House of War

by Scott Mariani

  The police sirens were getting closer, too close. He hurried back to the Alpina, stumbling once. His driver’s seat was red with blood. He got in behind the wheel, managed to squeeze past the wrecked motorcycle and the Mercedes, out of the T-junction with Rue Notre-Dame des Champs and away. By the time the first cop cars turned up, he’d be long gone.

  Chapter 28

  Ben drove for five kilometres across the city before the pain forced him to find a place to stop and check his injuries. He pulled into a littered back alley and clambered out of his blood-smeared driver’s seat into the back of the car, where he kept a small first-aid kit and a few other essentials. After gingerly peeling off his jacket and the blood-soaked denim shirt under it, he examined the sources of the bleeding. One of the bullets that had shattered the café window to the left of where he’d been sitting had scored a crease about a quarter of an inch deep across the peak of his left bicep and the curve of his pectoral muscle. He also had pieces of glass embedded in his chest, side and shoulder from the shattered window, which were digging into his flesh every time he moved.

  In other words, he’d been incredibly lucky. If the bullet had struck an inch further to the right it would have carved through his heart and at least one lung. End of story, right there.

  The medical kit contained a scalpel, tweezers, antiseptic cream, butterfly sutures and a pack of special painkillers called sufentanil, heavy-duty stuff designed for alleviating battlefield injuries. He spent the next uncomfortable twenty minutes closing the lips of his chest wound and extracting as many of the shards of glass as he could find, some of which had gone quite deep and needed cutting around with the razor-sharp scalpel blade before he could get a purchase with the tweezers.

  By the time he’d finished he was feeling faint with pain and his left side looked like raw steak. He swabbed himself with antiseptic and patched and dressed the wounds as best he could before swallowing a couple of sufentanil. He sat back with his eyes closed and waited a few minutes longer for the drug to start kicking in, then decided it was time to move on. His old green army bag contained a fresh pair of jeans and a clean shirt left over from his India travels. He put both on, used his bloodied clothes as rags to clean up the mess on the car seat, then bundled them up and dumped them in a nearby bin.

  ‘You’ll survive,’ he muttered to himself. ‘You’ve had worse.’ Which was definitely true. Once healed, the scars would be a minor addition to the collection he’d already accrued over the years.

  He got back behind the wheel and drove off. But where to go? Nazim al-Kassar could be anywhere in Paris, if indeed he hadn’t left the city by now. He’d soon realise that his hit had failed. Then he’d simply disappear into the shadows for a while, planning his next attack. There was no way to anticipate where or when that might take place.

  Ben connected his phone into the in-car system and called Thierry to check on his progress with the audio recording. The reply was disappointing.

  ‘Not much joy so far, chief. I’ve cleaned up as much of the background noise as I could and boosted up the voice frequencies hoping you might be able to hear what these two guys are saying, but it’s like polishing a turd. Whatever you do, it’s still a turd.’

  ‘Keep trying,’ Ben said, and ended the call.

  Still nothing from Keegan. It was one bad break after another.

  Ben lit a Gauloise and pondered his options as he drove. He’d just run from the scene of a major crime incident where he’d impersonated an officer, which only complicated an already problematic situation. There was a decent chance that the cop he’d spoken to had taken down the Alpina’s registration. That would lead them straight to Le Val. Jeff would know how to handle things if the police turned up there. Which would buy Ben some time, but meanwhile he’d need to take the necessary precautions to avoid unwanted attention from the law.

  Afternoon was turning into evening by the time Ben pulled up in the junk-filled forecourt of Fred’s car-breaking plant down by the river. While the city’s industrial areas were shrinking in the face of ever-expanding gentrification, Fred and his domain of scrap metal and rust, walled in like a fortress behind mesh gates and guarded by France’s most vicious cur of a junkyard dog, were among the last of the holdouts. Selling dodgy cars for cash, no questions asked, was one of Fred’s specialities that Ben had made use of in the past. Another was illicit firearms. All Ben needed from him today, however, was a set of scrap number plates to switch for the Alpina’s.

  Fred was only too happy to oblige. For a fistful of the cash Ben had lifted from the dead terrorist, he fitted the car with plates from the rusted-out corpse of a Paris-registered Peugeot that was destined for the crusher next morning. For another hundred euros Ben could have driven away with the sawn-off twelve gauge Fred wanted to sell him too, but he could live without one of those.

  From Fred’s place, Ben headed across the river into the Latin Quarter, to a Franco-Lebanese food bar he knew in the fifth arrondissement. The evening was turning cold and rainy. He spent more dead man’s cash on a pile of falafel with tabbouleh and lemon-marinated chicken en brochette, and took them back to eat in the car. He hadn’t eaten all day, and needed the energy for what was promising to be a long night ahead.

  Because by then, Ben had decided on his next move. If he couldn’t spring a surprise visit on the hideout of Nazim al-Kassar, he could at least try to locate Nazim’s business partner, Julien Segal. He wasn’t going to achieve much by calling the Institute again in the morning. But there were other ways to gain information.

  The offices of ICS were situated off Rue de Rivoli, not far from Place de la Concorde on the Champs Élysées and a stone’s throw from the north wing of the Louvre Palace where Ben had been that morning. As he arrived in the vicinity, he saw the flashing lights illuminating the night sky above the rooftops, and soon discovered that the streets for blocks around were swarming with police and riot troops. A fresh round of disturbances was already getting underway as thousands of protesters in yellow vests braved the rain to kick up a storm against the police. From a distance it looked pretty serious. Ben could hear the roar of the angry crowds and the popping of tear gas grenades. Maybe this time, if the marchers could breach the security cordons and make it up past Place de la Concorde, they might even have a crack at the Presidential palace. Though without a doubt, the little guy himself was tucked far away from any danger.

  For Ben, the rioting was the perfect cover. He left the Alpina far enough away to be safe, turned up the collar of his jacket, pulled on a woollen beanie hat and a pair of thick leather gloves, and slipped up Rue de Rivoli on foot, keeping to the arcades. Emergency vehicles howled by but they had much more to worry about than a lone figure who just happened to be wanted in connection with that afternoon’s terror incident.

  Segal’s Paris headquarters was a handsome three-storey building, in keeping with its upmarket address. The front entrance was a solid affair and the windows on the street side were barred with iron. But skirting around the side, Ben saw that a walled garden extended from the rear of the Institute, and that only the ground-floor windows on that side were barred.

  Thanks to the bad weather and the drama unfolding just blocks away, the street outside ICS’s offices was unnaturally deserted. There was nothing Ben could do about the CCTV cameras. Paris was full of them these days, though public surveillance was still only a fraction of what UK citizens had to endure. He glanced left, glanced right, then quickly scaled the wall and dropped down the other side of it in the Institute’s gardens. He crossed a small lawned area, with a pathway and some ornamental shrubs in large ornate pots, and slipped into the dark shadow cast by a mature elm tree that stood close to the rear of the building. Peering up through the foliage Ben singled out a balconied first-floor window that was just a short leap from the tree’s branches.

  Moments later he was there, swinging over the ornate balcony rail and ducking down by the window. There was nothing but darkness inside the building. The window was
securely locked. There was little point in messing around with locks, since the moment he ventured inside he was sure to set off the alarm system anyway.

  He used the butt of his pistol to break the glass. As expected, the alarm instantly went off. He wasn’t concerned about it being heard from the outside, with a riot in full swing nearby. But a building like this, the security system was certainly hi-tech enough to be internet-connected straight to the police. Ben reckoned he had about ten minutes, maximum, before his presence drew a response.

  He crawled in through the broken window, took a small pencil torch from his pocket and shone it around, and saw that he was in a conference room with a large table surrounded by chairs. He made his way quickly into a corridor, along which were rows of offices. The alarm shrilled more loudly in his ears as he made his way deeper into the building. He glanced at his watch. Seconds counted. He came to a stairway. If Julien Segal was like any other CEO in the world, his personal office would be on the top floor. Ben raced up the stairs.

  One minute gone.

  He came out on a landing with another corridor leading off both ways. If in doubt, turn right. He followed the corridor to its end, checking the little nameplates on the doors as he went. The carpeting underfoot was expensively thick, and fine antiques and paintings adorned the spaces between doors. But none of the nameplates was Segal’s.

  The alarm kept screeching. Ninety seconds. Ben was calm. His focus was complete. He turned and walked quickly back the other way, and found Segal’s office right at the far left end of the corridor. The door was locked. He crunched it open with his boot, walked in and cast his light around. It was a plush corner office with satin-draped windows overlooking the gardens on one side and the street on the other. The room smelled of furniture polish and leather. Segal had a large and fancy antique desk and a big green leather swivel chair, resting on a Persian rug that had probably once graced some Middle Eastern palace. The walls were covered with prints of ancient artifacts, and display cabinets housed items from Segal’s own collection.

  But Ben wasn’t here to admire works of pottery and sculpture. Two minutes and counting. The alarm shrilled on.

  Ben strode over to the desk. Segal was one of those guys who kept their desktop assiduously tidy, nothing on it but a phone, a closed laptop and a silver-framed photograph of himself with an attractive middle-aged woman whom Ben presumed to be Madame Segal. The desk had nine drawers, of which three were locked. Ben didn’t have a crowbar, but there were other means of getting into locked drawers, if you weren’t worried about noise and damage. He drew the pistol back out from his belt, took the silencer tube from his pocket and screwed it to the threaded end of the muzzle, then pressed it to each lock in turn and blew it out, keeping his other hand over the ejector port to catch the spent cases which he put in his pocket.

  Three drawers, three muted gunshots, a lot of splintered wood, a fine piece of old furniture comprehensively vandalised. He was as bad as the wreckers of ISIL.

  He unscrewed the silencer, put the gun away and started rifling through the contents of Segal’s desk. He started with the middle drawer and worked his way outwards and downwards, scanning their contents with the thin beam of his torch. Three and a half minutes gone. The alarm jangling and screeching as loud as ever.

  Ben stayed calm as he worked his way through all nine drawers. The locked ones contained confidential business documents like financial statements, invoices and receipts, tax returns, import licences and employee contracts, Romy Juneau’s among them. The other six were stuffed with less sensitive material. Letters from museum curators, transcripts of talks Segal had given, cuttings from magazines and newspapers in which he’d been interviewed, and other assorted folders and envelopes in which Ben came across nothing concerning a mystery cargo of ancient Near Eastern artifacts from Tripoli. Nor could he find any trace of the other key piece of information he was looking for, namely Julien Segal’s home address.

  As he finished sifting through the ninth and last drawer’s contents, his heart was beginning to sink. Nothing. Coming here had been a waste of time. Of which he was running out. Six minutes gone. Time to get out of here.

  He slid the drawer shut. Then pulled it open and shut it again. Something was preventing it from closing properly, but he couldn’t see what. It was only when he lowered himself right down and shone the torch towards the back of the drawer that he noticed the thick manila envelope that had been hidden in a recess of the desk, like a false bottom. It must have got shunted out of place during his search of the drawers, or else he’d never have found it. He said, ‘Hello,’ and reached inside and pulled it out.

  Nearly seven minutes gone. But when Ben examined the documents inside the envelope he realised he’d got lucky. Bingo. He took the sheet he needed and folded it into his jacket pocket.

  Less than a minute later, he was back in the conference room downstairs. Heading for the window. Stepping out onto the balcony into the cold night air. The rain was still spitting down. The sky over Rue de Rivoli and the Champs Élysées was red and blue with flashing lights. He could hear the ongoing whoop of sirens in the middle distance; so far they weren’t coming for him. Closer by, the other side of the wall of ICS’s gardens, the street was still empty.

  Ben stepped up onto the balcony rail and made the leap back to the tree. The jump sent a sharp jolt of pain through him from his wounds, but the leather gloves mercifully saved his hands from getting torn up by the rough bark of the beech branches. He scrambled back down until he was six feet from the ground, let go and landed softly on bent knees and made for the wall. Seconds later he was back out in the street and heading back the way he’d come, towards the car.

  Just under nine minutes, in, out and gone. Mission complete.

  On Rue de Rivoli it looked as if the police had succeeded in pushing the crowds into retreat, dispersing them with water cannon and CS as a phalanx of emergency vehicles moved up to clear the battle zone. The riot had been short lived. Another night’s drama now coming to a close.

  While, by contrast, Ben’s evening was just getting started.

  Chapter 29

  Ben hurried back to the car. He was feeling the painkillers wearing off, and so popped two more before he headed for his next stop.

  The document in his pocket was a page of a recent bank statement, one of many pages that had been carefully stored inside the manila envelope Segal kept hidden in his desk. The envelope was addressed to the ICS offices but the statements were for a personal savings account showing a balance of over a million euros, which suggested to Ben that this was where he was keeping his ill-gotten gains from the business he was doing on the side with his jihadist cronies. The subterfuge also made Ben wonder if Segal wasn’t hiding assets from his wife. Men were known to do that when they were secretly planning on running out on their beloveds. Maybe when Segal hit the two or three million mark he’d be off to Monaco or Switzerland with his mistress.

  Segal’s financial and marital affairs were of little interest to Ben. But the man’s home address was very much so – and there it was, crisply laser-printed at the head of the bank statement sheet.

  It took Ben forty minutes to get there, by which time the rain had stopped and the clouds had peeled away to reveal a bright moon. Montfort L’Amaury was a picturesque little commune that nestled by the foot of the hills north of the Rambouillet Forest. The archaeologist’s home, a modestly proportioned chateau in a secluded location, stood within a wooded park surrounded by a high stone wall. Ben drove slowly by the gates and saw the big house all in darkness at the head of a long, sweeping driveway. The surface of a private lake glistened under the moonlight.

  He circled the property’s perimeter for several hundred metres until he came to a leafy track running up its side, and turned in. A little way up the track, he parked the car under the shadowy canopy of a stand of oak trees and waded through the bushes towards the wall. It was high, but its craggy stonework was easy to climb. Ben scrambled up and over,
and landed stealthily on the other side among the shrubbery of Segal’s country park. Invading the same man’s property for the second time in one night. This was getting to be a habit.

  He still wasn’t convinced that the woman he’d spoken to at ICS had been telling the truth about Segal being out of the country. He obviously travelled a lot, but having only just returned from Libya it was odd that he’d leave again so soon.

  Whether true or not, up closer the chateau looked as dark and empty as it had from the road, with not a single light in any of its windows. If Segal was genuinely away on business, he’d either taken Madame Segal along for the ride or she was having an early night. Ben reached the edge of the encircling lawn and crossed a gravelled courtyard, past an ornamental stone fountain that could have belonged to the Palace of Versailles, and crept silently up to the house. Its walls were thick with ivy and the neoclassical columns on its facade gleamed white in the moonlight. As he skirted the side of the building an automatic light came on, and he retreated into the shadows for a few moments, listening and watching. The light went dark again, and he moved on, in search of an easy and discreet way to get inside the house.

  When he found the little side door set into an ivy-framed recess in the thick stone wall, he realised that he wasn’t the first uninvited visitor to have turned up recently with the idea of breaking into the Segal home. The hasp and padlock securing the door had been ripped loose. The splinters and flakes of paint on the ground at its foot hadn’t been there long.

  Ben slipped the pistol out from under his jacket and slowly, cautiously, made his way inside the house. He stood immobile in the darkness for a long time, listening, barely breathing. There was total silence, and a feeling of emptiness that told him it was safe to use his torch. The side entrance led into a utility area, comprising a laundry room and a back kitchen, then a short passage took him into the large main hallway. The floor was polished marble and gilt-framed paintings hung on the walls. An eighteenth-century longcase clock sonorously chimed the hour as he passed by. Ten p.m. but the house felt like four in the morning. The illuminated digital panel of an expensive home security system glowed dimly near the front entrance. If nobody was at home, they’d gone out without arming the alarm. Just a little odd, in Ben’s experience.