LeClerc was already walking toward the bay.
Tariq stared at the man, despising him. He started the engine, gunning it, taking the RPMs to the redline. The roar of the engine was earsplitting, louder still inside the hangar. At the sudden deafening noise, LeClerc jumped out of his shoes. His glasses fell to the ground. He dropped his clipboard and clapped his hands to his ears.
It was then that Tariq knew that the weekend was fated for success and that the Prophet was smiling upon him.
As LeClerc bent to pick up his clipboard, a loader approached from the opposite direction. It was a low, wide vehicle traveling ten miles per hour, less even. Either LeClerc did not see it or the driver of the loader did not see LeClerc. The inspector stumbled as he tried to gather up the clipboard. He took a step into the oncoming vehicle’s path. The loader swerved to miss him. Too late. The vehicle struck him dead on. LeClerc hit the ground and slid a short distance on the slick concrete. He lay still, either unconscious or dead.
TNT looked on, but only for a moment.
He eased the Bugatti into first gear and drove slowly—very slowly, indeed—out of the hangar.
Chapter 7
Hotel Bristol
Paris
Mac inched his way along one of the narrow ledges that lined each floor and ran horizontally across the facade of the hotel. Wrought iron balconies fronted each room. He shimmied from balcony to balcony until he reached a stout drainpipe. He gave it a tug. It held firm. He transferred his weight onto the pipe and carefully slid down, hand over hand. A young woman spotted him as he made it the last few feet and dropped onto the pavement. She eyed him warily and kept walking.
Mac looked to his right. A fan-shaped glass portico extended over the sidewalk at the hotel entrance. No sign of the doorman. Pedestrians continued to pass, none offering any indication that they’d witnessed his suspicious behavior. Dusk had camouflaged his escape.
Mac turned and walked in the opposite direction. A police car sped past, lights flashing, tires screaming as it halted. Mac refused to look behind him. He turned the corner and decided he needed a taxi. He spotted a green roof light and stepped into the street. The cabbie slowed, rolling down his window.
“Where to?”
“Gare du Nord,” said Mac.
The cabbie shook his head, muttering something about going in the opposite direction. He drove off. Mac raised his hand, waiting foranother. A second police car approached. Mac retreated to the sidewalk, lowering his head. He continued another block, then turned north, heading up the Rue Cambacérès.
It was nearly dark. Scratch the taxi. Mac ducked into the alcove of a modest apartment building. In quick succession, he powered off his phone and removed the SIM card. It was a homing beacon that recorded his every movement even when the phone was off. He placed the card between his rear molars, crushed it, and spat it out. No, not as good as the langoustines. He was, however, certain no one could track him any further.
Across the street was a branch of Crédit Agricole. He stopped at the ATM and withdrew his daily maximum of €3,000. He had an additional €600 in his wallet. Charge cards were heretofore verboten.
Two blocks further on was a C&A clothing store. He walked in wearing his new gray suit and walked out wearing baggy jeans, Vans, a Paris St.-Germain football jersey, and a baseball cap. Goodbye, Cary Grant. Hello, Kendrick Lamar. All he was missing was a braided gold chain.
He continued heading north and east. He avoided the main thoroughfares, keeping to side streets. He stopped at a corner kiosk and purchased three cheap cell phones—burners—that he could use once or twice, then throw away.
Ahead was a sign for the Métro. He descended a few stairs into the station before he spotted a camera. He pulled up abruptly. How could he be so careless? The Paris Métro, he knew from experience, was bristling with cameras. Cameras at entries. Cameras at turnstiles. Cameras on the platforms. In short, cameras covering every square inch of every station.
Any minute—perhaps even at this very moment—the police would be provided a copy of his passport photograph. It was simply a matter of feeding the image into their database and ordering their facial-recognition software to scrape every camera in the mass transitsystem—or any other linked network—to come up with a match. They’d find him in ten seconds. Fifteen max.
No, thought Mac, turning right around and running up the stairs, the Métro was out of the question.
Rain began to fall. He dug his hands into his pockets. He spotted a familiar restaurant; a café that he recalled made a decent espresso. He knew this part of town. He’d holed up at a few safe houses nearby—run-down studios or one-bedroom apartments—during an extended job in the city fifteen years ago. Operation Skylark. Mac shuddered at the name.
A French intelligence officer—a captain in the domestic security service—had been found to be passing top secret information to a Middle Eastern prince who maintained a residence in the city. The CIA informed the DGSE—its French counterpart—about the matter. Evidence was proffered. The French, however, refused to act.
Mac didn’t know more than that. It wasn’t his job to ask. It was his job to follow orders, to carry out instructions to the best of his ability. In this case, those orders required Mac to eliminate the French officer, Captain Guy de Villiers, and to do so in a manner that taught the Saudis and the French a lesson.
In other words, make it ugly. Make it visible. Make it embarrassing.
Mac slowed, recalling the operation. Bad memories. They’d chosen the wrong man for assassination. It was the Saudi who’d been stealing secrets from the Frenchman and passing them on. All this Mac had learned while surveilling them. But no one was going to green-light killing a Saudi—not a member of the ruling family. Mac protested and was overruled. And so, he did his job. He followed his instructions.
It had been a while since he’d dwelled on Skylark or his role in it. Until then, he’d considered himself an instrument of national policy. One of the few chosen to defend his country against all enemies. The sharp end of the stick. It sounded homespun, corny even, but it wasn’t naive. Not by a long shot. Mac had enough experience in the darkcorners of the world, the murky passageways where the truest intentions of states were laid bare, to know that the world needed him.
Skylark had changed that.
Skylark forced Mac to look in the mirror. It removed the mantle of respectability that cloaked his actions. It disallowed the immunity his country, and his unvarnished belief in it, had granted him and his conscience. After all was said and done, he was a killer. A taker of lives. An executioner. No flag’s colors could change that.
