by Mike Bond
“Well, as COS he’s our contact under the intragovernmental information sharing agreements. And because you and Mack are the only ones who have known Mustafa and survived, he put Mack right on it. And Anne” – he nodded at her – “has been working with Mack since.”
The thought of Mack being there, alive, working with Anne, with anyone, saddened me. I took a breath, tried to forget it. Thought about Gisèle, tried to forget that too.
“Why’d Mack call me?”
“You’d seen more of Mustafa than he had. That’s what he said.”
“So why,” I said to Anne, “are you on it?”
“Why?” Thierry smiled at her. “Because she’s the best we have. That’s why.”
I looked at her lovely hard face. Beauty scarred by pain. Which made it even more beautiful.
“So,” Thierry added, “Anne wants to go to Fontainebleau, see if we can ID Mustafa.”
“ID him?” I laughed. “Fat chance.”
“We’ll send forensics to do Mack and Gisèle’s.” Thierry gave a weary cough. “Go to Fontainebleau with Anne. That’s where Mustafa was last.”
“I’d rather check out where Mack’s car was found.”
“We’ve got plenty of people doing that. Only you can recognize this guy.”
—
DGSE’S DRONE had lost Mustafa al-Boudienne’s stolen Passat in the middle of the Fontainebleau Forest. This could mean that Mustafa had either stopped there, or had gone on to any number of towns and cities beyond.
Anne took the A6 south, weaving the bike at high speed between the lines of slower cars. Once when I glanced across her shoulder the speedometer was jiggling so fast I couldn’t read it but thought it said 185. Hell, I told myself, don’t worry. That’s barely a hundred twenty miles an hour.
“Slow down!” I finally yelled through the motorcycle’s howl and wind wail.
“Non, non,” she yelled back. “Le bon Dieu nous protège.”
The good Lord protects us. Did she really think that?
It certainly wasn’t true, as we would soon learn.
Terror
PARIS’S SOUTHERN SUBURBS are so ugly you have to get almost to Fontainebleau before you’re past their graffitied, polluted, dangerous, dirty, and sometimes lawless streets.
From my earlier years in France I remembered this drive south fifty minutes without traffic jams to Fontainebleau’s forests and climbing rocks. Back then, once you left Paris you were quickly in orchards, vegetable farms, dairies, poultry farms and wheat fields. But that’s all gone now, to welfare apartment towers and auto yards and trucking depots and little subdivisions hopping over each other like aberrant toads.
It was near dark when she geared the bike down at the crossroads deep in Fontainebleau Forest where DGSE’s drone had lost Mustafa’s Passat.
My ears were ringing and my body vibrating too hard to speak lucidly. “Aren’t you afraid of getting caught for speeding?” I yelled, gesturing at the bike and batting my ear in the vain hope of hearing something.
“You crazy? I do what I want.”
She racked the Indian back on its stand while I stood there with my balls rattling. On benumbed feet I hobbled along the road to where it snaked down into a little valley of gray lichened granite outcrops under a thick canopy of tall broad-limbed oaks. It was easy to see why the drone had lost the car, if it was visual only.
Anne came up. “They lost him right here.” She showed me her phone with the drone video on it and the little red arrow showing where we were.
The clouds reflected the lights of Fontainebleau and shadowed the great trees. The air was redolent with new growth, green saplings, ferns and early flowers, the rain-watered dank soil.
“You can smell God,” she said.
“You’re Catholic?” I’d already assumed this since she was wearing a crucifix on a golden chain between her small lovely breasts, and she had the no-nonsense sexiness of so many Catholic women.
“I just love God.”
I shrugged. There’s no way I’d still be alive without the help of some power far more all-seeing than me. I just didn’t know what that power was. Or how to reach it.
“Me too,” I said.
She hitched up her skirt and headed for the woods. “Got to pee.”
She came back a minute later, tipped the bike forward, leaned across the seat and kissed my cheek. “You see, my brave warrior, we’ve made it safely so far.”
This was true, but offered no guarantee for the trip back.
“If you were Mustafa,” she said. “Why would you be here and where would you be going?”
“Why would he have taken this back road through the Forest,” I asked, still batting an ear, “if he was going beyond Fontainebleau? Like to Nemours or Sens or somewhere with lots of Arabs to hide among? If he was going farther, wouldn’t it have been faster and safer to bypass Fontainebleau and keep going?”
“That’s what I think.” She straddled the Indian. “Let’s go into Fontainebleau and walk the sidewalks, check out the restaurants and bars?”
I was dizzy with fatigue, so any action sounded good. It was a clear evening; people would be out strolling or sitting in cafés. If Mustafa was here we might just see him.
I was trying to remember what Mustafa looked like, but that was from eight years ago. No way he’d look the same.
—
SHE CURBED THE INDIAN near Fontainebleau’s public market, chained our helmets to it, and handed me a clear plastic earbud microphone like the ones we used in SF, similar to the US police CodeRED Watchman. The earpiece fits easily into the ear and the lapel mike is semi-invisible, with an easy button for transmission.
“We stroll down each side of Rue Grande,” she said. “You’re the one who has to ID him, and I’m nearby for interdiction and support. If you see him you tell me, and I’ll call in backup and we wait for the right moment to take him down.”
I nodded, but if I found Mustafa could I keep myself from killing him?
Did Mustafa know where Mack was? Gisèle too?
In hostage rescue it’s the first few hours that count. Once they’ve hidden you in a squat somewhere among the growing Islamic areas of France – or elsewhere in Europe – the chances of finding you are zilch.
Nine hours already gone. I was getting nowhere.
—
RUE GRANDE is a large bright avenue bisecting Fontainebleau for a mile between low stone and stucco buildings, bars, restaurants, clothing stores and bakeries mixed in with small apartment buildings and a few homes, lit by the welcoming ambience of warm windows glistening on sidewalks full of young animated people, on passing cars, scooters and bikes, and bewitching with the fragrances of food from the cafés and the open bakery doors.
Mustafa was a little under six feet, as I remembered, a skinny rough guy with a tapering muscular trunk and runner’s slim legs. The eyes dead like those of Germans in the old photos of them shooting Jewish children. A hard, rectangular face, wide thin lips cut halfway between sarcasm and scorn. Long thin nose. Frizzy black hair cut short, the sharp beard and mustache. A face in which torment was written. And much more torment wished on others.
If he had a different beard now, or none, could I recognize him? By the black unfeeling eyes? The stony cheekbones and cruel mouth? His voice? Was he even here, in Fontainebleau?
Why were we doing this instead of hunting for Mack in Paris? For Gisèle?
I wandered casually, hands in pockets, along the east side of Rue Grande, keeping time with Anne’s progress on the other side. Checked each passing guy, the male faces in the flitting cars, the men clustered at the bars and in the early chairs and tables set out on the chilly sidewalk.
Then I saw him. A tall guy standing quickly and turning from a table as if he’d spotted me. Black beard, black coat with a furry collar, long dirty jeans, black boots.
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I pressed my lapel button. “Got him.”
“Wait for me!”
I slipped between two tables and around three chatting women and came up behind him as he ducked out the back door. I let the door swing back, pushed through it and tailed him down a narrow cobblestone alley half-lit by city lights off the clouds.
“Mustafa!” I hissed.
He ducked his head, started running. I leaped on his back and pressure-pointed his throat till his knees buckled and he fell backward on me. As I flipped him over he swung a knife that I knocked aside, wrenched his arm back under his shoulder and shoved him hard down on his face.
I flex-cuffed his right wrist to his left ankle and called Anne. “I’m in the alley behind the Café Splendide.”
“You have him?”
I looked down into the terrified, hate-filled face. “No, but I’ve got another nasty one.”
She came up tucking her Glock into her shoulder holster, glanced at him and scoffed. “They won’t even arrest him.”
“He pulled a knife –”
“Legitimate defense. You attacked him.”
“Let’s call the local flics. See if they have a file on him.”
“They won’t be able to stick him with anything.”
“Vous allez payer,” the guy mumbled. “The mother of all lawsuits.”
“Your mother’s a pig.” I tucked his knife up under my sleeve and we walked away, leaving him cuffed ankle to wrist around a sewer pipe in the alley.
—
“THAT WAS STUPID,” Anne huffed as we stood on the corner waiting for the Walk light so she could cross to the other side. “I thought you were smarter than that.”
“He took off when he saw me.”
She snatched my arm. “Listen, you, this isn’t America! You can’t just grab people –”
I felt angry, betrayed. “He had a knife.”
“Most Arabs carry knives. Get over it.” The Walk light flickered green and she stalked across Rue Grande like a woman deserting a lover.
I was nauseous with weariness and mad at myself. My stomach burned and my muscles felt weak. All I wanted was to go to the apartment in Passage Landrieu and sleep. But how could I, with Mack and Gisèle missing? And Mustafa festering among his evil friends, planning more suffering and death?
But once we got into the rhythm of hunting Mustafa in every Fontainebleau café, brasserie, restaurant and bar, in every car and passerby, a new energy filled me. Determination born of total urgency – Mack tortured, Gisèle too. And a mass murderer loose in France, organizing his next massacre.
—
AT THE FAR END of Rue Grande she and I switched sides and worked our way back up the street.
By 22:20, the crowds and traffic had thinned. I felt a savage mix of frustration and sorrow, when every minute counted and I hadn’t done a thing except knock down the wrong guy.
How could I even recognize Mustafa after eight years?
Why were we down here chasing shadows when Mack and Gisèle were probably being held somewhere in Paris, 45 miles north?
When we got to the Indian she stepped away and spoke briefly on her phone, then came back. “That was Mamie,” she said.
“Mamie?”
“My mother-in-law. She lives with me, takes care of the kids. Just telling her I’ll be home soon.”
She climbed on the Indian and gunned it. Buckling her helmet, she tossed me a sideways glance and slapped the saddle behind her. “You’re going to be okay, baby. Just don’t hold your breath.”
—
WE ARRIVED BEFORE WE LEFT. That’s what happens when you exceed the speed of light.
I got off the Indian with aching balls, wind-savaged cheeks and shuddering thighs, trying to remember where I’d put my keys (in my pocket, it turns out) and what floor my apartment was on (the fourth, apparently). Anne tugged back a sleeve to check her watch. “See you here, five-thirty?”
I nodded dumbly. It was now after midnight and it seemed five-thirty was due in about thirty minutes.
In the apartment I set my phone for 05:00 and toppled on the bed. Couldn’t sleep. Tried not to think what was happening to Mack right now.
And probably Gisèle.
—
TERROR UP YOUR SPINE when you’re going to die right now. The hot rifle muzzle nine inches from your eye, you’re cuffed to a stake, you’ve just seen the three guys next to you shot in the head. And you’re next.
Singe of cordite on the muzzle, trace of smoke snaking away. Bullet waiting in the chamber, hard steel backed by high explosive in a brass cartridge with a center-fire rim which when hit by the firing pin will explode from the pressure driving this wedge of steel at 2,900 feet per second through the skull between your eyes, crushing and shredding your brain and everything you’ve ever been and loved. And though the pain will be nearly instantaneous it will last forever.
Sometimes they shoot you in the eye. The three Iraqis before me they’d shot in the forehead, their brains blowing out the backs of their heads all over the posts they were tied to, pale bloody flecks floating away like gnats on the dry desert wind.
So maybe they won’t shoot me in the eye. In the last instant of my life I don’t want that.
Trouble with Nukes
IT HAD RAINED in the night and the gray roofs of Paris glistened in the dawn. I stood at the window transfixed as usual by the beauty of this place. Ineluctable, because it made no sense – who cares about another smoggy overpopulated city? But there is something about Paris I can’t understand but that makes my heart happy every time I’m here – its beauty, the astounding proliferating architecture – the most exciting city on earth, fabulous food and wine and magnificent women – sometimes you pass ten to twenty stunning women in every block – they have no idea how beautiful they are with their long slender bodies and flimsy spring clothes – the statues, monuments and fountains everywhere. As if life were something to be celebrated and commemorated.
At least it had been, before the loss of Notre Dame. People seemed different now, sadder, less lighthearted. Dispirited.
Thinking of the latest plan to attack the Eiffel Tower, I detoured to it across the Champ de Mars to check its new security measures. Far above me the Tower gleamed in early morning light, a lance-head filigree of human genius against a bright blue sky. It seemed so huge, impossible that humans had built it.
—
“OUR JIHADIS coughed up a bit more,” Thierry said when I got to DGSE. “The Iranian side of the puzzle. There actually may be a bomb, headed to Paris. An Iranian official of some kind. Will have it in his suitcase. Which doesn’t go through security because he’s a diplomat.”
“Holy shit. They said this?”
“More or less.”
“Stay on them. Make them spit it all out.”
“Too late.”
“Shit. And the Iranians?”
“Same as before. They know nothing.”
I exhaled wearily, trying to think it all out. “Maybe they don’t.”
—
THE TROUBLE WITH NUKES is they make everything unsafe. Not only in today’s nuthouse scenario of many nations – some of them stark raving mad – able to kill everything on earth 28 times over. But just having nukes puts you at far higher risk from your nuclear neighbors.
Like handguns – the more handguns exist the more likely people will be killed by them. The more nuclear weapons, the more likely people will be killed by them. Millions of people.
The backpack nuke is a perfect example. The more of these small portable devices get out there, the more likely one will go off. Law of averages and all that. Which of course will be then followed by many more in a fearful cascade. The technology is not that complicated; there are terrorist bombmakers out there working frantically right now to produce them.
Their greatest advantage i
s they don’t have to be delivered by another weapons system such as a missile. They can be small and portable enough to be brought into a city in the back of a small truck. Or a large suitcase.
And they can take your city hostage. Hide and seek: Try to Find My Warhead Now!
Or destroy everyone any instant their owners want.
I could not imagine how to deal with this. None of my training prepared me for it. I was the guy who climbed the cliff to rescue a hostage or was usually first into a firefight – not because I wanted to but because I didn’t want my buddies to risk it. Not the kind of guy to outthink a terrorist or an Iranian nutcase with a nuke.
Though all us SF guys who stay in the game get plenty of info from old buddies and up and down the channels. And we all keep abreast of shit: it’s simple survival.
From what Thierry was saying, DGSE couldn’t figure it either. Nor, apparently, could any of the folks on our side. Nor, supposedly, could their opposites in Iranian intelligence. But who, either honestly or dishonestly, professed no knowledge of it.
The Iranians, with testing of their own missile-based nuclear weapons only a year or two away, had no desire to get caught in a scheme like this. This is where the links between Sunni terrorism and Iranian-backed Hezbollah were so difficult to discern. And what in its medieval complexity the Iranian government wished, versus what the hardheads in their Revolutionary Guards, Hezbollah and Quds intended to do.
When most Iranians are just like us and want to live and love their families and friends in peace and quiet. With enough work and freedom to make a decent life.
But in Iran it doesn’t matter what most people want.
Nor most other places either.
—
THE ANTI-TERRORIST SECTION of the French Police recently moved to the 17th Arrondissement, in one of those shiny glass monsters popping up along the Péréphérique. A stone’s throw from the equally new and even more monstrous home of the Justice Department that sticks into the Paris sky like a stack of huge shiny cereal boxes.
