A Long Night in Paris: The must-read thriller from the new master of spy fiction

by Dov Alfon

  O.K. then, branding. Oriana was willing to be persuaded. “So I walk in and start scaring them?”

  “They got the order ten minutes ago. They’re probably thinking you’ll arrive tomorrow morning, accompanied by two or three of your soldiers. If your location on the Navran is correct, you’ll be there in less than fifteen minutes. Wait at the turn before the base until 01:00 hours, following the operation’s order, organise the convoy as impressively as you can, and drive in as if you’re about to break through the gate.”

  “And after I scare them, what do I do then? I don’t even know what to look for. I’m not sure anyone there knows where Vladislav Yerminski is.”

  “You’re looking for something strange. It may be something unexpected, it may be something that’s missing, or it may just be something that looks out of place. What it is not is information about this soldier’s whereabouts, because no-one knows where he is. He was kidnapped from his hotel from right under my nose.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not sure yet. But it happened with the same honeytrap, the blonde in the red uniform.”

  “Didn’t she throw away the red uniform in the chemical toilets in the terminal?”

  “Yes. I guess she had more than one. This time she wasn’t even accompanied by the Chinese. She settled for a gun to threaten him with until they’d left the hotel. She got him into a taxi and, according to my poor friend Commissaire Léger, they got out at Saint Lazare. It still isn’t clear what they did there and whether they boarded a train.”

  “You have the kidnapping on video?”

  “Only from the hotel cameras. It’s a giant mess, no cross-references and the lighting conditions keep changing.”

  “Send it to me on the Navran. I have an hour to kill here.”

  “Segen Talmor, you may be commander of the Fourth Army of Special Section, but are you insinuating that you’ll spot something that I did not in the pictures of the kidnapping?”

  “Aluf Mishne Abadi, you may be my commander now, but allow me to be frank. Yes. In fact, I have the feeling you called just to ask me to take a look at the footage, only you’re too embarrassed to ask that of a woman.”

  “That has nothing to do with it, it’s nothing to do with your gender.”

  “Of course it doesn’t, it has nothing to do with my gender, it never has. Well, come on then, send me your blonde, let me decide what has to do with your gender and what doesn’t.”

  On the screen, Abadi was seen working the buttons of his Navran. His gaze was now less defiant and his smile more bashful, like that of a child who knows he’s done something wrong, even if he hasn’t worked out what.

  Chapter 79

  The payee’s address was “13uEbM8unu0ShB4TewXjtqbBv5MndwfX6b”. No-one knew his name or the country he was in. They knew only, based on the first digit, that it was the account of an individual, and that it was a single-use address for the specific transaction. Once received, Mr or Mrs 13uEbM8unu0ShB4TewXjtqbBv5MndwfX6b would most likely disappear with the payment.

  There was nothing remarkable about it, other than the amount: based on the fickle conversion rate of the cryptocurrency, the payment would be in the region of twenty million US dollars.

  It is impossible to cancel a payment order in bitcoin. Once the order is given, the payer cannot request a refund. Payment in bitcoin was the closest thing to handing over a suitcase full of cash that modern times had come up with, apart from the fact that the person handing over the suitcase doesn’t know who’s receiving it.

  Some bitcoin payments are transferred to the payee within sixty seconds. Other payments must go through the minimal number of verifications dictated by the system, six confirmations from each of the twenty thousand computers that vet the payments. And then there are payments that must go through multiple verification stages, delaying the payment for a matter of hours.

  For this payment, the system had determined the highest number of verification stages possible. There were several reasons for this: first and most obvious, the amount; second, the identity of the payer, a private company registered in China which, contrary to usual practice, authorised payments based on only one digital signature. The payer’s wallet address was also confidential, but the system identified his nickname, so short and banal it didn’t seem possible its owner had the digital authorisation to transfer millions at the push of a button: Ming.

  The computerised system decided that the holder of account number 13uEbM8unu0ShB4TewXjtqbBv5MndwfX6b would have to undergo thirty verification stages before receiving Ming’s money. The estimated time of transfer that appeared on the order screen was five hours. Twenty million dollars. A non-refundable order. To an untraceable person.

  Chapter 80

  At 23:40, a total of five murders were listed on Commissaire Léger’s briefing board:

  1. Yaniv Meidan, 25 y/o, Israeli citizen, victim of mistaken identity. Murdered 10:50, Terminal 2A, Charles de Gaulle airport. Body found 20:05, Acheres purification facility. Identification confirmed through biometric data from Israel.

  2. John Doe, approx. 30 y/o, Chinese origin, presumed commander of abduction squad of victim no. 1, murdered passerelle Simone de Beauvoir 14:40. Body retrieved from Seine, beyond the bridge, fifteen minutes later.

  3. John Doe, approx. 24 y/o, Chinese origin, presumed junior member of abduction squad of victim no. 1, murdered same time/ place, several body parts recovered from quai de Montebello 20:15.

  4. John Doe, approx. 30 y/o, Chinese origin, member of abduction squad of Vladislav Yerminski, trapped by Colonel Abadi main entrance Le Grand Hôtel, murdered by his partners 20:54. Yet to be identified.

  5. Georges Lucas, 62 y/o, French citizen, security manager of Le Grand Hôtel. Entered hotel room of Vladimir Yerminski, shot by victim no. 4, 20:46.

  Léger himself was feeling like a corpse. Physically, because he was exhausted from a day that would not end, and professionally, since this new discovery at Le Grand Hôtel had brought his career that much closer to its bitter end. Not only had he failed to apprehend the minister’s imaginary drugs gang, but another Israeli had been kidnapped from under his nose by the same bait, and in a manner that Léger could not comprehend. If the blonde had snatched the Israeli from his hotel room at 17:20, why would a whole Chinese commando team need to return to the scene of the crime? To pick up a suitcase that contained nothing but basic hacking equipment, some clothing and a few toiletries? And if the Israeli was to be murdered immediately after his abduction, like the first Israeli that morning, why did the blonde take him to the railway station in a taxi instead of killing him at the hotel?

  For answers to any of these questions, Léger was dependent on the municipal surveillance system and its identification software, and at this busy time of night the two operators assigned to it could not handle the load. In any case, his technicians had not been able to isolate sharp enough pictures of her in the hotel hallways, and it seemed as though the assassin from the bridge, the Chinese pedlar, had worn a professional latex mask that made it effectively impossible for the software to identify him either. All the passenger lists from all trains leaving Gare Saint Lazare had been checked by the police, but to no avail. Where did the blonde go, was Yerminski still alive, where were all the other Chinese, and who had been in Le Grand Hôtel and what were they doing now? Who were they killing?

  The answer was soon forthcoming.

  Oddly enough, the credit was due not to an algorithm but a human: Brigadier Muhammad Yousefi, the duty officer of district 93’s anti-narcotics task force, recognised in the security footage a Chinese pedlar who matched the description distributed after the killings on the bridge.

  “We had a double showdown here, looks like a drug deal gone bust,” the officer told him on the telephone with unconcealed pride. “We have two bodies on a roof here in Bagnolet, rue de la Capsulerie, near Gallieni métro. They would appear to have taken each other out over turf, but it seems off to me because one was a lookout for the Moroccan gang an
d the other was an Afghani shit dealer.”

  “Shit?” Léger tried to follow. He did not have much time for the jargon of the anti-narcotics task force, whose officers tended to adopt the gang members’ slang.

  “Hashish, Commissaire. He was a dealer with clients in Paris, there was no reason for the Moroccans to kill him in ‘the Woods’.”

  “What wood? Brigadier, please try to be clear.”

  “I’m sorry, Commissaire, I’m used to reporting to the task force captains. ‘The Woods’ is the nickname of rue de la Capsulerie near Gallieni métro, right next to the 20th arrondissement and Belleville. It’s the Moroccans’ territory. There’s no good reason an Afghani dealer would try to sell hash there, it makes no sense.”

  Léger began to understand the meaning of the report. “You mean you suspect he was killed for some other reason?”

  “Yes, Commissaire. There are surveillance cameras all over the area, and I also got the images from the métro security unit. You can clearly see that the Afghani was being followed from Père Lachaise métro long before he arrived at the area. Throughout the ride, and even when he followed the Moroccans’ instructions and walked around the compound, you can see a strange man hovering, a Chinese pedlar with a loaded cart.”

  “And you’re sure it’s the same one photographed on the bridge? There are thousands of those pedlars in Paris.”

  “Not in my area, Commissaire. We have no Chinese pedlars here, no-one here’s going to buy a postcard of the Arc de Triomphe, or a selfie stick, trust me. That pedlar followed the Afghani dealer, whose name according to the documents on him was Wasim Zeerak, to the building where he was killed. We think the murder did not even happen on the roof, but in the car park below.”

  “And does the footage show where the pedlar went?”

  “Yes it does, Commissaire. He slipped away from the compound but I located him again in the métro footage. He boarded Line 3 again from Gallieni station, changed at Arts et Métiers and got off at Rambuteau.”

  Léger did not know much about drug investigations, but he knew Paris as well as any officer in the city.

  He did not need to look at the map to follow the killer’s route and its logic. Changing lines for only one stop would be unusual even for a regular passenger, not to mention someone being hunted by the entire Paris police force. There was only one explanation: he needed to reach his destination as quickly as possible, and even at night the métro was faster than walking between those two particular stations. What Léger could not understand was what was so urgent about getting to Rambuteau, a station that was used by visitors to the Pompidou Centre.

  “He doesn’t strike me as a lover of modern art,” Léger mused aloud.

  “Not to mention that the museum is closed at those hours,” the brigadier said, stating the obvious, to Léger’s annoyance.

  Without waiting for the conversation to end, Léger’s deputy began to make calls in every direction, and there was soon chaos. Investigators burst in with reports and notes and photographs, technicians stuck red pins all over a map of the city and sirens were heard outside while excitable reports came over the police radio inside. Five minutes later, the briefing board looked different.

  6. Wasim Zeerak, 26 y/o, Afghani origin, drug dealer, murdered border of Paris-Bagnolet 18:30, most likely by Chinese assassin from passerelle Simone de Beauvoir. Connection to abductions not yet clear. I.D. confirmed through fingerprints.

  7. Sa’id Aboumdane, 14 y/o, member of “the Woods” gang in Bagnolet, murdered shortly after victim no. 6, likely same assassin. No connection to abductions, believed to have interrupted assassin while killing victim no. 6. I.D. confirmed by mother.

  Fewer than eight minutes later, a report on another body came in. Its implications were clear – the loss of the single connecting thread.

  8. John Doe, approx. 20 y/o, recovered from Seine (Méricourt) 21:25. Analysis of water currents suggests river drowning (area around curve – Tour Eiffel). Body currently unidentifiable due to damage caused by freight ship propellers. Possibility under exploration: body is of second abducted Israeli, Vladislav Yerminski.

  Léger felt despair, less at the number of bodies on the board than by the thought of having to inform Colonel Abadi that the target of his search was at the pathology institute on the banks of the Seine. He preferred to call his redheaded Israeli colleague first. The duty officer at the embassy transferred the call to Chico’s mobile, and when he answered, Léger had a suspicion that he had been sleeping. “Are you sure it’s him?” Chico said.

  “We’re not sure of anything,” Léger said crossly. “The body can’t be identified yet, it’s too badly damaged.”

  “Commissaire, we’ve known each other for years. I’m asking you to update me on any development in this case. It’s important.”

  “There are a lot of developments in this case. I’ve been continually updating Colonel Abadi.”

  “I have a lot of respect for Colonel Abadi, but he’s not the official representative of the Israeli police in France, in fact, he’s not the official representative of any Israeli authority on French territory. I’m asking to be informed of everything, especially information about Vladislav Yerminski, alive or dead. Anything.”

  Normally, Léger would have hung up in fury. But these were not normal times, and what was the limit to the number of enemies one person could make in a city that had never been known for its camaraderie? He instructed his deputy to update Chico on all developments, and the deputy called Chico a few minutes later, because the on-call pathologist did not wait for the autopsy to send an initial finding: the body of John Doe had been in the water for at least three days.

  The officer standing near the board erased victim number 8: the length of time he had spent in the river disqualified him from the case. But then another call came in, and although the report was laconic, it provided answers to all their previous questions: why Rambuteau, where were the Chinese, who was connected to whom. The officer took his marker and added a new line to the board:

  8. Corinne Lemarquer, 20 y/o, acting student, deliberate electrocution, The Rite of Spring fountain, place Stravinsky, 4th arrondissement. 23:45. Identification to be confirmed (dental records en route). Possibility under exploration: victim was Chinese commando team’s honeytrap.

  Having called Chico, the deputy again called the pathology institute, whose staff sounded even snappier than his boss. On an average day in Paris they received perhaps two or three bodies for autopsy. Six bodies was a union matter.

  His deputy ended the conversation sharply and collapsed into the chair in front of Léger’s desk. He started reading from his notepad in a cold, official voice as if rehearsing for the investigation committee. Always dance like nobody’s watching, but report to your superiors as if the entire hearing committee is sitting in front of you.

  “Commissaire, the picture is clearer now. Fifteen minutes ago the Chinese assassin murdered a girl who was waiting at the fountain by the Pompidou Centre, next to Rambuteau métro where he was last caught on camera. The tools he used were primitive but deadly. He climbed to the roof of the nearby music centre and used a split extension cord to plug various electrical devices into the outdoor socket – a cup boiler, a toaster and three portable radiant heaters – and dropped them into the fountain. The girl was in contact with the water. She didn’t stand a chance.”

  Léger heard himself asking, “Are we sure she’s connected to our story?”

  “We’re not sure yet, Commissaire,” his deputy said, and Léger could not tell if he was mocking or imitating him. “But in the victim’s wallet we found used return tickets for Charles de Gaulle, with time stamps that match the morning’s abduction, and there were messages on her mobile from one of the numbers belonging to Wasim Zeerak – victim number six. In one of the messages he asks if it all went well, moments after the kidnapping, and then promises the payment, probably the drugs he went to buy for her at the car park where he was murdered, probably by the s
ame killer.”

  “And of course we have no idea where the pedlar is now, right?”

  “We have the images from the métro cameras, I distributed them to all units in the Paris area. The camera network can’t help us that much at night, but the software might locate him tomorrow at dawn if he’s not holed up indoors somewhere.”

  How many more people would the pedlar kill before dawn? He had already slaughtered Léger’s career. Now he recognised the enormity of the error he had made by turning to the Israelis. Co-operating with Abadi had yielded no results, and the cover story concocted by the Préfet and the Minister about a massive drug deal was receiving unexpected reinforcement. Now he would not be able to explain what he had been wasting his time on tonight. He might as well start drafting his letter of resignation.

  He looked out of the generous office windows at the river. To the right, the Eiffel Tower cut through the night sky with a beguiling beam of light. Léger began to suspect that the mysterious Colonel Abadi was somehow responsible, directly or indirectly, for the whole affair from the very start. Would all these murders have happened if Abadi had not come to Paris? Was he really an investigator for a secret Israeli intelligence unit and not the head of a hit squad masquerading as a Chinese commando unit?

  This possibility hit him with fearful clarity, as the beacon of the Eiffel Tower appeared in the skies. Like the tower itself, this suspicion was inescapable, unprecedented, improbable, and yet completely real.

  Léger called the makeshift investigation room at Le Grand Hôtel. An inspector who sounded younger even than the narcotics task force brigadier picked up. Since when had everyone in this city become so young?

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Who, Commissaire?”

  “Colonel Abadi, obviously. What is Colonel Abadi doing?”

  “Till now he was on a video call on that weird telephone of his, and now he’s typing on it. He keeps watching the security footage of the blonde over and over again. He’s not taking any interest in the reports I’ve been passing to him.”