Cyrille raised the weapon to her shoulder. She shut her right eye. Her vision wasn’t as good as it once was. Dekker appeared blurry and unsteady. She detached the stock, folded it, and stuffed it into her coat. She would take Dekker close up. It was what she did best.
Cyrille poked her head from the doorway and watched as Dekker stepped from the protection of the awning and onto the curb and looked in both directions. He was expecting someone.
It was now or never.
Cyrille left the doorway and walked up the street, head down, pistol concealed in her pocket. She sensed Dekker looking her way, but she didn’t dare meet his gaze. She could see him out of the corner of her eye. A few steps and she would make her charge across the street, firing as she ran. There was no chance he could escape. Imagining the act, Cyrille enjoyed a burst of confidence.
And then the confidence evaporated.
Two blocks to the north, a police car rounded the corner, blue lights flashing, driving at speed. Another police car followed it, and another.
Cyrille ducked into a recessed doorway, throwing herself against a wall, shoulders as flat as she could pin them. The cars sped by, passing Dekker first, then her, and braking to a halt in front of Rosenfeld’s building. Officers piled out of the cars. There was a great deal of commotion. Slamming doors, opening trunks, grabbing heavy firearms, shouting orders, throwing on helmets.
She looked for Dekker. There was no sign of him beneath the awning. No movement at all. Of course he’d vanished. He’d made a run for it like any sane man.
But no. Cyrille caught a glimmer of light. On, then off. Dekker’s phone. Like her, he’d ducked into the shadows. What was he waiting for? A ride—what else? Had to be.
She freed the pistol from her jacket. Her plan could still work. The police were fifty feet away, across the street and to her right. Only a few remained near their vehicles; the rest were storming Rosenfeld’s building. Dekker was hiding a hundred feet from them, maybe fifty feet from her position.
Cyrille took a knee and aimed at Dekker, elbow resting on her thigh, both hands supporting the weapon. It was a clean shot, the target immobile.
Then Dekker was moving, leaving the safety of the recessed doorway, stepping onto the sidewalk, hand raised. Cyrille followed him in her sights. A car approached and pulled to the curb. Dekker rushed toward it, reaching out an arm to open the rear door. Rideshare? An accomplice? It didn’t matter.
Cyrille pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession. Three times the pistol spat fire, the shots masked by the police’s continued ruckus.
She looked on as Dekker opened the door and threw himself into the back seat. Had she hit him? Impossible to know.
For a few seconds, the car didn’t move.
Cyrille left the doorway and approached the automobile. The car’s brake lights flashed. It accelerated. And then it was gone.
Mac Dekker knew what it was like to be shot at. He knew the hiss of the air, the curious sizzle felt on his skin, the momentary disruption in hearing that occurred when a bullet zipped past.
He threw himself into the back seat. “Go,” he shouted.
The driver looked over his shoulder. “Good morning,” he said. “Everything all right?”
Three shots. Someone had fired three rounds at him. Mac looked into the driver’s eyes. He was a kindly man, a welcoming smile for his passenger at 4:00 a.m. No, he could not tell him.
“I’m fine,” Mac answered. “Just in a hurry.”
Still the driver hesitated. Mac ventured a look out the rear window. He caught a movement in a doorway across the street. A bent, urgent figure. Short, thin, emerging from the shadows, wearing a beret and a heavy topcoat, hands thrust into its pockets. A hitter.
Finally, the driver returned his attention to the road and slowly pulled away from the curb.
Chapter 23
Paris–Le Bourget Airport
The Gulfstream G550 business jet carrying Eliza Porter Elkins and Don Baker touched down at Paris–Le Bourget Airport at one minute after nine o’clock in the morning. Ground fog hugged the runway. For a moment the aircraft skidded on the damp tarmac. Baker squeezed his eyes shut, hands clawing the armrests.
Elkins saw his wan, shaken face. “It’s okay, Don,” she said, reaching across the aisle to touch his arm. “We made it.”
Baker forced a smile. “Never gets easier.”
The jet taxied to a hangar far away from the main terminal. A black Mercedes sedan waited inside.
Elkins threw her travel bag over her shoulder and deftly negotiated the steep, narrow stairs, making a beeline to the sedan. Baker carted his carry-on bag off the plane, nearly tripping and falling before he made it to the ground.
