“Yes, my prince,” she said, with respect, staring him in the eye.
Tariq unbuckled his belt and lowered his pants to his ankles. He looked upon her. She had not groomed, as he’d requested. The sight enflamed him. With care, he entered her. She pulled his face to hers and kissed him.
When they had finished, he lay by her side, panting. He turned his head and looked in her eyes. She smiled at him wickedly, and he felt himself stir again.
“You are a bad, bad man,” she said.
Tariq smiled, content with himself. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“May I ask you something?”
“Of course, my darling. Anything.”
“Who is she?”
Tariq put a finger to her lips. “The enemy, my sweet. The enemy.”
Chapter 14
St.-Germain-des-Prés
Paris
A church bell tolled midnight as Mac arrived at 55 Rue du Bac.
The bolt-hole was a one-bedroom flat on a broad, leafy street in St.-Germain-des-Prés, in the heart of the Left Bank. Entry was governed by an alphanumeric keypad. The flat was dark and spare, very neat, the air stinging with ammonia-based cleaner, more a holding cell than any kind of comfortable abode. There was a bed and chairs and utilitarian tables. Lots of stainless steel and square edges. No decoration whatsoever. No plants. No pictures. Men and women didn’t live here; not men and women with real lives and real families and real friends. Operatives did. Operatives did not have any of those. Operatives were on government time and government dollars.
One foot inside the door and Mac felt part of himself slip away. The human part. The part that loved camping and climbing and playing hide-and-seek with his granddaughter. The part that liked listening to Clapton on a rainy Sunday and grilling steaks on a sunny afternoon. The part that liked lying beside Ava in the middle of the night, feeling the warmth of her close to him and listening to her breathe.
He closed and locked the door behind him, and that was that. Mac Dekker was back in the game.
Once a spy, always a spy.
Maybe he wasn’t so different from Ava after all.
A quick check of the accommodations.
First, the kitchen. The refrigerator was stocked with energy drinks and protein bars and packaged meats: roast beef, ham, salami.
Next, the bathroom: toothbrushes wrapped in plastic, combs, Q-tips. The medicine cabinet was filled to bursting. One look brought a grim smile to Mac’s face. Percocet, oxycodone, Dexedrine—the latter better known as “go pills.” It was a pharmacy with all the good stuff. Ambien, and if that wasn’t enough, propofol, surgical-grade anesthetic. Z-Paks, eyewash, laxatives (opioids clogged you up harder than a cement truck). Gauze, a needle, surgical thread, and, last but not least, a box of Band-Aids ... the small size. Who said the Agency didn’t have a sense of humor?
Mac closed the cabinet and took a few steps into the bedroom. He dropped onto the bed, bouncing a little as he ran a hand over the coarse woolen blanket. The top sheet was stiff as cardboard. The pillow was small and hard. Oliver Twist, he thought, would feel right at home.
Mac was bone tired, but sleep was not an option. He stood and stripped off his clothes, then stepped into the shower. He gave himself a minute of lukewarm and three minutes of cold thereafter. Cold, colder, coldest.
He dried himself vigorously, then wrapped the towel around his waist and returned to the medicine cabinet. He shook two go pills into his palm and dry swallowed them. He put two more onto the sink and added a half dozen oxycodones alongside them. Battle supplies. He didn’t know if or when he’d be back, and he didn’t want pain or fear or fatigue to hamper his efforts. To be honest, he didn’t mind the buzz he got from mixing the two. Sometimes feeling like Superman wasn’t a bad thing.
Mac went into the kitchen and sat down at the table. He’d told Jane he had a plan, and the first part of that plan involved finding out exactly what had happened inside the restaurant this afternoon. He put a phone on the table and searched for webcams of the Eiffel Tower. Thelist was endless. Several sites featured cameras mounted on the edifice itself, all offering varied views of the Parisian cityscape: the brightly lit Sacré-Cœur, Les Invalides. Most showed the Eiffel Tower itself, but from a great distance.
Finally, he found a view that proved helpful. The webcam was situated across the river from the monument near the Place du Trocadéro and offered a live view of the lower half of the monument, as if someone had zoomed in and left it there.
Mac took a screenshot and, using the edit tools of his photo app, zoomed in until he had a clear, if pixilated, view of the esplanade beneath the tower. He could see that barriers had been erected around its perimeter. At this hour, the monument was officially closed to visitors. Even so, he made out a group of police officers—he couldn’t count how many.
The restaurant, he recalled, had limited hours. Lunch was served from noon to 1:30 p.m. and dinner from seven to nine. It didn’t seem like a long time for an establishment to be open, until one considered that diners needed two to three hours to consume a meal, longer if celebrating an occasion. The kitchen, he guessed, would need at least an hour after the last guest departed to clean up. Establishments like the Jules Verne did not leave dirty plates in the sink until morning.
It was twelve thirty.
Still time.
