“A Company girl? Good job, Ben Calix. Took you long enough.” She still had her Slovakian accent, though not quite as strong. “Yes, I was there, with you the whole time.”
“But on the roof, you took a bullet for me.”
“A scratch. And I put myself in the line of fire for all the agents on the rooftop, not just you. I did it for them. For the Director. I had my doubts about him for a time, but not anymore.”
Ben fought to recapture images from that night, but he could still only see flashes. When he used Jupiter as a shield, Giselle had tried to flank him, not noticing the armored agents coming over the walls. She’d been seconds from putting a round in Ben’s brain. “So, who shot Giselle?”
Clara poked at Ben’s pillow. “Read the report if you want to know. You have the clearance now.”
“What clearance? I don’t understand.”
“Don’t try. Rest. You still have a long way to go.”
He slept on and off, but every time he woke, he found her there. Was it duty or something else? Clara brought him food and explained his treatments far better than the doctors with all their medical jargon, even though English was their first language and her second. Kidan’s antidote had been the key, just as Tess had predicted. And Jupiter had stocked the building in Norfolk with gallons of it, likely anticipating the need to inoculate his people after releasing the bacteria.
“What about your background,” Ben asked the next day, propped up again and holding a cup of orange Jell-O. “Your dad. Your brother. Was any of it true?”
“All of it. I’m not your average recruit. I didn’t go to the schoolhouse. For this operation, the Company needed someone Jupiter’s spies couldn’t possibly identify. Hale recruited me in Bratislava. No one else knew.” Clara dipped a spoon into his cup, stealing a bite. “He trained me—the retired spy working off the books—while I continued my art studies. For a few months, I had . . .” Her gaze drifted to the window, as if searching for the right word.
“A kind father.”
She sniffed and laughed. “And the world’s meanest uncle all rolled into one. I’m a little mad at him. He kept me in the dark on many of the mission’s details, too many if you ask me. But I suppose that’s the nature of our work.”
He finished the Jell-O and let her take the cup to set it aside. “And your orders?”
“To keep you safe. Get you out of Paris. Notre Dame was Hale’s idea. He created the hole in the security, not the workers. I knew all that, but once we reached Meudon, I didn’t know what would happen next. I’d done my job. The rest was up to you.”
“What about Sensen?”
“Terrifying.” She smacked Ben’s chest. It hurt. “You dragged me to the home of an assassin I knew nothing about.” She hit him again.
“Hey!” He shielded the spot with a jumble of arms and tubes. “Go easy.”
“You never did. You left me in his graveyard, and then his home. And when he left, I thought for sure he’d gone to kill you. I felt responsible.”
“So you followed. You tried to save me.”
She pursed her lips. “Don’t start crying or anything. I’d have done the same for anyone else. But Sensen went to Zürich to protect you, not kill you. And by following him, I crossed a line. Hale pulled me out. My part was done.”
“Not entirely. You showed up at the endgame. You begged to be part of the rooftop assault, didn’t you?”
She laughed. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
Ben saw a hint of red in her cheeks. A revelation on its own. He pressed for more. “Come on. Give me details—the play-by-play from the moment you stepped onto the roof. It’s only fair, considering what I’ve suffered.”
She bent close to his ear and lowered her voice to a whisper. “I told you. Read the report.”
For someone who’d never gone through the schoolhouse and who’d worked only one field op, Clara had a knack for keeping secrets. Whenever he tried to steer her toward Jupiter and Leviathan, she deftly redirected the conversation. But he got the sense the Director had things under control, and Ben had come to realize he didn’t need all the answers.
The disease had ravaged his body. Muscle damage. Nerve damage. Ulcers in his stomach and lesions on his organs. The doctors didn’t clear him to leave for another two weeks, and even then, he had months of rehabilitation work ahead.
Clara came the morning of his release too. While she helped Ben pull a hospital gift shop sweatshirt over his head, an extra doctor showed up, adding to the four already there. The newcomer wore no lab coat and held a dachshund in her arms.
“Tess,” Ben said.
“Otto!” Clara abandoned her patient and scooped the dog from Tess’s arms. She rubbed her forehead against Otto’s, earning a low groan from the dog—something between satisfaction and annoyance.
Tess brushed brown hairs off the front of her dress with perfectly manicured fingers. “Sorry it took so long. The Swiss claimed they still needed him for evidence. When I pulled him from the cargo kennel, I found a Ziploc taped to the back filled with unit patches, photos, and one Swiss National Police Service Medal.”
Clara didn’t seem to hear her, speaking a kind of baby Slovakian to the dog. Ben watched her, mulling over the reaction. “So, I guess Otto was yours before Hale recruited you.”
She shook her head and set him on the floor. “Not at all. Otto arrived on my doorstep the day after I moved into your building—with a big red bow on his back and a state-of-the-art GPS tracker in his collar.”
“The collar.” Ben slapped his forehead. “That’s how the French police found us in the park. The Company pulled the GPS track from Otto’s collar and made an anonymous call to the cops.”
Clara made kissy faces at the dachshund. “Yes they did. Didn’t they, Otto?”
The head Company doctor watched all of this with no amusement on his features. He removed his glasses and walked out. “I think we’re done here.”
A car waited in the parking lot to take Ben to his new DC apartment. Clara said her goodbyes next to the sedan’s open door, including a surprise kiss on the cheek, but left without giving him her number.
Tess lingered, waiting for her to go.
“You have something you need to say?” he asked.
“I have something you need to hear.” She pressed a paper sack of pill bottles into his hands. “You’ll be taking these for months. But when they’re gone . . .”
“I know. The kick. If what you said is true, I’m an addict now.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t feel like an addict.”
“Some wounds you picked up out there won’t ever leave you.” She swallowed hard, twisting her features and fighting to smooth them out again. Tess had never been one to show emotion. “The kick was one of those wounds, Ben—maybe the worst of them. And I’m the one who gave it to you. I’m sorry.”
“Did you know? About the reason for the severance, I mean.”
“At our meeting in Brussels? No. But Hale briefed me before I came to you in Mount Vernon.”
“So the kick was the Director’s choice, not yours.”
She shrugged one shoulder, as if that was poor consolation.
The kick had saved Ben’s life, enabled him to complete the mission he hadn’t known he’d been assigned. He should be thanking her, not accepting an apology. “Tess, I think you’re—”
“Listen.” She wrapped her hands around his, holding the bag of meds together. “You use these exactly as prescribed. And when they’re gone, you take things day by day. When you feel the withdrawal coming—and you will—you call me. Wherever I am. Whatever I’m doing. I’ll be at your doorstep in hours.”
“To bring more drugs?”
She let out a short, sad laugh and released him, turning to go. “No, you idiot. To keep you alive.”
He watched her go, smile fading. How bad could it be?
Once she’d disappeared into the hospital garage, Ben lowered himself onto the sedan’s pleather seat and shut the door. “
Where to?” he said with a laugh. He motioned between the driver and himself with both hands. “You see what I did there? Swapped . . . roles . . .”
The driver rolled up the tinted barrier and cranked the engine.
Out on the highway, Ben noticed they were headed west, deeper into the DC metroplex. The apartment Clara had told him about was supposed to be east, across Chesapeake Bay. He tapped on the glass. “Hey, driver. Where are you taking me?”
The barrier rolled down. The Director glanced in the rearview mirror to meet Ben’s gaze. “Haven’t you learned anything?”
“Boss?”
“Let’s stop by the office. I’ve got things to show you. Do you mind?”
Ben shook his head.
“Good answer.”
He made Ben wait ten minutes or more before he spoke again. “I’m moving you up, Ben. We just had to get through that little hiccup.”
“So you could catch Jupiter?”
The Director raised an eyebrow.
Ben shrank into his seat. “I mean, if you want to tell me. If not, that’s good too.”
“Yes. To catch Jupiter. And I’m glad I can finally tell you. All this started after the attack in Tokyo. We needed a fall guy, one we thought could endure the worst. Hale put your name up for the job. After that, we put out the whispers that we had big plans for Ben Calix—that I had big plans for you. In doing so, we made you a prize Jupiter couldn’t resist—not with our history together.”
“He was a Company man.”
“Once. A long time ago. One of my best. But arrogant.” The Director shifted his eyes to the road, signaling for a lane change. “It’s almost painful for me to say, but I know him better than he knows himself. I hung you out like bait on a hook. He gulped you down, thinking he’d arranged the whole meal, and we reeled him in. It’s that simple.”
Bait on a hook. Ben noticed the Director never apologized. At least he’d told Ben his purpose. This time.
“So now what?”
“We check out your new corner office. As it turns out, I really do have big plans for you. A supervisory role. More responsibility. Bigger picture. Start thinking about who you want on your new team. Any names come to mind?”
Ben had a few—one in particular.
“If you say Clara, I’ll reach back there and smack you. You know what happened last time you started a relationship with a teammate.”
Ben nodded, bouncing his head for emphasis. “Right. But what about Clara. She’s—”
“Special?”
“You could say that. If she can’t be part of my new team, what will she do? Will we work together at all?”
The Director turned down a ramp toward an underground parking garage, and the tinted barrier started rolling up again. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”
Author Note
I am not a spy.
Early in my Air Force student pilot days, an intelligence officer sat us down in a secure room and told us we were all spies because combat pilots fill out intelligence reports after every mission, reporting anything observed during flights over enemy territory. At the time, I considered the term spy in that context a stretch, and I still do. But little did I know in that moment how far beyond the flight deck my career and God would take me. I’m not a spy, but I’ve worked with a few and learned a lot.
In this story, for some fun, I wanted to give you a look behind the curtain at the reasons Ben does what he does or knows what he knows. Some of what I wrote is pure fiction fun, like Ben’s cleaning system. Some is extrapolation through research and old friends. And some is founded upon experiences, training, and conversations in a long career. “Pick up the trash” is my favorite among the latter, based on hockey, just as I said, offered by a man very much like Hale.
My other favorite is the frozen lake scene. As a former combat survival instructor, I feel this one is something more people should know. Yes, most lakes have a temperature inversion that can make a difference. More importantly, having the presence of mind to pause and find your escape route will likely mean the difference between life and death. Once you’re out, get a fire going, because hypothermia is sure to follow—although, to critique Ben, lighting a fire in a shed full of fertilizer was a less than optimum solution.
A COVID-19 disclaimer: The traditional publishing timeline from manuscript to bookshelf is a long one. The Paris Betrayal was 85 percent complete before COVID-19 struck. Imagine having an almost-completed manuscript about the threat of a global pandemic when you’re suddenly struck with an actual global pandemic.
Ben Calix is based upon the biblical Job, who experienced great physical suffering through a disease covering his whole body, so I didn’t feel I could drop the bioweapon portion of the megabomb/bioweapon combo I had developed. But I did my utmost to make changes that would prevent the story from hitting anyone too close to home. In this process, DiAnn Mills, Lynette Eason, and Edie Melson all offered excellent advice, and I am grateful. DiAnn Mills, as a mentor and teacher, also deserves a great deal of thanks as an ear and voice during the project as a whole.
Finally, a word about Job.
In preparation for the writing of this story, Dr. Gary Huckabay created a detailed analysis of the book of Job and all its characters—no easy task. Then he advised me throughout the writing process. Upon the foundation of his analysis, I built the characters of the Director, Ben, Giselle, Tess, Sensen, Hale, Dylan, and Jupiter. On this, I also built the story’s implied theological conclusions regarding God’s sovereignty. I cannot adequately express my gratitude to Dr. Huckabay for his hard work and insight.
For more on Ben and Job, including a comparative Bible study and book club resource, visit my website at www.jamesrhannibal.com.
James R. Hannibal is no stranger to secrets and adventure. A former stealth pilot from Houston, Texas, he has been shot at, locked up with surface-to-air missiles, and chased down a winding German road by an armed terrorist. He is a two-time Silver Falchion Award winner for his Section 13 mysteries for kids and a Thriller Award nominee for his Nick Baron covert ops series for adults. James is a rare multisense synesthete, meaning all of his senses intersect. He sees and feels sounds, and smells and hears flashes of light. If he tells you the chocolate cake you offered smells blue and sticky, take it as a compliment.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Endorsements
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
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Author Note
About the Author
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The Paris Betrayal Page 29
