Private Paris

Chapter 65

Pantin, northeastern suburbs of Paris

4:48 p.m.

SERGE MFUNE DROVE a stolen delivery van out of the condemned linen factory on the Canal de l’Ourcq. The sliding doors quickly slammed behind them, blocking any view of the sculpture inside.

In the passenger seat, Émile Sauvage looked over his shoulder at the thick, rolled Oriental rug on top of a painter’s tarp that covered the heavy load of two large wooden crates.

The major turned his attention to the side-view mirror and appraised his disguise: thick black eyebrows, a dense black beard, and a wig. With a healthy dose of instant tan to turn his already bronze skin darker, a worn and faded gray workman’s jumpsuit, and a black-and-white checked scarf, he looked infinitely more North African than French.

Mfune was similarly dressed. Satisfied that they would pass muster, Sauvage turned his attention to the portable police scanner in his lap. It crackled with reports of building protests over the arrests. They mentioned disturbances in Sevran, like Pantin a suburb of Paris with a high concentration of immigrants.

“Building protests,” the captain said. “That’s good.”

“Predictable,” Sauvage said, nodding. “Sevran is always up for a riot.”

He got out a piece of paper with three phone numbers on it, and entered them into the burn phone’s memory.

Mfune glanced over. “Where’d you get them?”

“From someone who thinks like we do,” Sauvage said, and left it at that.

Fifteen minutes later, they came upon a burning vehicle being doused by a fire crew. A police officer stopped them and said, “Where are you headed?”

“Les Bosquets,” Mfune said.

“Not the best place to be after dark tonight.”

“We just deliver a rug and go,” Sauvage said in a thick accent.

The cop shrugged and waved them forward.

Mfune found a place to park the van on the Avenue Clichy-sous-Bois, next to the Bondy Forest and across the street from Les Bosquets housing project. Several groups of young immigrants milled about on the other side of the street. A few eyed the van suspiciously.

Sauvage and Mfune pulled on workmen’s gloves and climbed out, leaving the keys in the ignition and ignoring the watchful eyes. They went to the rear of the vehicle, opened it, and pulled out the rug, leaving the tarp and cargo in place.

After the doors were closed, they hoisted the rug onto their right shoulders, blocking a good look at their faces, and walked diagonally left across the boulevard. Rather than veer right onto one of the streets that veined the housing project, however, they walked on past the nearest high-rise apartment building, hearing music and voices pouring out the open windows.

They went around to the rear entrance, where several young men were standing about and smoking.

“Who’s that for?” one boy asked.

“Madame Lao,” Mfune said.

“That nosy old bitch?” he replied with a chuckle, and even opened the outer door for them.

They moved to a stairwell where they could not be seen from outside. Sauvage slid forward to take the complete weight of the rug.

Captain Mfune split off and started down the stairs. The major began to climb. He encountered no one, and reached the fifth floor quickly.

At the top of the stairwell, Sauvage peered through the window in the door and down the hall. A woman and two children were walking the other way. The major waited until the trio had entered an apartment at the far end of the hall before opening the stairwell door and hurrying forward, noticing once again how loud and disjointed life was inside places like this. At best it was controlled chaos, which helped his chances a great deal.

Sauvage stopped in front of a dinged and scratched metal apartment door with the remnants of yellow crime tape on the hinges. He set the rug down and got out a key that Haja had stolen from the landlord when she had come through the week before, acting like a new refugee in need of shelter.

Haja had said a woman and her mother had been knifed inside the apartment two months before, and no one wanted to rent it. Haja also said that when he opened the apartment door, he’d get immediate attention. Sure enough, the second he threw the dead bolt, he heard a door over his left shoulder open.

Sauvage turned his head enough for nosy Madame Lao to see the beard, the eyebrows, and the hair before he pushed the door open and pulled the rug in after him. The door closed, and he locked it, sniffing at the lingering odor of powerful disinfectants. Leaving the lights off, he dragged the rug through the vacant apartment over to a window that faced the boulevard.

The major unwrapped the black-and-white checked scarf from around his neck and shoulders, revealing a headset with a jawbone microphone. Putting it on, he flipped the tiny power switch and said, “In.”

“Same,” Mfune whispered.

“Same,” Epée said.

Chapter 66

SAUVAGE GOT OUT the burn phone, highlighted the only three numbers in its memory, and pressed text. A blank box appeared, and the major felt his pulse quicken. His words had to be well chosen now.

He thumbed in: If you condemn the Barbes arrests, back us up tonight.

Sauvage hit send and waited.

A few seconds later, much faster than he’d expected, a reply came back from one of the phone numbers.

– Who is this?

Your ally, Sauvage typed.

– Who is this?

That question had come from one of the other numbers. Sauvage again texted all three: See crate contents of blue work van opposite Bosquets on Clichy-sous-Bois. Take enough to defend yourselves. Distribute rest to other believers.

– Who is this?

The third phone number had checked in. They were all waiting. He gave it twenty seconds, then replied: The Prophet’s warhorse.

Sauvage did not wait for a reply. He took off the back of the phone, pulled the battery and SIM card, and broke the unit in two. The pieces went in the baggy pocket of his coverall for later disposal.

The major stood in the shadows by the window, watching. Given his recon background, he was a patient, disciplined man. He would have stood there all night not moving a muscle if the job required it.

But it didn’t take more than ten minutes for the first two to emerge out of the bowels of the project. Both were male, under twenty-five, and dressed in loose drab green cotton pants and tunics. One looked African. The other was clearly of Arab descent.

They crossed the street and circled the van warily. The African peered in through the passenger window. He had to have seen the keys, had to have realized that the door was unlocked. But instead of going around to the driver’s side and getting in, he went to the back doors.

After a moment’s discussion with his partner, he opened them, and the Arab climbed inside. The African shut the doors and stood there. His partner wasn’t in the van more than a minute. When he jumped out, he was lit up, agitated. Both men got out cell phones and began pushing buttons.

Three other men came out of the project. They were in their late teens, early twenties: a Vietnamese, another African with beefy shoulders, and a big, big guy who looked French Polynesian to Sauvage.

They went straight to the rear of the van, and an argument began among the five men. There was some pushing and shoving by the Polynesian, and shouting among all of them when a third group appeared: two men this time, and both far better dressed than the others. This duo joined the fray for several tense moments before the first African guy began to play peacemaker.

He gestured at the van. He gestured at Les Bosquets. There seemed to be enough agreement with his argument that he was allowed to get in. He started the vehicle. With the six other men following closely on foot, he drove the van slowly across the boulevard and into the housing project, where Sauvage could no longer see it.

No matter, the major thought, and pressed the transmit button on the headset. He whispered, “We have a take.”

“Understood,” Mfune said.

“And ready,” Epée said.

“Sit tight,” Sauvage said, very pleased.

The crates in the back of the van contained fifty cleaned and oiled AK-47 assault rifles and seven thousand rounds of 7.62mm ammunition.

It was only a matter of time now.

Chapter 67

8th Arrondissement

6:25 p.m.

WHEN I WOKE up, dusk was falling over Paris, and beyond my bedroom door I could hear voices out in the suite’s living area.

How long had I been out?

I checked the clock on the nightstand. Four hours? We’d gotten back from the Dog’s place at around two that afternoon, and despite the fact that we had the contents of the memory stick to examine, I had been so tired and dizzy that I’d gone into my room, fallen into bed, and passed out cold.

After shaving and showering, I dressed and went out the bedroom door, finding several room service carts in the living area, and Louis, Petitjean, and Vans eating and working on laptop computers.

“Jack, you have arisen!” Louis cried, and gestured to the food. “Eat. Drink. Get your strength back.”

“Have you slept?” I asked.

“Why would I do that when there is so much to be done?” he replied.

“I’m beginning to think you’re a meth addict,” I said, moving to the service carts, which were loaded with delicacies from the Plaza’s kitchen. “You find anything yet?”

“Of course we did,” Petitjean said.

As I piled my plate and gorged, they got me up to speed on what they’d learned while I slept.

The memory stick contained thousands of files in various formats. Some were textual and contained random notes in French and English that referred to various people using initials. Other files contained diary entries and mentioned places by name, including several in the south of France. But again, no names used-just initials. And still others-the majority of the files, as a matter of fact-were copies of Microsoft Excel spreadsheet files that documented a large and very lucrative trading and distribution company.

“What company?” I asked.

“We don’t know yet,” Petitjean said, sighing. “And we don’t know what kind of business they’re involved in, or who they’re doing business with, because they’re using an alphanumeric code that we haven’t been able to crack.”

“Drugs,” Louis said. “Has to be.”

“If so, they’re highly disciplined drug dealers,” Petitjean said.

I poured a cup of coffee and said, “Give me a copy of the memory stick. I want to lend a hand.”

“We can do better than that,” Vans said. “Louis’s canine friend uploaded it all into our virtual office. Files that have already been examined are flagged.”

After getting my laptop from the bedroom, I took a seat on the sofa and followed Vans’s instructions to get access to the memory stick files.

I opened a few of the spreadsheets and studied them enough to see that the code made it a waste of time to search them further. I found several Microsoft Word documents that hadn’t been flagged and started opening them. Some did seem like random notes, ideas jotted down, but others were lists of orders to be given to certain initials along with various snippets of that code.

Because I wasn’t sure of my French-to-English translating skills with even the noncoded stuff, I exited those documents as well and did not flag them. Feeling kind of useless, I wondered how Sci would handle this kind of situation. I was about to give him a call, ask him for advice, when it dawned on me that he might try to take an inventory first.

“Can you get me a list of files filtered by type?” I asked. “A directory?”

“Sure. By format or extension?” Vans asked.

“I don’t know. What’s easier?”

She took my computer, gave it a few instructions, and then nodded and returned it to me.

I scrolled down the list, scanning past all Microsoft Excel and Word files, finding more than twenty files in a format-RCP-that neither I nor my computer seemed to recognize.

I dragged the RCP files into a new folder that I intended to e-mail over to Sci, and continued on with my scroll.

Five minutes later, I saw another three of the RCP-type files, but my attention shot below them on the list to two JPEG files. They’d been flagged as examined, but for some reason I highlighted both and double-clicked.

My laptop seemed to grind a moment before two pictures popped up, splitting the screen. I studied them, both offhand shots, and felt confused by the odd sense that the subjects of the photographs were familiar to me, but I didn’t know how. Then it struck me, and I stared at the pictures long enough to consider alternatives before the unarguable meaning of them became clear.

“I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch,” I said.

“What?” Louis said.

“The guy behind all this-the lighter, Kim, everything. He was right under our nose, Louis, and we let him walk away.”

Chapter 68

14th Arrondissement

7:40 p.m.

A COLD DRIZZLE fell over Paris as Louis and I left the taxi and hurried toward a blue gate in the dark stone fortress walls of La Santé prison.

For decades, and through the turn of this century, La Santé regularly made the list of the world’s worst places to be incarcerated.

“A hellhole, Jack,” Louis said angrily. “It’s supposed to be closed now, which makes the fact that they’re keeping Farad and the others in here an absolute outrage as far as I’m concerned.”

At the gate, Louis called someone on his cell phone. Ten minutes later, the gate was unlocked by a uniformed police captain, Alain Grande, a burly guy with pocked skin. He scowled and said, “You owe me on this one, Louis. He’s not supposed to have visitors beyond counsel.”

“We are working on his behalf and his counsel’s behalf,” Louis said.

“Ten minutes,” Grande said begrudgingly, and let us pass through.

Erected in the 1860s, La Santé was built like spokes on a wheel, with a central hub and four multistory wings jutting off it. A modern maximum-security wing was added later, and it was there that Grande led us.

“I can’t believe they have them in here,” Louis said.

The police captain shrugged. “It’s still the highest-security facility in Paris, and intelligence and anti-terror wanted quick and easy access to them.”

We passed construction debris and supplies for the prison’s renovations and at least twenty officers wearing bulletproof vests and carrying submachine guns.

“They think AB-16 is going to attack the prison? Free their leaders?”

“They killed a cabinet minister, didn’t they, Louis?” Grande snapped. “What makes you think they wouldn’t try?”

That shut Louis up, and we walked the rest of the way in silence. Captain Grande brought us into a room with two doors, a steel table bolted to the bare cement floor, and four metal folding chairs.

A few minutes later, the other door opened, and Farad was brought in wearing the same clothes from the other night, and leg-irons and shackles. His eyes were sunken and bloodshot. His hair was greasy, and he had two days’ growth of beard on his face.

He glared at us and at Captain Grande as officers ran a chain from his handcuffs through a steel eyebolt welded to the table. When they were done, Farad said in a hostile tone, “Nice of you to visit, Louis. Jack.”

“They wouldn’t let us see you before,” Louis explained. “It is only this past hour that we even knew where they were holding you.”

“It’s true, Ali,” I said.

Farad set his jaw before looking to Grande. “Can we have some privacy?”

“No,” the captain said.

“Ali was a decorated officer of the judiciaire,” Louis complained.

“I don’t care,” the captain replied. “I’m not moving.”

Looking as though he was on the edge of a meltdown, Farad said, “They think I’m part of the AB-16 conspiracy because I attend the imam’s mosque. They have him here too, and Firmus Massi. Both men are like me: moderate, and absolutely opposed to radicalism. We are being framed.”

“If so, we’ll prove it,” Louis said. “I promise you that, Ali. But right now we need your help on the Kopchinski case. It now involves, we believe, certain people you might know.”

Farad shook his head in weary disbelief. “You think I’m involved on the wrong side of this case too?”

“No,” I said. “Nothing like that.”

He puffed out his lips and blew out. “What can I do for you?”

Louis slid his cell phone across the table and showed him the two pictures I’d found on the memory stick. He tapped the face of the only person in either photograph. “Recognize him?”

Farad leaned over and studied the picture, and his head retreated. “Really? You’ve got actual evidence that he’s involved?”

Before I could reply, we heard a man and a woman shouting outside, demanding to know where we were, and how the hell we’d gotten inside.

Chapter 69

CAPTAIN GRANDE LOST several shades of color. “Time’s up, Louis.”

Louis ignored him and said, “Tell us what you know about-”

“I said enough!” Grande roared just before the door flew open, and Investigateur Hoskins and Juge Fromme stormed in.

The crippled magistrate pointed his cane at Farad and said, “Take that man back to his cell. Now. And put these two under arrest for obstruction.”

“Obstruction?” I said, getting to my feet. “We’re part of his defense team. We have the right to-”

“What do you know of rights in France?” Fromme thundered. “You, Monsieur Morgan, have no rights here. And I’m going to make sure you’re deported in the morning.”

“You let them in here?” Hoskins asked Grande.

“They said they were working on another case,” the captain sputtered. “Nothing to do with AB-16.”

I expected Louis to jump in, but then I glanced back and saw him talking fast and low to Farad, and I knew I had to stall.

“That is one hundred percent true,” I said. “It’s a missing persons case involving the granddaughter of one of my oldest clients back in California.”

Completely unconvinced, Fromme said, “Her name?”

“Kim Kopchinski,” Louis said, standing up from the table with a nod to Farad. “She’s a U.S. citizen, and we believe she is being held by someone involved in a murder here in Paris a few days ago-someone who is also of great interest to the judicial police in the south of France. Isn’t that right, Ali?”

Farad nodded. “You can call my former partner, Christoph Le Clerc, if you don’t believe me. He’s been working to put this guy away for years. It would be a great coup if he were taken down.”

The magistrate looked as though he wanted to break his cane over his knee, but then said, “Out with it. Everything.”

It took us about fifteen minutes to explain to the judge about Kopchinski, the lighter, the memory stick, and the connection to Marseille. When we were done, you could tell he didn’t like it, but he said, “You have this memory stick?”

“We have the data on it,” Louis said.

“We just want to make sure Ms. Kopchinski is returned safe and sound to her grandfather,” I said. “That’s all this discussion was about.”

The magistrate glanced at Hoskins, who shrugged.

“Fine,” Fromme said. “You are not under arrest. But you are leaving, right now, and Monsieur Farad is going back to his cell.”

“Keep the faith,” I said to Farad as officers led him out. “Private Paris is behind you one hundred percent.”

“This is a miscarriage of justice,” Louis told Fromme and Hoskins after Farad had gone. “There is nothing concrete that I know of that links Farad or the imam or Firmus Massi to the AB-16 murders.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Louis,” Hoskins said sadly. “We do have such evidence.”

Fromme nodded grimly. “When we searched the mosque we found crucifixes taken from Henri Richard, René Pincus, and Lourdes Latrelle.”

I said, “How can you be sure that-”

“They’ve all been positively identified by next of kin, Monsieur Morgan,” Hoskins said firmly. “There is also preliminary DNA evidence that puts the imam and Firmus Massi at the scene of Guy LaFont’s murder last night, and other DNA material that puts your employee, Monsieur Farad, inside the restaurant the night Chef Pincus was murdered.”

Chapter 70

Montfermeil, eastern suburbs of Paris

10 p.m.

MONITORING A PARIS news station and the police scanner, Émile Sauvage remained in disguise and waited patiently in the dark apartment, looking out the window and monitoring the street and sidewalks around Les Bosquets.

In the past two hours, the bands of immigrant youth roaming the area had been getting larger and angrier. The stolen van was brought out and lit on fire in the middle of the boulevard. When police arrived, rocks and bottles had flown in their direction.

That had prompted the cops to retreat two blocks from the housing project and call for reinforcements. Satellite news trucks were already on the scene, and the major was pleased when several rioters responded by spray-painting a crude version of the AB-16 symbol on the road near the burning van.

Based on radio reports and the scanner, in response to the arrests and riots in Barbès, similar mobs were forming and causing destruction in other Parisian suburbs with large immigrant populations. Surprisingly, there had been no reports of shots fired.

That’s about to change, the major thought coldly as the scanner lit up with word of riot police heading toward the housing project.

Sauvage got out a pocketknife and cut the strings that bound the rug. Grasping the fringe, he unrolled the cheap Oriental slowly, until he saw the edge of a five-by-seven-foot silver fire blanket wrapped inside.

He kept on unrolling the rug until he’d freed the fire blanket and a loaded Swedish-made AT4 shoulder-mount rocket grenade launcher.

“Alert,” Epée said into his earbud’s microphone.

“Confirmed,” Mfune said.

“Confirmed,” Sauvage said, and picked up the fire blanket, which he draped over his head and about his shoulders like a hooded robe.

At sixty inches long and eighty-four inches wide, the blanket more than covered him from the back when he took a knee so he could see further down the boulevard.

Two white Mercedes-Benz Unimog police trucks pulled behind the patrol cars. The Unimogs were equipped with antiriot gear, including water cannons and a front blade used as a battering ram. Riot police poured out the backs of the trucks. Wearing helmets, visors, body armor, and carrying Plexiglas shields, they quickly assembled in a tight line that spanned the boulevard.

An officer used a bullhorn to tell the rioters to disperse and return to their homes or face arrest. That only seemed to incense the mob. Molotov cocktails spun through the air, burst, and burned on the street.

Sauvage smiled when some in the crowd of immigrant youth began to chant, “AB-16! AB-16!”

On a shouted order, the riot police raised their shields and began to advance down the boulevard. The major waited until they were half a block closer before he pushed up the window and reached for the rocket launcher.

The AT4 was green, forty inches long, and fourteen pounds when loaded. A single-shot, recoilless weapon, it featured a hollow fiberglass barrel that was open at both ends. Sauvage pulled out a cotter pin, which unblocked the firing rod. Then he pushed the cocking mechanism up and over the barrel, locking it on safe with a red lever.

The major put silicone plugs in his ears before shouldering the weapon and settling in behind the simple iron sights, gloved left hand resting on the red safety lever, and gloved right thumb on the button trigger. Watching the police march steadily forward, he noted that the antiriot trucks were trailing them closely.

Thud. Thud.

Canisters of tear gas flew from behind the shields and burst in the street.

“On my mark,” he muttered into the mic.

When he was positive that the police and armored trucks were well within the launcher’s three-hundred-yard effective range, he whispered, “Now.”

Mfune cut all power to the apartment building.

Shouts and curses echoed out the windows of the housing project. Sauvage released the rocket launcher’s safety lever, swung the sights over the heads of the advancing police, and steadied his aim.

He punched the trigger.

There was an initial thumping sound like a bass drum being struck. The rocket blew a plume of intense pressure and fire out the rear of the launcher. The flames and blast waves bounced off the apartment walls and pummeled the blanket and Sauvage from behind like a crashing wave of fire.

Despite the heat and force of the backblast, the major never lost sight of the contrail of the 86-millimeter rocket, the warhead of which contained 440 grams of Octol, a substance so volatile that it’s also called HEAT, for high-explosive anti-tank.

Many of the riot police threw themselves to the ground just before the HEAT rocket struck the blade of one of the antiriot trucks and detonated in a thunderclap that spawned a brilliant red mushroom cloud.

Chapter 71

SAUVAGE DROPPED THE spent rocket launcher on the floor and threw off the singed fire blanket. He tried to stand but felt unbalanced by the backblast that had ruptured the air pressure in the apartment and upset his equilibrium.

On this second try, however, the major was up and yanking out the ear protectors in time to hear chaos in the streets below as the riot police shouted to one another, and bands of immigrant youth cheered the attack.

Sauvage did not pause to savor the havoc he’d caused. Instead, he pocketed the police scanner, threw the rolled rug over his shoulder, and went to the door, ignoring the charred and smoking apartment walls.

He pulled open the door. The dark hallway was filled with people panicking at the explosions and trying to get out of the building. Stepping into the hallway, he got out a pen flashlight and turned it on, saying into the jaw mic, “Joiners?”

“Not yet,” Epée said.

“Encourage them,” Sauvage said, head down, focused on the light beam, moving fast and straight toward the stairwell, using the rug as a soft battering ram to push people aside.

Through the open door by the stairway, the major heard Epée squeeze off three short bursts of automatic rifle fire. That caused pandemonium and shrieking in the hallway, which the major used to his advantage.

While most of the immigrants went to the ground, Sauvage went over the top of them, and shouldered his way through the staircase door. Holding tight to the rug, he started leaping down the stairs, taking them two or three at a time.

Behind and above him, Sauvage heard more shots, quick and erratic-not the disciplined bursts of fire that Epée employed.

Amateurs!

They had the AK-47 assault rifles and 7.62mm ammunition!

And they were fighting for AB-16!

The major barreled down the stairs like a wild man now, using the rug to knock the people below him aside and roaring out, “Allahu akbar! God is great!”

When he reached the first floor and burst out the rear entrance, Mfune was waiting. The captain took the rug, and they hurried with a knot of people fleeing pistol shots and submachine gun fire.

It wasn’t until they were well south of the housing project and crossing the Rue du Général de Gaulle that Sauvage felt comfortable enough to get out his real phone and call Amé, who answered on the first ring.

“It’s live!” she cried. “They’ve broken into programming!”

“Claim it,” he said, and hung up.

On the Avenue des Rossignols, Epée was waiting with the car. They put the rug in the trunk and got in. The tagger pulled out and drove away at an untroubled speed.

Feeling safe behind the tinted glass, Sauvage stripped off the beard, wig, and fake eyebrows before rolling the window down.

When they stopped at an intersection, he heard police sirens wailing north toward Les Bosquets. To his ears, it sounded like a triumphant symphony.

Chapter 72

International waters off the coast of Monaco

April 11, 4:10 a.m.

I PULLED ON a black wet suit top and balaclava-style neoprene hood. The night sky was overcast. There was nothing visible anywhere around us except for faint lights a mile or more off the bow of our Zodiac raft, which floated silently.

Louis was already in his wet suit, lashing shut a rubber dry bag with the equipment we’d need. Randall Peaks was futzing around back by the engine, and I was amazed and pleased at what a Saudi prince could do when he’s grateful to someone for keeping his sixteen-year-old daughter out of the headlines.

Need a raft? No problem. Need weapons? No problem-whatever you need, Mr. Morgan. We’ll move heaven and earth to help Private in whatever-

“Ready?” Peaks asked.

“Oui,” Louis said.

“Yes,” I said, and felt myself slip toward a mind-set I was taught in the marine corps and have continued to cultivate over the years: the cold, alert, and harsh way of thinking that seems to take over whenever I’m anticipating violence.

“Hand signals from here on out,” I said.

Peaks started the electric trolling motor mounted next to the outboard, and we started slowly toward the lights. He cut the motor when we were less than five hundred yards from the 120-foot triple-deck motor cruiser. She was sleek and midnight blue, and if it weren’t for the running lights, I think we would have had trouble finding her even with the GPS coordinates we’d been given.

Peaks lowered an anchor to slow the raft’s drift while Louis and I put on swim fins, masks, and snorkels before picking up the small dry bags. We slipped over the side and breaststroked through the swells, constantly scanning the yacht’s three decks. Nothing moved until we were right on the edge of the glow cast by the running lights.

Then Whitey lit a cigarette and walked forward along the rail of the main deck. The second he disappeared around the front of the yacht, we pulled the neoprene up over our lower faces and swam cautiously toward the stern and a wooden swimming platform to which a small speedboat was tied.

We hung off the rear of the smaller craft, stripped off the snorkeling gear, and opened the dry bags. I dog-paddled around the motorboat clenching a Glock 19 between my teeth to keep it out of the salt water. I placed it on the swimming platform. Louis came up beside me.

He climbed onto the platform first and rolled over tight against the hull, just below the painted name of the yacht, which read “Predator.”

I ignored the threat and followed Louis. Barely on the platform, I smelled cigarette smoke and caught sight of Whitey coming around the port side, still on the rear lower deck, moving as if he were on leisurely patrol.

I couldn’t move without being seen. Instead, I drew up the neoprene over my face and smeared myself against the wooden platform, gripping the Glock, pressuring the trigger safety, prepared to fire.

Whitey’s footsteps came closer, and then stopped. I held my breath, listening for the sound of a gun squeaking free of a holster, or worse, a shout of alarm. Instead, he walked on.

I gave Whitey two seconds before pushing up to my bare feet. Without a word or gesture to Louis, I oozed over the stern and onto the mahogany deck, as smooth and quiet as a snake. Whitey was twenty feet away, ambling and smoking with his back to me. I stalked him.

When I had closed the gap between us to less than five feet, I coiled to strike. Whitey seemed to sense something and began to turn, the cigarette glowing in his mouth. By the time he saw me, the butt of my Glock was already chopping toward his skull.

Whitey managed a cough before I hit him just above his right eye. He dropped dumbly to his knees, probably already out cold. But I wasn’t taking any chances. I hammered him again, and he pitched sideways onto the deck. I got zip ties from the dry bag, bound him to the rail, and gagged him while Louis stood guard.

It was ten minutes to five. The first hint of dawn showed on the horizon. We had to move.

Louis led the way off the rear deck, through a sliding glass door, and into a plush living and dining area. We padded forward, pistols leading, and I thought we were being quieter than your average ninja.

Then the dog started barking.

Chapter 73

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” a muffled and frustrated man yelled in French from somewhere on the deck above us. “Goddamn, it’s just Le Blanc getting coffee!”

But the dog wasn’t listening. He was still barking, and we could hear him bounding toward the gangway, which gave us little time to prepare. I looked around, wanting an alternative to killing the dog, and saw none.

Louis, however, grabbed a cushion and a cotton throw from a love seat.

Before I could reach for another cushion, the Jack Russell terrier exploded from the gangway, back bristled, teeth as big as a Doberman’s. He took two surprisingly long jumps, ducked his head, and leaped at my throat.

I ducked, and he sailed over me. Louis swatted him out of the air with the cushion, jumped on him when he hit the floor, and wrapped up the dazed pooch nice and snug and safe in the cotton throw. We used zip ties to keep him that way, though we could not control his shrill, panicked whines, which must have been relatively normal sounds for the dog to make because the man now coming down the gangway seemed irritated but unalarmed.

“If you take a dump before I can let you out, you are a dead little terrorist,” he called in warning as he exited the gangway. “Napoleon, I swear-”

Wearing nothing but red athletic shorts and the silver lighter on a thin chain around his neck, Phillipe Rivier halted at the sight of us aiming pistols at him from less than twenty feet away.

The man who’d ordered his Jack Russell terrier to attack me near the Hôtel Lancaster didn’t yelp, or shrink, or show any outward sign of fear. He just glanced at the open sliding glass door before raising his hands and calmly said, “What do you want? Money? I keep very little aboard, and-”

“We want Kim Kopchinski,” Louis said.

Rivier acted bewildered and said, “Wrong yacht. There is no-”

“We’ve got the right boat,” Louis said. “Now, where is Kim? Or should I put a hole in your kneecap to make you remember?”

Rivier’s calm demeanor vanished. He snarled softly, “Do you have any idea who you’re fucking with here?”

“You’re Phillipe Rivier,” I said, pulling off my hood. “You pose as an import-export entrepreneur. But behind the cover you’re a middleman and silent financier in everything from illegal arms deals to heroin smuggling and human trafficking. It seems there’s nothing you won’t do for an illegal buck, which is why you spend most of your time in international waters with bodyguards, and a vicious little dog for your only real companion.”

Rivier hardened. “You should have kept the hood on, Morgan, because now that I know who you are, I’m going to make sure that you and Private-”

Louis snapped, “You’re doing nothing to him or to Private. We’ve got a copy of that memory stick you use to track your black businesses. That’s how we figured out you have Kim. You were disciplined and careful with the codes and initials and all, but you couldn’t help putting a couple of pictures of your dog on the drive, and one with your brother in the background.”

“Luckily, I recognized the little terrorist,” I said. “And Investigateur Le Clerc of the French National Police in Marseille recognized your brother, Benoit, who, it turns out, is gay, lives in Le Marais, loves Kim, and hates your guts. He told us exactly where to find you. So do the world a favor: shut the fuck up, Mr. Rivier, and go facedown on the floor, hands behind your head.”

Rivier remained furious, but he dropped to one knee and made to put his hands on the ground. That’s when I caught a flicker of motion through the window behind Louis.

The Nose was out there on deck with some other guy. Both men were crouching to aim through the window.

Chapter 74

THROWING UP THE Glock, I shouted “Down!” at Louis and shot two wild rounds at the window. They sounded like cannon fire inside the cabin. Neither bullet connected, but they were close enough to make the two men dive for cover and hesitate to return fire.

“Kill them!” Rivier bellowed.

Louis grabbed the middleman and hauled him up in front of us as a shield.

I put my gun to Rivier’s head and said, “Wrong suggestion, Phillipe. Tell your boys to come in here, or we will do the world a favor and kill you. You’ve got five seconds to decide. Five, four, three…”

Rivier looked as if he’d eaten something rancid, but finally shouted, “Nez! Captain! Lower your weapons and come in here.”

The Nose appeared first, his pistol still up, looking for a clear shot at us, but finding none. We, however, had him dead to rights, and he knew it.

“Drop the weapon, and kick it away,” Louis said.

Rivier’s goon looked at his boss, who nodded. The Nose let the gun slip from his hand. It fell to the carpet and he toed it away.

“Bien,” Louis said. “Now, on your belly, hands behind your head, feet wide. You, same thing.”

The captain, a weathered man in his forties, put the shotgun aside before he even stepped inside the cabin and went facedown on his own. Louis had both men’s ankles and wrists in zip restraints before I did the same to Rivier.

“What do you mean to do to me?” Rivier asked after I’d shoved him down beside the others.

“Depends on you,” I said. “You can continue to stonewall us as to Kim’s whereabouts, which will force us to search the yacht, a time-consuming process that will truly piss us off and force us to take desperate measures with the memory stick, like sending a copy to the police. Or you can tell us where she is, we get her, and we leave you to your sorry-ass life, keeping several copies of your records in various locations as insurance that you will never, ever try to contact Kim again or try to take revenge against us.”

“Sums it up,” Louis said.

“How can I trust you?” Rivier asked.

“We told you the deal,” Louis said harshly. “Take it or leave it.”

Rivier hesitated, and then said, “She’s up one deck and forward. Master stateroom at the end of the hall.”

Relieved that she wasn’t dead, I said, “I’ll get her.”

“I’ll wait here and call our friend,” Louis said.

I suppose I expected to find Kim in handcuffs or tied down. But when I pushed open the door to the stateroom, it was worse than I could have expected.

Rivier had stripped her to her underwear and attached leather straps and bonds to her wrists and legs that held her loosely spread eagle on a bed with black sheets. She was blindfolded, and when she heard me enter, she started to beg in a thick, slurred voice, “Please, Phillipe. Just kill me. I can’t go on like-”

“You’re safe now, Kim,” I said, crossing to her. “It’s Jack Morgan. You’re safe and going home to your grandfather.”

I pulled off the blindfold so she could see it was true, and she dissolved into soft weeping as I pulled my knife from the diving sheath strapped to my calf. I cut free her wrists. When I did, I saw the livid tracks on the insides of her arms. There were syringes in the wastebasket.

“What has he drugged you with?” I demanded.

“Heroin,” she managed. “Trying to get me hooked again.”

I wanted to ask her how in God’s name she’d gotten involved with a guy like Phillipe Rivier, but I figured it could wait. The sooner we were off the yacht, the better. I found a blanket and covered her with it.

“Can you walk?” I asked.

She nodded groggily, and I helped her up. She was wobbly and leaned on me as we left her prison cell and made our way back to the living area. When she saw Rivier, she came out of her stupor and shrieked at him, “I hope you rot in hell for what you’ve done to me.”

“What I did to you?” Rivier said, amused. “You asked for it, Kimmy. You always asked for it.”

She pushed away from me, tried to go for a knife in the galley, but I caught her and said, “That only hurts you. It’s over now. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

“I’ll always hurt her,” Rivier said. “She’ll never get away from that, no matter how hard she tries to escape it.”

Kim stared at him, and then broke down sobbing in my arms.

“Get her out of here, Jack,” Louis said. “Our ride’s out there already.”

“Take care of the rest of it,” I said.

“What ‘rest’?” Rivier asked.

As I led Kim toward the rear deck, Louis said, “I’m going to raise your anchor, start your motors, and set a course on your autopilot. In about an hour, an hour and a half, you’ll enter French waters. And when you do, you’ll quickly be boarded by Investigateur Christoph Le Clerc of the Marseille office of the French National Police. He’ll take evidence on an obvious incidence of piracy on the high seas, and the first thing he’s going to collect is that fancy lighter around your neck.”

“What?” Rivier shouted. “We had a deal!”

“Jack, what is this phrase from Animal House again?” Louis asked.

Over my shoulder, I said, “You fucked up. You trusted us.”

Chapter 75

Nice, France

7:22 a.m.

WE BOARDED PRIVATE’S Gulfstream at the airport.

Kim had been quiet for most of the ride in on the Zodiac, nodding off at times. But on the drive from Monaco to Nice, she’d started to shake from withdrawal. We’d anticipated her having some physical issues and had brought along a concierge doctor and nurse. They immediately took Kim to the back of the cabin and shut the divider.

We were soon in the air, heading back to Paris.

“This your normal duty at Private?” Peaks asked from across the aisle. “You know, rescues? That sort of thing.”

“They come up,” I admitted, and yawned. “Why?”

“The prince is happy Maya’s safe, and grateful to you and Langlois,” Peaks said. “I don’t think the same can be said about me.”

“Looking for a job?” I asked.

“If it comes to that,” Peaks said.

“If it comes to that, I’d love to talk,” I said.

Louis, to my surprise, was already snoring in the seat in front of me. I put in earbuds and called up a white noise app for the sounds of waves softly crashing on a beach. It was as if I were home, and that noise was coming in my window. I fell hard and deep.

When I felt someone shaking my shoulder what seemed like a few minutes later, I jerked awake in a foul mood, pulled out the earbuds, and stared angrily at the doctor.

“I didn’t want to disturb you, but you’ve been sleeping an hour,” she said. “And Kim keeps asking for you.”

“Okay,” I said, forcing open my eyes. “I’ll be right there. How is she?”

“Considering what she’s been through, the heroin and all, she’s good,” the doctor said. “We gave her a slight dose of morphine to stay her withdrawal for a more suitable time and place, and a smaller dose of amphetamine salts to keep her heart rate up in the meantime.”

“She stable enough to make the trip to L.A.?” I asked.

“I think so.”

I thanked her and went aft, knocked, and went through the divider. Kim lay under blankets, propped up against pillows. She had an IV in her arm and looked wrung out and pale.

The nurse left and shut the divider behind her.

“You don’t give up, do you, Jack Morgan?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.

“Not as a rule,” I said. “The doc said you wanted to talk to me.”

Kim looked at her lap, bit the corner of her lip, and nodded weakly.

“I owe you an explanation,” she said. “After what you’ve done, you deserve it. But please, I’d appreciate it if my grandfather hears none of this. He’s…he’s one of the few people in my life who always believed the best of me.”

I leaned up against the cabin wall and said, “You don’t owe me an explanation. But whatever you feel comfortable telling me stays with me.”

Chapter 76

OVER THE COURSE of the next forty minutes, Kim gave me the CliffsNotes version of her story. After her parents died in the boating accident, she felt compelled to return to France, where she ended up working in Cannes as part of the film festival staff. She ran with a young, wild Euro crowd. There were drugs, and she got a taste for them, heroin in particular.

Kim met Phillipe Rivier the night of her twenty-fifth birthday at a nightclub in Cannes. He was fifteen years her senior, but he was handsome, sophisticated, mysterious, and by all appearances fabulously wealthy.

“There was also this…” Kim started playing with the blanket. “He was very, very sexy. And it was like in that book, you know?”

“Book?”

“Fifty Shades of you know?” she said. “Except it all took place on the boat.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said, and fell silent for several beats. “It was good for a while, an escape from everything, I guess. And then it wasn’t. I realized he was keeping me isolated on the yacht, and when I complained, he either punished me or gave me a little heroin, which kept me in line.”

Kim said she lived aboard Rivier’s yacht for more than two years. During that time, she became a junkie, using the heroin to deaden herself to her predicament.

Then one night, four months before Louis and I got the call from her grandfather, Kim said she overheard Rivier tell Whitey and the Nose that it was time to get rid of her, that the drugs had made her a liability. They were moored in the harbor at Marseille, one of the few times the yacht was so close to land.

“They were going to kill me once we were back out to sea,” Kim said. “Phillipe seemed to get aroused by that because later that evening he came to my cabin for the first time in weeks. I thought he might, so I had prepared.”

Instead of shooting up the powdered heroin he had given her earlier in the day, she’d saved it. When he gave her more, she heated both batches and pretended to shoot it while he stripped off his clothes. She lay back, acting as though she was in a heroin-induced stupor, and when he came to her she stabbed him with the hypodermic needle and drove the drugs into him.

Whitey and the Nose were ashore. And Rivier enjoyed S and M, so the captain never came to check when his boss yelled. Rivier punched Kim a few times before he passed out. Kim got dressed and decided she was owed something for the years he’d kept her prisoner. She knew the combination to his safe, and took one hundred thousand euros, and the only thing Rivier never let out of his sight: the lighter.

“You had no idea that it disguised a digital memory stick?” I asked.

“Is that what it was?” she said. “He always told me it was a present from his mother. I took it for spite.”

Kim got the keys to the speedboat. The captain saw her, tried to stop her, but it was too late. She made it to a dock in Marseille, and then to a church. She told the priest she was addicted to heroin and in trouble, but also that she had money to pay for her own rehabilitation.

For a twenty-five-thousand euro contribution to his church, the priest got her out of the city and to a private detoxification and addiction recovery center near Aix-en-Provence. Kim gave the center the rest of the money-seventy-five thousand euros-and spent three and a half months cleaning up there before Rivier’s men somehow found her.

“They asked for me at the gate, but the doctors refused to say whether I was there or not,” she said. “I took off that night and made my way to Paris, to a friend’s place in Les Bosquets. I had an ATM card from my trust, but no passport. I didn’t know what to do, so I called my grandfather, and he called you.”

I stood there, digesting it, until Kim said, “You think I’m a bad person.”

“I think you’ve got a few issues,” I said. “But I also think you got caught up in something that was way beyond your ability to either anticipate or control, and ultimately I have to commend you for escaping like that. It was gutsy.”

Kim smiled wanly. “Thank you.”

“One thing. Why didn’t you go to the police?”

“Because Phillipe always said he had the French police in his back pocket,” she said. “Especially in Marseille.”

I wondered about that, wondered whether Ali Farad knew cops in Marseille that he suspected were corrupted by Rivier. But before I could come up with reasons for or against the possibility, the doctor returned.

“The pilot wants us to take our seats for landing,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, and buckled myself into the jump seat next to her bed. “Rivier’s brother, Benoit. He cares about you.”

“He was in Cannes when I first met Phillipe,” she said softly. “He always cared about me. A true friend.”

“Did he know his brother was mistreating you?”

Kim shook her head. “Benoit lived in Paris, and never visited the yacht while I was there. He was shocked when I showed up at his door and told him.”

“So you were staying with him in the Marais the night of the shoot-out in the club?”

“Yes,” she said, and we banked in and landed.

When we’d pulled into a private jet hangar, I left my seat and held out my hand to shake hers. “They’ll refuel, take you to Los Angeles. The doctor will be with you the whole way, and I know your granddad will be thrilled to see you.”

Kim gripped my hand, tears in her eyes, and said, “Thank you for saving me even when I didn’t seem to want saving.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, and moved toward the divider.

“Jack?” she called after me.

She had this pitiful expression on her face when she asked, “Can people change for good? Someone like me?”

I flashed on my brother, Tommy, and felt torn, but said, “I hear it happens all the time if you just have faith and accept help from the people who love you.”

Chapter 77

Charles de Gaulle Airport

10:40 a.m.

WE WAITED UNTIL the jet had lifted off before taking a car back into Paris. From the highway we could see fingers of black smoke rising above the eastern suburbs. We’d been gone less than nine hours, but we entered a city that had fundamentally changed.

The rocket grenade attack and gunfight in Les Bosquets was all over the French media. Three police officers had been killed and nine wounded in the HEAT explosion and ensuing gun battle.

Six immigrant youths had died. Two had been weaponless. Four had been armed with AK-47 assault rifles. The footage of the AB-16 battle had gone viral, and more violence had erupted in public housing areas throughout the suburbs.

Cars were seized, sprayed with the tag of AB-16, and then set afire. Police who’d rushed to the scenes had been met with automatic weapons fire and forced to withdraw.

In the front seat, Peaks seemed to have had enough. He pulled out his phone, punched in a number, listened, and then said, “Your highness, I’m thinking that today might be a good time for the princesses to be leaving Paris.”

He listened and said, “If you can make that call, I will arrange everything.”

Peaks hung up and said, “He’s calling his wife to pull the plug on the shopping spree, and it sounds as if I have a job for at least another day.”

“My loss,” I said.

Peaks began making arrangements for three bulletproof limos to be brought to the Plaza Athénée in three hours’ time. That was followed by a call to the prince’s pilot. An estimated departure was set for four that afternoon.

I called Justine, who, it turned out, was visiting Sherman Wilkerson.

“Put him on,” I said.

“Jack?” he said in an airy voice. “Do you have her?”

“She’s on her way to L.A. as we speak,” I said. “She’s a little beat up and will need first-class medical attention, but I think she’s going to be all right.”

“And the danger she was in?”

“That’s been taken care of, sir,” I said.

For several moments I listened to Sherman’s labored breathing, and then he said, “You are one of the good ones, Jack Morgan. Everyone at Private.”

“We aim to please,” I said, and asked that Justine be put back on.

“You want me to meet her at LAX?” she asked.

“Yes. White-glove treatment,” I said, and then explained how Rivier had been trying to get Kim addicted again.

“I’ll get her to Betty Ford,” she said.

“But not until Sherman has seen her,” I said.

“Sure,” Justine said. “How’s the art professor?”

“I haven’t seen her in several days,” I replied. “Kidnappings, murders, and general insurrection have a way of killing the whole romance thing.”

“So there was a ‘romance thing’?”

“I’ll admit to a crush and nothing more.”

There was silence.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing,” she replied. “When should I tell people you’re coming back to L.A.?”

“What people?”

“Your brother, for one,” she said. “He keeps calling.”

“His trial is coming up,” I said. “Maybe I’ll stay in Paris until it’s over.”

“Really?”

“No,” I said, sighing. “Thanks for your work with Sherman. Job well done.”

“I’ve just been a regular in the ICU, but thanks.”

I hung up, feeling weirdly disconnected from my “normal” life back in L.A.

How long had I been in Paris? Five, six days?

It seemed longer. It seemed like-

“I have seen twenty-nine AB-16 tags just since we left the airport,” Louis said. “A week ago, there were none.”

“Okay…” I said, yawning.

“I think this is a tipping point,” he said at last. “With the rocket grenade and the AK-47 assault rifles, the government won’t have a choice now. They’ll declare martial law.”

Chapter 78

7th Arrondissement

Noon

INSIDE THE WAR School, Major Sauvage and Captain Mfune stood at attention with four of their classmates. They had only just been summoned to the office of Brigadier General Anton Georges, commander of École de Guerre.

General Georges was a tall, laconic man, proud of his bureaucratic skills. Sauvage, however, thought him a fraud and a jackass because he had risen to his rank and station in life without ever once experiencing combat.

“Gentlemen,” General Georges began. “Paris and les banlieues will be subject to martial law as of nineteen hundred hours, and to curfew between twenty-three hundred hours and oh six hundred hours. All French students of the War School are needed, especially the six of you, who speak Arabic. You will be deployed in command positions this evening throughout the eastern suburbs.”

General Georges said they’d be issued weapons and combat gear, and he handed out their assignments.

Sauvage wanted to pump his fist in the air when he saw where they were putting him. Mfune was also pleased.

“Go home and take care of your personal affairs,” the general said. “Rendezvous at seventeen hundred hours. Dismissed.”

“General?” one officer said. “Any idea how long we will be in the field?”

“Unclear, Captain,” General Georges said. “Depends on how quickly the AB-16 movement can be brought under control.”

The officer groaned softly. Sauvage understood and glanced at him scornfully. War School was a necessary stop on the way to high command. The officer was asking what would become of his career if he didn’t get to check the “War School” box on his résumé.

Another jackass, thought the major. Can’t he see the possibilities? No, of course not. He’s like the general: incapable of it.

Sauvage, however, saw all the possibilities, and he was almost beside himself with excitement. The army was putting them inside the flash points!

As the general was dismissing them, an audacious idea popped into Sauvage’s head. It bloomed and became part of the plot in an instant.

Outside, Sauvage told Mfune what he had in mind, and they split up with promises to stay in close touch. The major took the train to Pantin, and went straight to the Canal de l’Ourcq, where he entered the condemned linen factory through the footpath door.

The back room had been stripped of the whiteboards, the television screen, the table, chairs, and couch. Out in the cavernous space he found Haja and Amé finishing up beneath the sculpture.

Sauvage told them about the martial law decision and a change of plans.

“Wait,” Haja said. “You’ve already built this thing?”

“Months ago,” the major replied. “Just to see if I could do it. But it’s there, and it will work.”

Doubtful, Amé said, “But the curfew.”

“You’ll be long gone before curfew,” he assured her.

“What about afterward?” Haja asked.

“I’ve removed everything identifiable.”

For a moment, both women were hesitant.

“Haven’t we done enough?” Amé asked. “Hasn’t a tipping point been reached already with the riots and gunfights last night?”

“Do you want to risk them containing things?”

Haja stewed for a beat. “Where do you want it to happen?”

The major thought about his assignment, and then said, “Sevran.”

Chapter 79

8th Arrondissement

3:45 p.m.

WAKING UP AFTER a solid five hours of rest, I realized I was becoming a creature of the night in Paris. The television was on in the outer room, and after showering and shaving, I found Louis drinking coffee in there.

“Predicted it, didn’t I?” he said, gesturing at the screen. “Martial law.”

“No kidding,” I said, moving around behind him.

“They’re putting army units in the eastern suburbs. Curfew at eleven.”

The screen split then to show Laurent Alexandre, who was talking about the various designers he’d gotten to agree to put their work on at the upcoming Millie Fleurs memorial in defiance of AB-16, but I didn’t have a chance to hear the names because my cell phone rang.

I saw the caller ID, smiled, and answered.

“Michele Herbert,” I said. “How are you?”

“I was beginning to think you were avoiding me, Jack,” said the artist and graffiti expert in a teasing tone.

“I’ve just been a little busy the past few days.”

“Make nothing of it, but I might have something for you on that tag.”

I put her on speaker so Louis could listen. Herbert explained that she’d been receiving hundreds of photographs of the AB-16 tag from all around Paris. She’d been comparing them to the one up on the cupola at the Institut de France, and found that only one in ten tags matched the one on the cupola. The rest were copies, even the ones at the crime scenes.

“They didn’t use paint at Millie Fleurs’s,” Louis said. “It was done in fabric.”

Herbert said, “I hadn’t heard that.”

“It’s true,” I said. “Saw it myself.”

“Well, that doesn’t fit, but I don’t suppose it matters,” she replied. “Anyway, an old student of mine who is also obsessed with graffiti art examined the ones that were definitely done by the cupola tagger, and he agreed that the technique reminded him of Zee Pac-Man’s work.”

“The tagger murdered before Christmas?” I asked.

“Correct,” she said. “Which is what he found intriguing.”

“How’s that?” Louis asked.

“Taggers are like most artists. They start out copying others. Once they’ve mastered their techniques, they start introducing their own methods,” she said.

“So your old student remembered someone who copied Zee Pac-Man?”

“Someone who was once a suspect in his murder.”

“Pac-Man’s?” Louis asked.

“Correct,” she said.

“Name?” I asked.

“Piggott,” she said. “Paul Piggott, but he calls himself Epée, like the dueling sword. Besides graffiti, he’s obsessed with parkour.”

Louis scribbled on a pad of paper and showed it to me.

“I know Epée,” his note read. “Arrested his father once.”

“Does that help?” Michele asked over the speaker.

“Most definitely,” I said. “In fact, I owe you dinner before I leave Paris.”

“I’d like that, Jack,” she said. “Very much.”

Chapter 80

20th Arrondissement

5:15 p.m.

LOUIS AND I slid into seats outside a café on the Rue de Bagnolet, where we could see the front door of an apartment building that had seen much better days. Louis had pulled strings in France’s motor vehicles department and gotten the address for twenty-eight-year-old Paul Piggott, a.k.a. Epée.

We also had a three-year-old driver’s license photograph and Epée’s rap sheet, which featured multiple counts of destruction of property for putting up graffiti art. The only felony Piggott had ever been convicted of was assault and battery five years before. He had spent eight months in jail for the offense, and had been clean ever since.

We had Petitjean and Vans digging into his background while we staked out his apartment.

“He doesn’t look like your average Islamic militant,” I said, studying the driver’s license photo.

“They come in many shapes, shades, and sizes,” Louis said. “But you know, come to think of it, his father was…merde! There he is!”

I twisted in my chair and saw Piggott turn away from the door to his apartment building. Long, lean, and athletic, he wore a black warm-up suit, gym shoes, and a black-and-white checked scarf around his neck. A black messenger bag was slung across his chest, and he snugged it to his hip as he walked east.

“Let’s get to it,” Louis said.

We bolted from the café. Louis crossed the street. I paralleled him on my side. When Louis was less than twenty feet from Piggott, he called, “Hey, Paul. How’s your old man doing?”

Still moving, Epée glanced over his shoulder.

“Remember me?” Louis said.

Piggott seemed to remember Louis all right. He swiveled and took off like a four-hundred-meter sprinter, long legs and arms pumping as he accelerated, with Louis and me in pursuit.

True to his nickname, Epée had uncanny reflexes and remarkable evasive instincts. He parried and cut through the late-day crowd as if he’d memorized every move, and we almost immediately started to lose ground. Then I jumped out into the street and ran between the parked cars and oncoming traffic.

With no one to avoid, I was catching up to him when he took a hard left onto Cité Aubry, where he left the sidewalk and ran up the middle of the residential street. Where the paved way veered left, he continued straight ahead on a cobblestone street called Villa Riberolle.

Piggott was not only quick and evasive but insanely fit. Or at least he was fitter than me, because he kept putting distance between us, never once looking back. I did, however, and saw Louis several blocks behind, limping and hobbling slowly after me.

Louis bellowed, “I tore my knee! Get him!”

That filled my gas tanks. I put my head down and ran harder. If he was the one who had tagged the Institut de France, he was part of AB-16, knew the leaders. We could not afford to lose him.

At the end of the cobblestone road, Piggott took another hard left. When I got to the turn, he was forty yards ahead of me, climbing a tall, ivy-covered wall as if he were part monkey. In three quick moves he was up and over the top-again, never once looking back.

I got to the wall seconds later, and almost started up after him. Then I realized that if Epée was as clever as I thought he was, he wouldn’t look back until he’d cleared the wall. He’d get well out from under it and watch for half a minute or so before moving on.

So I forced myself to rest, taking in big, slow breaths while I watched the second hand of my watch. At thirty-five seconds, I began to climb. Reaching the top, I kicked up my right leg to straddle the top of the wall, and felt something slip from my pocket. My iPhone shattered on the cobblestones. I cursed and then hauled myself up and over.

Chapter 81

THE HILLY TERRAIN on the other side of the wall was covered in dense rows of stained grave markers, ornate mausoleums, and marble and limestone statues set amid leafy hardwood trees that made it difficult to see far. So I jumped.

I landed in a crouch inside Père-Lachaise cemetery and scanned all around me. I didn’t see him at first. But then I caught sight of his head and shoulders about a hundred yards ahead. He was weaving through the tombs, heading northwest at an angle away from me. Had he seen me?

I ran forward to the nearest large crypt and peeked around the corner. Piggott hurried on, but no longer sprinted. He hadn’t seen me come over the wall.

Had he seen me back there? He’d definitely seen Louis, but me? Once he had committed to fleeing Louis, I never saw him look back. He’d never hesitated because he’d scouted his escape route, and knew that the wall to Père-Lachaise cemetery would be a barrier to most pursuers.

Epée had not gotten a good look at me, I decided. But I couldn’t take any chances. I had to change my look and I had to do it fast. Stripping off my jacket, I tossed it on a grave, leaving me in jeans and a pressed white dress shirt as I hustled to keep him in sight.

I soon spotted him again, continuing northwest. He kept checking his back trail, but I’d gone off it by fifty yards or so, paralleling him through the gigantic graveyard for ten minutes, maybe more.

Then he stopped to take a sweeping look around. I had no place to hide, so I just went to my knee and acted grief-stricken before the nearest gravestone.

Epée turned and walked on. He had to have seen me there, but to my relief, he had not bolted. Still, with the white shirt, I was sure he’d recognize me the next time he checked for followers.

I wasn’t wearing an undershirt, so stripping a layer was not an answer. I’d almost surrendered to the idea that he was going to spot me at some point when he led me to the answer.

Epée skirted a large group of people gathered at a grave I remembered. I kept the crowd between us as I hustled toward the mourners, already hearing the music of the Doors playing.

Fifty pilgrims of all ages, sexes, and sizes surrounded Jim Morrison’s grave this time, so I had my pick of disguises. I chose a beefy guy with an Irish pie face who looked fairly drunk on his bottle of Jim Beam.

“Son of Fenway?” I asked, whipping out my wallet. “I’ll give you a hundred euros for your Sox hat and sweatshirt.”

“Nah, man. We’re talking Boston Strong here.”

“Three hundred euros,” I said, pulling out a wad of bills.

He shrugged, took the money, and handed me the red hat and matching hoodie. I had to jog to catch up this time, tugging the sweatshirt on over my shirt and pulling the cap down tight over my blond hair.

For several nerve-racking minutes I thought I’d blown it, that Epée had doubled back or used some other technique to shake me. Then I spotted him far ahead, moving northeast.

Using that parallel trailing technique, I followed him to a gate that opened out onto Rue des Rondeaux. He crossed the street and continued on the Avenue du Père-Lachaise, with me hanging well back in pedestrian traffic until I saw him enter the Place Gambetta and circle toward the Métro stop.

I sprinted after Epée and was less than twenty yards behind him when he went through the turnstiles. I waited until he was well down the stairs to jump the stiles and race after him, a Métro worker ranting behind me.

I got on the subway car behind the tagger, heading east on the 3 train, and then managed to loosely trail him through the Père-Lachaise Métro station to the 2 train northbound. I got into a car in front of him. He got off five stations later, at Jaurès, which also serves the S line.

Jaurès was a small station, but I’d bought a dark blue Windbreaker from a college kid on the train and wore it as I exited after Epée, and got on the same car going in the direction of Bobigny.

I stood with my back to Epée, and never looked his way.

Epée got off at the fifth stop, Église de Pantin. I waited until the last second to toss away the Red Sox hat and get out the door. There were no more than seven people leaving the train, so I wasn’t going to hide easily. I improvised, picking up a discarded newspaper and putting it under my arm.

Exiting the station, I spotted a clear public trash bag, went to it, and fished out a plastic bag filled with the remains of a meal. The light was fading now, and I hoped I’d be able to avoid detection if I just kept switching up the things I carried or wore, and stayed back.

Epée turned left out of the station and then left again onto a pedestrian mall that wandered north. Trees made the mall a place of shadows and a surprisingly popular hangout for the youth of Pantin.

Using the shadows and the thirty or forty teenagers smoking and posturing in the area, I was able to stay in visual contact with Piggott until he reached the far end of the mall and took a right onto a footpath.

The footpath ran along a canal. There were many joggers on the path. Still, I felt uneasy as I followed Epée past construction sites toward abandoned factories and warehouses along the canal’s south side.

Light was fading. We were a solid eighty yards apart, but I didn’t think I could remain below his radar if he led me to a less frequented spot. Piggott neared a bend in the path and an old building covered in brilliant graffiti. The tagger didn’t give the art a second glance.

He did, however, stop to look back along the footpath, and there weren’t enough joggers in the way to shield me. He saw me ambling along for sure.

But I didn’t seem to pose a threat because he calmly pivoted and strolled on beneath a pedestrian bridge that spanned the canal. The closer I got to the bridge, the more I thought about the fact that he had ignored the graffiti on the building. Even in the streetlight, the colors were impressive.

Then it hit me. He knows this place. He comes here often enough that he wouldn’t give the artwork a second glance. Epée was close to his destination.

A jogger went by me, and up the stairs to the pedestrian bridge. I followed him. The bridge had high steel-mesh walls to keep people from jumping off into the canal, which stank.

I walked out onto the bridge and casually glanced back along the footpath. Piggott had turned toward a large four-story building. It was old, perhaps the oldest of all the abandoned buildings in the area, and the only one that seemed to have been constructed entirely out of wood.

The roof had once been tin like the others, but it looked as though the metal had been stripped for salvage. There were stacks of it leaning up against the front of the building, partially covering faded white paint and the word linen.

Walking on across the bridge toward the north bank of the canal, I saw Epée go to a door that had a condemnation notice on it and knock. A moment later, the door opened and he disappeared inside.

Chapter 82

Pantin, northeastern suburbs of Paris

6:15 p.m.

HAJA CLOSED THE door behind Epée, saying angrily, “You’re not supposed to be here. We’re just about to leave.”

He noticed that she and Amé were wearing robes.

“What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is you’re not supposed to be here.”

“Why are you wearing robes?”

“Forget the robes,” Amé said. “Why are you here?”

The tagger said nothing for several beats before blurting out, “Louis Langlois-the head of Private Paris-he came after me as I was leaving my flat.”

Haja’s expression soured. “What do you mean, came after you?”

“He was just there all of a sudden, saying something about my father. But why would he be there, you know?”

“So what happened?” Amé demanded. “What did he say? More importantly, what did you say?”

“I didn’t say a goddamned word,” he replied fiercely. “I took one look at him, figured it couldn’t be a good thing, and took off. He’s, like, in his fifties. Didn’t stand a chance. I climbed the back wall of Père-Lachaise, and it was over.”

“You’re sure you weren’t followed?” Haja asked.

“Like I said, it was over at the wall.”

“But now he thinks you’ve got something to run about,” Amé said.

“I do have something to run about. We all do.”

“Have you told Sauvage?” Haja asked.

“I don’t have his new burn cell number, or Mfune’s.”

“I’ll call him,” Haja said. She punched in the number, handed the phone to Epée.

He told the story again. Sauvage said nothing until the end.

“You’re positive you were clean after the cemetery wall?”

“Yes.”

“I want you out of Paris immediately,” the major said. “Haja will give you money and the address of a safe house in the south. Let me speak to her.”

Epée handed Haja the phone.

Haja took the phone, listened, and nodded. “I’ll get both taken care of.”

She hung up and said, “We’ll give you ten thousand euros, and the address. Move in disguise. Use burn phones.”

“Okay,” the tagger said.

“It’s out in the factory with the creature,” Haja said, and went through another door into the cavernous space that held her sculpture.

The place was only dimly lit, but the beast loomed above them, looking otherworldly and fantastic. Epée tripped over electric cables on the floor.

“It’s all hitched up?” he asked.

“Yes,” Haja said curtly as she went to the table where she kept her tools.

Epée peered at the creature and thought he saw where the electrical cables attached to the lower legs of the beast. He pivoted to ask her if he was-

Haja’s powerful arms and shoulders were already swinging a piece of rebar. It cracked against the side of the tagger’s head. Fire and pain seized his brain, and he crashed to the ground.

Haja stepped over Epée’s quivering body and hit him again, so hard she heard and felt his skull cave in.

“God. What did you do that for?” Amé whined.

“He became a liability,” Haja replied coldly. “Émile said we had to martyr him for the cause.”

Chapter 83

DARKNESS FELL. THE number of joggers running along the canal dwindled to stragglers, and all of them were on the better-lit south bank, which was a problem.

In the twenty minutes that had passed since Epée went into the old building, I’d wanted to call Louis and tell him roughly where I was. But the two or three runners who came by either laughed at my pitiful efforts at French-one of them said that I spoke the language like a Spanish cow-or shook their heads at my request to use their cell phones, and carried on.

I decided to go back across the bridge and was a quarter of the way across when the door that Epée had used opened, and two Muslim women wearing dark brown robes and head scarves exited and headed west carrying large shopping bags with a logo on them that I couldn’t make out. One of them glanced up at me as I continued to cross toward them. She craned her head around and did it again after they’d walked beneath the south end of the bridge.

I continued on, as if I hadn’t a care in the world. When I started down the stairs, I meant to find a cell and wait for Louis before entering the building in search of Piggott. But when I looked after the retreating figures of the Muslim women, there was something about the way they were walking, as if there was something heavy in their shopping bags.

Blame it on my time in Afghanistan, because there was nothing rational or logical about it, but at the bottom of the stairs I decided to go with my instincts, abandon Piggott, and follow the women. They seemed even warier than Epée. It took all of my skills to stay below their radar. They turned left into that pedestrian mall. I stripped the Windbreaker, leaving the red hoodie exposed, and ran to catch up.

Fewer than half the teens were still hanging out in the area, but there were still enough of them that I didn’t seem to arouse the attention of the two women as they headed toward the main drag.

Instead of turning right toward the Métro station, however, they hung a hard left past a bar called the Pause, which was bustling with a happy hour crowd. I drifted toward a group of men and women chatting merrily, but stayed focused on the two women hurrying down the sidewalk.

I had a moment of doubt, thinking that I should go back and sit on Piggott, but then the women veered toward a small blue Suzuki two-door SUV. They opened the driver’s and passenger doors and popped forward the front seats so they could put the bags in the back.

They climbed in and started the car.

I didn’t know what to do. They pulled out of their parking spot and up to a red traffic light. I went to the curb as if I meant to cross the street. I memorized the license plate but could tell little about the women because they had their visors down.

The light changed. The engine revved and the vehicle drifted forward. For an instant a streetlamp lit up the interior enough that I could see the shopping bags.

The driver must have slipped her foot off the clutch pedal because the Suzuki suddenly bucked. Several pieces of what looked like white gravel fell off the rear bumper into the gutter. The car caught gear and roared off.

Stepping down off the curb, I picked up a piece of the gravel and saw that it was actually a powdery blue color. I smelled it, tasted it, spit it out, and felt my suspicions become hard convictions.

Spinning around, I jumped out into the street in front of an oncoming maroon and black Citroën, waving my hands wildly. The old car skidded to a stop inches from my knees, and I could see that the elderly woman driving was wide-eyed and scared.

I came around, opened the door, and climbed in. She was hunched over and gray, easily in her late seventies, but she began to hit me backhand with her fist and scream, “Non! Non! Police! Police!”

“Je suis avec police!” I said, fending off the blows, trying to dig out my ID. “Privé Paris police. Suivez la voiture bleu là! Le Suzuki! C’est les defaceurs de l’Institut de France! AB-16. Vous comprenez?”

I was butchering the language, but she must have gotten the gist of what I was trying to say, because she stopped hitting me and looked down the street, where the Suzuki was making a U-turn to go east on the N3 highway, before crying in an angry voice, “Ah bon!”

Then she pegged the gas, popped the clutch, and we squealed out of there with the tires smoking.

Chapter 84

SHE SPOKE NO English and suffered badly from scoliosis, but that old lady was sharp as a tack and could have given Danica Patrick a run for her money.

Weaving in and out of traffic with deft shifting of the gears and an easy touch at the wheel, she Tokyo-drifted us through the U-turn, and quickly brought us to within two cars of the Suzuki in moderate traffic. She chattered almost nonstop, as if she hadn’t had a listener in a while, and even though I was definitely missing the nuances of her monologue, I learned that her name was Eloise La Bruyere. Madame La Bruyere was a retired librarian. She had learned to drive from her husband, who had been involved in rally car racing and was now deceased.

At seventy-nine, Madame La Bruyere lived alone and rather liked it that way. Her children-two sons and a daughter-did not visit enough. She had six grandchildren, one of whom had purple hair. Best of all, she took great pride in France and her culture, and therefore hated AB-16, which she knew all about from the newspapers.

“We have to fight them,” she declared more than once, shaking her bony fist. “France cannot be destroyed. We must throw them all out!”

When I finally got a word in edgewise, I managed to ask her if she had a cell phone, and she shook her head and muttered something dismissive about them that I didn’t get.

The Suzuki stayed on the N3 for five or six miles before taking the N370 north. Madame La Bruyere trailed them like a pro, keeping three, four, and sometimes five cars between us, and all the while fuming about the “Muslims and immigrants” out to destroy her beloved country. Indeed, when she saw the two women get off at the Sevran exit and head east, Eloise went into a minor tirade about the area and the immigrants who lived there.

She drove us down the Boulevard de Stalingrad, past shabby shopping malls and drab clusters of high-rise public housing projects. Judging by the broken shop windows and charred cars along the route, Sevran had been a hub of violence the night before.

The people on the sidewalks seemed tense, in a hurry to be home and off the streets as armed French soldiers prepared for curfew. I thought about having Madame La Bruyere stop so I could tell one of the soldiers what was going on, but feared losing track of the two women.

The Suzuki took a left and headed north on a side street. We lost them several minutes later, when an ambulance blocked us from following them onto the narrow, windy Rue de Rougemont.

“Où sont-elles?” Madame La Bruyere kept saying, meaning, “Where are they?”

I was peering anxiously down every alley and side street and didn’t see the women anywhere. I feared we’d been spotted. A sinking sensation was drilling through my lower belly when the road bent hard left. Going around that tight curve, I got a good look down a lane that led to an old church.

The Muslim women had parked, back bumper facing the wall of the church. They were out of the vehicle, toting those heavy shopping bags, and heading from right to left and out of my vision.

For a beat I couldn’t remember the word for stop, but then sputtered, “Arrêtez! Arrêtez!”

Madame La Bruyere screeched the old Citroën to a stop. I kissed her on the cheek, jumped out of the car, and said, “Merci, madame!”

Chapter 85

Sevran, northeastern suburbs of Paris

7:10 p.m.

TEARING THE RED hoodie off so that I was again down to that white dress shirt, I ran down the lane into the churchyard, where several other cars were parked as well. The Suzuki was next to a closed green gate that blocked access to a larger parking lot and a brick building immediately north of the Saint Martin Church.

Two police cars were parked in that lot, along with two small white sedans. I could see a well-traveled route beyond them. A bus sighed, caught gear, and then roared past the mouth of the bigger parking lot.

Figuring the women had gone to the main route, I jumped the gate and ran through the lot to a large traffic rotary with a park at the center.

The bus stop was to my left, along with an Asian grocery store and a clothing shop, both closed, and a pharmacy, still open. When I looked right, I was surprised to see another police car, and more surprised to realize that I was right in front of the Sevran police station.

Had they gone in there? Did I have this all wrong?

I hurried inside to check. The officer behind a pane of bulletproof glass was on the phone but lowered it when I adopted a prayer pose. When I asked in halting French if two Muslim women had come inside, she looked down her nose, shook her head, and immediately lifted the phone to her ear again.

I tried to talk again, but she held up her finger and turned away from me.

Frustrated, I went out onto the sidewalk. Where the hell had they gone?

There were three people at the bus stop now: an elderly man wearing a turban, a young Vietnamese girl, and a woman with long, braided reddish hair. She wore a laborer’s clothes, leather boots, tan canvas pants, and a denim shirt. She had her back to me and was smoking.

A heavyset blond woman wearing heavy makeup, a white pantsuit, and carrying a large black purse was coming down the sidewalk toward me. A mother and child exited the pharmacy, and I headed their way. As I walked by the bus stop, the woman with the reddish braids flicked her cigarette into the gutter, and squatted to rummage in a stonemason’s bag at her feet.

I kept going. The blonde in the pantsuit passed, giving me a quick, bright smile. Sweet perfume lingered in her wake. The lights in the pharmacy went dark. A bus approached. I wanted to punch something.

Had they circled me? Gone back to the car? I could go there and sit on it, or just go back to the police station and make the officer understand the situation.

Changing direction, I followed the bus to the stop, seeing the four people board and wondering if the Muslim women had gotten on the first bus I’d seen leaving the area.

I thought about the pale blue gravel that had fallen off the Suzuki’s bumper. It was definitely ammonium nitrate fertilizer. I’d tasted and smelled remnants of the stuff in the air after IED explosions back in Kandahar.

But if they’d left the area with the bags…

Oh, Jesus. I had it wrong.

I took off toward the police station. The bus doors closed. As I came abreast of the bus, it began to pull away. I happened to glance at the windows.

The woman in the work clothes, the one with the reddish braids, was sitting in the third row from the front, looking out the window at me. She was exotically beautiful, with haunting nickel-gray eyes and high cheekbones across which stretched burnished, dusky skin.

As the bus drove off, I was puzzled by the sense that I had seen her somewhere before…

I began to sprint after the bus, trying to get a better look at her. But crossing the mouth of the narrow parking lot next to the Sevran police station, I understood that I was too late. I’d never catch up.

I staggered to a stop just beyond the entrance to the parking lot, right in front of the station, and was sucking wind, cursing, and watching the bus disappear into the dusk when the car bomb erupted.

Chapter 86

THE BLAST THREW me off my feet and to the pavement. Shock waves pounded through my back, deafened me, and rattled my brain for several minutes. And I took some body shots from falling debris.

But thanks to the northwest corner of the Sevran police station, which stood between me and the parking lot and the Catholic churchyard where the robed women had left the Suzuki, I was otherwise uninjured.

There was dust and debris everywhere, and that acidic fertilizer smell permeated the air like humidity on a stiflingly hot day.

Struggling to my feet, I saw that all traffic on the roundabout had come to a halt. People were outside their cars, covering their mouths, or stretching them wide to scream. But I could barely hear them. Their voices were drowned out by a high-pitched ringing in my ears.

Still in a daze, I stumbled a few steps and looked into the parking lot. Through the thick cloud of dust, I could see that the entire front of the church had been blown inward, collapsing the roof. A large jagged hole had been opened in the rear sidewall of the police station.

A policeman staggered from it, covered head to boots in dust and plaster. His face showed blood from a nasty scalp gash.

I went to him, tried to talk to him. But he looked at me as if I were a creature in a nightmare, and walked dumbly past me. I looked into the hole, into the dark hull of the police station, seeing human silhouettes amid the wreckage.

I threw my sleeve across my chest and fought my way in across the debris, finding an officer dead at his desk and the pieces of a dead man in a holding cell. Then I spotted the desk officer who’d ignored me minutes before.

She was trying feebly to get up from the floor. I went to her, got her in a fireman’s sling, and got her outside. Her face was a mess. Blood soaked her right leg and I could see the bulge of bone sticking from her thigh.

I ripped off my belt and cinched it tight around her upper thigh. If I was right, the blast had broken her femur and probably nicked her femoral artery. Had the bone fully cut the blood vessel, she would have been dead where I had found her.

I was acting on autopilot at that point, focused on saving the officer and nothing else. Surging with adrenaline, I scooped her up again and moved back toward the roundabout, where red and blue lights were flashing.

Reaching the sidewalk, I saw cops, firemen, and paramedics racing to the scene. I set her down amid the rubble in front of the station.

A team was working on her in seconds. I stood there and watched numbly. One of the new officers on the scene began talking to me, but I still couldn’t hear for the ringing.

I said, “J’ai vu les saboteurs.”

I saw the bombers.

Chapter 87

THAT STATEMENT GOT me a lot of attention in the next couple of hours. The cop went and returned with a captain. The ringing in my ears began to fade and I repeated what I’d said, showed them my Private identification, and told him to contact Louis Langlois at Private Paris, or Investigateur Sharen Hoskins from La Crim, or even Juge Fromme. They would all vouch for me.

Klieg lights shone from the park across the street, where a gathering horde of media was encamping. The police captain was caught in the glare of indecision, looking at my identification card and then at me. Finally he dug in his pocket for his phone, and hurried off.

He returned about an hour later, but not with Hoskins or Fromme or Louis. A French Army officer in full battle gear and helmet trailed him, his eyes going everywhere until they settled on me.

“I am Major Émile Sauvage,” he said in flawless English. “French Army. I am in charge of this area under martial law.”

“Lucky you,” I said.

“What can you tell us?” he asked, studying me from under his helmet brim.

Sauvage listened attentively and wordlessly during my summary of events. I gave it to him, all of it, from following Epée to a condemned linen factory in Pantin to the moment when I lost sight of the two robed women after they’d parked the Suzuki in front of the church.

“I think they changed out of the robes,” I said. “And left on a bus that pulled away shortly before the bomb went off.”

“What bus?” he demanded tersely. “What route?”

“I don’t know.”

“What makes you think they were aboard?”

“Because I think I recognized one of them.”

That seemed to dumbfound the major. “You knew one of the women?”

“No, not like that,” I said. “It was just a feeling. The redhead. Her face. Like I’d seen it before somewhere.”

“Where?”

Shaking my head slowly, I said, “I don’t know. As I said, it was a feeling. The shape of her face. Her eyes. The way it all came together.”

“But nothing more specific, sir?” Major Sauvage asked.

“No,” I said. “At least right now. My bell got rung in the explosion.”

“Take care of that,” the major advised. “I speak from experience. Concussions can make you feel stupid or nuts.”

Another French Army officer, a big dark-skinned captain, hurried up and signaled the major for his attention.

“You are not to leave France without notifying me, Monsieur Morgan,” the major said. “I’m sure there will be others who make the same demands on you.”

“I’ll help any way I can, Major,” I said.

With a stiff nod and a limp handshake, he pivoted and went to the captain. They spoke and moved off.

Louis hobbled up with Sharen Hoskins and Juge Fromme, and I had to repeat my story all over again.

“You don’t know where you saw that woman before?” Fromme asked.

“Only that she reminded me of someone.”

“Could she be the same redhead the opera director was seen with the night he was murdered?” Louis asked.

“Again,” I said, “I’m clueless. Maybe it will come to me.”

Hoskins said, “We can’t do a thing here. Military intelligence and anti-terror will be all over it. Think you can find that linen factory again?”

Knitting my eyebrows, I thought back, still fuzzy, but said, “I think so.”

Chapter 88

10:20 p.m.

HOSKINS DROVE. SHE and Fromme got us past the blockades near the blast site. Louis and I sat in the back and studied Google Maps on an iPad that the magistrate had produced from his briefcase.

Gesturing at the screen and the roof of a building close to a narrow bridge over a canal, I said, “That’s it, I think.”

“You have an address?” Hoskins asked.

Louis tapped on the satellite image and an address popped up. He gave it to her and she called it in while driving toward Pantin.

I said, “You’ll want to take a look from the other side of the canal before you go kicking down the door.”

Hoskins looked ready to argue, but the magistrate said, “He’s right. We must consider them heavily armed.”

The investigateur sighed, nodded, and altered her route. Someone called Hoskins a few minutes later to inform her that the address she’d called in was a condemned property that had been seized for taxes and was due to be razed to make way for a vacant lot sale in the coming weeks.

“Perfect safe house,” Louis said.

“Again I agree with you,” Hoskins said. “These are miraculous days.”

She pulled over fifteen minutes later on a deserted industrial street and said, “We’re two blocks off the canal here, close to the north side of that bridge.”

We set off in that direction slowly, having to wait for the magistrate and Louis to limp along behind us. A block closer to the canal, headlights appeared. A news van shot by and skidded to a halt by a construction site beside two other news vans.

“What the hell is going on?” Hoskins cried, and ran toward the canal.

I did my best to stay with her, but she reached a small crowd gathered just east of the pedestrian bridge before I did. The reporters had their backs to the canal and the condemned factory, and were barking at the cameras.

When I caught up, Hoskins looked at her watch and said, “AB-16 sent out a message calling the media to be here at ten thirty p.m. In less than a minute they’re supposedly going to deliver a message to France.”

Juge Fromme and Louis hobbled up to us, gasping.

A series of thumping booms like mortar fire echoed across the canal. Fire fountained high inside the condemned factory. Plumes of it billowed out the broken windows and set the whole structure ablaze.

In minutes it was a runaway, throwing shimmering heat and fire that blew through the roof and licked at the Paris skyline like so many snake tongues. Hoskins was calling for fire and police backup, but the rest of us were transfixed by the growing inferno.

Was this the message AB-16 wanted to send in the wake of the bombing? That Paris was burning?

I got my answer a second later, when many of the reporters gasped.

Deep inside the factory something else had ignited, blue and then white and silver hot, almost blinding in its intensity. That brilliant new fire within a fire expanded and took shape at a blistering pace, two bent columns rising from the floor of the factory to a massive curve that soon became the powerful haunches of a giant prehistoric-looking horse reared up on its back legs, pawing at the flames and the sky.

As the roof fell in, there was a third ignition. The horse had wings that burned so hot it was as if the creature actually had molten silver feathers that fluttered in the greater inferno, as if the beast was poised to take flight.

“It’s Al-Buraq,” Louis said.

I nodded in grim awe. “The Prophet’s warhorse.”