Scorpion Deception

CHAPTER FIVE

Paris,

France

“I wasn’t sure you would come,” she said. It was the first time he had seen her wearing makeup, and in a green sheath dress and bronze eye shadow that brought out the gold in her lion’s eyes, she took his breath away. “I wasn’t so nice the last time.”

“You knew I’d come,” Scorpion said. “You didn’t dress like that for the chef de cuisine.”

They were sitting at a table at La Maree, a clubby restaurant with Tudor-style leaded windows on the Right Bank not far from the Arc de Triomphe. They were the only ones speaking English in the crowded restaurant, sharing a superb Montrachet white wine along with the freshest fines de claire oysters he’d ever tasted. The restaurant was famous for its seafood.

“Alors,” she smiled. “There are two occasions when a woman must look absolutely fabulous. When she’s going to see a man she’s interested in and when she’s getting rid of a man, so he can properly appreciate what he’s lost.”

“And which is this?”

“Allez au diable,” she laughed, her laughter clear as a bell. Go to hell. “Impossible man.”

The waiter came over and they ordered. Around them, well-dressed French couples were doing what the French did best, eating and talking. The evening sparkled, and looking at her, Africa and what had happened in Switzerland and Hamburg seemed far away. Except for the brown Peugeot 308 he had spotted following his taxi in from the airport.

Who could have made him at De Gaulle? he had wondered, watching as the Peugeot followed them in on the A1, past the Peripherique and into the city, making the turn from the Boulevard de la Chapelle onto Boulevard de Magenta. And then it hit him like the persistent beep-beep-beep of an alarm.

They didn’t know who he was in Hamburg, and in any case, he had gotten rid of the glasses, cap, and shaved the stubble to change his image. It had to be either Bern, the photo ID from the Kilbane cover, or that stupid article from Africa. Or worse, something else. Something he didn’t know about.

Except how had they gotten onto him in Paris? And so quickly? He’d watched the brown Peugeot in the taxi’s rearview mirror, not relaxing even when it didn’t follow their turn onto Rue Saint-Martin. Either he was being paranoid or they had switched off and someone else was following now.

“You said it was urgent,” he began, as they sat in the restaurant.

She nodded. “I was at a charity spectacle, tres chic, at the Grand Palais for les MPLM. This man came up to me. Said he was a journalist. He was asking about you.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That you were an American. That I hardly knew you, which of course is true.” The waiter brought them chilled langoustines for an appetizer and refilled their glasses. She waited till he left. “He wanted to know if I knew where you were.”

“And?”

“I told him I had no idea, and if I did, I certainly wouldn’t tell him.” She smiled wryly.

“That doesn’t sound terribly urgent,” he said, sipping the wine.

“It was his manner,” she said. “I had a bad feeling. There was something about him.”

“Describe him.”

“Middle Eastern. Arab or Iranian. Small man. His hands were very big, like they belonged to a much bigger man. And his journalist’s carte. It looked cheap, phony. His clothes too. He gave me, in French we say, la chair de poule?”

“He gave you the creeps.”

“Yes, he creeped me.” She frowned. “But it wasn’t just that.”

“Something spooked you. What was it?” he said, looking up as the waiter brought his sole meuniere and Sandrine her pike quenelles in shellfish sauce.

“For a journalist, he didn’t seem interested in the story. Not the children, not the bravery or what happened in Somalia, nothing. It was all about you. He wanted to know where you were. He showed me a photo.”

Scorpion put his fork down. His sole meuniere stuck in his throat. It was unbelievably good and at the same time terrible because he knew it was all about to go to hell.

“Of me?” he said.

She nodded. “Not the one from the article. A different one and with a different name.”

“Michael Kilbane?” he asked.

She nodded again. “He asked if it was you.”

Christ, he thought, taking a deep breath. He was blown. Someone had put it together.

“What did you tell him?”

She shook her head, her hair swaying like a curtain.

“I said it didn’t look like you to me.” She looked at him sharply. “But it was you. And I don’t think he believed me.”

For a moment neither of them spoke. There was laughter from another table, a family. A thin man with a long nose shook his head and told them: “Non, non. Mais c’est vrai.” No, no, but it’s true, and they laughed again.

“I don’t know what to call you,” Sandrine said softly. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”

“The food’s good,” he said, and in spite of herself, she sputtered, laughing.

“Damn you,” she laughed. “So what is your name? Is it really Nick? Or is it Michael, or do you have one for every day of the week?”

He wiped his mouth with his napkin.

“I shouldn’t have come. It was stupid. Self-indulgent. I’m so very sorry,” he said, frowning. “We need to leave Paris. Both of us. Tonight.”

“What are you talking about? I’m not leaving.”

“Look, I know it sounds insane, but right now you’d be safer in Africa. I think you should go back to Dadaab. Now. Right away. I’m begging you.”

She examined him with her lion’s eyes.

“You know,” she said, “the Canadian nurse, Jennifer. She e-mailed me. She said the boy, Ghedi, the one you saved from Somalia, all he talks about is you. That you’re coming for him.”

“I will,” he said, his voice thick. He had to take a sip of wine to go on. “Have to clean this up first.”

“I don’t understand any of this. Why did you come tonight? Truly?”

He looked at her. Smooth golden skin, high cheekbones, and eyes like no one else’s.

“You know why,” he said, barely able to get it out. The effect she had on him was unbelievable.

“Tiens!” she whispered, mostly to herself. “Come on,” she said, taking his hand for him to get up.

“Where are we going?” he said, following her up and motioning to the waiter for the bill.

“My place. I’m going to rip your clothes off and have sex with you.”

As they headed for the door, the waiter, a Gallic half smile on his lips as if he knew exactly why they were leaving, handed him the bill, and Scorpion shoved a handful of euros at him.

“Why?” he asked as they nodded to the maitre d’ and stepped outside, the street dark and nearly empty except for the streetlights shining on the cobblestones and darkened shop windows.

“I don’t care whether you’re lying or telling the truth,” she said. “That was the sexiest proposition I’ve ever heard in my life.” They started walking toward the Place des Ternes when he stopped suddenly. He had spotted the brown Peugeot parked near the corner.

She looked at him, and he pulled her close as if to kiss her, his eyes quartering the Peugeot and the street. He put his lips to her ear.

“When we get to the Place des Ternes, don’t ask questions. Run down the stairs to the Metro without me. Make sure you’re not followed home. I’ll come later if I can. What’s the address?”

“What’s going on?” she whispered back.

“We’re being followed,” he said, and kissed her so long and hard he almost forgot what he was doing.

“Mon dieu,” she said, catching her breath. “Eight rue du Terrage, au troisieme etage. It’s in the 10th Arrondissement, near the Canal St. Martin.”

“I know the canal,” he said, taking her arm, the two walking together. He had spotted a glint of metal reflected from the shadows in a parked Renault Megane half a block behind them. As they walked toward the lights of the Place des Ternes, he could feel her trembling beside him.

In the center of the square was the entrance to the Metro, and next to it a shuttered flower stall. Scorpion spotted a front tail behind a tree near the stall. He didn’t have to turn around to sense the tail behind them. They were bracketed.

“Is this how it’s going to be?” Sandrine whispered.

“Je ne sais pas comment il va etre.” I don’t know how it is going to be. “Run!” he said abruptly, pushing her toward the Metro entrance. He had a sense of her running down the stairs as he whirled and kneeled into a shooting position, pulling the Glock from the ankle holster under his trouser leg.

“Ne bougez, trouduc!” he shouted at the shadow. Don’t move, asshole!

The shadow detached from the side of the flower stall and ran toward the Avenue de Wagram. A Middle Eastern-looking man in a windbreaker. Scorpion started after him. He needed him alive, he thought, running as hard as he could, wondering why the man hadn’t fired first.

The man, wearing a windbreaker, hopped onto a motorbike parked vertically between cars. Dodging a passing red Citroen, Scorpion raced toward the curb. He needed to get out of traffic and get a clean shot. He had almost reached the curb when he got his answer about why the man in the windbreaker hadn’t fired.

A bullet pinged off the cobblestones less than two inches from his foot. Scorpion dived between two parked cars and wriggled under one of them. He peered out from beneath the car. The shot had made no sound. Whoever fired must have been using a sound suppressor.

He quartered the area looking for the source of the shot. It hadn’t come from behind, from rue du Faubourg St.-Honore. Other than the man in the windbreaker, he had spotted no one and no one had followed Sandrine down the stairs to the Metro. So where the hell did the shot come from? he wondered, pulling off his jacket.

His thoughts were broken by the sound of an engine revving. Scorpion peeked out from under the car and saw the man on the motorbike cut into traffic. He flicked his jacket out toward the sidewalk while rolling the other way to the street, looking around wildly while snapping into a kneeling shooting position. He was about to fire when something moved, a shadow or a reflection; something out of the corner of his eye made him look up, and he just had time to roll back under the car as another bullet ricocheted off the cobblestones, barely missing his head. He heard a woman scream and saw another woman, crossing the street to the Metro with a small dog, look up. He watched her, the sound of the motorbike fading up the avenue.

The shot had come from a roof or upper floor apartment building on Avenue de Wagram near the little square. The middle-age woman with the dog shouted, “Aidez-moi! Police!”-Help! Police! — scooped up her dog and ran to the Metro stairs. A couple walking across the square ran back from where they’d come.

The shot had come from above on his side of the street, Scorpion realized. It had to be a rifle because even a marksman couldn’t have come so close while shooting from above at that distance with a pistol. Also, he wouldn’t have been in an apartment, because before he and Sandrine decided to take the Metro to her place, they hadn’t known they would be walking to the Place des Ternes. The tails must have spotted them heading this way, figured out where they were going, and the sniper-part of the front tail team-went into the apartment building above the pharmacy. He would have gone up to the roof for what should have been an easy kill. It was the red Citroen that saved him, forcing him to step aside, spoiling the sniper’s first shot.

Whoever they were, they were good. He wouldn’t get lucky again.

It was about four meters from under the car to the front door of the apartment house. A ledge between the top floor and the roof would give him some protection from the sniper shooting vertically down. There would be no time to ring the bell for the concierge; it would take perhaps seven or eight seconds to bump the front door lock with his Peterson universal key. He would only be vulnerable during the two or three seconds on the open sidewalk.

It would all depend on how fast the sniper’s reaction time was, he thought. Also, a pure vertical shot was difficult; the kind people almost never fired in their lives. The bullet would not have a curved trajectory. The sniper would have to adjust the sight lower than normal to hit the desired point of impact. Scorpion knew that moving fast, at night, he would present a minimal target from above, where all the sniper would see were his head and shoulders.

They’d set it up well, he realized. The man on the motorbike had been a decoy. Another few seconds, and if he hadn’t shoved Sandrine to the Metro stairs, the sniper would have killed them both. He had told her that knowing him would be dangerous, and she’d probably wondered if he was being melodramatic. He hadn’t expected it to be proven right so quickly.

Did the sniper know about the vertical trajectory? he wondered. One way to find out. Taking a deep breath, he rolled out from under the car and sprinted to the apartment house door, a bullet drilling into the sidewalk behind him as he slammed himself flat in the doorway.

He had been right. The sniper overshot the point of impact by a few critical centimeters.

Scorpion used the Peterson universal key to open the door and enter the building. The hallway was typically Parisian: a patterned tile floor, flowered wallpaper, a staircase and narrow elevator. Gun ready, he pressed the button for the timed hall light and looked up the staircase. Nothing moved.

He pushed the button for the elevator, and using the noise as it started down to cover his footsteps, climbed the stairs, whipping around at every turn and landing, ready to fire. The timed hall light went off. He crept up to the top floor, his eyes slowly adjusting to the dark. Reaching the landing, he hesitated, peering into the darkness.

It would be impossible to go up the stairs to the roof. The sound of the roof door opening would alert the sniper. At that distance, and as a stationary target for an instant, the shot would be fatal. He needed another way onto the roof.

Moving on tiptoe down the carpeted hallway, he put his ear to the first apartment door. Through it he could hear a television. Someone was listening to a game show, La Rue de la Fortune. Wheel of Fortune. He went to the next apartment door and thought he heard someone talking inside. The third apartment was silent. It didn’t look like it was wired for an alarm. Just to be sure, he knocked. If someone answered, he’d tell them he was l’electricien sent by the concierge to investigate a problem. But there was no answer. Using the Peterson key, he opened the lock and went inside.

The apartment was dark, quiet. He used a pocket LED flashlight to look around, but whoever lived there was out. The window overlooked the Avenue de Wagram. No good, he thought. The sniper was probably right above him, where he could cover the Place des Ternes and the Metro entrance and street. To have any chance, he would need to work his way over toward the other side of the building to try and come up on the sniper from behind.

Provided the sniper was alone and didn’t have a spotter. Otherwise all bets were off, he thought, opening the window and climbing out, his toes on the sill so he could reach up to the ledge he had spotted from below.

The night was cool and clear. He slipped his toes into a crevice in the building’s facade and pulled himself up by his fingers till his forearms and elbows rested on the ledge. The roof parapet was about a meter above the ledge, so he would have to crouch or crawl, heaving himself up till he could swing a leg over it. For a few seconds he dangled from his arms, gripping the ledge. Don’t look down! he told himself.

A moment later he was lying flat on the ledge, staring down at the street four stories below, hoping he hadn’t made a sound. He looked up, but saw only the top of the parapet and the sky. He listened intently. There was no way to know where the sniper was; he could be only a meter away.

Slowly, Scorpion moved onto his toes and knees, one foot behind the other, making sure to stay crouched below the top of the parapet. The ledge was barely six inches wide. He felt horribly exposed. Someone honked a horn below. For an instant he looked down, but it was just normal traffic. In the distance, over the tops of the buildings, he could see the upper part of the Eiffel Tower, glittering gold with electric lights. He took a breath. Time to move.

The footing was precarious; he crept slowly, one step at a time. It seemed to take forever to reach the corner of the building. Clinging to the side, he edged around the corner. The parapet on this other side was sloped and he had to hold on as he inched forward, conscious of the sound of traffic on the tree-lined street below. It would be the Boulevard de Courcelles, he thought. About ten meters from the corner he saw a mansard window, though he wasn’t sure if it was real or decorative.

Time to decide, he thought. If the sniper was at the Avenue de Wagram parapet, coming over the top he would be to the side and behind him. Then, even if he made a sound, he would have time to aim before the sniper could turn around and shoot. Grabbing the edge of the window molding, Scorpion reached up to the pitched top of the parapet with his left hand. In his right, he held the Glock. It would all depend on which way the sniper was facing, he thought as he put the toe of his shoe into an indented part of the molding. He listened intently. No sound from the roof. Here we go, he thought. Pulling with his left hand, he leaped over the top of the parapet onto the slanted metal roof.

Landing, his feet at an angle, he snapped into a firing position and scanned the length of the parapet just as he heard the snap of a door closing. He whirled, ready to shoot, but the sniper was gone, out the roof door he hadn’t wanted to use. He straightened. The rooftop was empty.

He made a tour of the parapet to make sure the sniper hadn’t gone over onto the ledge on the Avenue de Wagram side. That was empty too. Then he ran to the roof door, readied himself to fire, and ripped it open. There was no one on the landing, but he could hear the elevator descending. The son of a bitch was getting away!

Scorpion raced to the stairs, took them three or four at a time, leaping down to the landings, then ripped around and down the next flight, racing the elevator. As he reached the second floor, he could hear the elevator door opening, then someone running on the tile floor of the front hallway. Leaping nearly the entire flight of stairs to the landing, he was just in time to see the front door close and an older woman-the concierge-opening her apartment door.

“Retournez a l’interieur, madame!” Go back inside! he shouted as he raced past her and out the front door. A man with a rifle case was running hard toward the Metro entrance. Scorpion took off after him.

The man leaped down the stairs to the Metro, causing people coming up to stare at him. Scorpion raced across the street, nearly getting sideswiped by a BMW. He ran down the stairs, holding his Glock in his pocket. The man with the rifle case had already gone through the turnstile; he wasn’t there.

Scorpion used a one-day ticket to go through the turnstile, then had to choose which tunnel platform: PORTE DAUPHINE or NATION. No way to know which platform the sniper had gone to. Trains came by every couple of minutes. If he chose wrong, he might give the sniper a shot at him, or the man would get away and he’d never have a chance to find out who was after him-whether it was Bern or something else. Only if it wasn’t Bern, how the hell had they picked up on him in the middle of Paris?

Time to choose. Two passageways: NATION would be the train heading east into the 11th Arrondissement; PORTE DAUPHINE was the shorter part of the line, he could see from glancing at the map. The next stop that way was Charles de Gaulle-Etoile. If he were the sniper, he would try to lose someone in all the traffic and people on the Champs-Elysees and around the Arc de Triomphe, and so he sprinted down the passage to the Porte Dauphine platform.

He stopped at the opening to the platform and crouched low. A young woman a few feet away looked at him, and seeing him take the Glock out of his pocket, started to run. Scorpion grabbed her by the arm. She tried to twist away, terrified.

“J’ai besoin de votre miroir de maquillage,” he said. I need your makeup mirror. He took her handbag, opened it, and poking around, pulled out a small mirror case. He handed the bag back to her as she stared at him, wide-eyed. He put his finger to his lips as she continued to stare as if he was insane, then bolted and ran toward the exit. He could hear the sound of her high heels click-clicking behind him as he bent low and held the mirror out, close to the floor, angled so he could see the platform.

A train was coming but on the other side, going toward Nation, the noise covering any other sounds. On his side, the platform was long and curved and there were only a dozen or so people waiting. Then he spotted the sniper in the mirror. He was a young man in a black Faconnable jacket, Iranian, by the look of him. Then he turned and Scorpion got a better look.

It was the man with the seaman’s cap, the motorcyclist from Hamburg. The one who had killed Harandi.

Scorpion counted eight people on the platform between himself and the sniper, who glanced his way, without being able to see him, in the direction the sniper would have to take were he to come after him. Pulling his hand with the mirror back, Scorpion glanced over his shoulder toward the Metro entrance. There was no way of knowing if there were more of them. The train on the other side pulled away, reminding him that the next train to Porte Dauphine would be coming any second. Once it did, he would have to put himself out in the open on the platform or lose the sniper for good.

He eased the mirror back out again. There were the same eight bystanders and the sniper, for the moment not looking toward him, but down the track. Then Scorpion heard the Porte Dauphine train approaching.

He stepped out onto the platform and sprinted at the sniper, who whirled and frantically began opening the rifle case. He pulled out a large sniper rifle.

It looked like a Russian rifle, Scorpion thought, running; a VKS Vychlop with a silencer. How the hell had the bastard missed?

The bystanders, staring, were about to get killed.

He screamed at the top of his lungs: “Attention! Fusil! Police!”

As the sniper swung the rifle into aiming position, some of the bystanders screamed and ran; the others stood there, frozen. Scorpion threw himself onto the platform floor in a prone position, aimed the Glock and fired at the sniper’s thigh. He needed him alive.

The sniper staggered but did not go down. He re-aimed as Scorpion fired again, hitting him in the shoulder this time. Scorpion rolled to the side as the sniper fired and barely missed, the bullet tearing a jagged scar in the concrete platform next to his ear, then came up to his feet and ran toward the sniper again.

The man was struggling to raise the Vychlop for another shot. The train was coming fast, not far behind him, the bore of the rifle’s silencer opening looking big as a tunnel to Scorpion. But the sniper was too close, and instead swung the rifle at Scorpion’s face.

Scorpion blocked it and started the Krav Maga disarm, curling his right arm around the weapon, creating torque on the forearm while smashing his left elbow into the man’s face. He twisted the rifle away then smashed the butt of the weapon into the sniper’s face, staggering him sideways. As Scorpion reached to pull him close into a choke hold, the Iranian, seeing the train almost there, suddenly lurched sideways and off the platform.

The train came with a roar of air, its brakes squealing above a woman’s high-pitched scream as the front car smashed into the Iranian, flinging the body forward onto the track like a rag doll before rolling over it.

He stood in the shadow of a doorway across the street from her building. She had said “third floor,” which in France means the fourth floor as Americans count. Her building was brick with wrought-iron window balconies with flower pots, and at the end of the street a stone arch led to the Canal St. Martin. He could smell the water from here.

There was a light in the window of what had to be her apartment. She was waiting for him and he wanted to go up, but he knew this was as close as he was going to get, and that he would remember standing in the street looking up at her window for a long time. He called her on his cell.

“Allo,” she answered. And in English: “Is it you?”

He didn’t answer. Just hearing her voice, knowing he was as close as he would ever get, was like nothing he had ever felt before.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Across the street.”

“Come up, je t’en prie,” she whispered. Please. “We have to talk.”

“I can’t. Did you hear?”

“The death in the Metro? It was on the tele. Was it you?”

He didn’t answer. He could hear her breathing over the phone.

“Witnesses in the Metro said he was going to shoot,” she said. “You had no choice. I hate this.”

“So do I,” he said.

“What are you going to do?”

“You need to leave Paris now. Tonight,” he said.

“I could go back to-”

“Don’t say it! Don’t tell me where. Don’t tell anyone. Your phone could be bugged. Just call a taxi and go, now.”

“And you?” she said.

“I’m going too. I won’t be able to contact you, and don’t try to reach me. When it’s over, if I’m still alive, I’ll find you.” With a pang, he remembered those were the same words he had used with the boy, Ghedi. “You’ll probably be married with three children.”

“I wish,” she said. Then softly, “No, I don’t.”

“If you never want anything to do with me again, I’ll understand. It’ll probably be the smartest thing you’ve ever done.”

“Who said I was smart?”

“I’m so sorry about this.”

“You’re sorry. Is that the best you can do?”

“I don’t regret a damn thing,” he said, and clicked off.

He stood in the shadow of the doorway and waited. He wanted to be sure no one would follow her when she left. A cool breeze came from the canal, and he stepped farther into the doorway, out of the wind. Looking up at the lit window, he saw her shadow moving on the curtains. He hoped to God she was packing. His eyes scanned the street again. There were no watchers at either end or on any of the roofs.

Finally, a taxi pulled up outside her building and its interior light came on. He tensed watching the driver make a call on his cell phone. The light went out in Sandrine’s apartment. A minute later she came out of the building, pulling a rolling suitcase behind her. The taxi driver put the suitcase into the trunk and then they were gone.

The street was empty. Checking his iPhone, Scorpion located a youth hostel near the Gare du Nord that catered to backpackers and college students. He walked on the quai next to the canal, where it was virtually impossible for anyone to follow without him spotting them.

Turning up a side street, he walked for blocks past shuttered shops, his footsteps echoing in the deserted street. He had never felt so alone, and all he could think about was Sandrine. How he had upended her life and how quickly she understood what she had to do, even if she didn’t understand what was really going on. There’s steel in her, he thought. A lot more going on there than just a doctor with a pretty face.

There was traffic on rue du Faubourg St.-Martin. He stepped into the lobby of a cheap hotel and had a sleepy concierge call a taxi that dropped him off at the Gare du Nord train station. Waiting till the taxi left, he walked through the terminal, doubling back to make sure he was completely clean, then walked to the youth hostel.

He spent a restless night in a bunk bed. In the morning, by offering to chip in for gas, he was able to crowd into a beat-up Ford Mondeo, joining up with three young male European backpackers and a college girl from Ohio. They were headed south on the A6 to Grenoble, where all of them except the girl were enrolled at the university.

He went as far as Lyon with them, waving goodbye to the backpackers, and found an Internet cafe in Old Lyon, a few blocks from the Rhone River. There was only one person he trusted enough to contact, he thought grimly, hoping Shaefer was still in Europe. He sent an e-mail to Shaefer’s dummy Gmail account and then used the NSA software on a plug-in drive to delete any trace that he had been on the computer or where the message was coming from, including the deleted items file and the temporary Internet files. It only took four words, but it would reach Bob Harris, whom he and Shaefer had nicknamed among themselves “Turd Face,” or “tf.” tell tf im in