Patriot

CHAPTER 2

Most evenings, like tonight, Harding Torrance walked home from the office. His cardiac guy had told him walking was the best thing for his ticker. Harding liked walking. He even wore one of those FitBit thingamajigs on his wrist to keep track of his steps. Doctor’s orders after a couple of issues popped up in his last stress test. But the truth was, Harding liked walking in Paris, especially in the rain.

Ah, April in Paris.

And the women on the streets, too, you know? God in heaven. Paris has the world’s most beautiful women, full stop, hands down. The clothes, the jewelry, the hair, the way they walked, the posture, the way… the way they dangled their dainty little parapluies, the way they goddamn smelled. And, it wasn’t perfume, it was natural.

Plus, his eight-room Beaux-Arts apartment was an easy stroll home from his office. His ultradeluxe building was located on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, right next to Sotheby’s. Saint-Honoré was the shopping street in one of the fancier arrondissements on the Right Bank. Where there are beautiful shops, there are beautiful women, n’est-ce pas? Especially in this extremely ritzy neighborhood. Or arrondissement, as the froggies like to say.

Tell the truth, he’d lived here in Paris for ten years or more and he still didn’t have any idea which arrondissement was which. Somebody would ask him, Which is which? He’d shrug his shoulders with a smile. He had learned a handy little expression in French early on which had always served him well in his expatriate life: “Je ne sais pas.”

I don’t know!

At any rate, his homeward route from the office took him past the newly renovated Ritz Hotel, Hermès (or “Hermeez” as the bumpkins called his ties whenever he wore one when he visited Langley), plus, YSL, Cartier, et cetera, et cetera. You get the picture. Ritzy real estate, like he said. And, just so you know, Hermès is pronounced “Air-mez.”

Very ritzy.

Oddly enough, the ritziest hotel on the whole rue was not the one called the Ritz. It was the less obvious one called Hôtel Le Bristol. Now, what he liked about the Bristol, mainly, was the bar. At the end of the day, good or bad, he liked a quiet cocktail or three in a quiet bar before he went home to his wife. That’s all there was to it, been doing it all his life. His personal happy hour.

The Bristol’s lobby bar was dimly lit, church quiet, and hidden away off the beaten path. It was basically a dark paneled room lit by a roaring fire situated off the lobby where only the cognoscenti, as they say, held sway. Harding held sway there because he was a big, good-looking guy, always impeccably dressed in Savile Row threads and Charvet shirts of pale pink or blue. He was a big tipper, a friendly guy, great smile. Knew the bar staff’s names by heart and discreetly handed out envelopes every Christmas.

Sartorial appearances to the contrary, Harding Torrance was one hundred percent red-blooded American. He even worked for the government, had done, mostly all his life. And he’d done very, very well, thank you. He’d come up the hard way, but he’d come up, all right. His job, though he’d damn well have to kill you if he told you, was station chief, CIA, Paris. In other words, Harding was a very big damn deal in anybody’s language.

El Queso Grande, as they used to say at Langley.

He’d been in Paris since right after 9/11. His buddy from Houston, the new president, had posted him here because the huge Muslim population in Paris presented a lot of high-value intel opportunities. His mandate was to identify the al-Qaeda leadership in France, then whisk them away to somewhere nice and quiet for a little enhanced interrogation.

He was good at it, he stuck with it, got results, and got promoted, boom, boom, boom. The president had even singled him out for recognition in an Oval Office reception, had specifically said that he and his team had been responsible for saving countless lives on the European continent and in the United Kingdom. What goes around, right? Let’s just say he was well compensated.

Harding had gone into the family oil business after West Point and a stint with the Rangers out of Fort Bragg. Spec-ops duty, two combat tours in Iraq. Next, working for Torrance Oil, he was all over Saudi and Yemen and Oman, running his daddy’s fields in the Middle East. He was no silver spooner, though; no, he had started on the rigs right at the bottom, working as a ginzel (lower than the lowest worm), working his way up to a floorhand on the kelly driver, and then a bona fide rig driller in one year.

That period of his life was his introduction to the real world of Islam.

Long story short?

Harding knew the Muslims’ mind-set, their language, their body language, their brains, even, knew the whole culture, the mullahs, the warlords, where all the bodies were buried, the whole enchilada. And so, when his pal W needed someone uniquely qualified to transform the CIA’s Paris station into a first-rate intelligence clearinghouse for all Europe? Well. Who was he to say? Let history tell the tale.

His competition? Most guys inside the Agency, working in Europe at that time, right after the Twin Towers? Didn’t know a burqa from a kumquat and that’s no lie—

“Monsieur Torrance? Monsieur Torrance?”

“Oui?”

“Votre whiskey, monsieur.”

“Oh, hey, Maurice. Sorry, what’d you say? Scotch rocks?” he said to the head bartender, distracted, not even remembering ordering this fresh one. “Sure. One more. Why not?”

“Mais oui, m’sieur. There it is. C’est ça!”

Apparently his drink had arrived and he hadn’t even noticed. That was not a first, by the way.

“Oh, yeah. Merci.”

“Mais certainement, Monsieur Torrance. Et voilà.”

His drink had come like magic. Had he already ordered that? He knocked it back, ordered another, and relaxed, making small talk, le bavardage, with Maurice about the rain, the train bombing in Marseilles. Which horse might win four million euros in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp tomorrow. The favorite was an American thoroughbred named Buckpasser. He was a big pony, heralded in the tabloids as the next Secretariat, Maurice told him.

“Really? Listen. There will never, ever, be another ‘Big Red,’ Maurice. Trust me on that one.”

“But of course, sir. Who could argue?”

Harding swiveled on his barstool, sipping his third or fourth scotch, depending, checking the scenery, admiring his fellow man…

And woman…

And this one rolled in like thunder.