Kill.
Chapter 19
Seventh arrondissement
Paris
Mac had his answer. Gerard Rosenfeld lived at 34 Rue des Rosiers, in the heart of the Marais.
Huddled in the doorway of an all-night pharmacy, a kilometer from the Eiffel Tower, Mac had needed seventy-four seconds to find the address. The internet was awash with sites offering to dole out biographical information for a price. It was simply a matter of entering a name, address, or phone number and paying a nominal fee. Mac had a name and a phone number. The fee was €4.95. He paid with a credit card. Anyone tracking his purchases would note the charge and the company name, but get no further. It was a digital site without a brick-and-mortar location. No mention of the information he was seeking would appear on a tertiary search.
Riskier was the five-kilometer walk across the center of Paris. It was 2:00 a.m. It was raining. A lone man walking the streets invited attention.
Mac shivered, a spasm of cold running the length of his spine. He turned up the collar of his jacket as he studied the route to Rosenfeld’s home. He was concerned about stretches where he’d have to cross the Esplanade des Invalides and, later, traverse the intersection near the Pont Royal. Either would leave him exposed for at least two hundred meters—two football fields—give or take. A passing police car wouldtake note of the lone pedestrian and would give him a look. He didn’t relish the idea of trying to outrun them on foot.
A taxi was, similarly, out of the question. He hadn’t killed two ordinary civilians. He’d murdered two diplomats ... Saudi diplomats ... in a country that placed a premium on good relations with the kingdom. He had no doubt that pressure was being exerted from the highest levels of the Élysée Palace to find the fugitive cold-blooded killer, Robert “Robbie” Steinhardt. He must assume his description had been circulated to every taxi company and every transport hub across the city, if not the entire country.
So now what?
A car approached from his left. Yellow halogen headlights of a police cruiser. A slow, deliberate speed. Mac turned away and buried his head in the dishwasher’s phone. The car passed by. He raised his eyes. A Volkswagen with Belgian plates. False alarm.
He looked back at the phone and saw it. A black icon with white lettering.
Uber.
It was the first time he’d thought of the company since taking refuge in Zinal over nine years earlier. Ride-sharing was not an option in a remote mountain hamlet of four hundred souls. It was, however, his best option in a metropolis of two million.
He opened the app. When prompted for a destination, he did not enter Rosenfeld’s address, but an address a block away. Last, he confirmed his current location. Three minutes later, a late-model Audi sedan pulled to the curb. He slid into the rear seat. The driver pulled away without a word or a look in his direction. A dashboard-mounted phone displayed the route toward Rosenfeld’s apartment. For the moment, he was safe.
Mac put away Matthieu’s phone and opened the burner he’d used to take pictures of the man and woman who’d abducted Ava from the restaurant. The photos were grainier than he’d hoped, nothing like the color high-def images he’d viewed in the restaurant. Still, there was a chance he’d get a match. Who the hell were these people?
He typed in the web address for Clearview AI, a commercially available facial-recognition software. All he had to do was upload the photos. The firm’s software would compare the person in each to over fifty billion images it had scraped from public data-collection sites: social media, news outlets, law enforcement mug shots. Again and again, he tried to upload the photos, but the 5G connection was spotty. He gave up. It didn’t matter. He was going to the source. He’d beat the information out of Gerard Rosenfeld if he had to.
He arrived a few minutes later. He waited for the Audi to pull away, then reversed his direction. He passed a deli, a boutique, a religious bookstore. Mezuzahs decorated many of the doorways. This was LePletzl, meaning “little place,” the center of Jewish life in Paris. It was here, forty-odd years ago, that terrorists had attacked a delicatessen, Jo Goldenberg, in plain daylight, lobbing grenades into the restaurant and spraying the diners with machine gun fire. Six people were killed and many more wounded. Mac knew this because Ava had been involved in tracking down one of the suspects, a soldier working for the infamous Abu Nidal. Ava found him at a seaside rest home in Alexandria, Egypt. He was an old man by that time. Justice, however, did not dim with age. A drone carrying a half-kilo brick of plastic explosive did the rest.
Mac arrived at the doorway to number 34. The vestibule was unlocked. A directory inside listed the residents, a doorbell next to each name.G. Rosenfeld. 3B.Mac was in the right place. He checked his surroundings and spotted a camera high in one corner. There was a mirror on the wall. He looked a little waterlogged, but respectable, more or less.
Back to the directory.
A Mr. S. Katz lived in 1A. Mac pressed the bell. Thirty seconds passed. No response. 1B, Mrs. L. Kinsky. Again, no answer. 2B, Mr. A. Cohen. Mac rang the bell twice for good measure.
A gruff voice burst from the speaker. “Who is it?”
“It’s me. Gerard Rosenfeld,” said Mac. “I’m sorry. I forgot my key at the restaurant.”
“Jerk,” said Mr. A. Cohen.
So, thought Mac, they know each other.
The buzzer sounded. Mac opened the glass door to the lobby. He took the stairs to the third floor. There were two apartments, one to each side of the landing. No names or apartment numbers were posted to indicate which belonged to Rosenfeld.When in doubt, go to the right.
Mac banged on the door. “Police,” he said, with authority. He held his open passport at eye level. It was two-thirty. He was betting that, woken from sleep and taken by surprise, Rosenfeld would be too groggy to focus.
The door opened a notch. Hooded, dark eyes peered out. A halo of silver hair. It was him.
“Hello again,” said Mac.
Rosenfeld slammed the door on Mac’s shoe. Mac was bigger, stronger, and ready to knock heads. He shoved the door open. Rosenfeld crashed onto the floor. Mac entered and closed the door behind them. “Remember me?”
