The Paris Betrayal

by James R. Hannibal

  “Sure.” Ben took his time. Nausea swept over him, threatening to knock him down again. He swallowed back his bile and straightened. “How’d you find me?”

  “Our police forces are covering the roads and trains, leaving you only one route out of this district—the river. I’ve been patrolling the south bank. Tell me. Where is the girl?”

  He must not have seen Ben leaving the cathedral earlier. He hadn’t found Clara’s hiding place.

  “She ditched me.”

  “Smart girl. I’ll find her for you. I’ll take good care of her.”

  A surge of pain washed through Ben’s head, sending another wave of nausea through his gut. It might have been concern for Clara. Then again, he’d taken two good knocks in the same day. He’d be lucky to get out of this without long-term damage.

  Duval had him—wounded and covered. But the cop hadn’t called in the troops. Not a good sign. “Who are you working for? Jupiter? Leviathan?”

  Duval’s eyes went vacant for a fraction of a second. He didn’t seem to recognize those names.

  Ben chuckled. “Do you even know who you’re working for?”

  “I work for a man who pays well and wants to speak with you. That is enough.”

  So, he didn’t know. Another answer remained out of Ben’s reach. “Sorry to disappoint your boss, but I won’t be taken alive.”

  “I can’t tell you how gratified I am to hear you say that.”

  “Don’t be. Previous experience tells us your chances of winning this fight are slim.” Ben’s hand inched along his hip.

  The cop saw. “Yes. Good.” Duval slowly raised the revolver to level, clenching his jaw against the pain. “A gunfight is what I want, like something from your Old West movies. But before we see who’s fastest, you should know something. The girl—”

  A flash of gray appeared in the lamplight, crashing against Duval’s temple. His eyes went wide and a rasp escaped his lips as he fell forward to his knees. Clara stood behind him, holding a chunk of stone from a cathedral statue.

  “What did you do?” Ben asked.

  She set the stone on the ground and lifted her hands away, leaving half of a scorched shepherd’s face to stare up at the night sky. “I’ll put it back. I swear.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Trailing blood, Duval rolled over and aimed his gun at Clara. Ben kicked it away, then fell to his knee, driving a punch down into the same spot Clara had hit with the rock.

  The cop went still. Ben grabbed him by the ankles, dragging him toward the steps. “We have to move. Help me.”

  She stared at him.

  “Now, Clara!”

  She picked up the revolver and aimed at Duval.

  “Don’t you fire that thing.” Ben spoke the words as a growl. “A gunshot’ll bring every cop in Paris down on us. Plus, I’m not making you into a cop killer, dirty or not.” He kept dragging Duval, around the stone rail and down the stairs. The man’s head bounced on every other step.

  Clara followed in a daze, holding the gun in both hands. “He . . . He was going to kill you.”

  “Story of my life.”

  She never helped him, only watched, as Ben laid Duval out flat on the river walk, under the bridge. He removed Duval’s belt, flipped him over, and bound his hands, then flipped him again and went through his pockets. The wallet went in the river—after Ben confiscated the cash, of course. And he found two moon clips of .38 Special to feed the revolver.

  Cautiously, he took the gun from Clara. “How about I hold on to this for you, hmm? This one came with extra bullets, so it’s worth keeping.” When she didn’t respond, he touched her cheek. “Hey, you with me? Where’s Otto?”

  “In the cathedral. Asleep.”

  “Good. That’s good. Why don’t you go get him while I stay here and clean up this mess? Grab my go-bag too. We’re leaving.”

  19

  At the schoolhouse, Colonel Hale had opened Ben’s Escape and Evasion course by extolling the virtues of fog. A man-made smokescreen is, by its very nature, also a signal. A Mark 18 smoke grenade obscures your activity on a battlefield, but it also declares your position to the enemy. Fog and mist are natural. Fog a gift from the Almighty.

  The rivers running through the larger European cities make fog nightly, and in most, it grows densest in winter. Utilities and tunnels running under the water pull heat from the city. When the night air trapped between the channel walls grows cold, the warm spray at the surface creates a blanket of vapor, thickest in the wee hours. Even advanced thermal sensors struggle to penetrate its natural cover. Spies and the specialists who hunt them both have a name for this effect.

  “We call it the smuggler’s mist.” Ben helped Clara up onto the deck of a houseboat, secured for the winter at a post not far from the place they’d left Duval. The vapor had grown so thick, he couldn’t see the channel wall, less than ten meters away. “Surveillance guys hate it. Plays havoc with every form of optical sensor. Thermal, infrared—doesn’t matter. Cops searching with their naked eyeballs alone don’t stand a chance.”

  Stealing the houseboat’s tiny skiff required no more effort than cutting a line with his KA-BAR and turning a crank. Together they lowered it to the water, and Ben loosened the tarp’s stern end. He climbed in. “Give me the dog.”

  “Otto.”

  “Whatever.”

  “If you are going to steal a boat,” she said, handing him the dachshund, “why not one with a motor? Won’t it be faster?”

  Otto paddled his legs in desperation until Ben had him safely on the skiff floor, nestled on a life preserver under the aft bench. “We need stealth, not speed.” He held out a hand. “You next.”

  She clearly hadn’t spent much time in small watercraft. The skiff appropriated her nervousness, wobbling so much as she stepped in that even Otto gave her a frustrated look. Ben steadied her all the way down to the bench. He didn’t let go of her hand, long after she’d settled, studying her face. Her timing had been impeccable. How would Duval have finished his last statement if Clara hadn’t slammed a priceless chunk of masonry into his temple? Before we see who’s fastest, you should know something. The girl—

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Clara asked.

  “It’s nothing.” He let go and looked away. “I mean . . . I’m not.”

  She lifted the KA-BAR from the houseboat deck, slapping the hilt into his palm. “Don’t forget this.”

  “I won’t.”

  When he opened his go-bag and dropped the knife in, Clara reached in after it. Going for the revolver? He flinched.

  She drew out a protein bar, frowning at his response. “What’s wrong? You don’t want me to have this? You said to eat one if I got hungry.”

  “Right. Sure.”

  She set the wrapped bar on her knees and dove in again.

  “Hey,” Ben said.

  “I need one for Otto too.”

  “The dog?”

  “You want him to starve?”

  The dachshund raised his head, releasing something between a mutter and growl, as if Ben was riding on the edge of his good graces.

  Along with the second egg white bar, Clara drew out a thick roll wrapped in cellophane. “Forget egg whites. We should be feeding him steak. There must be thousands of euros in this roll.”

  “Ten thousand, to be exact.” Ben closed the bag before she could start counting the rest. “Going on the run gets expensive. For instance—” He plucked the roll from her fingers, poked a hole in the center, and pulled out a 500-euro note the way he might pull a Kleenex from a box. He crumpled it into a ball and tossed it onto the houseboat deck before pushing away. They drifted noiselessly toward the faster current at the river’s center. “That’s to compensate our benefactor for the skiff.”

  “Won’t the owner find the boat once we’re done with it?”

  “No. We’ll have to sink her. We don’t want the police figuring out where we put in.”

  The current checked the
drift and held the skiff near the river’s center. They picked up speed, maybe four knots. At that rate, they’d be out of the city in two hours. Ben hoped the smuggler’s mist would hold that long.

  Clara lifted a small case from her purse and shook out a couple of pills. “Take these.”

  He let her set them in his hand. They had no markings. “What are they?”

  “Ibuprofen. Your head hurts, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then take the pills. Show a little faith, please.”

  Faith. Tess had mentioned faith. The day had shaken Ben’s—in the Director and in Clara. But the pounding in his head drowned out his suspicions. “Yeah . . . okay.”

  He chased the pills with water from his go-bag, then settled in for the long haul. He sat on the bottom and pushed his feet toward the bow, resting his shoulders against the bench. “You, too,” he said, tapping Clara’s arm. “We’ll cover up with the tarp before we reach the tower. The Champ de Mars and Quai Branly never sleep. The cops’ll be watching the streets there for sure, maybe patrol the bridges too.”

  “If we’re hiding under the tarp, how will you steer?”

  “No need. The current near the river’s center will lock us in.” He laid a hand on a plastic paddle clipped to the interior hull. “The hard part will be getting to shore south of the city.”

  Clara squeezed in beside him and used a life vest as a cushion for her neck. Otto had claimed the other one as a bed. Ben let him keep it. He needed a little discomfort, anyway—to keep him awake. His eyes felt heavy. He pressed his body against the hull to give Clara some room. “What were you doing outside the cathedral?”

  “What else? Looking for you.”

  “I told you I’d come back.”

  “Oh yes. I remember. You said you would come back in two hours. ‘What if you do not?’ I asked. And what did you say?” She deepened her voice, adding some Texan. “‘I will, little lady.’”

  “I didn’t say ‘little lady.’” He laid his head back, trying not to put pressure on the painful knots back there, and looked up through wisps of vapor at the void above—no stars, no discernible clouds. Just emptiness. “And I don’t sound like that.”

  “Perhaps not, but you did say two hours. You were gone almost three. I was worried. I took a stone for protection and came looking.” She pulled her coat tight about her. “I also thought you might have run away.”

  “If I wanted to ditch you, I would have done it this morning. And if I had, you’d be dead.”

  She snorted. “So would you.”

  “I had Duval handled.”

  “Mm-hmm.” She mimicked him with the bad southern accent again. “I had it handled.”

  “Stop that.”

  An echo of voices interrupted the argument. Ben touched at her arm. “Here comes Quai Branly. Help me with the tarp.”

  She held it taut while he stuffed the corners under a bungee cord strapped to the stern gunwale. The two lay there, scrunched so close together that when Clara rolled her head toward him, her breath tickled his ear. “Are you sure this will work?”

  “Gray boat, gray tarp. In this fog, we’re invisible. Trust me.”

  “What do you think I’ve been doing all day?”

  He felt the sting in her voice, despite the whisper’s softness. She had trusted him—over and over. Why did he find it so hard to return the favor?

  Some tragic secret had died on Duval’s tongue when Clara knocked him out. Ben had seen it in his eyes—heard it in his voice. The dirty cop knew something about her. Maybe it had been the plans he had for her after killing Ben. Maybe he’d been a breath away from revealing her as a plant. She might be the reason the police had found them in the park and the reason Duval had found him at the bridge. Hale had warned his entire class.

  The deadliest betrayals come from those closest to us, people. Watch your backs.

  In a few short hours, had Ben let this woman get too close?

  When he considered their relationship, she’d been close to him for months, even if he’d tried to push her away. How many times had she run into him in the stairwell? Were all their meetings chance? Were any of them?

  Trust me. Ben’s words. Maybe his error too.

  The boat shifted sideways, tempting him to peel back the tarp, but the current soon corrected the drift. The river must have split at the narrow island southwest of the Eiffel Tower. The voices faded. “We’re clear,” he said. “But keep the tarp in place.”

  Clara rolled onto her side. “What about river traffic?”

  “No traffic at this hour—not in winter. We’ll be safe all the way to Meudon. An hour and a half or so.”

  “In that case, I’m going to sleep. You should too.” With no small amount of bumping and bustling, she unfolded the life vest. “Here. Lift your head. We can share it as a pillow. This aluminum shell cannot be healthy for those bumps on your head.”

  He let her slide a portion of the vest into place behind him. “Thanks. I’ll stay awake, though. One of us has to.”

  “Suit yourself.” She closed her eyes, leaving him alone with no sound but the steady chirr of Otto’s nasally breathing.

  Ben stared at the tarp’s underside, a few inches above his head.

  Trust me.

  The thought came fuzzy this time. He had a hard time keeping it in focus. He had a hard time keeping any thought in focus. Important questions had occurred to him before the shift of the current passing the island had stolen his attention. He tried and failed to recapture them.

  Ben closed his eyes and saw Duval. He saw the revolver extended, the cop’s smirk, some vicious revelation forming on his lips. But a crashing rock had cut him short. Luck?

  Show a little faith. He heard her voice this time, not his.

  He saw Duval crumple—saw Clara behind him, frightened.

  No.

  Had she looked frightened? Or had his memory filled a gap with an assumed detail. The light from the streetlamps and the growing fog had obscured his vision. Had he seen her face clearly enough to register fear? He lost his hold on the image.

  His thoughts dissolved into black.

  20

  Ben woke to the sting of a finger flicking the end of his nose. He swatted the finger away, and the back of his hand grazed the underside of a tarp. Why was he lying beneath a tarp?

  “Hey, wake up.” Clara flicked his nose again. “We’ve stopped.”

  The tarp. The skiff. Ben’s head felt ready to split. He groaned.

  Clara moved to flick his nose again.

  He fended her off. “I’m awake.”

  “Really? You don’t sound awake, especially not for a man who declared only hours ago that he refused to sleep.”

  A shock of fright-induced cortisol snapped him to full wakefulness. He rolled onto his side. “Hours?” The drift south to Meudon should have taken no more than ninety minutes. “How many hours?”

  Clara showed him a watch, some Fitbit knockoff with a rectangular face and pink glowing numbers. “Too many, I think. It is a quarter to five.”

  “Why did you let me sleep?”

  “Let you? You’re the one in charge, remember? And I only woke up moments ago. Now get up and get us moving.”

  Clara’s indignation raised her voice too far above a whisper for Ben’s comfort. “Quiet,” he said, and pulled the tarp free from the bungee cord holding it in place. He rolled it back.

  The skiff had come to rest in a tangle of willow branches bending low to reach the water. The fog remained as thick as ever, but black willows meant they’d reached St. Germain, a mile-long island near the 150-degree bend where the Seine snaked from south to north after leaving Paris. Meudon, their goal, might be a hundred meters away, or it might be a thousand, depending on what part of the island had trapped the boat. With zero visibility, they’d have to feel their way along the shore to find out.

  Ben unclipped the plastic oar. “Sun’ll be up in three hours. We have to keep moving.” He poked at a willow bran
ch. “Sit up and help me get us loose.”

  They clawed their way along St. Germain’s shoreline a few meters at a time. Over and over, Ben pushed away, with Clara paddling on the other side, and the river pushed them back into the willows. The repetitive work got his mind churning again.

  Ben’s worries over Duval’s interrupted revelation returned, compounded by his long sleep. He’d never struggled with staying awake for all-night missions before. He grabbed a willow branch and muscled the skiff onward for another five-meter run. “Did you drug me?”

  “Did I what?”

  “You gave me pills. I fell asleep.” He pushed off the next branch, grunting with the effort. “I don’t fall asleep on the job. Ever.”

  “I gave you ibuprofen.”

  “So you say.”

  Clara stopped paddling. “You think I’m working against you? Do you think I wanted to smash a policeman’s head with a rock and spend the night half-frozen in a tiny boat with a man I hardly know? You are insane.”

  The boat hit the willows. Ben pushed it off again. “You never answered the question. Did you drug me? Better yet, did you give my position to the cops or Duval? Are you part of this?”

  “I can’t believe you. I saved your life, and this is my thanks.” She dipped her oar in the water and started paddling again. “Think what you want.”

  One moment the willows seemed an unending barrier. In the next, the skiff sailed into open water. Ben took over the paddling. Wooden docks appeared in the mist to his left. Meudon. They’d made it.

  Neither spoke a word as the two climbed out, even when Ben kept Clara from pitching sidelong into the water. The moment she had both feet on the dock, she jerked her elbow free. Ben frowned and retrieved Otto, setting him at her feet. The dachshund yawned and stretched, unfazed by the strangeness of his night.

  The first gray hint of morning dusted the eastern horizon over the old-world suburbia of Meudon. Ben hefted his backpack up to his shoulder. “I’ll be setting a quick pace. Try to keep up.”

  Three blocks southeast of the river, on a street lined with multifamily homes, Clara broke the silence. “This town. This is where your imaginary girlfriend lives?”