“Where is Ava?”
“I don’t know. I swear.”
“Where?”
“Stop,” wailed his wife, Laura, struggling to get to her feet. “Don’t kill him. I called the police. They’ll find you. Don’t kill him!”
It was then that Mac saw the phone in her hand. He ran to the window. He didn’t see any police cars. He couldn’t hear a siren. There was one last thing he needed to know.
“When?” asked Mac. “When did he tell you all this ... When did your brother tell you to help TNT?”
Rosenfeld closed his eyes. He shook his head, mumbling.
“I asked you, ‘When?’” Suddenly it was very important that Mac knew. “When did TNT tell you that he was planning on kidnapping Ava from the restaurant?”
“A week ago,” said Rosenfeld.
Mac reeled at the news. The trip to Paris had been a last-minute decision. Ava had booked the table five days ago.
Chapter 22
Rue des Rosiers
Paris
Cyrille guided her Renault along the Rue des Rosiers, the window rolled down to better view the addresses. The Marais had changed dramatically in the past few years. When she was growing up, it had been a kind of ghetto, a place where Jews lived and few others visited. A dour, backward neighborhood populated by men in black coats and funny hats, a part of Paris stuck in the nineteenth century. Today it was as fashionable as the Left Bank. Department stores. Boutiques. Everything shiny and polished.Très chic. She was not sure that was a good thing.
At the corner of the Rue des Écouffes, she braked to a halt. She gazed at the four-story limestone building. Number 34. Her eyes moved to the top floor, where lights burned from a picture window. Either the occupant, Gerard Rosenfeld, was a very early riser, or he was receiving an unexpected visitor.
Cyrille turned left and parked two blocks farther along, in front of a synagogue. She killed the engine and threw her workbag onto the passenger seat. Matthieu was long gone. A quick stop in the Bois de Boulogne. A dark hollow. A deep pond. It would be a week before anyone found him.
A look over her shoulder to check for unwanted attention. The street was deserted. She unzipped the bag and removed an automatic pistol.She attached a folding stock and a noise suppressor, then inserted the magazine—an abbreviated five-round clip—and chambered a round. She drove her thumb hard on the safety. She exited the car in a rapid, rehearsed motion, deftly sliding the pistol beneath her overcoat. She slipped on a beret for good measure. With the beret, you didn’t know: man or woman.
She approached the corner with caution, like a tourist arriving at a hallowed site. The lights still shone from the top floor. No need for a confrontation. Sooner or later, the visitor would depart. Cyrille crossed the street and found shelter in the doorway of a coiffeur—the Salon Vogue—and retreated until she was concealed by shadow. From her vantage point, she had an unobstructed line of sight to the building’s lobby and vestibule—both unlit—like her, bathed in darkness.
All she could do now was wait.
Cyrille hated waiting. Her thoughts went to dark places, invariably landing on the night that had changed everything. The Sahara. Outside of Timbuktu. Yes, darling, there was such a place, and it was as bleak and desolate as anyone could imagine.
Slow duty at Camp Barkhane. A peacekeeping force sent to protect the city’s residents from the Islamic State of the Sahel, the local chapter of Terror Inc. The Islamic State was on vacation, or so Cyrille and her fellow soldiers had joked, as they passed around bottle after bottle of the local Malian tipple. One hundred forty proof and guaranteed to turn the mildest man into a howling wolf. And Cyrille’s mates were not mild, not one of them. A few bottles and they turned their eyes on Cyrille. Pretty, brunette Cyrille, one of three women in the company, and the only one on duty that terrible night. First they joked, then they pawed, then they threatened. Every minute, she grew less human in their eyes. At 7:00 p.m., she’d been Sergeant Montcalm, the rock of the company. By 10:00, she was a “queer” who needed to be taught a lesson. By 11:00, she was an animal put there to fulfill their needs.
It was the lieutenant who egged them on. He was the one who pinned her arms behind her back and ordered the others to strip off her clothes. He wanted proof she was really a woman. She remembered the loud voices, the sweaty faces, the rough hands. The screen went blackthe moment one of them stuck his hand down her pants. It had come back into focus much later. By then, the lieutenant was dead and two of the men lay writhing on the barracks floor with broken limbs.
Cyrille hated waiting.
To calm herself, she drew a breath and repeated a mantra her sergeant had taught her on her first drop into Mali.Res firma. Res-feerma.Latin, roughly translated: “Stay hard.” Sound advice.
A light appeared in the building’s lobby. The door to the elevator opened. Mac Dekker stepped out and crossed to the vestibule. Cyrille slid the pistol from her coat and rested the stock against her shoulder. She inclined her head, sighting on Dekker’s chest, then thumbed the safety off and laid her finger against the trigger.Doucement. Softly.
Dekker walked to the vestibule door but did not leave the building. He stood where he was, studying his phone ... or more likely, Matthieu’s phone. Cyrille could take the shot now, but she didn’t want to break the glass and call attention to herself. Let Dekker come outside. No one would hear the muffled shot. Dekker would fall to the ground. Cyrille would dash across the street, deliver the coup de grâce, and be gone seconds later.
Up the street, a car turned the corner, tires screeching, and accelerated madly. A Simca, its old four-cylinder engine growling, music blasting from open windows. Cyrille ducked back into the shadows as the car passed.
Seconds later, she retook her position. To her chagrin, the vestibule was empty. Cyrille panicked. How? Where? Then she spotted Dekker, several doors down, cloaked in shadow beneath the awning of a café. Now, when Cyrille needed traffic—just one car, please Lord—there was none. The street was empty, the neighborhood so still she could hear a footfall. She studied Dekker. Take every precaution, her handler had advised.
And then?
There was no way Cyrille could approach Dekker without being seen. But what choice did she have? Her target stood one hundred feet away. She couldn’t risk a shot at this distance. She was no sharpshooter. Shoot and miss, and she’d lose the element of surprise. If Dekker went to ground, there was no telling when Cyrille would get a second chance.
