by Jack Mars
He couldn’t help but wonder who the woman was, but he shook it off. He didn’t want to incite another headache. Instead he set the pen to the napkin again, about to write the final name—Zero. That’s what the Iranian interrogator had called him. But before he could write it or recite it, he felt a bizarre sensation. The hairs on the nape of his neck stood on end.
He was being watched.
When he glanced up again, he saw a man standing in Féline’s dark doorway, his gaze locked on Reid like a hawk eyeing a mouse. Reid’s blood ran cold. He was being watched.
This was the man he was here to meet, he was certain of it. Did he recognize him? The Arabic men hadn’t seemed to. Was this man expecting someone else?
He set the pen down. Slowly and surreptitiously, he crumpled the napkin and dropped it into his half-empty cold coffee.
The man nodded once. Reid nodded back.
Then the stranger reached behind him, for something tucked in the back of his pants.
CHAPTER FIVE
Reid stood with such force that his chair nearly toppled. His hand immediately wrapped around the textured grip of the Beretta, warm from his lower back. His mind screamed at him frantically. This is a public place. There are people here. I’ve never fired a gun before.
Before Reid drew his pistol, the stranger pulled a billfold from his back pocket. He grinned at Reid, apparently amused by his jumpy nature. No one else in the bar seemed to have noticed, except the waitress with the rat’s nest of hair, who simply raised an eyebrow.
The stranger approached the bar, slid a bill across the table, and muttered something to the bartender. Then he made his way to Reid’s table. He stood behind the empty chair for a long moment, a thin smirk on his lips.
He was young, thirty at best, with close-cropped hair and a five o’clock shadow. He was quite lanky and his face was gaunt, making his sharp cheekbones and jutting chin look almost caricature-ish. Most disarming was the black horn-rimmed glasses he wore, looking for all the world as if Buddy Holly had grown up in the eighties and discovered cocaine.
He was right-handed, Reid could tell; he held his left elbow close to his body, which likely meant he had a pistol hanging from a shoulder holster in his armpit so he could draw with his right, if need be. His left arm pinned his black suede jacket closed to hide the gun.
“Mogu sjediti?” the man asked finally.
Mogu…? Reid didn’t immediately understand the way he had with Arabic and French. It wasn’t Russian, but it was close enough for him to derive the meaning from context. The man was asking if he could sit down.
Reid gestured to the empty chair across from him, and the man sat, keeping his left elbow tucked all the while.
As soon as he was seated, the waitress brought a glass of dark amber beer and set it before him. “Merci,” he said. He grinned at Reid. “Your Serbian is not so good?”
Reid shook his head. “No.” Serbian? He had assumed the man he would be meeting would be Arabic, like his captors and the interrogator.
“In English, then? Ou francais?”
“Dealer’s choice.” Reid was surprised at how calm and even his voice sounded. His heart was nearly bursting out of his chest from fear and… and if he was being honest, at least a shred of anxious excitement.
The Serbian man’s grin widened. “I enjoy this place. It is dark. It is quiet. It is the only bar that I know of in this arrondissement that serves Franziskaner. It is my favorite.” He took a long swig from his glass, his eyes closed, and a grunt of pleasure escaped his throat. “Que delicioso.” He opened his eyes and added, “You are not what I expected.”
A surge of panic rose in Reid’s gut. He knows, his mind screamed at him. He knows you’re not who he’s supposed to meet, and he has a gun.
Relax, said the other side, the new part. You can handle this.
Reid gulped, but somehow managed to maintain his icy demeanor. “Nor are you,” he replied.
The Serbian chuckled. “That is fair. But we are many, yes? And you—you are American?”
“Expat,” Reid answered.
“Are not we all?” Another chuckle. “Before you I met only one other American in our, um… what is the word… conglomerate? Yes. So for me, it is not so strange.” The man winked.
Reid tensed. He couldn’t tell if it was a joke or not. What if he knew that Reid was a fake and was leading him on or buying time? He placed his hands in his lap to hide his trembling fingers.
“You may call me Yuri. What may I call you?”
“Ben.” It was the first name that came to mind, the name of a mentor from his days as an assistant professor.
“Ben. How did you come to work for the Iranians?”
“With,” Reid corrected. He narrowed his eyes for effect. “I work with them.”
The man, this Yuri, took another sip of his beer. “Sure. With. How did that come to be? Despite our mutual interests, they tend to be a, uh… closed group.”
“I’m trustworthy,” Reid said without blinking. He had no idea where these words were coming from, nor the conviction with which they were coming. He said them as easily as if he’d rehearsed it.
“And where is Amad?” Yuri asked casually.
“Couldn’t make it,” Reid replied evenly. “Sends his regards.”
“All right, Ben. You say the deed is done.”
“Yes.”
Yuri leaned forward, his eyes narrowed. Reid could smell the malt on his breath. “I need to hear you say it, Ben. Tell me, is CIA man dead?”
Reid froze for a moment. CIA? As in, the CIA? Suddenly all the talk of agents in the field and visions of detaining terrorists on airfields and in hotels made more sense, even if the entirety of the matter didn’t. Then he remembered the gravity of his situation and hoped that he hadn’t given any cues to betray his charade.
He too leaned forward and said slowly, “Yes, Yuri. CIA man is dead.”
Yuri leaned back casually and grinned again. “Good.” He plucked up his glass. “And the information? You have it?”
“He gave us everything he knew,” Reid told him. He couldn’t help but notice that his fingers were no longer trembling beneath the table. It was as if someone else was in control now, as if Reid Lawson was taking a backseat in his own brain. He decided not to fight it.
“The location of Mustafar?” Yuri asked. “And all he told them?”
Reid nodded.
Yuri blinked a few times expectantly. “I am waiting.”
A realization struck Reid like a heavy weight as his mind put the little knowledge he had together. The CIA was involved. There was some sort of plan that would get a lot of people killed. The sheikh knew about it, and told them—told him—everything. These men, they needed to know what the sheikh knew. That’s what Yuri wanted to know. Whatever this was, it felt big, and Reid had stumbled into its midst… though he certainly felt as if this was not the first time.
He did not speak for a long time, long enough for the smile to evaporate from Yuri’s lips into an expectant thin-lipped stare. “I don’t know you,” Reid said. “I don’t know who you represent. You expect me to give you everything I know, and walk away, and trust that it gets to the right place?”
“Yes,” said Yuri, “that is exactly what I expect, and precisely the reason for this meeting.”
Reid shook his head. “No. See, Yuri, it occurs to me that this information is too important to play whisper-down-the-alley and hope it gets to the right ears in the right order. What’s more is that as far as you’re concerned, there’s only one place it exists—right here.” He tapped his own left temple. It was true; the information they were looking for was, presumably, somewhere in the recesses of his mind, waiting to be unlocked. “It also occurs to me,” he continued, “that now that they have this information, our plans will have to change. I’m done being the messenger. I want in. I want a real role.”
Yuri just stared. Then he let out a sharp, braying laugh and at the same time slapped the table so hard i
t jarred several nearby patrons. “You!” he exclaimed, wagging a finger. “You may be an expat, but you still have that American ambition!” He laughed again, sounding very much like a donkey. “What is it you want to know, Ben?”
“Let’s start with who you represent in this.”
“How do you know I represent anyone? For what you know, I could be the boss. The brains behind the master plan!” He held both hands up in a grand gesture and laughed again.
Reid smirked. “I don’t think so. I think you’re in the same position I am, ferrying information, swapping secrets, having meetings in shitty bars.” Interrogation tactic—relate to them on their level. Yuri was clearly a polyglot, and seemed to lack the same hardened demeanor as his captors. But even if he was low-level, he still knew more than Reid did. “How about a deal? You tell me what you know, and I’ll tell you what I know.” He lowered his voice to nearly a whisper. “And trust me. You want to know what I know.”
Yuri stroked his chin stubble thoughtfully. “I like you, Ben. Which is, how do you say, um… conflicting, because Americans usually make me ill.” He grinned. “Sadly for you, I cannot tell you what I do not know.”
“Then point me to who can.” The words flowed out of him as if they bypassed his brain and went straight to his throat. The logical part of him (or more appropriately, the Lawson part of him) screamed a protest. What are you doing?! Get what you can and get out of here!
“Would you care to go for a ride with me?” Yuri’s eyes flashed. “I will take you to see my boss. There, you can tell him what you know.”
Reid hesitated. He knew he shouldn’t. He knew he didn’t want to. But there was that bizarre sense of obligation, and there was that steely reserve in the back of his mind that told him again, Relax. He had a gun. He had some sort of skill set. He had come this far, and judging by what he now knew, this went way beyond a few Iranian men in a Parisian basement. There was a plan, and the involvement of the CIA, and somehow he knew that the endgame was a lot of people being hurt or worse.
He nodded once, his jaw clenched tightly.
“Great.” Yuri drained his glass and stood, still keeping his left elbow tucked in. “Au revoir.” He waved to the bartender. Then the Serbian led the way toward the rear of Féline, through a small dingy kitchen, and out through a steel door facing a cobblestone alley.
Reid followed him into the night, surprised to see that it had grown so dark so quickly while he was in the bar. At the mouth of the alley was a black SUV, idling gently, with windows tinted nearly as dark as the paint job. The rear door opened before Yuri reached it, and two goons climbed out. Reid didn’t know how else to think of them; each was broad-shouldered, imposing, and doing nothing to try to hide the TEC-9 automatic pistols swinging from harnesses at their armpit.
“Relax, my friends,” said Yuri. “This is Ben. We take him to see Otets.”
Otets. Phonetic Russian for “father.” Or, on the most technical level, “maker.”
“Come,” Yuri said pleasantly. He clapped a hand on Reid’s shoulder. “It is a very nice ride. We will drink champagne on the way. Come.”
Reid’s legs did not want to work. It was risky—too risky. If he got in this car with these men and they discovered who he was, or even that he wasn’t who he said he was, he might very well be a dead man. His girls would be orphans, and they would likely never know what became of him.
But what choice did he have? He couldn’t very well act like he’d changed his mind suddenly; that would be far too suspicious. It was likely he had already taken two steps past the point of no return simply by following Yuri out here. And if he could keep up the charade long enough, he could find the source—and discover what was going on in his own head.
He took a step forward toward the SUV.
“Ah! Un momento, por favor.” Yuri wagged a finger at his brawny escorts. One of them forced Reid’s arms up at his sides, while the other patted him down. First he found the Beretta, tucked into the back of his jeans. Then he dug into Reid’s pockets with two fingers and pulled out the wad of euros and the burner phone, and handed all three to Yuri.
“This you can keep.” The Serbian gave him back the cash. “These, however, we will hang onto. Security. You understand.” Yuri tucked the phone and the gun into the inside pocket of his suede jacket, and for the briefest of moments, Reid saw the brown hilt of a pistol.
“I understand,” Reid said. Now he was unarmed and without any way to call for help if he needed to. I should run, he thought. Just start sprinting and don’t look back…
One of the goons forced his head low and pushed him forward, into the back of the SUV. Both of them climbed in after him and Yuri followed, pulling the door behind him. He sat beside Reid, while the hunched goons, nearly shoulder to shoulder, sat in a custom rear-facing seat opposite them, right behind the driver. A dark-tinted partition separated them from the front seat of the car.
One of the pair knocked on the driver’s partition with two knuckles. “Otets,” he said gruffly.
A heavy, telltale click locked the rear doors, and with it came a stark comprehension of what Reid had done. He had gotten into a car with three armed men with no idea where he was going and very little idea of who he was supposed to be. Fooling Yuri hadn’t been all that difficult, but now he was being taken to some boss… would they know that he wasn’t who he said he was? He fought down the urge to jump forward, yank open the door, and leap out of the car. There was no escape from this, at least not at the moment; he would have to wait until they arrived at their destination and hope that he could get out in one piece.
The SUV rolled forward through the streets of Paris.
CHAPTER SIX
Yuri, who had been so talkative and animated in the French bar, was uncharacteristically silent during the car ride. He opened a compartment alongside his seat and took out a well-worn book with a torn cover—Machiavelli’s The Prince. The professor in Reid wanted to scoff out loud.
The two goons across from him sat silently, eyes directed straight ahead as if they were trying to stare holes through Reid. He quickly memorized their features: the man on the left was bald, white, with a dark handlebar mustache and beady eyes. He had a TEC-9 beneath his shoulder and a Glock 27 tucked in an ankle holster. A jagged pale scar over his left eyebrow suggested a shoddy patch job (not all that dissimilar from what Reid was likely due for once his super-glue intervention healed). He couldn’t tell the man’s nationality.
The second goon was a few shades darker, with a full, unkempt beard and a sizable paunch. His left shoulder appeared to be sagging slightly, as if he was favoring his opposite hip. He too had an automatic pistol tucked under one arm, but no other weapons that Reid could discern.
He could, however, see the mark on his neck. The skin there was puckered and pink, raised slightly from being burned. It was the same brand he had seen on the Arabic brute in the Paris basement. A glyph of some sort, he was certain, but not one that he recognized. The mustached man did not appear to have one, though much of his neck was hidden by his shirt.
Yuri did not have a brand either—at least not one that Reid could see. The collar of the Serbian’s suede jacket rode high. Could be a status symbol, he thought. Something that had to be earned.
The driver directed the vehicle onto A4, leaving Paris behind and heading northeast toward Reims. The tinted windows made the night all the darker; once they left the City of Lights, it was difficult for Reid to make out landmarks. He had to rely on the route markers and signs to know where they were heading. The landscape slowly shifted from the bright urban locale to an idle, bucolic topography, the highway gently sloping with the lay of the land and farms stretching on either side.
After an hour of driving in utter silence, Reid cleared his throat. “Is it much further?” he asked.
Yuri put a finger to his lips and then grinned. “Oui.”
Reid’s nostrils flared, but he said nothing more. He should have asked just how far they would be taking hi
m; for all he knew, they were going clear to Belgium.
Route A4 became A34, which in turn became A304 as they climbed ever further north. The trees that dotted the pastoral countryside grew thicker and closer, wide umbrella-like spruces that swallowed the open farmland and became indistinguishable forests. The gradient of the road increased as the sloping hills turned to small mountains.
He knew this place. Rather, he knew the region, and not because of any flashing vision or implanted memory. He had never been here, but he knew from his studies that they had reached the Ardennes, a mountainous stretch of forest shared between northeastern France, southern Belgium, and northern Luxembourg. It was in the Ardennes that the German army, in 1944, attempted to launch their armored divisions through the densely forested region in an attempt to capture the city of Antwerp. They were thwarted by American and British forces near the river Meuse. The ensuing conflict was dubbed the Battle of the Bulge, and it was the last major offensive of the Germans in World War II.
For some reason, despite how dire his situation was or might soon become, he found some small measure of comfort in thinking about history, his former life, and his students. But then his thoughts again transitioned to his girls being alone and scared and not having any idea where he was or what he had gotten himself into.
Sure enough, Reid soon saw a sign that warned of an approach to the border. Belgique, the sign read, and below that, Belgien, België, Belgium. Less than two miles later, the SUV slowed to a stop at a single small booth with a concrete awning overhead. A man in a thick coat and wool-knit cap peered out at the vehicle. Border security between France and Belgium was a far cry from what most Americans were used to. The driver rolled down the window and spoke to the man, but the words were muted by the closed partition and windows. Reid squinted through the tint and saw the driver’s arm reach out, passing something to the border officer—a bill. A bribe.
