Private Paris

Chapter 1

1st Arrondissement

April 6, 3:30 p.m.

“THE SECRET TO understanding Parisians, Jack, is to see that they are almost the exact opposite of people in Los Angeles,” said the big bear of a man sitting across from me. “In L.A., children are raised to be optimistic, full of life, friendly. People who grow up in Paris, however, are taught the value of melancholy and an unwavering belief in the superiority of suffering. It’s why they have a reputation for being rude. It’s to make you as uncomfortable as they are, and they honestly believe they are doing you a favor.”

It was late afternoon, a warm, gorgeous spring day in the French capital, and Louis Langlois and I were sitting outside Taverne Henri IV in the Place Dauphine, well into our second glasses of excellent Bordeaux.

I smiled and said, “It can’t be that bad.”

Amused, Louis shook his head and said, “It is a fact that having fun, laughing, and generally enjoying life in Paris is a clear indication of latent insanity, or at least that you are visiting from an inferior place, which means anywhere outside the city limits.”

“C’mon,” I said, chuckling now. “People seem genuinely nice. Even the waiters have been great so far.”

With a dismissive flip of his hand, he said, “They seem nice because, at long last, they understand that Paris is the number one tourist destination in the world, and that tourism is the biggest moneymaker in the city. At the same time, they know you are a tourist from America-the land of the absurdly obese, the absurdly wealthy, and the absurdly ignorant-and they hope you give them an absurdly big tip. You must believe me, Jack. Deep inside, Parisians are not enjoying themselves and find it upsetting when others appear overly happy.”

I raised my eyebrows skeptically.

“Don’t believe me?” he said. “Watch.”

Louis threw back his head and began roaring with laughter. The laugh seemed to seize control of him, and shook down through his entire body as if he were scratching his back with it.

To my surprise and amusement, the patrons around us, and even the waitress who’d just delivered our wine, were now glancing sidelong at him. That only encouraged Louis, who started howling and slapping his thigh so hard tears streamed down his face. I couldn’t help it and started laughing too. The people around us were gaping openly or sniffing at us now, as if we were refugees from a funny farm.

At last, Louis calmed down and wiped away the tears, and when the café had returned to normalcy, he murmured, “What did I tell you? I use this-laughter-to upset suspects many times. To the people of Paris, a policeman who sees humor in everything, he must be crazy. He must be dangerous. He must be feared.”

I held up my hands in surrender. “Your city, Louis.”

“My adopted city,” he said, holding up a finger. “I do not think this way, but I understand it well.”

Thirty years ago, Louis left his home in Nice in the south of France and joined the French National Police. His extraordinary emotional intelligence, his understanding of the French people, and his unorthodox investigative instincts had propelled him swiftly into a job in Paris with La Crim, an elite investigative force similar to the major case units of the New York and L.A. police departments.

For twenty-nine years, Louis served with distinction at La Crim. The day before his retirement, I offered him a job at three times his old pay. He now ran the Paris office of Private, a global security and investigative agency I founded and own.

You’ll hear people refer to Private as “the Pinkertons of the twenty-first century.” I don’t know if we warrant that high praise, but it’s flattering, and the reputation has helped us grow by leaps and bounds over the last few years, especially overseas, which causes me to travel more than I’d like.

I’d been visiting the Berlin office for a few days and arrived in Paris the evening before. After a series of meetings with the local staff during the day, Louis suggested we go out for a few drinks and then a fine meal. That brilliant idea had brought us to one of his favorite cafés and led him to begin to explain to me the intricate mysteries of Paris, its citizens, and their way of thinking.

Before Louis could move on to another subject, his cell phone rang. He frowned and said, “I asked them not to call me unless it was important.”

“No worries,” I said, and took another sip of wine.

Even if the Parisians weren’t happy, I was. Louis Langlois was a funny guy and Paris was still one of the most beautiful cities on earth, filled with interesting and sometimes shocking people, art, and food. In an hour or two, I’d no doubt be eating an incredible meal, and probably laughing a whole lot more. Life, for the foreseeable future, looked very good.

And then it didn’t.

Louis listened to his phone, nodded, and said, “Of course I remember you, Monsieur Wilkerson. How can Private Paris be of help?”

Wilkerson? The only Wilkerson I knew was a client who lived in Malibu.

I mouthed, “Sherman Wilkerson?”

Louis nodded and said into the phone, “Would you rather talk with Jack Morgan? He’s right here.”

He handed me the phone. Now, the last time I’d heard from Sherman Wilkerson like this, out of the blue, there were four dead bodies on the beach below his house. I admit that there were nerves in my voice when I said, “Sherman?”

“What are you doing in Paris, Jack?” Wilkerson demanded.

“Visiting one of my fastest-growing offices.”

Sherman Wilkerson was a no-nonsense engineer who’d built a wildly successful industrial design company. By nature he dealt with facts and often understated his opinion of things. So I was surprised when he said in a shaky voice, “Maybe there is a God after all.”

“You’ve got a problem in Paris?” I asked.

“My only granddaughter, Kimberly. Kimberly Kopchinski,” Wilkerson replied. “I just got off the phone with her-first call in more than two years. She’s in an apartment outside Paris and says there are drug dealers hunting for her, trying to kill her. She sounded petrified, and begged me to send someone to save her. Then the line went dead and now I can’t reach her. Can you go make sure she’s safe? I’ve got the address.”

“Of course,” I said, signaling to Louis to pay the bill. “How do we find her?”

Wilkerson read me out an address.

I wrote it down and said, “Can you text me a photograph? And tell me about her? College student? Businesswoman?”

Louis laid down cash on the table and gave me the thumbs-up during a long pause.

“Sherman?” I said, standing. “Are you there?”

“I honestly don’t know what Kim’s been doing the past two years, and I know little of her life over the past five,” Wilkerson admitted as we left the café and Louis called for a car. “Her parents-my daughter, Pam, and her husband, Tim-they died in a boating accident six years ago.”

“I remember you telling me that,” I said. “Sad.”

“Very. Kim was in her senior year at USC, and back from a junior year in France, when it happened. She was as devastated as we were. Long story short, she inherited a bit of money along with a trust, and she turned wild child. She barely graduated. When she did, she went straight back to France. For a time I know she was working for the Cannes Film Festival organizers. We tried to stay in touch, but we heard from her less and less. Before today, there was a Christmas card from Monaco, and before that, a condolence card when my wife died.”

The car pulled up. Louis opened the door, and I climbed in, saying, “Don’t worry, Sherman. We’re on our way.”

“Thank you, Jack. You’ll call when you have her?”

“I will.”

“Protect her, Jack. I beg you,” Wilkerson said. “She’s my only grandchild-my only living relative, really.”

“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” I said, and hung up.

After filling Louis in on the conversation, I pushed the address I’d written on a napkin over to him. “Know it?”

Louis put his reading glasses on and studied it, and his nostrils flared as if he’d scented something foul. Then he looked up at me and with a definite edge in his voice said, “Look up trouble and danger in a French dictionary, and you get a picture of this place.”

Chapter 2

Pantin, northeastern suburbs of Paris

3:45 p.m.

HOW CAN I make you burn?

How do I make you come alive like a creature from hell’s fire?

In what used to be a linen factory along the Canal de l’Ourcq, these questions consumed the woman standing on scaffolding, absently stroking her long braid of mahogany hair, and studying the giant’s skeleton.

She was in her midthirties, with dusky skin and haunting pewter eyes, and she wore clothes that were completely at odds with her exotic beauty: black steel-toe work boots, double-faced and riveted canvas pants, and a flame-resistant cape and apron over a heavy denim shirt.

She turned from the skeleton, still unsure how it was all going to work, and looked for answers among the various materials she’d bought or salvaged and transported to the building. In the last month she’d amassed two tons of number 9 rebar in twenty-foot lengths. She had sections of battered steel conduit torn from culverts during a big highway job out toward Reims. And she had stacks of scrap sheet metal, angle iron, and galvanized pipe gathered from junkyards and metal recycling plants across northern France.

The massive steel posts came from an old engine repair shop in Orléans. They were already standing, four of them anchor-bolted into the cement floor. I beams had been hoisted and pinned in place as well, forming an open-sided rectangular box forty-five feet long, twenty-five feet wide, and thirty feet high. From a structural point of view, the heavy work was over. The superstructure of the skeleton was standing. And already she could see the vague dimensions of what was to come forming in her-

“Haja!” a man’s voice called.

Haja startled and looked around to see a rugged man in his late thirties emerge from a door in the corner. Thick neck, bronze skin, short black hair. He carried a gym bag and was dressed in a sweat suit. Cleats hung around his neck.

“Up here, Émile,” she called.

Émile Sauvage spotted her and said, “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for your date?”

“Henri won’t be ready until nine,” she said. “I have plenty of time.”

“You’ll text when you’re inside?”

“I remember the plan,” she said.

“I’ll see you there.”

“I look forward to it, chéri,” she said. “AB-16 at last.”

Sauvage smiled. “AB-16 at long last.”

Haja blew him a kiss and watched him go out the main door. She heard the bolt thrown before she turned again to look at the skeleton.

Seeing it from this new angle, she had a sudden, intense inspiration, saw how she might begin the process of creation. Rushing about now, feeling feverish, Haja climbed down off the scaffolding. She grabbed a pair of heavy bolt cutters and snipped off several lengths of rebar. She set them on the floor next to the near post, and then wheeled over the welding tanks, hose, and torch.

Putting on the helmet and shield, she took up the torch and the striker, and then turned on the oxygen and acetylene gas and ignited the hissing mixture. Even through the smoked glass, the flame was searing in its intensity.

I can sculpt you, she thought. I can create you from scrap.

But how do I make you burn like this welding torch?

How do I create an apocalyptic vision that France will never, ever forget?

Chapter 3

Montfermeil, eastern suburbs of Paris

4:45 p.m.

SHORTLY AFTER LOUIS Langlois and I spoke with Sherman Wilkerson we headed east out of Paris in workmen’s blue jumpsuits that featured the logo of a bogus plumbing company. Louis drove a Mia electric-powered delivery vehicle, which looked like a minivan back home, only much smaller. The tiny van had the same fake plumbing logo painted on the rear panels and back door.

Louis said he used the Mia and the plumbing disguises often during surveillance jobs, but tonight we were using them to stay alive.

“The areas around the Bondy Forest have always been places of poverty, crime, and violence,” Louis explained. “You’ve read Les Misérables?”

“Years ago,” I said. “But I saw the movie recently.”

“Okay,” he said. “That scene where Jean Valjean meets Cosette getting water? The inn where the Thénardiers robbed their customers? All in Montfermeil. It looks different today, of course, but the dark spirit of the place continues. Montfermeil is like your Bronx was in the nineteen seventies, or South Central L.A. in the nineties: high unemployment, high crime rate, and lots of gangs, drug dealers, and violence. Add an angry Muslim and young immigrant population, and it’s unimaginable to me why Mademoiselle Kopchinski would take refuge in Les Bosquets-one of the worst housing projects in France.”

I shrugged. “We’ll find out, I guess. You’re sure about the plumbers’ gear being the right way to go?”

“Bien sûr. Everybody needs the plumber at some time, in some emergency. Non? Plumbers can come and go at all hours and no one thinks anything of it other than some poor bastard has a backed up toilet. And plumbers tend not to get hassled even in places like Les Bosquets. Why is that? Because everyone needs the plumber! Someone shakes the plumber down, and soon no plumbers will come, and no one wants that. Not even there.”

“This wouldn’t fly in the States,” I said, gesturing at the full jumpsuit. “People would know we weren’t plumbers.”

Louis seemed taken aback by that. “How would they know?”

“No American plumber would wear a coverall like this. If they did, they couldn’t show their ass crack, and that’s a requirement in the States.”

Louis glanced, and then laughed. “This is true?”

“No.”

My cell phone buzzed, alerting me to a text. It was from Sherman Wilkerson and included a photograph of a pretty young woman with sad eyes sitting at a bar. At a red light I showed it to Langlois, saying, “It’s the most recent picture of her Sherman’s got. He said it’s at least four years old.”

“As a rule I don’t like babysitting jobs,” Langlois said.

“Neither do I,” I agreed, pocketing the phone. “But when a client like Sherman asks Private to look after his granddaughter, we answer.”

Twenty minutes later, and less than eleven miles from the chic streets and genteel parks of central Paris, we entered a world apart. Out the van’s window, the area didn’t look too bad at night. It kind of reminded me of East Berlin, with big clusters of drab, uniform, state-designed high-rise apartment buildings-a communist’s decaying vision of ideal housing.

Then I started seeing the graffiti. “Fuck the police” was a common theme. So were images of faceless men in dark hoods with flames painted behind them and Arabic scrawled above them.

“Was this project part of those riots a few years back?” I asked.

“Les Bosquets was in the thick of it,” Louis confirmed. “And it’s home to a vicious gang that specializes in targeting tourists who take the train from de Gaulle to Paris. A few months ago, they put a car on the tracks to stop a train holding more than a hundred Japanese visitors, then went on board and robbed everyone at gunpoint.”

“Brazen.”

“Yes, but there are reasons,” Louis replied. “Back in the sixties and seventies, when France was on the up economically, we needed labor, so they allowed anyone from a current or former French colony to immigrate here. They built the projects, and a generation later the economy busts, and the immigrants stay on, having children, lots of children. Fifty percent of the population out here is younger than twenty-five. And they can’t find jobs. So they live in terrible conditions, with no purpose. It’s a recipe for disaster for everyone involved.”

“Can’t they work their way out of it through school?” I asked.

Louis wagged a finger at me and said, “You are thinking of the States again, Jack. In France, it is not the same. There are proven paths to power here-the right schools, the right friends-and these paths are shut off to the immigrants. Worse, there is no public transportation in these areas. Without a car, you go nowhere. You’re trapped. You get angry. You explode.”

Louis flicked his chin toward the windshield. “There it is. Les Bosquets.”

The project consisted of eight decaying high-rise apartment buildings. Clotheslines hung from windows, as did immigrants of all ages and skin colors. Louis pulled over on the Avenue Clichy-sous-Bois.

He opened the glove compartment, got out a Glock 19, and handed it to me.

“I’m not licensed to carry this in France,” I said.

“You’re not a licensed French plumber either, Jack,” Louis said. “Put it in your pocket, and let me do the talking.”

It’s hard to argue with a guy who knows his turf as well as Louis. I decided to trust his judgment and nodded. We got out and grabbed toolboxes and flashlights from the rear hatchback. Men across the street had checked us out when we pulled up, but now they were ignoring us.

“You see?” Louis muttered as we headed down the road that ran north into the complex. “Everyone needs us, even if we don’t show the butt cracks.”

Chapter 4

7th Arrondissement

5 p.m.

THE HOOKER, THE props, the locks, and the flankers were tight in the scrum when the eighth man joined them, and the battle began.

On a pitch in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, the scrum half player snatched up the rugby ball and pitched it to the fly, who sprinted madly to the outside of a defensive mob in full pursuit. The fly passed the ball to the inside center, who took a hit, but not before he lobbed the ball on to Émile Sauvage.

Sauvage snagged the rugby ball out of the air, tucked it, and accelerated right at his enemy. He smashed the heel of his palm into the face of the first defender and broke into the open field. Out of the defensive pack a big coal-black guy appeared. Moving laterally with tremendous speed and agility despite his bulk, he seemed sure to flatten Sauvage.

But a fraction of a second before he could, Sauvage laid down a stutter step that suggested he’d change direction. The feint worked. His pursuer planted a foot so hard to cut the other way that he tripped and sprawled while Sauvage loped on toward the in-goal area.

A whistle blew. Sauvage slowed to a stop well shy of the try line and went back to help the big guy to his feet. “You didn’t roll that ankle, did you, Mfune?”

Mfune smiled, shook his head, and said in the clipped French of West Africa, “Nice move, though.”

“Keep them guessing, embrace the chaos,” he said. “It’s the only way to survive and win a battle. Any battle.”

“Best tactic,” Mfune agreed.

The other players were drinking water and gathering their gear. Practice was over.

Sauvage said, “I think we have time for a few rounds before the lecture, don’t you?”

“If we’re quick about it.”

They grabbed their bags and water bottles and hurried off the field, crossing an equestrian track and parking area to get to a three-story, tan-colored building. They passed through double doors, went to a locker room, stored their cleats and practice jerseys, and retrieved their pistol cases.

After signing into the fifty-meter range in the basement, they received 9-millimeter ammunition, ear protection, and shooting glasses.

They set human assailant silhouette targets at thirty-five meters, loaded their MAC 50 pistols, and fired in five quick, two-round bursts until their weapons were empty. When they called back the targets, they saw that four of Mfune’s shots were to the forehead, and six clustered over the heart.

All ten of Sauvage’s bullets, however, had patterned tight between the eyes. They cased their pistols, turned in their protective gear, and returned to the locker room. Drying off after a shower and shave, Sauvage moved to his locker, already forcing his complex mind to compartmentalize.

The uniform helped as it always did.

In short order, he was dressed in French Army-issued khaki shirt and trousers, a black tie, and a green commando sweater with epaulets. Polished black shoes and a green garrison cap completed the transformation.

He shut his locker door. Mfune was dressed and ready as well.

Mfune gave him a crisp salute and said, “Major Sauvage.”

“Captain Mfune,” Sauvage replied.

“I don’t know why these guest lectures always occur at night,” Mfune complained softly. “And tonight of all nights.”

“At ease, Captain,” Sauvage said. “We’ve got a few hours before AB-16 is launched.”

The French Army officers left the locker room and walked outside across a cobblestone courtyard. Other men and women in uniform were already hurrying into a two-story buff-colored building through light-blue doors in need of paint. Next to the door, a brass plaque read, “École de Guerre.”

War School.

Chapter 5

5:15 p.m.

LOUIS WAS RIGHT about plumber being the perfect disguise.

We passed four or five small groups of menacing-looking types, and as soon as they’d had a hard stare at our plumber’s logo, they relaxed and looked away. The last group was out in front of the entrance to the address we’d been given, a building at the rear of Les Bosquets.

I remembered enough from high school French class to understand when one of the guys asked where we were going. Louis never broke stride, just went past him saying something I couldn’t follow. It seemed to do the trick, however, because no one trailed us into the lobby, which featured poor lighting; a wall of mailboxes, many broken; and a cement floor that was cracked and offset in several places.

“What did you tell those guys?” I asked.

“I said that the toilet in 412 was backed up and there’s shit all over the place. It shuts down their curiosity every time.”

We didn’t have to use a buzzer, because there was no buzzer or security of any kind. A young Muslim woman in black robes and head scarf came down the stairs and glanced at us with enormous brown eyes that showed suspicion until they focused on the logos on our jumpsuits. She nodded and went on. Two Asian teenagers came bouncing down the stairs as we climbed, and never gave us a second glance. Nor did the African woman carrying a load of laundry.

“I’ve got to remember this,” I muttered to Louis as I followed him toward a cement staircase.

“Plumbing is a beautiful thing,” he replied.

When we reached the fourth floor of the tenement we opened the door into an empty hallway with a rug frayed down to the floorboards. The smells of the place hit me all at once: lamb cooking in garlic and onions, cigarette smoke, marijuana smoke, and the odor of too many people living in tight quarters.

The apartment walls and doors could not have been very thick or insulated, because a general din filled the passage: babies crying, pots banging, men shouting, women shouting back, televisions and music blaring in Arabic and other languages I couldn’t identify. It all felt depressing-suffocating, even-and I’d been in the building less than three minutes. Louis said there were people who’d lived in Les Bosquets their entire lives, and I began to understand some of the pressures that contributed to the riots.

But why had Wilkerson’s granddaughter come here of all places?

Louis knocked on the door to 412. Several moments later, a woman’s voice asked who we were, and Louis replied that we were from Private and had been sent by Kim’s grandfather.

A minute passed before a dead bolt was thrown. The door opened on a chain, and a wary woman who looked Polynesian and was wearing a blue skirt and floral blouse looked out at us, and asked to see our identification. We showed it to her, and she shut the door.

Nothing happened for several minutes, and Louis was about to knock again when we heard the chain slide, and the door opened. Louis stepped inside a dimly lit, narrow hallway, and I followed.

The door shut behind us, and I turned to find myself face-to-face with Kimberly Kopchinski. In her late twenties now, wearing jeans, a black blouse, and a rectangular silver thing on a chain around her neck, she was undeniably beautiful in person. But I could tell by the color of her skin and the way she held herself that she’d been through some terrible physical ordeal recently, and that she was very, very frightened.

We introduced ourselves and showed her the badges and identifications.

“How do I know my grandfather sent you?” she asked.

I showed her Sherman’s text and the picture of her. Kim stared at the picture for several moments as if she barely remembered the girl in it.

“He says you’re in danger,” I said.

“I am in danger,” she said.

“He said something about drug dealers?”

“I just need somewhere to go, to disappear for a while,” she said in a strained whisper. “Can you help me do that?”

“We can,” I replied. “But it helps if we know who we’re hiding you from, Kimberly.”

Her face twisted with inner pain, and she said, “Call me Kim. And can we have this conversation later? Once I’m somewhere safe? I can’t stay here anymore. My friend’s husband is coming home from Lyons in a few hours. He doesn’t know I’m here, and if he did I’d be…”

Her lower lip quivered.

“Don’t worry, Ms. Kopchinski,” Louis said. “You are under the care and protection of Private Paris now. Already you could not be safer. We’ll take you to the same hotel where Jack is staying.”

“A hotel?” Kim said, alarmed. “No, that’s too public.”

Louis said soothingly, “This hotel is the most discreet in Paris. Already I have you registered there under an alias.”

The Polynesian woman emerged from a doorway at the other end of the hall carrying a canvas bag. She set it down and tapped on her watch.

Kim appeared to be torn, but nodded, and went to the woman. She talked quietly to her for several moments before hugging her. Both women looked distraught when they parted.

Grabbing the bag, Kim said, “Let’s go.”

We got more scrutiny leaving with her than we had when entering, and plenty of hostile glances, but no one challenged us directly. With Kim in the backseat and Louis starting the Mia, I thought we were home free. Thirty minutes from now we’d have her safely in a suite at the Plaza Athénée and I’d be talking to Sherman Wilkerson, trying to figure out a way to get her quickly to L.A.

Louis threw the Mia in gear and was pulling a U-turn to head west toward Paris when headlights went on a block in front of us. Another set went on half a block behind us.

I didn’t think much of it until the car in front of us, a black Renault, pulled out and stopped sideways across the street. He couldn’t block the entire avenue, but there wasn’t a whole lot of room to get past him either.

“Merde,” Louis said, locking up the brakes on the electric van and throwing us in reverse.

“What’s happening?” Kim cried.

“We’re not waiting to find out,” I said, twisting around in the seat to look out the rear window and see the other car, a blue Peugeot, coming fast in the other lane.

A bald, pale man in a studded, red leather jacket hung out the passenger-side window. He was aiming a rotary-magazine shotgun.

Chapter 6

SAUVAGE SWELLED WITH pride as he climbed to the second floor of France’s fabled War School, the history of the place flickering in his thoughts. In 1750, at the suggestion of Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV founded a military academy for poor young men so they might have a vehicle for bettering their lives. The most prestigious course of study was and is War School.

Almost every major French military figure of the past 225 years has been through a variation of the program, including Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles de Gaulle. Officers who’ve attended War School have effected radical change before, Sauvage thought, and we will again.

They moved toward a small amphitheater already filling for the day’s special lecture: “Psychological Warfare.”

Though not his specialty, the major looked forward to the talk.

Entering the amphitheater, Sauvage scanned the room and his fellow students-an old recon habit. He thought that even within this elite group of military minds, there was no one here, except him and Mfune, who had the vision, courage, and conviction to attempt something like AB-16.

The rest? They were sheep.

The lecturer that evening was Eliza Greene, a U.S. Army colonel assigned to NATO in Brussels and an expert in the fine art of fragmenting the will of the enemy and turning the hearts and minds of civilians caught up in war.

A few of the techniques and examples the American described fascinated Sauvage, but he ultimately found the lecture lacking and raised his hand to say so.

“Colonel Greene,” Sauvage said. “Those seem like excellent tactics, but with all due respect, wouldn’t psychological warriors such as yourself do well to adopt the techniques of modern marketing, especially the art of branding?”

A short, stocky woman in her forties, Colonel Greene crinkled her brow in response. “You are…?”

“Sauvage,” he replied. “Major Émile Sauvage.”

She nodded, watching him intently. “How would you do this, Major?”

“By standing for something, Colonel,” Sauvage said. “Maybe only one thing, but selling that position, that one thing, with a logo, perhaps, to the enemy and civilians long before combat ensued.”

Colonel Greene tilted her head, thought, and said, “That’s really the job of politicians, isn’t it? The selling of a war? It isn’t until you have troops on the ground and combat begins that psychological techniques really work. Defeating the enemy in battle repeatedly goes a long way toward winning civilian minds.”

Sauvage stood his ground. “Again, with all due respect, Colonel, have you been on duty in Afghanistan?”

She stiffened and said, “I have not.”

“I spent four years in Afghanistan with NATO,” Sauvage replied. “And I can tell you for a fact that the U.S. message there-the branding, if you will-was mixed, garbled, and the old country will just revert to its ingrained ways the second you leave.”

Colonel Greene smiled at him without enthusiasm and said, “Perhaps you can run a war your way, with branding, logos, and all, when you’re a commanding general, Major Sauvage.”

Sauvage found her smugness infuriating. He wanted to tell her off, inform her in no uncertain terms that he already was the commander of a growing army.

But then he felt Mfune’s slight elbow nudge, and understood. He couldn’t appear to be a fanatic in any way, shape, or form. That was the key to staying undetected as a scout, as a spy, and as a guerrilla warrior.

“I look forward to it,” the major said, sounding reasonable.

But as the colonel returned to her lecture, Sauvage was thinking that someday, after it was all over, he’d track down smug Colonel Greene and spray-paint “AB-16” all over her know-nothing face.

Chapter 7

THE SHOTGUN ROARED. The rear driver’s-side window exploded, throwing bits of glass and causing Kim to scream in terror, and me to dig for the Glock 19.

Louis reacted by showing us his mad skills behind the wheel.

At another time and another place, the head of Private Paris might have driven for a bank robbery crew or as a stuntman in the movies, because that shotgun blast caused him to unleash a series of maneuvers over the course of the next fifteen minutes that left me speechless and shaking.

The second after the side window exploded, Louis ducked down and threw the delivery van into a series of S turns, as if he were a skier in a slalom course, only going backward. Kim’s screams had died down to whimpers even as the Peugeot locked up its brakes and came after us in reverse. The Renault, however, was in third gear, in our lane, and coming at us at full throttle.

“Hold on to the handle above the door, Jack, and when I swing, shoot the tires of the closest vehicle!” Louis shouted.

Frantically cranking down the window, I grabbed the handle with my left hand and rested my right on the side-view mirror to steady the gun.

The bald, pale guy hanging out of the Peugeot was in our headlights now, aiming the shotgun left-handed. He touched one off, blowing out one of our headlights and cracking my side of the windshield into spiderwebs.

Louis didn’t flinch; instead, he spun the wheel and swung the rear end of the van around into that spur road we’d walked to get deeper into the project. As he did, the Renault floated into my pistol sights at twenty-five yards. I dropped my aim below the passenger-side front fender and squeezed.

The Glock bucked, and the bullet threw sparks off the lower fender. The second shot, however, was on target, and blew out the tire. The Renault swerved right toward the Peugeot, and I tapped the trigger a third time. The driver’s-side tire destructed. The front end of the car came down hard on the pavement, peeling strips of smoking rubber that spun crazily through the air.

The Peugeot’s rear end struck the Renault’s flank, and I was sure the pale shooter was going to sling off like a daredevil from a cannon. But the guy must have had uncanny reflexes and strength, because he managed to hang on.

Louis hit the brakes. We came to a bouncing, screeching halt in front of some of those gang members we’d passed earlier on foot. The whole lot of them were jumping up and down and cheering as if we were the best thing to happen in Les Bosquets in months, maybe years.

One of them yelled something in French that I didn’t catch, but Louis did, and he started laughing as he threw the little van into forward again, and pinned the accelerator to the floor. We passed other groups of immigrants who were now screaming those same words at us.

“What are they saying?” I yelled as we shot back out onto Avenue Clichy-sous-Bois, heading opposite the way we’d come in.

“Bad-Ass Plumbers!” Louis said, grinning, a little mania in his eyes.

I started laughing a little myself. Warm, good, crazy-the mix of emotions surging in me felt familiar, as if I was back on a mission in Afghanistan, mainlining on adrenaline, about to land my helicopter and a squad of marines in range of Taliban snipers and rocket grenades. Sometimes it was all about the risk.

Then I realized that I hadn’t checked on Kim and that she’d stopped whimpering. Fearing the worst, I twisted around fast and saw that she’d left her seat and gone back into the small cargo area to look out the rear door.

“Are you okay?” I yelled.

There was a flash of headlights behind us.

“Kim?”

She jerked her head around, mascara running down her cheeks, and said, “They’re coming.”

I undid my seat buckle and jumped into the back just as Louis took a hard left. It threw me off my feet and I crashed hard into the wall of the van, briefly stunned, until I saw Kim crawling toward me.

“Are you okay?” she asked, fighting back tears.

Over her shoulder, headlights glared through the rear window. There was a sharp cracking noise and the window blew out, showering us with little chunks of shatterproof glass.

“Get them off of us, Jack!” Louis yelled. “Before they take our tires!”

That jerked me back fully alert. Scrambling by Kim, I got to the back door. Crouched below the window frame, I reached up and pushed the Glock out the hole the shotgun had made. I tilted the pistol toward the headlights and pulled the trigger twice.

There was a screeching of tires and the headlights retreated.

I can’t give you every detail of the chase that ensued in the next few minutes because I haven’t the foggiest idea what roads we took or when we turned or where. For me there was only those headlights and trying to shoot them out every time they got close, while Louis tried to shake them.

“Merde!” Louis shouted at one point. “Hold on!”

Cars skidded and honked all around us.

Cars crashed all around us.

Chapter 8

LOUIS RAN A red light, and we shot up onto National Route 3 south of the town of Sevran. I got up to peer out the hole in the rear window and saw five demolished vehicles in the two hundred yards of road leading to the highway ramp. The Peugeot and the bald guy with the rotary-mag shotgun had somehow gotten through the pileup unscathed. We had put distance between us, but they were still coming, and coming hard.

“You got to go faster!” I yelled.

“I’m going as fast as a Mia goes!” Louis shouted. “Sixty-eight top speed.”

We were screwed. I didn’t know the top speed of the Peugeot, but it was a safe bet it was a whole lot more than sixty-eight. Kim must have been thinking much the same thing, because she shouted, “How far can we go?”

“Fifty-two more miles,” Louis said. “Plenty of power.”

I stood in the back of the van now, left hand pressed against the roof, and punched out the rest of the glass with the butt of the Glock. The Peugeot was back there less than a quarter of a mile, weaving through traffic.

Louis managed to stay ahead of them through the interchange onto autoroute 4, a three-lane freeway heading south. But the additional lane thinned traffic and the Peugeot took advantage of it, charging after us at eighty, ninety miles an hour. The crazy pale guy hanging out the window didn’t seem to care when I shot at him and missed.

He raised the shotgun with one hand. I dropped just in time. Buckshot clanked and pinged off the rear door. I was going to jump up and return fire but then noticed that the Glock’s slide was locked open. The pistol was empty.

I pivoted, stayed low, and duckwalked past Kim, who was on the floor of the van, holding tight to the legs of the jump seat with her eyes closed. Louis was hunched over the wheel like some pinball wizard. Grabbing the backs of the two front seats to stabilize myself, I said, “I’m out of ammo. I need your-”

“No time,” Louis barked as he cut the Mia hard left into the fast lane before the Peugeot could get up alongside us again.

In the next moment, everything seemed to move slower, and I was hyperaware of everything around us. There was a bloodred BMW coupe in our lane, three car lengths in front of us, just beyond the nose of a blue flatbed truck to our immediate right. Beyond the truck, in the far right lane and two car lengths ahead, a woman in a silver Mercedes sedan was singing with her radio. To our left the guardrail flickered in the headlights of the Peugeot, which was closing in fast.

We started up a rise. The flatbed downshifted and slowed. The BMW sped up, opening space. In the rearview, the bald, pale guy was aiming for our tires, and I held on tight, figuring we might be crashing in the next few seconds.

Without warning, Louis wrenched the wheel to his right. The bald guy shot and missed us, hitting the BMW’s tires instead. Our right rear quarter panel brushed the front bumper of the flatbed, which sent us careening into a clockwise 360-degree slide across the freeway.

It was surreal and blurred, almost like being in a helicopter when it’s going down. I held on for dear life, sure we were going to roll or collide hard with that Mercedes in the far right lane.

But Louis made a quick cut with the wheel and we missed broadsiding the Mercedes by inches. The van straightened out and we shot up the exit ramp for the D34 highway heading east.

I was shaking head to toe as we merged into Paris-bound traffic. In all my life I’d never seen a gutsier move than that one. Boxed inside the fast lane by the slower flatbed and the crippled BMW, the guys in the Peugeot never had a chance of following us.

Louis clenched his fist and smiled his wild smile at me again.

“That, Jack,” he said proudly, “is how a plumber drives in Paris.”

I laughed, but then heard Kim Kopchinski say in a strained voice, “They knew I was there. How did they know? How could they?”

“Don’t worry, Mademoiselle Kopchinski,” Louis said. “I’ll call some friends at La Crim. Get you protection that-”

“No!” Kim shouted. “You call in the police and you might as well shoot me right here, right now.”

Chapter 9

8th Arrondissement

8:30 p.m.

LOUIS LANGLOIS PULLED us over on the Rue du Boccador. A man wearing a white chef’s shirt and apron smoked a cigarette to one side of an open door, and a petite woman in a neat gray suit waited on the other side. Louis waved to her, and she made a small beckoning motion.

“Her name is Elodie,” Louis said. “She takes care of everything, Jack.”

“What is this place?” Wilkerson’s granddaughter asked before I slid back the Mia’s side door.

“Kitchen entrance to Alain Ducasse’s restaurant at the Plaza Athénée,” Louis said. “That door gives us access to the room service elevator. No one will know you are here. It’s how the famous and the infamous go in and out.”

Kim hesitated and then nodded to me. I opened the door and we moved quickly toward the hotel’s rear entrance. I’d stripped off the plumber’s coverall and retrieved my blue blazer so I fit in somewhat at the ritzy address in the heart of Paris’s fashion center. But Kim looked as though she’d been sleeping in her old clothes for days.

Elodie didn’t seem to care. “Bonsoir, Monsieur Morgan,” she said brightly, and then bowed to Kim. “Madame.”

The chef, a lean, handsome guy in his thirties, stubbed out his cigarette, smiled, and gestured toward the open door and the sounds of pans and dishes rattling. “Please,” he said.

Elodie led the way inside, and within seconds we were weaving through a state-of-the-art kitchen and a feverish pack of young men and women in white toques cleaning up after the evening service. Several of the kitchen staff glanced our way, but then saw the chef coming behind us and returned to their jobs with renewed vigor.

Elodie took us to a service elevator and punched the button for the eighth floor.

“At Monsieur Langlois’s request, Monsieur Morgan, we have moved your things to a new suite with two bedrooms and a generous sitting area,” she said. “You’re lucky we had it available. Several Saudi princesses are arriving with their entourage tomorrow and will take over the entire seventh floor.”

“That work?” I asked Kim.

Hugging her chest as if suddenly cold, she nodded, but it was with little enthusiasm. We got out on eight and trailed Elodie to a door.

“A beautiful suite,” Elodie said, sliding an electronic key card.

She pushed open the door and we entered a spacious living area with black-and-white art deco furniture and French doors that opened onto a small balcony.

“You have a view of the Eiffel Tower from the balcony and your bedroom,” Elodie told Kim.

“Storybook,” I said.

Kim said, “This looks like the room Carrie stayed in during the last few episodes of Sex and the City.”

The concierge laughed. “No, that’s down on seven, and almost always reserved, I’m afraid. The Saudi women love staying there.”

Elodie quickly showed us the suite’s features, and left us with assurances that we could call her anytime during the night, and that room service was available twenty-four hours a day. After she left, I went through the place again, checking the windows and doors, including a locked one that Elodie said led to a third bedroom, should we need it.

Kim, meanwhile, had gone to the minibar and opened two splits of Stolichnaya vodka. She poured them both in a glass, took a long draw, shuddered, and carried it and her knapsack out onto the balcony.

I used the toilet, picked up a menu, and heard a knock at the door. Louis lumbered in, scratching at his salt-and-pepper beard, looking as though he’d just been roused from sleep instead of jacked up after a high-speed car chase.

“She say anything yet?” he asked quietly.

“Just giving her a little space,” I replied.

We went to the open doors to the balcony, finding Kim looking at the Eiffel Tower and putting an unlit cigarette to her lips. She unsnapped that silver rectangular jewelry piece from the chain around her neck and pressed at it with her thumb. A lid shot back, revealing the workings of a lighter.

She thumbed it to a flame and took two deep drags off the cigarette before Louis said, “You want to tell us about it?”

Kim turned and looked at us with that glassy, faraway stare I’d seen on marines I was airlifting out of combat.

“I’d rather not tonight,” she said. “I just need to sleep.”

I said, “If you don’t tell us what’s going on, we can’t protect you.”

She drained the vodka and said, “In the end, no one can protect me, and if I tell you, no one will be able to protect you either.”

“But no one knows where you are now,” Louis said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kim said, pushing by us. She got both splits of Glenlivet scotch this time.

“You made it sound as if police are involved in your problem.”

“If you get them involved, I’ll have another problem.”

I sighed in exasperation. “You’re not looking out for yourself.”

Her laugh was hard and short. “That’s where you’re wrong, Jack. I most definitely am looking out for myself. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go enjoy my view of the Eiffel Tower, take a shower, and get some sleep.”

She went into her bedroom and shut the doors behind her.

Chapter 10

FOR SEVERAL MOMENTS I thought about barging in on her and demanding that she tell us what was going on. We’d damn near died coming to her rescue. We had a right to know.

I saw Louis’s frustration and said, “Why don’t you go home, my friend? I’ll take the night shift.”

“I have a man outside, and I’ll be back first thing in the morning,” he said, handing me a new loaded magazine for the Glock and then leaving.

The shower was still running on Kim’s end of the suite when I ordered a strip steak and pommes frites from room service. I’d no sooner hung up than my cell phone rang. Sherman Wilkerson was calling.

“Do you have her?” he asked, sounding anxious.

“I do. She’s fine. Taking a shower.”

“She’s terrified, Jack. Am I wrong?”

“No, you’re right.”

“Did she say why?”

“Not yet.”

“Can you protect her?”

I chewed the inside of my cheek, and considered informing him of the gun battle and car chase that had ensued after we took Kim from Les Bosquets housing project, but I knew it would only worry him.

“We can, but how long are we talking about?”

“As long as it takes,” Wilkerson said. “In Paris, and back here in Malibu.”

“Sherman, with all due respect, that could get very expensive.”

“I don’t care what it costs,” he shot back. “For that I’ll pay anything.”

“Okay, Sherman,” I said. “I just needed to understand the ground rules.”

“Is there anything I can do on this end to help?”

“I’ll call tomorrow once I’ve had a chance to talk to her.”

“Don’t worry about the time difference. And tell her I love her, Jack.”

“I’ll do that, Sherman,” I said, and heard the line click.

I checked my watch. It was 10:30 p.m., which was 1:30 p.m. back in Los Angeles. I hesitated, punched in Justine Smith’s number, and waited.

Justine used to work as a psychologist on contract with the criminal justice system in L.A. But a few years back she came to work at Private, where she has become one of our best investigators. And once upon a time, before I screwed it all up, we were lovers. Now she was seeing Emilio Cruz, another of my operators in Los Angeles. It had been awkward between the three of us for nearly six months now, and the second I heard Justine’s voice I realized nothing had changed since I’d been overseas.

“Jack?” Justine said.

Even over the static on the international connection, her voice filled me with a sense of regret, of things that could have been if I hadn’t been such a stubborn idiot and let her walk out of that part of my life.

“Hey,” I said. “You holding down the fort?”

“No barbarians at the gate, if that’s what you mean,” Justine replied. “I finished up the Dawson case. And Del Rio is handling the CTI thing.”

Rick Del Rio was my closest friend. We’d crash-landed together in the marines and he’d been with me from the day I launched Private. Del Rio broke his back the previous fall, and had only just returned to work.

“How’s he doing?” I asked.

“You can see he’s still in some pain, but damned if he’ll tell anyone,” Justine replied.

“Cruz?”

There was a moment of silence before she said, “He’s in Phoenix. His mother has breast cancer.”

“Tell him my prayers are with him and his mother.”

“I’ll do that,” she said. “Thanks.”

I told her about Sherman Wilkerson and his granddaughter.

“Sounds like she’s been through something traumatic,” she said.

“Yeah, I wish you were here, to see if you could get her to open up.”

“You telling me to pack my trousseau and fly to Paris?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I need you there to work the L.A. end of this. I want you to take a team to Sherman’s home and office. Look for signs he could be under surveillance.”

“By who? French drug dealers?”

“Honestly, Justine, I’m still trying to figure that out.”

When I hung up, the shower was still running at Kim’s end of the suite. She’d been in there almost thirty minutes. But then again, I could see her wanting a long hot shower before crashing.

A knock came at the door. Room service. The attendant wheeled in a cart, and made a racket lifting the metal covers over the plates, showing me a prime steak with béarnaise sauce, fresh asparagus, and crisp shoestring fries.

I noticed the shower was off when I settled down to my meal. The meat was tender, and the fries were out of this world: crunchy outside and soft inside, not even the hint of oil. So when I finished every last bit of it, and washed the meal down with a cold Coca-Cola, I was evidently a rare man in Paris: a truly happy camper.

And then I wasn’t.

Over the street sounds echoing through the open balcony doors, I caught poor Kim Kopchinski’s muffled sobs. They were coming from deep in her gut, and made me feel horrible, made me wonder what in God’s name had happened to her and who the pale psycho with the shotgun was.

I went to the door and raised my hand to knock, to comfort her if I could.

But her sobbing ebbed to painful moans that reminded me of my mother’s when she’d locked herself in her bedroom after fights with my drunken father.

I dropped my hand and did what I’d done for my mother back when I was a boy. I stood guard at the door until the moaning died out altogether.