Private Paris

Chapter 89

8th Arrondissement

April 12, 7:20 a.m.

Brothers and Sisters,

We the warriors of AB-16 fight in the name of Al-Buraq, warhorse of the Prophet Mohammed, blessings be upon his name. Flying into battle on the back of the winged Lightning, AB-16 calls to all immigrants and immigrant youth:

Look at the way France has treated you.

No job. No future. No hope.

And brutal oppression when you protest.

This will be your useless life unless you join our fight now. Take up the sword of divine justice. Wage holy war for your children’s lives.

Help us drive out the decadent French culture now, and replace it with one that will make the Prophet proud.

Lightning has taken flight over Paris. The warhorse soars over all of France in 2016.

Hear his battle cry. Spread the message. Join our ranks.

Al-Buraq in 2016!

AB-16!

Sitting in the living area in the suite, with the television on and my breakfast eaten, I set the letter aside. It was the fifth time I’d read it since Ali Farad first received a copy three days before, but it was the first since I’d watched the sculpture of the Prophet’s warhorse ignite and burn so furiously hours before.

The two together-image and call to jihad-felt greater than the sum of their parts. The letter alone was incendiary, a call to treason and revolution. But footage of the factory fire and the statue was dominating the news in ways the letter could not.

Every station I turned to, even the ones out of Japan and China, was showing images of the Prophet’s warhorse engulfed in flames. CNN kept broadcasting a clip with firemen arriving on the scene. When they had turned the hoses on the still-glowing sculpture, it had hissed and thrown steam, which made it seem otherworldly and threatening all over again.

The BBC was reporting that in response to the bombing in Sevran and the factory fire in Pantin, the riots had spread. The feed cut to a knot of youths, their faces wrapped in head scarves, defying the curfew and chanting, “AB-16! AB-16!”

In voice-over, the British reporter said that police and army officers, firemen and ambulance workers, had been shot at repeatedly during the night, and dozens of vehicles had been set ablaze and used to block streets.

I changed to a French station and was reaching for the pot to pour myself more coffee when the screen jumped to someone I recognized.

It was Major Sauvage, the French Army officer from the night before. He was giving the press a briefing. He looked hard and focused, not tired at all.

“It has been a violent night,” Major Sauvage began. “While trying to stop a van of immigrant men from breaking curfew and attempting to leave Les Bosquets at around three a.m., my men came under intense fire. Three men in the van were killed. The other two are in custody.

“All five men were carrying AK-47 assault rifles and a considerable amount of ammunition,” he went on. “As of now, we consider all members and supporters of AB-16 to be armed and dangerous.

“Despite this brazen show of force, my soldiers remain committed to preventing outside forces from destroying France and its culture. That, I can tell you, will not happen on our watch.”

The screen jumped to Barbès, where the imam’s mosque had been firebombed, and several white French teenagers had been beaten by immigrant gangs.

A picture appeared, showing one of the boys and identifying him as Alain Du Champs, an aspiring photojournalist who had been hospitalized in serious condition. To my surprise, I recognized him. He was the same kid who’d sung that funny version of the Billy Joel song to the Muslim-

The room phone rang. It was Louis.

“Hoskins wants you to work with a sketch artist on that redhead you saw on the bus,” Louis said.

I thought of her, saw her clearly in my mind, and somehow it all clicked.

“I know where I saw her before,” I said with growing conviction. “You’ve seen her too, Louis. Remember the day we went to Al-Jumaa tailors and there was a white kid with a camera singing to a beautiful Muslim woman?”

“I remember. It’s her?”

“Her eyes were a different color, but I think so,” I said.

Louis said in a leaden voice, “She was coming from that mosque then, Jack, so the imam has to be involved with AB-16. And by extension Ali Farad.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, and then I did.

“We’ll deal with whoever is involved later,” I said. “Right now we need to find out what hospital the rioters in Barbès were taken to last night.”

Chapter 90

12th Arrondissement

8:30 a.m.

IN THE BEDROOM of Haja Hamid’s small apartment, she and Amé watched the television footage of the linen factory collapsing upon itself and the giant winged warhorse surrounded by burning timbers, smoke, and ash. The beast was so hot that the feathers and some of the skin were going molten and falling away, revealing the skeleton.

“It’s brilliant!” Amé cried. “My God, what a statement, Haja! That image will never be forgotten in France-ever.”

As an artist, Haja was pleased with the overall effect: sculpture and fire as performance art. The whole had been better than she’d hoped, and iconic as well-a symbol of her adopted nation’s inner, hidden turmoil.

But at the same time, Haja’s satisfaction was tempered by the memory of Jack Morgan staring at her from outside the bus in Sevran. Had there been a flash of recognition in his expression?

She wasn’t sure.

But if so, Morgan had probably followed them to Sevran after he’d followed Epée to the linen factory. Haja had not told Amé of her suspicions and certainly not Émile Sauvage. As much as the major craved her, she knew his unwavering commitment to the cause. If he ever thought that she had become a liability, he would sacrifice her the same way he’d sacrificed Epée. She wondered whether it was time for her to slip off, and leave the country until things had shaken out.

“How did you do it, Haja?” Amé asked. “Make it burn like that?”

“Math, thermodynamics, and magnesium,” Haja said.

“Translation?”

“A wood fire can burn up to four hundred degrees,” Haja said. “Throw gasoline in, and a wood fire can create temperatures well over five hundred. Magnesium ignites at roughly four hundred and seventy-three degrees, and can then burn as hot as four thousand degrees. I made the horse’s skin with sheets of magnesium, which caught when the first fire was at its hottest.”

Amé shook her head. “How in God’s name did you figure that all out?”

“God had nothing to do with it. I looked it all up on the Internet.”

Her burn phone rang.

Sauvage.

“Your art,” he said. “It’s all they’re talking about. Your masterpiece is raising a revolt, chéri. I’m seeing it with my own eyes.”

Haja smiled at last. “I’m glad you’re pleased.”

“Beyond pleased,” he said, and paused. “Did you see Jack Morgan there?”

“The Private guy?” she said. “No.”

“He told me he saw you through the bus window, but didn’t recognize you.”

Haja had gone from a state of relative calm to desperate alertness.

“Why would he?” she asked. “That one time I walked by him I was wearing a robe, head scarf, and contact lenses-a totally different woman than the one on the bus.”

Sauvage paused and then said, “Destroy your burn phone and lay low for a while. It’ll be a few days before I can come see you.”

“Done,” Haja said simply, and hung up.

She went to the bedroom window, breaking the phone and removing the SIM card. There was scaffolding outside the window. The building’s owners were having the exterior plaster replaced and painted.

Haja opened the window and looked down through the scaffolding, past a flower box on a lower floor, to a Dumpster in the alley below. She tossed the phone parts, watched them fall, all the while wondering whether she should be in a hurry to be long gone from Paris.

Chapter 91

18th Arrondissement

10 a.m.

“WE ARE HERE to see my nephew,” Louis said when we reached the nurses’ station outside the intensive care unit at Bretonneau Hospital. “Alain Du Champs?”

The nurse on duty grimaced bitterly and said, “Doubt they’ll let you in to see him. He’s got a police guard. They think he firebombed the mosque before he was beaten by people trying to save it.”

“A horrible thing,” Louis said. “I don’t know how he came to this. But perhaps I should talk with the police officer? I used to work for La Crim.”

She shrugged and then gestured with her chin down the hall. “Down the hall, left, then first door on your right.”

I hung back while Louis spoke with the officer sitting outside Du Champs’s room. At first I thought he was going to turn us down, but then Louis gestured to me. The officer had changed his mind.

“Merci,” he said, nodding at me as we went by him toward the door.

“What’d you tell him?” I whispered to Louis in English.

“The truth,” Louis said. “You saved that police officer in Sevran last night. It was enough to get us a few minutes.”

We went through hospital curtains and found Alain Du Champs lying in a bed, looking as though he’d been everyone’s favorite punching bag. His face was swollen almost beyond recognition. A few of his front teeth were missing, and his arm had six or seven pins jutting out of it.

“Detectives?” he slurred. “I’m not saying nothing ’til I talk to my attorney.”

“We work for Private Paris,” Louis said. “You’ve heard of us?”

Through the swelling, Du Champs’s eyes moved to study us.

“I’ve heard,” he said.

“Speak English?” I asked.

“Little,” he said.

“How long have you been a photographer?” I asked.

“Not about the mosque?” he said.

“No,” Louis said.

“Ten years,” Du Champs said, running his tongue along the gums where his teeth had been. “Since I got my first camera, when I was nine. Loved it.”

“Take a lot of photographs?” I asked.

“Can always throw the bad ones out.”

“Remember the girl you sang to last week near the mosque?” Louis said.

“I don’t sing.”

“Really?” I said, and then sang, “‘Wake up, Fatima, don’t let me wait. You Muslim girls start much too late’?”

The kid broke into a painful smile and laughed as if his ribs were broken. “I remember now. She was hot.”

“Any chance you took a picture of her?”

“Who is she?”

I said, “She may have been involved in the Sevran bombing last night.”

“Yes?” he said, the gears of his brain meshing and spinning. “So a pic of her could be a get-out-of-jail-free card? ’Cause I did not set that mosque on fire. I was in the area taking pictures and got attacked.”

“Did you get a picture of her?” Louis demanded.

“Had to,” he replied, grinning painfully. “That sweet Fatima was one of a kind.”

Chapter 92

17th Arrondissement

11:15 a.m.

OUTSIDE A CAFÉ near the headquarters of La Crim, we found Investigateur Hoskins and Juge Fromme drowning their sorrows in a bottle of wine.

“Kind of early to be drinking on the job,” Louis said.

“We’re off the job,” Juge Fromme said miserably.

Hoskins nodded. “Counter-terror and the military are taking over.”

“Guess you’re not the people we want to show this to then,” Louis said, sliding his iPhone across the table.

“It’s her,” I said. “The woman on the bus.”

Fromme set his wine down and fumbled for his reading glasses. Hoskins peered at the photograph, and then used her fingers to blow it up.

Du Champs had caught her from an odd angle: looking up and in three-quarter profile, from the chest of her brown robe to the top of her brown head scarf.

“You said the woman on the bus was a redhead with nickel-gray eyes,” Fromme said. “This woman has dark hair and brown eyes.”

“Contacts and rinsable dyes,” Louis said.

“It’s her,” I insisted. “There’s no doubt in my mind.”

“How can you be sure from this angle?” Hoskins said. “You can barely see the right side of her face.”

“When I close my eyes, I know they’re the same person,” I said. “This picture should be given to every media outlet in the country.”

“That won’t happen,” the magistrate said. “This woman has rights. If you’re wrong and we say she’s a suspect, we could be destroying her reputation.”

“And putting her in harm’s way,” Hoskins agreed.

Incredulous, I said, “So you’re not going to use this?”

Fromme said, “We’ll pass the photograph along, and your thoughts on it, but I highly doubt this will become a focus of the investigation unless some other evidence comes forward to support it.”

“Like what?” Louis demanded.

“Another picture would help,” Hoskins said. “And it would be better if she was caught climbing off the bus somewhere. But again, there are not many public security cameras in France.”

“Someone should check all the cameras around Sevran, at least,” I said.

“We’ll recommend that as well,” the magistrate said, and picked up his glass of wine again.

“That’s it?” I said.

“For us,” Hoskins said. “I’m going home and sleeping for as long as I can.”

“You’re making a mistake,” I said.

“We don’t make the laws,” Fromme said. “We just enforce them.”

I was still furious when we were a block away, and I noticed Louis lagging behind me and limping hard.

“Have you had that knee checked?” I asked.

“It will pass,” Louis said. “It always does.”

“Go get it checked. That’s an order. You’re no good to me like this.”

He looked ready to argue, but then nodded. “I have an old friend, Megan, who specializes in knees.”

“Go see Megan,” I said. “Or at least go somewhere where you can get it elevated and on ice.”

“It does feel like shit,” Louis said.

“Get a taxi. I’m going for a walk.”

“How can I contact you?”

“I’ll buy a phone and text you the number,” I said, and left him there.

Chapter 93

I WANDERED OUT of the Batignolles neighborhood and headed south toward the river. The sun had broken through the clouds and it had gotten quite warm-easily in the high seventies. Coming upon a phone store a few blocks later, I bought a disposable Samsung and texted Louis the number. I also asked him to send me the picture. It appeared almost immediately, along with the news that Megan, his doctor friend, was going to see him at once.

“Good news,” I texted back. “Keep me posted.”

Given the violent events of the prior night, a surprising number of Parisians were out walking or jogging along the Seine. I didn’t know if they were defying AB-16 or just ignoring the group and its threat.

Twenty minutes later, I stopped across the river from the Eiffel Tower. Calling up the picture, I looked at the woman and wondered if she and AB-16 wanted to topple the Eiffel Tower and all the great monuments of Paris. It had been Hitler’s plan once. Were they really out to obliterate French culture like that? Were they really out to see Paris burning?

Those questions put me in a foul mood and I walked on, thinking that I needed to eat. The Plaza was a few blocks away, and there were several cafés from which to choose. But before I decided, the phone I’d just bought rang.

“Louis?” I answered.

“Louis told me to call, Jack,” Michele Herbert said. “I hope that was okay.”

“More than okay,” I said, feeling tension drain from my shoulders. “Would you like to have lunch?”

There was a pause, and then she said, “I’d like that very much.”

I hailed a taxi, giving the driver the address of a café that Michele Herbert had suggested in the 6th Arrondissement, not far from L’Académie des Beaux-Arts.

We got there at virtually the same time. Just seeing her made me forget all about terrorists and bombs and burning horses. For an hour, anyway, I wanted to put it all aside and find out more about her.

But when we took a table, all she wanted to talk about was the night before and what I’d seen and done.

“You were a big help, by the way,” I said. “That guy, Epée? I followed him to the factory that burned down last night and that horse statue. Did you see it?”

“All of France has seen it,” she said. “Is he in custody?”

“Not that I know of,” I said.

Between breaks to order food, I told her the rest of it.

“You saved that cop’s life,” she said, shaking her head.

“Anyone would have,” I said.

“This is not so,” Michele said with a dismissive flick of her fork. “So what then? You went back to the factory? You saw the horse burn in person?”

“I did.”

“Though I hate to admit it, I thought the sculpture and the way it burned were brilliant. Was it as spectacular in person as it was on-screen?”

“Awe-inspiring, and unforgettable,” I said. “I guess that was the point.”

“Point taken,” Michele said. “So what will happen tonight? Will AB-16 attack again?”

“The police and army better assume so.”

That seemed to upset her. “I want to fight them, but I don’t know how.”

“I hear you, but this is a national security deal now.”

“The government pursues leads?” she asked. “That is the word, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “I’m sure they are. But they should be looking for this woman.”

Getting out the phone and calling up the picture, I said, “Even though she looks a lot different here in the robes and head scarf, I think she was the same woman I saw on a bus just before the Sevran explosion.”

Intrigued, Michele took the phone. She looked at the picture blankly at first, but then her facial muscles twitched and she enlarged the phone so the face of the woman filled the small screen.

For several moments, the art professor gazed at the picture, blinking as her other hand came slowly to her lips.

“My God,” Michele whispered. “Why didn’t I see it last night?”

Chapter 94

12th Arrondissement

1:10 p.m.

A TAXI DROPPED us down the block from our destination.

Michele looked nervous. “What if I’m wrong?”

“Then we walk away,” I said.

“And if I’m right?” she said.

“I take a picture, we walk away, find the police.”

The art professor chewed the corner of her lip.

“You said you wanted to fight them,” I reminded her.

That pushed her over the top. She led the way to a four-story apartment building that had recently been sandblasted. She rang a bell and waited. She rang again, looked back at me, and made a “What do I do?” gesture.

An older man exited the apartment building. Barely giving us a glance, he walked away, the door closing slowly behind him.

I grabbed the door before it closed.

“I can’t be part of a break-in,” Michele said quietly, looking after the old man.

“All you’re doing is knocking on a door,” I said, and then told her what I had in mind.

She was doubtful, but went inside the building and started up the stairs. I went back up the street, counting doors-seven-and hung a left and then a quick left again into an alleyway I’d seen on the Google Maps app on Michele’s smartphone during the taxi ride over from the restaurant.

I counted rear exits and found scaffolding set up behind the seventh building. The workers appeared to be on break, so I started climbing. As I did, I noticed a Dumpster beneath the scaffolding and flower boxes behind it.

When I reached the fourth floor, I texted Michele. “Knock.”

I heard a dull rap-rap-rap coming from one of the windows. The shade was drawn. The window was shut and locked.

I checked the alley again and looked over my shoulder at the building behind me. I had the place to myself.

I drew the Glock and used it to bust in one of the windowpanes. Reaching in, I tore down the shade and undid the latch.

Then I climbed inside, gun first.

Chapter 95

THE APARTMENT SEEMED to be a home for hoarders. I stepped in on a toolbox wedged between stacks of newspapers and magazines. A hodgepodge of broken furniture was piled along the walls. There were dozens of lidded five-gallon buckets too-stacks of them.

Rap-rap-rap.

I picked my way through the mess, threw the bolt, and opened the door.

Michele slipped in and I shut the door behind her.

“I don’t like this,” she said. “I shouldn’t be here.”

“All we need is a picture that confirms it. And then we go. But all this crap? Does it make sense? It feels like a storage unit for a slob.”

“Think of it as a supply warehouse,” Michele said. “These are materials.”

“You’re the artist,” I said, and then found the kitchen, which was tidy and uncluttered.

There were still droplets of water on the insides of glasses sitting upside down in a rack. Used very recently, probably within the last hour.

But beyond that, there was nothing on the counters or cabinets, and no pictures-no touch of home at all. For all the junk in the outer room, the mind behind this was ordered and operating in a stripped-down fashion. Whatever this place was, it was not a home.

That feeling hung with me when I returned to find Michele in the storage area with the lids off several buckets filled with metal parts, nails, and short lengths of iron rod. Seeing the contents, I became single-minded and walked down the hallway to the bedroom and the bath. I was positive we were in the right place; now we just needed to prove it.

In the bedroom I found stripped twin beds, two empty dressers, and bare walls. Except for a few hangers, the closet was also empty. And there was a bleach smell in the air. This was either the lair of someone who swept tracks or more likely someone who’d just cleared out.

“Merde,” I said.

“Gone?” Michele asked as she came into the room.

“Probably for good,” I said.

I took a step and raised the bedroom window shade, throwing light across the wood floor. By the discoloration, I could tell that there’d been a rug there by the bed, and by the scratches, a chair and table of some sort up against the wall.

I mentioned it, and Michele said, “Drafting table.”

I pushed up the sash, looked out the bedroom window, and saw that the apartment below had a window box with churned earth and freshly planted flowers. Something small and golden that I couldn’t make out sparkled in the dirt.

But I was more interested in the Dumpster in the alley directly below the window. People who leave places for good throw away their trash and whatever else they don’t want before they move. I squinted. Was that a piece of a cell phone down there?

Intending to go back to the alley, I wandered into the bathroom, finding it also stripped except for a short stack of newspapers on a shelf by the toilet.

The papers were months old. Two were classified sections with circled ads for what Michele said were flea markets and junkyards. The other three were folded and featured partially done crossword puzzles. There were doodles of stars and geometric designs around the puzzles of the first two sections.

But there were no stars or boxes around the third puzzle. Above it, however, there was a crude doodle in black felt pen that didn’t make sense. But when I turned it upside down, Michele’s breath caught in her throat.

“It’s a study of a horse’s leg,” she said. “And look at the way it’s drawn. That’s the leg and rear haunch, positioned much as the statue of Al-Buraq was.”

I immediately took a picture of the sketch and sent it to Louis Langlois and Investigateur Hoskins, along with a text that read, “Drawing of Al-Buraq’s leg,” and the address.

I hit send, and we heard the dead bolt thrown.

Then the front door swung open.

Chapter 96

FOR ME, EVERYTHING became simple then. Whoever was coming into the apartment was part of AB-16, and given the group’s actions until now, I had to assume they were armed, dangerous, and ready to kill, which meant I needed to be just as ready and just as deadly.

Setting the newspaper and horse drawing aside on the vanity, I motioned to Michele to stay quiet and not move. Then I slipped to the transom and listened to footsteps that entered, and stopped. The front door shut.

I took a peek and saw a big woman, short blond hair, dressed in hipster black. She had one of the bucket lids in her hands.

Which meant if she had a gun, she couldn’t go for it easily. It was my opportunity, and I acted, stepping out into the hallway in a combat crouch, the Glock braced in two hands. We were no more than twenty-five feet apart.

I couldn’t remember how to say “Get down on the floor,” so I yelled, “Asseyez-vous!”

Sit down!

She jumped in alarm, twisted toward me in panic. I yelled at her again. But instead of going to the ground, she whipped the plastic bucket lid at me like a big Frisbee. She must have had mad disc skills because the lid came whizzing at me with surprising snap and accuracy. I had to bat it out of the air, which gave her the chance to flee.

“Damn it,” I said, and raced after her down the passage.

I should have slowed down, taken my time. Instead, I barreled into the choked living area like a stampeding bull. The blonde darted down the entry hall at the same time I caught motion to my left and was immediately hit with a spray of short sharp bits of metal.

Most of the shrapnel caught me on the right side of my face, and only reflexes prevented a piece from blinding me. It cut into my eyelid and blurred my vision. I lunged right, trying to get out of range so I could turn and shoot.

But when I tried, I tripped against one of the big buckets. By the time I regained my balance and was fighting for a sight picture, it was too late.

Haja Hamid had me dead to rights.

Crouched behind several stacks of magazines that covered her chest, she was aiming a pistol with a sound suppressor at me.

I froze.

And she tapped the trigger.

Her bullet smashed into the exposed grip panel of the Glock, just below my thumb. It was as if an electrified sledgehammer had hit my hand, causing it to close and inadvertently pull the trigger, discharging a round before the pistol slipped from my useless fingers and fell to the floor.

Even in that crowded space, the sound was deafening, disorienting. Blood was blinding my left eye. My right hand had gone completely numb. And from wrist to shoulder, my muscles twitched and my bones burned.

I realized that Haja was shouting at me, and that in shock, I’d gone to one knee, holding my useless arm. She came at me. The blonde returned. She shouted, but Haja couldn’t hear, or wasn’t listening.

Haja was getting a better angle. Maybe she’d aimed for my hand at first because she wanted to find out how much I knew before killing me. But my gun going off had ended that idea.

The shot would bring the police, and she had to be gone when they came. She would kill me now to cover her tracks. I could see it in her nickel-gray eyes when she stepped out from behind the stacks of magazines, raised her pistol, and aimed, two feet away, no more.

“Haja! Don’t!”

Those were the first words I heard clearly after my gun went off, and they hadn’t come from the blonde.

Michele Herbert was standing in the mouth of the hallway, afraid, but insistent when Haja turned to her.

“Don’t shoot, Haja! It’s me, Michele!”

Seeing Michele surprised and broke something in Haja. Her arms, hands, and pistol began to sink.

It registered in my daze, and once again my marine training kicked in. I let go my damaged hand, and lunged at her.

My left shoulder hammered the side of her left knee. Haja crashed sideways. Her gun went off as she fell. I went frantic then, and scrambled up on top of her, straddling her legs. I saw her pain and hatred of me, and the fact that she no longer had the pistol.

But she’d found a nasty chunk of metal, and swung it hard at my head. I blocked it with my good arm, stunned at the raw power of her blow. Then she bucked against me. With her ironworker strength she damn near threw me off.

Then she hit me in the face with the butt of her palm, caught me right under the jaw, and rocked me. She cocked back that hunk of metal again, meaning to finish me off.

Flinging out my left hand again, I caught the inside of her elbow, and then used the only other weapon I had.

My head became my hammer. I swung it with every bit of my remaining strength and felt my forehead crack and crush the bridge of her nose.

When I lifted my head, she was addled, and there was blood gushing from her nostrils. But I hit her a second time, just to make sure.

Panting, drenched in sweat, my face slick with sweat and blood, I heard something, and looked to my right in time to see the blonde. She gripped a three-foot piece of angle iron, which was already in full swing at my head.

Halfway through the arc, I heard a thud.

The blonde hunched up and let go of the iron piece. It flung through the air, clipped my ear, and hit something behind me. Dumbly, she looked at me, and then down at her chest before going down in a breathless heap.

“Jack?” Michele said weakly. “Help. Me.”

I pivoted. She was sitting up against a piece of busted furniture. Haja’s pistol was in her lap, and her hands were clasped across her belly and blouse, where a dark rose of blood had bloomed.

Chapter 97

14th Arrondissement

6:12 p.m.

SHAREN HOSKINS PULLED her car over in front of La Santé prison. She climbed out, came around the back door, and opened it for me.

I was in handcuffs. My face was swollen and held together by thirty-two stitches. A black patch covered antibiotic cream smeared over my sewn eyelid. My arm was in a sling, and my spiral-fractured wrist in a cast.

A dull throb had returned to my fingers and lower forearms as Hoskins led me, Juge Fromme, and Louis Langlois toward the security entrance.

Louis’s doctor friend had figured out that he’d slightly dislocated the head of his tibia, and had snapped the bone back into place. But it was still so sore he could only walk as fast as the magistrate’s top speed.

My chief concern, however, was Michele Herbert, who was still in surgery. I had put her there, gut shot, and it was killing me. The fact that I was walking up to prison doors instead of in vigil outside the operating room was killing me too. To my way of thinking, you owe a person who takes a bullet for you, and then saves your life by putting a bullet through someone else.

Two high-level French intelligence officers met us on the other side of security. The shorter, balder one introduced himself as La Roche. The taller, paler one told us his name was Rousseau. Both were probably operational handles.

“You are here as a courtesy, Morgan,” La Roche said in perfect English.

Rousseau said, “Despite the fact that you broke enough laws to get you thrown in jail for thirty years, you risked your life multiple times to catch Hamid, and France owes you that much.”

“The handcuffs necessary?” I asked.

Juge Fromme cut the intelligence officers off before they could reply, saying, “The minister of justice himself says those cuffs are staying right where they are until Mr. Morgan is placed on a jet leaving France.”

La Roche shrugged.

Admitting defeat, I asked, “Has she said anything?”

“Hasn’t had the chance,” La Roche replied. “You busted her up pretty good, but the doctor says she’s coming around. They’re moving her to an interrogation room as we speak. Investigateur Hoskins? We’d like you to conduct the initial interrogation, along with Juge Fromme. All on tape, of course.”

Hoskins said, “Why me? Why not some big counter-terror expert?”

“Because this began as a murder case,” Rousseau said. “You know the details better than we do, so I want you to question her about the killings at the same time you ask about her accomplices, and their future plans.”

“Back and forth,” said La Roche. “Keep her off-balance. If we have questions, we’ll text you to come out of the room to hear them. Can you do that?”

“I’ll try,” Hoskins said, and the magistrate nodded.

Soon after we started walking, Rousseau moved beside me and said, “There are a few things I don’t understand.”

“Only a few?” I said, wincing at my sutured and bandaged cheeks.

“Two, then. How did Professor Herbert know Haja Hamid? And how did you track her down so fast?”

As we made our way through the ruined halls of the old prison, I explained that Haja had attended the academy of fine arts on a scholarship for one year. Michele Herbert, an upper classman at the time, had been Haja’s student adviser. She described Haja as an angry woman right from the start, someone who made life difficult for just about everyone she met. At the same time, she was passionate about her art, and had gravitated to metal sculpture and welding almost immediately.

Haja, Michele said, liked to play with fire and hammer heated metal, as if she were burning and beating her inner demons when she was working. After the first year, she left to go to a welding school.

“Haja told Professor Herbert that she’d learn all she needed to know there,” I told Rousseau as we reached the ultra-max security wing, where Ali Farad, the imam, and the others caught up in the AB-16 conspiracy were being held.

“Haja dropped off Michele’s radar when she left,” I went on. “The last the professor heard, she’d gone off to work somewhere in the south of France. When Michele saw the picture of the woman outside the mosque and recognized her, she called up the alumni office at the academy of fine arts, and asked if it had a forwarding address for Haja on record. There was one, and I blundered us into the hornet’s nest that got Michele shot.”

“I know her surgeon,” Rousseau said. “She’s in good hands.”

The other intelligence officer asked, “Did the professor know what Hamid was angry about back in school?”

“Michele didn’t know,” I said. “Haja wasn’t the kind who opened up.”

“Did Herbert ever hear her speak of hating France, or supporting radical Islam?”

“She remembered Haja as happy to be in France, glad to have left Africa, so Michele figured her anger was personal. And Islam? Michele said Haja was adamantly nonreligious, and apolitical. Do we know exactly where she’s from, by the way? The professor couldn’t remember.”

“Niger, in sub-Saharan West Africa,” La Roche said. “By birth she’s Tuareg, a desert nomad. On her citizenship application she listed no religion, and her occupation as ‘welder and artist.’”

We stopped near two doors guarded by counter-terrorists.

“People do change,” said Rousseau. “Investigateur Hoskins, Juge Fromme: your job is to show us how much. Give us five minutes to get in position, and then go in.”

Chapter 98

THE FRENCH INTELLIGENCE officers led us into a soundproof booth that faced a two-way mirror into an interrogation space turned ICU.

Wearing a prison gown, Haja Hamid sat semi-upright in a hospital bed. She was lashed to it with restraints. An IV ran into her left arm. Her nose was bandaged and the rest of her face looked as though it had plowed into a brick wall. You could barely see her eyes for the swelling.

A nurse was taking her vitals. Haja had refused all pain medications.

“I want a lawyer,” she told the nurse, sounding like someone with the worst cold in history.

The nurse ignored her.

“I want a lawyer,” Haja said again. “I know my rights.”

The nurse continued to ignore her. When the door opened and Fromme and Hoskins entered, the nurse immediately nodded and left.

“I want a lawyer,” Haja said.

“In due time,” Fromme replied, painfully moving into a chair.

“I know my rights.”

“You don’t know your rights,” the magistrate said firmly. “You have committed murder and acts of terrorism against France and her people, so the normal rules and rights don’t apply. You’ll see an attorney when I say you can.”

“Which means the more you cooperate, the sooner you see your lawyer,” Hoskins said, taking a seat by the bed.

“This is wrong,” Haja said.

“So is killing innocent people because they represent the best of my culture,” Fromme said.

Haja said nothing for several moments before spitting out her words. “France is doomed no matter what you do to me. The Prophet’s warhorse is in the skies and the dark Muslim horde is coming for you. You are already in a state of siege that will not end until France and all of Europe are taken.”

“That’s your goal?” Hoskins asked. “An Islamic republic in France?”

The sculptor hesitated, seemed to come to some decision, and then nodded. “Inshallah. We are willing to martyr ourselves to see that day come to pass. Every one of us. And our numbers grow every day.”

“She’s brazen,” Louis remarked on the other side of the mirror. “Hasn’t denied a thing.”

Hoskins said, “Did you know Henri Richard?”

“The opera director?” Haja said rather quickly. “Not personally, no.”

“Never came into contact with him?”

“No.”

“Who killed him?” Juge Fromme asked.

“I don’t know,” Haja said. “Things in AB-16 are kept cellular. We often don’t know what other cells are doing for the cause.”

“Who do you take orders from?”

“Allah,” she replied.

“On earth,” Hoskins said.

“As it is in heaven, I take my orders from God.”

“Did Allah design the graffiti tag?” Fromme asked.

“An instrument of God did,” she said.

“But you built the statue,” Hoskins said.

“I was an instrument through which Allah expresses himself. If God wills it, it shall be done.”

The magistrate seemed to tire of this line of questioning, and returned to the murders. “Did you kill or participate in the murder of René Pincus?”

“Me? No. I’m guilty of the statue and nothing more.”

“Bullshit,” I said.

“You were seen leaving the scene of a bombing,” Fromme said. “The witness, Jack Morgan of Private, is willing to testify.”

“I’ve got nothing to say about that,” Haja said.

“I’m sure the prosecutors will have a lot to say about it,” Hoskins snapped. “And whose body burned in the linen factory fire? Was it Paul Piggott? Epée?”

Haja’s puffy eyebrows rose at the question. “I have no idea who that is, and body? Some bum must have snuck in after I left.”

Hoskins looked irritated. “Is this a game to you?”

“No,” the sculptor snapped. “This is war.”

Chapter 99

IN THE OBSERVATION booth, Rousseau, the taller intelligence officer, said, “That’s one war you are going to lose, bitch.”

Haja asked for water. While Fromme poured it for her and held the cup and straw to her lips, I remembered something from earlier in the day.

“Do you have access to the list of evidence seized at her apartment?” I asked La Roche.

“It’s still being processed,” he replied. “From what I understand, there was so much stuff the floors were about to cave in.”

“I told La Crim about a busted cell phone I saw in the Dumpster beneath her bedroom window,” I said. “Has anyone analyzed it yet?”

La Roche pondered me a moment, and then said, “I’ll find out.”

He left the room, and was not present when Hoskins said, “Were you involved in the killing of Lourdes Latrelle?”

“No,” Haja said. “That was another cell of believers.”

“Minister of culture Guy LaFont?” Fromme asked.

“No, though I heard it might be coming.”

“From?”

“Amé, my dead friend, and martyr.”

“You’re referring to the blonde who died in your apartment? Amé Thies?” the magistrate asked.

“Who else?”

“Where did she hear that LaFont might be assassinated?”

“Can’t help you. She had the contacts. I didn’t.”

“I don’t believe you,” Hoskins said sharply. “You need to start leveling with us if you want to have some chance of seeing daylight ever again.”

Haja responded smugly, “You can’t offer me hope, madame investigateur. I know my fate and accept it as any true believer would.”

“Were you involved in the death of Millie Fleurs?” Fromme pressed.

Haja almost laughed. “I can honestly say I never heard a thing about her being a target. Jacques Noulan? Maybe. But not Millie Fleurs.”

“You’re again saying another cell was responsible?” Fromme insisted.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” she replied. “And I need more water.”

Neither magistrate nor investigator moved a muscle.

“You deny me water?” Haja asked. “That’s torture. That’s what that is.”

Hoskins’s lower lip curled inward. She stood, poured Haja more water, and held the cup out to her. As Haja sipped through the straw, I started thinking about how she had been angry, not religious, and apolitical when Michele knew her.

What had turned her to this? When was that moment?

Hoskins set the cup on the bed stand and sat back down, asking, “You regularly attend services at the mosque in Barbès?”

“Not regularly,” Haja replied. “But at times.”

Fromme asked, “Is the imam part of AB-16?”

She didn’t answer at first, but then said, “Al-Moustapha? Of course he’s part of it. And Firmus Massi. How do you think we communicated? Through FEZ Couriers. We’re all part of AB-16. We’re all out to change France. And we’re all willing to spend time in jail because we know it won’t be long before the prison doors are thrown open and we are rescued by the mob.”

“Ali Farad of Private Paris?” the magistrate asked. “He in AB-16 too?”

“A great soldier of the revolution,” Haja said.

I didn’t know why, but in my gut I didn’t buy it. Then again, I didn’t have to buy it. A jury did, and on these counts Haja sounded confident enough to convince one. One thing was sure now: Ali Farad faced life in prison.

La Roche returned to the observation booth, and his partner filled him in on what Haja had said. La Roche glanced at me and Louis as if trying to decide whether to kick us out. Guilt by association.

Instead, he said, “Nothing on the phone, Morgan. They found both pieces, but no SIM card.”

Frustrated, I forced my attention back to the interrogation, wondering once again about the source of Hamid’s anger during her time at the academy of fine arts. If she was a terrorist from the beginning, a sleeper sent to France, was showing anger back then carelessness on her part? Or an inability to mask her hatred of France?

Then again, Michele had said she believed Haja’s anger was personal. Was the anger connected to her willingness to join AB-16? If yes, I decided, the source of her anger had to be deep and violent.

Back in Africa, back in Niger, did someone French murder someone close to her? A sibling? Or was Haja raped at some point? By a Frenchman? Was she beaten or had she watched someone close to her beaten? Was she…?

Stark images from the week before flickered in my mind.

Now that would be enough to make her angry, wouldn’t it?

I thought so. Very angry. Spitting angry. Maybe in a constant rage at what life had done to her. But is it true? Simple test, right? But say it is true. How does that translate into her being willing to spend her life in prison for the…

It dawned on me then.

“What if there’s another explanation?” I asked Louis and the intelligence officers. “What if we have this all wrong?”

“What are you talking about?” Louis said.

“Text Hoskins and Fromme,” I said to La Roche. “Tell them to come out.”

Ten minutes later, we were all gathered down the hall from the interrogation room, and I was finishing up explaining my theory and the evidence that supported it.

The French intelligence officers looked skeptical at best, but I could see that Fromme was chewing it over, and Hoskins was keeping an open mind.

“Doesn’t hurt to ask,” the magistrate said at last. “It’s either true or not, and she sure can’t hide a thing like that.”

Chapter 100

WE WATCHED FROM the booth as Hoskins and Fromme reentered the interrogation room.

“I’ve cooperated,” Haja said. “Can I see a lawyer now?”

“A few more questions,” the magistrate said, sitting on a chair to the sculptor’s right and leaning over his cane.

Hoskins, who stood on the other side of the bed, said, “Michele Herbert described you as angry when you were at the academy of fine arts.”

“I don’t remember that,” Haja said.

“Was it your hatred of France that made you angry?”

Haja paused and said, “Maybe. I was disgusted with the decadence of Paris.”

Fromme said, “So you came to France already a radical follower of Islam? Is that right?”

“It was my fate. Part of my calling.”

Hoskins reached into a folder and took out an eight-by-ten photograph. “Is this you?” She held the picture up to her, and even through the swelling, I could see shock registering.

The investigateur saw it too and said, “You didn’t know Henri Richard was taking pictures of you two having sex with him dressed as a priest and you in a robe and hijab?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Haja said. “That’s not me.”

Hoskins said, “Do I need to use force? Strip-search and photograph you myself? Or do I spare you that indignity?”

The bomber and sculptor closed her eyes.

After several long beats, Fromme said insistently, “Is that you, madame?”

“Yes,” Haja said at last. “It’s me.”

“Who did that to you? Who mutilated you like that?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Haja said, opening her eyes.

“Oh, I think it does matter,” Hoskins insisted. “I think it matters a great deal to you. I think your castration is the source of your anger.”

“I stopped being angry about that a long time ago. It was the will of Allah.”

“That’s how you react after having your clitoris cut off because of Islam? You think it was right and proper for your father’s religion to lop off one of your body parts so you could never enjoy having sex?”

“Islam is submission,” Haja said. “Submission to God’s will. Once I submitted, I was able to see the rightness of Islam. It’s what I fight for.”

“You want an alternative explanation? One that Jack Morgan is floating?”

At hearing my name, Hamid shifted and said, “What’s that?”

“Morgan thinks it’s possible that you’re fighting for something else entirely,” the investigateur said. “He thinks because of your resentment over your mutilation, you planted evidence against the imam and the others to stir things up, create a mob mentality, promote a civil and racial war in France.”

Haja snorted. “And what good would that do me?”

“It might just drive Islam from this country,” Hoskins said. “It might just cleanse your adopted society of the religion that butchered you.”

“Mr. Morgan has quite the imagination, but he is dead wrong.”

“You deny wanting a civil war?” Fromme said.

“I want a coup d’état.”

“How do we know you’re not lying?”

“Why would I?”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Hoskins cried. “You lied about knowing Henri Richard. And here we have pictures of him buried in your mutilation, pictures sure to come out in court and make your humiliation complete.”

Haja’s hatred shimmered through her swollen features before she closed her puffy eyes and said, “Burn in hell, bitch. I’m not saying another word until I have a lawyer present.”

Chapter 101

Montfermeil, eastern suburbs of Paris

7:20 p.m.

MAJOR SAUVAGE LEFT General Georges’s evening briefing at a crisp pace, with Captain Mfune hard at his shoulder.

“What are we going to do?” Mfune muttered.

“Not here,” Sauvage said sharply.

The major found Corporal Perry, a young, scrawny kid assigned to drive him, and told Perry to catch another ride back to their position. Then he ordered Mfune to take the wheel of the Renault Sherpa.

Tan, squat, and plated with armor, the Sherpa looked like the head of some prehistoric reptile. It was imposing, and people tended to get out of its way the second they saw it. The big machine gun up top helped. It was an AA-52, the machine gun that French soldiers referred to as La Nana, or the maid, because it cleaned up. Sauvage had seen a combo of the Sherpa and La Nana work all the time in Afghanistan. The Taliban ran like hell when they saw them coming.

Mfune pulled the armored vehicle out into traffic and said, “Major?”

“You heard the briefing,” Sauvage said testily. “Haja’s staying on story. She’s sacrificing everything.”

“With all due respect, sir, Amé sacrificed everything,” Mfune said. “Haja is still alive. Haja could change her mind.”

“She could if she was normal, but she’s not, so she won’t,” the major reasoned. “And because of that, the powers that be will have to take her at her word, and act accordingly. In fact, if you think about it, she’s in a unique position to convince them that the AB-16 threat is real and growing.”

“Another layer of disinformation,” Mfune said.

“Exactly,” Sauvage said.

“So we do nothing for the time being?” Mfune asked. “Let the uprising build on its own?”

Sauvage thought about that. It was a good question.

He considered his options for several moments, and then said, “No, I think it’s time we show France what a little fighting back would look like. Get more of the home team behind us.”

The captain said, “Without provocation, sir? Is that advisable?”

“Of course not,” Sauvage said. “We’ll create provocation, and then la pagaille, in the chaos of battle, we’ll retaliate. Hard.”

Chapter 102

14th Arrondissement

8:15 p.m.

LEAVING LA SANTÉ, I was aware of the prison’s cold hard walls and the fates of the people inside. Haja Hamid deserved to be in there.

But Imam Al-Moustapha? And Ali Farad?

Though Haja had denied it, I was still entertaining the possibility that her motives were opposite the ones she cited. In that scenario, the sculptor was prepared to suffer, and she was prepared to make innocent men suffer with her.

Juge Fromme broke me from my thoughts. “As helpful and insightful as you’ve been, Mr. Morgan, Investigateur Hoskins must now take you to a holding cell until the minister of justice sees fit to deport or release you.”

“This is ridiculous,” Louis fumed.

Fromme growled, “Carrying a handgun without a license. Carrying a handgun in the commission of a crime. These are crimes we take seriously in France, Louis. Or have you forgotten?”

Louis looked ready to argue, but I said, “You’ll take off the cuffs if I’m in a cell? Get me some pain meds?”

“Yes.”

“Can we go by the hospital first so I can check in on Michele Herbert?”

“That’s not happening,” Hoskins said. “But I’ll get you an update.”

We returned to the police car we’d taken to the prison, and I was climbing in the backseat when Louis’s cell rang. He answered, listened, and said, “Here. I’ll let him explain.”

Louis hit speaker, and I said, “It’s Jack.”

“Where are you?” Justine asked. “And where have you been the last day and a half?”

“I’m on my way to jail,” I said. “And the last thirty-six hours are too complicated to go into at the moment.”

There was a pause. “What are you charged with?”

“Multiple felony counts. How’s Kim and Sherman?”

“They had a truth and reconciliation meeting before she went to Betty Ford. Kim fessed up, told her grandfather everything.”

“How’d Sherman take it?”

“He’s grateful she’s alive. He also sent over a check this morning for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and a note asking if it was enough.”

“That’ll do,” I said. “Transfer half to the Private Paris bonus account.”

“That’s enough,” Fromme grumbled from the front seat. “You’re in custody, not business. End that call. Now.”

“You heard the judge,” I said. “Gotta go.”

Louis ended the conversation. As he put the device away, I thought about how cut off I was without a phone, and what a valuable tool it was for someone in my line of work. A phone keeps you mobile, not tied down to a desk, and yet able to access information when you need it. A very good thing.

And if we were lucky enough to get hold of a bad guy’s phone, well, that was like hitting the mother lode, finding the keys to the kingdom. Thinking back to that busted cell phone I’d seen in the Dumpster below Haja Hamid’s bedroom window, I felt reasonably sure that it had been hers or Amé’s.

How had that worked? Had the burn phone been broken and tossed in the alley, or from Haja’s bedroom window?

I shut my eyes, tried to imagine the pieces sailing out the window, falling through the scaffolding, tried to envision the trajectories the pieces might have taken…falling to the…

“Turn around,” I said.

“Why?” said Hoskins.

“No,” Fromme said firmly. “He goes to-”

“Haja’s apartment. Turn around.”

“That is an active crime scene of a killing in which you are a suspect,” the judge shot back. “You’ll never be allowed in, and neither will we.”

“Then call someone there,” I said. “I think there’s something we missed.”

Chapter 103

Sevran, northeastern suburbs of Paris

10:04 p.m.

THE CHAOS OF BATTLE! Major Sauvage thought with growing pleasure and excitement. La pagaille! It’s coming, so close I can smell it. Kill them now, soldier. Vanquish them. Drive them from our land.

As all this played in his head, Sauvage was pacing inside his command post in an abandoned building, drinking coffee, and monitoring the radio traffic from the six units under him. He was waiting for one of the hot spots to gather wind and throw sparks. So far, however, there’d been little to suggest a repeat of yesterday evening’s chaos: the bombing, Haja’s burning horse, and all the violence those two masterstrokes had spawned.

He thought of Haja, and knew without a doubt that she would sacrifice herself to their cause. She was that noble. She was that committed.

Sauvage admired her greatly. To the extent that he could, the major even loved her, and it made him sick that he might never see her again.

His burn phone rang. Had to be Mfune. Seeing the junior officers inside the command center caught up in their work, he slipped outside. He didn’t recognize the number, and almost didn’t answer.

Then he did, and said, “Yes?”

“Chloe there?” a woman said in a voice thick with alcohol.

“You’ve got the wrong number, madame,” he said.

“You’re sure? I punched the number she put in my contacts last night.”

“If Chloe did that, she’s either stupid or nuts,” Sauvage said, and ended the call.

The major hesitated, and then hit redial. The other phone rang twice.

“Chloe?” the woman said.

Sauvage cut the call, and went back to waiting for a mob to appear.

It wasn’t until shortly after midnight that the first gunshots were reported around La Forêt-the Forest-a housing project six kilometers northeast of his position on the northern border of the Bondy Forest.

The major called Captain Mfune on the radio. “Take the convoy jammers and triangulate the entire place. I’m coming behind you with two full units.”

“Rules of engagement?”

“If fired upon, defend yourselves.”

“Roger that,” Mfune said, and signed off.

Sauvage grabbed his flak jacket, helmet, and sidearm, saying, “Let’s move, Corporal Perry.”

The major got in the Sherpa, climbed into the backseat, and pushed up the roof hatch.

Taking goggles and a radio headset from a hook by the hatch, the major wriggled up through the opening and got in position behind the machine gun.

Moments after his driver and the sergeant who usually manned the turret gun climbed in, Sauvage’s headset crackled. “Where to, sir?” the corporal asked.

“La Forêt housing project. Patch me into all radio traffic in the area.”

“Roger that, sir,” the corporal said.

They pulled out and headed north.

Sauvage loved his station in life at that moment, riding high above the streets behind La Nana and a whole lot of accurate ammunition. Was there anything better?

The major’s brain replayed savored bits of past trips into the chaos of battle, and he felt his body warm. The radio traffic only fed his excitement. There were reports of armed men in the streets around the housing project, and snipers.

In Sauvage’s mind, the sniping was more than enough provocation to retaliate with force, regardless of whether someone was hit or not. He trembled with an addict’s anticipation then, knowing for certain that he was on the verge of slipping into the familiar insanity and lethal bliss of la pagaille.

Chapter 104

La Forêt, northeastern suburbs of Paris

April 13, 12:44 a.m.

NINE SEEDY TOTALITARIAN-STYLE high-rise buildings made up La Forêt housing project. Four sat to the left of a central access road, and five to the right. The project bordered a crescent-shaped wetland. If you made a straight line through the Bondy Forest, it was less than six miles from Les Bosquets.

Some of those AK-47s have got to be here, Sauvage thought as the Sherpa rolled to a stop two blocks from the eastern edge of the project. How many? Five or six at least. But perhaps as many as ten or fifteen were taken out of Les Bosquets, and then smuggled through the woods.

Mfune’s voice came over the headset. “Convoy jammers in position.”

The jammers were state-of-the-art Argos designed to interrupt all cellular and walkie-talkie traffic within five hundred yards. With three of the Argos in place, the housing project was a dead zone, which is how Sauvage wanted it.

“Turn them on,” the major said. “Shift all comm to C.”

“Yes, sir.”

The headset went dead. The major ducked down into the Sherpa, looked at the gunner sergeant, and said, “You’ll mobilize here as part of the perimeter.”

“Here, sir?” the sergeant said.

Sauvage nodded. “You’re to stop and search anyone seen fleeing that project. If they have weapons of any kind, arrest and restrain them.”

The sergeant pursed his lips and got out, shutting the door behind him.

“Change to C frequency, Corporal Perry,” Sauvage said.

The driver looked uneasy. “Protocol says B under these-”

“Perry, are you being insubordinate?”

“No sir!”

“Then do as I say,” Sauvage snapped. “Intelligence indicates that AB-16 may be monitoring police and military frequencies.”

He knew nothing of the sort, but it worked. His driver typed in the new frequency on the Sherpa’s in-dash computer.

“Well done, Corporal,” Sauvage said. “Going topside.”

The major crawled up through the port again and got his boots solidly in the stirrups below before triggering his mic.

“Captain Mfune?”

“Roger.”

“Put two-man teams on every corner two blocks back from the target,” he ordered. “You stay mobile on that perimeter. Catch the cats as they run.”

“You’re playing rat tonight?”

“Affirmative,” Sauvage said.

There was a pause, and then, “Good luck, Major.”

“Roger that,” he replied. “Corporal Perry?”

“Major?”

“You’re recon-trained?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So you know what a rat patrol is?”

“Seek out the enemy and draw fire, sir.”

“Are you a brave man, Corporal Perry?”

“I’m a recon soldier, sir.”

“Then do your duty. Advance east. Cruise the perimeter of the project.”

“Done, sir.”

The Sherpa rolled toward La Forêt. Sauvage put both hands on the machine gun, swept away in the heightened awareness he longed and lived for.

He felt the way he used to in Afghanistan, when the sky was moonless and armies were moving. He sensed the tension that built before la pagaille, waiting for the first shot, the first flare, the first rocket streaking across the sky.

It was where he belonged.

I’m coming home, he thought ecstatically. Coming home right-

A gunshot ripped the night. Someone was shooting in the project.

“You hear that, Corporal Perry?”

“Affirmative, sir.”

“Bear right along the perimeter. Take the first entrance in, road or path.”

The Sherpa swung right onto a narrow two-lane road. The streetlamps were dead. A block away, two cars had been turned sideways, bumper to bumper, spanning the street, and set afire. Two other cars were burning and blocking the road a hundred yards beyond, up against the Bondy Forest.

Between the two barriers, a mob of young men guarded the main entrance into the project. Most held knives or machetes, clubs, Molotov cocktails, or stones. Sheets had been hung in the trees. There was Arabic writing on them that Sauvage read easily.

We fight for the Prophet’s warhorse!

Even better, Sauvage thought.

Then he barked, “Straight at them, Corporal Perry! Show them how the Sherpa works at ramming speed!”

Chapter 105

WITH A LURCH that threw the major against the back of the turret, Perry buried the accelerator. The armored car hurtled at the burning barrier.

“Brace for impact!” his driver shouted.

Sauvage leaned into the crash as the Sherpa’s massive steel bumper blew through the two cars, sending them spinning out of the way.

Perry screeched the armored vehicle to a halt thirty yards from the mob, which had begun to break up and scatter. But ten or more men stood their ground, screaming at Sauvage. They hurled stones and then a Molotov cocktail that burst into flames in front of the Sherpa.

Provocation if there ever was, the major thought. He flipped the safety lever on the machine gun and almost pulled the trigger. But he held his fire and said, “Straight ahead, Perry. Get them running.”

Perry steered around the fire and accelerated toward the lingering rioters, who turned and fled into the housing project.

“Follow them,” Sauvage said.

His eyes went everywhere, from the youth in the headlights to the dimly lit grounds and the glowing windows of the nearest high-rise, where residents were looking out fearfully.

C’mon, the major thought. Let’s do this.

But they passed the first building without incident.

“Left,” Sauvage commanded.

The Sherpa rolled into a bare dirt common area between the first and second apartment towers.

C’mon, the major thought. I’m giving it to you on a plate. Do it or I’m going to lose my faith in-

The shot came from six or seven stories up in the second tower, and smacked off the hood of the Sherpa.

Defective bullets in lots slated for disposal have a way of not shooting where you aim them, the major thought in amusement. Especially when they’re shot from guns with faulty sights.

The 7.5mm cartridges in La Nana, on the other hand, were top grade, and its sights sharply calibrated. He aimed the muzzle of the maid where he thought the shot had come from and mashed the trigger.

The machine gun rattled and shook, spitting death at the upper floors of the second building. Spent casings flipped all around Sauvage as the bullets gouged the walls and shattered windows in the general area where he thought the sniper had his perch. In Sauvage’s mind, casualties were irrelevant.

There was a deep silence after the six-second machine gun burst, and then from both buildings he heard screams and wails of fear, grief, and agony that all melded into one quivering howl about the injustice of combat.

Well, thought Sauvage, don’t harbor fucking Islamic terrorists and this kind of shit won’t happen.

“Drive on, Corporal.”

“Major? Are you-”

“Take an S pattern through the remaining buildings, Perry!” he roared. “We have to know which ones need to be swept floor to floor.”

“Yes, sir!” Perry cried, and drove on.

Gunfire sounded in the distance. Sauvage’s radio headset crackled.

“We’re getting fire from the north,” Captain Mfune said.

“Engage,” the major said, hearing more shots within seconds.

As they rolled on, Sauvage watched the upper floors of the building he’d just shot at, and saw no one at any window, shattered or whole. That worked in his favor. No witnesses meant that his version of events would be the one accepted.

They rounded the far end of the second building and passed between it and the third, with no shots fired and no one watching out the windows. Even without cell phones, word of his coming had spread. Bullets had a way of transcending all forms of communication.

All remained quiet as the Sherpa drove slowly between the third and fourth buildings and then along the fourth apartment tower’s far side, which bordered a swampy area.

But when the Sherpa crossed the lane that divided the housing project in two, there was a burst of gunfire from the second building on Sauvage’s right. He saw the muzzle flash clearly as the defective bullets, shot from beyond the Sterling’s optimum distance, skipped harmlessly off the pavement.

“Hard right, then left, Corporal,” Sauvage said, already locking on the crosshairs of La Nana’s sights.

Perry complied without comment. The Sherpa tacked twice toward the second sniper, who was on the sixth floor, four windows in.

The major was about to shoot when he noticed a woman in a robe and head scarf standing at the window of an apartment on the third floor. She was holding up a cell phone as if photographing or videoing his actions.

Sauvage took careful aim and shot her first.

Chapter 106

FOR EIGHT FULL seconds, until the ammunition was spent, Sauvage raked machine gun fire above, below, and on either side of that sixth floor window where the sniper had been.

“Move, Perry! Evasive,” the major barked. “I’m reloading.”

The Sherpa picked up speed. It wove back and forth while Sauvage fed a new chain of ammunition into La Nana.

Raindrops hit the machine gun’s superheated barrel and hissed as Perry took a right around the near high-rise. The major was already locked and loaded when the corporal took another right that put them in a long U-shaped space, with buildings to either side and a third at the far end.

Many of the rioters had regrouped in the common area. As Perry closed the gap between them, Molotov cocktails flew through the air and exploded. Then one of the rioters fired an AK-47 that damn near killed Sauvage. He heard the sound barrier break when the bullet blew past his ear.

The mob turned and fled as one.

“Full pursuit, Corporal!” the major ordered.

Perry sped after the rioters. Sauvage triggered his microphone and said, “Captain Mfune, I have armed AB-16 sympathizers heading your way.”

He heard nothing in return, but his focus was on that gang of thirty or forty rioters running in the Sherpa’s headlights toward the apartment building that formed the bottom of the U. They did what he thought they’d do: split into two groups. The majority went left, back toward the entrance. But about twelve of them broke to the right, including the one carrying the AK-47.

“Cut the small group off!” the major shouted.

Perry swung the Sherpa hard right, accelerated, and got out in front of the escaping rioters before skidding to a stop in the narrow gap between the buildings. Two of the rioters turned on a dime and took off the other way.

Seeing Sauvage training La Nana on them, the ten others, including the rifleman, dropped their weapons and threw up their hands.

The major noted the fear and loathing in their faces, and then pulled the trigger, mowing them all down in a single three-second burst.

“Major Sauvage!” Perry screamed. “Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!”

Sauvage ignored him, wriggling out of the turret and jumping off the roof. With his back to the corporal, the major walked ten steps toward the bodies.

“Jesus, Major,” Perry choked out the open window. “They gave up.”

Crouching, Sauvage picked up the AK-47 amid the twitching corpses, pivoted, and aimed at his young driver.

“Sorry it had to be you, Perry,” he said. “But this story needs a saint.”

Terror registered on the young corporal’s face before Sauvage put two rounds through the driver’s forehead and six more around him through the open window.

The major reached into his pocket to tug out a handkerchief to wipe the Sterling down. He caught motion back at the open end of the common area.

He looked closer and saw Jack Morgan running back toward the entrance to the project, his arm in a sling. Even at this distance, the major could tell from his body language that Morgan had seen him turn the gun on his own man and maybe more.

Sauvage threw the Sterling to his shoulder, found Morgan in his sights, and fired just before he made the corner.

Chapter 107

BULLETS SMASHED OFF the wall five feet from me and sent me into an all-out sprint to get away.

Even with one eye patched, I’d seen it all, from Sauvage’s Sherpa cutting off the rioters to them dropping their weapons and throwing up their hands. I saw the major open fire. I saw him slaughter ten young men, many of them teenagers, unarmed and in surrender.

It had unfolded so surreally that I had just stood there in shock and disbelief, shoeless and with mud dripping off my pants, watching Sauvage jump down, pick up the gun, and shoot his driver in cold blood.

Nothing had prepared me for that. Nothing could have.

My will to survive kicked in then. I’d started running in my muddy stocking feet, and Sauvage had tried to kill me. Safely behind the building, I kept running, not toward the wetland I’d used to access the housing project but toward the main entrance. As I ran, I dug in my pocket for the cell Louis had given me not fifteen minutes before.

I hit send, then speaker, and dodged out into another common area, this one with children’s jungle gyms and swings in it. I took a quick look right, expecting to find Sauvage flanking me. But there was no one, and I ran on. The phone started to jangle weirdly. It wasn’t working for some reason.

I had to get back to the street. I had to get to protection. I had to tell someone what I’d seen.

Breaking out from behind the building closest to the street, I cut toward a sparse grove of trees that separated me from the entrance. I reached the narrow road that divided the housing project and was forty yards from the exit when Sauvage stepped out from the shadows to my right, his cheek welded to the stock of the assault rifle.

I skidded to a stop, threw up my good hand, and said loudly, “I’m unarmed, Major.”

“Don’t know what you think you saw back there,” Sauvage said quietly. “But I just can’t let you go telling any lies about-”

“I am unarmed, Major!” I bellowed.

“I don’t care.”

Chapter 108

MAJOR SAUVAGE WAS going to love this moment.

I could see it in his expression as his finger began to squeeze the-

“Stand down, Major!” a man shouted through a bullhorn. “Stand down and drop your weapon!”

Multiple headlights flashed on from out on the road, catching us in profile, Sauvage ready and willing to end my life and me just frozen there, wondering if this was the end of everything.

The major began to swing the gun toward the blinding lights, as if he meant to snuff them out along with whoever was demanding his surrender.

“This is General Anton Georges. I order you to drop that gun, Major. Now!”

Sauvage took that like a slap. He glanced at me, but then calmly set down the gun on the pavement. He stepped back, stood there. Engines started. Three sets of headlights came toward us, and stopped.

The lights dimmed, revealing General Georges climbing out of another Sherpa while soldiers on foot came in behind him, their weapons at the ready. Then Louis Langlois limped up out of the shadows behind Sauvage.

I nodded to him that I was okay.

“Pistol on the ground too, Major,” the general said.

“Sir,” Sauvage replied, calmly removing the pistol and setting it down. “This man was inside my perimeter without authorization, abetting the enemy.”

“That’s bullshit,” I said.

General Georges glared at me, and in surprisingly good English said, “You, sir, defied my direct orders.”

I said, “General, you can put me in chains and you’d be right to do it, but I witnessed an atrocity here just a few minutes ago.”

“He witnessed ten armed members of AB-16 confronting me,” Sauvage said. “They killed my driver and were trying to kill me when I opened fire.”

“They had dropped their weapons and surrendered,” I said. “All ten of them. He gunned them down in cold blood, and then took that rifle there from one of the dead guys and used it to shoot his own man, again in cold blood.”

“He’s delusional, General!” Sauvage cried. “This American fool has no understanding of war, of combat, of la pagaille and what the chaos of battle can do to your perceptions. Either that, or he is an AB-16 sympathizer.”

“General Georges,” I said. “I was honorably discharged with the rank of captain from the United States Marine Corps. I did two full tours in Afghanistan as a combat helicopter pilot. I know an atrocity when I see one.”

Before Sauvage could respond, I kept right on going, poking my finger at the major. “AB-16 is a charade, General, just like I told you. I’m betting AB-16 was his idea from the start. I’m betting he orchestrated the entire-”

“This is a fucking outrage!” Sauvage roared. “I will not have my unblemished reputation destroyed by-”

Two soldiers dragged Captain Mfune onto the scene, his wrists cuffed behind his back. He stared at Sauvage as if he were his only hope now.

“I don’t know what they’re thinking, Major,” Mfune said.

“What have you done, General?” Sauvage demanded. “Captain Mfune is an outstanding, decorated, and battle-tested officer who-”

General Georges held up his hand and said, “Investigateur Hoskins? Juge Fromme?”

Several soldiers stood aside, and the police detective and the magistrate stepped forward. Hoskins held a cell phone up in the air and pressed her thumb against it.

In one of Major Sauvage’s pants pockets, a phone began to buzz and ring.

“Answer it,” Hoskins said. “I’m looking for Chloe.”

Chapter 109

IN MY LIFE I have encountered men and women whose dark stories were written in every line of twisted emotion that squirmed across their faces. But I had never seen a reaction that spoke novels before.

Disbelief. Defeat. Dread. Honor. Conviction. Anger.

All those feelings flickered on Sauvage’s face before he went stoic.

“Why do you have my phone number?” he asked.

“That’s not your cell,” Juge Fromme said. “We checked. It’s a disposable.”

I said, “After your accomplice Haja Hamid busted her burn phone, she tossed the pieces out her bedroom window. Two pieces landed in a Dumpster. But the SIM card hit the scaffolding and landed in a flower box a story below. Hoskins called the last number Haja called, and we got you. I recognized that phrase you like to use-that some person is ‘either stupid or nuts.’”

“This proves nothing,” Sauvage said firmly. “Since I have owned this phone, I have gotten many wrong numbers. As if the number had been used many times. The fact that this Haja person called me is pure coincidence.”

I laughed in disbelief. “Major, you are without a doubt the most cold-blooded, conniving, lying bastard I have ever met. You, Haja, and Captain Mfune here murdered five of France’s finest people to try to set off a war against Islam.”

“Why in God’s name would I do that?” he said calmly, though the muscles on his neck were stretched as taut as piano wire.

“Because for whatever reason you and Captain Mfune hate Muslims as much as Haja does,” Louis said.

“And because,” I said, “starting a war against them would give you the opportunity to engage in the kind of atrocity I just witnessed. We’ve read up on you. We know you were investigated for brutality in Afghanistan.”

“General,” Sauvage said, “this is slanderous and un-”

“Enough!” General Georges bellowed. “Major Sauvage, Captain Mfune: you are under arrest for murder, conspiracy, and treason against France, a nation you were both sworn to protect.”

The captain hung his head. But not Sauvage. He laughed scornfully. “Treason?” he said, and thumped his chest. “Against France? The country that we love more than life?

“No, General. If anything, the captain and I are France’s greatest patriots. We are the only ones willing to see the obvious: that this nation is already at war, and has been since we started letting Muslim immigrants come here in the sixties. Look at the massacre at Charlie Hebdo last year. They want our culture erased, and their numbers are growing faster than ours. Unless people like Captain Mfune and me and Haja Hamid act, France as we know it will be destroyed, and-”

General Georges cut him off, thundering, “By any definition and despite any intentions you may have had, you, sir, are a dishonor to your uniform, and you will be tried for your crimes against your country, against Paris, and against humanity. What you did tonight? We call that genocide where I come from. Cuff him. Get him the hell out of my sight.”

Four soldiers surrounded Sauvage, who stood with his head held high and defiant, glaring at all of us in turn. They put zip restraints on him and pushed him forward.

From the windows of the immigrant housing towers, people began to cheer and jeer and trill like nomads calling in the desert.

The major went berserk as he and Mfune were led away.

“You hear them!” he shouted at us. “The Muzzies want people like me silenced. They want the great cathedrals and monuments of Paris burned or reduced to rubble and built up again as grand mosques. Our food. Our music. Our free speech. Our culture will be swallowed whole and turned to shit if they’re not stopped!”

Ignoring Sauvage’s rants as they faded, General Georges marched up to me and said in open fury, “Morgan, by rights you should be in a brig along with him. You did exactly what I explicitly ordered you not to do.”

I hung my head. “Yes, General. But I knew you were handcuffed, awaiting your rules of engagement. And, I don’t know, I heard the pace of the shooting, and I thought-well, both Louis and I thought-that someone had to come in here and bear witness. So I did.”

“And it’s a good thing he did,” Hoskins said.

The general stood there fuming. “I don’t know what to do with you.”

I said, “Let me show investigators what I saw and where I saw it from, and then I’ll go home. When I’m needed, I’ll return to testify at my own expense.”

Georges continued to stand there and fume.

Juge Fromme said, “General, I’m sure the minister of justice will agree to Monsieur Morgan’s proposal. He’s as sick of Morgan as you are, and wants him out of France as soon as possible.”

The general said, “It’s on the minister, then. After Morgan makes his statement, I want him taken straight to de Gaulle and put on the first plane out of Paris.”

Nodding, I said, “With one important stop on the way.”

I thought the general was going to punch me.

Chapter 110

11th Arrondissement

8:04 a.m.

MICHELE HERBERT WAS awake but drowsy when I knocked on her hospital room door. I still had mud all over me and wore a pair of ill-fitting boots that one of the soldiers had given me. I hadn’t showered or shaved or slept. I hadn’t even been allowed to return to the Plaza Athénée to pay my bill or gather my things. They sent Louis to do all that, with orders to meet me at de Gaulle.

“What are you doing here?” she asked in a weak, slurred voice.

“I owe you dinner for saving my life,” I said, and produced a cup of ice chips.

Michele smiled wanly. “Bon appétit.”

“They say you’re going to be okay.”

She nodded, swallowed, and gestured at the television, which was on mute and showing still shots of Sauvage, Mfune, and Hamid.

“I saw what happened,” she said.

“Fighting back. You were an important part of it.”

“Too much hatred in the world,” she said.

“Agreed,” I said.

“Not enough love.”

“Double agreed.”

Michele smiled again, and blinked sleepily.

“They’re booting me out of France,” I said. “My jet’s coming in to get me in a couple of hours.”

“Your jet?”

Before I could reply, a man said, “What the hell is he doing in here?”

Looking over my injured shoulder, I saw François, her agent with the crazy hair, coming into the room with a cup of coffee.

“Paying my respects,” I said.

“You almost got her killed!” François shouted. “One of the greatest artists of her time and you almost kill her!”

“François,” Michele said. “He uncovered the AB-16 plot.”

“I don’t care,” François said. “He’s a danger to you, Michele.”

That seemed to amuse her. She looked at me. “True?”

“I hope not,” I said, and then caught something out of the corner of my eye on the screen. “Do you have the controls for the television?”

“Please leave,” François said. “You’re not wanted here.”

“On the table,” Michele said.

I turned off the mute. We watched as Imam Al-Moustapha, FEZ Couriers owner Firmus Massi, and Ali Farad were released from La Santé prison. They each made a brief statement condemning the intent of AB-16, swearing their allegiance to France, and reiterating their belief in nonviolence.

The screen cut away from them, and the anchorwoman quoted other condemnations that were rolling in from around the world against Émile Sauvage and the rest of the AB-16 conspirators. Parisians of all persuasions were said to be outraged at their methods and goals.

After a few man-on-the-street interviews, the anchor said, “In other news: One man is trying to show that Paris is not burning by simply going on and celebrating in memory of one of the murder victims.”

The feed cut to Laurent Alexandre. Wearing a black mourning suit, Millie Fleurs’s personal assistant stood in the middle of her haute couture showroom. It was packed with white folding chairs. There was a large picture of the designer on an easel surrounded by floral bouquets.

“I think what AB-16 wanted was obscene and unthinkable,” said Alexandre. “All of Paris, all of France, should stand up against this kind of thinking by showing them that our culture goes on. This afternoon, many of the best designers in the world will unveil dresses made in Millie’s honor and in defiance of AB-16.”

“Morgan?”

Sharen Hoskins stood in the doorway. She tapped on her watch. I nodded, and turned to Michele. As I did, I saw a model appear behind Alexandre. She wore a stunning black cocktail dress. Millie Fleurs’s assistant gestured to it and said, “This is my contribution.”

“Beautiful dress,” Michele whispered, almost asleep.

“I have to go.”

She roused, looked at me. “Come back?”

“God no,” said her agent.

I nodded. “To testify, at least.”

“Call me?”

“Definitely. And you should come to L.A.”

“Not happening,” François said.

“I’d like that,” Michele said, and paused. “You know you’ve never kissed me. You’ve never even tried.”

“I thought you were out of my league.”

“She is,” her agent said.

“You’re not,” Michele said.

“My bad, then. It will never happen again.”

Then I leaned over and kissed her tenderly.

Chapter 111

11:18 a.m.

ON THE RIDE out to de Gaulle, I relived that kiss over and over, wondering when I’d actually get to see Michele Herbert again. We could Skype and see each other, of course, but I meant to actually hold her, and kiss her more than once, and learn her story by heart.

My eyelids drifted shut in the backseat of the sedan that Hoskins was driving. Juge Fromme sat beside her, determined to see me aboard my flight and gone.

I drifted into a buzzing sleep, right on the edge of consciousness.

Images from the past few hours slipped by me: Sauvage ranting as the soldiers dragged him away, the look on Hoskins’s and Juge Fromme’s faces when I showed them the massacre site, Michele’s wan smile when I left her, and then Millie Fleurs’s assistant gesturing to the black cocktail dress.

“Morgan?” Hoskins said, waking me. “We’re here.”

I looked around in some confusion at the entrance to the private jetport at de Gaulle because the image of the black dress lingered with me. And I didn’t know why. Then I flashed on a drawing of the dress, and Millie shaking that swatch of black fabric the one and only time we met.

Something about it all clicked, and I said, “I don’t think AB-16 was responsible for Millie Fleurs’s death.”

Hoskins and Fromme twisted around in their seats. “What?”

“There’s another suspect you should consider,” I insisted. “Her assistant, Laurent Alexandre.”

Fromme scowled, but Hoskins said, “Why?”

“The morning before she was killed, I saw a drawing of the dress that Alexandre later said he designed in memory of Millie. It was on his desk.”

“Okay…” Fromme said skeptically.

“Millie had this piece of black fabric that she said she was using to make Princess Mayameen’s little black cocktail dress that night,” I said. “But when we found her, there was no such dress on the mannequins. One of them was bare.”

“So maybe she just decided not to make the dress, and Alexandre used the fabric in her honor from his own design,” Fromme said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Millie was adamant that the dress had to be ready first thing in the morning. And the princess told Louis and me that she’d gone to Millie’s workshop after the club specifically to see that dress.”

“Seems thin to me,” the magistrate said.

“What do you think happened?” Hoskins asked.

I thought a moment. I spotted Louis limping down the airport sidewalk toward us, pulling my roll-on.

“Alexandre designs the dress,” I began. “And maybe Millie just doesn’t have a good idea for a spectacular cocktail dress that evening, but then she sees her assistant’s design, and she steals it for her own.

“Alexandre kills her in revenge, and pins it on AB-16. He even uses fabric instead of spray paint to form the tag. He comes up with the idea of a fashion show in Millie’s memory. The dress is his again to make a statement in front of the best designers in Paris about the woman he murdered.”

Hoskins looked at Fromme, who shifted uncomfortably before saying, “We would be remiss if we did not look into your theory, Monsieur Morgan.”

“It’s been nice getting to know you, but I think I’ve overstayed my welcome,” I said, and opened the back door to climb out.

“Morgan,” Hoskins said.

I stopped, looked at her.

“Thanks,” she said. “For everything.”

“Moi aussi,” Fromme said with his hunched back to me.

“My pleasure,” I said, and got out and shut the door.

“You look like shit,” Louis said.

“Appreciate the vote of confidence,” I said, yawning. “The jet here?”

“Already refueled,” he said. “They have a shower inside you can use before you go. Your clothes and shaving kit are here, and your passport.”

I showered, shaved, and dressed in cleaner clothes. Louis had nodded off in the waiting lounge.

“Time for me to leave Paris,” I said after waking him.

Louis stood and threw his arms around me. “You are a hard man to contain, Jack Morgan.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“No,” he said. “This is a great compliment, a-”

His cell rang. He looked, raised his eyebrow, and answered. “Justine?” Louis listened, and then handed me the phone. “She wants to talk to you.”

“You caught me about to board,” I said. “Can this wait until I get back?”

“No, actually,” Justine said. “We just got a call from General Santos with the Rio de Janeiro Olympic authority. He’s nervous that Brazil isn’t handling security for the games well at all, and he wants Private involved.”

“That’s not what he said after the World Cup,” I said.

“Things change.”

“The games are in what, less than four months?”

“Fifteen weeks, Jack,” she said. “Which is why I’m afraid you’re not coming home to L.A. Tell the pilot you’re bound for Rio.”