by Mark Greaney
“Oui?”
“Sept Rue Tronchet.”
“Est vous sûr?” Are you sure?
“Bien sûr.” Of course.
There was a slight delay as his contact did some research on his end about the location, so Court took the time to check his own security here. It seemed to be a typical cloudy spring afternoon on a typical central Paris intersection, which meant a lot of traffic, both pedestrian and automobile, and quite a few people just standing around. There were window shoppers, smokers standing in front of shops and office buildings, men and women selling out of food kiosks and newsstands.
But within ten seconds of the beginning of his scan, a pair of men on the opposite sidewalk set off Court’s internal alarm. They were on motorcycles next to each other, one man on a black Honda and the other on a red Suzuki, and they scanned the area, much like Court himself was now doing.
Court looked around at the buildings behind the pair, tried to come up with a legitimate reason they would pick that part of the sidewalk to park, and came up with nothing. A women’s clothing store. A perfumery. A shop that made and sold high-end confectionery.
Sure . . . these guys could be out picking up gifts for wives or girlfriends. But they had no bags with them, only backpacks with webbing on the outside used to strap more gear on, a feature common with military and police personnel.
He put them in their late thirties or early forties; they were relatively fit men, one bearded with wavy brown hair and the other completely bald and clean-shaven. There was a hard edge to both that was easily apparent to Court, even from this distance. They weren’t military—not active duty, anyway—and they certainly weren’t beat cops, but Court wondered if they might be attached to the police or government in some capacity.
Their backpacks and helmets looked well used, but both their motorcycles appeared to be almost new. He had the impression that these guys could handle more powerful bikes than the ones they were sitting on, so he pegged the motorcycles as rentals.
As Court concentrated on remaining subtle—performing the balancing act of surveilling two people while at the same time remaining sensitive to any possible countersurveillance—his earpiece came alive again with a response from the Frenchman.
“Sept Rue Tronchet is a hôtel particulier. A private guesthouse for wealthy travelers visiting Paris. Four suites. Five floors. Minimal security . . . but cameras in the lobby, stairs, and lift. Good locks, no easy roof access.”
“My problem. Not yours.”
“D’accord.” Agreed. “What do you need?”
“A car. Somewhere within three blocks of the target location.”
“It will be delivered. You will be texted with the drop-off location.”
“Okay.” And then: “Question . . . Do you have any eyes trailing the target?”
“Non. You demanded we discontinue surveillance.”
“You’re certain your guys are clear of this scene?”
“Absolutely so. We did not have any idea she would be going to Rue Tronchet. All our assets are accounted for. Why . . . ? Is there a problem?”
Court looked up to the two bikers again. The brown-haired man on the Honda was gone; he must have headed off to the south, otherwise Court would have seen him race past. And the bald man on the Suzuki was just now putting his helmet on. In seconds he fired up his bike and rolled off to the north.
“’Allo?”
Court asked, “Who else might be interested in the target? Caucasians. Europeans.”
After a pause the Frenchman said, “No one. Certainly no Caucasians that I can think of. None.”
But Court was less sure now than he had been about the pair. Court was certain they hadn’t ID’d him, so he couldn’t imagine why they would leave like this if, indeed, they had been following Medina or holding surveillance on her building. And, try as he might, Court couldn’t find anyone else in the crowd who looked like they might have replaced these two in coverage.
“’Allo?” the man said again.
“It’s nothing,” Court replied, though he wasn’t at all sure. “Just deliver the car and text me the location.”
Court made to hang up when he heard the man speak.
“When do you think you will be able to—”
Court ended the call.
He started the Yamaha again, brushing off lingering thoughts of the two men. He drove off to circle the block and try to find a better place for surveillance, because he was certain this was his target’s residence for the evening, and this would be the evening he’d come for her.
CHAPTER 4
At ten p.m. Bianca Medina left her private apartment on the Rue Tronchet, climbed into her silver Escalade with her full security detail, and rode in silence for the ten-minute journey to a two-Michelin-star restaurant on the Rue Lord Byron.
Here she was escorted into an ornate private room by the maître d’, the door was closed, and she dined alone.
Well, not really alone.
Three of her five minders sat at the two other tables in the room, with a fourth man just beyond the door to the main dining room, and the fifth with the Escalade outside.
The men around her did not make eye contact with Bianca, nor she with them. There was little talking between the protectee and any of her protectors and no real conversation whatsoever. The detail and the principal had a prickly relationship that no one in the mix seemed anxious to rectify.
Bianca sat at her candlelit table, nursed a flute of champagne, and picked at a salad with no dressing. She alternatively nibbled on her food and thumbed a copy of French Vogue she’d pulled out of her handbag. Bianca was from Spain, but she spoke French and English fluently, having lived in Paris and New York working as a model, dividing her time between the two fashion meccas for nearly a decade before all but retiring three years earlier.
Her waiter was a handsome man in his midtwenties, a few years younger than her and a thousand times more upbeat and talkative, and he was clearly fascinated by the sullen-looking beauty with the expensive jewelry and the big security entourage. He attempted to flirt with her at every opportunity, showing himself not to be intimidated by either her magnificence or the gruff men surrounding her.
Bianca had ignored his early attempts at small talk, but this Casanova wasn’t one to take no for an answer, so the more curt she became, the more he wanted to break through her tough exterior.
As he removed her salad plate and replaced her silverware, he asked, “Are you in town on vacation?”
“Work,” she said, not even looking up from Vogue.
“Of course. You must be here for Fashion Week.”
She did not reply.
“A supermodel. I would surely recognize you if I spent more time following celebrity magazines.”
Nothing.
After a pause, the waiter leaned a little closer. “Madame . . . I just have to say it—”
She flipped a page in her magazine. “No, monsieur . . . whatever it is, you do not.”
The handsome waiter hesitated again, surprised at the remark, but he recovered. He somehow didn’t get the hint that Bianca was not a woman to be toyed with. “Forgive me, but while I understand why a true beauty like you must be well protected, I don’t understand why you can’t give just a little smile. It is always sad to dine alone, c’est vrai, but a perfect woman in a perfect restaurant in a perfect city should, at least, try to find a way to be happy.”
Bianca lifted her eyes from the magazine only now, but not to look at the Frenchman. Instead she just glanced towards Shalish, the leader of her security detail, sitting alone at a candlelit table by the door to the dining room. He had certainly heard the exchange, she knew, because Shalish missed nothing.
Shalish, in turn, looked to his two men, and Bianca turned her attention to the waiter now. In French she said, “Go away. Come back with food, o
r don’t come back at all.”
The waiter was used to women playing hard to get, but he clearly was not used to such cruel rejection. After a moment’s pause, he bowed curtly and turned on his heels, heading towards the door.
Shalish glared at the waiter as the young man passed by. As Bianca began to look back down to her magazine, she saw two of her bodyguards standing—off the look from their boss, no doubt—and following the young man out the door.
Ten seconds later she heard an exclamation in the kitchen, then a clanking of plates and glasses.
She could picture the scene. The waiter was either up against the wall or down on the floor, and he was in pain. She imagined the good-looking man would be sent home for the evening, perhaps to tend to a black eye or a sore shoulder joint.
To the guards around her, to the restaurant staff, and most certainly to the waiter with the wounded body and pride, Bianca Medina appeared to be a cold and cruel bitch, but as far as she was concerned, she’d done the would-be Lothario a favor. If she’d shown any interest in him, given him any sort of green light that emboldened him to press on with his attempts at seduction, the men with Medina would have probably taken it upon themselves to put the waiter in the hospital with shattered bones and broken teeth.
Bianca had learned over the past few years that the kindest turn she could do her fellow man was often to encourage them to just walk on by her without a passing glance.
Minutes later a new waiter, this one older, blander, and almost catatonic in his countenance, appeared with her entrée, coq au vin, with the sauce in a silver boat on the side. He put it in front of her with a quick and perfunctory “bon appétit,” and then he was gone.
Bianca Medina reached for her fork and knife now; she put the hand- some young waiter out of her mind and did not think of him again.
* * *
• • •
The Escalade pulled back in front of the archway at 7 Rue Tronchet at midnight, and Bianca Medina returned to her three-thousand-square-foot fifth-floor suite. While one of the dark-suited men remained in the lobby, the four others entered the suite with her. They took up their positions in the living area, kitchen, and guest rooms, while she entered the master bedroom alone without a word to anyone.
She’d fly home tomorrow, but not till early afternoon, and she knew her detail would not allow her to go anywhere other than to breakfast before heading to the airport. This meant she could sleep in, so she dawdled in her room for a while. She looked through the rest of her magazine while lying on the bed, then spent a few minutes standing on the balcony and looking out over the forecourt of the property. She regarded the single shot of brandy in the large lead crystal decanter on the nightstand by her bed, then poured the shot into the snifter left there for her. She drank the sweet liquid while she perused her magazine once more. And then, shortly after one a.m., she pulled an extra blanket from the linen closet next to the bathroom door, climbed into bed, and flipped off the light on the end table next to her.
Seconds later she began to cry.
* * *
• • •
Are you fucking serious?
Court Gentry knelt just twenty feet away, watching the woman through a slat between two louvers in the door of the linen closet, a thin sheen of sweat glistening in the thin shaft of moonlight running across his forehead. He’d removed the lower shelf in the closet so he could fit there on his knees, and then he’d pushed back tight into the small and dark space and covered his body with a pair of large pillows. And he was glad he’d done so, because when his target had opened the door to grab the extra blanket, he’d been able to remain tucked under the middle shelf and out of her view.
He looked forward to being able to stand again to straighten his legs, but his plan had been to give his target time to fall asleep before moving on her.
But now she was crying for some reason, and Court worried it would take her a while to nod off.
He looked down to his watch; its hour and minute hands were tipped with vials of tritium gas so they would show faintly, even in complete darkness. He told himself he could wait a half hour, but then he’d need to act, whether or not she was asleep.
Court was dressed head to toe in black, and he wore a small black pack on his back staged with rappelling gear, a suppressed Glock 19 snapped into an open-style molded polymer holster on his hip, and a pair of flash bang grenades on his Kevlar vest. A black Benchmade Infidel switchblade was hooked into his back pocket, smoke grenades and a fixed-blade knife hung in sheaths on his utility belt, and another blade was hooked into one of his black Merrell boots.
He had a plan tonight, and he’d prepped accordingly, perhaps even overpreparing with all the gear on his body, but Court had learned through hard experience that out here in the field he could rely on no one but himself, so everything he might possibly require on an operation he needed to have within reach before the onset of action.
Court had been trained by the CIA, specifically by a grizzled Vietnam veteran he knew as Maurice, and Maurice had a saying that played back in Court’s brain at times like this. Son . . . you can never have too much ammo unless you’re drowning or on fire.
Court had laughed the first time Maurice said it, but he quit laughing the first time the saying had saved his life.
Bianca Medina’s crying intensified for a few minutes, then softened to sobs, and eventually even that drifted away. Court didn’t know what she was upset about, and he didn’t really care, except for the fact he wanted her to hurry up and fall asleep so he could get on with his night.
The last thing he needed was her calling out to her gorillas when he crossed the room towards her.
Soon Medina rolled onto her side, facing Court’s direction. The blinds were open on the French doors out to the balcony, and faint moonlight from outside reached into the room and illuminated her face. Even from across the master bedroom, the man in the closet could see that the woman’s eyes were open and wet.
Count sheep, lady. I don’t have all damn night.
To his pleasure, soon her eyes closed and remained so. He watched the cadence of her breathing slow finally, and he knew she was out, or close to it.
After another check of his watch, he told himself he’d move in five minutes.
Just then, the shafts of moonlight on Bianca Medina’s face altered, and Court leaned to his left to try to get a look outside on the balcony. He didn’t have much room to maneuver where he knelt, but by pressing his head all the way against the wall, he could see what had interrupted the light.
He blinked hard in surprise.
One of Medina’s bodyguards stood on the balcony just outside the window, staring through the glass at the woman lying in bed.
Court knew the layout of this property because he’d had the run of the place for much of the time the entourage was out to dinner. He’d come down from the roof of an adjacent building full of retail spaces, and he’d dropped onto the balcony where the guard now stood. There was no real access from any other part of the building, which meant the bodyguard must have climbed out the window of the other bedroom in the suite and scooted along a foot-wide ledge to make his way to the balcony.
What the hell? Court wondered. Does this guy really have orders to watch his protectee sleep?
The woman seemed to have no idea he was there, or else she was so accustomed to being watched over like this that it no longer bothered her at all.
Or else, and Court imagined this to be a distinct possibility, it did bother her, and that was why she cried herself to sleep.
Court almost felt sorry for her for a moment.
Almost.
The arrival of the close-protection agent on the balcony complicated the situation exponentially. Court had a Gemtech suppressor on his Glock pistol, but shooting this asshole was still going to make a hell of a lot of noise. The men in other parts of the suite would
all hear it, and they’d come hard and fast in the protection of their client.
He decided he’d watch the guard for a few minutes to see if he’d leave, or at least turn away. But if the man remained there, focused on Bianca Medina through the glass door of the balcony, Court would just have to deal with the sentry before carrying on with his mission, because it looked like there was no way he was getting to the girl without the man seeing him.
* * *
• • •
There was little automobile traffic in the 8th Arrondissement at this time of night; the area was all but deserted, but a single man on a bicycle rolled along the Rue Tronchet, passing the Madeleine church. A few seconds later a second bicycle appeared from the north, and a third turned onto the street from the west just after that. All three cyclists slowed when they came to a point just south of the big red double doors closing off the forecourt of the hôtel particulier.
Two of the men climbed off their bikes and stepped up to the wall just feet from the doorway, while the third dropped his kickstand and parked directly under the security camera pointing down to the pavement in front of the doorway. He deftly climbed up onto his bike, put one foot on the top tube and another on the seat, and used the wall of the building and his left hand to balance himself there. With his right hand he pulled a can of black spray paint from the pocket of his hoodie. He shook the can a couple of times, then sprayed up from below, coating the lens of the camera black in an instant.
The two others watched him work, and as soon as he was finished they rushed forward, knelt at the door latch, and pulled out their lock-picking tools. One man centered a flashlight’s beam on the lock while the other worked, and while this was going on, the man on the bike jumped down, pulled out his phone, and speed-dialed a number. He stood there looking up and down the street, ready to warn the lock-picking team of any passersby on the sidewalks or vehicles on the road.
