Omar looked down at the half-written message to Marielle on his screen. He deleted it and started over:
Trust no digital comms.
Someone was monitoring every step they took.
11
As a misdirection, Olivia and Marielle used the hotel’s car service to go to the fashion district in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. From there, they walked.
At 12:45, they were in position in the park across the street from Shakespeare and Company. Marielle watched the pedestrian traffic, looking for anyone who walked by more than once, looked like one of Idris’s guards, or seemed too interested in them. Olivia watched the cars for someone circling the block or driving erratically or too slowly.
At 12:55, Sabban emerged from the cafe next door to the bookstore, studied the street, and entered the bookstore. She was alone.
At 12:58, Marielle and Olivia crossed the street and followed her in.
The famed bookshop was exactly as Marielle remembered. A warren of rooms, some narrow, all lined with bookshelves crammed full of books from the stone floor to the wood-beamed ceiling. Here and there, you’d find a reading spot with a comfortable chair and good lighting. Everywhere, the smell of paper and binding glue hung in the air like perfume.
The rare books library was upstairs. Perfect for a private conversation. Terrible for a quick escape.
They climbed the narrow stairs and found Sabban examining a first edition of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.
“Did you know he wrote the first draft on a one-hundred-twenty-foot scroll so he didn’t have to interrupt his flow to change his typewriter paper?” Olivia asked.
Anissa Sabban raised an eyebrow as she slid the book on the shelf. “Is that so?”
“True story,” Olivia chirped.
Sabban got down to business. “Your message concerned me. I thought you wanted to meet with Ms. Ayari.”
“We have reason to believe our communications are compromised,” Marielle said quietly. “Someone accessed my phone remotely and sent you a text telling you we couldn’t meet today after all. I didn’t write it.”
“And I never received it.”
“Someone knows we were going to talk to Hanna and tried to prevent the meeting,” Olivia said.
“But why write it and not send it?” Marielle shook her head.
“It could have been an oversight,” Olivia suggested. “Or whatever tech they used to control the phone is imperfect. Or they were interrupted. Or any one of a thousand reasons.”
“Whatever the reason, we still need to talk to Hanna,” Marielle said.
“Oui. But not here and not at any location that you searched from your device. There is a café in Montparnasse called Le Coeur. It’s tucked away, but the tables are not crowded together. And no mobile phones or laptops can be used. They have blocking technology.”
“It sounds perfect,” Olivia said.
Anissa checked her watch. “We will meet you there in twenty minutes. But if I see anything suspicious, anything at all, we abort.”
“Understood.” Marielle agreed.
They descended the stairs in single file and exited onto the street. Sabban went left, so Marielle and Olivia went right.
They walked in silence for several blocks, taking random turns, checking their reflections in shop windows, using every counter-surveillance technique they knew.
By the time they reached Le Coeur, Marielle was reasonably confident they’d arrived clean. Anissa Sabban and Hanna were already there, seated at a small four-top in the back corner of the room.
Hanna’s dark hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail. She wore jeans and a plain sweater instead of the designer clothes Idris had draped her in. She looked younger than she had on the yacht. And she looked terrified.
Marielle took the seat across from her. “Thank you for meeting with us.”
