Dark Zone

63

Donohue turned right when he reached the top landing and walked down the hall to the second apartment. He paused, pulling on a set of latex gloves, then slipped the owner’s key out of his pocket and placed it into the lock. The mechanism was old and the key worn; he had to jiggle it and lean forward to get it to work.

The apartment smelled musty, as if its owner had never once opened the windows in the fifty years she had lived there. The smell made Donohue gag slightly as he came in; he associated it with his own childhood in Londonderry, a place where every memory evoked disgust. He was soon over it, moving quickly to the closet where he had placed his weapon the day before.

The Direction de la Surveillance du Territore, or DST, had its official headquarters at 1 rue Nélaton, some blocks away. But for a variety of reasons, including security, low-key suboffices had been found in the city. Ponclare, like some of the other section leaders and their teams, worked out of a bunkerized basement in the middle of what looked like an ordinary residential block. This made a mass attack on the DST difficult — but it presented certain advantages for anyone clever and bold, like Donohue.

Ponclare had only just arrived at work and typically would not leave his office for at least two hours — perhaps not for three or four — but the assassin had to be ready. His escape had already been complicated by the American President’s plans to visit Paris later that day.

From what Donohue knew of Mussa Duoar, it was likely that the visit had been somehow factored into the assassination of the French official. Donohue believed that Mussa primarily acted as a conduit for orders from an organization outside of France, though he was enough of a snake that one could never be too sure. So long as his fee was paid, Donohue would not bother to inquire too deeply.

He began assembling the Barrett sniper rifle, a fifty-caliber American-made gun that fired a round capable of penetrating an engine block. The weapon was not his favorite, but it was necessary because of the distance and the fact that Ponclare might choose to drive one of the armored Peugeots available to him.

When Donohue finished setting up his rifle, he went to the bathroom. He avoided the shower where he had placed the body of the woman who had lived here after killing her yesterday. Despite the fact that he had wrapped her in plastic bags, there was already a distinct odor of decay; this, too, reminded him of the slums where he had grown up, and he flushed the toilet with disgust.

An hour and a half to go. He would wait.