaste from the tube that was lying on the worn porcelain sink. After he rinsed his mouth out, he stood staring at himself in the mirror above the sink; he had no idea what to do now. Should he leave or wake Lisa up and thank her before leaving, or should he just quietly exist until the women got up from their sleep. He thought about it for a minute and decided that he would have to wake her up. He made his way to the side of the bed closest to the sink, put his hand on the lump under the covers, and shook it.

  “Lisa, Lisa,” he whispered without a response.

  “Lisa I’ve got to go, wake up.” He again requested, but louder.

  He was about to shake the lump again when he noticed red splatter on the only part of the pillow that was not under the covers. He felt the blood drain from his body. He took a deep breath and prepared himself for what he thought he might discover, and quickly jerked the blanket off the bed.

  He knew he was set up the minute he saw the blood soaked bodies under the cover; both appeared to have had their throats cut as they slept. It was a gruesome sight of blood and flesh all mixed up in a disgusting biological mess. He instantly felt sick knowing that these two women would probably be alive if he would not have approach
ed Lisa and requested her help.

  He would have to come to grips with this some other time, he would have to get out of the apartment and get out quickly.

  He exited the front door of the apartment and made his way to the stairwell, just as the French police were making their way up the stairwell with weapons drawn. He immediately turned and ran down the dirty hallway entering the roof access stairwell, directly opposite the rushing police officers. Thank God, she lived on the top floor, he thought, as he made his way to the roof.

  "Déjà vu, I certainly have been here before,” realizing it did not turn out so well the last time he was on a roof.

  He was winging his escape since he was unsure on what to do, but he had nothing to lose. These were professionals trying to kill him, so he was sure that they had planted plenty of evidence to prove his guilt; the French police would not be lenient. He ran out onto the roof of the apartments and quickly saw that his avenues of escape were limited to the roof of an adjacent building, but it had a two level drop over an eight-foot divide.

  Without thinking, he went to the corner of the roof that gave him the most distance away from the divide and planted the soles of his shoes against the roof's edge for support. With one last deep breath, he exploded towards the edge of the roof, and with all his ability, leapt over the gap overlooking the alleyway. He easily cleared the span with a picture perfect landing on the opposite building, and proud of his accomplishment, he did not notice the two French police officers who were waiting for him as he landed.

  He felt the cold steel of the interrogation room table under his hands in the mostly empty room, except for the two-way mirror at the end of the room, from where he was surely being watched. He was in a tough spot and he knew it, there was no way he was going anywhere, and the authorities certainly were not going to let him leave just because he said he was innocent. He was sure the police had collected the proverbial mountain of evidence by now. A detective in dress pants, white shirt, and tie entered the room.

  “My American friend,” the interrogator said as he sat across from him.

  “Did you run out of women to murder in your own country?” He asked sarcastically lighting up a cigarette and offering one to him.

  “No thank you.” He said. “Didn’t you hear those things will kill you?”

  “Better I do it myself, than to have someone like you come along and put a bullet in my head,” the interrogator retorted.

  “I suppose you wouldn’t believe me if I told you I was innocent,” he said knowing that he couldn’t tell the cop that he was an FBI agent, if he did he was sure it would only be a matter of time before whoever was trying to kill him would be his cellmate.

  “You can’t kill two French intelligence agents and just expect to walk out of here,” the man said with a look of disgust.

  “Intelligence agents,” he came back with astonishment and felt the perceived noose tightening around his neck; he was screwed. The American government certainly would not be helping him, and the French law enforcement agencies would not go very far in keeping him alive after killing two of their own.

  "It's a pretty damn curious coincidence I would say, first we have an American fall, or was pushed, from the Eiffel Tower last night, and today we have another American kill two women just two blocks away from the same location.

  The man leaned over towards him and thrust his fist hard against the metal table, “Is there something that you wish to tell me?"

  It was obvious that the man knew the two incidents were related, but Tom wasn’t about to give the inspector any more information, after all, he already had two murder charges against him and didn’t want a third. Ironically, Frank’s death was the one that he did have something to do with; self-defense would matter little to the inspector.

  “I am fed up with you Americans coming over to my country, thinking you can do whatever you want without repercussions,” the man raised his voice and threw his chair against the wall in an attempt to intimidate him.

  “Take this asshole American back to his new roommates,” he commanded the guard that had entered the room after the inspector made a motion through the two-way mirror.

  He said nothing more and within moments was escorted to a jail cell which was already occupied by two rather large and scruffy men who were sitting on the lone bench in the cell, while a third man was sitting on the steel toilet, it was exposed and gave little privacy to the user. He hung his head low; sizing up the situation, and thought it best to keep himself well away from the others.

  He jumped every time he heard a jail guard approach down the corridor, for he did not know who was trying to kill him, or when they would come for him. The last guard to walk the hall stopped in front of the cell and looked directly at him, “You have a call, get your ass up here.”

  He could not think of who would be calling him while he was in a rundown jail cell in the middle of Paris, they must have contacts within the police department. He was led out of the cell and into a small room with four telephones on the wall, so close together that no privacy could be expected. The guard standing over by the far wall motioned him towards the phone’s receiver lying on top of the phone.

  “Hello,” he said not sure what to expect to come from the other end.

  A slow soft voice came from the other end of the phone, “Tom keep yourself alive. I will see you soon.”

  He was in a world of racing thoughts when he was taken back to his jail cell, because he knew exactly who it was that had spoken on the other end of the line, and he had been looking for her for quite some time.

  He noticed a new prisoner after he was returned to the damp and pungent jail cell. The man was clean-shaven and well kept, probably around his age; he was not scruffy like the other men in the cell. He noticed that the man was going out of his way to avoid eye contact with him, something that worried him and caused him a feeling of uneasiness. The jail guard, in an uncaring and rough manner, unhooked the cold steel handcuffs that he had to wear during any movement to and from his cell, and shoved him back into confinement.

  Once the heavy door of the cell, which consisted of heavy-duty bars with little space in between each rung, slammed shut and the guard was out of sight, the well-kept man started edging his way towards him. The man was mistaken if he thought that the small movements went unnoticed. Just as he was preparing to defend himself and fight for his life, the approaching man stopped just shy of his position.

  "Look in your right pocket," the man said in a very low voice.

  He knew his jeans had already been searched thoroughly, and were completely emptied by guards during his booking in procedure when he had first arrived at the police station. He had nothing to lose, so he gave the man the benefit of the doubt, besides it didn’t seem wise to question him at this point. He placed his hand in his pocket and slowly made his way down to the very bottom, and to his amazement, his hand hit an object. It felt round and flat, and while blocking the view of the other occupants of the cell, he glanced at what he had retrieved from his pocket, which was now firmly in his hand. It was a silver colored device and no bigger than the size and width of a dime. His experience in covert operations let him instantly recognize it as a transmitter.

  “Don’t become separated from that," the man quietly said as he slowly returned to his original position in the cell.

  He knew he was taking a chance by holding on to the transmitter because it could be a double-edged sword. If he kept the transmitter, it would provide his location to for possible rescue or it could be a set-up and lead the killers to him. He also knew he had little choice and decided to play out the scenario to the end, so he placed the device back into its hiding place at the bottom of his pocket.

  He cleared his mind, which had been going over the possibilities of escape, and turned and placed his back against the hard block wall of the jail cell trying to get some kind of rest. Unknowingly, he nodded off late in the evening giving way to his body’s demand for sleep, and was on
ly awakened when he felt the bare hands of one of his fellow prisoners wrapped around his neck.

  Tom, taking just a second to catch his wits after the surprise awakening, grabbed the man by the testicles and pulled straight down causing the man to immediately release his hold that he had around his neck, and instead clutched his balls in an instinctive reaction to pain. Tom followed with a maneuver that he had been taught in the first days of his law enforcement career, he grabbed the man by the left arm and pivoted his body, while simultaneously grabbing the man’s head with both of his hands and slamming it against the block wall of the cell several times until the man was rendered unconscious.

  His cellmates did not move, they just watched.

  It was an easy explanation to give the jail guards, who had come running to the cell at the sound of the commotion, explaining to them that the man had passed out for some unknown reason and struck his head against the wall. The guards were weary of the explanation of the disturbance, but lacked the enthusiasm to investigate the matter any further; instead, they loaded the man on a backboard and carried him off.

  After the disturbance, the cell became quiet and he was undisturbed after the other men in the cell witnessed that he could take care of himself.

  He was roughly pulled out of his jail cell the next morning and placed in a transport van that appeared to be parked in the basement of the police station. The guards, taking no chance of his escape, shackled Tom at the waist with a solid metal linked chain, and handcuffed him behind the back, before placing him on a bench located at the back of the prisoner transport.

  It was not long before the vehicle made its way through the busy streets; at least that is what it felt like to him from of all the sounds of people and cars that he heard. The design of the rear compartment of the transport did not give an outlet that let him view even the sunlight of the outside world, so he relied on sound.

  About thirty minutes into the journey, the noises that he had heard coming from people and cars on the outside became almost nonexistent, and it was clear that they were on the outskirts of the city, probably on the way to one of the notorious prisons of the country, after all, what better place to house such an infamous prisoner. Tom rubbed his hand over the pocket of his jeans, almost like rubbing a good luck charm, hoping if it were good guys tracking him that they had something special planned. He sure needed it right now.

  He felt two loud thuds jolt the side of the vehicle, and for the first time since the beginning of his journey, he saw sunlight filter through, only to be blackened out again by the smoke that filled the air. He saw figures moving around the compartment, but they had become hazy as the gas introduced into the vehicle took effect on the occupants, and he was no exception.