Room 421 was at the end of the hall. He touched the key card to the lock and opened the door. He entered the suite boldly, marching into the salon, seeing at once that it was empty.
“Ava,” he called, if only to make himself feel better, to permit himself one last moment of normalcy.
No one answered.
He continued into the bedroom. The maid had cleaned the room. Clothing was folded neatly on the dresser. Fresh bottles of mineral water sat on the nightstands. The air tingled with an invigorating lemon fragrance. He studied the maroon carpet. No footprints disturbed the perfect vacuum tracks.
He had, in fact, beaten madame back to the hotel.
Mac crossed to the bathroom, a palace of white marble, mirrors, gold fixtures, and a bathtub large enough for two. The night before, he and Ava had enjoyed a hot, luxuriating soak after a bout of vigorous lovemaking. Ava had been particularly forthright, he recalled, offering wordless but unmistakable direction. At one point, she’d straddled him, one hand on the wall for support, allowing herself to be unusually vocal.
“I hope I didn’t wake anyone in the next room,” she’d said afterward.
“The next room?” said Mac. “What about the next block?”
“Well, don’t blame me,” said Ava, eyes locked on his, then she had laughed and laid her head on his chest.
Mac returned to the bedroom. He went to the window and gazed down on the boulevard. A normal autumn afternoon in Paris. Light rain. Leaves falling from beech trees lining the sidewalk. Men and women hurrying home after a trying day at work. Yet there was nothing normal about it. Not for him.
At this moment, he was sure of only one thing. He’d entered the restaurant one person. He’d left another. His life as an unburdened civilian had proven miserably brief. He was no longer Robbie Steinhardt, Swiss citizen, if of dubious origin—a tourist enjoying a romantic getaway in the City of Light with the woman he loved and hoped to make his wife. He was Mac Dekker. The old Mac Dekker.
He dropped into a chair. Where, he asked himself, had Ava gone?
Off the bat, there were two possibilities. First, her disappearance was an act of retribution. A reckoning. A measure to punish Ava for something she’d done in the past—some perceived injustice that demanded a balancing of the scales. Put simply: payback.
Mac had only a vague knowledge of her professional history. More than he, she was bound by her occupation’s code of silence. The majority of her work was graded top secret or higher. He knew, for example, that she’d lived and worked as a covert operative in Jordan for five years, teaching French at a secondary school. But never once had she shared details about her time in Amman. He didn’t ask. She didn’ttell. The fact that she’d made it back to Tel Aviv alive and in one piece led him to believe she was good at her job.
He also knew that she’d lived in Paris for several years, working as a cultural secretary out of the Israeli embassy. He did not believe her primary responsibility was arranging exhibits of traditional Israeli folk dancing or shepherding the odd musician on their tour of France. She was a trained spy. By definition, she cultivated sources, ran networks, and gathered information. And that’s where it ended. Unlike Mac, she was never the sharp end of the spear. She was not a killer.
It was entirely reasonable, then, to suspect that someone from somewhere deep in her past, someone unable to live another day with their wronged soul had traveled to Paris seeking vengeance. Reasonable, but unlikely. Why here? Why now?
No, Mac decided, Ava’s disappearance had nothing to do with her past.
The second possibility was more realistic. Ava’s disappearance had to do with the present. She was involved in something. She was operational.
Mac ran over their long lunch in the restaurant Jules Verne. Surely she’d given some indication—dropped a hint, let slip a word or two—that something was amiss. But no, not for a moment had she appeared worried, preoccupied, or distracted. On the contrary. She’d been as blithe and free spirited as he could remember. As Ava had herself toasted, “L’Chaim.” To life.
Otherwise, had Mac noticed anything out of place? It was a professional habit—adéformation professionnelle, the French called it—to take careful note of those around him. Upon their arrival at the restaurant, the dining room had been nearly full. He’d counted sixteen tables in all. In his mind’s eye, he reviewed them all, moving from the left side of the dining room to the right. Tables of two and four persons. Mostly couples. Two families. Several businessmen. He’d caught snatches of a half dozen languages. French, of course. English, Dutch, Arabic, Chinese, and German. Primarily tourists, if he had to guess.
At the table to their right sat a husband and wife from the Gulf, both very much taken with one another—young, attractive, affluent. His and hers Rolex Daytonas, a diamond solitaire big enough to cut glass, and a crocodile Birkin bag that had caught Ava’s eye. “Psst,” she’d whispered. “That silly bag costs a hundred thousand euros. Can you imagine?”
To their left sat a pair of German businessmen who insisted on drinking beer throughout their meal and talking about their favorite football teams.
No, Mac concluded with certainty. He hadn’t noticed anything indicating that he or Ava was in danger. No overt staring. No undue interest. No abruptly averted glances. It was a uniformly well-dressed, cosmopolitan clientele, all of them seemingly thrilled to pay €300 apiece for a fixed-course meal.
At least Mac could take consolation from one thing: His powers of observation were as sharp as ever. Maybe the Prevagen Ava mercilessly pushed on him actually worked.
One thing was certain. If Ava had been abducted—there, he had finally said the word—there was a reason. Events didn’t happen in a vacuum. Newton’s third law. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Ava was involved in something, and it had not gone as planned.
If this was the case—and suddenly Mac believed it to the core—he had to admit something else.
Ava had lied to him. She had purposely kept her activities secret from him.
Once a spy, always a spy.
Somewhere, he knew, there was a clue.
Chapter 5
